‘’Ow much longer?’ he panted.
‘If it’s more than fifteen minutes longer,’ replied the voice behind him, ‘we shall be going over this ridge without the sun to help us.’
The sun had greeted them again as they rose out of the forest, but it was now very low indeed, and their shadows were grotesquely elongated. Ben noticed, with something of a shock, that his own shadow ended at the waist some twenty feet away, and that his head was over the side of the road, probably a thousand feet below!
‘Well, I’m done in, any’ow,’ said Ben; ‘so yer might as well know it.’
The revolver touched his back again.
‘I tell yer, it’s no good,’ gasped Ben, almost blubbering. ‘If yer feels ’ow yer feels, yer can’t ’elp ’ow yer feels.’
The revolver pressed harder. Ben dropped his sack.
‘I shall count three,’ warned Sims.
‘One, two, three!’ said Ben. ‘Now I done it for yer.’
He closed his eyes and opened his mouth and waited. Nothing happened. When he opened his eyes, he saw Greene clambering back towards them. Sims had summoned him, and Greene looked surly.
‘Pick it up, Greene,’ ordered Sims, ‘and be slippy.’
‘Bah! The fellow’s only shamming,’ growled Greene. ‘Think I’m so damned fresh?’
‘Damned fresh,’ returned Sims. ‘If the fellow were shamming I’d know it!’ His voice rose suddenly to a bark. ‘Do you hear me, Greene, or don’t you?’
The third officer scowled, and glanced at the revolver. Then he glanced ahead. Faggis was now carrying Miss Holbrooke, and Molly Smith was walking beside him.
‘Oh, all right,’ muttered Greene; ‘but if you’re not using him as a pack horse, why you don’t tip the fool over the mountain beats me hollow!’
He picked up the bag, turned, and made after the others. Sims paused before continuing himself, and gazed at Ben speculatively.
‘I wonder if he’s right,’ he mused. ‘Shall I tip you over, my man?’
‘If yer does,’ answered Ben, ‘I’ll call a bobby.’
‘You know, Ben,’ observed Sims, drawing an inch nearer, ‘you don’t quite believe in me yet, do you?’
‘Wot’s that?’
‘Faggis has two murders to his credit, and Greene goes about with chloroform and injection needles. It was Greene who gave Miss Holbrooke her present injection, you may like to know. Then Greene tried to murder you, also, didn’t he? But, so far, you haven’t seen any of my own activities. So you still imagine that when I poke you behind with my revolver it won’t go off—that when I consider tipping you over into a precipice there is no chance that I will actually do it—’
He seized Ben’s coat collar as he spoke, and jerked him towards the edge.
‘… And that, behind my talk, I am really quite an amiable old man, whose favourite occupations are Ludo and stamp collecting!’
Ben found himself staring over the edge, looking down at the tops of trees twenty thousand miles below.
‘Fer Gawd’s sake, git on with it!’ he squeaked.
‘I will,’ replied Sims, and pushed him.
Ben jerked out over space. There was nothing but space between him and those infinitely distant tree-tops. The alarm-bell rang in Heaven and Hell, and all the inhabitants left their occupations hurriedly to receive him. ‘Ben’ll be here in a minute,’ rang the cry. ‘He’s only got to hit those trees.’ ‘Nonsense—he’ll die through loss of breath on the way down!’ cried another theorist. ‘Don’t you worry,’ cried a third. ‘He’s dying of fright before he starts!’ Then the question arose as to which was to have him. A red devil thrust out two arms holding a large sack. An angel held out a golden fishing rod. ‘Go away!’ hissed the red devil. ‘He’s coming down, and Hell’s always at the bottom.’ ‘But I can pull him up,’ retorted the angel, ‘and I know he’d prefer to go to Heaven. He’s begging me at this moment. Can’t you hear him?’ ‘He told a lie to the captain about his mother.’ ‘Yes, but he says he’s sorry.’ ‘Well, what about that old man he bound and gagged on Newmarket Heath?’ ‘Don’t be silly! You know that wasn’t true! He’s got a soft heart, and he cries if you look at him. He’s crying now. And, if he’d lived, he’d have helped these two poor girls—’ ‘Go away! Here he comes! Here he comes! Right into my sack …’
Bong! A violent jerk! Space disappeared. Hard ground was under him again.
