Faithful Margaret Part 44

On rushed the train through the darkness of night.

Purcell, who sat beside his mistress, spread a plaid over the back of her seat, and pinned it about her shoulders, grumbling that she would take her death of cold in the drafty car; and presently she fell fast asleep, with her head resting against the jarring panel.

Purcell, too, dozed off, and dreamed that he was in his own cozy room at Castle Brand; and only awoke with the banging of a door ringing in his ears and the soft hand of his mistress clutching his arm.

The train was gliding on again, but it had paused one minute at a little country station, and a man had entered.

He was m.u.f.fled in a huge fur coat, and seated himself near Margaret, with a grunt of satisfaction that he had a whole seat to extend his legs upon.

Margaret regarded him keenly, and he returned her gaze with stolid indifference. Purcell growled out his disapprobation of the new-comer's placing his clumsy foot against his mistress' long dress, and the man serenely changed his position, wound a scarlet m.u.f.fler about his copper-colored throat, and settled himself for a nap.

He was a tall, stout man, with a heavy jaw, coa.r.s.e lips turned doggedly down at the corners, and piercing steel-blue eyes; his face was red and his hands were large and brown; but stupid, dull, and sleepy, he seemed unworthy of a second thought; and Margaret sank into a deep reverie and forgot him.

On they glided; through dim villages, amid bare-branched wealds, and over creeping rivers, which shone like misty mirrors in the faint starlight, resting from time to time, for a few minutes, at the country stations.

Other cars emptied and were filled again with fresh travelers; other compartments changed their occupants from seat to seat, but the trio sat still in this, and whiled away the time silently.

Then the train entered upon an hour's stretch of country, which it must traverse without pausing.

The man in the fur coat, weary of steadying his drowsy head against the corner of his seat, sat upright and drew a newspaper from his pocket.

Falling asleep over that, he produced a silver snuff-box, and refreshed himself with a generous pinch; then he looked meditatively at the old steward nodding comfortlessly before him, and proffered him the snuff-box; but looking into it, he discovered that it was about empty.

This appeared to afford him peculiar gratification, for he smiled to himself as he drew a paper parcel from his pocket, and proceeded to fill the snuff-box with its fragrant contents.

Idly Margaret watched him thrusting the diminished parcel back into the breast-pocket, and waking Purcell up by a vigorous poke, in order to offer him the replenished snuff-box.

The old man's eyes brightened, he uttered a heartfelt "I thank you kindly, sir," and inhaled a huge pinch, handing back the box with a courtly bow.

Then, sneezing with much fervor and wiping his eyes, Purcell vowed that he couldn't remember the day when snuff had smelt so queer; at which the man in the fur coat roared with laughter and boasted that his was the best; and presently Purcell's head sank down on his breast, and he took no further notice of his _vis-a-vis_.

Margaret drew out her handkerchief and covered her face with it, for a faint, sickening, drowsy odor was exhaling from Purcell's nostrils, and stealing her breath away.

She next tried her smelling-salts, and requested Purcell to open the window on his side: but he, taking no heed, she shook his arm, and, at last, gazed into his face.

It was chalk-white, a deadly perspiration bathed lip and brow; the half-closed eyelids showed the eyeb.a.l.l.s glazed and sightless, and his breast heaved painfully, as if a ton-weight lay upon it.

Margaret Walsingham came to herself in an instant--she grew cool and calm.

She knew now that the man who sat opposite to her had been hired by Mortlake to murder her.

No more tremors of fear, no more hurried plans for escape, no more hoping for some fortunate circ.u.mstance to save her. She felt that her time had come; and she knew that she must succ.u.mb to her fate. She saw how well her destruction was planned; she traced out the tragedy with terrific distinctness, she saw herself seized by these great, cruel hands in the first tunnel whose resounding roar could drown her death-shriek, and the pistol fired off at her ear, or the silent knife plunged into her bosom; and she knew how easy it would be for her murderer to leave the car at the next station and escape forever.

Before she raised herself from her speechless examination of her drugged servant, she had foreseen her death, and accepted it with a stony despair.

She mechanically turned to pull down the window at her own side, but the rough hand of the murderer met hers and arrested the act; his steel-blue eyes gleamed into hers, and drove her back to her corner, where she sat gazing like a dumb animal into the man's face, with her arms folded over her breast, a frail s.h.i.+eld which he laughed at.

Some minutes pa.s.sed, the servant partially recovered consciousness, and was plied with a handkerchief saturated with chloroform and pressed to his nostrils; and, when he was swaying to and fro in his seat like a dead man, with every lurch of the car, the ruffian turned to the unhappy woman beside him with a mischievous, fatal look in his coa.r.s.e face.

CHAPTER XXII.

PURSUIT OF A FELON.

One by one Margaret's faculties deserted her; her power of speech first of all, then her power of motion, her power of resistance, even her power of fear. All save the seeing sense left poor Margaret, and she watched with distended eyeb.a.l.l.s and a dull, ghastly feeling of interest the movements of the man who was to murder her.

What had he done to her that had thrown her into this helpless lethargy?

A faint, sweet odor pervaded the car.

It was the insidious chloroform stealing her consciousness from her and deadening every nerve. She saw him take a tiny vial from his pocket, fit a perforated top upon it, and direct a spurt of deadly perfume, fine as a hair, into her face.

She tried to move, but could not. The breath was cut off from her nostrils by that fatal jet; she could only gaze with a sad, anguished look into those flaming eyes opposite her.

Something in the harrowing intensity of that silent look troubled the man.

He missed his aim, and the death-giving essence streamed harmlessly upon the bosom of her dress.

Again and again he adjusted the cunning little tube so as to force her to breathe its fatal contents; but his hand trembled, his face waxed white--he quailed before the ghostly appeal of those fixed orbs.

Minutes pa.s.sed. Why did not the man finish his victim.

Was ever yet a woman more completely in a murderer's power?

Her attendant drugged into a senseless clod beside her, her faculties all benumbed, no eye to watch the tragedy, no hand to seize the villain--why did he not act out his instructions?

She held him by that mesmeric gaze, where the soul stood plainly forth pleading for mercy. She was so young, so gentle, so sorrowful.

Oh! he cowered away from his fell purpose; he dallied with his chance, and that chance slipped by.

The tram glided into a station shed; the red lights glowed in at the window, palling the flickering tin lamp hanging from the roof. Strangers rushed pell-mell across the platform; and at last the door of this car was opened, and a young man looked in.

Margaret vehemently sought to cry out to him, to stretch out her hands, to moan, even, but in vain. She seemed petrified.

The young man's eyes pa.s.sed aimlessly over the white-faced woman in black and her sleeping escort, and fastened doubtfully upon the disconcerted ruffian.

"Is Richard O'Grady in this car?" shouted he.

"I am the chap you want," returned the man in the fur coat.

The other handed him a telegram and vanished instantly, and the car moved on.

She saw him hold out a slip of paper to the dim flame and master its message, and the sickly pallor crept out of his cheeks and the coa.r.s.e red came back.

He looked hard in her face with a sinister light on his visage, and smiled at her with a certain kind of grim admiration.

"You've overcrowded him, have you, my clever wench?" mattered he. "You must be a sharp 'un to do _him_. Curse your haunting eyes! you've all but overcrowded _me_, in spite of my leather hide. Confound you! I'll never get rid of them great eyes."