This last was the result of a feeble cry of protest Crayfoot uttered, and, while doing so, nearly fell from his chair in the extremity of his fear.
“I didn’t say I would,” the other went on, “I only said how safe it would be, no one knowing this place except Loo what I can settle.”
He paused again; and the reference to Loo, and a glimpse he now gave of his features as he turned for a moment sideways, enabled Bobby to recognize Coop. Coop went on:
“Very safe and private like down here which no one knows of and for certain sure not that there Mr Blighted Inspector Bobby Owen, poking his nose in other people’s business all the time like the busy he is, but a cut above his brains to find this place, see?”
“Yes, I know, of course, he never could,” acquiesced Crayfoot as nervously as before.
“Makes me laugh,” declared Coop, who seemed to be gradually talking himself into a more genial mood, “to think of him a-chasing and a-hunting all over everywhere; and all the time me and you tucked away here, snug as a bug in a rug, us having our little chat together where no one won’t ever know what’s happened. See?”
“No, they won’t, will they?” stammered the wretched Crayfoot. “Oh, my God,” he murmured under his breath.
“Aw, shut it, you make me sick,” Coop told him. “You weren’t ‘My Goding’ any when you outed the old bloke, were you?”
“No,” agreed Crayfoot, “no,” and under his breath he said again: “God help me.”
“Well, He won’t,” snapped Coop irritably, “no one will, especial not Mr Bleeding Inspector Bobby Owen. Now, you listen to me. You wouldn’t have nothing to complain of if I done the same to you as you done to old Peter, and I don’t know as I didn’t ought to, and lucky for you I ain’t that sort of chap, ain’t it?”
“Yes,” stammered Crayfoot. “Yes—God have mercy.”
“You and your God,” complained Coop. “Aw, shut it, can’t you? Putting the old cove through it and thinking you was getting away with it, too, sneaking here the way you did after them silver things and the pictures, which seemingly you’ve burnt like the silly fool you are, and didn’t ought to have, them being worth money.”
“It was to get help,” Crayfoot protested. “I thought someone might see and afterwards I had no more matches.”
“Does in a bloke for to get his pictures,” commented Mr Coop disgustedly, “and then goes and gets caught in as neat a trap as ever was and burns them same pictures. Makes me laugh to think of the old bloke catching you in his trap same as he did after him being dead, and there you would be for ever more most like only for me, and no one ever known a thing.”
“Someone knew,” Crayfoot said. “Someone pushed bread and potatoes and a bottle-full of water on the end of a string through the opening over the door. So someone knew or else I think I should have gone quite mad.”
“That was Loo most like,” Coop answered carelessly. “Not much she don’t know, but I know what to do with her.” His voice had an uglier note than ever as he said this, and Bobby promised himself to take good care Mr Coop never had any opportunity of putting into effect any such intentions he might cherish. “Bit of luck for you,” Mr Coop insisted, “as how, not being a fat-headed cop, I had brains enough to find out where you was. Lucky for you, eh?”
“Yes,” quavered Crayfoot, but without conviction.
“Lucky for you, too,” Coop continued, “you couldn’t burn them candlesticks or else I would have gone and lost me temper. Why, those painted pictures you done me out of, I reckon I might have got as much as ten or twenty pound each for.” He paused, evidently not wishing to make claims that might seem too absurdly exaggerated. “Or thereabouts, and not worth nothing now, along of you, which you couldn’t wonder, could you, if I drilled you with a bullet out of disappointment and vexation like. Now could you?”
“No,” agreed the wretched Crayfoot as meekly as before, “not at all, I’m sure.”
“Aw, shut it,” said Coop, quite mechanically. “Now, you listen to me. If a bloke with brains—what’s me—wants to think things out, then he’ll find a way. It all depends on brains. See?”
“Yes,” said Mr Crayfoot, meek as ever.
“Brains,” repeated Coop with satisfaction. “Some works for their living. Some has brains and don’t. That’s me. Brains. Thinking. Put ’em together and what do you get?”
