CHAPTER XXIX

Rescue

Like an imbecile, I waited stock-still in the darkness for the light to return. The sudden eclipse, however, had checked my foes as well. I heard their footsteps cease like those of men who had walked over a cliff.

Not a gleam penetrated the murk. There were cries for light, and someone tried to scratch a match, ineffectually. I began to move.

I partly lost my balance, lurched against a man, and heard his Lordship’s bitter plaint from the level of my knees. I blundered into the passage without disabling anyone else. Intuition kept me from blundering toward the front entrance; later I realized that would have been too obvious a way. I groped to the left, feeling along the right-hand wall.

I seemed to wake up in the dinner-room.

Someone else was in there. I heard an anxious whisper: “Bannerlee . . . Bannerlee . . . that you?”

I recognized a friend. “Yes.”

From the invisible a small, damp, clutching paw clasped my hand. “You gotta get out of this. Out the window. Snap into it.”

We were together on the east lawn, running. Thank God the moon had gone down. Thank God the servants were asleep.

“It’s a—wise egg that knows—its own rooster. Bannerlee, your offsprings—couldn’t spot you—as the bloke that finished Cosgrove. Step on it! I can—keep up.”

“What happened to the lights?”

“I happened to ’em—that’s all.”

We approached a black smudge across the greater dark: a band of trees. We entered into their depths. I stopped, held her back.

She whispered frantically, “Step on it! You can’t stay here!”

“No, but I have to decide what comes next. Steady on! Don’t worry about me; I’ll come clear. What did you do? Are the lights finished for good?”

“Did you notice I’d sneaked out? I was afraid the lid ’ud blow off, soon and I wanted to do my bit. I had the dickens of a time finding the fuse-box in the kitchen. I pulled off the handle of the big switch com_pletely_, and gave the rest of the works a kick so a lot of stuff fell down to the floor. I also cut the telephone connection into bits to round off a good night’s effort.”

“Wonderful. I’m surprised you weren’t killed by the current.”

“Never mind wonderful. I know my electricity. All in the good cause. Only step on the gas!”

“By Jove, I will!” I cried, divining the sense of this saying. “I must get a tin of petrol—no, two tins. First, though, listen. Will you do something more for me?”

“Yes, yes—anything. But make it snappy.”

“I want my diary. Get hold of it and wait for word from me. Where can I write you safely?”

“You’re crazy. They’ll trace you sure as—”

“Not if you do this right. The book is in the desk drawer in my room. It’s not locked. It’s your part to conceal the thing, here, until the wind blows over a bit. The police will believe I have it, and I want it—for a good reason. Eventually you can recover it and mail it to the name and address I write you. Where can a letter reach you safely?”

“I don’t know. American Express, London.”

“No good. Are you going to be in the Continent this winter?”

“I think so. Mummy’s hipped on Nice.”

“American Express, Nice, then. You can send for my letter if you don’t go there after all. By the way, it will be addressed to Miss, er, Sarah Vale. Can you remember?”

“Yes, yes; I’ll write it down when I get in.” She hung on my arm imploringly. “Step on it now! You’ll get caught if you keep hanging around with these by-the-ways and can-you-remembers. My God, you’ve only a couple o’ minutes’ leeway. I don’t see how you’ll make it.”

I laughed and patted her shoulder. “My dear Lib, I have a start of at least two hours, probably more. But I shan’t be foolhardy and lessen the time I have. Goodbye, Lib. I can never thank you for what you’ve done.”

“Good-bye forever, Bannerlee.” Dim white arms reached around my neck, and her lips touched mine in a brisk little kiss. “I’m awful sorry Paula had to spill the beans. She took the line Cosgrove was her man, and—and all that sort of rot. Say you aren’t mad at me, or anything. ’Cause I’m to blame for all this trouble, I guess.”

“No! How could you be?”

“I saw you drop the translation in the fire that night, and like an ass I let Paula find it out. But I didn’t mean any harm; honest I didn’t.”

I touched her cheek with my fingers. “You’re absolved, little Lib. It could have made no difference, eventually. You’re going to be Mrs. Cullen some day, aren’t you?”

