CHAPTER XXVI. A RACE AGAINST TIME
Even when he had said this aloud it was still as though he could notgrasp its full meaning.
"Walter," he repeated vaguely. "Walter."
His thoughts, that had seemed as frozen by the sudden shock of thetremendous revelation so unconsciously made to him by Ella, began tostir and move again, and almost at once, with an extraordinary andabnormal rapidity.
As a drowning man is said to see flash before his eyes the whole historyand record of his life, so now Dunn saw the whole story of his life-longfriendship with Walter pictured before him.
For when he was very small, Walter had been to him like an elderbrother, and when he was older, it was Walter who had taught him toride and to shoot, to hunt and to fish, and when he was at school it wasWalter to whom he looked up as the dashing young man of the world, whoknew all life's secrets, and when he was at college it was Walter whohad helped him out of the inevitable foolish scrapes into which it isthe custom of the undergraduate to fall.
Then, when he had come to man's estate, Walter had still been hisconfidential friend and adviser. In Walter's hand he had been accustomedto leave everything during his absences on his hunting and exploringtrips; and at what time during this long and kindly association ofgood-fellowship had such black hate and poison of envy bred in Walter'sheart?
"Walter!" he said aloud once more, and he uttered the name as though itwere a cry of anguish.
Yet, too, even in his utter bewilderment and surprise, it seemed strangeto him that he had never once suspected, never dreamed, never once hadthe shadow of a suspicion.
Little things, trifling things, a word, an accent, a phrase that hadpassed at the time for a jest, a thousand such memories came back to himnow with a new and terrible significance.
For, after all, Walter was in the direct line. Only just a few livesstood between him and a great inheritance, a great position. Perhapslong brooding on what might so easily be had made him mad.
Dunn remembered now, too, that it was Walter who had discovered thatfirst murderous attempt which had first put them on their guard, butperhaps he had discovered it only because he knew of it, and when itfailed, saw his safest plan was to be foremost in tracking it out.
And it was Walter who had last seen poor Charley Wright alone, and farfrom Bittermeads. But perhaps that was a lie to confuse the search forthe missing man, and a reason why that search had failed so utterly upto the moment of Dunn's own grim discovery in the attic.
With yet a fresh shock so that he reeled as he stood with the impact ofthe thought, Dunn realized that all this implied that every one of hisprecautions had been rendered futile that of all his elaborate plans notone would take effect since all had been entrusted to the care of thevery man against whom they were aimed.
It was Walter for whom the net had been laid in Ottam's Wood; and Walterto whom had been entrusted the task of drawing that net tight at theright moment.
It was Walter's friends and agents who were to break into WresteAbbey, and Walter to whom had been entrusted the task of defeating andcapturing them. It was Walter from whom Ella stood in most danger if heraction that morning had been observed, and it was Walter to whom he hadgiven the task of protecting her.
At this thought, he turned and began to run as fast as he could in thedirection of Bittermeads.
At all costs she must be saved, she who had exposed the whole awfulplot. For a hundred yards or so he fled, swift as the wind, till on asudden he stopped dead with the realization of the fact that every yardhe took that way took him further and further from Ottam's Wood.
For there was danger there, too--grim and imminent--and sentencesin Ella's hasty letter that bore now to his new knowledge a deepsignificance she had not dreamed of.
As when a flash of lightning lights all the landscape up and shows thetraveller dreadful dangers that beset his path, so a wave of intuitiontold Dunn clearly the whole conspiracy; so that he saw it all, andsaw how every detail was to be fitted in together. His father, GeneralDunsmore, was to be murdered first at the Brook Bourne Spring, to whichhe was being lured; and afterwards, when Dunn arrived, he was to bemurdered, too. And on him, dead and unable to defend himself, theblame of his father's death would be laid. It would not be difficult tomanage. Walter would arrange it all as neatly as he had been accustomedto arrange the Dunsmore business affairs placed in his hands forsettlement.
A forged letter or two, Dunn's own revolver used to shoot the old manwith and then placed in Dunn's dead hand when his own turn had come,convincing detail like that would be easy to arrange. Why, the veryfact of his disguise, the tangled beard that he had grown to hide hisfeatures with, would appear conclusive. Any coroner's jury would returna verdict of wilful murder against his memory on that one fact alone.
Walter would see to that all right. A little false evidence apparentlyreluctantly given would be added, and all would be kneaded together intothe one substance till the whole guilt of all that happened would appearto lie solely on his shoulders.
As for motive, it would simply be put forward that he had been in ahurry to succeed his uncle. And very likely some tale of a quarrel withhis father or something of that sort would be invented, and would gouncontradicted since there would be no one to contradict it.
