The Time Mirror Part 15

Elaine lay unconscious on the floor. He caught up her limp body. Kicked open one door. Lunged out into the turbulent stream. Drifted with the current, barely keeping their heads above water.

From the banks came the shouts of searching men.

Onward Mark and Elaine drifted. The girl's eyes still were closed. Her body slack.

All his life those endless hours were a nightmare to the man. He remembered, vaguely, that they lay hidden under the roots of a willow while guardsmen on the bank above them cursed the luck that had let the pair escape. Mark's teeth were chattering and his muscles weak. Elaine's face, beside him, was growing blue with cold. Yet still she did not recover consciousness.

Then, at last, the baron's men were clumping off, and Mark was dragging his sweetheart out onto the bank.

A voice said:

"Praise G.o.d they did not find you!"

Mark staggered to face the man who spoke. His hand flashed to the knife in his belt.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

The stranger was old. The hands he raised in a gesture of peace were toil-worn.

"Only a poor peasant, friend," he answered. "I welcome you because the baron's men would not be hunting you were you not his enemies--may his soul rot in h.e.l.l!"

"You will help us?"

The old man nodded.

"As much as I can. There is an abandoned chateau near here. You can hide there. I shall bring you food."

All but one wing of the ancient edifice to which the peasant took them was in ruins, gutted by fire. It stood high on a hill like a blackened skeleton.

"Once those who lived here were as cruel and proud as Baron Morriere,"

commented their guide. "Fire made them our equals."

And the part of Mark that was Jacques Rombeau answered:

"Fire will make many equals in the years to come, old man. And swords will help, for a poor man's arm can strike as l.u.s.ty a blow as any lord's."

They laid Elaine on a bed of straw high in the unburned wing. She was conscious now, but screaming in delirium.

"We've got to get a doctor!" Mark grated tensely. "If she dies--"

The thought brought him up short. History said Elaine Duchard could not die! No! She must be tormented and murdered! And already the time was short, for Professor Duchard had a.s.serted that she was killed two days after her first escape. Twelve hours had pa.s.sed since he and the girl had clambered into the coach. That left thirty-six--

The old peasant was shaking his head.

"There is no doctor here who can be trusted," he declared. "One and all, they would run to Baron Morriere. The nearest who would help you and keep his mouth shut is in Paris--"

For ten long seconds Mark struggled with himself.

Elaine was sick. Perhaps dying. Well, why not let her die? Wouldn't it be better than to see her perhaps back in the hands of Baron Morriere?

Was it not to kill her that he, Mark Carter, had come across a hundred fifty years of time? Had he not sworn he would contradict history's verdict--

"Jacques! Don't let them get me! Save me! Jacques--"

She was screaming in delirium again, her lovely face pale, her golden hair water-soaked to limp stringiness. Mark knelt beside her. Chafed her wrists. Sponged the fevered brow.

"Jacques! Jacques!"

"History be d.a.m.ned!"

He shouted it aloud. Sprang erect, eyes flashing cold fire.

"I won't let her die now, and I won't let the baron get her! History or no history, she's my Elaine, and I'll save her!"

He whirled on the bewildered peasant.

"How far is it to Paris?"

"About eleven miles."

"Then I'll go there. I'll get a doctor." Even as he spoke, Mark was pulling on his jacket. He strode toward the door, then hesitated and came back. He gripped the old peasant's shoulders. "Stay with her, old man, 'till I come back."

"I shall stay."

Mark drew the knife from his belt. Handed it to the other. When he spoke, his voice was but a cracked whisper:

"If _they_ come ... use this. She would rather have it so."

And the answer came back:

"I promise it, friend! They shall not take her alive!"

A wild trip it was, that journey to Paris. A dozen times before he was beyond Baron Morriere's domains, Mark was certain he would be trapped.

Then he was in the city and searching out the doctor's office in a vast, ancient rookery on the Left Bank. Outside--although it was only mid-afternoon--hovering storm clouds transformed day into night, while, at last, he pounded on the door to which he had been directed.

The door opened. A scowling, youthful man with tousled hair glared out at him, reeling tipsily all the while.

"Wha' y' want?"

"I'm looking for Doctor d'Allempier."

"Then why y' come here? _I_ ain' no doc-tor. Me, I'm painter. Gustav Jerbette. 'M bes' dam' pain'er--"

Disgust welled within Mark's heart like the thunder that rumbled overhead. He jerked free of the drunk's pawings.