“Oh, gee, I don’t know. I s’pose I’ll have to be, to get some peace and quiet.”

“I shall send you a beautiful present from Central Africa or Siam or elsewhere. May I kiss the bride again?”

I might. And yet again.

I turned away, but swung back. “Tell her—I’ll never forget her. And I’ll always be sorry for the pain I’ve caused her. That’s all.”

“I will; sure I will. But, Bannerlee, I want to say something. I think it’s the limit a real man like you has to light out because something happened to that doggone Irishman. I think it’s a goldarn pity Paula couldn’t have fallen for you—hard. Then she would have kept quiet if they’d torn out her finger-nails, instead of seeing her duty and doing it to-night, like a fool. I’m awful sorry. _Now step on it!_”

She glided and glimmered away. I was a lone outlaw against the world.

Not a moment squandered now. I dashed for the stables, with which I was fairly familiar. Cautiously using my torch, I penetrated the section transformed into the garage. A minute later, with two petrol tins hugged to my breast, I fled down the Vale for life. There had not been a single shout from the environs of the House.

I carried the tins across Aidenn Water and set one down, returning with the other to the temporary log bridge, which I must burn behind me. It must have made a comfortable blaze, soaked as it was with petrol, but I could not stop to witness this holocaust to Mercury.

Salt’s car was waiting there. I deposited the emergency tin of petrol in the rear, jumped in, and had no difficulty in starting the engine. The key had been left on the dashboard, as I knew it would be. With the fire rising behind me, merrily I rolled out of the mouth of the Vale to the main road and toward New Aidenn, embarking on a brief career of constructive vandalism.

My object was to cut off for as long as might be the communications of my enemies, the inhabitants of the earth. The torch revealed that along the edge of the road eight or ten telephone wires were strung, but shortly before entering the town I jumped out of the car, clambered up the short pole, and with the aid of gloves and other things in the tool-box snipped both right and left.

There were no street lamps in New Aidenn, I had heard, and I thought it safe to assume that no constable would venture out of doors there as late as one o’clock in the morning to recognize my borrowed motor. Not a soul was stirring; the Police Station was dark. I passed through safely, and halted the car on the other side of the town to give some attention to the wires running that way.

My destination was Hereford, but I had until nearly three o’clock to reach there, and no danger of my losing my road. So I often halted in my journey when I had passed a village which might contain a telephone, in order to secure it from business too early in the morning. Thus I reached Hereford about ten minutes before the north-to-west express was due.

I left the useful car in an alley near the station, hoping it would be recognized about dawn and not until then. When the train was puffing beside the platform, I boldly applied at the window for a first-class ticket to Exeter (I had been about to say “Bristol,” when I happened to think “Don’t be so childishly obvious, like an ordinary criminal. Let Salt think he’s up against a real antagonist.”) I explained that I had intended to drop off at Hereford, but would not break my journey until further on because a person I had met on the train told me there wasn’t a decent hotel in the place. I needed some excuse, of course, for the fact that I was not wearing hat and coat. The booking-clerk seemed rather sleepy, and I remained a little longer talking to him, to insure that he would remember me.

Then I boarded the train and entered a first-class compartment where a gentleman was sleeping. His hat and coat, however, would not fit me. I merely scraped some of the mud (quite distinctive mud that said “Aidenn Vale” as plainly as words) on the floor there. I thought of leaving more “clues,” but decided not to butter the bread too thick. I passed on to another compartment in search of vestments. From a gentleman who was slumbering with his head hanging off the seat I obtained not only hat and coat, but a mackintosh which from a distance would look just as well inside-out.

I then found an empty compartment and sat there, wearing my new-found raiment, until the engine snorted and hunched its shoulders and commenced crawling southward. When the train had left the platform, I glanced from the off window to insure that the station yard was dark, then unlatched the door and dropped safely to the ground.

All immediately required was to keep out of sight until the corresponding express from west to north should come in. It should have arrived a quarter of an hour afterward, but to my disgust it was late, and I had a worried thirty minutes among some coals. I devoted the time to cleaning my boots with my handkerchief, which I stuffed in my pocket, to be burned later. At length the express pulled in, and when all appeared ready for departure, I walked quickly up the track beside it. The south-bound platform was deserted now. This fact enabled me to choose an empty compartment and enter it by the off door.

