Peter Ruff and the Double Four Part 82

Bernadine accepted the challenge.

"It is not I, alas! who may call myself Caesar," he replied, "although it is certainly you who are about to die."

Sogrange turned to the man who stood behind his chair.

"If I might trouble you for a little dry toast?" he inquired. "A modern but very uncomfortable ailment," he added, with a sigh. "One's digestion must march with the years, I suppose."

Bernadine smiled.

"Your toast you shall have, with pleasure, Marquis," he said, "but as for your indigestion, do not let that trouble you any longer. I think that I can promise you immunity from that annoying complaint for the rest of your life."

"You are doing your best," Peter declared, leaning back in his chair, "to take away my appet.i.te."

Bernadine looked searchingly from one to the other of his two guests.

"Yes," he admitted, "you are brave men. I do not know why I should ever have doubted it. Your pose is excellent. I have no wish, however, to see you buoyed up by a baseless optimism. A somewhat remarkable chance has delivered you into my hands. You are my prisoners. You, Peter, Baron de Grost, I have hated all my days. You have stood between me and the achievement of some of my most dearly-cherished tasks. Always I have said to myself that the day of reckoning must come. It has arrived. As for you, Marquis de Sogrange, if my personal feelings towards you are less violent, you still represent the things absolutely inimical to me and my interests. The departure of you two men was the one thing necessary for the successful completion of certain tasks which I have in hand at the present moment."

Peter pushed away his plate.

"You have succeeded in destroying my appet.i.te, Count," he declared. "Now that you have gone so far in expounding your amiable resolutions towards us, perhaps you will go a little further and explain exactly how, in this eminently respectable house, situated, I understand, in an eminently respectable neighborhood, with a police station within a mile, and a dozen or so witnesses as to our present whereabouts, you intend to expedite our removal?"

Bernadine pointed toward the woman who sat facing him.

"Ask the Baroness how these things are arranged."

They turned towards her. She fell back in her chair with a little gasp.

She had fainted. Bernadine shrugged his shoulders. The butler and one of the footmen, who during the whole of the conversation had stolidly proceeded with their duties, in obedience to a gesture from their master took her up in their arms and carried her from the room.

"The fear has come to her, too," Bernadine murmured, softly. "It may come to you, my brave friends, before morning."

"It is possible," Peter answered, his hand stealing around to his hip pocket, "but in the meantime, what is to prevent--"

The hip pocket was empty. Peter's sentence ended abruptly. Bernadine mocked him.

"To prevent your shooting me in cold blood, I suppose," he remarked.

"Nothing except that my servants are too clever. No one save myself is allowed to remain under this roof with arms in their possession.

Your pocket was probably picked before you had been in the place five minutes. No, my dear Baron, let me a.s.sure you that escape will not be so easy! You were always just a little inclined to be led away by the fair s.e.x. The best men in the world, you know, have shared that failing, and the Baroness, alone and unprotected, had her attractions, eh?"

Then something happened to Peter which had happened to him barely a dozen times in his life. He lost his temper and lost it rather badly.

Without an instant's hesitation, he caught up the decanter which stood by his side and flung it in his host's face. Bernadine only partly avoided it by thrusting out his arms. The neck caught his forehead and the blood came streaming over his tie and collar. Peter had followed the decanter with a sudden spring. His fingers were upon Bernadine's throat and he thrust his head back. Sogrange sprang to the door to lock it, but he was too late. The room seemed full of men-servants. Peter was dragged away, still struggling fiercely.

"Tie them up!" Bernadine gasped, swaying in his chair. "Tie them up, do you hear? Carl, give me brandy."

He swallowed half a winegla.s.sful of the raw spirit. His eyes were red with fury.

"Take them to the gun room," he ordered, "three of you to each of them, mind. I'll shoot the man who lets either escape."

But Peter and Sogrange were both of them too wise to expend any more of their strength in a useless struggle. They suffered themselves to be conducted without resistance across the white stone hall, down a long pa.s.sage, and into a room at the end, the window and fireplace of which were both blocked up. The floor was of red flags and the walls whitewashed. The only furniture was a couple of kitchen chairs and a long table. The door was of stout oak and fitted with a double lock. The sole outlet, so far as they could see, was a small round hole at the top of the roof. The door was locked behind them. They were alone.

