Blue Hand Page 21

  “This house doesn’t seem to be occupied,” said Jim, “and it is a big one, too.”

  He led the way along a broad terrace, and they came to the front of the building. The door stood open, and there the invitation ended. Jim looked into a big dreary barn of a hall, uncarpeted and neglected.

  “I wonder what place this is,” said Jim, puzzled.

  He opened a door that led from the hall to the left. The room into which he walked was unfurnished and bore the same evidence of decay as the hall had shown. He crossed the floor and entered a second room, with no other result. Then he found a passageway.

  “Is anybody here?” he called, and turned immediately. He thought he heard a cry from Eunice, whom he had left outside on the terrace admiring the beauty of the Somerset landscape. “Was that you, Eunice?” he shouted, and his voice reverberated through the silent house.

  There was no reply. He returned quickly by the way he had come, but when he reached the terrace Eunice was gone! He ran to the end, thinking she had strolled back to the machine, but there was no sign of her. He called her again, at the top of his voice, but only the echoes answered. Perhaps she had gone into the other room. He opened the front door and again stepped in.

  As he did so Xavier Silva crept from the room on the left and poised his loaded cane. Jim heard the swish of the stick and, half turning, took the blow short on his shoulder. For a second he was staggered, and then driving left and right to the face of the man he sent him spinning.

  Before he could turn, the noose of a rope dropped over his head and he was jerked to the ground, fighting for breath.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  WHILST Jim had been making his search of the deserted house, Eunice had strolled to the edge of the terrace, and, leaning on the broken balustrade, was drinking in the beauty of the scene. Thin wraiths of mist still lingered in the purple shadows of the woods and lay like finest muslin in the hollows. In the still air the blue-grey smoke of the cottagers’ fires showed above the tree-tops, and the sun had touched the surface of a stream that wound through a distant valley, so that it showed as a thread of bubbling gold amidst the verdant green.

  Somebody touched her gently on the shoulder. She thought it was Jim.

  “Isn’t it lovely, Jim?”

  “Very lovely, but not half as lovely as you, my dear.”

  She could have collapsed at the voice. Swinging round she came face to face with Digby Groat, and uttered a little cry.

  “If you want to save Steele’s life,” said Digby in a low urgent tone, “you will not cry out, you understand?”

  She nodded.

  He put his arm round her shoulder and she shivered, but it was no caress he offered. He was guiding her swiftly into the house. He swung open a door and, pushing her through, followed.

  There was a man in the room, a tall, dour man, who held a rope in his hand.

  “Wait, Masters,” whispered Digby. “We’ll get him as he comes back.” He had heard the footsteps of Jim in the hall and then suddenly there was a scuffle.

  Eunice opened her lips to cry a warning, but Digby’s hand covered her mouth and his face was against her ear.

  “Remember what I told you,” he whispered.

  There was a shout outside, it was from Xavier, and Masters dashed out ahead of his employer. Jim’s back was turned to the open door, and Digby signalled. Immediately the rope slipped round Jim’s neck and he was pulled breathlessly to the ground; his face grew purple and his hands were tearing at the cruel noose. They might have choked him then and there, but that Eunice, who had stood for a moment paralysed, flew out of the room and, thrusting Masters aside, knelt down and with her own trembling hands released the noose about her lover’s neck.

  “You beasts, you beasts!” she cried, her eyes flashing her hate.

  In an instant Digby was on her and had lifted her clear.

  “Rope him,” he said laconically, and gave his attention to the struggling girl. For now Eunice was no longer quiescent. She fought with all her might, striking at his face with her hands, striving madly to free herself of his grip.

  “You little devil!” he cried breathlessly, when he had secured her wrists and had thrust her against the wall. There was an ugly red mark where her nails had caught his face, but in his eyes there was nothing but admiration.

  “That is how I like you best,” he breathed. “My dear, I have never regretted my choice of you! I regret it least at this moment!”