Mr Crayfoot awaited enlightenment and Mr Coop said impressively:
“You get to see. See?”
“Yes,” agreed Mr Crayfoot, almost hopefully.
“Which here it is,” continued Coop. “You did in the old hermit, didn’t you?”
“I never—” began Crayfoot and changed his intended denial to a terrified squeal of agreement as Coop swung up his revolver. “I mean Yes. Yes. I only meant I didn’t know you knew.”
“Saw it all,” affirmed Coop, “and didn’t know you had the guts, so I didn’t. So now you write out a confession, saying as how it was you, and how you tried to get him to tell you where them great valuable pictures were, and he wouldn’t, and took his chopper to chase you out, but you got it from him, which is more than was to be expected from such as you, and laid him out, but not before first you made him tell you about this place, and so you came along and got yourself trapped, not knowing how the old bloke had fixed the door to swing back sharp after anyone went through, and you not having sense enough to see for yourself.”
“It was open when I came,” Crayfoot protested, stung to defend himself against this charge of stupidity. “I only knew it was there when I tripped on the wire holding it back.”
“That was the old bloke’s trap, that was,” Coop explained, “and very cunning and smart, too. Now you write down what I told you. See? Then you give it me and I let you go because if you try any tricks I send it straight to that there Mr Blasted Inspector Bobby Owen. See?”
Mr Crayfoot had evidently made up his mind to obey. No alternative that he could see, since otherwise he supposed he would be shot on the spot. Or else perhaps left to remain, an even worse fate, once again imprisoned here. He produced a fountain pen and a note-book and began to write. Coop watched him with satisfaction. Bobby, from his unseen position in the shadows of the passage, decided to wait till the confession was completed. He felt he would like to secure it when it was finished. Coop strolled over to the inside wall of the cavern and stood looking first at one of the two candelabra and then at the other.
“Silver ain’t what it was,” he admitted regretfully, “but they’ll fetch a bit all right; and a good thing I brought candles along to stick in ’em, so as we can see what we are doing. I don’t reckon even as I’ll have to melt ’em, seeing there’s no one can identify ’em, though such a lot of ugly mugs I never saw before in all my life. Like they was alive and watching you. Enough to scare anyone, wondering what they are waiting for. Might be Mr Inspector Blooming, Blasted, Blighted, Bleeding Bobby Owen from the way they look as they was saying: Just you wait till we’ve got you. Only it’s me that’s got them, see?” He put up a hesitating and almost reluctant finger and touched one of the faces, choosing what was certainly the most hideous, the most repulsive of those devilish features where their creator had so well expressed all that was most evil, most malignant. “The very dead spit image of that Owen bloke,” he announced. “But you ain’t got me yet, not yet you ain’t. See?”
Bobby wished very much to protest. He was certain that grinning carven face in no way resembled his own. He felt quite hurt about it indeed, and considered it was an impression as mistaken as was Coop’s final remark. Crayfoot looked up from the table at which he had been writing. He said:
“Will this do?”
Bobby moved forward, for now was the moment he had been waiting for. Coop heard and turned. Crayfoot jumped to his feet with a cry. Coop stammered:
“It’s him.”
“So it is,” agreed Bobby, keeping a wary eye on Coop’s big revolver which, however, Coop made no effort to use.
I
nstead he pointed with his other hand to Crayfoot.
“That’s him, Mr Owen, sir, that’s him what done in the poor old gentleman. I’ve just made him write a confession and all so as to let you know.”
“Very good of you,” Bobby answered, “but are you quite sure it is not you yourself who should have signed it?”
“That’s it, is it?” Coop snarled and swung forward his pistol.
Before either of them could make another movement light flying steps sounded, and swift as a ray of passing light Loo’s small form sped down the passage into the cave, across it, and at a bound into the alcove and down amidst the blankets and the rugs heaped there. A moment later she thrust out her head.