"The odd trick to Bernadine!" Peter exclaimed hoa.r.s.ely, wiping a spot of blood from his forehead. "My dear Marquis, I scarcely know how to apologize. It is not often that I lose my temper so completely."

"The matter seems to be of very little consequence," Sogrange answered.

"This was probably our intended destination in any case. Seems to be rather an unfortunate expedition of ours, I am afraid."

"One cannot reckon upon men coming back from the dead," Peter declared.

"It isn't often that you find every morning and every evening paper mistaken. As for the woman, I believe in her. She honestly meant to sell us those papers of Bernadine's. I believe that she, too, will have to face a day of reckoning."

Sogrange strolled around the room, subjecting it everywhere to a close scrutiny. The result was hopeless. There was no method of escape save through the door.

"There is certainly something strange about this apartment," Peter remarked. "It is, to say the least of it, unusual to have windows in the roof and a door of such proportions. All the same, I think that those threats of Bernadine's were a little strained. One cannot get rid of one's enemies, nowadays, in the old-fas.h.i.+oned, melodramatic way.

Bernadine must know quite well that you and I are not the sort of men to walk into a trap of any one's setting, just as I am quite sure that he is not the man to risk even a scandal by breaking the law openly."

"You interest me," Sogrange said. "I begin to suspect that you, too, have made some plans."

"But naturally," Peter replied. "Once before Bernadine set a trap for me and he nearly had a chance of sending me for a swim in the Thames. Since then one takes precautions as a matter of course. We were followed down here, and by this time I should imagine that the alarm is given. If all was well, I was to have telephoned an hour ago."

"You are really," Sogrange declared, "quite an agreeable companion, my dear Baron. You think of everything."

The door was suddenly opened. Bernadine stood upon the threshold and behind him several of the servants.

"You will oblige me by stepping back into the study, my friends," he ordered.

"With great pleasure," Sogrange answered, with alacrity. "We have no fancy for this room, I can a.s.sure you."

Once more they crossed the stone hall and entered the room into which they had first been shown. On the threshold, Peter stopped short and listened. It seemed to him that from somewhere upstairs he could hear the sound of a woman's sobs. He turned to Bernadine.

"The Baroness is not unwell, I trust?" he asked.

"The Baroness is as well as she is likely to be for some time,"

Bernadine replied, grimly.

They were all in the study now. Upon a table stood a telephone instrument. Bernadine drew a small revolver from his pocket.

"Baron de Grost," he said, "I find that you are not quite such a fool as I thought you. Some one is ringing up for you on the telephone. You will reply that you are well and safe and that you will be home as soon as your business here is finished. Your wife is at the other end. If you breathe a single word to her of your approaching end, she shall hear through the telephone the sound of the revolver shot that sends you to h.e.l.l."

"Dear me," Peter protested, "I find this most unpleasant. If you will excuse me, I don't think I'll answer the call at all."

"You will answer it as I have directed," Bernadine insisted. "Only remember this--if you speak a single ill-advised word, the end will be as I have said."

Peter picked up the receiver and held it to his ear.

"Who is there?" he asked.

It was Violet whose voice he heard. He listened for a moment to her anxious flood of questions.

"There is not the slightest cause to be alarmed, dear," he said. "Yes, I am down at the High House, near St. Mary's. Bernadine is here. It seems that those reports of his death were absolutely unfounded.... Danger?

Unprotected? Why, my dear Violet, you know how careful I always am.

Simply because Bernadine used once to live here, and because the Baroness was his friend, I spoke to Sir John Dory over the telephone before we left, and an escort of half-a-dozen police followed us. They are about the place now, I have no doubt, but their presence is quite unnecessary. I shall be home before long, dear.... Yes, perhaps it would be as well to send the car down. Any one will direct him to the house--the High House, St. Mary's, remember. Good-by!"