by John Buchan
“Can you shoot?” Nanty asked.
“I have never tried, but no one will suspect that I have this . . . and I will be very near . . . and I do not think I can fail.”
“Give it me,” he said, and reluctantly she laid it in his hand.
It was a heavy two-chambered cavalry pistol. Nanty, who knew little about such weapons, fingered it, balanced it in his palm, and regarded it with a kind of awe. It was David’s sling against the two-handed sword of Goliath. This frail woman clung to it as her solitary hope, and the pathos of her lonely valour smote on his heart till his eyes blurred.
“This is for me,” he said slowly. “If your husband is to find an executioner I must be the man. It cannot be you, for it would break your heart. Once you loved him — and you have lain in his arms. His death at your hands would be a righteous judgment, but the memory of it would haunt you all your days.”
“Give it me back,” she cried piteously. “I have no length of days to look for. I shall soon be dead. Oh, you cannot be so cruel! It is my child, my only hope.”
“I will use it, have no fear. You are right, Cranmer must die, but I will fire the shot. That is no work for a woman’s hand, still less for a wife’s. But it is work for me, since I have been divinely guided into this business, and must see it through to the end.”
“But you cannot,” she cried, her eyes wild and imploring. “I shall be alone with him. He is here and soon he will call me. You cannot follow. You will be taken—”
His uplift of spirit was now mated with a pleasant coolness.
“You forget that I have the master hand in this game. No one knows I am here, except Winfortune, and he thinks that I am lying helpless among the sheepskins. They mean to fire this place, and he doubtless imagines that I will burn with the rest of it. Wherever you are taken I will follow, and the chance of surprise is with me. I will cherish this pistol as I cherish my hope of salvation, and I swear when the time comes the bullet will go true, though I have to press the muzzle against his heart.”
Suddenly she dropped before him, all the power gone out of her limbs. He caught her in his arms, he whose arms had never before held a woman, and the scent of her hair was like spring flowers. He pressed his lips to it.
“Courage,” he whispered. “God will not desert us. In a little while — a very little—”
There was a voice from beyond the door.
“Gaby,” it cried. “Come to meat.” And when there was no answer, it sank into a mutter, “What ails the bitch?” and a step sounded on the floor without.
Nanty, behind the screen, saw the woman with a great effort compose herself and move to the door. He could not see the man beyond it. The door was left ajar, so he heard the footsteps in the short corridor. There was the creak of another door opening, a door very near at hand, and then silence.
He waited for a few minutes, while he thought out his course. Cranmer had talked of meat, so nothing was likely to happen for a little. He must not be premature, but must put off the decisive act to the last moment, to give his friends the chance of arriving. Oh, where in heaven’s name were all the others? If they did not come, he himself would be torn in pieces. Not the woman — Winfortune would protect her. And Mr Perceval would escape — if Cranmer were dead, it was likely that his satellites would not have the nerve to consummate the plot, if indeed they knew of the proposed consummation. Cranmer must die, but at the right moment.
To his surprise he felt no fear. Coming events seemed to fall into a scheme as exact as a set of propositions in logic, and fully as abstract. He calculated his own chance of living much longer at about one in a hundred — if his friends did not come. The latter contingency he could not assess, for he had no data. He was not greatly perturbed. He had heard of drowning men living over again in their extremity their past lives, but his thoughts had no inclination to travel back. His one anxiety was that at the due moment he should not miss, and he lifted the pistol and pointed it at the green lamp. It was a heavy thing — if he missed he thought he could brain a man with the butt. He had a notably powerful right arm.
He must have waited a quarter of an hour before he decided to move. It would be well to find out what Cranmer was doing, for he must not miss his market. He pushed wider the door, and very stealthily tiptoed into the passage. The light of the green lamp followed him, and revealed a closed door at the end of it. He stood and listened outside it, but no sound came. The Cranmers were making a silent meal.
Suddenly he heard an oath, and then a cry followed, a small stifled cry like some small thing in cruel pain. It was the smallness and feebleness of it that stabbed his heart and woke a primeval passion. He opened the door.
