A Traitor's Wooing Part 28

Revived by the water she had given him on her last visit, he was suffering now from little more than the discomfort of cramped limbs, and was able to follow intelligently the breathless story which the girl poured out to him. At the conclusion he groaned at his own impotence.

"If I was only free I might find a way of stopping the s.h.i.+p," he said.

"Do you think if you could get tools you could draw the staple to which the chain is fastened?"

Nettle stood on tiptoe, and, after a careful scrutiny in the half light, was compelled to admit that the task, even with the aid of tools, would be beyond her powers. The staple, which was really a heavy iron ring, was firmly driven into the oak bulk-head, and without mechanical leverage would remain immovable.

"But what should you have done supposing you were loose?" she asked.

"Find a pistol and shoot Brant and the mate? I am afraid I should miss them, or I'd have a try myself."

"You would have to shoot the whole crew," replied Leslie, with a weary smile for her eagerness. "No, I should endeavour to hit upon some plan for damaging the engines. Those of a turbine steamer like this are a very delicate piece of mechanism, and a comparatively trifling injury, not necessarily entailing great violence, would do the trick. Ever such a little delay for repairs would enable the _Snipe_ to catch up if they have allowed her to come as close as you describe."

"Then the sooner I set to work the better," said Nettle, knitting her brows, as the germ of an inspiration was born. "Good-bye, Mr. Chermside, and keep your p.e.c.k.e.r up. Miss Maynard doesn't know the hobble we're in--still thinks we're on the point of being rescued."

"G.o.d bless you for that," Leslie flung after his departing visitor.

But she was already half-way to the ladder to the main deck. In her exploration of the steamer during the run from Weymouth on the previous day she had been idly interested in what Chermside had called the delicate piece of mechanism, so far as its throbbing pulses were visible through the dome-shaped skylight of gla.s.s on the upper deck over the engine-room. The gla.s.s was opaque and thickly corrugated, but a slide in the dome had been opened for ventilating purposes, and through the aperture Nettle had been fascinated by the antics of gyrating fly-wheels and sucking piston-rods below. As she emerged into the free air of the upper deck she wondered if that convenient slide was open now.

But her first glance was for the pursuing wars.h.i.+p, and it told her that the destroyer was a good half-mile further astern since her plunge into the bowels of the _Cobra_. Her second anxiety was about Brant, and she was comforted to see that he was not on the bridge. As a matter of fact he had gone to his cabin for breakfast, tiring of a joke which had lost its zest with Nettle's disappearance from the deck.

The gla.s.s dome over the engine-room was amids.h.i.+ps, abaft the funnel.

Thither she strolled with seeming carelessness, pa.s.sing on forward without stopping, but satisfying herself as she did so that the ventilating slide was open. She walked nearly to the bows, and then, on turning to come back, struck a gold mine in the way of good fortune, though it took the humble shape of a zinc bucket full of cinders. It had been placed by the cook outside the door of the caboose, ready to be thrown overboard by one of the sailors--a duty which had been neglected in the excitement of the chase by the _Snipe_.

Miss Jimpson looked slyly round. With the exception of the look-out man in the bows the crew were all aft, watching the outpaced war vessel and exchanging ribald jests at the expense of her commander. But between the cook-house and the superstructure in which were the saloon and the state-rooms was an open stretch of deck in clear view of the bridge. And on the bridge Bully Cheeseman was stalking to and fro, in charge of the s.h.i.+p.

To reach her objective, the skylight over the engine-room, she would have to traverse the open s.p.a.ce as far as the deck-house, when the latter would furnish some sort of cover; but the real danger would be after she had pa.s.sed under the bridge into the after-part of the vessel.

The eyes of the mate, who was watching the destroyer, were naturally turned in that direction. The only compensation was that the skylight was close to the bridge, and that she would not be long in the perilous zone of Cheeseman's vision before attempting her self-set task.

