With that--either this was all a dream or I heard footsteps on the flat roof outside; very slow, soft footsteps, too, as of somebody walking on tiptoe. But if on tiptoe, why was he coming _towards_ me?
Yet so it was; my ear told me distinctly.
As his feet crunched the leads close outside the window I caught a gleam of scarlet; then the frame grew dark between me and the daylight, and through the pane a man peered cautiously into the room.
It was Archibald Plinlimmon.
He peered in, turning his face sideways for a better view and shading it, after a moment, with his hand. So shaded, and with the daylight behind it, his face after that first instant became an inscrutable blur.
But while he peered speech broke from me--words and a wild laugh.
"Look at it! Look at it!" I cried, and pointed.
He drew back instantly, and was gone.
"Don"t leave me! Mr. Plinlimmon--please don"t leave me!" I made a leap for the window--halted helplessly--and fell back again from the body. I was alone again. But power to move had come back, and I must use it while it lasted. If I could gain the stairs now . . .
Stealthily, and more stealthily as the fear returned and grew, I reached the door, pushed it open, and looked out on the landing. But for a worm-eaten trunk and a line of old suits dangling from pegs around the wall, it was bare. The little light filtered through a cracked and discoloured window high up in the slope of the roof.
The stairhead lay a short two yards from me, to be reached by one bold leap.
This, however, was not what I first saw; nay, how or when I saw it is a wonder still. For, across the landing, a door faced me; and, as I pushed mine open, this door had moved--was moving yet, as if to shut.
It did not quite shut. It came to a standstill when almost a foot ajar. Beyond it I could see yet other suits of clothes hanging: and among these lurked someone, watching me, perhaps, through the c.h.i.n.k by the hinges. I was sure of it--was almost sure I had seen a hand on the edge of the door; a hand with a ring on one of its fingers, and just the edge, and no more, of a black cuff.
For perhaps five seconds I endured it, my hair lifting: then, with one sharp scream I dashed back into the room and across the corpse; struggled for a moment with the window-sash; and flinging it up, dropped out upon the leads.
Out there, in the restorative sunshine, my first thought was to crawl away as fast and as far as possible; to reach some hiding-place where I might lie down and pant, unpursued by the horrors of that house.
The roofs on my right were flat; I staggered along them, halting at every few steps to lean a hand for support against one or other of the chimney-stacks, now growing warm in the sunshine.
From the far side of one, as I leaned clinging, a man sprang up, almost at my feet. It was Archie Plinlimmon again. He had been flattening himself against its shadow; and at first--so white and fierce was his face--I made sure he meant to hurl me over and on to the street below.
"What do you want? What have you seen?" Though he spoke fiercely, his teeth chattered. "Oh--it"s you!" he exclaimed, recognising me through my soot.
"Mr. Plinlimmon--" I began.
"I didn"t do it. I didn"t--" He broke off. "For Heaven"s sake, how are we to get down out of this?"
"There"s no way on the street side," I answered, "unless--"
He took me up short. "The street? We can"t go that way--it"s as much as my neck"s worth. Yours, too."
"Mr. Trapp"s waiting for me," I answered stupidly.
"Who knows who isn"t waiting?" he snapped. "We"ll have to cut out of this." He pointed downward on the side away from the street.
"I say, what happened? Who did it, eh?"
"I slipped in the chimney," I answered again. "He wanted his chimneys swept this morning. We knocked--Mr. Trapp and I--and no one answered: then we tried the door, and it opened. There was no one about, and no one in the street but Sergeant Letcher."
He began to shake. "Sergeant Letcher? What do you know about Sergeant Letcher?"
"Nothing, except that he was in the street--the man the bull chased, you know."
He was shaking yet. "I ought to kill you," said he. "But I didn"t do it. Look here, show me a way down and I"ll let you off.
You"re used to this work, ain"t you?"
"How did you come up?" I asked, innocently enough.