The light was dim, but it was not of lamps but of daylight. He saw nothing of the place save two figures, a man’s and a woman’s — the woman crouching as if she had been struck. They were preoccupied, and would not have noticed his entrance had not his boots slipped upon a grease stain on the floor. He recovered himself with a scrawl of nails on wood, and the man swung round to face him.
Nanty, having no confidence in his marksmanship, came at a bound within a yard of the man, held the pistol to his breast and pulled the trigger. The priming must have been faulty, for the hammer only clicked on the nipple, and before he could use the butt the man had leaped aside, and swung a heavy chair before him. The next second Nanty was looking into the barrel of another pistol.
He hurled his own weapon at his adversary, and at the same instant ducked his head. Something bright flashed in his eyes, and something hot and sharp furrowed his scalp. Now he was berserk mad, and sought only to grapple with his foe, though he carried a whole armoury. But the foe did not shoot again — instead he blew a whistle. He slipped like an eel from the clutch of Nanty’s arms, and in a trice had put the table between them. In doing this he flung from him the third occupant of the room who had tried to impede him.
Then things began to happen to Nanty with a furious speed. Other figures appeared on the scene, and a hundred hands seemed to be reaching for his throat. He struggled desperately, but a giddiness came over him, and something of the nausea he had suffered that morning. The next he knew was that his legs were being trussed up with ropes and his arms bound to his sides. He resisted no more, for the strength had gone out of him.
“Bring a lamp,” he heard Cranmer’s voice. “I must have a look at him.”
The green lamp was fetched and set on the table, Nanty was placed in a chair beside it and Cranmer stood opposite him. “Get out till I call you,” Cranmer told the others. “I want to be alone with this madman.” Nanty had a confused vision of men with evil faces passing him, and Winfortune was not among them.
The film of passion had gone from his eyes, and he was at last fully conscious of the scene. He was in a long room with three windows which let in the hazy purple twilight. Once it had been a noble apartment, but now cobwebs hung in the cornices and festooned the window shutters, and the panes were leaden with grime. The floor was of bare boards, and there was no furniture except the table and several chairs, and an ancient oaken cupboard of which the door swung half-open on broken hinges. The remains of food were on the table, and a case bottle of brandy. Every detail Nanty saw with an acid clearness.
He could not see Mrs Cranmer, for she was behind her husband, who stood opposite him beyond the table. Cranmer was plain in the green circle of lamplight. Unlike his wife, he had made his toilet since his journey from Norfolk, and was now a resplendent figure in a blue coat, a double-breasted satin waistcoat cut high, dark pantaloons and strapped boots. He was busy reloading a pistol and meticulously measuring the charges. His slim white hands moved in what was almost a caress, and as he wrought he spoke — not to Nanty, but to the figure behind him in the shadows.
“One of your many lovers, my dear? Nay, do not deny it, for he is the kind that would follow your beaux yeux. A most determined fellow. He would have made you a widow, but for an unlucky misfire. His foul hands were very near my throat.
Your taste was always for the kennel, my sweet, but I had thought you might have chosen something cleanlier.”
He laid down the pistol and looked at his watch.
“Seven by the clock. You are nearest the window, Sister Anne. Do you see anybody coming? I must finish with this carrion before eight. Eight, I think, was the hour our friend fixed, and, as befits the head of the State, he is a punctual gentleman.”
He was looking at Nanty now. “You have only a matter of minutes to live, sir,” he said. “You may care to satisfy my curiosity as to who in hell you may be. On the other hand, you may not. I do not press you.”
Confidence and enterprise now utterly fled from Nanty’s soul, and every spark of hope. He was confronting Cranmer, the man who had haunted his dreams, and the reality was more dreadful than his fear. The figure before him had a demoniac air of mastery. The oval of dead white face, exquisitely modelled, the horseshoe eyebrows, the mocking mouth had a corrupt Satanic beauty. The eyes, large, luminous and impenetrable, had lost all human quality; they were only windows from which looked out cruelty and unutterable hate. Here was no madman in the common sense, but an immense perverted genius. Strangely enough the picture of Sir Turnour Wyse flashed across his vision. Once he had detested that bluff figure, but now it seemed to embody all in the world that was sane and wholesome and human. Oh, why had his pistol missed fire, and not sent this spirit of the Pit to its begetter?
