CHAPTER XIX.

TRUSTED TOO LATE.

To Heriot’s utter surprise, Salome at seven o’clock brought him a message that the ladies were expecting him at dinner. It occurred to him suddenly that second thoughts had convinced the late Mrs. Erle that a man who had been able to come to her secluded retreat would be able to get away from it, and that the strange disappearance of even an orphan girl might be a thing to report to the police. To be the jailer of a kidnaped damsel would not add glory to the record of any woman.

Before Beryl neither of the two betrayed their private position. Andria was quiet, that was all. She let Heriot talk to the girl as freely as he liked, and, in spite of his prejudice, he saw that she never tried to stop any disclosures of the terror that haunted them at night.

It was only when dinner was over that he saw her expression change. A quick remembrance had come to her. The servants had gone to bed; she dared not let even her enemy, who might at any minute betray Beryl’s faith in her, cross that courtyard in the dark.

Walls were no obstacles to the evening visitors at the house; she had a quick, sickening vision of a snarling pounce, a sound of worrying, and then a scream and a crunching and tearing of flesh. And in the vision, too, something that squatted on the wall and hounded on its dreadful servants.

“Mr. Heriot,” she had risen abruptly from the comfortable chair where her thoughts had been a torment that even Heriot might have pitied, thoughts of old days that had come back to her as if risen with this man from the dead, “Mr. Heriot, it’s dark! Do you know you can’t go back to your rooms?”

“I never meant to,” he answered quietly. “Did you think that, after hearing all I have, I was going to leave you two alone to face the night?”

To his surprise, it was Beryl who bestowed a somber glance on him; there was a queer relief on Andria’s face.

“You ought to have gone!” the girl cried. “You will only be a trouble here.”

“I’ll try not to be,” he laughed, in spite of himself. “I can sleep quite well on this sofa.”

“If you sleep anywhere!”

“She’s right,” said Andria. “It will be worse if those beasts smell you out. You should have gone.”

But, though she hated him for his unkindness, she was glad of his company. Even an extra dog would have been welcome in that house.

“Let us hope they won’t scent me.” He was only half in earnest, thinking they exaggerated, as women do.

“I can manage them,” said Beryl softly. “They’re tame, really,” and, without reason, Heriot’s heart thrilled with pride at the fearless, almost careless, voice.

It was torture to Andria to sit in the room with the man who knew her history and despised her for it. It brought back those London nights with the supper-room windows open on a moonlit garden, when Andria Erle, in satin and diamonds, had fleeted time carelessly, reckless of what men thought of her. She cared now. She would have given all her beauty to have seen respect in Heriot’s eyes, casual acquaintance though he was. And the very way he turned his sentences brought back Raimond, haggard, brown-eyed, gentlemanly, with that way he had of smiling.

In spite of herself her heart cried out for the man who had been her all. To shake off her thoughts she rose as soon as she dared, and carried Beryl off to bed.

Heriot, left alone, remembered something.

Salome, at a word from Andria, had produced cigars. He rummaged about and found them on a side table. They were Egerton’s, but Heriot was in no mood to be particular. He had had nothing to smoke in the three weeks he had been in this queer place.

He lit a perfecto and leaned back in sweet content as the blue smoke curled upward. For a little while he forgot everything but the joy of his smoke, and then the close heat of the room annoyed him. He limped over to a window and unbarred it, but hardly a breath came in. Without a thought of the tales of jaguars or their strange master, Heriot opened the veranda jalousies and sniffed the air of the gorgeous night.

A honey-colored moon swam in the sky, even the colors of the flowers in the garden were visible, and the scent of oleander-blossoms rose like incense in his nostrils. With a sigh of content, he turned back into the room and picked up the only book it contained. The yellow pages opened of their own accord at a worn passage, and as he read it he wondered.

“As sure as the turquoise attracts love and the amethyst repels it, so does the beryl bring bad dreams.”

He turned to the title-page.

“Jewels--Their Verye Majicke Vertue,” he saw in thick, old lettering, and went back to the passage he was reading.

