Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  The man’s evil face, the woman’s sombre eyes, her shiver, rather suspected than seen, all were enough to convince me of this. And in truth hope was already dead in me — hope and all save the instinct to die with dignity — when the dwarf appeared, dragging the half-fainting girl by the waist.

  Then for one moment, seeing her at their mercy, seeing her doomed to God knew what of shame and torment, seeing her frail slender form in the grasp of that unnatural brute, I lost my head. I struggled furiously, though I knew it to be useless — struggled with my bonds, striving desperately to rise.

  I spat curses at them, I foamed at the mouth, and only — only when strength failed me, when the ropes cut to the quick and I fell over helplessly on my side, only when I read the evil triumph in the man’s face and understood that I was but contributing to his enjoyment — only then did I recover the will to desist.

  “That’s better,” he chuckled. “That’s better. It’s coming home to him now! That’s what I like to see. That’s worth all. You would knock out my teeth, would you?” setting me up roughly and at the same time kicking me savagely in the ribs. “And it will help us, too. It will help us with her, and it’s well she is here. Bring her on, lad, bring her on! No — not too near. That will do. Stand there and hold her. And now, slut, you listen to me! Listen, do you hear? Do you know where your fine gentleman, so nicely trussed up, is sitting? Do you know? Do you know?”

  In the weakest there is, I suppose, a residuum of strength upon which extremity can draw. The girl had been half-carried, half-dragged to the spot, and when I had first caught sight of her she had seemed to be swooning — to be barely conscious of her plight.

  In appearance at least, terror had robbed her of three parts of her senses and of all her self-control. And my foolish, futile outbreak, which in her eyes must have seemed the effect of sheer cowardice — though, indeed, it was not — this, one would have thought, would have been of all things the least likely to revive her courage.

  Yet it seemed, on the surface, at least, to have that result. For, challenged by the brute who had kicked me, she stiffened herself, she lifted her head. Her features, though still colourless as paper, took on a firmer cast, and though no sound passed her parched lips, she shook her head.

  “You don’t?” the man repeated with gusto. “You don’t know where he is sitting, eh? Your fine gentleman who thought to buy you? Who followed us and threatened us? And knocked out my teeth — for which he is going to pay, and pay high? You don’t know, don’t you?”

  Again she shook her head. And now I saw that she stood alone, for Karl in his enjoyment of the scene had released her, and she stood erect, her pinched face hard to ugliness, her eyes watchful as a cat’s.

  “You don’t?” the brute repeated. “Well, I’ll tell you,” with relish. “I’m going to tell you!” He stamped his foot on the floor beside me, and I felt the planks leap strangely under me. “Hollow, eh? Sounds hollow, does it? I’ll tell you why. He’s on the trap, d’you hear, wench? He’s on the trap-door that they let fall when they lower the sacks.

  “In the floor below there’s another trap — under this — and it’s open. And below that is another — to the cellar. To the cellar! You know what is in the cellar, wench? So if your fine gentleman falls through this” — and again he stamped upon it, his eyes glittering—” if he falls through this he falls plump — to the cellar! Where he’ll join his friend, and there’ll be no labour wasted in carrying him down, do you see?

  “He’s on the trap, my girl, and d’you see this?” He kicked an iron bolt that fixed in the trap-door and, passing through a staple in the floor, held up the platform on which I rested. “Do you know what that is? That’s the bolt that holds up the trap!

  “I knock it through with this” — and he picked up an iron bar that lay beside him—” I knock it through with this, d’you see, and in five seconds your fine gentleman will be in Kingdom Come, with every bone in his body broken! And in half an hour more he’ll be rotting with his friend — you know where! See!” he added. “See!” He swung the bar to and fro within an inch of the bolt.

  The cold sweat broke out on my brow and upper lip “ You devil! You devil!” I cried, seeing all now.

  “Ay, you’d knock out my teeth, would you?” he retorted. “You’d knock out my teeth! It’s my turn now. But you’ve a chance — you’ve a chance yet. See you” — to the girl—” it’s your affair! It’s for you to say. We give you five minutes, wench.

