Roden's Corner Part 28

"Oh yes," answered White, looking at the station clock. "Twenty minutes' time."

"We have the information from one of the malgamiters themselves, who knows the time and the place, but he is tipsy. He is in a carriage outside the station."

"How tipsy?" asked Major White; and both his hearers shrugged their shoulders.

"How can we tell you that?" snapped Mrs. Vansittart; and Major White dropped his gla.s.s from his eye.

"Where is your brother?" he said, turning to Dorothy. He was evidently rather afraid of Mrs. Vansittart, as a quick-spoken person not likely to have patience with a slow man.

"He has gone to Utrecht," answered Dorothy. "And Mr. von Holzen is not at the works, which are locked up. I have just come from there. By a lucky chance I met this man Ben, and have brought him here."

White looked at Dorothy thoughtfully, and something in his gaze made her change colour.

"Let me see this man," he said, moving towards the exit.

"He is in that carriage," said Dorothy, when they had reached a quiet corner of the station yard. "You must be quick. We have only a quarter of an hour now. He is an Englishman."

White got into the cab with Uncle Ben, who appeared to be sleeping, and closed the door after him. In a few moments he emerged again.

"Tell the man to drive to a chemist's," he said to Mrs. Vansittart.

"The fellow is not so bad. I have got something out of him, and will get more. Follow in your carriage--you and Miss Roden."

It was Major White's turn now to take the lead, and Mrs. Vansittart meekly obeyed, though White's movements were so leisurely as to madden her.

At the chemist's shop, White descended from the carriage and appeared to have some language in common with the druggist, for he presently returned to the carriage, carrying a tumbler. After a moment he went to the window of Mrs. Vansittart's neat brougham.

"I must bring him in here," he said. "You have a pair of horses which look as if they could go. Tell your man to drive to the pumping-station on the Dunes, wherever that may be."

Then he went and fetched Uncle Ben, whom he brought by one arm, in a dislocated condition, trotting feebly to keep pace with the major's long stride.

Mrs. Vansittart's coachman must have received very decided orders, for he skirted the town at a rattling trot, and soon emerged from the streets into the quiet of the Wood, which was dark and deserted. Here, in a sandy and lonely alley, he put the horses to a gallop. The carriage swayed and b.u.mped. Those inside exchanged no words. From time to time Major White shook Uncle Ben, which seemed to be a part of his strenuous treatment.

At length the carriage stopped on the narrow road, paved with the little bricks they make at Gouda, that leads from Scheveningen to the pumping-station on the Dunes. Major White was the first to quit it, dragging Uncle Ben unceremoniously after him. Then, with his disengaged hand, he helped the ladies. He screwed his gla.s.s tightly into his eye, and looked round him with a measuring glance.

"This place will be as light as day," he said, "when the moon rises from behind those trees."

He drew Uncle Ben aside, and talked with him for some time in a low voice. The man was almost sober now, but so weak that he could not stand without a.s.sistance. Major White was an advocate, it seemed, of heroic measures. He appeared to be asking many questions, for Uncle Ben pointed from time to time with an unsteady hand into the darkness. When his mind, muddled with malgamite and drink, failed to rise to the occasion, Major White shook him like a sack. After a few minutes'

conversation, Ben broke down completely, and sat against a sand-bank to weep. Major White left him there, and went towards the ladies.

"Will you tell your man," he said to Mrs. Vansittart, "to drive back to the junction of the two roads and wait there under the trees?" He paused, looking dubiously from one to the other. "And you and Miss Roden had better go back with him and stay in the carriage."

"No," said Dorothy, quietly.

"Oh no!" added Mrs. Vansittart.

And Major White moistened his lips with an air of patient toleration for the ways of a s.e.x which had ever been far beyond his comprehension.

"It seems," he said, when the carriage had rolled away over the noisy stones, "that we are in good time. They do not expect him until nearly ten. He has been attempting for some time to get the men to refuse to work, and these same men have written to ask him to meet them at the works at ten o'clock, when Roden is at Utrecht, and Von Holzen is out.

There is no question of reaching the works at all. They are going to lie in ambush in a hollow of the Dunes, and knock him on the head about half a mile from here north-east." And Major White paused in this great conversational effort to consult a small gold compa.s.s attached to his watch-chain.

The two women waited patiently.

"Fine place, these Dunes," said the major, after a pause. "Could conceal three thousand men between here and Scheveningen."

"But it is not a question of hiding soldiers," said Mrs. Vansittart, sharply, with a movement of the head indicative of supreme contempt.