  “Release my hands!” she stormed. She was panting painfully, and, judging that she was incapable of further mischief, he obeyed.

  “Where have you taken Jim? What have you done with him?” she asked, her wide eyes fixed on his. There was no fear in them now. He had told her that he had seen the devil in her. Now it was fully aroused.

  “We have taken your young friend to a place of safety,” said Digby. “What happened this morning, Eunice?”

  She made no reply.

  “Where is Villa?”

  Still she did not answer.

  “Very good,” he said. “If you won’t speak I’ll find a way of making your young man very valuable.”

  “You’d make him speak!” she said scornfully. “You don’t know the man you’re dealing with. I don’t think you’ve ever met that type in the drawing-rooms you visited during the war. The real men were away in France, Digby Groat. They were running the risks you shirked, facing the dangers you feared. If you think you can make Jim Steele talk, go along and try!”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying,” he said, white to the lips, for her calculated insult had touched him on the raw. “I can make him scream for mercy.”

  She shook her head.

  “You judge all men by yourself,” she said, “and all women by the poor little shop-girls you have broken for your amusement.”

  “Do you know what you’re saying?” he said, quivering with rage. “You seem to forget that I am—”

  “I forget what you are!” she scoffed. The colour had come back to her face and her eyes were bright with anger. “You’re a half-breed, a man of no country and no class, and you have all the attributes of a half-breed. Digby Groat, a threatener of women and an assassin of men, a thief who employs other thieves to take the risks whilst he takes the lion’s share of the loot. A quack experimenter, who knows enough of medicines to drug women and enough of surgery to torture animals—I have no doubt about you!”

  For a long time he could not speak. She had insulted him beyond forgiveness, and with an uncanny instinct had discovered just the things to say that would hurt him most.

  “Put out your hands,” he almost yelled, and she obeyed, watching him contemptuously as he bound them together with the cravat which he had torn from his neck.

  He took her by the shoulders and, pushing her feet from her ungently, sat her in a corner.

  “I’ll come back and deal with you, my lady,” he growled.

  Outside in the hall Masters was waiting for him, and the big, uncouth man was evidently troubled.

  “Where have you put him?”

  “In the east wing, in the old butler’s rooms,” he said, ill at ease. “Mr. Groat, isn’t this a bad business?”

  “What do you mean, bad business?” snarled Digby.

  “I’ve never been mixed up in this kind of thing before,” said Masters. “Isn’t there a chance that they will have the law on us?”

  “Don’t you worry, you’ll be well paid,” snapped his employer, and was going away when the man detained him.

  “Being well paid won’t keep me out of prison, if this is a prison job,” he said. “I come of respectable people, and I’ve never been in trouble all my life. I’m well known in the country, and although I’m not very popular in the village, yet nobody can point to me and say that I’ve done a prison job.”

  “You’re a fool,” said Digby, glad to have some one to vent his rage upon. “Haven’t I told you that this man has been trying to run off with my wife?”

 
“You didn’t say anything about her being your wife,” said Masters, shaking his head and looking suspiciously at the other, “and, besides, she’s got no wedding-ring. That’s the first thing I noticed. And that foreign man hadn’t any right to strike with his cane—it might have killed him.”

  “Now look here, Masters,” said Digby, controlling himself, for it was necessary that the man should be humoured, “don’t trouble your head about affairs that you can’t understand. I tell you this man Steele is a scoundrel who has run away with my wife and has stolen a lot of money. My wife is not quite normal, and I am taking her away for a voyage…” He checked himself. “Anyway, Steele is a scoundrel,” he said.

  “Then why not hand him over to the police,” said the uneasy Masters, “and bring him before the justices? That seems to me the best thing to do, Mr. Groat. You’re going to get a bad name if it comes out that you treated this gentleman as roughly as you did.”

  “I didn’t treat him roughly,” said Digby coolly, “and it was you who slipped the rope round his neck.”