“This is a queer Beryl; I wonder if she will bring bad dreams,” he thought sleepily, as his cigar burned out. Too lazy to move, he dozed in his chair, while the lamps burned low and flickered in the rising breeze.

A pleasant sound, hurrying, pattering, like heavy rain on a roof, soothed him dreamily.

His head rested more heavily on the silk cushions of his deep chair; he still saw the dimly lighted room, but mistily, as in a dream.

His eyelids fell at last, his long lashes rested on his brown cheek.

The hurrying patter outside ceased.

If any one looked with wild incredulity through the open jalousy Heriot did not see them; if softly and soundlessly something slipped in and crept behind his chair he did not hear, or know what curved, crooked fingers itched to clutch at his throat, and yet were kept from it by a cunning mind.

The man was asleep; would stay asleep till--something woke him.

A minute later Heriot opened his eyes, and leaped to his feet as one who shakes off a dream at a half-heard sound.

Had he seen, for one second, a face, jeering and malicious, glance back at him from the door into the passage? And did he see that door closing softly now? And did he hear quite close, and coming nearer, quick, yelping whines, as of beasts hunting?

Heriot rushed to the open jalousy, tore it to him and barred it; shut and locked the window into the room. And not an instant too soon, for something soft, yet tremendously heavy, had hurled itself against his jalousy; but the good wood held.

“The jaguars! It was true, then,” he thought almost unconsciously, for there was no time for thinking when something worse than a jaguar was on its way to those two defenseless women up-stairs. Regardless of his lameness, he raced up-stairs.

There were lights everywhere, and perfect silence everywhere, too. Had he dreamed that evil, fleering face--that misshapen body, with its crooked claws of hands?

A scream, so wild and dreadful in that lonely house that it turned his blood to fire, answered him. Yet the thrilling note of it was rage--not fear!

“All right!” he shouted; “I’m coming!” and ran in the direction of the sound.

Andria Erle, white as ashes, her teeth showing as her lips curled back from them, was half-facing him, as she threw Beryl back through a half-open door. As Heriot ran to her she banged it to, and shut it on the girl; and then he saw what sickened him. There were hands like claws clasped round Mrs. Erle’s bare throat, and a monster that bit buried in the nape of her lovely neck.

“Bolt the door, Beryl--quick!” her voice came choked. “Never mind--me!”

Heriot’s arms shot over her shoulder as she spoke. But he missed the ghastly thing that clung around her. He jumped to drag it off her, but it eluded him; with the noiseless spring of a cat it had dropped to the ground and vanished somewhere in the winding passage.

Andria panted desperately.

“Beryl is all right,” she said. “He can’t get at her. Beryl, can you let us in?”

“Yes. Oh, Andria!” in anguish, “no! The bolt’s stuck.”

“Don’t move it, then.” Andria was trembling from head to foot. “Lock your window. Is Salome there?”

“Yes, missus! Wait, we’ll get you in.”

“No!” with authority. “I’m all right; Mr. Heriot’s here. Don’t open that door, Salome, till I tell you to. Promise!”

“I can’t open it,” said the black woman with despair. “Oh, Miss Holbeach! Run somewhere--quick! He’s in; he’ll let dem in!”

Andria clutched Heriot’s arm.

“She’s right!” she cried. “Come! See my room. I left a light there, and now it’s dark!”

“I’ll break the crazy brute’s neck!” said Heriot furiously. “Let go my arm, please!” To his anger, she was strong as he.

“Not without a revolver,” she said imperiously. “Have you no sense? You can’t do anything but get killed--and then I’m gone, too. Come!”

Even in his rage Heriot saw she was right. He was in no trim to fight a madman, with no weapon but his hands.

In utter silence he ran with her up the lighted stairs and into the first room they came to. There was a lamp burning, for it was Egerton’s sitting-room, and by his orders never dark, even in his absence. But as they entered it they heard pattering footsteps on their trail.

“Stop!” Andria caught Heriot as he would have shut the door. “We daren’t. He might get in at Beryl.”