"No," admitted White. "Better hide ourselves, perhaps. No good standing here where everybody can see us. I'll fetch our friend. Think he'll sleep if we let him. Chemist gave him enough to kill a horse."

"But haven't you any plans?" asked Mrs. Vansittart, in despair. "What are you going to do? You are not going to let these brutes kill Tony Cornish? Surely you, as a soldier, must know how to meet this crisis."

"Oh yes. Not much of a soldier, you know," answered White, soothingly, as he moved away towards Uncle Ben. "But I think I know how this business ought to be managed. Come along--hide ourselves."

He led the way across the dunes, dragging Uncle Ben by one arm, and keeping in the hollows. The two women followed in silence on the silent sand.

Once Major White paused and looked back. "Don't talk," he said, holding up a large fat hand in a ridiculous gesture of warning, which he must have learnt in the nursery. He looked like a large baby listening for a bogey in the chimney.

Once or twice he consulted Uncle Ben, and as often glanced at his compa.s.s. There was a certain skill in his att.i.tude and demeanour, as if he knew exactly what he was about. Mrs. Vansittart had a hundred questions to ask him, but they died on her lips. The moon rose suddenly over the distant trees and flooded all the sand-hills with light. Major White halted his little party in a deep hollow, and consulted Uncle Ben in whispers. Then bidding him sit down, he left the three alone in their hiding-place, and went away by himself. He climbed almost to the summit of a neighbouring mound, and stopped suddenly, with his face uplifted, as if smelling something. Like many short-sighted persons, he had a keen scent. In a few minutes he came back again.

"I have found them," he whispered to Mrs. Vansittart and Dorothy.

"Smelt 'em--like sealing-wax. Eleven of them--waiting there for Cornish." And he smiled with a sort of boyish glee.

"What are you going to do?" whispered Mrs. Vansittart.

"Thump them," he answered, and presently went back to his post of observation.

Uncle Ben had fallen asleep, and the two women stood side by side waiting in the moonlight. It was chilly, and a keen wind swept in from the sea. Dorothy s.h.i.+vered. They could hear certain notes of certain instruments in the band of the Scheveningen Kurhaus, nearly two miles away. It was strange to be within sound of such evidences of civilization, and yet in such a lonely spot--strange to reflect that eleven men were waiting within a few yards of them to murder one. And yet they could safely have carried out their intention, and have sc.r.a.ped a hole in the sand to hide his body, in the certainty that it would never be found; for these dunes are a miniature desert of Sahara, where nothing bids men leave the beaten paths, where certain hollows have probably never been trodden by the foot of man, and where the ever-drifting sand slowly acc.u.mulates--a very abomination of desolation.

At length White rose to his feet agilely enough, and crept to the brow of the dune. The men were evidently moving. Mrs. Vansittart and Dorothy ascended the bank to the spot just vacated by White.

Only a few dozen yards away they could see the black forms of the malgamiters grouped together under the covert of a low hillock. Hidden from their sight, Major White was slowly stalking them.

Dorothy touched Mrs. Vansittart's arm, and pointed silently in the direction of Scheveningen. A man was approaching, alone, across the silvery sand-hills. It was Tony Cornish, walking into the trap laid for him.

Major White saw him also, and thinking himself un.o.bserved, or from mere habit acquired among his men, he moistened the tips of his fingers at his lips.

The malgamiters moved forward, and White followed them. They took up a position in a hollow a few yards away from the foot-path by which Cornish must pa.s.s. One of their number remained behind, crouching on a mound, and evidently reporting progress to his companions below. When Cornish was within a hundred yards of the ambush, White suddenly ran up the bank, and lifting this man bodily, threw him down among his comrades. He followed this vigorous attack by charging down into the confused ma.s.s. In a few moments the malgamiters streamed away across the sand-hills like a pack of hounds, though pursued and not pursuing.

They left some of their number on the sand behind them, for White was a hard hitter.

"Give it to them, Tony!" White cried, with a ring of exultation in his voice. "Knock 'em down as they come!"

For there was only one path, and the malgamiters had to run the gauntlet of Tony Cornish, who knocked some of them over neatly enough as they pa.s.sed, selecting the big ones, and letting the others go free.

He knew them by the smell of their clothes, and guessed their intention readily enough.

It was a strange scene, and one that left the two women, watching it, breathless and eager.

"Oh, I wish I were a man!" exclaimed Mrs. Vansittart, with clenched fists.