The Admirable Tinker Part 11

"Look here, my lad," said Mr. Lambert thickly. "I don't want any of your silly games! I shall be late enough home as it is. You unlock that door, and show me the way to this Beg's at once! D'ye hear?"

Tinker laughed a good scornful laugh. "Lambert of London," he said, returning to the romantic vein, "to-night reflect on your misdeeds.

To-morrow we will treat of your ransom. Hans Breithelm and Jorgan Schwartz, ye answer for this caitiff's safe keeping with your heads! I charge ye watch him well. To horse, my brave men. We ride to Ardrochan!" And he turned his pony.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "To-night reflect on your misdeeds. To-morrow we will treat of your ransom."]

The money-lender broke into threats and abuse; then, as the pony drew further away, he pa.s.sed to entreaties. Tinker never turned his head; he rode on, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with joyous triumph; he had a real prisoner.

Mr. Lambert shouted after him till he was hoa.r.s.e, he shouted after him till his voice was a wheezy croak. Tinker pa.s.sed out of sight without a glance back, and, for a while, that iron-hearted, inexorable man of many loans, sobbed like a child with mingled rage and fear. Then he scrambled down the ladder, and tried the door. There was no chance of his bursting it open; that was a feat far beyond his strength; and though he might have worked the rusted bars out of the window, he could never have forced his rotundity through it. Then he bethought himself of pa.s.sers-by, and hurried to the top of the tower. There was no one in sight. He shouted and shouted till he lost his voice again; the echoes died away among the empty hills. He leaned upon the parapet waiting, with the faintest hope that the diabolical boy would tire of his joke, return, and set him free. Again and again he asked himself who was this boy who had recognised him in this Scotch desert.

The dusk gathered till he could not see a hundred yards from the tower.

Then he came down, struck a match, and examined the bottom room; it was being borne in upon him that he was destined to spend the night in it.

It was some twelve feet square, and the stone floor was clean. In one corner was a pile of heather; but there was no way of stopping up the window, and the night was setting in chill.

He went back to the top of the tower; it was dark now. He shouted again. The conviction of the hopelessness of his plight was taking a strong hold upon him, and he was growing hungry. He stamped wearily round the top of the tower to warm his chilling body, pondering a hundred futile plans of escape, breaking off to consign to perdition the deceptive angel child, and meditating many different revenges. At the end of an hour he went down the ladder, and flung himself on the pile of heather in a paroxysm of despair.

Till nearly ten o'clock he went now and again to the top of the tower, and shouted. He was beginning to grow very hungry. At ten o'clock he buried himself in the heather, and slept for an hour. He awoke cold and stiff, and his sensitive stomach, used to the tenderest indulgence, was clamouring angrily. He was learning what the cold and hunger, which, by a skilful manipulation of the laws of his adopted country, he had been able to mete out to many foolish innocents with no grudging hand, really were. He went to the top of the tower, and shouted fruitlessly; he warmed himself by stamping up and down; then he came and slept again. This was his round all the night through: s.n.a.t.c.hes of uneasy sleep, cold and hungry awakenings, shoutings, and stampings round the top of the tower.

Meanwhile Tinker had ridden joyously home, and shown himself in such cheerful spirits during dinner that Sir Tancred had observed him with no little suspicion, wondering if it could really be that he had found opportunities of mischief even in a deer-forest. After dinner Tinker went into the kitchen, where he found Hamish Beg supping. He talked to him for a while, on matters of sport; then he said, "I say, you told me about the headless woman and the red-headed man with his throat cut, at the Deil's Den, but you never told me about the man in brown who shouts and waves from the top of the tower, and when you come to it, it's empty."

Hamish, the cook, and the two maids burst into a torrent of exclamations in their strange language. "Yes," said Tinker, "a man in brown who shouts and waves from the top of the tower, and when you come to it, no one's there."

He kept his story to this, and presently came back to his father, a.s.sured that the more loudly Mr. Lambert yelled, and the more wildly he waved, the further would any inhabitant of Ardrochan fly from the Deil's Den. He went to bed in a gloating joy, which kept him awake a while; and it was during those wakeful moments that a memory of "Monte Cristo" suggested that he should gain a practical advantage from what had so far been merely an act of abstract justice.

It was past eleven when Tinker came riding over the hills at the head of his merry, but imaginary men. Horribly hungry, but warmed by the sun to a quite pa.s.sable malignity, the money-lender watched his coming from the top of the tower, pondering how to catch him and thrash him within an inch of his life. He did not know that far more active men than he had cherished vainly that arrogant ambition, but Tinker's cheerful and confident air afforded little encouragement to his purpose.

"Halt!" cried the robber baron, reining up his pony. "Hans and Jorgan, is your captive safe? Good. Bring him forth." He turned to his invisible band. "To your quarters, varlets! I would confer alone with the usurious"--he rolled the satisfying word finely off his tongue--"rogue."

Hand on hip he sat, and watched his merry figments dismount and lead away their horses.

He turned, and frowned splendidly on the prisoner. "What think ye of our hospitality, Lambert of London?" he said.

Mr. Lambert scowled; his emotion was too deep for words.

Suddenly Tinker dropped the robber baron, and became his frank and engaging self: "I'm sorry to be so late," he said with a charming air of apology, "but I had to send a message to Tullispaith to say that you would not be back till Sat.u.r.day, or perhaps Monday."