She seized a hard-stuffed bolster from a corner, and, before he could stop her, had sent it twice through the window, with a crash and fall of splintered glass. There was a veranda outside, but no jalousies; nothing to keep an evil thing imprisoned. With an irresistible force she dragged Heriot behind a table, whose cloth reached the ground, and made him crouch there beside her. His arm felt like iron under her fingers. He was waiting for a fight, and saw nothing in her breaking the window but an attempt to fly that way, quickly abandoned as useless.

The hurrying, relentless steps came in, stopped. Then, with a snarling cry of wordless rage, their strange enemy saw the open window. Like a flash, he bounded to it, through it; and Heriot, quicker than he had ever moved in his life, leaped after him. Andria pointed to a heavy chest of drawers.

“That!” she cried. “Keep him out!” and, somehow, the two moved the heavy thing across the window. From outside, without a purchase, it would have taken a Sandow to move it; but the two, with one consent, moved quickly from the room. Heriot shut and locked the heavy door behind them, rejoicing in the iron clamps on the solid wood, but marveling no longer.

“How did he get in?” cried Andria; she leaned against the wall, pale and trembling.

“Come back to Beryl. It’s all right now.”

“Yes,” but he did not move. “Turn round,” he said authoritatively; “let me see your neck! Do you know that brute bit you?”

His whole manner utterly changed, and he laid a hand on her shoulder, where her white dressing-gown was torn to ribbons. He felt a shudder run through her.

“I didn’t--feel it!” she said jerkily. “I was so frightened for Beryl.”

Heriot’s face was dark with shame.

“My God!” he muttered as he saw the deep marks of teeth in the nape of her neck. “I ought to be kicked. Mrs. Erle, I have to beg your pardon a thousand times. I’ve behaved like a beastly cad. I--do you know, it’s all my fault?”

“Is it deep? Will it be poisoned?” She took no heed of his words, and he saw that at last there was terror in her face.

“No!” he lied bravely, sickening at the jagged marks, where the blood oozed. “Come here! Where can I get some water?” but as he spoke his quick eye caught a can standing at the head of the stairs, ready to fill the morning baths.

“Kneel down, and don’t be frightened, please,” he said gently. “If there is any poison I’ll get it out.”

Half-mad with disgust, she did not realize what he meant to do till she felt his lips on her neck. He was sucking the poison from the wound!

At first she nearly flung him from her, and then she buried her face in her hands. There was no one else. Beryl she could not let do it, and Salome was black. But Andria was whiter than marble and cold from head to foot. When the sickening business was done, as she rose from her knees she staggered.

“I ought to thank you,” but she did not look at him. “You----”

“I’m not fit to black your shoes,” he cut her short, with a queer sound in his voice. “For God’s sake, Mrs. Erle, forgive me if you can. I thought you were on Egerton’s side, and in his pay to get rid of the girl. And I’ve just seen you ready to chuck your life away for her.”

“I’m not what you think me. I never was.” She put her hand to her throat and cried out at the pain of the bruised flesh she touched.

“I think you are a good woman,” said Heriot, “and the bravest on God’s earth. I can’t forgive myself. Do you know, it was I let that brute in?”

From very weakness the tears came in her eyes as he told her how; yet spoke up bravely.

“I don’t care. I’m not frightened of the bite if you trust me now. You’ve seen--you must believe me!”

Heriot looked at her, pale and wild in her torn dressing-gown, her beautiful face ghastly. This was the woman he had dared to judge; and she had dared to risk her life for the very girl he had thought she meant to betray. And it was he who had really caused that wound that bled still. He could have gone on his knees in his shame and humiliation.

“Come,” he said quietly, “get the others to let you in, and go to bed.”

“I can’t sleep;” she shook like a leaf, but she followed him.

Salome got the door open in what seemed an endless time, as Andria stood outside with chattering teeth.

“Miss Holbeach!” the woman cried wildly, “it’s daylight! An’ I heard de engines in de bay. De ship’s got back!” she ran past Andria to the top of the house.

The world lay quiet in the hour of daybreak, and Egerton’s yacht lay at anchor in the gray wanness of the calm water.