“He’s killed Henry George and Mary and everyone and now he’s coming to kill me,” she told them and vanished again, down amidst the rugs and blankets that she drew over her head for safety’s sake.
“’Ere, now then,” said Mr Coop, waving his big revolver to and fro in a helpless way that confirmed the suspicions Bobby had entertained from the first that the thing was unloaded and probably un-fireable.
Abruptly Mr Crayfoot screamed. Not a pleasant sound. Loo’s irruption, this new threat, had been too much for what was left of his self-control. It was the cry of a trapped rabbit. Bobby, who had reached the centre of the cave, near the table, was watching the passage. Heavy, running steps were hurrying down it. A man grew visible at the passage mouth, but stayed there, hidden in the shadows. He could see them in the comparative light of the cave, but they could only distinguish him as a vague, menacing form, motionless and silent. There passed an interval that for all any of them knew might have been half a day, might have been a split second. Motionless they remained, like clockwork figures waiting the touching of the spring that would set them all in motion.
Then from the brooding shadow at the entrance to the passage, a movement, a flash, the roar of the report of a pistol that sounded in that confined space like a clap of monstrous thunder.
CHAPTER XLV
THE FIGHT
TWICE MORE THAT loud report rang out; and through the reverberating echoes that went thundering to and fro in each corner of the great cavern, sounded a loud scream, a loud and dreadful scream, mingled with a heavy clattering sound as one of the candelabra, struck by a bullet that had flown too high, came smashing to the ground.
Some of the candles were extinguished by the fall, some flared up in a high greasy unsteady flame, Bobby saw Coop swing round upon himself, so that now his back was to the entry to the passage that before he had faced. He held both hands to his chest, pressing against it as if to hold something there, and then he began to cough.
Bobby sprang back to the table and dropped to the ground behind it, at the same time tilting it to one side so that it formed some sort of temporary protection or shield. Crayfoot had vanished, but Bobby had no time to wonder what had become of him, was not consciously aware of his disappearance. Another bullet smashed against the side of the uptilted table, boring its way very neatly right down the centre of one of its stout projecting legs. Bobby had his unloaded revolver in one hand now and was groping in his pocket with the other for the ammunition he had brought with him. He was thinking to himself in a calm, detached so to say impersonal manner, that he had been inconceivably foolish to neglect loading the weapon. Self-confidence, a stupid self-confidence and reliance on his official authority, had again betrayed him. Coop he had never been inclined to take too seriously. Coop might shoot, as he had done before in a panic-stricken effort to escape, but would never dare defy police. Indeed Bobby had always felt over him a complete and somewhat contemptuous mastery. This was different, this was an uttermost extremity of peril, and before he had begun to thrust his cartridges into the cylinder of his revolver, fierce eyes were glaring down at him over the table edge, a pistol barrel was thrust into his face, a harsh voice said:
“Drop it.”
Nothing to do but to obey. No need to ask either to what the ‘it’ referred he was to drop. He let revolver and cartridges fall. The harsh voice said:
“Hands up. Stand up. Turn round.”
Bobby obeyed. He felt something hard thrust into the small of his back. He had no need to wonder what it was. He knew his life hung now upon the crooking of a finger; and not his life alone, but also that of the child, Loo, hiding under the blankets and rugs in the alcove. He remembered clearly, vividly, with what an accent of terror Crayfoot had pleaded with Coop, with Coop who had had himself no chance at all to plead. With that same note of panic in his voice Bobby let his voice rise to the roof of the cavern as, in a kind of stuttering scream, he cried:
“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot. Oh, please, please.”
The answer was an increased pressure of the hard pistol muzzle against the small of Bobby’s back, and then in that same harsh voice that was more like the snarl of a beast than human speech, he heard:
“Where are the El Grecos? Where are the pictures? Quick now.”
“Oh, my God, don’t shoot,” Bobby cried again and made all his body quiver as with an agony of apprehension. “I’ll show you, they’re here, Coop hid them, only don’t kill me.”
