The Yankee.
Even at that distance, there could be no doubt about it. The Yankee, with his strange, grinning, reckless face. His name was - Mr. Rampole. Yes. Mr. Rampole seemed to be testing the rope. He swung round on it, drawing up his legs. Climbing a few feet up the rope, he hung there with one hand and pulled at it with the other. Then he dropped to the ground and waved his hand again. Another light, like a bull's-eye lantern, flashed on. He hitched it to his belt, and into that belt he seemed to be thrusting other things - a hatchet and an instrument like a diminutive pick.
Sliding his body between two of the wide spikes on the edge of the well, he sat on the inner edge for a moment, holding the rope. He was grinning again, at the small figure which held the other light. Then he swung off the edge .and down into the well; his lamp was swallowed. But not before the small figure had darted to the edge, and, as the beam of Rampole's lamp struck upwards for an instant, Budge saw that the face bending over the well was the face of Miss Dorothy....
The watcher at the edge of the Hag's Nook was not now the adventurer Budge or even the butler Budge. He was simply a stooping, incredulous figure who tried to understand these amazing things. Frogs complained loudly, and there were bugs brushing about his face. Edging forward between the trees, he crept closer. Miss Dorothy's light went out. The thought went through his head that he would have a rare wild story to tell to the Rankins a month hence, over the port.
From the well a few broken reflections glimmered, as of a lamp sizzling out in water, but never quite extinguished. Momentarily the pointed leaves of a beech tree were outlined, and once (Budge thought) Miss Dorothy's face. But the cool moon had come out again, ghostly against the wall of the prison. Afraid of making a noise, tight-chested and sweating, Budge moved still closer. The chorus of frogs, crickets, God knew what!-this chorus was so loud that Budge wondered how any noise could be heard. It was cold here, too.
Now, it is to be urged that Budge was not, and never has been, an imaginative man. Circumstances do not permit it. But when he glanced away from the flickers of light dancing deep in the well, and saw a figure standing motionless in the moonlight, he knew it was an alien presence. Deep within him Budge knew that the presence of Miss Dorothy and the American was right, as right as gravy over roast beef, and that the other presence was wrong
It was - Budge tells it to this day - a small man. Standing some distance behind Miss Dorothy, a crooked shadow among the shadows of the trees against the moon, he seemed to grow into weird proportions, and he-had something in his hand.
A muffled noise bubbled up from the well. There had been other noises, but this was definitely a cry or a groan or a strangling of breath....
For a time Budge remembered nothing very clearly. Afterwards he tried to determine how long a time had elapsed between that booming echo and the time that a head appeared over the edge of the well once more, but he could never be sure. All he could be sure of was that Miss Dorothy, at some period or other, had snapped on her light. She did not point it down into the well. She kept it steady, across the mouth of the rusty spikes.... And up from the well, now, another lamp was strengthening as somebody climbed....
A head appeared, framed between the spikes. At first Budge did not see it very clearly, because he was trying to peer into the darkness to find that alien figure on the outer edge; that motionless figure which somehow gave an impression of wire and hair and steel, like a monster. Failing to see it, Budge looked at the head framed between the spikes, coming higher and higher above the well.
It was not Mr. Rampole's face. It was the face of Mr. Herbert Starberth, rising up over the spikes of the well; and the jaw was fallen, and by this time Budge was so close he could see the bullet-hole between the eyes.
Not ten feet away from him he saw this head rising, horribly, as though Mr. Herbert were climbing out of the well. His sodden hair was plastered down over his forehead; the eyelids were down and the eyeballs showed white beneath; and the colour of the bullet-hole was blue. Budge staggered, literally staggered, for he felt one knee jerk sideways beneath him, and he thought he was going to be sick.
The head moved. It turned away from him, and a hand appeared over the edge of the well. Mr. Herbert was dead. But he seemed to be climbing out of the well.
Miss Dorothy screamed. Just before her lamp went out, Budge saw another thing which loosened his horror like a tight belt, and saved him from being sick. He saw the young American's head propped under Mr. Herbert's shoulder; and he saw that it was the Yankee's hand which had seized the wall, carrying a stiff corpse up out of the depths.
