CHAPTER XXI.
THE BAAG-NOUK.
The car rushed at the slope, and the shoulder of the cutting hid it fromMelchard the fraction of a second before his next shot was heard.
Amaryllis took the double bend of the little canon with an assurancewhich satisfied Dick of her ability.
The sprint had exhausted his reserve of nervous force, for the momentslender; and he lay back in the ample seat of the tonneau scarcely morethan half-conscious.
The road straightening before her and still climbing, Amaryllis glancedat him over her shoulder.
"There's some brandy left," she shouted, her eyes again on her work, "inyour left pocket. Finish it."
Her voice roused him; with an effort he found and unscrewed the flask.
He had hardly drained it before sight came back to his eyes and heremembered the danger ahead.
Mut-mut!
They had reached a strip of road level and straight, some two hundredyards in length, which crossed the breadth of the ridge, on its way to adescent as steep as the climb already accomplished. But even this, thehighest part of their road, ran in a cutting, or natural cleft, in thespine of the ridge; and rocks and bushes, with a few stunted trees, rosein jumbled terraces on both sides of the car.
Cover was there for a hundred Mut-muts; and for Dick Bellamy one wasmore than enough, while he could not see him.
With his heart in his mouth and Ockley's gun in his hand, he satwaiting.
But Amaryllis, in the false belief that both enemies were behind her,and well taught in the handling of a car, was not going to begin anunknown descent at full speed. About half-way across the level, sheslackened the pace, turning her face a little to the left, as if tospeak to the man behind her.
And in that moment, with the words in his mouth to bid her quicken, notrelax the speed, Dick saw the bestial one-eared Malay, erect upon aboulder, not more than three feet on the off-side distant from the car.
The brute was on the point of leaping down upon them.
The girl saw Dick's revolver go up, turned, and saw its target.
The horrors of the morning, coming to a climax in this shock like anightmare's crisis, seemed to stop her heart. With instinctive memory ofher instructor's, "If you're taken bad, miss, throw out your clutch, jamon your breaks and faint comfortable," she stopped the car and lostconsciousness.
In the same moment Dick fired.
The bullet was too late to stop that gorilla-like spring, and Mut-mut,with a glitter of steel flashing in one of his outspread palms, launchedhimself upon them, landing, like some huge and horrible cat of dreams,on all fours in the body of the car.
His left ribs were pressed against Dick's knees, his right hand tearingat and ripping the cloth and leather of the car's side-linings as hestruggled to rise.
What was fastened in that right hand Dick had seen, and with Ockley'slast bullet he blew out Mut-mut's brains.
Before even freeing himself from the weight of the corpse, he felt forits hip-pocket, and pushed what he found into his own belt.
Then, cursing himself for having finished the brandy, he searched thelocker under the cushion of the seat and found, amongst a confusion ofodds and ends, a sealed bottle of whisky and a corkscrew.
"Robbie Burns, Three Star, All-malt, Pre-War, Liqueur Highland Whisky,"said the label, gay with pseudo-tartan colours, which, in happier hours,would have scared him worse than the words.
When he had stretched Amaryllis, still unconscious, in the road, with acushion under her head and two beneath her feet, he let her lie awhile.Then, encouraged by the faint colour creeping back to her cheeks, he satbeside her in the road and lifted her shoulders in his left arm, coaxingher to life and forcing between her pale lips burning drops of "RobbieBurns."
So that, when her eyes came open, and a little sense into her ears, thiswas the kind of thing that she heard:
"Oh, yes, but you must! It's three stars, and there's only a pair oftwins in your eyes. Proof strength, and yours isn't, you darling! Drink,will you, you wicked girl? I tell you, it's all-malt, and not a jim-jamto the cask. That's the way, my beauty! Now another! It'sPre-War--fitting prize for Our Brave Women Who Showed The Tommies How ToFight!"
"How silly you are, Dick, dear!" she said at last, wiping her lips. "Andwhat perfectly beastly brandy!"
Dick tasted the stuff, and frankly spat it out.
"I suppose it might be worse, seeing its called whisky, and allowing forthe label," he said. "Young woman, I'm going to kiss you somethin' croolin a minute. 'Course I'm silly! What was it you did, when I was onlytaking a snooze?"