"By the Lord, if you ask questions, I"ll strangle you! You were in the room with--with _it_! I saw you: I"ll swear I saw you. Get me down out of this, and hide--get on board some ship, and clear.
See? If you breathe a word that you"ve seen me, I"ll cut your heart out. You understand me?"
I hadn"t a doubt then that he was guilty. His fear was too craven.
"There"s a warehouse at the end here," said I, and led the way to it.
But when we reached it, its roof rose in a sharp slope from the low parapet guarding the leads where we stood.
"But I don"t see," he objected; "and, anyway, I can"t manage that."
I pointed to a louver skylight half-way up the roof. "We can prise that open, or break it. It"s easy enough to reach," I a.s.sured him.
He was extraordinarily clumsy on the slates, but obeyed my instructions like a child. I wrenched at the wooden louvers.
"Got a knife?" I asked.
He produced one--an ugly-looking weapon, but clean. By good luck, we did not need it; for as he pa.s.sed it to me, the louver at which I was tugging broke and came away in my hand. We easily loosened another and, squeezing through, dropped into the loft upon a sliding pile of grain.
The loft was dark enough; but a glimmer of light shone through the c.h.i.n.ks of a door at the far end. Unbolting it, we looked down, from the height of thirty feet or so, into a deserted lane. Or rather _I_ looked down: for while I fumbled with the bolts Master Archie had banged his head into something hard, and dropped, rubbing the hurt and cursing.
It proved to be the timber cross-piece of a derrick used for hoisting sacks of grain into the loft, working on an axle, and now swung inboard for the night. A double rope ran through the pulley at its end and had been hitched back over the iron winch which worked it.
We pushed the derrick out over the lane and I manned the winch handle, while Master Archie caught hold of the hook and pulley at the end of the double line. Checking the handle with all my strength I lowered him as noiselessly as I could. As his feet touched the cobbles below he let go and, without a thought of my safety, made off down the lane.
I tugged the derrick inboard and recaptured the rope; cogged the winch, swung out, dropped hand over hand into the lane, and raced up it with all the terrors of the law at my heels.
CHAPTER VIII.
POOR TOM BOWLING.
Master Archibald"s advice to me--to escape down to the water-side and conceal myself on shipboard--though acute enough in its way, took no account of certain difficulties none the less real because a soldier would naturally overlook them. To hide in a ship"s hold you must first get on board of her un.o.bserved, which in broad daylight is next to impossible. Moreover, to reach Cattewater I must either fetch a circuit through purlieus where every householder knew me and every urchin was a nodding acquaintance, or make a straight dash close by the spot where by this time Mr. Trapp would be getting anxious--if indeed Southside Street and the Barbican were not already resounding with the hue and cry. No: if friendly vessel were to receive and hide me, she lay far off, across the heart of the town, amid the shipping of the Dock. Yonder, too, Miss Plinlimmon resided.
If you think it absurd that my thoughts turned to her, whose weak arms could certainly shield no one from the clutches of the law, I beg you to remember my age, and that I had never known another protector. She, at least, would hear me and never doubt my innocence. She must hear, too, of Archie"s danger.
That to reach her, even if I eluded pursuit to the Hospital gate, I must run the gauntlet of Mr. George--who would a.s.suredly ask questions--and possibly of Mr. Scougall, scarcely occurred to me.
To reach her--to sob out my story in her arms and hear her voice soothing me--this only I desired for the moment; and it seemed that if I could only hear her voice speaking, I might wake and feel these horrors dissolve like an evil dream. Meanwhile I ran.
But at the end of a lane leading into Treville Street, and as I leapt aside to avoid colliding with the hind-wheels of a hackney-coach drawn in there and at a standstill close by the kerb, to my unspeakable fright I felt myself gripped by the jacket-collar.
"Hi! Bring-to and "vast kicking, young coal-dust! Where"re ye bound, hey? Answer me, and take your black mop out of a gentleman"s weskit."