Chapter IX: One Too Many

“Oh, I say! It can’t be time to get up yet,” groaned Maurice, rolling over resentfully on his couch of pine-needles as a hand was laid on his shoulder. But the hand shook him slightly, and Wylie’s voice said, “Wake up, and don’t make a row.”

Throwing off the rug, Maurice sat up, blinking in the grey light of dawn. He and Wylie had chosen their sleeping-places in front of the hut, so that the girls might know they were at hand in case of an alarm in the night; but Wylie was now beckoning him away from it. On the other side of the ashes where the fire had been stood the brigands in a row, grim and silent, with their rifles ready. Maurice stared.

“What’s up?” he asked in bewilderment.

“We desire not so moch to guard,” responded Milosch. “You too many for us. Ze women are precious, and zere most be one man for to attend upon zem. Ze ozer most go. We make you draw ze lot.”

“All right, all right! but you needn’t do it where the ladies can hear you,” said Wylie impatiently. “Come along, Smith.” Wide awake by this time, Maurice rose, and they followed the brigands into the wood, Wylie grasping Maurice’s arm to draw him out of earshot of Milosch. “Look here,” he said. “If the lot falls upon you, of course I’ll take it, for your sisters can’t do without you, but I’m pretty certain it’s only a trick to get rid of me. They’ve been planning this all night.”

“But you don’t think they’d dare--to _kill_ you?”

“Why not? They killed Haji Ahmad without compunction. Their lives are forfeit already, you see, and so long as your sisters are alive, they know that no Government will dare to hunt them down.”

“Zese woods of different shortness,” said Milosch, advancing with a couple of twigs. “You select each, and we tell you which has drawn ze black ball.”

“But which represents the black ball--the long one or the short one?” demanded Maurice.

“Zat not for you to know. We tell you when ze lot is drawn.”

“I told you so,” murmured Wylie. “Whichever I draw is the fatal one. Here, Milosch, let me choose.”

He took one of the twigs, the shorter, and Maurice found himself with the other in his hand. Stoyan, coming forward, measured their length with great deliberation, and announced that the lot had fallen upon Wylie. Maurice sprang forward furiously, but Wylie pinned his arms to his sides.

“Now don’t let us give ourselves away,” the doomed man entreated. “I know what you feel like, and what you would like to do, but your business just now is to think of your sisters. They must not be left in the hands of these scoundrels without a protector. You’ll have to look after them both now. Don’t let them know what’s happened to me if you can help it. Can’t you let them think I have been taken away to be kept safe somewhere? Remember, they have a lot to bear already.”

“I can’t stand by and see you murdered,” panted Maurice.

“I don’t want you to. Go back to the hut. Your sisters will be terrified if they wake and find us both gone. Good-bye, and good luck to you. I wouldn’t ask for a better comrade at a pinch than you have been all through this.”

“Any messages?” asked Maurice shortly.

“No, I have no one to trouble about me, and my affairs are all in order. Some day you might tell your eldest sister that I was sorry to leave without saying good-bye to her.”

“Ze Voivoda say he exhausted of waiting,” said Milosch, coming up with a handkerchief, which he proceeded to tie over Wylie’s eyes.

“Now go, go!” entreated Wylie of Maurice. “You must think of the girls, as I ought to have done yesterday instead of playing the fool.”

Maurice wrung his hand and withdrew, slowly and reluctantly. At the edge of the wood he turned, hearing his friend’s voice raised angrily. “For heaven’s sake, leave me my hands free!” Wylie cried, but Maurice gathered that the demand was refused. He went on into the clearing, and sat down beside the extinguished fire, a prey to the deepest despondency he had ever known. Without Wylie, how were he and the hapless girls to face the trials before them? He himself might be the next sacrifice to the savagery of the brigands, and what would then become of Zoe and Eirene, since neither fear nor avarice seemed potent to restrain their captors? Wylie’s resourcefulness, his restless energy, his cheerfulness, and the underlying force of character which manifested itself only occasionally, but was therefore all the more telling, had made him a tower of strength, and Maurice felt bitterly his own comparative futility. His life had taught him to exercise a certain amount of initiative, clogged by the habit, inculcated as a duty, of weighing the merits of a question before deciding on it, but while he was thinking, Wylie would act--would have acted, rather. The thought swept over Maurice with desolating effect. The man of action was taken, the man who could only feel sure of himself in the humdrum routine of daily life was left. It did not occur to him that Wylie had not grown to his full mental height in a day, or that he himself might draw from the depths of his present desolation the experience which would complete the measure of his manhood.