Suddenly remembering my plans for the morrow, however, I stepped out on the platform and bought some fruit from a yawning lad who conducted a buffet on wheels. I had thought at first of stealing the stuff, but buying it would be less ostentatious. When I had paid for what I had chosen, I took the first opportunity to steal quite a bit more.

I had really been very lucky. During my absence from the compartment, tickets had been inspected and doors locked. Lacking a ticket for this particular train, I might have been embarrassed. Now I walked hurriedly toward the end of the train, past the ticket-inspector, around the rear coach, and along to the off door of my empty compartment again.

I rode north.

At Shrewsbury I alighted for precaution just before the train drew into the platform, and re-entered my compartment when the engine had been changed. Near Crewe I definitely abandoned the train, climbed the bank of a shallow cutting, and got over the hedge. It was still rather dark, but I had no difficulty in finding a satisfactory bit of woodland where I might lie hidden all day.

I was staking everything on one chance, that Paula Lebetwood had remembered the references to the Bonnet yacht and that my ticket-taking and perhaps the mud from my boots would serve to concentrate the attention of the authorities upon Bristol. If Jack and Mary hadn’t altered their plans, they would be slipping out of harbour this morning with the tide, probably five hours before the dogs of righteousness would arrive hungry at the docks. It seemed reasonable that the authorities should assume that I was aboard the barque. I knew for certain that she carried no wireless, and that barring an unexpected encounter there was no chance of police disillusionment until she put in in Norway—or Africa.

I intended never to be seen unless for urgent cause, and then, if possible, by the under-intelligent. Empty compartments on fast trains by night were to be had for the taking, and even if the expresses should be crowded, the stopping trains were available, though on them it would be necessary to turn out at every station. In the barely credible contingency of my being nipped and made to pay my fare, I had plenty of money, for I had cashed a fairly large cheque before setting out for Aidenn Forest, and I had not stopped to tip the servants before leaving Highglen House. The train by night and secluded slumber by day; these were indicated for my recovery.

I shall not detail my week-long, decidedly boring expedition to Hull. After a couple of days my personal appearance became run-down, and I dropped into a small market town on market day, asked a constable directing traffic to assist me to a hairdresser’s, found the place down a dark dead-end and up a shaky stair, and enjoyed a haircutting, shampoo, and shave. I told the attendant that I looked and felt a new man, bought a packet of safety-razor blades, tipped him enough but not too much, chatted pleasantly about the price of heifers, and departed.

About nine that evening, in a restaurant in a larger town, I expressed a predilection for pickled walnuts.

Not long afterwards I stepped out of a station wash-room, an unobtrusive dark gentleman to the roots of my hair, with eyebrows that gave a special appearance to my face.

I carried a passport, thanks to Jack and Mary. From Hull one Albert Barrerdale sailed eight days after Alfred Bannerlee had stumbled out of the Hall of the Moth. Praises be for the men who are supposed to scrutinize the details on passports, and don’t.

Now on my Mediterranean island (whose name, pardon me, I do not mean to give) I enjoy perpetual sun and the fruits of never-ceasing summer. I might rest here secure for the term of my natural life, and I might achieve a sort of happiness, for here no sensuous pleasure is withheld from man. Air, sea, and land conspire to lull the soul, and at night from the village creep up strains of music sweet and spicy. I might remain—but I think I shall move on.

The Bonnets saved me; no doubt of that. Overweening sleuth-hounds met a sharp rebuff three months later when the Bonnet barque, not having touched at any port, returned to Bristol dock. The emphatic statement of Jack and Mary that I had not been on board, a statement which they later attested in order to dispel public mutterings against their veracity, stunned the police, who had been sitting back and waiting for me to be delivered up to them from India or Madagascar. The hounds then were willing, but found no scent. Moreover, since I had not been aboard the barque, they _knew_ that I could not have escaped from England, knowledge that must have proved rather a hindrance than a help.

