Again, from afar, there seemed to come the faint response--"Hollo!"
And at the same instant he became conscious of voices speaking together outside the door of the cul-de-sac in which, foolishly enough, he had allowed himself to be made, for a second time, a prisoner.
CHAPTER XVII
THE MOST DANGEROUS FOR OF ALL
Mr. Paxton withdrew his face from the window. He turned towards the door, his ears wide open. The speakers were talking so loudly that he could hear distinctly, without moving from his post of vantage on the shelf, every word which was uttered. They seemed to be in a state of great excitement.
The first voice he heard belonged evidently to the quick-witted individual who had fastened him in the trap which he himself had entered.
"There he is--inside there he is--ran in of his own accord he did, so I shut the door, and I slipped the bolt before he knowed where he was.
The winder"s only a little "un--if he gets hisself out, you can call me names."
The second voice was one which Mr. Paxton did not remember to have previously noticed.
"Blast him!--what do I care where he is? He ain"t no affair of mine!
There"s the Toff, and a crowd of "em down there--you come and lend a hand!"
"Not me! I ain"t a-taking any! I ain"t going to get myself choked, not for no Toff, nor yet for any one else. I feel more like cutting my lucky--only I don"t know my way across these ---- hills."
"You ain"t got no more pluck than a chicken. Go and put the "orse in!
Me and them other two chaps will bring "em up. We shall have to put the whole lot aboard, and make tracks as fast as the old mare will canter."
A third voice became audible--a curiously husky one, as if its owner was in difficulties with his throat.
"Here"s the Toff--he seems to be a case. I ain"t a-going down no more.
It"s no good a-trying to put it out--you might as well try to put out "ell fire!"
Then a fourth voice--even huskier than the other.
"Catch "old! If some one don"t catch "old of the Baron I shall drop "im. My G.o.d! this is a pretty sort of go!"
There was a pause, then the voice of the first speaker again.
"He do look bad, the Baron do--worse nor the Toff, and he don"t seem too skittish!"
"Strikes me he ain"t far off from a coffin and a six-foot "ole. You wouldn"t look lively if you"d had what he "as. That there ---- brained "im, and now he"s been burned alive. I tell you what it is, we shall have to look slippy if we want to get ourselves well out of this. Them others will have to scorch--it"s no good trying to get "em out--no mortal creature could live down there--it"ll only be a bit sooner, anyhow. The whole ---- place is like a ---- tinder-box. It"ll all be afire in less than no time, and it"ll make a bonfire as"ll be seen over all the countryside; and if we was seen a-making tracks away from it, there might be questions asked, and we mightn"t find that pretty!"
"Where"s the ---- as done it all?"
"In there--that"s where he is!"
"In there? Sure? My----! wouldn"t I like to strip his skin from off his ---- carcase!"
"He"ll have his skin stripped off from him without your doing nothing, don"t you be afraid--and made crackling of! He"ll never get outside of that--he"ll soon be warm enough--burnt to a cinder, that"s what he"ll be!"
Suddenly there was a tumult of exclamations and of execrations, sound of the opening of a door, and of a general stampede. Then silence.
And Mr. Paxton realised to the full what had happened. For into the place of his imprisonment there penetrated, all at once, the fumes of smoke--fumes which had an unpleasantly irritating effect upon the tonsils of his throat.
The house was on fire! The hanging-lamp which he had sent crashing to the floor had done its work--had, indeed, plainly, done more than he intended. Nothing so difficult to extinguish as the flames of burning oil. Nothing which gets faster, fiercer, more rapidly increasing hold--nothing which, in an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time, causes more widespread devastation.
The house was on fire! and he was caged there like a rat in a trap!
The smoke already reached him--already the smell of the fire was in his nostrils. And those curs, those cowards, those nameless brutes, thinking only of their wretched selves, had left their comrades in that flaming, fiery furnace, to perish by the most hideous of deaths, and had left him, also, there to burn.
In a sudden paroxysm of rage, leaping off the shelf, he rushed to the opposite end of what, it seemed, bade fair to be his crematorium, and flung himself with all his weight and force against the door. It never yielded--he might as well have flung himself against the wall. He shouted through it, like a madman--
"Open the door! Open the door, you devils!"
In his frenzy a stream of oaths came flooding from his lips. In such situations even clean-mouthed men can swear. There are not many of us who, brought suddenly, under such circ.u.mstances, face to face with the hereafter, can calm our minds and keep watch and ward over our tongues. Mr. Paxton, certainly, was not such an one. He was, rather, as one who was consumed with fury.
What was that? He listened. It was the sound of wheels and of a horse"s hoofs. Those scoundrels were off--fleeing for their lives. And he was there--alone! And in the dreadful furnace, at the bottom of that narrow flight of steps, the miserable creatures with whom he had had such a short and sharp reckoning were being burned.