Silver-blue like the glow for a pantomime, the moonlight etched a Japanese tracery of trees. All of it had been done in pantomime. Budge never knew about the other figure, the alien figure he had seen standing beyond the well and peering towards the spikes. He never knew whether this man had seen the young American's head beneath Mr. Herbert's body at all.... But he did hear a flopping and stumbling among the brush, a wild rush as of a bat banging against walls to get out of a room. Somebody was running, with inarticulate cries, through the Hag's Nook.
The gauzy dimness of the pantomime was ripped apart. Far above, from the balcony of the Governor's Room, glared a bright light. It cut down through the trees, and the boom of a voice roared out from the balcony.
"There he goes! Grab him!"
Wheeling, the light made a green and black whirlpool among the trees. Saplings crackled, and feet sloshed on marshy ground. Budge's thoughts, in this moment, were as elementary as the thoughts of an animal. The only distinct impression in his mind was that here, crackling through these bushes, ran Guilt. He had a confused idea that there were several flash-lamps darting beams around the runner.
A head and shoulders were suddenly blocked out against the moon. Then Budge saw the runner
Budge, fat and past fifty, felt the flesh shaking on his big body. He was neither Budge the swashbuckler nor Budge the butler; he, was only an unnerved man leaning against a tree. Now, when the moonlight fell as with a shining of raindrops, he saw the other man's hand; it was encased in a big gardener's glove, and the forefinger was jammed through the trigger-guard of a long-barrelled pistol. Through Budge's mind went a vision of youth, of standing on a broad football field, wildly, and seeming to see figures coming at him from every direction. It was as though he were naked. The other man plunged.
Budge, fat and past fifty, felt a great pain in his lungs. He did not drop behind the tree. He knew what he had to do; he was solid, with a quiet brain and a very clear eye.
"All right," he said aloud. "All right!" and dived for the other man.
He heard the explosion. There was a yellowish spurt, like a bad gas-range when you apply a match to it. Something hit him in the chest, swirling him off balance as his fingers ripped down the other man's coat. He felt his finger nails tear in cloth, falling, and his hip was suddenly twisted into weakness. There was a sensation as though he were flying through the air. Then his face squashed into dead leaves, and he dimly heard a thud as of his own body hitting the ground.
That was how Budge the Englishman went down.
Chapter 16
"I DON'T think he's dead," said Rampole, going down on his knees beside the flattened figure of the butler. "Buck up, please! Hold your light down here while I roll him over. Where the devil is what's-his-name-Sir Benjamin?"
Budge was lying on his side, one hand still stretched out. His hat was crushed along one side with an almost rakish effect, and his respectable black coat had burst a button. Tugging at the dead weight, Rampole wrenched him over.
The face was like dough and the eyes were closed, but he was breathing. Since the wound was high along the left breast, blood had begun to soak through.
"Halloa!" Rampole shouted. "Halloa, there! Where are you?"
He lifted his head to glance at the girl. He could not see her distinctly; she was looking away, but the light did not waver much.
There was a crackling in the bushes.
Sir Benjamin, his cap crushed down like a gangster in a motion picture, pushed through. His long arms dangled out of his sleeves, and you could see the freckles against the muddy pallor of his face.
"He - he got away," the chief constable said rather hoarsely. "I don't know who he was. I don't even know what happened. Who's this?"
"Look at him," said Rampole. "He must have tried to stop ... the other one. Didn't you hear the shot? For God's sake let's get him to your car and down to the village. Take his feet, will you?- I'll get his head. Try not to jolt him."
It was a heavy weight. It had a habit of sagging between them, as when two people try to move a large mattress. Rampole found his chest tight and his muscles aching. They staggered through the scratching arms of bushes, and out across the long slope to where Sir Benjamin's Daimler was parked in the road.
