Chapter FORTY-ONE

The inspector was cutting away the encircling bands of gauze. Kneeling beside him, Geoffrey watched with a stony expression, fatalistically certain that rescue had come too late. Either the poor girl’s jailers had slain her outright during the long drive, or death had come five minutes ago when the car overturned. The heavy sag of her head made him believe her neck was broken.

As the last fold of material came away, the two men bent forward, dreading the disfigurement which threatened to meet their eyes. None appeared. Only the tight gag was revealed, together with sundry creases where the skin had been long compressed.

“Look what has been done to her!” murmured the officer with a savage click of the tongue. “Now we begin to see.… They have much to answer for, those two!”

So saying he severed the gag, and drew it cautiously from between the swollen lips. Beyond the head wound there was no visible mark of injury, yet the cheek which Geoffrey touched remained cold as ice.

“The hands, too--bound to her body! See how the strips have cut into the flesh! Those bruises would have told a story.…”

The loosened hands dropped upon the ground, like two weights.

“She is dead, of course?”

Geoffrey expected no reply to his toneless utterance, which was less a question than a statement. For a moment he looked on while the inspector, without replying, pressed his ear over the girl’s heart.

All at once, with the movements of an automaton, the young man rose, picked up the revolver which lay in the road, and took a step towards the two bound figures propped against the dusty hedge. He scarcely heard the astonished cry which burst from Bernard.

“Monsieur! Are you mad?”

He stared stupidly as a lean hand shot out and wrested the weapon from his grasp.

Perhaps he was mad. At any rate it was not a self he knew which had yielded to that instinctive urge towards revenge. He came slowly to his senses to hear Bazin calling to him sharply:

“Monsieur--quick! There is a flask in the flap-pocket of the car. And bring a cushion, so we can raise her head.”

He complied, sure that no stimulant could bring back the spark of life to that senseless form. All hope was dead as mechanically he lifted the limp body and watched while the inspector tried to force a few drops of brandy into the mouth.

“It’s no use,” he heard himself muttering.

Seconds passed. He saw both the other onlookers shake their heads, then no longer able to bear the sight before him, he closed his eyes.…

A cry roused him.

“Monsieur! Look!”

He obeyed in time to catch the faintest discernible twitch of the eyelids. Only a mere trace of movement, but it was sufficient.

“Catherine!” he cried in a frenzy of love and longing. “Catherine----!” and seizing her cold hands he began to chafe them vigorously.

For a single second the eyes opened, gazed blankly at him. Then the lids drooped again before there had been any sign of recognition.

“She is not dead, monsieur, but we must lose not an instant in getting her to a doctor. That wound has probably bled a great deal, besides which she has suffered terribly from shock.”

Leaving the young man to continue the work of resuscitation, the inspector hastened to inspect his damaged car, which by a miracle was still fit for service. Finding this to be the case, he then held a hurried consultation with the agent, as a result of which it was decided that the latter should remain behind with the prisoners while the injured girl was conveyed to Aubergenville as quickly as possible in search of medical aid.

As they had supposed, the Portuguese was dead--shot through the back. They dragged his body to the road-side, then returning to the unconscious victim, gently raised her and placed her within the car.

Geoffrey’s last glimpse of the scene of wreckage showed him the butler’s glazed eyes and blood-stained features upturned to the moonlit sky, and a few yards off the two living accomplices, glaring and livid, while Bernard, mounting guard, leaned against the hedge, a vulture-like figure etched in black, his bony fingers philosophically extracting a cigarette from a battered yellow packet.

After her brief flicker of animation Catherine had sunk back into a state of coma. As her head rested heavily against Geoffrey’s shoulder, it seemed certain that she was in no degree aware of her surroundings. Indeed, she scarcely appeared to breathe, but she had given proof that she was alive, and at that knowledge a passion of thanksgiving welled up in her lover’s heart. She was here, in his arms, her hair brushing his lips at a time when but for the most extraordinary good fortune, she would have been at the bottom of the cold whirling stream. Perhaps she had been unconscious all the latter part of her terrible drive. The wound on her head was no recent one by the look of it, nor had any fresh injury, beyond a few bruises, resulted from the collision. Wedged between Jeanne and Blom and with her face thickly covered, she had even escaped cuts from the shattered window.