“Maurice, how slack you look!” cried Zoe, putting out a dishevelled head gingerly at the door of the hut. “Mind you tell Captain Wylie that he must give us some more kabobs for breakfast.”

“All right. They’ll be ready. Provided,” with a sudden happy inspiration, “that you promise faithfully to eat them before you begin to talk. It’s no good my--our cooking if you let the things get cold when they ought to be eaten at once.”

“I promise, honour bright!” said Zoe, and Maurice began to collect wood for a fresh fire, half fearing that orders for the march would be issued before he had time to do any cooking. But the brigands came back into camp and sat down round their own fire with the evident intention of taking their ease, and when the girls came out of the hut they found Maurice busy toasting his face as well as a bountiful supply of kabobs.

“Where’s Captain Wylie?” they cried.

“What did you promise?” asked Maurice repressively. “Sit down and begin at once, and I’ll be doing some more.”

“Maurice, you are eating none yourself,” cried Zoe, having kept her promise until hunger was satisfied. “And where is Captain Wylie? He didn’t get his face nearly as much burnt as you do.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Somewhere about, I suppose,” mumbled Maurice. “Have some more?”

“No, thanks; I don’t want any more. Maurice, has anything happened to him? Do you really know where he is?”

“Can’t you let the poor chap alone?” demanded Maurice desperately. “He hasn’t escaped by himself and left us in the lurch--I can tell you that, at any rate.”

“No, but has he been taken away? I believe something has happened. Tell me honestly, Maurice; where is he?”

“They took him away early this morning,” admitted Maurice. “He thought himself it was out of spite for his trying to get us rescued. He asked me to say how sorry he was not to bid you good-bye.”

“Good-bye? Then he thought---- They weren’t going to kill him?”

“How can I tell? They didn’t do it when I was there.”

“But you think they have done it? And you let them?”

“Look here,” said Maurice; “I’d better tell you all I know, and you can see what you think.” He told his story as fast as he could, with involuntary pauses here and there.

“Then there can be no doubt,” said Zoe slowly at last. “He is dead now.”

“I admire you both,” said Eirene, with her gracious air of distributing praise impartially. “Your duty was to the living, and he knew it. He could only die, and he did that well. Some day----”

“Eirene,” said Zoe, with concentrated bitterness, “if you say you will raise a memorial church in his honour, I shall hate you till I die.”

She rose and went into the hut, and Eirene turned to Maurice.

“You think he is dead?” she said.

“Why, of course. What else could I think?”

“I don’t believe it in the least. I think they were trying to frighten him--as a punishment for yesterday, you know. I think they will blindfold him and tie his hands and pretend to take him to the edge of a rock and throw him over, but he will only fall one or two feet.”

“Good gracious, Eirene! how can you think of such diabolical things?” cried Maurice.

“But it is not as if it would hurt him really. They would wish to see him show fear; that would be most natural. It would be foolish for them to kill him. If they found themselves hotly pressed--do you say?--they might kill one of us as a warning to the pursuers, but to do it without any purpose would only diminish their power of bargaining for a ransom and an amnesty.”

“Well, if you’re so certain, why don’t you tell Zoe?”

Eirene shrugged her shoulders. “She is determined that he is dead; how could my sole opinion change her mind? If I thought it would comfort her I would tell her; but suppose that we see him no more again until we are all ransomed and set free? She would determine again that he was dead, and suffer twice over.”

“I only hope you may be right, and that he is alive,” said Maurice gloomily.

The brigands had finished their meal, and were peacefully employed in mending their clothes and moccasins, while the chief was seated under a tree, in close confabulation with Milosch. A sentry was stationed at the head of the track leading to the clearing, there was another on the brow of the mountain above, and a third, as Maurice knew, at the lower end of the wood. Everything seemed to portend a quiet day, without further wandering, and Maurice felt the fact an added trial, welcome though the prospect of rest was. If Wylie was not already dead, where was he, and what fate was intended for him? It was maddening to think of repeating these questions for a whole day, uninterrupted by any possibility of useful occupation.

As Maurice sat engrossed in his dreary meditations, Zoe came out of the hut, red-eyed and gruff-voiced, but overflowing with nervous energy.

