It was dark, brutally dark. If he could only see a little, so that he might hoard his strength and waste fewer blows! Two of the men were still on the top stair—at times like elusive shadows! But the other one—where was the other one? He could not make out the third man at all now.
Something gripped and twined around his ankles—a grim, instant answer to his question. The third man had crawled upon him from between the others' legs! And then, as Stranway strove desperately to free himself from this new attack, while still fighting to hold back the other two, a cry, still with rage, pain and impotence, came up the stairs from the disabled man below:
"Ah, finish him! You haven't got all night! Put a bullet in him, and have done with it!"
The grip on Stranway's legs tightened—he could not loose himself, and in another second he would be thrown. Better to force the issue than wait for that!
It would give her a little more time before the inevitable end—just a minute or two more time. He drew his body backward from the knees up—and then, head down like a battering ram, he flung himself suddenly forward in a plunging dive full into the shoulders of the men on the step below him.
There was a crash, the sound of rending wood as the banister sagged—another crash—and the four men were sprawling in a tangled heap upon the stairs.
Up out of the ruck Stranway struggled to his feet. But he was surrounded now, and now he could only fight on blindly while his strength held out. They were pounding at his face, raining blows upon his head. He felt himself swaying, and giddy flashes swam before his eyes. And then there came a yell again from the disabled man below, but this time it was unmistakably a yell of warning. It was answered by a hoarse, mirthless laugh, the tongue-flame and roar of a revolver shot, a scream—and some one came leaping up the stairs—and Stranway's opponents seemed to melt away from before him, as, evidently in sudden panic, not only at the unexpected attack, but because their presence in the lonely house had obviously been discovered now, they dashed past the newcomer, and rushed headlong down the stairs.
Flint? No, it wasn't Flint! Who, then? The question came and went in a confused way through Stranway's mind, as he jumped back to the landing and threw himself face downward upon the floor. The fight wasn't over yet! Rallied by the frantic yells of their disabled leader, as he screamed out to them that they had only to deal with one man more, from below came a volley of shots. The newcomer flung himself down beside Stranway. Only the leader of the band lay in full view in the candle light, in full range below at the foot of the stairs—the others were scattered farther back along the hall, and were firing out of the darkness.
"You didn't come any too soon, whoever you are," Stranway panted grimly. "If you've got another revolver, I'll take a hand."
"I've only one!" The man fired as he spoke; then, anxiously: "Where is she? Is she safe?"
But it was the Orchid herself who answered suddenly from somewhere behind them.
"Yes, I'm safe," she said.
"Thank God!" ejaculated the man soberly; then, peremptorily: "Get into a room somewhere out of danger until we've settled with this rabble."
"Yes—in a moment!" she replied tensely. "But, first, there is something else. Ewen, are you hurt? I could not find a way out. I could not see, but I could hear—and it was terrible! Tell me, tell me, are you hurt?"
"No," Stranway answered quickly. "No; not a bit—but you must get back there into that room at once! Please! At once!"
She made no answer, but the next instant, to Stranway's relief, he heard the closing of a door. And now he could smile with grim complacence at the shots that were coming up from the hall below, for, lying flat here on the floor, the bullets must necessarily, from the angle at which they were fired, pass harmlessly overhead. The man beside him, though perhaps no more effectively, fired in turn, coolly, methodically, at the flashes as they came up out of the darkness, and twice reloaded his revolver.
Perhaps five minutes passed, and then in a lull in the firing, the leader's voice calling to his companions, but calling now in piteous entreaty, once more reached the head of the stairs:
"Help me out of here, you cowards! My leg's broken, and my back's hurt! Help me out of here, before they drill me full of holes!"
The man at Stranway's elbow laughed—and in the laugh was something that it was not good to hear.
"Have no fear, Hastvik," he called, a softness in his voice that was deadly in its menace and its irony. "I could have shot you on the way up—or finished you with any shot I have fired from here—you should be reassured, should you not?"
