An Old Meerschaum Part 4

His busy and practised hands were at work all the while.

'Now, ladies, wait here for a few moments. I must bring help.'

'Stop one minute!' cried the mother. 'Is he in danger?'

'Grave danger.'

'Will he die?'

'Not if I can help it,' And with that the stranger leaped on sh.o.r.e, and ran like a racehorse across the fields and into the nearest house, where he turned out the residents in a body, and made them uns.h.i.+p a five-barred gate. There were plenty of cus.h.i.+ons in the boat, and he wasted no time in getting others. The helpers beaten up by the doctor worked with a will; and one ran off in advance and seized upon a punt belonging to the Campers Out, and set it at the end of the house-boat, towards the sh.o.r.e. Over this they bore Leland, and laid him on the cus.h.i.+ons which the doctor had arranged upon the gate. Then they carried him into the 'Swan' and got him to bed there.

Lilian and her mother, trembling and struggling with their tears, followed the bearers. The crowd which always accompanies disaster, even in a village, made its comments as the melancholy little cortege went along, and Lilian could not fail to overhear. Hodges was there.

'I know'd what it ud come to,' proclaimed Hodges loudly. 'They was a naggin' every night, like mad, they was. I told you all what it ud come to.'

'So a did,' said others in the crowd. Then some one asked 'Where's t'other chap?' and in the murmur Lilian heard her lover's name again and again repeated.

She knew well enough--she could not fail to know--the meaning of the murmurs; but she started as though she had been struck when Hodges said aloud, so that all might hear--

'They was a naggin' again last night, an' then theer was a shot; and then ten minutes arterwards that Barndale bolts and knocks me over at the bottom o' the station steps. What's all that pint to?'

'Oh,' said another, 'there can't be no mortal shadder of a doubt who done it.'

For a moment these cruel words turned her faint; but the swift reaction of certainty and resolve which followed them nerved her and braced her for all the troublous times to come. She waited calmly until all had been done that could be done. Then when the doctor had left his patient, she took him apart.

'My brother has been wounded by a pistol shot?' she asked him very bravely and steadily. The doctor nodded. 'I must find out who did it,'

she went on, looking him full in the face with her hazel eyes.

'The people here seem to suspect a Mr. ------'

She s.n.a.t.c.hed the word out of the doctor's mouth.

'My brother's dearest friend, sir. Why, sir, they would have died for each other.'

'As you would for one of them?' said the doctor to himself.

'You have experience in these matters, sir. Will you help me to examine the boat? There may perhaps be something there to help us to track the criminal.'

The doctor had but the poorest opinion of this scheme. 'But, yes,'

he said, he would go, and then fell to thinking aloud. 'Poor thing.

Wonderfully plucky. Bears it well. Brother half killed. Lover suspected.

Go! Of course I'll go. Why the devil shouldn't I?' And he marched along unconscious of his utterances or of the heightened colour and the look of momentary surprise in Lilian's face. 'Pretty girl, too,' said the doctor, in audible thought. 'Devilish pretty! Good girl, I should fancy.

Like the looks of her. Hard lines, poor thing--hard lines!'

They reached the bank and walked across the punt into the house-boat.

As she entered the door Lilian gave a cry, and dashed at the table; then turned and held up before the doctor's eyes a meerschaum pipe--the identical Antoletti meerschaum stolen in the Stamboul Bazaar by Demetri Agryopoulo.

'This is it!' she gasped. 'The clue! Oh, it is certain! It is true! Who else could have wished him ill?'

Then she told the doctor the story of the pipe. She told her tale in verbal lightning. Every sentence flashed forth a fact; and in sixty seconds or thereabouts the doctor was a man convinced.

But meantime where was Barndale? Poor Leland could tell them nothing.

For many a day he would bear no questioning. Could her lover, Lilian asked herself, have started for the ball last night, and come to any damage by the way?

'Here is a letter,' said the doctor, quietly taking up something from the table. 'A lady's handwriting. Postmark, Constantinople.'

He drew the letter from its envelope and read it as coolly as if he had a right to read it.

'The story is clear enough,' he said. 'The lady is in London. Your brother knew of her presence there. The Greek you speak of has followed her. The pipe proves his presence here. But how did he find out with whom the lady was in correspondence?'

'That I cannot guess,' said Lilian.

It had been late in the afternoon when Lilian and her mother reached the house-boat first. Twilight had fallen when the doctor and the girl started to walk back together. Lilian, turning to look at the house-boat as they went, seized the doctor by the shoulder. He turned and looked at her. She pointed to a figure in the fields.

'The Greek!' she whispered.

She was right. Demetri agryopoulo had come back again with twilight to the scene of his crime, drawn by an impulse, pa.s.sionate, irresistible, supreme.

The doctor ran straight for him, leaping the hedge like a deer. Lilian, mad with the excitement of the moment, followed she knew not how.

Demetri Agryopoulo turned and awaited the arrival of these two onward-rus.h.i.+ng figures calmly. The doctor laid a hand upon him.

'I arrest you on a charge of murder,' he said, gasping for breath.

'Bah!' said Demetri Agryopoulo quietly, and threw the doctor's hand aside.

The doctor seized him again, but he was spent and breathless. The Greek threw him off as if he had been a child.

'Are you mad?' he asked. 'What murder? Where? When?'

'My brother's murder, here, last night,' panted Lilian, and flung herself, a mouse against a mountain, on the Greek, and grappled with him, and actually bore him to the ground. But before the doctor could lend a hand to aid her, Demetri was on his feet again, and with one bound sprang into a little skiff which lay with its nose upon the bank.

He swung one of the sculls about his head, and shouted, 'Stand back!'

But the doctor watched his time, and dashed in upon him, and before he knew it was struggling in the water, whilst Demetri in the skiff was a score of yards away tugging madly for the farther sh.o.r.e. The doctor scrambled to the bank and ran up and down the riverside looking for another boat. But he found none, and the Greek was already growing dim in the twilight mist. And again Demetri Agryopoulo went his own way, and the darkness shrouded him.

CHAPTER V.

Thecla Perzio received Barndale with much shyness and embarra.s.sment; and he, seeing that she was a good deal afraid of him, plucked up courage and treated her rather wilfully. He insisted on her going down to his sister at his own house in Surrey and staying there under the old maid's chaperonage, at least until such time as she should be able to find another suitable companion. The more Thecla found herself overpowered by this masterful son of Anak, the more she felt resigned, and comfortable, and peaceful, and safe. Barndale, like the coward he was, felt his power and took advantage of it. He would have no 'nay' on any grounds, but exacted immediate obedience.

To make things smoother he set out that afternoon for Surrey, saw his sister, talked her into a great state of sympathy for little Thecla, and brought her back to town by the next morning's train. Then, having introduced the ladies to each other, he left them and went to his own chambers in King's Bench Walk. Arrived there he stooped at the keyhole, finding some trifle or other there opposing his latch-key. The key-hole was half-filled with putty. Barndale never lost his temper. 'Some genius takes this for a joke, I suppose,' he murmured philosophically, and proceeded by the aid of a pocket corkscrew to clear the keyhole. He had just succeeded when a hand was laid familiarly upon his shoulder.

He turned and saw a stranger clean-shaven, calm, and in aspect business-like.

'Mr. Barndale, I think?' said the familiar stranger.

'Yes,' said Barndale, looking down at him in a somewhat stately way, in resentment of the familiar hand upon his shoulder.

'We'll do our little bit of business inside, sir, if _you_ please.'