"What!" screamed Mr. Lambert. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I didn't want them to hunt for you. I'm going to keep you here till you do what I want," said Tinker with a seraphic smile.

"You young rascal! You mean to try and keep me here!" screamed Mr.

Lambert, jumping about in a light, but ungainly fas.h.i.+on. "Oh, I'll teach you! I'll make you repent this till your dying day! You think you can keep me here! You shall see. The first shepherd, the first keeper who pa.s.ses will let me out. And I won't rest"--and he swore an oath quite unfit for boyish ears--"till I've hunted you down!"

"No one will come within a mile of the Deil's Den," said the unruffled Tinker. "It's haunted by a headless woman and a redheaded man with his throat cut. But perhaps you've seen them. Besides, I've told them that there's a man in brown who shouts and waves, and then disappears when anyone comes to the tower. Why, if they see you, they'll run for their lives." He spoke with a convicting quietness.

Mr. Lambert doubled up over the parapet in a gasping anguish.

"You're not going to leave here till you give me a letter for your clerk, telling him to hand over Sir Tancred Beauleigh's promissory note," said Tinker.

Mr. Lambert rejected the suggestion in extravagant language.

"You bandy words with me!" cried the Baron Hildebrand Anne of Ardrochan. "Lambert of London, beware! Think, rash rogue, on your grinders! Hans and Jorgan, prepare the red-hot pincers! You have a quarter of an hour to reflect, Lambert."

He flung himself off his pony, tethered it, strode down to the spring which trickled out of the hillside some forty yards away, and came back bearing a big jug full of water.

Mr. Lambert watched him in a bursting fury, at whiles scanning the empty hills with a raging eye. Suddenly light dawned on him: "Are you the boy who stole the flying-machine?" he cried.

"You mind your own business!" said Tinker tartly; it was his cherished belief that he had borrowed the flying-machine.

Mr. Lambert understood at last with whom he had to deal; and the knowledge was not cheering. His angry stomach clamoured at him to come to terms, but his greed was still too strong for it.

"The time is up, Lambert of London!" said Tinker presently, very sternly. "Will you ransom your base carcase?"

The money-lender turned his back on him with a lofty dignity.

"Ha! ha! Hunger shall tame that proud spirit!" said the Baron of Ardrochan.

Suddenly the money-lender heard the door opened, and he dashed for the ladder. He scrambled down it in time to hear the key turn again, but the jug of water stood inside. He took it up and drank a deep draught.

He had not known that he was so thirsty, never dreamed that water could be so appetising. He heard Tinker summon his men, and when he came back to the top of the tower, he was riding away. He watched him go with a sinking heart, and, since he was so empty, it had a good depth to sink to. Twice he opened his mouth to call him back, but greed prevailed.

The day wore wearily through. His spoilt stomach was now raving at him in a savage frenzy. Now and again he shouted, but less often as the afternoon drew on, for he knew surely that it was hopeless.

As the dusk fell, he found himself remembering Tinker's words about the headless woman and the redheaded man, and began to curse his folly in not having come to terms. At times his hunger was a veritable anguish.

This night was a thousand times worse than the night before. His hunger gave him little rest, and he awoke from his brief sleep in fits of abject terror, fancying that the redheaded man was staring in through the window; he saw his gashed throat quite plainly. He grew colder and colder, for he was too faint with hunger to stamp about the top of the tower. Later he must have grown delirious, for he saw the headless woman climbing up the ladder to the second story. It must have been delirium, for the figure he saw wore an ordinary nightrail, whereas the lady of the legend wore a russet gown. Some years later, as it seemed to him, the dawn came. It grew warmer; and he huddled into the pile of heather and slept.

He was awakened by a shout of "Lambert of London, awake!" and tottering to the window, groaning, he beheld a cold grouse, a three-pound chunk of venison, two loaves, and a small bottle of whiskey neatly set out on a napkin. His mouth opened and shut, and opened and shut.

"The letter, rogue! Are you going to give me the letter?" shouted the Baron Hildebrand Anne fiercely.

Mr. Lambert tore himself from the window, and flung himself down on the heather, sobbing. "Fourteen hundred and fifty pounds!" he moaned, "Fourteen hundred and fifty pounds!--and costs!" Suddenly his wits cleared . . . What a fool he'd been! . . . Why shouldn't he give the boy the letter, and wire countermanding his instructions? . . . Oh, he had been a fool!

He hurried to the window, and cried, "Yes, yes, I'll give it you! Give me the paper. I've got a fountain pen!"

"You'd better have a drink of whiskey first; your hand will be too shaky to write your usual handwriting," said the thoughtful Tinker, handing him the bottle along with the note-paper.

Mr. Lambert took a drink, and indeed it steadied his hand. Sure that he could make it useless, he wrote a careful and complete letter, lying at full length on the floor, his only possible writing table.

He scrambled up, and thrust it through the window, crying, "Here you are! Let me out!"

Tinker spelled the letter carefully through, and put it into another letter he had already prepared to send to Sir Tancred's solicitors.

Then he handed the money-lender a thick venison sandwich, cut while he had been writing.

The tears ran down Mr. Lambert's face as his furious jaws bit into it.

"Don't wolf it!" said Tinker sternly. "Starving men should feed slowly."

Mr. Lambert had no restraint; he did wolf it. Then he asked for more.