"Hastvik!" The man's head lifted, and his eyes strained wildly up the staircase. "Hastvik! Who calls me Hastvik?"
Again the man beside Stranway laughed.
"I do!" he said. "Do you not recognise the voice—Hastvik?"
"Who are you?" Hastvik screamed.
"Who am I?" said the other, and there was a rasp now in his voice. "I am—Kyrloff."
Hastvik with an agonised effort, his face contorted, jerked himself forward from his sitting posture against the wall.
"Kyrloff—eh!" He broke into oaths. "Well, I might have known it! I should have finished you that night on the river bank when we pulled you out of the water—I've cursed myself that I didn't ever since!"
"You threw me back again because you thought that I was already dead," said Kyrloff hoarsely. "But there was enough murder done that night, Hastvik, wasn't there? Enough murder done that night! My wife—that you killed, you hell-hound! No, have no fear, Hastvik, I shall not shoot you—unless you move—or one of those others tries to move you. That would be too easy a way out for you. You've had nineteen years of freedom—you know why—but the law is ready and waiting for you now."
Kyrloff—Sanctuary! The last account! That entry in the Red Ledger! The story of that night! Stranway's brain was correlating it all now. This was Kyrloff—the man who had given sanctuary to Charlebois. And below was the man who——
Stranway's mind veered abruptly as he stared fixedly at Hastvik. Had the man's face gone whiter, more a ghastly, bloodless colour? In the faint candle light he could not tell; but Hastvik's shoulders and head had slumped suddenly back against the wall, and the man lay there motionless now as though he had fainted.
A silence had fallen—the other three, hidden below, had evidently been intent upon the scene. But now, suddenly, there came a shot, and, with a muttered exclamation, Kyrloff, who had unconsciously edged a little forward, drew hastily back.
"Hit?" asked Stranway.
"No," Kyrloff answered.
Stranway spoke again quickly:
"Have you plenty of cartridges?"
"Yes," Kyrloff replied.
"Good!" said Stranway. "They can't get up here, and we've nothing to fear, then, unless they carry out their original plan of setting fire to the house. They've, I don't know how many, cans of kerosene below there."
"I stumbled into the cans coming up," said Kyrloff. "But they won't set fire to the house and leave Hastvik there, and they can't move him without coming into the light, or get at the cans either. They're welcome to try! I wish they would! I'd like to get that first fellow back there—ah!" The flash of his revolver cut a lane of light down the staircase; there was an answering yell of pain—and then a hail of bullets came streaming up from below. "Winged him, that's all!" growled Kyrloff. "But I've about got his position now, and next——"
"Do you hear that?" Stranway grasped suddenly at Kyrloff's arm. "There's some one outside!"
From the roadway without came the sound of approaching motor cars, and, a moment later, the sharp whir of tires on the gravel driveway. But the three men below had heard it too! With a rush they sprang from their concealment, making past the light and down the hallway for the head of the lower flight of stairs. Kyrloff flung his arm forward to fire—and the hammer clicked on an empty shell. He jumped to his feet with a bitter oath.
"After them!" he cried.
For a moment all was wild confusion: ru
shing feet, slamming doors, cries, hoarse shouts from outside the house—and Hastvik, returned to consciousness again, if indeed he had ever lost it, shrieking in frantic appeal:
"Don't leave me—don't leave me—you blasted curs! Do you hear—Jake!—Blackie—you——" He burst into a torrent of wild blasphemy.
Kyrloff had dashed down the stairs past Hastvik and disappeared along the hall; but Stranway, as the door opened and he heard the Orchid's voice, turned and stepped quickly toward the room in which she had taken refuge.
"Ewen!" she called. "Are you there?"
He reached out in the darkness, and drew her to him. She was trembling, and he brushed back the hair from her forehead tenderly.
"We are safe now," he said. "Quite safe, dear. They have come—Flint, I think, and some of our men from the Court, for there is more than one car outside. Listen! There they are coming up the stairs now."