‘And, if there’s any more nonsense,’ said Mr Sims, ‘the next time I will drop you!’
A foot away was the small stump of a withered tree that had been struck a year ago by lightning. Ben stretched his arms forward and put them round it.
‘Get up,’ ordered Mr Sims.
‘Can’t fer a mo’, guv’nor,’ replied Ben. ‘I’m goin’ ter be sick.’
20
Arrival at the ‘First Hotel’
Sims had expended two valuable minutes on Ben. This was partly due to his knowledge that, unless Ben received some stimulant (such as being held over a precipice) he would walk slower and slower until he stopped, and there was genuine need for acceleration, and partly to the natural malice that lay like poison behind his usually unruffled exterior. He had implied the truth to Ben when he had suggested that he was just as capable of killing as were Greene and Faggis. If, when necessity pressed, he did not kill, it was only because he found somebody else to do the job and take the risk for him, and the thwarted homicidal instinct went inwards to burst out in such impulses as that which had caused him to seize Ben and hold him over space.
Sims’s heart knew that Ben feared him mortally. Sims’s pride, however, was worried by Ben’s refusal to yield permanently to the fear, and by the cheeky humour and badinage that ran so doggedly through it. And because, for the sake of wider policies, Sims accepted the cheeky humour and the badinage with imperturbability, his thwarted impulse again went inwards, gathering venomous force for its ultimate expression.
The wider policies could not be interfered with for such small fry as Ben; but if, without interfering with them, a process of torturing the small fry could be developed, this would make a most entertaining hobby, a very agreeable sauce to go with the main dish.
That was why Sims did not drop Ben on to the tree-tops a thousand feet below—and how he came to make his cardinal mistake.
For a quarter of an hour the journey continued, while the valleys filled with deepening shadows and the pools of blackness rose up to them. Soon they would themselves be drowned in the advancing tide of the night, and there would be nothing to tell their eyes whether the next step would descend on solid ground or a precipice. But, at the moment, the dropping sun still sent its final slanting rays upwards to the ridge on which they walked—a ridge that would have been a dream to any beholders from below, but that was a nightmare to some of those who were actually upon it.
The ridge widened, assisting the process of acceleration. Now the yawning chasms lay only on their left, fresh heights appearing on their right to deride their achievement and reduce their pride. ‘You think you know anything about climbing?’ they jeered. ‘Try us!’ Fortunately for weary feet, there was no need to try them. The track wound along their base, possessing its own goal. And the goal was now very close.
All at once, Sims paused, and called on those ahead to halt. They halted obediently. Ben’s were not the only feet that were tired, nor was his the only oppressed spirit. The mountain heights towered over anxious souls, and Sims alone appeared to consider himself their equal. He stared up at a peak now. His boots were in shadow, but the sun illuminated his white hair. Then he lowered his eyes and rested them on a little clump of pine trees. There were five pine trees. Like Sims, they rose out of the shadows and glowed only at their tops.
‘Dead beat?’
It was Molly Smith’s voice. She stood by Ben, and was regarding him quietly.
‘Ain’t you?’ answered Ben.
‘Bit of a climb,’ she said; ‘but I’ve not had anything to carry. Well, we’ll s
oon be at our first hotel!’
‘That’s right,’ murmured Ben. ‘Growvenner ’Ouse, ain’t it?’
Sims was studying his map. Molly glanced towards him for an instant, then turned back to Ben and went on in a low voice:
‘There’s a man and a mule at Grosvenor House.’
‘And six donkeys jest arrivin’.’
‘Listen! The man’s been told to look out for us.’
‘’As ’e?’
‘Yes. There were two places we might have landed at, and this is one of them. The man was told to stand by in case we turned up.’
‘Then ’e won’t ’elp us!’
‘No, but the mule may!’
‘Go on!’
‘Suppose,’ she whispered, ‘suppose we could get hold of the mule!’
