The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood Part 58

While she still hesitated, a voice from the subterranean regions at the end of the shop fell upon her ear. Her heart gave a great jump at the sound--it was Benito's. "Joe! Joe!" he was crying, in feeble accents.

"It's take it or leave it. There are plenty of your sort about. Well, what do you say?"

"I accept," said Mariquita, eagerly. "When shall I begin work?"

"Now, this minute. Come down and help me to get a batch of bread out of the oven."

They pa.s.sed down into the cellar by a short ladder, and Mariquita found herself in a dimly-lighted cavernous den, hot and stifling, at one end of which glowed the grate below the oven.

"Joe! Joe!" repeated Benito's voice, and Mariquita, with difficulty, made out his figure lying on a heap of rags in a corner of the cellar.

"Well?" answered Joe, roughly, as soon as he had pointed out the bread-trays and desired her to get them in order. "What's wrong with you now? You are always groaning and calling out."

"Water!" asked Benito, piteously. "This place is like a furnace. I am suffering torments from raging thirst and this cruel wound. Accursed Englishman! may I live to repay him!"

"You will have to hurry and get well, or the Russians will save you the trouble," remarked Joe.

"That is my only consolation. It was I who gave him to them."

Although bending busily over her task, Mariquita felt her heart beat faster and faster. These words, which she now overheard through such a strange chance, clearly referred to her lover.

"Will they hang him, do you think?" asked Benito.

"As sure as the sun breeds flies. We have done our business too well to give him a chance of escape."

"Would that I might hold the rope, that I might see his agony, his last convulsions! That I might myself revenge the tortures he has made me bear!"

And Benito sank back upon his miserable bed, groaning with pain.

"Don't whine like that, you miserable cur!" said Joe, brutally. "It's bad enough to have you here at all, without your disturbing the whole place. Why did you come here?"

"Where else could I go? I never expected to get so far. I was faint from loss of blood, and in frightful pain. I thought I should die as I crawled along."

"Better you had than bring me into trouble, as you will if the provost-marshal finds you here."

"It is cowardly of you to ill-treat and upbraid me. Take care! I am helpless now, but by-and-by, when I am well and strong, you shall suffer for your cruelty."

"What! you threaten me? But there, it is idle to waste words on such a wretched rogue; I have other work to do. Now, young imp!" cried Joe, turning to Mariquita, "stir yourself, and let us get out this batch of bread."

The conversation which she had overheard, conveying as it did the confirmation of her worst fears, had agitated Mariquita exceedingly, but she knew that she must control her emotion, and arouse no suspicions in the minds of these villains. Benito, wounded, and in desperate case, was in no position to recognise her, and Joe was, of course, completely in the dark as to whom he had admitted within his shop.

The work in the cellar was not completed and the bread carried upstairs for an hour or more, during which time Mariquita was able to think over and decide what she would do. She had matured her plan when they got upstairs.

"Pay me!" she said, saucily, to Valetta Joe. "I shan't stop here."

"Pay you, vile imp? Why, I only took you on trial!"

"Pay me!" she repeated. "You shan't cheat me."

"I owe you nothing. Be off out of this or you shall feel the weight of my hand."

"Pay me, you swindling old rogue!" shouted Mariquita, in a shrill voice. "I won't go till I get my rights."

"You won't!" cried Joe, as he seized her roughly by the collar and dragged her towards the door.

"Villain! Thief! Murder! Help, help! He is killing me!" cried Mariquita, now at the top of her voice, and this frenzied appeal had the exact effect she hoped. A crowd of camp-followers quickly gathered around the door of the shanty, and with it came a couple of stalwart a.s.sistants of the provost-marshal.

"What's all this?" asked one of them, in a peremptory tone. "Leave that lad alone, you old rascal!"

"What's he doing to you?" asked the other.

"He won't pay me my wages," said Mariquita, in a whining, piteous voice. "He owes me three shillings."

"I don't, you lying little ragam.u.f.fin! I only took you on trial."

"He does; and he was beating me, ill-using me," went on Mariquita.

"We can't have no disturbance here," said one of the provost-marshal's men. "You must come before the provost, both of you; he'll settle your case in a brace of shakes. Bill, you bring the old man; I'll take charge of the youngster."

And the two guardians of order marched their prisoners through the hut-town to a wooden building at the end, where Major Shervinton dealt out a simple, rough-and-ready justice to the turbulent characters he ruled.

This was precisely what Mariquita had hoped for. What she sought at all hazards was to gain speech of the provost-marshal.

They had to wait for him half-an-hour, and when he appeared there were other cases to be dealt with first.

When it came to Valetta Joe's turn, he stoutly denied the charge of defrauding and ill-using the lad.

"I don't know about the wages, sir," said one of the a.s.sistants, "but we caught him in the act of cuffing the boy."

"What does he owe you, my lad?" asked Major Shervinton.

"Nothing," replied Mariquita, trembling and in very imperfect English.

"I only wanted to get him here to denounce him as a friend of the Russians and a spy."

"There's not a word of truth in what he says!" cried Joe, looking at her with open-mouthed astonishment.

"We have long had our eye upon you, my friend, you know that; and I shall inquire into this more closely."

"At this moment there is a man--his name is Benito Villegas--in the bakehouse below the shop," said Mariquita. "He is wounded; you will find him there. Go and seize him; make him tell you what he has done with the English officer, Mr. McKay."

"Mr. McKay!" said the provost-marshal, deeply interested at once. "He is absent--missing! Have you heard anything of him or his fate?"

"Make Benito tell you. He has betrayed him into the Russians' hands."

"This is very important intelligence. What you say shall be verified at once. See to the prisoners, one of you, and let some one come with me to Joe's shop."

Major Shervinton made short work of Benito.

"Look here, my fine fellow, you had better make a clean breast of it all. What have you done with Mr. McKay?"