The pound of feet as a number of men raced up the lower staircase reached them; and then a voice shouted out anxiously:
"Mr. Stranway! Mr. Stranway! Where are you?" Then, suddenly: "Good God, what's this!"
Stranway stepped to the head of the stairs. Flint and three of the organisation's men were bending over Hastvik.
"I'm here!" said Stranway.
Flint turned and peered up the stairway.
"You're safe—you're all right?" he cried excitedly.
"All right," said Stranway.
"And the Orchid—is she——"
"Safe," Stranway answered; and then abruptly: "Carry that man down stairs at once, Flint. I imagine he is in rather a bad way, but keep your eye on him just the same. He has probably got a revolver in his pocket, though he was in a predicament where he dared not use it!"
"Leave him to us!" Flint replied, a sudden gruffness in his voice; and, motioning to his men to pick Hastvik up, led the way toward the lower stairs.
Stranway turned to the Orchid.
"It's strange," he said musingly. "They all seem to know that you were here. Kyrloff knew—and Flint knew when he called up to me just now. But Flint didn't know when I left him an hour ago."
"You didn't ask him about—Charlebois," she said, in a low voice.
Stranway shook his head. He had feared that there could be but one reply, and he dreaded any further shock to her until she should have recovered, at least in some measure, from the experience she had just been through.
"No," he said slowly.
Quick in her intuition, she spoke:
"Was it because—of me?"
For a moment he held her close to him again, and laid her head upon his shoulder, his cheek against hers—it seemed the only answer he could make. Then, releasing her, he took her hand.
"Come," he said. "We will go downstairs."
Chapter XXXI.
At Midnight
Table of Contents
Slowly, a little sadly, this shadow upon them, they went down the stairs to the ground floor. There were lights here shining out from the dining room. From outside came the sound of men's voices, the tramp of feet on the driveway; and from still farther away came shouts, and once, muffled by the distance, the report of a revolver shot.
They reached the door of the dining room—but on the threshold they halted suddenly as though of one accord, and for a moment stood motionless, staring incredulously at the scene before them. Then, with a little cry that mingled wonder and joy, the Orchid darted from Stranway's side, and, running across the room, dropped upon her knees beside a stretcher that stood by the French window.
A mist seemed to form before Stranway's eyes—a great happiness to overflow his heart. On the stretcher lay Charlebois. Like a man in a dream then, Stranway walked slowly forward. The little old gentleman was patting the bowed brown head beside him tenderly.
"Ah, little Highness," said Charlebois, a hint of mischievousness creeping into the world of affection that was in his voice, "you must not kneel to any man, you know! And you, my boy"—he raised his hand from her head, and held it out to Stranway—"need I tell you what it means to me to find you both safe? I think, from what I know has happened here, that to-night must have brought you very close together, though I trust, sir"—the steel-blue eyes twinkled, and his voice grew quizzically stern—"that you have not presumed so far as to be guilty of the crime of lese-majesty against Her Highness the Princess Myril of Karnavia."
"Highness! Princess!" stammered Stranway—and something cold seemed to clutch suddenly at his heart.
The brown head lifted quickly; and the dark eyes, full of happy tears, but with a half startled, half frightened look in them now, searched the face of one and then the other.
"Tut, tut!" said the little old gentleman, smiling at the dismay he had created. "You are conjuring up story-book fancies now, I am sure: that little Myril here is the reigning princess of a kingdom; that she must wed only royal blood; that her duty is to her subjects; that she must bid you a tearful adieu and go back to her country, her crown, and a loveless life! Well, it is nothing of the sort—nothing of the sort! Listen, then! As you may have already surmised, my boy, the manuscript I gave you to read was the story of the night, nineteen years ago, when I escaped in the boat with Myril, a baby of two years old then, and with that box containing the money and papers in a foreign language that you saw on my desk in the Red Room to-night; and I will leave it to you and our good friend Kyrloff there to supply Myril with the details of that part of her story a little later on, for I have many other things to say, and I must not talk any more than I can help."