“Show me, show me where they are,” his captor ordered, and then: “Where’s Loo?”
“Oh, oh,” Bobby moaned again, “oh, promise you won’t kill me. She’s under there, that bench, by the wall, the pictures, too, only they’re hidden. Coop hid them. You won’t hurt Loo, will you?”
“Of course I won’t,” was the answer; and with it came a low and horrid chuckle that told with scarce a pretence of concealment what were the speaker’s real intentions. “Show me. Show me the pictures. Only Loo first. She says she saw me. Hurry up. No tricks mind. Or you’ll have a bullet smash your spine before you know it.”
Bobby sent upwards to the cavern roof yet another cry of utter inarticulate terror and appeal. His captor heard it with satisfaction. Well may a man feel secure when he is holding a loaded pistol in the small of another’s back walking before him with hands held high above his head. What else can that other do but ‘accept the logic of the situation’? Obey or die. What else? No wonder that from the one man cries of terror and appeal were coming. No wonder that the second man was supremely confident. Bobby’s hands were still held high, his last hysterical cry of despair was still echoing under the cavern roof as he swung round sharply to the left, at the same time in one simultaneous co-ordinated movement bringing down his open left hand like a chopper on the wrist of his captor’s hand that held the pistol, and bringing up his right knee into the other’s stomach.
The sudden unexpected attack, coming as it did from one who had seemed so overwhelmed with terror, was successful, but not entirely so, for Bobby’s opponent was wary and strong. The sudden sharp chopper-like blow on his wrist knocked the pistol from his grasp; but the upward thrust of Bobby’s knee that should have incapacitated him was delivered just the least possible fraction of a second too late; and he was able to avoid its full force.
The next instant they had grappled in an embrace as close as ever lovers knew, breast to breast, almost mouth to mouth, an embrace both well understood meant for the one sweet life as for the other inevitable death. To and fro they stamped, straining every nerve and muscle, and even in that moment Bobby could see how his enemy’s eyes glared into his with a strange and bestial fury, how on his lips were flecks of foam, flecks of foam that were tinged with red. Another glimpse he had over the other’s shoulder was of Loo’s small, frightened face peering out at them from under the piled-up blankets and rugs in the alcove. He wanted to call to her to run away while there was still time, but he had neither breath nor chance. The strength of his opponent seemed as the strength of ten; not, God knows, because his heart was pure but because of the fury of his hate, the rage of his despair. Against that, formidable as it was, Bobby called up all he had, and more, much more, for in his need there came to him those deep hidden reserves with which in the ultimate moment the strange human spirit can insp
ire the machine of flesh and blood and bone wherein it is enclosed.
Tremendous, huge beyond all normal possibility, were the efforts that each made, each to get free from the other’s desperate grasp, each to fasten his own grip upon his adversary, each to break the other’s resistance and force him to the ground. How it happened Bobby could never have told, but suddenly they were separate, apart, glaring and breathless. Bobby was aware of the warm salt taste of blood in his mouth from a cut lip. In one hand he held the other’s collar and tie that had torn away in his grasp, deceiving the hold he had hoped to make fast. Between them, but farther from Bobby and nearer his enemy, lay the revolver Bobby had knocked from the other’s hand. For either to secure possession of it would mean for him swift victory, for the other death inevitable. Both of them saw it at the same time, both sprang to seize it, and since his adversary was nearer and reached it first and was already screaming hoarsely his triumph as his hand began to close upon it, so Bobby with a flying kick sent it spinning away along the floor. Then turning to resume the struggle he saw his adversary still grinning at him with a continued certitude of victory. Disappointed of the recovery of his pistol, he had taken advantage of the brief pause and freedom from the immediate struggle to draw a sheath knife such as those sailors still make use of—a weapon more formidable perhaps and at least as deadly as any pistol. For even at close quarters a bullet may still go astray, but a knife-thrust is more easily, more certainly aimed.
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