The diary reached me in a picturesque village in a small Balkan country. Its disappearance that night, by the way, gave rise to the amazing belief among several of my fellow-guests that I had secreted myself within the House, and the consequence was a general desertion next day. After receiving the pages, I carried them with me for weeks before lighting on my isle and commencing my work anew. Now the manuscript is ready to return, rounded, coherent, and decked with proper ornament.

My purpose? I have done it for _her_ sake. I don’t care a penny for the gaping world; all I ask is, let this book stand as the monument of an ardour which exceeded the orthodox. Let it be a fantastic tribute to a mistress who never can be mine. Let it take the place of a sigh and a sob for love’s labours lost. While I handled and recast this matter, I lived near her again in Highglen House, shared hours that held all life’s sweetness, and remembered that she did not despise me!

If I may offer a suggestion to you who are to receive this manuscript, I advise that you present it unaltered to the public as a piece of fiction, with the name of some obscure but ambitious author upon the title-page. And if he will be so generous, I trust that Lord Ludlow will write a foreword to give the thing the stamp of reality.

I trust, finally, that I may be forgiven if I remark that this is the _last_ that will ever be heard of me.

Paula!

THE COMMUNICATION OF APRIL 17, 1926

No matter where I am. It is a different place from where you think, and it will be no good tracing this letter, for you’ll find only that you are mistaken. The man who is going to take it to Rangoon and mail it two months hence, is an outcast like myself and will certainly keep faith.

Occasionally a paper gets through to me from England, and I read it with more or less amusement. Bloodthirsty wretches, the English, who would like nothing better than to see me suspended between time and eternity. But it shall not be.

There has been some discussion as to what “really” happened the evening Maryvale attempted to shoot the cat. One copy of a newspaper I came across contained a sort of symposium on the subject. One or two letters came near the simple truth, which was that, being afraid of Maryvale’s revolver, I took the chance which was offered to remove the bullets from as many cartridges as I could, managing to insure that his first three shots would be ineffective. Hints that I deliberately intended to craze the poor fellow, for whom I had a sincere liking, are false.

Through Lord Ludlow my diary has reached the authorities upon guarantee that it will not be confiscated, and from official announcements it seems they believe it to be an equal mixture of necessary truth and designing falsehood. To my astonishment, moreover, they have reported that it is a masterpiece of indiscretion—which is nonsense. About myself, to be sure, I have perhaps written a thing or two that most men would not care to have known of them during life. But I am dead. Yes, in all that concerns life as I knew it, my friends, my studies, my pleasures—in all that matters—I am dead. The authorities, however, scoff at the diary, and adduce the “mystic bone.”

Fools! The episode of the bone hanging white in the gloom was not invention, or delusion either. It was the white patch on Cosgrove’s head while he waited in the darkness and surveyed the Hall, planning Noah’s Flood and the crisis which would arise when Sir Brooke met the gorilla-man. The close-cropped nape of his neck between his black hair and the black collar of his sportsman’s coat, and the knobs that were his ears—I did not comprehend at first that these were what I saw. When my amazement and alarm had subsided, and I realized that Cosgrove was in there—I think I hated him then. His odious behaviour toward his intended wife and the sinister hint beneath Bob’s bitter outbreak had rankled. My survey from outside my window a minute later happened to prove that no one was in the immediate vicinity of the Hall. Otherwise I should hardly have felt the sense of satisfaction snug at the heart of my shivering soul when—after the bracket had given way—I realized that _something had happened_! But not until I reached the lawn did I know that it had happened to Cosgrove. I shall never be sure in my inmost soul whether or not I was quite aware that this trivial act might loose some destructive force—whether I am a murderer or the toy of Fate.

They say, however, that the placards I left and the stone I cast down from the balcony convince me of malice prepense. They do not, though they seem to do so.

The placard I left in Cosgrove’s chamber that morning (the bottom of a cardboard box I found in the store-rooms) meant no more than what it said: mischief. I never had any delusion about the supernatural aspect of Parson Lolly; indeed, the stressing of that element had made me a little suspicious of Cosgrove himself. Celts do odd things. I believed that for some clandestine reason he might be behind the manifestations, and I thought it would be good sport to play his own game against him. I merely proved to be wrong.