Absorbed, with no thought but of Charlebois when he had entered, Stranway had taken no notice of any one else in the room. He turned now, following the direction of the little old gentleman's eyes. Back by the door in the opposite corner, Dr. Damon was bending over Hastvik, who lay upon the floor; and leaning against the wall, his arms folded, like some grim sentinel, stood Kyrloff—older looking now, as he must well be, but still recognisable as the short, stocky, dark-eyed man of Charlebois' manuscript.
Stranway's eyes swept the group, and, as Dr. Damon rose to his feet, held questioningly on the physician, while his head inclined in a significant little nod toward Charlebois.
Dr. Damon shrugged his shoulders.
"My orders did not take precedence at Dominic Court," he said bluntly. "It was the shock and the loss of blood more than anything else that affected him—a bad flesh wound. We stopped the flow, got him around, and——"
"Quite so," interposed Charlebois imperturbably. "I came—and the doctor professionally is an outraged man. Your other patient there, doctor—can he be taken back to town?"
"When I'm through with him," said Dr. Damon crossly.
Charlebois laughed.
"Well, take him into another room, then. Stranway, my boy, call somebody to help. There are plenty of our men around the house."
Stranway stepped to the window.
"Flint! Verot! Sewell!" he called. "Are any of you there?"
"Yes—Verot," answered a voice.
"Bring some one with you," ordered Stranway, "and carry this wounded man out of here."
"At once!" Verot replied—and a moment later, followed by another man, entered the room.
"Verot," demanded Stranway abruptly, "those other three men didn't get away, did they?"
"I'm afraid they did," Verot answered, with a muttered imprecation. "It's pitch black outside, you know, and they got among the trees before we were hardly out of the cars. But there's half-a-dozen of our men still after them."
Stranway uttered a sharp exclamation, and his fists clenched. It was a little different now, of course, since Charlebois had not been killed, but——
"It doesn't matter," said the little old gentleman quietly. "They were only tools, hired by that man there on the floor—professional thugs from the city's scum. I know them, and to-morrow or the next day we will get them as surely as though we had caught them to-night. You may go, Verot."
Verot and his companion picked Hastvik up, and,
followed by Dr. Damon, left the room. Kyrloff, silently, his arms still folded, took a step after them.
"Wait, Kyrloff," Charlebois called. "You have not spoken to Myril here."
Kyrloff paused, and turned a white, set face, with twitching lips, toward them.
"I know—but not now," he said in a colourless voice. "I will atone for that to-morrow. Now, until he is safe in a prison cell, I stay with him."
A shadow of sadness stole over Charlebois' face and crept into his eyes, but he made no answer. The door closed behind Kyrloff, and they were alone.
"You must try to bring some brightness into Kyrloff's life, both of you," said the little old gentleman gravely, beckoning Stranway nearer; "for you both owe everything to him. Now listen, for I must be very brief. My side is paining me, and——"
"You shouldn't try to talk now at all," Stranway interposed quickly. "Wait until another time."
Charlebois shook his head.
"No," he said. "My mind will be relieved and I shall feel easier when I have told you. Karnavia, as you may or may not know, is a small semi-independent principality in Europe, where, as is indeed the custom of many of her greater neighbours, the title of prince or princess, though not uncommon among the nobility, infers no direct connection with the reigning family. That, Myril, is exactly your status. Your mother was one of the wealthiest women in the principality. Her only near kin and heir was a cousin—Prince Stolbek. Both were young—and Stolbek was as poor as your mother was rich. He did not love her. He was too utterly a scoundrel to know the meaning of love. It was her fortune he wanted. But his suave, polished plausibility did not deceive her. She hated him. But even she did not know the worst of him. He was dissolute, reckless, unscrupulous, extravagant, miserably in debt—a criminal."
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