Ambrotox and Limping Dick Part 17

The letters from Melchard's pocket were still in her hand. He took them, and picked out a white envelope with no writing on it. The wax seal had been broken.

He drew from it a sheet of paper, and unfolded it before her.

"That's the formula--it must be," said Amaryllis.

"Let's hook it, then," said d.i.c.k, b.u.t.toning the package and envelope into his hip-pocket, and slipping the rest of Melchard's papers into the side pocket of his own jacket, hanging loosely on Amaryllis.

As they crossed the hall he missed Ockley.

"My G.o.d!" he cried. "The black bloke's gone. Did you see him go--or hear him?"

Amaryllis shook her head.

"I thought I'd given him a five-minute dose at least," said d.i.c.k on the threshold, and taking her left elbow in his hand, began to run. "We've got to grease like h.e.l.l. It's a mile and a half to my car."

They were half-way to the pretentious gate, and Amaryllis was already distressed by the pace, when they heard behind them the thud of a revolver. A twig with two leaves, cut from a branch above and beyond them, fell into the road. d.i.c.k increased his pace, so that Amaryllis was only kept from falling by his firm hold of her arm.

A second shot hit the drive behind them, spraying their backs with gravel.

"High. Low, to left--jump!" yelled d.i.c.k, swinging the girl leftward past his body with a force so sudden that she fell on the gra.s.s at the roadside, in the shelter of an artificial knoll covered with shrubs; and this time d.i.c.k heard the bullet close on his right.

He threw himself on the gra.s.s, sharing her cover.

"All right?" he asked.

Speechless for lack of breath, Amaryllis nodded, trying to smile.

"You can't run to the gate," he said, rather as if speaking to himself than to her. "Wind's gone already, and it's a hundred yards without cover. To the bank of the road's only about twenty-five. Breathe deep.

Is my cap in that pocket still?"

Amaryllis found and gave it to him. d.i.c.k, unrolling it, rose slowly to his knees, facing the rhododendron bush.

"Oh, don't!" exclaimed the girl.

"Wouldn't, if I'd got a stick. Listen; he's using an Army Webley, I think. Six shots. He's fired three. If I can draw the second three before he fills up, it gives us a start while he reloads."

On his knees, he peered through the bush.

"Still at the door," he said. "Breathe deep. On the third shot we go for the embankment. I'll get you up it. Then over the road. There's timber that side as well as this."

Again Amaryllis nodded, and d.i.c.k, rising a little higher, disposed the cap between two clumps of leaves, where he hoped it would seem supported by his head.

"Real G. A. Henty stunt, ain't it?" he said. "But I've shaken him up a bit, and it's worth trying."

He raised the cap slightly, let it drop back again on the rhododendron leaves, and laid himself full length on the ground.

"Third shot--if it comes. Breathe deep," he repeated.

There was a pause, agonizing to the girl; and then it came.

Three shots, thumping in rapid succession, the last of them depositing the cap almost in her hands. Clutching it, she scrambled to her feet, and d.i.c.k, catching her by the arm beneath the shoulder, forced her into a thirty yards' sprint, in which, while her heart beat as if it would burst, her feet seemed to touch the ground barely half a dozen times before the grey stones of the embankment rushed to meet them almost in the face.

How he managed to force her to the top and bundle her over the parapet, she could never remember, any more than she could forget Ockley's next shot, which was discharged as their figures showed against his sky-line for the two seconds which it took them to cross the road and fling themselves recklessly down the slope of its other side.

"Brace up," said d.i.c.k at the bottom. "You've got some guts, anyhow; and once we're well into that undergrowth, your hairy friend may come after us with a Vickers and be d.a.m.ned to him."

To get to it he had to lift her over a swampy patch in a hollow to a stony place beyond it; whereafter they were soon as well hidden from the road as its outline lay exposed to the search of their eyes.

But Amaryllis at first left the watching to his, closing her own and lying still, in sheer womanly terror of being sick. Somewhere within was a doubt as to whether she did not already adore him, and a pitiable anxiety that "nothing horrid" should be a.s.sociated in his mind with her person.

d.i.c.k, lying at full length, turned his eyes every now and again from his watch on the road to look at the girl's face; and saw, with anxiety as well as pity, how pale it was, and how wasted already by hunger, fear and running--and perhaps by the drug they had given her the night before. He must ask no further exertion of her until she was fed and rested.

His object was to make his way as quickly as possible to "The Coach and Horses," his car, and safety.

But he dared not move from this shelter, nor even stand upright, until he knew what Ockley intended. Already he had tasted the man's quality, and, with the girl on his hands, held him in healthy fear.

"They've gone too far," he reflected, "to back out."

Had Black Beard been playing 'possum when he ought to have been laid out? He must, it would seem, have been pretty fit all the time to get away without making a sound.

Then a thought which sent fear through him like a knife:

"If he saw or heard what we took from that scented swine, no wonder he's shooting to kill. It's G.o.d's judgment on me for a fool--a fool that believed in peace and policemen. Limping d.i.c.k on a gaff like this without a gun!"

And then he saw a figure, clear against the sky, standing on the road, at the head of the path by which, three-quarters of an hour ago, he himself had gone up to get his first view of "The Myrtles."

It was Ockley; even at three hundred yards d.i.c.k could distinguish the black beard and heavy shoulders of the enemy, who was gazing from his high point, not in the direction of the fugitives, but along the moorland path to "The Coach and Horses"--the path which lay open to his eye for its whole length.

"Easy to guess the way I want to go," d.i.c.k calculated, "and easier to see that I haven't dared take it." Then, as Ockley turned his head towards the trees, "and easiest of all," he added aloud, "to spot the only cover."

Amaryllis opened her eyes, and he saw that her face was less grey.

"What is it?" she asked.

"The Hairy One," said d.i.c.k, "looking for us."

"But he can't see us, can he?"

"No. That's why he knows where we are. He's coming down."

"Don't be worried, d.i.c.k," said Amaryllis softly. "You'll get the best of him again. You've been splendid."

"I've been a fool."

"Why?" she asked.

"To be caught without a gun. I could have killed him."