“Do let us find something to do, Maurice, if we are to stay here all day,” she said. “Let us make a hut for you. I’m sure it will be better for you than sleeping in the open another night.”

Maurice rose at once, receiving a wholly unnecessary glance of advice from Eirene, which said, “Humour her; she needs something to divert her mind,” and going into the wood, began to choose fresh branches, and cut them down with the useful knife which served so many purposes. Zoe threw herself into the work with determination, and Eirene sat enthroned on a hillock at the foot of a tree and gave counsel.

“Make it large enough for Captain Wylie as well,” she said, as Maurice, thinking he had cut enough twigs, was gathering them into a bundle to carry back to the clearing; “he may be back to-night.”

“Eirene, how can you?” cried Zoe indignantly, and stopped, unable to say more.

“Look here, Eirene,” said Maurice, exasperated, “can’t you get something to do? It’s all very well to sit there looking on----”

“Oh, she can’t,” broke in Zoe. “Her arm got strained again in crossing that awful place yesterday, and it was rather bad when I dressed it this morning. Let her alone; I suppose she has her own idea of a joke.”

Eirene’s glance at Maurice said, “What did I tell you?” as she rose and picked her way daintily back to the clearing. When they returned thither with their burdens, she retired to a rock at some little distance, with an ostentatious air of leaving them to their obstinate ill-humour in peace. Finding that they took no notice of her, however, she came gradually nearer, in order to give them the benefit of her valuable advice, which proved more useful than might have been expected, since, as she said, she had often watched her father’s foresters build huts of birch-boughs in her childhood. When she repeated her suggestion that the hut should be made large enough for two, however, Maurice felt obliged to intervene with a pacific compromise.

“We have all day to spend over it,” he said, “so we can make a better job of it than the one we ran up in a hurry last night. You girls shall move into it, do you see? and I’ll succeed to the old one.”

Zoe accepted the suggestion in silence, and they went on with their work, interweaving the slanting branches which formed the sides with smaller boughs and twigs. They worked hard most of the day, and talked so little that Eirene found them very dull company. At last she left them in despair, and wandered up the hill towards the rock where the sentry stood, taking care to keep within sight of the clearing. They saw her seat herself on a convenient stone and begin to study the landscape, and then they forgot all about her until an exclamation from her, simultaneously with a shout from the sentry, made them start to their feet and the brigands grasp their rifles.

“Can we have been traced after all?” cried Maurice.

“A day too late!” murmured Zoe. “Oh, if they had only come up with us last night!”

“Well, all our work won’t be much good, for they’ll be sure to hurry us away somewhere else,” said Maurice, noticing that the brigands were hastily cramming their possessions into their sacks. But presently another shout from the sentry, following on a faint hail from the distance, announced that only three men were in sight, and they were friends. Almost at the same moment, Eirene came rushing frantically down the hillside.

“It is himself! I told you so!” she cried. “It is Captain Wylie and two of the brigands. I was sure of it. They were only trying to frighten him, and he is coming back.”

“Oh, let us go and meet him!” cried Zoe.

“Let Maurice go,” said Eirene primly. “Your eyes are so red, Zoe,” she added in a low voice.

“Don’t be Early-Victorian, Eirene,” was the crushing reply. “Do you think I mind his seeing that I cried because I thought he was killed? I should be ashamed if I hadn’t!”

They went down the track in the wake of the brigands, who were jostling one another in mingled surprise, irritation, and alarm. The two members of the band who accompanied Wylie began to pour forth explanations and excuses at the top of their voices long before any words could be clearly distinguished, and while they were seized and cross-examined by their fellows, Wylie was able to reach his friends.

“You haven’t quite done with me yet!” he said, giving one hand to Zoe and the other to Maurice, while Eirene waited for a more ceremonious greeting. “I shall be able to cook one more supper for you before I am sent off.”

“Then it was all a trick?” asked Maurice.

“Well, in a way. You would have been left to think that I was dead, as a warning to you against playing the fool, I suppose, but what I was really picked out for was a very serious matter--getting your ransom. The brutes over-reached themselves utterly in the way they went to work, and the result is that here I am.”

“What a lot you must have to tell us!” said Zoe. “Wait till we get to the camp, so that we can listen comfortably.”

“Why, you must have spent the day in house-building!” said Wylie, as they reached the clearing.

