Chapter XIV: “murder!”

Magdalen had noted that there was something queer about the boy on the box, something terrifying in the look of him where he sat in a hunched heap, regardless of the driving rain or the horses pulling the reins through his listless fingers as they tossed and fretted at their bits.

Suddenly she could no longer distinguish him. A black rain-squall fell from the sky and shut her in, she could not see Dolly and Ronald at her elbow, or her own hand on the carriage door. By some instinct she shut it softly.

“Keep still,” she said, and felt her way round the hind wheels to wake the red-headed boy. How dared he sleep here? It was not safe, it----”

A narrow flash, strangely red for lightning, blinded her; the carriage backed and knocked her down.

In an instant she was on her feet, clutching Dolly in the dark.

“Don’t scream!” she fiercely breathed. “Hold on to my skirts and come.”

Stooping, gasping, she felt her way off that pier, its wooden coping her only guide.

The noise of wheels, of tearing hoofs, of a horse’s scream, tore the air--the latter a sound to stop the heart.

“What was that?” Dolly stood paralyzed.

“Murder!” said Magdalen to herself as she felt solid ground under her groping hands, and stood up. “Come on.”

She dragged Dolly and Ronald behind some bushes she could feel more than see.

“Oh, what was it?” Dolly repeated tremulously.

“The carriage is in the Clyde,” Magdalen briefly replied, “and if we’re not quiet we’ll be there, too.”

For that red flash had done more than frighten the horses; it had showed the end of the pier to Magdalen Clyde, with a stout post at each corner of it, the top of the right-hand one square and blank against the flare.

On the other post, squatting motionless, like some horrible heathen god, was the Chinese butler, waiting. For what?

“For just what he saw!” thought Magdalen with a terror that would have been unreasonable in broad daylight or in another place. “That flash wasn’t an accident. The carriage was meant to go over with us inside. The boy was drugged! Oh!”--with a sick shudder--“the poor boy! The poor horses!”

It was useless for common sense to assure her that she was all wrong; that Stratharden had for some reason not come himself to see them off, but sent the butler; and that the obvious thing to do was to call to the Chinaman, tell him how miraculously they had escaped, and go back to Ardmore till the morning. For if common sense said all this instinct clamored louder that if the man had been there to help them, he would have come over to the carriage; that if he had perched himself on the post, it was to be safe when the carriage and horses tore past him!

Trembling she cleared the rain from her face and strained eyes to the pier-end. If all were right human flesh and blood could not have kept silent when the carriage crashed into the water. Yet the Chinaman had not made a sound.

Through the dark she could see nothing; could hear only the lap of the water, the pattering rain; but through it the man might be creeping on them, step by step, might have guessed the carriage was empty, might----

“Come away,” she whispered, and her lips were stone-cold. “Don’t let Ronald cry,” for the shrill child’s voice could be heard above the storm.

“Come where?” muttered Dolly. “Not back! I won’t go back.”

There was no fear of Ronald’s crying; he was nearly fainting with terror; the feel of his rigid little body in her arms made her swear to herself that for nothing on earth would she take him back to the house where they hated him.

“Back? No! Anywhere out of this.”

Step by step they crept along the hillside, away from the pier; edging from one clump of grass to another, from one stunted fir to the next; since, for all they knew, their figures might be plain enough if a man had a night-glass.

Every now and then Magdalen stopped to listen to the noise of the river. They must go up-stream, not down. Anyone who wanted to make sure of wreckage would go down. Suddenly her feet felt the smoothness of a well-worn path leading downward to the water. It seemed better than aimless zigzagging on the hillside, and she followed it with Dolly treading on her heels. It came to an end on the very edge of the frith, with a sharp turn where a boulder and some low firs made a shelter from the rain.

“We can’t go on,” she whispered, feeling the turf under the trees; “it’s dry here. Sit down. Is Ronald wet?”

“No; he’s covered with my cloak.” Under the strain Dolly’s nerve had come back to her; the vicious fury of a woman who has lived by her wits was in her voice. “I’ll keep him dry somehow. He shan’t die in my arms when we kept him safe in that awful house,” she fiercely added.

“They meant to murder us,” said Magdalen in a husky voice. “Did you think that flash was lightning? It was some kind of devilish firework, and it did what they meant--but it saved us, too, for I saw him!”

“Stratharden?”

“No; the Chinaman. I don’t believe Stratharden ever left the house. Can’t you see now that he was at the bottom of everything? Keith was only his tool, that he lied to. He told her you were mad.”

Dolly caught her by the hand.

“What do I care what he said? If it hadn’t been for you I would have stayed in the carriage,” she whispered--Dolly, who had never been grateful in her life before!