  “Tell us where the papers are and we let him go, and you, too. But if within five minutes from now — he stepped behind me, and coming back with the lanthorn in his hand drew my watch from his fob and held up its face to the light—” if within five minutes from now, you slut, you don’t speak, I knock out this bolt — I knock out this bolt, do you see? And down goes your man to hell — and you after him!”

  “Don’t!” I cried hoarsely. “Don’t tell him! “And heaven knows it was not courage nor duty that spoke. It was despair. For I read the man — only too well I read his black mind. It needed not his cruel crafty face, it needed not the sinister scraps of talk that I had heard, to assure me that whatever she told and whatever she did, I was doomed — that the girl had been right, fatally right, when she said that, her story once told, we should not go out alive!

  “Don’t tell him!” I repeated desperately, even while my flesh crept as I pictured the depth below me and in fancy saw my body falling, dropping, whirling through space.

  “D — n you, keep quiet, will you?” the man cried, and he struck me so heavy a blow with the iron bar that he knocked the breath out of me. “Shut your cursed mouth! It’s not for you to choose; it’s for the girl! You hear?” turning to her. “It’s for you! Do you want to see him go? Do you want to hear his bones crack? And then to follow him? If not, out with it! Give it mouth! There’s a minute and a half gone already.”

  She stood mute, staring, her soul in her eyes. She stared at the bar, her face gleaming ashen through the gloom, and once I thought that her lips moved, that she tried to speak. But no sound came.

  He waited. Then: “There’s another minute gone,” he said. He tapped the bolt lightly, playfully, and I felt, with an instinctive gathering together of all my body, the trap jar under me. “In three minutes it will be too late. Too late, my girl!”

  Two minutes — and a half! I had that long to live, and then a hurtling through space, a crash, nothingness! But in the worst strait — as I now learned — the mind will still hope, will still seek a way of escape! And for one of those minutes mine wrought furiously, desperately, thrusting every way for some scheme, some trick, some anything, by which at this last moment I might baffle my fate or postpone it.

  Was the man playing with me? Alas, I knew that he was not; nor in the woman’s dark brooding face, nor the dwarf’s grim features, set with eager inhuman interest on what was to follow, was there one gleam of hope or spark of mercy.

  No, I read as little hope, as little mercy in their faces as in the gloomy cavern about us, that barred with light or dark, according as the horn or the metal of the lanthorn fell on beam or plank, was to be the last scene on which my eyes rested.

  A minute — vainly spent, wasted in such thoughts. And then, thank God, I found strength to give the next to thought of another — to thought for this poor child, innocent, hopeless, timid, whom the same dreadful fate awaited, whom tragedy had swept with me into this web of death, who, frozen by terror, looked on, already bereft of sense and almost of life!

  “Stay!” I gasped, for I had hardly recovered my breath. “Stay, man! I know where the papers are! I will tell you!”

  Waechter shot round. “ So!” he exclaimed. “ You?”

  “Yes, I. If you will let her go.”

  “Then out with it.” His eyes sparkled with greed. “Where are they? Where are they, man?”

  “No,” I replied. “ Not so. I know you. You would only murder me first and the girl afterwards. But let the woman take her to the C
offee House and bring back a note from the landlord to say that she is safe, and I swear that I will tell you.”

  It was a vain attempt; even while I made it I knew that it was a vain attempt. I knew that they dared not let her go. And even as I expected, he answered: “Ay, and have the police on us in five minutes! Fool! Dolt! Do you think that we are as stupid as you?

  No! Speak, speak, jade, or in another minute—”

  He waved the bar.

  “Stay!” I cried, against hope. “She will swear — the girl will swear to be silent. In six hours you can reach the frontier, you can be gone! And you will have all that you want! For God’s sake” — I turned to the woman—” don’t lay this crime, this useless crime on your soul! For God’s sake, spare her. She will swear to be silent.”

