The Penalty Part 45

DEAREST BARBS:

I can't help breaking my silence to say I love you with my whole heart and soul. Only tell me that you are safe and sound in your father's house. I want much to know that, for I am on the brink of a great, a dangerous, and I think a n.o.ble venture.

WILMOT.

"What did I tell you!" she exclaimed. "Who brought this, Bubbles?"

"n.o.body--a messenger-boy."

"Barbara," said her father, "write that you are safe at home. I'll tell Lichtenstein what has happened. He's our best advice. Where is Mr.

Lichtenstein, Bubbles?"

"In his room, sir, writing."

Dr. Ferris left hurriedly, and Bubbles, gnawed by unsatisfied curiosity, stood first on one foot and then on the other while Barbara wrote to Wilmot. Somehow it was a very difficult note to write, for she felt sure that it would not be read by Wilmot's eyes alone, and she didn't wish by a syllable further to incite the legless man against his prisoner. So at last she merely wrote that she was with her father at Clovelly. What she wanted to write was that her love for him had grown and grown until she was sure of it.

After Bubbles had gone with the note she sat for a long time without moving, silent and white.

When her father returned, bringing Lichtenstein, he, too, was white. "I am going to town at once," he said. "G.o.d willing, I shall have only good news for you."

Barbara turned to Lichtenstein. "You've thought out something?"

He nodded gravely.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Read that, father"]

XLV

"My treasure! My ownest own!"

Rose cowered from the cold malice in the legless man's voice, and from the unearthly subdued excitement in his eyes.

"Sit there opposite me. Don't be afraid. Things are coming my way.

To-morrow I shall have a pair of legs. Think of that! Are you thinking of it?"

She nodded.

The legless man wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand. "I told him,"

he said, "that she was a prisoner in this house. He said he would give me his legs if I would let her go free. He wrote a note asking if she was safe and sound. I sent it out to her place where she was all the time, and of course she answered that she was safe and sound."

He chuckled, and his agate eyes appeared to give off sparks.

"But she," he went on, "has promised to marry me, if I will let _him_ go free. They love each other, Rose. They love each other! But I'm not jealous. It won't come to anything. First I will get his legs. Then, if he lives, I will make him write to her that he _is_ sound and free. I will tell her that he refused to sacrifice himself. That will make her hate him, and then we'll be married and live happily ever after. But if she breaks her word, why on the 15th of January she will be taken, wherever she is, and brought here, and we--we _won't_ be married!" He laughed a long, ugly laugh.

"What are you going to do with me?"

The legless man considered, "I'm afraid you'll be too jealous to have about, my pretty Rose. I'm afraid your love for me will turn into a different feeling--in spite of the beautiful new legs that I shall have.

In short, my dear, knowing women as I do, you are one of my greatest problems. If I could be sure that you wouldn't give anything away before the 15th--after that it wouldn't matter."

"Are you leading up to the announcement that you are going to kill me?"

She looked him straight in the eyes, and began to shiver as if she was very cold.

"Wouldn't that be best," he asked, "for everybody concerned?"

"I swear to G.o.d I won't give anything away," she said.

He continued to smile in her face. "I could do it for you," he said, "so delicately--so painlessly--with my hands--and your troubles would be all over."

He took her slender white neck between the palms of his great hairy hands and caressed it. She did not shrink from his touch.

"Rose," he said presently and with the brutal and tigerish quality gone from his voice, "you're brave. But I know women too well. I don't trust you. If you'd screamed then or shown fear in any way, you'd be dead now. After the 15th you shall do what you please with your life.

Meanwhile, my dear, lock and key for yours."

"You'll come to see me sometimes?"

"After to-night, I shall be laid up for a while, growing a pair of legs.

Later I'll look in, now and then. How about a little music, before you retire to your room for the next few months? I'll tell you a secret. I'm nervous about to-night, and frightened. A little Beethoven? to soothe our nerves? the Adagio from the Pathetique?"

He stumped beside her, holding her hand as a child holds that of its nurse; but for a different reason.

That night, securely locked in her own room next to his, she slept at last from sheer weariness. And she dreamed that he was playing to her, for her--the Adagio, and then the "Funeral March of a Hero."

XLVI

Occasionally now, for a long time, there had been coming from the next room the d.i.n.k of steel against steel, a murmur of hushed voices, and a sound of several pairs of feet moving softly. With the exception of two cups of soup, Wilmot, in preparation for what he was to undergo, had had nothing to eat. What with this and the natural commotion of revolt in his whole nervous system, he was weak and faint.

The door opened, and Dr. Ferris came quietly into the room and bent over him. He was in white linen from head to foot, and wore upon his hands a pair of thin rubber gloves, glistening with the water in which they had been boiling.

Prepared to find Wilmot, he naturally recognized him, in spite of the beard which so changed the young man's face for the worse; but of this recognition he gave no sign. The legless man, alert for any possibility of self-betrayal on Wilmot's part, had followed him into the room. Dr.

Ferris spoke very quickly:

"My man," he said, "is it true that of your own free will, in exchange for immunity and other benefits received, you consent to the amputation of both your legs, as near the hip-joint as may be found necessary?"

Wilmot drew a long breath, focussed his mind upon bright memories of Barbara, and slowly nodded.

"You are quite sure? You are holding back nothing? There has been no coercion?"

"It's all right," chirped in Blizzard. "Glad of the chance to pay me back, aren't you, my boy?"

For a moment Wilmot's eyes rested with a cold contempt on the beggar's.