In his narrow chamber the presence of smoke was becoming more conspicuous. He could hear the crackling of fire. It might have been imagination, but it seemed to him that already the temperature was increasing. What was he to do? He recollected the window--clambered back upon the shelf, and thrust his face out into the open air. How sweet it was! and fresh, and cool! Once more he listened. He could hear, plainly enough, the noise of wheels rolling rapidly away, but nothing more. With the full force of his lungs he repeated his previous cry, with a slight variation--
"Help! Fire! Help!"
But this time there came no answering "Hollo!" There was no reply.
Again he shouted, and again and again, straining his throat and his lungs to bursting-point, screaming himself hoa.r.s.e, but there was none that answered. It seemed that this was a case in which, if he could not help himself, he, in very deed and in very truth, was helpless.
He set himself to remove the sashes from their places, feeling that if he only could, small even then though the s.p.a.ce would be, he might, at such a pinch as this, be able to squeeze his body through. But the thing was easier essayed than done. The sashes were small, strongly constructed, and solidly set in firmly fashioned grooves. He attacked them with his hands; he hammered them with the Baron"s revolver and the branding-iron, but they remained precisely where they were. He had a suspicion that they were looser, and that in time, say in an hour or so, they might be freed. But he had not an hour to spare. He had not many minutes, for while he still wrestled with their obstinacy there came from behind him a strange, portentous roar. His prison became dimly, fitfully illuminated with a dreadful light--so that he could see.
What he could see through the cracks in the bolted door were tongues of fire, roaring in the room beyond--roaring as the waves roar over the stones, or as the sound of a high wind through the tops of trees.
The suddenness of the noise, disturbing so unexpectedly the previous stillness, confused him. He remained on the shelf, looking round.
Then, oblivious for the moment of the danger which so swiftly was coming nearer, he was filled with admiration. What a beautiful ruddy light it was, which was making the adjacent chamber to gleam like glowing gold! How every instant it was becoming ruddier and ruddier, until, with fairylike rapidity, it became a glorious blaze of colour!
The whole place was transfigured and transformed. It was radiant with the splendours of the Fairy Queen"s Palace of a Million Marvels.
The crackling noise which fire makes when its hungry tongues lick woodwork brought him back to a sense of stern reality. He became conscious of the strong breeze which was blowing through the open window. It was coming from the house, and was bearing with it a rush as of heated breath. Already it seemed to scorch his cheeks--momentarily it seemed to scorch them more and more. The air, as he drew it into his lungs, was curiously dry. He had to draw two breaths where before he had drawn one. It parched his throat. What would he not have given to have been able to glue his lips to cool, fresh water! As in a vision he pictured himself laving his face, splashing in the crystal waters of a running stream, with the trees in leaf above his head.
Escape was hopeless. Neither on the one side nor on the other could salvation be attained. Other men, he told himself, with a sardonic twitching of the corners of his lips, had been burnt alive before to-day--then why not he? He, at any rate, could play the man. To attempt to strive against the inevitable was puerile. Better, if one must die, "facing fearful odds," to die with one"s arms folded, and with one"s pulse marking time at its normal pace. What must be, might be; what cared he?
Confound the smoke! It came in thicker and thicker wreaths through the interstices in the panels of the door. It was impossible to continue facing it; it made him cough, and the more he coughed the more he had to. It got into his mouth and up his nose; it made his eyes tingle. To cough and cough until, like a ramshackle cart, one shook oneself to pieces, was not the part of dignity.
He turned his back to the door. He thrust his face again through the window. With his lips wide open he gulped in the air with a sense of rapture which amounted to positive pain. What a feeling of life and of freedom there seemed to be under the stars and the far-reaching sky!
What a spirit of solitude was abroad on the hills, in the darkness of the night! What a lonely death this was which he was about to die! No one there but G.o.d and the fire to see if he died like a man!
He tried to collect his thoughts. As he did so, there was borne to him, on a sudden overwhelming flood of recollection, the woman whom he loved. He seemed to see her there in front of him--her very face. What was she doing now? What would she do if she had an inkling of his plight? What, when she knew that he had gone? If he had only had time to hand over to her all the fruits of that rise in the shares of the Trumpit Gold Mine!
How hot it was! And the smoke--how suffocating! How the fire roared behind him! The bolted door had been stout enough to keep him captive, but against the fury of the flames it would be as nothing. Any moment they might be through. And then?
He had an inspiration. He began to feel in his pockets. Those rogues had stripped them, only leaving, so far as in his haste he could judge, two worthless trifles, which probably had been overlooked because of their triviality. In one pocket was the back of an old letter, in another a sc.r.a.p of pencil. They were sufficient to serve his purpose. Spreading the half-sheet of notepaper out on the shelf in front of him, he wrote, as well as he could for the blinding, stifling smoke, with the piece of pencil--
"I give and bequeath all that I have in the world to my dear love, Daisy Strong, who would have been my wife. G.o.d bless her!--CYRIL PAXTON."