“That’s exactly what we did--to drown our misery,” said Maurice. “Now begin. Did they pretend to shoot you, or any vile trick like that?”

“No, only cuffed and hustled me down these goat-tracks for ever so far, which was no joke with my eyes covered and my hands tied. I really do wonder that I’m here to tell the tale, for I did more slipping than walking. At last we seemed to come to a comparatively level place, and they took the handkerchief off my eyes and set me free, and instructed me to make the best of my way back to civilisation and tell your friends to send fifteen thousand pounds by this day month if they wanted to see you again alive.”

“Fifteen thousand pounds!” gasped Zoe.

“Yes, it sounds a large order, but that wasn’t what stumped me. It was that I really know nothing about you, except that I gather you have a place in Homeshire. I know that Smith was at Cambridge and won a prize for poetry, but I could hardly go there and open a subscription list, or ask the Dons to mortgage the college revenues for his ransom, could I? It sounds absurd that after all we have gone through together we should know so little about each other, and I couldn’t make my guards believe it. They evidently thought that we lived next door to one another at home, or something of that sort, and laboured to explain to me that if there had been only three of us they would have made us write a letter, but as there were four, they sent one of us instead. But at last I managed to make them understand that nothing could induce me to show my face in Therma without proper credentials, and that unless I knew who to apply to, there would be no chance of their getting the money, so they decided to send back here for instructions. But when it came to the point, neither of them would be left alone with me, and as I declined to remain where I was and wait for them, the only thing to do was to bring me back.”

“You said you were no longer blindfolded?” said Eirene, for Maurice and Zoe were looking at one another in consternation. “Ah, yes, that is it. The guards were afraid of you--of your eyes. They hate them.”

“Horribly bad taste in them,” said Wylie lightly. “Why, here’s our friend Milosch coming--bringing us something for supper, I see.”

A sheep had been procured during the day--by nefarious means, of course--and Milosch brought a portion of its flesh for the captives; but he carried also Zoe’s safety inkstand, a leaf torn out of one of her note-books, and a pen of unknown origin.

“You write now, before ze sun falls,” he said to Maurice, “a letter signified by all of you. Ze ransom we demand is fifteen sousand Ingliss pounds, to be placed in gold zis day month on a spot zat will be indicated to your messager. If ze ransom comes not forth, or if deception is adventured, we shall kill you, beginning wiz”--he looked round with a calculating eye upon the three, who all afterwards confessed to feeling cold shivers down their backs, and then laughed--“No, I say not who we begin wiz. Perhaps we let you draw ze lot again. From zis time you hold no communion wiz your messager but in my presence; zerefore seek not to cook up fraud among yourselves.”

Maurice looked at Zoe in despair. How could they let Wylie proceed on his quest in absolute ignorance of their real name? and yet, how could they reveal it in the hearing of Milosch, who possessed the disconcerting faculty of being able to understand English much better than he spoke it? Zoe came to her brother’s help.

“Captain Wylie had better go to Professor Panagiotis,” she said.

“Professor Panagiotis!” said Eirene sharply. “What do you know about him?”

“He is the friend we were going to stay with,” answered Zoe, in surprise. “Do you know him?”

“He was an acquaintance of my father,” said Eirene, with some hesitation. “I don’t remember that I have ever seen him.”

“Well, if he wouldn’t remember you we needn’t mention you separately,” said Zoe quickly, wondering if Wylie was trying once more, as she herself would have done, to reconcile the relationships of this remarkable family. “If you will just say that we are all here together?” she added to Wylie.

“Yes, I think the letter had better go to the Professor,” agreed Maurice, “and then he can post you up, Wylie. There are some things that can’t very well be explained here, but that have a tremendous bearing on the case.”

The letter was written, duly signed by Maurice Smith, Zoe Smith, and Eirene Smith, and addressed to the Professor at his villa at Kallimeri. Milosch was highly entertained by the idea that the head of the Greek party in Emathia should find himself compelled to finance his Slavic opponents to so large an extent, and shouted the news to the rest of the brigands as a huge joke. They chuckled over it without him, for he did not quit the prisoners again. It was evidently his business to see that no one exchanged a word with Wylie that might cover any suggestion designed to cheat the band of their destined spoil, or lead to their being hunted down, and even when Maurice and Wylie rolled themselves up in their rugs to sleep, he sat between them, revolver in hand.