The House Of Cain

by Arthur W. Upfield

  No answer came. He changed the tapping to soft, insistent knocking, continued till he heard her voice demanding to know who knocked.

  “Monty Sherwood,” he whispered through the keyhole. Rustling sounds indicated movement. When she spoke again it also was through the keyhole.

  “Who is it?” still suspicious that it was not the big man. Recognizing his voice when he repeated his name, she opened the door about an inch, allowing the light from her room to fall on the dishevelled head of the visitor. With a whimsical look in his grey-blue eyes Monty drawled:

  “I thought you would like to know that Martin and me are having stirring times. Anyway, I want your help rather bad. Don’t be nervous––I won’t bite.”

  A tremulous smile played about her naturally sweet mouth when, opening the door wider, she came out fearlessly to Monty, and, pressing down a switch, lighted their end of the room. A pale blue wrapper covered her night attire, her naked feet were thrust into velvet slippers, and her glorious hair fell over her shoulders, twin ropes of glinting auburn. Far more was she the eternal woman than when last he had seen her.

  “At the present moment,” he explained, “Martin and me are like a couple of dog-chased iguanas––well up a tall tree. Friend Moore and your prospective husband are the dogs. I’ve bitten Moore so hard that he’s pretty helpless, and I’m looking for sanctuary for Martin while I go biting the rest of ’em. This morning I got Mabel to tell me you didn’t love Bluebeard and that you sent us away under compulsion. At the time I didn’t think you admired Anchor good enough to erect a statue to him.”

  “I hate him,” she said fiercely. “Mabel told me to be ready to escape with you to-night. Then she came again to say that your camels had wandered away. But tell me what has happened.”

  In a few words he detailed the events leading up to his knocking on her door. He saw the flame of indignation light up her face. When she spoke her voice trembled with passion.

  “The traitorous hounds!” she said. “Mr. Anchor made a bargain with me, a bargain which I would have kept.”

  “I know,” he responded grimly. “I’m going to remember that bargain when I get my gun-sights on him. Now, listen! I can’t carry on till I’ve found a place of security for Martin. You see, his blindness makes him so helpless. I thought, if you didn’t mind, I’d bring him here.”

  “Mind!” she echoed with shining eyes. “Of course I don’t mind! I’ll look after him while––while––oh Monty! Be careful! If anything happens to you we would be lost. I––I had given up all hope. It would be awful if anything happened to you now.”

  Patting her gently on the arm, he smiled at her, and his smile renewed her courage and utter belief in his indestructibility. He looked what he was, a superman, huge in size, tremendous in mental and physical force, his limbs as flexible as a cat’s, his vision keen as an eagle-hawk’s. Seeing the automatic he still held in his hand, she shuddered faintly, saying:

  “Go now and bring him.”

  When he returned with Martin he found her where he had left her, the electric radiance falling on as fair a vision of womanhood as ever man beheld. With shining eyes and parted lips she came to meet them, her bare arms held out to the lesser of the brothers, whose face was suffused by an indescribable light of joy.

  “Austiline!” he breathed. “Austiline, where are you?”

  “Here!” she whispered. “Oh, my dear! my dear!” she sighed, her arms slipping round his neck and drawing him closely to her.

  For a moment the giant looked down on them, smiling happily, more with the eyes than the face. A soft, joyous laugh broke from him, and, turning abruptly, he walked to the door and passed out on as perilous an adventure as ever had appealed to a brave man.

  His most precious need was shells fitting the automatic, and two boxes of fifty apiece he knew were in a pack-bag then among his gear. In all probability, he thought, there would be quite a lot of cartridges fired before breakfast.

  The torch guided him along the passage to the steps. Here he removed his canvas shoes to relieve his mind from the strain of remembering to move silently. At the panel door he paused in thought, before sliding to the right the simple opening catch.

  “It is good soldiering to split the enemy in two,” he murmured, and then strained to listen.

  From beyond the door came a dull, muffled roar.

