Ambrotox and Limping Dick Part 35

"Miss Caldegard!" he shouted.

"I'm coming," came the clear voice in reply, and a patter of light feet.

d.i.c.k could just see the car, and Amaryllis when she reached it.

"Where are you?" she called, bewildered.

"Keep straight on. You see a thing something like a man, standing in the road, don't you?"

"Yes," answered Amaryllis.

"Near it you will find an automatic pistol, on the ground. Pick it up, please, and go back to your seat," shouted d.i.c.k.

Amaryllis obeyed him. But, after going a little way, she called back to him and instinctively she imitated his formality in presence of the unclean.

"Mr. Bellamy!" she cried. "Please--not this one."

To this allusion Melchard had no clue. But there was in her tone something which turned the blood cold in him.

The invisible d.i.c.k, however, answered in a laughing voice so joyous that Amaryllis was vaguely distressed.

"Rather not," he replied. "I've something much better for this guy."

With intense pleasure, while his observation-slit gave him sight of her, he watched the girl returning to her post.

Then he shot a fresh order at the prisoner.

"Turn round," he said.

Melchard obeyed.

"If you move a foot or lift a hand before I speak again, it's a bullet between the shoulders."

Judging this to be the position most demoralizing, d.i.c.k descended with more haste than precaution. Melchard, his entrails shaking, stood, to all appearance, firm as a rock. When d.i.c.k tapped his shoulder, he turned, showing a face white and drawn.

"The man Bunce!" he exclaimed.

"Silly liar!" said d.i.c.k. "You knew who I was the moment you saw my cheek--guessed I was the man who was queering your game. I have queered it, and I'm going to queer you. Walk in front of me, and don't forget, that, if I have to disappoint myself by killing you, I shan't lose any sleep about it."

Melchard walked silent and erect, with the unseen pistol-barrel behind him.

d.i.c.k could see even in the shoulders before him the ripple of fear controlled, but not conquered.

And the sight brought, not indeed compa.s.sion, but a separated measure of respect.

When they had almost reached the car, he called a halt.

"I shan't keep on threatening you," he said "You're down and out.

Understand, once for all, that, on the least movement, I shoot to kill."

He pointed to the coat spread over what had been Mut-mut.

"That's yours," he said. "Put it on."

The man was reeking with sweat, exhausted and in mortal fear. A chill might endanger the success of d.i.c.k's design.

Melchard, guessing well what it covered, lifted the fawn-coloured overcoat with resolution; but the earless side of that frightful head, with another and b.l.o.o.d.y hole making a pair of dead eyes to stare up at him, was too much for the shaken nerve, and Alban Melchard collapsed on his face in the road.

d.i.c.k turned him over, lifted an eyelid, and, convinced that the man was unconscious, fetched from the car his bottle of the strange device, and poured a stream from its neck into Melchard's half-open mouth.

For some moment's after, he was afraid that the fit of choked coughing his rough remedy had caused would compel him to leave a second corpse by the roadside.

When it was over, however, it appeared that the stimulant had been partly a.s.similated, for Melchard was able to stand. When he had got his arms into the overcoat, d.i.c.k led him to the car.

From the locker under the seat he produced a thick tumbler.

"Get in," he said, and half-filled the gla.s.s from the bottle.

Melchard lay back exhausted in the near-side corner, examining with dull eyes the havoc made by Mut-mut's claw.

"Drink that," said d.i.c.k.

Melchard shook his head.

"I hate spirits," he objected feebly. "That's his stuff--Mut-mut's."

"You'll hate it worse soon," was all the answer he got; and drank, gasping between gulps.

Knowing that the man had not a kick left in him, d.i.c.k ventured, rather than fetch Amaryllis into sight of the uncovered corpse, to mount the front seat and drive the car to the place where she sat waiting.

When she was beside him, he asked if she were fit to drive.

"Yes," she answered. "But I nearly went to sleep waiting for you, d.i.c.k."

"I don't think either of us is fit to drive her to town," he said, looking at his watch. "I'm pretty tough, but I'm nearly all in. How you've stuck it as you have, I can't understand. So we'll have a shot at that five-fifteen. We've about seven miles to go. Thirty m.p.h.--that's fourteen minutes. Bar hold-ups, that's good enough. It's just five to five now, but I must fix up my pa.s.senger."

Amaryllis looked round at Melchard.

"What are you going to do with him?" she asked, turning back upon d.i.c.k a face of disgust.

"Take him up to town," said d.i.c.k.

"How beastly!" said Amaryllis.

"Doped, my child--most royally doped--with a kindly poison that he loathes."

He left her and took his seat beside the prisoner. Amaryllis, not a little vexed by the addition to their party, started the car.