  But it was useless. Of course it was useless. The woman, indeed, seemed to me to waver, her face moved for a second by some ripple of fear or of feeling. But the man’s brute sense met the appeal with scorn. “And be hunted from one end of Germany to the other! “ he replied savagely. “Have Justus Gruner on our heels? And von Kalisch? Be chased with a price on our heads from Hamburg to Memel, and from Bremen to Warsaw? No! No! We’ll make an end! Of you first, and then we’ll try — we’ll try another way with her!”

  He raised the bar, and I thought one anguished wordless prayer, and closed my eyes — and then the girl shrieked. “Oh, I will tell! I will tell!” she babbled. “Oh, let him go! I will tell!”

  I opened the eyes I had involuntarily closed. The child had fallen on her knees, her hands outstretched, and the hardest breasts, one would have thought, must have relented before that appeal, before that frail sinking form, that white face wrung with agony, those eyes wide with the fear of that on which she dared not look. “Oh, I will tell!” she continued to cry—” I will tell!”

  “Then tell! Tell! the man commanded.

  “Speak,” said the woman, interposing more gently, for the girl was sinking forward and on the point of collapsing.

  “In the eaves — over the window!” she panted. “Over my window! Oh, spare him. Let him go.” And then — and I thank God for it — she fell forward insensible, swooning, dead to us all.

  But—” Good!” was the man’s only answer. “Good! Good! Then here’s one witness out of the way!” And he swung the bar in the air.

  But even while — in a fury of rage, for the girl’s fall had altered my mood — I cursed him, the woman sprang forward. She seized his arm. “It is you that are the fool!” she hissed. “It may not be true, man — it may not be true. And you would throw away the tool that has served us! Wait! Wait, Waechter, till I see if they are there.”

  He lowered the bar unwillingly. “See?” he growled. “ How will you see?”

  “By looking,” coolly. “How else? I will go now. In ten minutes I shall be back, and once I have them — you may do as you please.”

  He swung the bar idly, his eyes glinting, then he yielded to her and threw it down. “Well, be quick,” he said, “ or by G — d, you’ll find the work done. I want it done, woman. We’re not safe till it is done and they are under the soil — both of them. But there, it is fine talking, but how will you get into the room?”

  “Trust me for that,” confidently. “Only — do you wait till I come back and don’t be a fool. And see Karl plays no tricks, do you hear? If the papers are there — if they are there, I’ll have them within ten minutes, you may be sure of it.”

  CHAPTER XXIV

  FROM THE DEPTHS

  I HEARD the woman’s steps go quickly down the stairs, heard the creak of the door at the foot. The girl lay on the floor where she had fallen, a huddled heap of white, for the wretches, once in possession of the secret, had not given a second thought to her. The man, after listening to the last echo of his wife’s departure, began to pace feverishly up and down, stuffing a pipe the while, and now and again shooting an evil glance at me.

  The dwarf picked up the bar and began to play with it, now twirling it in his monstrous hand as if it had been a stick, or again trying strokes with it, seeing how nearly he could brush the floor, or sweep by some outstanding nail without hitting its head.

  To me black moments of black despair! Thoughts of home crowded into my mind as I crouched helpless above what I knew to be my grave. Thoughts of past hopes, past ambitions — hopes and ambitions that had made up my life, and had owned few limits.

  Thoughts of easy, care-free days at the Office before responsibility was mine; again of later and fuller days, and finally of that sunny voyage to the South with pride and confidence at the helm — no more than six months back, yet it seemed to me in another life! Swift thoughts of Vienna, of my work there, of the retreat, of Iglau!

  And could it be I who crouched here, fettered and hopeless, at the mercy of these vile miscreants, could it really be I who had played that part? Who had talked with Gentz and Metternich, who had felt so deeply the paltry sting of supersession, who had journeyed and bickered with poor Perceval — only, only, oh intolerable doom, to perish in the end by the same ignoble hands, to fall into the same dark secret grave, to leave behind me no name, no fame, no memory, but only the waning puzzle — some day perhaps to be raked up out of dusty annals — of an unknown fate! A little weeping at home, a little talk at the Office, a despatch, or two — and oblivion.