Ben’s brain was muzzy, and it took him a few seconds before the full beauty of this plan dawned upon him. Then he realised its possibilities. Lummy! Get hold of the mule, eh? Get hold of it, and jump upon its back …
‘Yus, but ’ow many does a mule ’old?’ he asked. ‘We’d want a halligater.’
‘Cave!’ muttered the girl.
Sims raised his eyes from the map and looked towards them. The sunlight had left his hair, and he was now a tall, dim figure fast merging into the background. Near him squatted the dim figures of Greene and Faggis. Thus shortened, they might have been the gnomes that haunted Rip Van Winkle in the Catskill Mountains.
‘Stay here, all of you,’ ordered Sims. ‘I’m going ahead to investigate.’
‘How long’ll you be?’ inquired the third officer.
‘How do I know?’ replied Sims.
‘As you like,’ grunted the third officer; ‘but if you get into trouble don’t blame us for not sending a search party.’
Sims considered the point. Then he nodded, implying that it was a sound one.
‘Say, ten minutes,’ he said. ‘If I’m longer than that, you can begin to wonder.’
‘Right,’ answered the third officer. ‘In ten minutes we’ll ring up the fire brigade.’
Sims smiled. Something glinted in his hand. The next moment, he was gone.
Slowly the minutes ticked away. Greene timed them by a wrist-watch, but Ben watched them pass by fixing his eyes on the highest peak on which the sun still played. The shadows went upwards like spreading ink, and Ben calculated that the ink would spread to the top by the time the ten minutes had run their course.
The first minute passed in utter silence, save for the striking of a match. By the light of the match two faces became successively illuminated, each making a little momentary cameo in the darkness. When the match went out, only two points of light were left, like evilly glowing eyes.
In the second minute, inspired by the incidents of the first, Ben made a discovery. He found a third of a cigarette in a pocket. It had escaped him for days. But he did not forget his manners, even a thousand feet up a Spanish mountain.
‘’Ave one, miss?’ he asked, holding the cigarette end out. She shook her head. ‘It’s orl right,’ he assured her. ‘Picked it hup in Bond Street.’
He remembered the nob who’d dropped it. Spats. But she still shook her head, so he placed the precious fragment between his lips.
In the third minute he made another discovery. He hadn’t a match. The cigarette end returned to his pocket. They often had to wait.
In the fourth minute, Faggis made a remark,
‘What do we do if he pitches down a precipice?’
‘Pitch a few more down a precipice,’ replied the third officer.
In the fifth minute, Ben made a remark.
‘’Arf way,’ he said, with his eyes on the ascending shadow.
The sixth minute passed in silence. In the seventh there was a little rustle. Molly Smith was drawing an inch or two closer to Ben. In the eighth, Greene got up.
‘What the hell’s happening?’ he exclaimed. ‘I don’t like it!’
‘P’r’aps he’s done a bunk?’ answered Faggis.
‘When we’ve got the girl?’ retorted Greene. ‘Don’t be a lunatic!’
‘And, if you want to live to ninety,’ said Faggis, ‘don’t call names.’
In the ninth minute, Faggis got up. Greene had left his boulder, and had gone a few paces along the track.
In the tenth minute, the shadow above them reached the highest solid point, extinguished it, and continued invisibly into space.
‘Good-bye,’ murmured Ben.
A little night breeze rose. Or perhaps it was only now that they noticed it. It came to them from the direction in which Sims had vanished, and whispered a thousand horrors in its fluttering sigh. Faggis and Greene looked at each other.
‘What about it?’ asked Faggis.
‘We’d better push on,’ replied Greene.
‘Suppose we find something we don’t like?’ suggested Faggis.
‘Are we finding anything especially attractive here?’ rasped Greene. ‘I’m not keen to die of exposure, if you are!’
‘P’r’aps you’re right.’
‘I’m damn well right. Pick her up, and come along.’
‘Pick her up, eh?’ There was a pause. Then Faggis suddenly shot out, ‘Why?’
‘Faggis,’ said the third officer, ‘you objected a minute ago when I called you a lunatic. Why must you prove yourself one? That girl means money to us, and security. If we lose her, we lose everything. Oh, for God’s sake, stop staring, and get on with it! It’s getting so damned dark that in another minute we shan’t dare move a step!’
