"You snake!" She fairly hissed the word.
He drew back, speechless. She came a few steps nearer.
"You snake!" she repeated, her eyes blazing.
"Wha--What do you mean?" he gasped, a fiery red rushing to his face.
"Would you have died for the Ritter girl?"
A bomb exploding at his feet could not have produced a greater shock.
His mouth fell open; the colour swiftly receded, leaving his face a sickly white.
"Who the h.e.l.l--" he began blankly.
"Be good enough to remember where you are," cried Alix, lowering her voice as she glanced over her shoulder. "I can say all I have to say to you in a very few words, Mr. Thane. Don"t interrupt me.
I have been a fool,--a stupid fool. We need not go into that. Thank heaven, I happen to be made of a little stronger stuff than others who have come under your influence. You would have MARRIED me,--yes, I believe that,--because it would have been the only way. I have the complete history of your betrayal of the Ritter girl. I know how your leg was injured. I know that you were kicked out of the American Ambulance and advised to leave France. I don"t believe you ever served in the British Army. I have every reason to believe that you poisoned my dog, and that you,--were the man who came to my window the other night. And I suspect that you are the cause of poor Rosabel Vick"s suicide. Now you know what I think of you. My G.o.d, how could you have come here tonight? These people trusted you,--they still trust you. Until now I did not believe such men as you existed. You--"
"I had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with Rosabel," he cried hoa.r.s.ely. He was trembling like a leaf. "Don"t you go putting such ideas into their heads. Don"t you--"
"Oh, I am not likely to do that," she interrupted scornfully. "I shall not add to their misery. If I could prove that you betrayed that poor, foolish child,--then I would see to it that you paid the price. But I cannot prove it. I only know that she would have been helpless in your hands. Oh, I know your power! I have felt it.
And I did not even pretend to myself that I loved you. What chance would she have had if she loved and trusted you? I shudder at the thought of--If Amos Vick should even suspect you of wronging his child, he would not wait for proof. He would tear you to pieces.
You may be innocent. That is why I am giving you your chance. Now, go!"
"You certainly will give me the opportunity to defend myself, Alix.
Am I to be condemned unheard? If you will allow me to walk to the ferry with you--"
"And who is to act as my bodyguard?" she inquired with a significant sneer. "Go! I never want to see your face again."
With that, she left him. He stood perfectly still, staring after the slender, boyish figure until it was hidden from view by the bend of the stairway.
His eyes were gla.s.sy. Fear possessed his soul. Suddenly he was aroused to action.
"I"d better get out of this," he muttered.
His hand clutched the weapon in his coat pocket as he strode swiftly toward the front door. Once outside he paused to look furtively about him before descending the porch steps. Several men were standing near the gate. The porch was deserted. He wondered if Amos Vick was down there waiting for him. Then he remembered what Alix had said to him: "These people trust you,--they still trust you." What had he to fear? He laughed,--a short, jerky, almost inaudible laugh,--and went confidently down the walk. As he pa.s.sed the little group he uttered a brief "good night" to the men, and was rewarded by a friendly response from all of them.
Down the moonlit road he trudged, his brain working rapidly, feverishly. In his heart was the rage of defeat, in his soul the clamour of fear,--not fear now of the dark strip of woods but of the whole world about him. He communed aloud.
"The first thing to do is to pack. I"ve got to do that tonight.
I"m through here. The jig"s up. She means it. How the devil did she find out all this stuff?...But if I leave immediately it will look suspicious. I"ve got to stick around for a few days. If I beat it tomorrow morning some one"s bound to ask questions. It will look queer. Tomorrow I"ll receive an urgent letter calling me home. Mother needs me. Her health is bad....I wonder if an autopsy would reveal anything....Tomorrow sure. I can"t stand it here another day....There"s nothing to worry about,--not a thing,--but what"s the sense of my hanging around here any longer? She"s on.
Some meddling whelp has been--Good Lord, I wonder if it could be that fat fool, Webster?...If I skip out tonight, it would set Vick to thinking....What a fool I was...."
And so on till he came to the woods. There, his face blanched and his heart began to pound like a hammer. He drew the revolver from his pocket and plunged desperately into the black tunnel; he was out of breath when he ran down to the landing.
Through the gloom he distinguished the ferry boat three-quarters of the way across the river, nearing the opposite bank. His "halloa"
brought an answer from the ferryman. Cursing his luck in missing the boat by so short a margin of time, he sat down heavily on the stout wooden wall that guarded the approach. It would be ten or fifteen minutes before the tortoise-like craft could recross and pick him up. His gaze instantly went downstream. The faint, rhythmic sound of oarlocks came to his ears. There were no lights on the river, but after a time he made out the vague shape of an object moving on the surface a long way off. From time to time it was lost in the shadows of the tree-lined bank, only to steal into view again as it moved slowly across a jagged opening in the far-reaching wall of black. It was a boat coming upstream, hugging the bank to avoid the current farther out.
Some one approached. He turned quickly and beheld the figure of a woman coming down the road. His heart leaped. Could it be Alix?
He dismissed the thought immediately. This was a tall woman--in skirts. She came quite close and stopped, her gaze evidently fixed upon him. Then she moved a little farther down the slope and stood watching the ferry which, by this time, was moving out from the farther side. He recognized the figure. It was that of the gaunt woman who crossed with him earlier in the night.