  “I tried to get it over his shoulders,” explained Masters hastily; “besides, you told me to do it.”

  “You’d have to prove that,” said Digby, knowing that he was on the right track. “Now listen to me, Masters. The only person who has committed any crime so far has been you!”

  “Me?” gasped the man. “I only carried out your orders.”

  “You’d have to prove that before your precious justices,” said Digby, with a laugh, and dropped his hand on the man’s shoulder, a piece of familiarity which came strangely to Masters, who had never known his employer in such an amiable mood. “Go along and get some food ready for the young lady,” he said, “and if there is any trouble, I’ll see that you get clear of it. And here.” He put his hand in his pocket and took out a wad of notes, picked two of them out and pressed them into the man’s hand. “They are twenty-pound banknotes, my boy, and don’t forget it and try to change them as fivers. Now hurry along and get your wife to find some refreshment for the young lady.”

  “I don’t know what my wife’s going to say about it,” grumbled the man, “when I tell her—”

  “Tell her nothing,” said Digby sharply. “Damn you, don’t you understand plain English?”

  At three o’clock that afternoon a hired car brought two passengers before the ornamental gate of Kennett Hall, and the occupants, failing to secure admission, climbed the high wall and came trudging up towards the house.

  Digby saw them from a distance and went down to meet the bedraggled Bronson and the dark-skinned Spaniard who was his companion. They met at the end of the drive, and Bronson and his master, speaking together, made the same inquiry in identical terms;

  “Where is Villa?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  THE room into which Jim was thrust differed little from those chambers he had already seen, save that it was smaller. The floorboards were broken, and there were holes in the wainscot which he understood long before he heard the scamper of the rats’ feet.

  He was trussed like a fowl, his hands were so tightly corded together that he could not move them, and his ankles roped so that it was next to impossible to lever himself to his feet.

  “What a life!” said Jim philosophically, and prepared himself for a long, long wait.

  He did not doubt that Digby would leave immediately, and Jim faced the prospect of being left alone in the house, to make his escape or die. He was fully determined not to die, and already his busy mind had evolved a plan which he would put into execution as soon as he knew he was not under observation.

  But Digby remained in the house, as he was to learn.

  An hour passed, and then the door was snapped open and Digby came in, followed by a man at the sight of whom Jim grinned. It was Bronson, looking ludicrous in Jim’s clothes, which were two sizes too large for him.

  “They discovered you, did they, Bronson!” he chuckled. “Well, here am I as you were, and presently somebody will discover me, and then I shall be calling on you in Dartmoor, some time this year, to see how you are going along. Nice place Dartmoor, and the best part of the prison is Block B.—central heating, gas, hot water laid on, and every modern convenience except tennis—”

  “Where is Villa?” asked Digby.

  “I don’t know for a fact,” said Jim pleasantly, “but I can guess.”

  “Where is he?” roared Bronson, his face purple with rage.

  Jim smiled, and in another minute the man’s open hand had struck him across the face, but still Jim smiled, though there was something in his eyes that made Bronson quail.

  “Now, Steele, there’s no sense in your refusing to answer,” said Digby. “We want to know what you have done with Villa. Where is he?”

  “In hell,” said Jim calmly. “I’m not a whale on theology, Groat, but if men are punished according to their deserts, then undoubtedly your jovial pal is in the place where the bad men go and there is little or no flying.”

  “Do you mean that he is dead?” asked Digby, livid.

  “I should think he is,” said Jim carefully. “We were over five thousand feet when I looped the loop from sheer happiness at finding myself once again with a joy-stick in my hand, and I don’t think your friend Villa had taken certain elementary precautions. At any rate, when I looked round, where was Villa? He was flying through the air on his own, Groat, and my experience is that when a man starts flying without his machine, the possibility of making a good landing is fairly remote.”

  “You killed him,” said Bronson between his teeth, “damn you!”