‘All right, all right,’ drawled Faggis, stooping. ‘You’ll get paid for compliments later.’ Then he paused again. ‘What about the others?’
‘They’d better come too,’ growled Greene.
‘You bet, we’re coming too,’ remarked Molly Smith quietly. ‘We’re just as interested in Miss Holbrooke as you are.’
Without more words, the procession resumed its way. The little breeze rose to a sudden hilarious shriek to meet them, and then dropped dead. All they now heard were their own footsteps, crunching over the almost invisible track.
‘This is narsty,’ thought Ben.
They had proceeded about a hundred yards, taking each step with exaggerated caution, and pausing a dozen times at imagined sounds, when something definite caused them to halt. A streak of yellow light streamed out from some unseen point on their right, and lay with incongruous brilliance across their path.
‘What’s that?’ whispered Greene.
‘Home, probably,’ answered Faggis. ‘If we go on, we’ll see.’
He trudged on again as he spoke. He seemed anxious to get it over. The others followed. Round an angle, the source of the light was revealed. A lamp on a wooden table, shining out through the open window of a small, dark building.
The lamp was not the only thing visible through the window. On the floor of the room, near the farther wall, lay a prone figure.
21
The Conference in the Hut
‘God! They’ve done him!’ gasped Greene, staring numbly at the outstretched form.
But Faggis suddenly woke up.
‘Have they?’ he muttered; and, swiftly laying his burden down, he darted towards the hut. A door at the side stood open.
Greene hesitated. As a rule, he managed to dominate Faggis, but for once he found himself less alert. Possibly he realised more intelligently what the loss of a leader meant, and was momentarily stunned by the swiftness of the message from his brain. He did not move for two or three seconds after Faggis had darted forward, but continued to stare through the open window, as though waiting for the figure lying there to move. But the figure did not move. The lanky form lay, face downwards, obviously dead.
Then, while he stared, Greene suddenly gave an exclamation. It came at the moment Faggis appeared in the room bringing movement into the grim picture illuminated by the lamp. It was not the sight of Faggis, however, that produced the third officer’s cry, and sent him dashing also towards the hut.
‘Gawd!’ gulped Ben.
This was the only thought that came to him at such moments. It covered everything—emotion, impotence, and prayer.
Greene was now in the room with Faggis, and Faggis was bending over the body. As Greene advanced, Faggis rose, and stared past Greene at the door.
‘Any’ow, it makes one less, miss!’ muttered Ben.
Receiving no reply, and considering that the situation demanded one, he turned to Molly Smith, and found there was no Molly Smith to turn to. That made him one less, also, and he didn’t like it.
‘Oi!’ he whispered hoarsely.
A figure began to grow out of the shadows.
‘Thort you’d gorn,’ gasped Ben.
‘No, I’ve not gone,’ replied the voice of Mr Sims. ‘I’m still here.’
Ben sat down upon the ground. He did not remember doing it, but as he was on the ground he supposed he must have. A dozen Mr Simses seemed to be dancing all around him.
‘Beg pardon,’ he mumbled weakly, to the one who looked the most distinct; ‘but are you dead or am I?’
‘We are both alive—at the moment,’ replied the most distinct Mr Sims.
‘Then—’oo’s the bloke in there?’
‘Ah! He is undoubtedly dead!’
‘And ain’t ’e you?’
‘I imagine not. I also imagine, from what I have observed, that he was temporarily taken for me, probably on account of our similarity in build and the fact that he was lying on his face.’
‘Oh! That was it, was it?’ murmured Ben. ‘But—’oo deaded ’im?’
Sims considered the question for an instant.
‘He was tired of life, Ben,’ said Sims, ‘and, taking a knife, he killed himself.’
Ben offered no comment. But Faggis did. He had emerged from the cottage, and had overheard the last remark. Greene was still in the room, examining the dead man.
‘That’s the way I always try to work it too, Sims,’ he observed sarcastically. ‘Suicide covers a multitude of sins, eh?’
‘It has its uses, Faggis.’
‘P’r’aps one day you’ll commit suicide?’
Murderer's Trail Page 13