In the sleeping village they managed to knock up a doctor, who quickly attended to the gash in her scalp and made her as comfortable as possible on a couch in his dispensary. She was suffering from slight concussion, which, combined with shock and exhaustion, had reduced her to a fairly serious state. He shook his head gravely over her as he applied restoratives, but offered no objection when Geoffrey suggested sending for an ambulance to take her to the American Hospital at Neuilly, merely stipulating that she should not be moved till the following day. He then set the young man’s broken arm, dressed the bullet wound in his shoulder--luckily no more than a graze--and, providing him with a glass of cognac, left him to get what rest he could.

Meanwhile the inspector returned to pick up his prisoners, after promising to communicate with the elder Macadam as soon as he reached Paris.

Geoffrey spent the rest of the night in acute anxiety. During long hours the poor girl remained dead to the world, now wholly unconscious, now raving with delirium. Visions of brain fever filled the watcher’s mind, and for a time he seriously feared that her reason would suffer as a result of what had happened in the past forty-eight hours. However, by seven o’clock in the morning she had drifted into a more or less normal slumber, and when the doctor entered bringing hot coffee and the news that the ambulance was on the way, Geoffrey himself had succumbed to exhaustion and, his head fallen forward upon the couch, was sleeping soundly.

Catherine opened her eyes upon a tiny bare room, overlooking a walled garden. Birds were singing in the trees outside, a nurse in uniform was bending over her with a keen but kindly scrutiny. For the moment she had not the remotest idea where she was, and while a thermometer was inserted into her mouth, lay examining her new surroundings with slight curiosity.

“That’s better,” she heard her guardian say in an honest middle-western voice as she shook down the little tube and placed it in its case. “That’s decidedly better.… By the way, there’s a young man walking up and down the corridor begging for a look at you. Shall I let him in for one minute? He’s feeling rather badly used.”

Catherine stared. By an ironic twist her thoughts leaped back to Miles Waring, her former fiancé. Who but he could think himself badly used? Then realizing the absurdity of this, she gropingly came a little nearer the present situation.

“Why, of course,” she replied weakly. “Let him come in.…”

The next instant Geoffrey stood beside her. He was ghastly pale, she thought, and had his left arm in a sling.

“What’s happened to you?” she whispered wonderingly. “Have you hurt yourself?”--and she stretched out a hand which he grasped in a hungry clutch.

“Only a fractured arm. Nothing at all,” he replied awkwardly, his gaze devouring her. “It’s you I want to know about. How do you feel?”

“Rather groggy,” she murmured. “I’ve just waked up. Have I been ill long?”

As she spoke she raised her other hand to her head uncertainly and encountered the rim of a bandage. Astonishment overspread her face.

“Why--am I hurt, too? What is all this?”

For a second she was completely bewildered. Then recollection began to dawn on her.

“Of course! Now I remember!”--and the pupils of her eyes dilated. “It was that beast Eduardo. He banged me over the head with a candlestick last night--or was it last night?”

He did not tell her that the thing she mentioned had happened four days ago.

“Eduardo is dead,” he said shortly. “He’s paid for his sins.”

“Eduardo dead?” She stared at him. “And the others?” she ventured fearfully.

“Locked up, waiting for their trial. There’s nothing for you to bother about now.”

She struggled to take it in.

“Germaine,” she whispered faintly. “She’s dead, too. They killed her, you know. They set fire to her room and locked her in. I tried to stop them, but they were too much for me. They----”

“S’sh--don’t talk,” he commanded soothingly, stroking her hand.

“Better go now,” cautioned the nurse, coming forward. “She’s run on like that for hours, ever since she was brought here. We mustn’t let her excite herself.”

But Catherine’s hand stayed her with an imploring gesture.

“Don’t send him away just yet,” she begged, while tears started to her eyes and spilled over her dark lashes. “I won’t say any more if you’d rather I didn’t.”

And so, without speaking, they sat hand in hand during a long interval of perfect peace.