"Cried," she answered.
"And I laugh to see you all right again."
But Amaryllis was looking about her.
"Is it gone, that awful thing?" she asked, whispering.
"Gone for good," said Dick.
"And, oh! the car? How did you ever stop it?"
"You stopped it, you wonder-child. And there's a great deal more 'how'about that."
"Then--then it's the same thing as last time?" she said, her face palingonce more.
"The same thing," admitted Dick. "It was him or us, you know. Andthere's not much egoism in saying we're better worth keeping, is there?"
Though she shuddered again and bore a grave face, he could see that shewas relieved.
Rising with the help of his hand, she tried to smooth her rumpledfeathers, and said:
"Hadn't we better go on?"
"I've got to move something from the car first," he replied, withambiguity merely euphemistic. "You stand here and keep a look-outtowards Harthborough."
"All right," she answered, understanding very well what he had to do.She turned away, and then, with an effort, her face still averted,"Can't I help you, Dick?" she asked.
"Yes--by sitting on that stone and not turning round till I let you."
And he went back to the car, taking the "Robbie Burns" with him.
In his shaken and exhausted condition, the task of dragging thatrevolting corpse from the car was not easy. Heavy he had known the bodywould be, but when he had opened the door on the off-side, and wouldhave pulled the dead thing out by the heels, he was surprised to findthat he could not move it. On a second effort the slight yielding of themass was accompanied by a sound of rending and he remembered Mut-mut'sright hand, armed with a weapon of unspeakable cruelty, which only oncebefore in his life had he seen--the Mahratta baag-nouk, or Tiger's Claw.
He went round to the car's-near side, and there found, as he hadexpected, the dead right hand anchored to the lining-cushions by whatwas, he supposed, a unique specimen, made to the fancy of the creaturethat wore it; for, in addition to the leather strap across the back ofthe hand, two rings were welded to the instrument, through which to passthe second and third fingers, thus keeping in position the four short,razor-edged steel claws hidden in the palm.
Dick loosened the buckle of the strap, and drew the hand, already cold,from the rings; picked the baag-nouk from the cushion, wrapped it in agreasy cloth out of the tool-box, and hid it under the seat.
The thought of that gruesome weapon, more frightful than the unsheathedclaws of the royalest Bengal tiger, hanging over the head of his chosenamong women, stung Dick Bellamy to very unceremonious removal of thebody, which, after rifling it of a handful of cartridges, he flung bythe roadside; and then, lest Amaryllis should see the awful head again,even in death, he covered the whole corpse with an overcoat ofMelchard's from the car.
The engine had run down. As he cranked it up, Dick was seized by asudden savage desire to have in his hands the man who had brought allhis outrage, suffering and terror to the girl whose uncovered head andpatient back he could see waiting for him down the road.
A fierce rage, such as he had seldom felt, and never since boyhood,flooded his body with a dry heat, and stimulated his intelligence.
For with these thoughts of the evil Melchard came sudden insight intothe man's purpose at the foot of the Bull's Neck, and his probableaction at the pr
esent moment.
"He was shooting to drive us into Mut-mut's arms, and to make us believeour danger was all behind us," he reasoned. "And it's a white elephantto a dead rat he's trudging up this road now to find what Mut-mut's leftof us. Perhaps he's heard the two shots, and me cranking up."
Not daring to call Amaryllis, he trusted her precise obedience to hisorders, and sank, almost as swiftly as Pepe into the landscape.
Crouching, crawling, worming himself on his belly from tree-stump toboulder he mounted some ten feet above the road on the side away fromthe car, and then, invisible from the road level, continued his courseuntil he had retraced about fifty yards of the way they had travelled.
Then he stopped, lying prone where two rocks, standing so little apartthat they seemed long years ago to have formed a single mass, gave himview of the road's whole width.
He laid one ear against the rock, and over the other a hand.
After a minute's waiting, footsteps; three more, and a weary figure camein sight where the level road began.
The joy he felt kept him patient until Melchard, unmistakable, was rightbeneath him.
"Hi! Melchard!" he cried.