Mingled with his repulsion was the acutest fear. His early boldness had been only the valour of ignorance. His bonds supported him or he would have crumpled in a heap. It was terror that made him answer Cranmer’s question.
“I came here last night,” he said in a voice which trickled from a parched throat and between dry lips. “I thought it an inn, and I looked for hospitality. I was attacked by a servant and struck down and locked up in a lumber-room. I found means of escape and groped my way in the dark to this room. Here I saw you in the act of maltreating a lady, and I — I — endeavoured to shield her.”
Cranmer grinned, but with an unsmiling face.
“A very pretty tale,” he said. “Some of it may well be true, but some of it is manifestly false. What kind of preux chevalier are you that draws on a man merely on the supposition that he has spoken harsh words to a woman? Will you swear, you that have so short a time to live, that you have never seen my wife before?”
Nanty remained silent, for it seemed hardly worth burdening his conscience with a lie. Cranmer spoke to the darkness behind him. “As I thought, Gaby dear. It is another of your lovers.” Again he looked at his watch. “The quarter-past — nearly the twenty minutes. I will finish with him at the half-hour. Sister Anne, Sister Anne, do you see anybody coming?”
He stopped to listen. “I thought it was horses. It is only the swallows chackering.”
Then he turned to Nanty.
“I am not interested in you, so I will let your past alone. Soon it will be all past, for at the half-hour I propose to kill you. You have a few minutes to make your peace with whatever gods you worship.”
The words restored Nanty to his manhood. His life was over, with all its pleasant ambitions and quiet dreams. No more for him the blown sands of Forth, and the broomy uplands, and his snug little study in whose drawers lay the unpublished masterpieces of youth. He renounced these things with scarcely a regret, for his whole soul was consumed with a passion of pity for the woman whom he had so tragically failed. His brave words had been folly, and now she must tread her bitter road alone. To where? The answer to Cranmer’s question came back to him out of the memory of his childhood’s fairy-tales. “Only the wind blowing and the grass growing.” For the youth of both of them wind and grass would soon be but the appurtenances of a grave.
Cranmer seemed to read his thoughts, for he spoke again. “You will have a pyre like an ancient Roman. In an hour or two this place will be crackling, and to-morrow it will be ashes.”
He took his watch from his fob, and what he saw there made him stretch his hand to the pistol on the table. But as he moved the figure behind him rose and plucked his arm. “Justin,” she cried. “Someone is coming. Listen. There are horses on the road.”
He listened, and then shook her from him.
“You lie. The time is up, and I am a man of my word.” Again he put out his hand.
Suddenly upon Nanty’s strained ears fell the sound of a horn.
CHAPTER XVIII. How Sundry Gentlemen Put Their Trust in Horses
The curricle with its oddly matched pair swung out of the inn-yard as the moon rose above the poplars. Sir Turnour sat in the best Four-in-hand Club style, head erect, shoulders squared, hands well down, elbows close to his side; but though immobile as a Buddha, his delicate fingers were testing the mouths of his cattle. Beside him Harry Belses was buried in the folds of his great-coat, and in the narrow space at their feet, his head against Sir Turnour’s apron, lay the spaniel Benjamin.
They passed through a sleeping hamlet, and debouched from the narrow parish road into the broader Lynn highway. Here Sir Turnour gathered up the ribbons and proceeded to try the quality of his horses. In a trot their paces did not match, and the curricle swayed unpleasantly, but when he sprung them into a short gallop they went better together.
“John was right,” said Sir Turnour. “There’s blood in both of them, and willing blood. No need for fanning or towelling or chopping ‘em. But they’re not a sweet pair to drive, and I don’t know how the chestnut will last the course. He has come down too often over the sticks, I’ll swear, and his off fore-leg may give out before we’re done with him. The bat-eyed bay is right enough. As they say on the road, he’ll go through to hell or Hackney.”