Anyhow, the danger had to be faced, and, timing her start so that the mate should be at the opposite end of the bridge from the side of the s.h.i.+p she selected for her rush, Nettle seized the bucket and raced for the shelter of the deck-house. She reached it without, so far as she knew, being observed, and so came to the alley under the bridge, where she waited till the lighter sound of Cheeseman's heavy steps overhead told that he had again receded from the side where she meant to operate.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Looking up, she caught the furious eye of Cheeseman glaring at her along the blue barrel of his still levelled pistol."]

Then, with a queer little sob of expectancy, she darted forward to the glazed cupola and raised the bucket shoulder high over the open slide.

As she stood there, her splendid young figure posed like a Greek G.o.ddess, a hoa.r.s.e oath was yelled from the bridge, followed instantly by the simultaneous crack of a revolver and the ping of a bullet on the bucket. The missile glanced off and seared the bloom on the girl's cheek.

Looking up, she caught the furious eye of Cheeseman glaring at her along the blue barrel of his still levelled pistol. She smiled up at him, and before he could fire again she dumped the contents of the bucket into the whirling tangle of machinery below.

CHAPTER x.x.x

AFTERMATH OF STORM

The cinders fell with a clatter among the pistons and the fly-wheels, and Nettle Jimpson, too absorbed in watching results, forgot to notice that the ruffian on the bridge had not fired a second shot at her. For almost immediately there began a jarring and a scrunching in the engines which told that the delicate mechanism was trying to a.s.similate in its vitals the rough food she had fed it with, and found it indigestible.

Cold-blooded murder was quite in Mr. Cheeseman's line as a preventive, equally so as a cure had that been possible. But those ominous sounds were eloquent of mischief done, and he was not the man to run his neck into a noose for the empty pleasure of revenge.

Three feeble revolutions followed, and then the engines stopped altogether, and the _Cobra_, quickly exhausting the way on her, lay like a log on the oily swell. Brant came running from his cabin, and at the foot of the bridge stairs met Cheeseman, who had descended, and the chief engineer, who had hurried up from below.

"How long will it take to pick the stuff out?" asked Brant, when he had been informed of what had happened.

"It will be from two to three hours before we can get a move on the s.h.i.+p," was the engineer's verdict. "A lot of the muck has got into the governors and cylinders. If I hadn't shut off steam sharp there'd have been such a mix up that the steamer would have had to dock for repairs."

This meant that the _Snipe_ would be up with them in twenty minutes.

Brant c.o.c.ked a wicked eye at the oncoming destroyer, and then began to walk to where Nettle was still standing by the engine-room hatch. So diabolical was the menace on the horrible hairless face that the girl was fascinated as by a snake, and could not fly, though she knew that her fate was trembling in the balance. Brant addressed her very quietly.

"Will you jump overboard yourself, or shall I shoot you first and then throw you over?" he said, drawing a vicious Derringer from his hip.

Unflinchingly Nettle returned his stare. She even laughed a little. "I am certainly not going to commit the crime of suicide to save you from committing the crime of murder. I don't love you well enough for that,"

she replied.

And then the swift thought came to her that the wretch meant to slake his thirst for revenge and trust to his cunning to avoid the penalty for it. When the wars.h.i.+p's men boarded the _Cobra_ he would have to explain the kidnapping of Violet Maynard and his treatment of Chermside as best he could, and he would doubtless have to suffer for it. But he had been guilty of no capital offence against them, and might contrive to throw much of the blame on other shoulders.

"I'll give you thirty seconds to reconsider that decision," said Brant, c.o.c.king and raising the pistol.

"It will be about long enough for you to reconsider yours," Nettle rejoined promptly. "You are relying on the crew of that destroyer not being aware that there are two women on board your s.h.i.+p. You think that if they saw me on deck they will have taken me for Miss Maynard, and that with her rescue a.s.sured they will ask no questions about me."

"And they won't," said Brant, though there was a note of interrogation in the a.s.sertion. "How are they to know that I s.h.i.+pped a d----d wild-cat at Weymouth?"

