"Do you mean," gasped Jean, "that this was for a bomb?"
"Looks like it," he answered.
"Hush!" I whispered.
The torch went out on the instant and in absolute inky darkness we held our breath and listened. Somebody was quietly approaching the barn. The steps were not exactly stealthy, but guarded and wary, though quite a.s.sured, as if the man were only exercising a general precaution.
"Keep your faces hidden as much as you can!" whispered Whiteclett.
There was enough light in the open door to silhouette a figure as it entered, and a moment later I saw for an instant quite distinctly the outline of that oilskinned man once more. And then for perhaps three long seconds he was lost in the gloom within and we only knew of his approach by the sound of his footsteps. Abruptly they stopped. He was little more than a couple of paces from us now and I thought I heard him move back a step. Probably he had seen the white of some one"s face.
There was a little click and Whiteclett"s torch flashed full on him. In that instant I saw his hand rise, and with my head down I charged him.
The report of his pistol rang through the barn and almost simultaneously down he came, and I had a firm grip of those oilskins at last.
How the man fought! Not till I was sitting on his legs and Jack and the doctor each had an arm pinned to the floor did he cease to struggle, and even then he did not cease to swear. Sir Francis standing up over him, with the torch in his own hand, now turned the light on to his face. When I saw what it revealed I nearly let go our prisoner"s legs through sheer bewilderment. For there in the torch"s bright circle lay the poor idiot Jock, cursing us in fluent German.
XVII
THE REST OF THE TRUTH
"Does any one know him?" demanded my uncle.
"It"s the Scollays" idiot son!" I gasped.
I heard an exclamation both from Jean and the doctor.
"Son?" said Jean. "What! Did you think Jock was a Scollay?"
"He was sent up here about a couple of years ago to be looked after by these Scollays," explained the doctor. "We always supposed he was somebody"s--?" he glanced at Jean and hesitated--"er--somebody"s son."
"Good Heavens!" I cried. "What a fool I"ve been!"
Swiftly I ran over in my mind my first night with the Scollay household.
Had I ever been told Jock was a son? No, I had simply a.s.sumed it, and gone on that a.s.sumption without ever once thinking anything more about the matter. And so, with this impenetrable curtain between me and all possibility of guessing the truth I had gone on uselessly groping.
"Fool!"
A harsh voice startled me. It was Jock, gazing viciously up at me and talking guttural English now. His face was still framed in the circle of the torch, and as I looked at it now I realised that the truth had actually been written there all the time for a closely observing eye to read. This man"s features differed vitally from the Scollays" and, especially, there was no cast in his eyes.
"Fool!" he snarled, "yes, you have been a d.a.m.ned fool, you Hobhouse! Ach, if I had known, you should have been a dead fool!"
"You mean if you hadn"t been made a bit of a fool of too?" I suggested.
He was a brave man and a useful man to his country, but the German boastfulness would out.
"Ach, but I should have found you out soon! Me, you would have found out never!"
His eyes rolled round our party and I could see curiosity overcoming even his bragging.
"Who did tell you?" he demanded.
"If it is any satisfaction to you to know," replied Sir Francis, "your machinations were discovered and you were tracked down and caught by a girl." He turned to Jean and added, "An exceedingly clever, brave and patriotic girl."
I am sorry to say our prisoner still further smirched his record. What he said was fortunately in German and the words at the beginning of his sentence were not the kind that Jean would know. Before he had finished it my uncle had struck him with the b.u.t.t end of the torch on the mouth.
"Hold your foul tongue!" he cried and then turned away and I could see a kind of shiver run over him.
"G.o.d forgive me!" he murmured. "I never struck a man when he was down before!" And then he recovered himself a little and added, "But is a German a human being?"
Meanwhile Jean was already bringing a bundle of rope from the corner under my cousin"s direction, and in a few minutes his practised hands had knotted our prisoner up so securely that we were able to move aside from him and hold a hasty council of war.
"Now for the rest of the gang!" said my uncle. "Do you suppose they"ve heard us and bolted?"
"Do you mean the Scollays?" asked Jean. "Oh, I don"t believe they knew!"
"My dear young lady, it"s very painful for you to think your tenants are playing such games, but they simply must have known!"
"We can"t afford to give them the benefit of the doubt," said Jack Whiteclett. "That"s absolutely certain. I am afraid I must arrest them, Miss Rendall, and the sooner it"s over the better."
"Jack!" commanded our uncle, "this is a matter I think I could handle rather better than a hot-headed young man." (Commander Whiteclett, it may be mentioned, was reputed in the Navy to have a remarkably cool head.) "Dr. Rendall, perhaps you will be good enough to keep watch over our prisoner for a few minutes while we are gone. Roger, give the doctor your pistol. If we hear you fire, doctor, we"ll be out in a few seconds.
Jack and Roger, come along with me."
Jack and I exchanged a look but said nothing. Our uncle still held the torch, and flashing it before him led the way out of the barn. We followed him, but my eyes I am afraid were over my shoulder. I saw Jean slip her own torch into the doctor"s hand and then she ran after me.
"May I come too!" she whispered.
"Of course!" I said, "you"re in command of the party--or ought to be!"
and out we went together.
The farm yard made rough walking, and there seemed every excuse for my taking her arm and none for her objecting; nor did she.
"Who is this delightful, arbitrary old gentleman?" she asked in my ear.
"You never introduced me!"
"Our uncle," I murmured back. "Jack and I both have expectations so we"ve got to give him his head!"
I must say Sir Francis stage-managed our entrance into the Scollays"
house very effectively. As he quietly opened the door, he got us all close behind him, exactly like a band of robbers, so that we trod on one another"s heels down a yard or two of narrow pa.s.sage. The Scollays were all seated round the kitchen table when our uncle"s figure suddenly towered out of the gloom, his pistol covering Peter senior"s head, and his voice thundering:
"Hands up!"
At the first command they simply gasped.
"Hands up or I fire!" thundered Sir Francis again, and up went every pair of hands, and what is more they stayed up.
"Your confederate is captured and has confessed everything!" announced Sir Francis.