The second placard was a flash of inspiration, after the bracket had given way and pandemonium burst out below me. There might be a way of shifting the onus, if anything actually catastrophic had taken place!—if there _had_ been a cat’s claw, and—! Parson Lolly again! It did not take twenty seconds to dash into the storeroom, find the cover of the same box, scrawl the words, and fling the placard out of the window for the wind to carry. Later I destroyed every scrap of the box.

The stone I pitched down late that night. It was an obvious afterthought, and a good one.

As for Heatheringham’s death, it was black misfortune and nothing else. It appears that on account of Cosgrove’s Will he looked askance on Paula Lebetwood, but even had he suspected me, I do not think I could have been so callous as to wipe him from the earth in a bloody smear. I was doubtful that minute in my room, which was the more prudent course for me: to dash the bracket down, creating a new disturbance, or to leave it untouched. Prudence certainly decided to let the accursed thing alone, but one moment’s recklessness defied prudence. I solemnly assert that I believed the Hall was empty and Heatheringham somewhere in the twilight north of the House.

Salt, it seems, was a shrewder fellow than his appearance betokened. He had suspected me from the first night he came to the House. “The way he looked at Miss Lebetwood, or rather the way he avoided looking at her, set me thinking”; such are the words which commence an interview given to one of the more lurid newspapers. Salt’s homely yet somehow handsome face, accompanied by well-combed beard, adorns this report, which concludes with an irony I suppose must be accidental: “I am glad Mr. Bannerlee didn’t injure my car.”

While irony is fresh in mind, irony was never more dramatic than in that business of the water-wheel, facts they found when the claw was dismantled and the channel investigated. That the Knight’s dead body, blundering down the channel, should have dislodged the obstruction which otherwise would have prevented the wheel from turning and the claw from darting out! So Sir Brooke, elderly and infirm, stumbling to his death, fulfilled his mission after all.

I have received a message from Lib, and I may as well close with that. It was transmitted to me through an American newspaper, by means of a simple “dictionary” cipher code I explained to her in a farewell letter from that Mediterranean isle of mine:

“Dear Bannerlee Paula’s going to marry a guy named Frank Andrews she knew here in the States before she bumped into Cosgrove Bobby and I too as soon as Bobby is twenty one the first boy will be named after you why not I hope you are not too sad in that place wherever you are and I wish you could come and see us sometime but I guess you’d better not a plain-clothes policeman says good morning to me every day when I go round the corner so it wouldn’t be healthy for you here I sure wish Paula had met you before this Andrews or Cosgrove there would have been nothing to it and everything would be rosy Paula is terribly sorry but she doesn’t hate you Love Lib.”

Well, some day in the forties, when the Radnorshire riddles are buried in oblivion beneath the ashes of a hundred other mysteries—I shall return! I shall visit little Lib, and find it difficult to recognize in her matronly staidness a trace of the dash and frankness of her liking for me. Perhaps, too, I shall pat that “first boy” on the head.

Shall I dare to see _her_? Or, shall I stand outside her lighted window, remembering. That would be better, I believe. I can be nothing to her then, but once—

After all, she did not despise me!

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

This transcription follows the text of the Jacobsen Publishing Company edition published in 1928. However, the following alterations have been made to correct what are believed to be unambiguous errors in the text:

* “Pharmond” has been changed to “Pharamond” (Preface). * “morsal” has been changed to “morsel” (Chapter IV). * “catridge-belt” has been changed to “cartridge-belt” (Chapter VII). * “rerespectively” has been changed to “respectively” (Chapter X). * “rcok” has been changed to “rock” (Chapter XV). * “scyamores” has been changed to “sycamores” (Chapter XXI). * “criss-crosing” has been changed to “criss-crossing” (Chapter XXII). * “mose” has been changed to “most” (Chapter XXIII). * “Mrs Belvoir” has been changed to “Mrs. Belvoir” (Chapter XXIII). * “Whimple” has been changed to “Whimble” (Chapter XXIV). * “had same funny bits” has been changed to “had some funny bits” (Chapter XXV). * Five occurrences of mismatched quotation marks has been repaired.