"That is the hole you have dug for yourself to tumble into," returned Miss Nettle Jimpson sweetly. "You thought you were being funny at my expense in allowing the torpedo-boat to nearly catch you, but you overdid your joke, Captain Brant. That s.h.i.+p is the _Snipe_, with my young man as acting gunner. You let her come so close that we were blowing kisses to each other half an hour ago. When my Ned steps on to your deck five minutes hence he'll ask for me, if he's still the affectionate youth I've educated him into. And you won't be able to gammon him with any yarn about my having jumped overboard. He knows jolly well I'm not built that way."

Brant looked up at her, mouthing and gibbering; then he spat on the deck, and, turning away without a word, flung his Derringer over the rail into the sea.

And the helpless _Cobra_, her poison-fangs drawn, lay on the swell like a wilted weed while the _Snipe_, vomiting black fury from her three funnels, swooped down.

Mr. Montague Maynard pa.s.sed the decanter, and beamed upon his guests--Mr. Vernon Mallory and Reggie Beauchamp. Through the open window they could catch glimpses of Leslie Chermside, who had taken a lover's privilege to leave the dessert table early and join Violet on the Manor House lawn. Somewhere out there in the twilight there were also Aunt Sarah and Enid Mallory, the elder lady listening for about the twentieth time to the adventure of the younger in the grotto at The Hut--an adventure which had been the direct cause of her great-niece's rescue.

"Roughly speaking, then, this is what you make of it," Mr. Maynard was saying. "From first to last Levison's murder was a job put up by Travers Nugent in order to render my future son-in-law the bait for getting Violet on to the _Cobra_?"

"That is established from the mouth of Pierre Legros, from Brant's brutal frankness to Violet, and by Nugent's evident intention to kill Sergeant Bruce, Legros and myself the other night," replied Mr. Mallory.

"He would not have embarked on wholesale murder, which must have been brought home to him, unless he had known that the game was up, and that his only resource was flight."

"Yes, that is all clear enough," the Birmingham magnate a.s.sented. "But what I am most concerned with, as I like the chap and he is going to marry my daughter, is Chermside's extraordinary conduct in being frightened into bolting on to that infernal steamer. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it, he being obviously innocent of the crime. I shouldn't like to think that Violet was going to marry a fool or a coward."

The old civil servant made patterns on his plate with walnut sh.e.l.ls before replying. He was thinking of an interview he had had with Leslie Chermside that morning, at which the young ex-Lancer had made full confession to him of his early implication in the plot, and had sought advice as to what as a man of honour he ought to do. Mr. Mallory, after very earnest consideration, had given that advice, and it was in sustentation of it that he now replied--

"My view is this--that Chermside was duped by Nugent into becoming an accomplice in this atrocious scheme, without in the least understanding the enormity of the offence he was to aid, that he discovered how and for what a vile purpose he had been duped, and that in the meanwhile, having fallen in love with your daughter, he was terrified lest his complicity should come out. Nugent then deliberately engineered the murder of Levison so that he might play upon Chermside's fear--not of the legal consequences of arrest for murder, but of the revelations that would follow, Levison, I have reason to believe, having played a minor part in the conspiracy. The affair fell out exactly as Nugent antic.i.p.ated, and Chermside lost his head and ran away--with the results we know."

Montague Maynard puckered his brows in a judicial frown quite unsuitable to his jovial features. But the cloud pa.s.sed.

"Yes," he exclaimed, "the boy has acted straight enough, though he would have been wiser to put us on our guard instead of trusting that Nugent had abandoned the plot. He tells me, however, that he intended to write me about it at the first opportunity, and I have not found him other than truthful. I remember when I tackled him first about Violet, he confessed that the yacht, waiting to take him on that accursed cruise, and credited to him by local gossip, was not his property. No false pretence about that."

"I am sure he tried to act for the best in a very difficult position,"

Mr. Mallory interposed quietly.

"And his behaviour on the _Cobra_ in tackling, single-handed and unarmed, the crew of the launch, shows he's got grit," Maynard continued warmly. "I reckon we'll leave it at that. He has tried to chuck away his life to save Vi; he has suffered the tortures of the d.a.m.ned for her, and as he's good enough for her, he shall be good enough for me."