Melchard started, stopped, and looked anxiously round.
"Never heard the voice before? You'll hear it often, and lots of it,soon, Melchard. Pull out your gun."
The man in the road made no attempt to obey. From Mut-mut's revolverDick sent a bullet which threw up the dust at Melchard's feet.
"Two inches to the right of your feet."
He fired again. Again the little puff of dust.
"An inch and a half to the left of your feet," he sang out cheerfully."The next'll be half-way between and three feet higher. Put down yourgun."
Melchard produced his automatic and dropped it.
"Kick it away from you."
Melchard obeyed, and his weapon lay three yards out of reach.
"Move an inch, and I'll put a hole in your slimy heart."
Melchard stood, still game enough to control in some measure thetrembling which had seized him.
Then Dick raised his voice.
"Miss Caldegard!" he shouted.
"I'm coming," came the clear voice in reply, and a patter of light feet.
Dick could just see the car, and Amaryllis when she reached it.
"Where are you?" she called, bewildered.
"Keep straight on. You see a thing something like a man, standing in theroad, don't you?"
"Yes," answered Amaryllis.
"Near it you will find an automatic pistol, on the ground. Pick it up,please, and go back to your seat," shouted Dick.
Amaryllis obeyed him. But, after going a little way, she called back tohim and instinctively she imitated his formality in presence of theunclean.
"Mr. Bellamy!" she cried. "Please--not this one."
To this allusion Melchard had no clue. But there was in her tonesomething which turned the blood cold in him.
The invisible Dick, however, answered in a laughing voice so joyous thatAmaryllis was vaguely distressed.
"Rather not," he replied. "I've something much better for this guy."
With intense pleasure, while his observation-slit gave him sight of her,he watched the girl returning to her post.
Then he shot a fresh order at the prisoner.
"Turn round," he said.
Melchard obeyed.
"If you move a foot or lift a hand before I speak again, it's a bulletbetween the shoulders."
Judging this to be the position most demoralizing, Dick descended withmore haste than precaution. Melchard, his entrails shaking, stood, toall appearance, firm as a rock. When Dick tapped his shoulder, heturned, showing a face white and drawn.
"The man Bunce!" he exclaimed.
"Silly liar!" said Dick. "You knew who I was the moment you saw mycheek--guessed I was the man who was queering your game. I have queeredit, and I'm going to queer you. Walk in front of me, and don't forget,that, if I have to disappoint myself by killing you, I shan't lose anysleep about it."
Melchard walked silent and erect, with the unseen pistol-barrel behindhim.
Dick could see even in the shoulders before him the ripple of fearcontrolled, but not conquered.
And the sight brought, not indeed compassion, but a separated measure ofrespect.
When they had almost reached the car, he called a halt.
"I shan't keep on threatening you," he said "You're down and out.Understand, once for all, that, on the least movement, I shoot to kill."
He pointed to the coat spread over what had been Mut-mut.
"That's yours," he said. "Put it on."
The man was reeking with sweat, exhausted and in mortal fear. A chillmight endanger the success of Dick's design.
Melchard, guessing well what it covered, lifted the fawn-colouredovercoat with resolution; but the earless side of that frightful head,with another and bloody hole making a pair of dead eyes to stare up athim, was too much for the shaken nerve, and Alban Melchard collapsed onhis face in the road.
Dick turned him over, lifted an eyelid, and, convinced that the man wasunconscious, fetched from the car his bottle of the strange device, andpoured a stream from its neck into Melchard's half-open mouth.
For some moment's after, he was afraid that the fit of choked coughinghis rough remedy had caused would compel him to leave a second corpse bythe roadside.
When it was over, however, it appeared that the stimulant had beenpartly assimilated, for Melchard was able to stand. When he had got hisarms into the overcoat, Dick led him to the car.
From the locker under the seat he produced a thick tumbler.
"Get in," he said, and half-filled the glass from the bottle.
Melchard lay back exhausted in the near-side corner, examining with dulleyes the havoc made by Mut-mut's claw.
"Drink that," said Dick.
Melchard shook his head.
"I hate spirits," he objected feebly. "That's his stuff--Mut-mut's."