  “Shut up,” snapped Digby. “We know what we want to know. Where did you throw him out?”

  “Somewhere around,” said Jim carelessly. “I chose a deserted spot. I should have hated it if he had hurt anybody when he fell.”

  Digby went out of the room without a word, and locked the door behind him, and did not speak until he was back in the room where he had left Villa less than a week before. He shuddered as he thought of the man’s dreadful end.

  The two Spaniards were there, and they had business which could not be postponed. Digby had hoped they would rely on his promise and wait until he had readied a place of safety before they insisted on a share-out, but they were not inclined to place too high a value upon their chief’s word. Their share was a large one, and Digby hated the thought of paying them off, but it had to be done. He had still a considerable fortune. No share had gone to the other members of the gang.

  “What are your plans?” asked Xavier Silva.

  “I’m going to Canada,” replied Digby. “You may watch the agony columns of the newspapers for my address.”

  The Spaniard grinned.

  “I shall be watching for something more interesting,” he said, “for my friend and I are returning to Spain. And Bronson, does he go with you?”

  Digby nodded.

  It was necessary, now that Villa had gone, to take the airman into his confidence. He had intended leaving his shadow in the lurch, a fact which Bronson did not suspect. He sent the two men into the grounds to give the machine an examination, and Jim, sitting in his room, heard the noise of the engine and struggled desperately to free his hands. If he could only get up to his feet! All his efforts must be concentrated upon that attempt.

  Presently the noise ceased; Xavier Silva was a clever mechanic, and he had detected that something was wrong with one of the cylinders.

  “Tuning up!” murmured Jim.

  So he had more time than he had hoped for.

  He heard a step on the stone terrace, and through the window caught a glimpse of Bronson passing. Digby had sent the man into the village to make judicious inquiries as to Villa’s fate.

  Curiously enough, the three men who had watched the approaching aeroplane from the terrace of Kennett Hall had been unconscious of Villa’s doom, although they were witnesses of the act. They had seen the loop in the sky and Digby had thought no more than that Bronson was showing off to the g
irl, and had cursed him roundly for his folly. Villa’s body must be near at hand. How near, Bronson was to discover at the village inn.

  After the man had left, Digby went to look at his second prisoner, and found her walking up and down the room into which she had been put for safety.

  “Did you like your aeroplane journey, Eunice?” he asked blandly.

  She did not reply.

  “Rather thrilling and exciting, wasn’t it? And were you a witness to the murder of my friend Villa?”

  She looked up at him.

  “I don’t remember that your friend Villa was murdered,” she said, ready to defend Jim of any charge that this man might trump up against him.

  He read her thoughts.

  “Don’t worry about Mr. Steele,” he said dryly. “I am not charging him with murder. In fact, I have no time. I am leaving tomorrow night as soon as it is dark, and you are coming with me by aeroplane.”

  She did not answer this.

  “I am hoping that you won’t mind a brief immersion in the sea,” he said. “I cannot guarantee that we can land on my yacht.”

  She turned round. On his yacht! That, then, was the plan. She was to be carried off to a yacht, and the yacht was to take her—where?

  There was a clatter of feet in the outer room and he opened the door. One glance at Bronson’s face told him that he had important news.

  “Well?” he asked sharply.

  “They’ve found Villa’s body. I saw a reporter at the inn,” said the man breathlessly.

  “Do they know who it is?” asked Digby, and Bronson nodded.

  “What?” asked Digby, startled. “They know his name is Villa?”

  Again the man nodded.

  “They found a paper in his pocket, a receipt for the sale of a yacht,” he said, and through the open doorway Eunice saw the man shrink back.

  “Then they know about the yacht?”

  The news confounded him and shook him from his calm. If the police knew about the yacht his difficulties became all but insuperable, and the danger which threatened him loomed up like a monstrous overwhelming shape. Digby Groat was not built to meet such stunning emergencies and he went all to pieces under the shock.