And most probably what was contemplated at Wreste Abbey was no ordinaryburglary, but the assassination of old Lord Chobham, of which the guiltwould also be set down to him.
Very clearly now he realized that this tremendous plot was aimed, notonly at life, but at honour--that not only was his life required, butalso that he should be thought a murderer.
With the realization of the danger that threatened at Wreste Abbey heturned and began to run back in the direction where it lay, that hemight take timely warning there, but he did not run a dozen strides whenhe remembered Ella again, and paused.
Surely he must think of her first, alone and unprotected. For she wasthe woman he loved; and besides, she had summoned him to her help, andthen she was a woman, and at least, the others were men.
All this flood of thoughts, this intuitive grasping of a situationterrible beyond conception, almost unparalleled in bloody and dreadfulhorror, passed through his mind with extreme rapidity.
Once more he turned and began to run--to run as he had never run before,for now he saw that all depended on the speed with which he could coverthe eight miles that lay between him and Ottam's Wood, whether he couldstill save his father or not.
The district was lonely in the extreme, there was no human habitationnear, no place where he could obtain any help or any swift means ofconveyance. His one hope must be in his speed, his feet must be swift tosave, not only his own life and his father's, but his honour, too, andElla and his old uncle as well; and all--all hung upon the speed withwhich he could cover the eight long miles that lay between him and BrookBourne Spring in Ottam's Wood. Even as he ran, as he thought of Ella,he came abruptly to a pause, wrung with sudden anguish. For each fleetstride he was making towards Brook Bourne Spring was taking himfurther and further away from Bittermeads just as before each step toBittermeads had been taking him further from Ottam's Wood.
He began to run again, even faster than before, and it was towardsOttam's Wood that he ran, each step taking him further from Bittermeadsand further from the woman he loved in her bitter need and peril, wholooked to him for the help he could not give. With pain and anguishhe ran on, ran as men have seldom run--as seldom so much was hung upontheir running.
On and on he sped, fleet as the wind, fleet as the light breeze thatblew lightly by. A solitary villager trudging on some errand in thislonely place, tells to this day the tale of the bearded, wild-eyed manwho raced so madly by him, raced on and down the long, straight roadtill his figure dwindled and vanished in the distance.
A shepherd boy went home with a tale of a strange thing he had seen ofa man running so fast it seemed he was scarcely in sight before he wasgone again.
And except for those two and one othe
r none saw him at all and he ranhis race alone beneath the skies, across the bare country side.
It was at a spot where the path ran between two high hedges that he cameupon a little herd of cows a lad was driving home.
It seemed impossible to pass through that tangle of horns and tails andplunging hoofs, and so indeed it was, but Dunn took another way, andwith one leap, cleared the first beast clean and alighted on the back ofthe second.
Before the startled beast could plunge away he leaped again from thevantage of its back and landed on the open ground beyond and so on,darting full speed past the staring driver, whose tale that he told whenhe got home caused him to go branded for years as a liar.
On and on Dunn fled, without stay or pause, at the utmost of his speedevery second of time, every yard of distance. For he knew he had needof every ounce of power he possessed or could call to his aid, since heknew well that all, all, might hang upon a second less or more, and nowfour miles lay behind him and four in front.
Still on he raced with labouring lungs and heart near to bursting--onward still, swift, swift and sure, and now there were six milesbehind and only two in front, and he was beginning to come to a part ofthe country that he knew.
Whether he was soon or late he had no idea or how long it was that hehad raced like this along the lonely country road at the full extremityand limit of his strength.
He dared not take time to glance at his watch, for he knew the fractionof a second he would thus lose might mean the difference between in timeand too late. On he ran still and presently he left the path and tookthe fields.
But he had forgotten that though the distance might be shorter the goingwould be harder, and on the rough grass he stumbled, and across the bareground damp earth clung to his boots and hindered him as though eachfoot had become laden with lead.
His speed was slower, his effort greater if possible, and when he cameto a hedge he made no effort to leap, but crashed through it as best hecould and broke or clambered or tumbled a path for himself.
Now Ottam's Wood was very near, and reeling and staggering like a manwounded to the death but driven by inexorable fate, he plunged on still,and there was a little froth gathering at the corners of his mouth andfrom one of his nostrils came a thin trickle of blood.
Yet still he held on, though in truth he hardly knew any longer why heran or what his need for haste, and as he came to the wood round a spurwhere a cluster of young beeches grew, he saw a tall, upright, elderlyman walking there, well-dressed and of a neat, soldier-like appearance.
"Hallo--there you are--father--" he gasped and fell down, proneunconscious.