  Black, black moments of despair! To die and moulder in the hideous depths of this deserted building, while the sun shone, and the world went on its way, and for a brief space men questioned, then wondered, then forgot! Forgot! Was it astonishing that overcome by the thought I rebelled? That again I let slip for a moment manhood, courage, self-control, and fought, fought furiously with my bonds, and hopeless as I knew it to be, spat curses, threats, abuse, at my captors, until once again I fell over and lay, breathless and exhausted, on my side.

  This time the man paid no heed to my outbreak. He had ears only for the return of the woman and was so absorbed in listening that he did not even vouchsafe me a glance. It was the dwarf who this time came to me and playfully levered me up with his iron bar. “Fine sport!” he mouthed, stooping his horrible face to me. “Fine! Fine! But by and by, when we—” he went through the motions of striking away the bolt—” Finer! Finer! Oh, colossal! You will down — bump! bump! bump”!

  I closed my eyes and strove to frame a prayer. Then I heard the girl moan, and I opened them. But she had not moved. She lay a mere heap of white, on the shadowy fringe of the circle of light cast by the lanthorn. The man, too, had heard her, and cast a careless glance that way, but beyond that he took no notice of her.

  The dwarf still hung over me. “Fine! Fine!” he gibbered. “It will be fine when we—” and again he made a pretence of striking the bolt, and tucking in his chin and whirling his arms he mimicked the motions of a body falling headlong. “Fine! Fine!”

  “Shut your mouth!” the man growled, “And stop that folly!” But I knew that it was out of no thought for me, no human feeling that he spoke. It was only that he was listening, that he would listen without interruption. And he had hardly uttered the words before, “Silence!” he snarled. “Do you hear, dolt? Do you want your head knocked off? Be quiet, fool! What is that?”

  “She is coming back,” the lad replied sulkily. “That’s all. Can’t you hear her?”

  “I hear someone,” the man muttered, and he shot a devilish glance at me. “There is someone coming, to be sure, but—”

  “Who else should it be?” the dwarf asked surlily.

  “I don’t know,” the man muttered. “ But it doesn’t sound like—” He broke off and stood, waiting, staring — staring all ears and eyes in the direction of the door, that sunk in the gloom was barely, if barely, visible from where we were. I, too, could now hear the ascending footsteps — I heard them stop. It seemed to me that the woman had paused at the head of the staircase, just without the door.

  The man peered into the gloom, and so infectious was his doubt, so eloquent of suspense his figure, that h
ope that I had thought dead leaped up in me. If it was the woman, if his accustomed ear had detected some change in the step — who was it? Who could it be? Or why, if it was the woman, had she paused on the threshold of the room, instead of entering?

  She might be out of breath — it might be that, for the climb was a long one. But in that case —

  A flash, that dazzled the eyes, a report that thundered in the roof overhead, and a figure, vaguely seen, leapt into sight, and into the room, came clattering across the loose floor. Waechter saw, and in a moment knew. He uttered a curse, he sprang to meet the man, then turned and leapt to recover the bar. “Any way,” he roared, “ he shall to hell before us! Quick, the bar! The bar!”

  But — and that went half-way towards saving me — the dwarf, slow-witted and caught by surprise, dropped the iron, as the other snatched at it. It fell between them, they jostled one another as both strove to grasp it, and a brace of seconds were lost. Then the man secured the bar, swung it aloft and struck at the bolt.

  He missed it — and almost lost his footing! But he had still a chance, the figure leaping across the floor was still half a dozen paces away, and the wretch, set desperately on his purpose, swung the bar aloft again.

  This time he might have hit the bolt — I think he would have, though I roared at him — and at the last moment rescue might have come too late. But as the bar went up the girl — no one had thought of her or seen her rise — leapt upon his back, and hurled him a yard or two forward. The blow crashed down, but it jarred harmlessly on the planks.

  He had no third chance. Before he could recover his balance or shake the girl from her hold, the stranger was waving a pistol in his face, “Yield!” the unknown shouted, “or by the God above me, I blow your head off! Yield! Yield!”