“We might just as well have stayed if Ah Lee’s at our heels,” said Magdalen grimly. “Don’t talk,” and in odd contrast to her hard voice she stooped gently and covered the huddled pair with her own heavy traveling-coat that she had stripped off in the dark. If she shivered as she tucked it round Ronald it was only half from cold.

“For we can’t stay here,” she thought. “I must do something. And I’m afraid to move or even to breathe! It’s no use to mince things, I daren’t go back to that house, even if I could find the way in the dark. Mrs. Keith might help me but she’d hang before she’d help Dolly. And if I dared go back to the pier--but I daren’t and that’s the end of it!”

She slipped down beside Dolly and spoke in her ear.

“Dolly,” she said, “do you know where we are? For I don’t. All I know is that this pier isn’t the one the boat comes to at all, for I saw that one from the top of the hill one day, and there were cottages all round the head of it. Do you suppose we could find our way there?”

“I don’t know. You forget I never was out of the garden but that once when the man turned us back. We can’t do anything but sit here till daylight. If the Chinaman knows we weren’t in the carriage he’ll be scouring every path. If he found us he wouldn’t dare to let us go; he’d know we knew something, and----”

“Hush!” Magdalen breathed. “Hush! I hear some one! Don’t let Ronald move.”

“He’s asleep,” whispered Dolly.

Magdalen leaned in the supposed direction of the sound and listened. It was all very well to think that she needed her coat less than the delicate child in Dolly’s arms, but thinking could not stop her teeth chattering. She bit fiercely into her own hand.

“It’s a boat--oars----” she muttered. “It’s----Crawl in behind the rock, between it and the fir trees--quick!” and as Dolly obeyed her she huddled herself in after, face down, a shapeless heap in the dark.

Motionless, scarcely breathing, terrified lest Ronald should wake and cry, they heard a boat crunch on the pebbly beach not three yards away.

“If it’s a fisherman,” Magdalen thought, trying to check those horrible shivers, “we’re saved! If it’s not----”

A man’s quick spring from the boat sounded loud on the stones, and in the dull grind of the keel as it was pulled up a foot or so over the pebbles, Magdalen flattened herself under the fir branches.

That quick foot on the shore was not the heavy thud of country-made boots. It was the Chinaman! They were found, they----

The steps came closer, were so near that----He was stopping!

The girl felt he must hear those thin, crawling shivers that swept her body. She gathered herself up to spring and face him, when a slither of falling stones, an oath that was not the swearing of a foreigner, nor yet a fisherman, drew her very strength out of her.

The voice was a gentleman’s, and Dolly’s hand gripped her fiercely.

“Where the devil’s the path?” went on the voice that, for all its irritation, was like silk. “Oh, here! The boat can go to the devil. I’ve had enough of it. I’m dirty enough to have been in ten accidents. Even Ah Lee----” and he laughed.

At the most evil sound of that laughter rage made one listener start; but the squish of the wet moss and mud under the man’s groping feet covered it.

It seemed hours before that slow tread died away; hours when it was not safe to move or breathe.

When there was no sound but the rain Magdalen sat up.

“Did you hear?” Dolly’s whisper sounded like a shriek to her. “That was Stratharden--and he laughed!”

“He’s looking for our bodies,” with stern coolness.

“Well, he won’t find them. The fool has saved us. Come quick; he’s left his boat!”

With a man’s strength Magdalen lifted Dolly to her feet and got her to the beach. In the quiet the crunch of the pebbles sounded like pistol-shots as they felt their way to the boat.

“Get in,” Magdalen whispered. “Don’t stumble.” And when Dolly was seated she lifted the bow of the clumsy tub Stratharden had been good enough to leave behind him; the keel made no sound as the boat slipped out and Magdalen swung herself into the bow.

Drenched to the skin she crept to the oars, and knew she dared not row, for the noise they would make against the thole-pins. Yet if she let the boat drift the current would sweep them broadside on against the pier. She crawled into the bow again and paddled desperately with one oar, knowing she could never get out into midstream, but hoping against hope.

Her strong strokes were making no difference; broadside on they were drifting down to the pier--and there was a light there!

“We’re done!” she muttered to herself, and nearly fell flat where she knelt.

The boat had fairly leaped under her, had swung round, was going out into midstream, bows on. The outgoing tide had snatched them from the shore eddy; they were flying on it like a chip or a straw. Every minute was taking them further from Stratharden, further from the island that had been their prison. Triumph shook the girl like a leaf.

When the light on the pier was but a distant star she set the oars boldly into the thole-pins and began to row.

“Where shall we go?” said Dolly feverishly. “Can’t you see any lights on the banks? We must land at the first village.”

“All right,” said her stepsister, thanking Heaven that she had learned to row on the lake at her country convent. “We’ll be in London to-morrow, Dolly,” she added cheerfully, as if in her heart she did not know she was lost on the wide black frith, and for all she knew was rowing out to sea in the cold, stinging rain that hid the shore on either hand.