  Somehow that sound reminded him of the borrowed blow-lamp. He thought of burglars attacking a safe. When he slid back the catch and drew the door open, he understood. It was raining. A steady, torrential downpour, indicating, without doubt, that the flaring, burning drought was broken. He thought of the Minters, and smiled. The rain roared on the iron roof above, and gurgled and rilled over the ground beyond the veranda. He was thankful now that the camels had strayed, thankful he had not essayed their escape that night, for camels would be unable to proceed far over ground now slippery and deep in bog.

  Other than the sound of the rain on the roof there was tomb-like silence; but the roar on the roof, although effectually blanketing any chance sound he might make, would as effectually mask any movement caused by a prowling enemy. With his torch extinguished, he slipped like a crow’s shadow into the hall.

  The patch of lighter darkness showed him the position of the glass door leading to the veranda. He found it unlocked and was not surprised, for few doors are locked in Central Australia. A veranda board creaked when he crossed it, but the rain muffled the sound. It hissed down through motionless air in streams as from a stupendous watering cart. When he reached his store-hut he was drenched to the skin.

  A few seconds later he emerged with his pockets weighted with shells, and slipped into the tool-house, where after a little hunting he found a box of four-inch screws, of which he took two. Another hunt brought forth a gimlet and a screwdriver.

  Crossing the compound to the hall door, Monty felt a mighty impulse to sing. Joy of living, joy of action, bubbled up and sought escape through his lips: a happiness so wonderful that, had it not been for Austiline and his blind brother’s dependence upon him, he doubtless would have aroused the enemy by a yell to come out and fight.

  As it was, he regained the hall without sound, without sound crossed to the panel-door, and noiselessly with gimlet and driver screwed it to floor and frame. The screwdriver he pocketed, and made then a trip to his bedroom, where he borrowed four broad ribbon curtain sashes and a set of lace dressing-table mats.

  The big man’s plan was simple to understand, but less so to carry out. At that time he knew what rooms were occupied by Mallowing and “The Cat,” also the position of Mabel Hogan’s room, where he felt sure Bubbles was. His plan was silently to overpower Mallowing and from him learn the whereabouts of the other inmates, then to secure Lane and “The Cat.” He anticipated little trouble from Cotton, and none from Madeline Fox. Johnston, an unknown quantity, and Anchor, doubtless would provide excitement.

  Thirty seconds were devoted to noiselessly turning the handle of Mallowing’s door. When the little man awoke, it was to be dazzled by the glare of an electric torch in his eyes, and, revealed by it, the ominous muzzle of an automatic pistol within two inches of his forehead. A soft voice hissed:

  “Silence!”

  Mallowing was silent. Not a sound did he utter, whilst a huge, vague, but substantial shadow bound his ankles together and his hands to the bed-rail above his head. When next the nightmare spoke, he recognized Monty’s voice, and felt better.

  “I like you, Mallowing,” the big man whispered. “And, because I like you, I’d simply hate to pump lead into your body. You, my dear old freed galley-slave, of course know that Anchor has declared war on me. Like the Irishman, I’m agin the government, and it follows naturally that I’m agin Anchor’s government. You’re for his government; which is where we begin to argue. Don’t yell, now, or you will compel me––much against my wishes––to bash you. Where does Anchor sleep?”

  “I am afraid I can’t tell you,” Mallowing said, for the first t
ime in his post-murder years without his jovial, care-free expression.

  “Or won’t. Which?”

  “Won’t.”

  Sadly Monty shook his head, and, opening his metal box of wax matches, built a pyramid with them on the bridge of the little man’s nose.

  “When I fire these matches, loveliest, you’ll see comets by the million before the fall of eternal darkness. My brother doesn’t recommend eternal darkness, you know.”

  “You’d torture me!”

  “With tears in my eyes, I would,” Monty assured him, but with an absence of tears in his voice. “I am at one with our dear enemies in the late war, in that I believe the side which is deficient in man and brain power may kick hard below the belt on any and every occasion.”

  Monty struck a match. “Where did you say Anchor sleeps?” he asked blandly.

  “Down in the basement,” Mallowing whispered with a groan.

  “What room?” came the remorseless voice.

  “Next to Dr. Moore’s rooms, where you were taken.”