"You'd better stay here on guard," the chief constable said, when they had steadied Budge in the tonneau. "Miss Starberth, will you ride in to Dr. Markley's with me and hold him on the rear seat? Thank you. Steady, now, while I turn round."
The last sight Rampole had was of her holding Budge's head in her lap as the motor churned into life, and the big headlamps swung. When he turned to go back towards the prison, he found he was so weak that he had to lean against the fence. His brain, tired and stupid, moved round like a creaky wheel. So there he was, clinging to the fence in the clear moonlight, and still holding Budge's crushed hat in one hand.
He glanced at it, dully, and let it fall. Herbert Starberth
A light was coming closer. Dr. Fell's bulk waddled above the grey meadow.
"Halloa there!" the doctor called, poking his chins forward. He came up and put his hand on Rampole's shoulder. "Good man," he said after a pause. "Well? What happened? Who was hurt?"
The doctor tried to speak levelly, but his voice grew high. He went on:
"I saw most of it from the balcony. I saw him run, and called out, and then I thought he fired at somebody. . . ."
Rampole put a hand to his head. "That butler fellow - what's his name-Budge. He must have been watching us from the wood. God knows why. I'd just hoisted him - you know, the dead one -over the edge of the well, and I heard you call, and somebody start to run. Budge got in his way, and took it in the chest."
"He isn't-?"
"I don't know," the American answered, despairingly. "He wasn't dead when we put him in the car. They've taken him in to Chatterham."
Both of them stood silent for a while, listening to the crickets. The doctor took a flask from his pocket and held it out. Cherry brandy went down Rampole's throat with a choking bite, and then crawled along his veins in a way that made him shudder.
"You've no idea who the man was?" Dr. Fell asked.
Rampole said, wearily: "Oh, to hell with who it was. I didn't even get a glimpse of him; I just heard him running. I was thinking about what I'd seen down there.... Look here, we'd better get back to the dead one."
"I say, you're shaking. Steady on-"
"Give me a shoulder for a second. Well, it was this way-"
Rampole swallowed again. He felt that his nostrils would never be free of the odour from that well, or from crawling things. Again he saw the rope curling down from the balcony, and felt the stone against his corduroy trousers as he swung himself over the edge.:. .
"It was this way," he went on, eagerly. "I didn't have to use the rope very far. About five or six feet down there are stone niches hacked into the side, almost like steps. I'd figured it wouldn't be very far down, because heavy rains might flood out any hiding place Anthony had made. You had to watch yourself, because the niches were slimy; but there was one big stone scraped almost clean. I could see an 'om' and a 'me' cut into a round inscription. The rest was almost obliterated. At first I thought I couldn't move the stone block, but when I braced myself, and tied the rope round my waist, and put the edge of the trench-mattock into the side, I found it was only a thin slab. You could push it in fairly easily, and if you kept it upright there was a hole at one side where you could get in several fingers to pull it back again.... The place was full of water-spiders and rats...."
He shuddered.
"I didn't find a room, or anything elaborate. It was just an opening hollowed out of the flat stones they'd used for the well, and a part of the earth around; and it was half full of water, anyway. Herbert's body had been squeezed into it along the back. The first thing I touched was his hand, and I saw the hole in his head. By the time I had hauled him out I was as wet as he was. He's pretty small, you know, and by keeping the rope tied round my waist to brace me I could hoist him on my shoulder. His clothes were full of some kind of overblown flies, and they crawled on me. As for the rest of it . . ."
He slapped at himself, and the doctor gripped his arm.
"There wasn't anything else, except - oh yes, I found the handkerchief. It's pretty well rotted, but it belonged to old Timothy; T. S. on the edge, bloody and rolled in one corner. At least, I think it's blood. There were some candle-ends, too, and what looked like burnt matches. But no treasure; not a box, not a scrap. And that's all. It's cold; let me go back and get my coat. There's something inside my collar. . . ."