The highway climbed from the dim moonlit fields to a ridge of heath, where the going was sandy, and then to a long flat stretch between young woodlands. Harry, with no task to distract his mind, sat twining his fingers with impatience, and grudging every moment when they slowed down at a turn or an ascent. But Sir Turnour, immersed in his proper vocation, seemed to have shed his cares. His manner to Belses had hitherto been civil and stiff, but now it took on the freedom of a comrade. At a rise, where the waning moon gave a prospect, he pointed out the direction where lay his own house of Wood Rising; he expatiated on what he could have provided in the way of horse-flesh had his stable been twenty miles nearer; he had tales of the road and of the local hunts, which he recounted as to a brother sportsman; and, as the pearly spring dawn crept up the sky, he burst into a song which he said his own father had composed in honour of a squirrel of a mare Called “Iron Devil.” “Hirondelle she was christened,” he said, “but that Frenchy jargon won’t go down in Norfolk.”
With that melody disaster came upon them. The off horse, the chestnut, suddenly began to jib and hang back. “Scotching it,” Sir Turnour cried. “What on earth is the matter with you? The road’s good and the pace is easy.” Then in a moment the animal seemed to go dead lame. He pulled up, flung the reins to Belses, and the next second was on the ground, passing his hands over the chestnut’s legs.
“God,” he cried. “I wouldn’t have believed it! He has broken his off thigh — the bone’s sticking through the skin. John Cherrybook is an infernal tailor not to have known of this, and I’m another not to have spotted it sooner. The poor devil must have been crocked at the start, and the mild springing I’ve given ‘em has put the cap on the mischief.”
Sir Turnour took off his beaver and surveyed the rosy heavens and the wide empty landscape. “There’s an inn a mile on,” he said, “a rotten little beer-shop, but we may be able to pick up something. Something we must have, though it be a punch from the plough-tail.”
So they limped on for a mile, Sir Turnour being wholly taken up with redressing the extravagances of the bay, who seemed to have developed a vile trick of shouldering. The beer-shop proved to be a very small place, with a half-obliterated sign which seemed to represent a rising or a setting sun. The landlord had to be fetched out of bed, and appeared in a red-cotton n
ightcap, which was hastily doffed at the sight of Sir Turnour. He was very willing to help, for Sir Turnour’s was a name to command respect, but he had only the one beast in his stable. “He’s not what I’d offer to your honour,” he said, scratching his head, “for I dunno as he has ever run in a gentleman’s pair. He come to me by way of a bad debt from my cousin Barnaby. But fetch him out, Jim,” he told his boy, “and let his honour cast an eye over him.”
The horse which was produced was a big, wild-looking brown, all over flea-bites, with a queer uncertain eye. Sir Turnour examined him critically, and nearly had his hand bitten off, while a flying hoof grazed his thigh.
“Pace,” he pronounced, “and the strength of an elephant, but as shy as a trout. Don’t blame me, Belses, if he pitches us both into a field or kicks this contraption to pieces. But there’s no choice before beggars. Put him to, my lad, and quick about it.”
The harnessing was a dangerous business, and the innkeeper’s final act was to strap over the horse’s eyes a piece of black leather like the half of a coal-scuttle. “It’s what we call moping,” he explained. “It’s the only way to drive a hot devil like him. A gentleman like your honour will teach him manners, and I’ll be bound he’ll carry you to Lynn.”
They departed like a whirlwind, the bay disliking his companion and shying violently, and the new horse apparently determined to run a race on his own account. For ten minutes Harry believed that each one would be his last. The curricle swayed and swung like a bough in a gale, and had the road not been straight and smooth there would have been instant disaster, for they needed every inch of its breadth. So erratic was their course that, in spite of their fury, they covered the ground slowly. Sir Turnour’s face turned from red to purple, and the muscles stood out in knots on his wrists. He used the whip vigorously, but not all his arts could produce a decent harmony. Finally he slowed down.
“I can hold the brute,” he grunted between his clenched teeth, “but, damme, I can’t drive him. Soon I’ll be reduced to clubbing him, a thing I’ve never done in my life. He wants weighting — I could manage him in a coach if he were one of four — but in this cursed bandbox he plays cup and ball with me. I apologise, Belses, for giving you such a bucketing.”