  “Who else is below, bar Miss Thorpe and them?”

  “Mrs. Jonas.”

  “Where does she sleep?”

  “Opposite Mr. Anchor.”

  “What’s in the other rooms?”

  “Some are empty, some contain stores and art treasures.”

  “‘The Cat’ sleeps next door, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s Lane?”

  “In the room on the left.”

  “We are getting on. What about Cotton?”

  “He occupies the bedroom opposite your own,” replied the little man, now more freely.

  “And the sweet-tempered Johnston?”

  “In a room off the kitchen.”

  “Humph! There’s the girl Fox. Where’s she?”

  “Opposite this room.”

  “Which reminds me I haven’t heard the hounds. Where are they?”

  “They’ll be loose outside the compound. They rarely bark when they’re loose.”

  “Well, I think we have ’em all catalogued now. Where is your cannon?”

  Mallowing blinked when a slight tremor sent the match pyramid tumbling into his eyes. The big man carefully rebuilt it.

  “Your gun––where is it?” came the insistent voice.

  “In the left drawer of the chest.”

  “Thank you!” Monty returned politely. “As I have said, Mallowing, my lad, I like you. I would spare you a lot of discomfort if it wasn’t for our private war. As we used to say in France, ‘permitty-mwar, monsoor,” whereupon Monty expertly gagged his second prisoner.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  MONTY’S “PRIVATE BATTLE”

  ONCE more in the corridor with Mallowing’s door shut, Monty listened intently, but heard nothing other than the roar of the rain on the roof. He had decided that his services should be rendered next to “The Cat”; but, finding “The Cat’s” door locked, stole back to the room occupied by Lane. Lane’s door was not locked.

  Despite his utmost care in turning the door handle, it made an uncomfortably loud click. For nearly a minute he stood motionless, then gently pushed the door inward. From somewhere near the window Lane snored loudly. Now with the door behind him, Monty gently closed it, slowly releasing the inside handle. It, too, clicked with what seemed a great noise.

  For another minute he listened to the monotonous snoring, and then, deciding that the noise made so far had aroused nobody, he turned on his torch, when a pencil of light stabbed the inky blackness and revealed a circle of ordinary carpet at his feet. The revealing circle slid across the floor, paused at the washstand, moved away at an angle, and finally rested on the foot of a single bed showing Lane’s naked feet and pyjama-clad legs.

  To the fat man’s brutish nature, or perhaps more likely to his gluttonous habit of consuming vast quantities of food, the soundness of his sleep was due. His snores never varied while Monty crossed the room to stand by his bed. They came with the unbroken regularity of a clock during the operation of lashing the shapeless ankles together with one of the curtain sashes, and the wrists with a second. A third sash lashed the wrists to the right thigh.

  To carry out this operation the big man had propped the torch against a spare pillow so that its light was reflected from the papered wall. The automatic he held between his teeth. But a final phase of Lane’s complete subjugation remained, that of gagging him; and to stop the fat man’s oral protests would mean speedy and ruthless action.

  The fourth sash he laid in a convenient position and began rolling a lace mat into a ball for the gag, when the door-handle clicked precisely as it had done when he himself had turned it twice. At once his light was out.

  There was no time now to gag Lane; no need, in fact, to prevent his shouts, for one of the other sleepers on the ground floor was outside the door. In the Stygian darkness it was impossible to distinguish the door, to see it slowly open. A red pencil of flame darted venomously from it, then came a thunderous report. Monty sensed the passage of a bullet so close to his head that the hair of his crown was raised by its passing. Unaware that the door was open, he was hardly prepared to shoot at the red pencil in turn. He dropped on all four instead.

  Pandemonium broke loose from the bed, a vast bellow of rage proceeding from Lane, who now struggled fiercely to free himself from his light but strong and well-knotted bonds.

  When the mountain in labour paused suddenly for breath, the succeeding silence was accentuated, not diminished, by the ever-present sound of falling water. Monty waited. When Lane resumed his bellowing, the big man crept doorwards like a huge, grotesque cat.