The doctor gave him another drink of brandy, and they moved on heavy legs towards the Hag's Nook. Herbert Starberth's body lay where Rampole had deposited it beside the well. As they looked down at it under the doctor's light, Rampole kept wiping his hands fiercely up and down the sides of his trousers. Small and doubled, the body had its head twisted on one side, and seemed to be gaping at something it saw along the grass. The cold and damp of the underground niche had acted like an ice-house; though it must have been a week since the bullet had entered his brain, there was no sign of decomposition.
Rampole, feeling as though his brain were full of dull bells, pointed.
"Murder?" he asked.
"Undoubtedly. No weapon, and - you know."
The American spoke words which sounded idiotic even to him in the way he felt. "This has got to stop!" he said, desperately, and clenched his hands. But there was nothing else to say. It expressed everything. He repeated: "This has got to stop, I tell you! Yes, that poor devil of a butler.. . or do you suppose he was in on it? I never thought of that."
Dr. Fell shook his head.
"No. No, there is only one man concerned in this. I know who he is."
Leaning against the coping of the well, Rampole groped in his pocket after cigarettes. He lit one with a muddy hand on the match, and even the cigarette smelt of the depths down there. He said:
"Then we're near the end-?"
"We're near the end," said Dr. Fell. "It will come tomorrow, because of a certain telegram." He was silent, meditating, with his light directed away from the body. "It took me a long time to realize it," he added, abruptly.
"There is one man, and only one man, who could have committed these murders. He has killed three men already, and tonight he may have killed a fourth Tomorrow there is an afternoon train arriving from London. We will meet that train. And there will be an end to the murderer."
"Then - the murderer doesn't live here?"
Dr. Fell raised his head. "Don't think about it now, young fellow. Go down to Yew Cottage and get a bath and a change of clothes; you need it. I can watch."
An owl had begun to cry over the Hag's Nook. Rampole moved through the brush, back along the trampled trail where they had carried Budge. He glanced back only once. Dr. Fell had switched off his flashlamp. Against the blue and silver of the moonlight, Dr. Fell was standing motionless, a massive black silhouette with a leonine head, staring down into the well.
Budge was conscious only of dreams and pain. He knew that he was lying on a bed somewhere, with deep pillows under his head. Once he thought he saw a white-lace curtain blowing at a window; he thought that a lamp was reflected in the window-glass, and that somebody was sitting near him, watching.
But he could not be sure. He kept dozing off to sleep, without seeming to be able to move. There were no
ises like the shiver of beaten gongs. Somebody was arranging a prickly blanket about his neck, though .he felt too hot already. At the touch of the hands he felt terrified, and again he tried to lift his arms without success; the gong-noises and the swing of phantom rooms dissolved in a jerk of pain which ran through him as though it were flowing along his veins. He smelt medicine. He was a boy on a football field, under a dinning of shouts; he was winding clocks and measuring port from a decanter; and then the portrait of old Anthony, from its frame in the gallery at the Hall, leapt out at him. Old Anthony wore a white gardener's glove....
Even as he retreated, he knew that it was not old Anthony. Who was it? Somebody he had seen on the motion picture screen, associated with fighting and gunplay; and a whole genie-bottle of shadowy faces floated past. Nor yet was it any of these, but some person he had known a long time. A familiar face -.
It was bending over him now, in his bed. His scream became a croak.
Impossible that it should be there. He was unhurt, and this was a fancy coloured with the smell of iodoform. The linen of the pillow felt cool and faintly rough to his cheek. A clock struck. Something was shaken and flashing, thin glass in lamplight, and there were tiptoeing footfalls. Distinctly he heard a voice say:
"He'll live."
Budge slept. It was as though some subconscious nerve had been waiting for those words, so that afterwards sleep descended, and wound him rigid as in a soft dark ball of yarn.
When at length he awoke, he did not know at first how weak he was, nor had the morphine quite worn off. But he did know that a low sun was streaming in at the window. Bewildered and a little frightened, he tried to make a move; he knew with ghastly certainty that he had slept into the afternoon, a thing unheard-of at the Hall.... Then he saw that Sir Benjamin Arnold, a smile on his long face, was bending over the bed. Behind him was a person whom he did not at first recognize, a young man....
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