The ferry was drawing out from the Windomville side when a faint shout came from down the river. Burk answered the call, which was repeated.
"This is my busy night," growled the ferryman. "I ain"t been up this late in a c.o.o.n"s age. Not since the Old Settlers" Picnic three years ago down at the old fort. I wonder if those fellers have got any news?"
Courtney stepped off the boat a few minutes later and hurried up the hill. The woman followed. At the top of the slope he pa.s.sed three or four men standing in the shelter of the blacksmith shop, where they were protected from the sharp, chill wind that had sprung up. A loud shout from below caused him to halt. Burk, the ferryman, had called out through his cupped hands:
"What say?"
The wind bore the answer from an unseen speaker in the night, clear and distinct: "We"ve got her!"
CHAPTER XXII
THE THROWER OF STONES
An icy chill, as of a great gust of wind, swept through and over Courtney Thane. His mouth seemed suddenly to fill with water. He could not move. The men by the forge ran swiftly down the hill. The tall woman turned and after a moment followed the men, stopping in the middle of the road a few rods above the landing. She was still standing there when Courtney recovering his power of locomotion struck off rapidly in the direction of Dowd"s Tavern. Halfway home he came to an abrupt halt. An inexplicable irresistible force was drawing his mind and body back to the river"s edge. He did not want to go back there and see--Rosabel. He tried not to turn his steps in that direction, and yet something like a magnet was dragging him. A sort of fascination,--the fascination that goes with dread, and horror, and revulsion--took hold of him....He moved slowly, hesitatingly at first, then swiftly, not directly back over the ground he had just covered but by a circuitous route that took him through the lot at the rear of the forge. He made his way stealthily down the slope, creeping along behind a thick hedge of hazel brush to a point just above the ferry landing and to the left of the old dilapidated wharf. Here he could see without himself being seen....
He watched them lift a dark, inanimate object from the boat and lay it on the wharf....He heard men"s voices in excited, subdued conversation....He saw the tall woman running up the road toward the town. She paused within a dozen feet of his hiding place....
Then something happened to him. He seemed to be losing the sense of sight and the sense of hearing. His brain was blurred, the sound of voices trailed off into utter silence. He felt the earth giving way beneath his quaking knees....The next he knew, men"s voices fell upon his dull, uncomprehending ears. Gradually his senses returned. Out of the confused jumble words took shape. He heard his own name mentioned. Instantly his every faculty was alive.
Through the brush he could see the dark, indistinct forms of three or four men. They were in the road just below him.
"You shouldn"t have let him out of your sight," one of the men was saying. "Hang it all, we can"t let him give us the slip now."
The listener"s eyes, sharpened by anxiety, made out the figure of the woman. She spoke,--and he was startled to hear the deep voice of a man.
"He was making for the boarding house. Webster says he is not in his room. I took it for granted he was going home or I wouldn"t have turned back."
Where had he heard that voice before? It was strangely familiar.
"Well, we"ve got to locate him. I"ll stake my life he is George Ritchie. I compared this snap-shot with the photograph I have with me. Shave off that d.i.n.ky little moustache and I"ll bet a hundred to one you"ll have Ritchie"s mug all right. Hustle back there, Gilfillan,--you and Simons. He"ll be turning up at the house unless he"s got wind of us. Don"t let him see you. You stay here with me, Constable. The chances are he"ll come back here to wait for Miss Crown, if he"s as badly stuck on her as you say, Gilfillan. They"re all fools about women."
The hidden listener was no longer quaking. His body was tense, his mind was working like lightning. He was wide awake, alert; the fingers that clutched the weapon in his pocket were firm and steady; he scarcely breathed for fear of betraying his presence, but the courage of the hunted was in his heart.
The little group broke up. Constable Foss and one of the strangers remained on the spot, the others vanished up the road. He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the wharf. A long dark object was lying near the edge, while some distance away a small knot of men stood talking. The moon, riding high, cast a cold, sickly light upon the scene.
"I"ve always been kind of suspicious of him," Foss was saying, his voice lowered. "What did you say his real name is?"
"His real name is Thane, I suppose. I guess there"s no doubt about that. Mind you, I"m not sure he"s the man we"ve been looking for these last six months, but I"m pretty sure of it. Last February two men and a woman tried to smuggle a lot of diamonds through the customs at New York. I"ll not go into details now further than to say they landed from one of the big ocean liners and came within an ace of getting away with the job. The woman was the leader. She was nabbed with one of the men at a hotel. The other man got away.
He was on the pa.s.senger list as George Ritchie, of Cleveland, Ohio.
The woman had half a dozen photographs of him in her possession.
I"ve got a copy of one of "em in my pocket now, and it"s so much like this fellow Thane that you"d swear it was of the same man. This morning Gilfillan,--that"s the Pinkerton man,--telephoned to his chief in Chicago to notify the federal authorities that he was almost dead certain that our man was here. He"s a wonder at remembering faces, and he had seen our photographs. Simons and I took the three o"clock train. Gilfillan met us in the city and brought us out after we had instructed the police to be ready to help us in case he got onto us and gave us the slip."
"How much of a reward is offered?" inquired Foss.
"We are not supposed to be rewarded for doing our duty," replied the Secret Service man curtly. "He got away from us and it"s our business to catch him again. You can bet he"s our man. He wouldn"t be hanging around a burg like this for months unless he had a blamed good reason for keeping out of sight."