  When he butted into a chair, there came instantly a second darting pencil of flame, which gave fleeting glimpse of the door wide open and a short, crouching figure of a man within its oblong frame. The bullet crashed into the basin on the washstand and certainly would have found Monty had he been standing.

  Lane’s description of the shooter, his ancestors, and his future offspring, if lacking literary finish was decidedly picturesque. It brought a grin of amusement to Monty’s face, and, under cover of the hullabaloo, he pushed aside the fallen chair and moved yet closer to the door.

  Lane’s objurgations apparently made the enemy more cautious, for he did not again fire when Monty, coming across a boot, hurled it into the opposite corner, making there a deceptive thud.

  What puzzled the bushman was why the enemy did not switch on a light, how it was he suspected anyone to be in the room but Lane, why he did not call to Lane demanding the reason for so much noise and so little movement.

  Inch by inch he slid to the door, the automatic in one hand raised before him, his finger barely touching the trigger. Presently he found the edge of the open door, and there lay on his chest listening. A door somewhere else was thrown open with a crash against the wall, and Monty realized that enemy reinforcements were on the march. Again he moved forward, and again paused when he was in the passage.

  Every sense was on the stretch. Somewhere in the impenetrable blackness, within a few feet of him, was a human being ready and lusting to kill. A second door, this time plainly in the hall, was flung open. Heavy thudding footsteps crossed to the passage, paused, shuffled, stopped. Then suddenly the passage was abaze with light. The first object thus revealed to Monty was “The Cat” crouched against the opposite end of the passage, his lined face not more than twenty inches from Monty’s pistol pointing straight at him. “The Cat’s” revolver was held against his knees, but before his brain had time to command his hand holding the weapon he was a dead man.

  Footsteps thudded along the corridor. Monty was on his knees sitting back on his heels. He saw a raw-boned, whitefaced, lobster-eyed, black-moustached man rushing towards him. Even while he raised his pistol a tomahawk whizzed through the air, skimmed along his rising arm, and struck him full on the chest with a blow that knocked all the breath out of his body.

  Luckily the implement, used by bush cooks to cut down carcasse
s, hit him flatwise. As it was, the impact paralyzed his chest muscles. Deprived of breath though he was, he fired. The bullet hit Johnston, for it was the chef, but merely grazed his neck. The man leapt to clear “The Cat’s” body; and, even during the half-second allowed him for recovery, even whilst Johnston hovered at the apex of his leap, Monty fired again twice, and it was not a living man that crashed down upon him with the weight of twelve stone, hurling him sideways, his legs pinioned beneath the chef’s body.

  Agonizing pain tore through the big man’s chest, and for half a long minute he fought to regain his breath. With a final mighty effort he filled his bursting lungs with air; when, even though his great chest felt like a mass of splintered bone, he could not resist a croaking laugh. Just then he felt supremely happy; for he, who loved fighting, was fighting the battle of his life in a good cause.

  The excitement of the grim conflict affected his bruised and bloody chest as a local anæsthetic. No longer was he conscious of pain: he was like a pugilist consumed with fury and oblivious of the blows battering him into defeat. When he dragged his legs from under Johnston, he was obliged to claw his way up the wall to regain his footing.

  Uppermost in his mind then was the coming encounter with the next on his list, Cotton; and he was not a little surprised when he saw no sign of the new guest: but he did see, between the slightly open door opposite and the jamb, the blanched face and wide china-blue eyes of Madeline Fox, glaring at him with remorseless, insensate hatred.

  His vision of her was a fleeting one. Her door was slammed shut, and he heard her running across her room and the veranda door flung open. Then vertigo seized him, and, slipping sideways, he almost fell, would have fallen had he not clutched at Lane’s doorpost. The light was flickering in an alarming manner. He felt sick.

  Came a single crack of thunder from within Lane’s room, and a stabbing, red-hot pain across Monty’s left side. To the astonishing fact that the fat man was free and firing at him, as well as to the shock of the bullet itself, the big man reacted as possibly no other man would have done. He laughed again, a richer, louder laugh. The light suddenly steadied, the nausea vanished. A step took him along the wall, out of Lane’s vision.