"You'll hate it worse soon," was all the answer he got; and drank,gasping between gulps.
Knowing that the man had not a kick left in him, Dick ventured, ratherthan fetch Amaryllis into sight of the uncovered corpse, to mount thefront seat and drive the car to the place where she sat waiting.
When she was beside him, he asked if she were fit to drive.
"Yes," she answered. "But I nearly went to sleep waiting for you, Dick."
"I don't think either of us is fit to drive her to town," he said,looking at his watch. "I'm pretty tough, but I'm nearly all in. Howyou've stuck it as you have, I can't understand. So we'll have a shot atthat five-fifteen. We've about seven miles to go. Thirty m.p.h.--that'sfourteen minutes. Bar hold-ups, that's good enough. It's just five tofive now, but I must fix up my passenger."
Amaryllis looked round at Melchard.
"What are you going to do with him?" she asked, turning back upon Dick aface of disgust.
"Take him up to town," said Dick.
"How beastly!" said Amaryllis.
"Doped, my child--most royally doped--with a kindly poison that heloathes."
He left her and took his seat beside the prisoner. Amaryllis, not alittle vexed by the addition to their party, started the car.
As they glided down the wide bends of the descent, Dick plied thewretched Melchard with dose after dose of throat-rasping spirit. Afterthe second half-tumbler the man wept, sobbing out entreaties for mercy.And Amaryllis felt a wave of cold fear run down her spine when she heardthe voice and words of her lover's reply--words not meant for herhearing she knew for the voice was so low that it was only the precisionof the speaker's passion which carried them, against the wind, to herears.
"Pity! Pity on a filthy creature that never felt it--not even for hisown filthy servants! Pity for a lickspittle parasite that battens on thepassions and vices of hopeless gaol-birds, abandoned women, jadedpleasure-hunters and terrified neurasthenics! Pity on a speculatorcalculating huge revenues from the festering p
utrefaction of humandisease! I haven't hit you yet, because your flesh is foul tome--but--drink that down, or, by God! I'll smash every bone in yourface."
A gasp, a spasmodic sound of gulping, another gasp--and silence.
Two-thirds of the bottle's contents was down the man's throat. Dickpoured the remnant into his flask and sat watching the effects.
Satisfied at last that he had induced complete alcoholic coma, hetouched Amaryllis on the shoulder.
"Stop her as soon as you can," he said. "I'll drive now."
When they were off again, she asked, in a voice none too steady, what hehad been doing to the wretched man behind her.
"Made him absolutely blind--blotto," he answered.
"You sounded rather dreadful, Dick," she said; adding, after ahesitation, "Cruel--almost."
His face was set on the road ahead of him, and his profile, she thought,though not definitely vindictive in expression, was hard as stone.
"Cruel?" he asked.
"You said awful things in a very dreadful voice."
"The awful thoughts I had account for the voice, beloved," he explained."They couldn't be said to him. I thought of his hands touching you--hisvoice speaking to you--you, young as an angel, as beautiful as thegoddess that floated in upon the world in a mother-of-pearl dinghy! Asclever as that other one with the fireman's tin hat, as game as JimmyWilde, and as kind as Heaven. Spoke to _you_--touched you--looked atyou--blasphemy, profanation and sacrilege! And barged into your bedroom,when--. My God! woman," cried poor Dick, as if a flame came from themarble lips of him, "I could have watched him through an hour of rackand thumbscrew, when I thought of you up in that room of his. It's thecruelty I haven't done that's my claim to the next vacancy in halos.Cruel? Just for pouring down him a few tumblerfuls of a mixture ofarrack and spud-spirit that he'd bought for his damned Caliban! And Ionly did that because there weren't any handcuffs handy."
Uttered in a voice wonderfully soft, yet vibrating with a quality whichthrilled him like some tone of a celestial violin, her answeringquestion reached him through the rush of their speed.
"Do you love me like that?" she asked.
To the short nod of his white silhouette he added curtly:
"Be quiet, please. I'm driving."
She chuckled softly to herself, thinking how well already she began tounderstand his ways--ways so odd and dear, she told herself, that never,she was sure, would she tire of them.