The Borough Treasurer Part 26

"You're wrong!" retorted Mallalieu, masterful and insistent as ever.

"You have the power! D'ye think I've been a justice of the peace for twelve years without knowing what law is? You've the power to admit to bail in all charges of felony, at your discretion. So now then!"

The magistrates looked at their clerk, and the clerk smiled.

"Mr. Mallalieu's theory is correct," he said quietly. "But no magistrate is obliged to admit to bail in felonies and misdemeanours, and in practice bail is never allowed in cases where--as in this case--the charge is one of murder. Such procedure is unheard of."

"Make a precedent, then!" sneered Mallalieu. "Here!--you can have twenty thousand pounds security, if you like."

But this offer received no answer, and in five minutes more Mallalieu heard the case adjourned for a week and himself and Cotherstone committed to Norcaster Gaol in the meantime. Without a look at his fellow-prisoner he turned out of the dock and was escorted back to the private room in the Town Hall from which he had been brought.

"Hang 'em for a lot of fools!" he burst out to the superintendent, who had accompanied him. "Do they think I'm going to run away? Likely thing--on a trumped-up charge like this. Here!--how soon shall you be wanting to start for yon place?"

The superintendent, who had cherished considerable respect for Mallalieu in the past, and was much upset and very downcast about this sudden change in the Mayor's fortunes, looked at his prisoner and shook his head.

"There's a couple of cars ordered to be ready in half an hour, Mr.

Mallalieu," he answered. "One for you, and one for Mr. Cotherstone."

"With armed escorts in both, I suppose!" sneered Mallalieu. "Well, look here--you've time to get me a cup of tea. Slip out and get one o' your men to nip across to the Arms for it--good, strong tea, and a slice or two of bread-and-b.u.t.ter. I can do with it."

He flung half a crown on the table, and the superintendent, suspecting nothing, and willing to oblige a man who had always been friendly and genial towards himself, went out of the room, with no further precautions than the turning of the key in the lock when he had once got outside the door. It never entered his head that the prisoner would try to escape, never crossed his mind that Mallalieu had any chance of escaping. He went away along the corridor to find one of his men who could be dispatched to the Highmarket Arms.

But the instant Mallalieu was left alone he started into action. He had not been Mayor of Highmarket for two years, a member of its Corporation for nearly twenty, without knowing all the ins-and-outs of that old Town Hall. And as soon as the superintendent had left him he drew from his pocket a key, went across the room to a door which stood in a corner behind a curtain, unlocked it, opened it gently, looked out, pa.s.sed into a lobby without, relocked the door behind him, and in another instant was stealing quietly down a private staircase that led to an entrance into the quaint old garden at the back of the premises. One further moment of suspense and of looking round, and he was safely in that garden and behind the thick shrubs which ran along one of its high walls. Yet another and he was out of the garden, and in an old-fas.h.i.+oned orchard which ran, thick with trees, to the very edge of the coppices at the foot of the Shawl. Once in that orchard, screened by its close-branched, low-spreading boughs, leafless though they were at that period of the year, he paused to get his breath, and to chuckle over the success of his scheme. What a mercy, what blessing, he thought, that they had not searched him on his arrest!--that they had delayed that interesting ceremony until his committal! The omission, he knew, had been winked at--purposely--and it had left him with his precious waistcoat, his revolver, and the key that had opened his prison door.

Dusk had fallen over Highmarket before the hearing came to an end, and it was now dark. Mallalieu knew that he had little time to lose--but he also knew that his pursuers would have hard work to catch him. He had laid his plans while the last two witnesses were in the box: his detailed knowledge of the town and its immediate neighbourhood stood in good stead. Moreover, the geographical situation of the Town Hall was a great help. He had nothing to do but steal out of the orchard into the coppices, make his way cautiously through them into the deeper wood which fringed the Shawl, pa.s.s through that to the ridge at the top, and gain the moors. Once on those moors he would strike by devious way for Norcaster--he knew a safe place in the Lower Town there where he could be hidden for a month, three months, six months, without fear of discovery, and from whence he could get away by s.h.i.+p.

All was quiet as he pa.s.sed through a gap in the orchard hedge and stole into the coppices. He kept stealthily but swiftly along through the pine and fir until he came to the wood which covered the higher part of the Shawl. The trees were much thicker there, the brakes and bushes were thicker, and the darkness was greater. He was obliged to move at a slower pace--and suddenly he heard men's voices on the lower slopes beneath him. He paused catching his breath and listening. And then, just as suddenly as he had heard the voices, he felt a hand, firm, steady, sinewy, fasten on his wrist and stay there.

CHAPTER XXIII

COMFORTABLE CAPTIVITY

The tightening of that sinewy grip on Mallalieu's wrist so startled him that it was only by a great effort that he restrained himself from crying out and from breaking into one of his fits of trembling. This sudden arrest was all the more disturbing to his mental composure because, for the moment, he could not see to whom the hand belonged. But as he twisted round he became aware of a tall, thin shape at his elbow; the next instant a whisper stole to his ear.

"H's.h.!.+ Be careful!--there's men down there on the path!--they're very like after you," said the voice. "Wait here a minute!"

"Who are you?" demanded Mallalieu hoa.r.s.ely. He was endeavouring to free his wrist, but the steel-like fingers clung. "Let go my hand!" he said.

"D'ye hear?--let it go!"

"Wait!" said the voice. "It's for your own good. It's me--Miss Pett. I saw you--against that patch of light between the trees there--I knew your big figure. You've got away, of course. Well, you'll not get much further if you don't trust to me. Wait till we hear which way them fellows go."

Mallalieu resigned himself. As his eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom of the wood, he made out that Miss Pett was standing just within an opening in the trees; presently, as the voices beneath them became fainter, she drew him into it.

"This way!" she whispered. "Come close behind me--the house is close by."

"No!" protested Mallalieu angrily. "None of your houses! Here, I want to be on the moors. What do you want--to keep your tongue still?"

Miss Pett paused and edged her thin figure close to Mallalieu's bulky one.

"It'll not be a question of my tongue if you once go out o' this wood,"

she said. "They'll search those moors first thing. Don't be a fool!--it'll be known all over the town by now! Come with me and I'll put you where all the police in the county can't find you. But of course, do as you like--only, I'm warning you. You haven't a cat's chance if you set foot on that moor. Lord bless you, man!--don't they know that there's only two places you could make for--Norcaster and Hexendale? Is there any way to either of 'em except across the moors?

Come on, now--be sensible."

"Go on, then!" growled Mallalieu. Wholly suspicious by nature, he was wondering why this she-dragon, as he had so often called her, should be at all desirous of sheltering him. Already he suspected her of some design, some trick--and in the darkness he clapped his hand on the hip-pocket in which he had placed his revolver. That was safe enough--and again he thanked his stars that the police had not searched him. But however well he might be armed, he was for the time being in Miss Pett's power--he knew very well that if he tried to slip away Miss Pett had only to utter one shrill cry to attract attention. And so, much as he desired the freedom of the moors, he allowed himself to be taken captive by this gaoler who promised eventual liberty.

Miss Pett waited in the thickness of the trees until the voices at the foot of the Shawl became faint and far off; she herself knew well enough that they were not the voices of men who were searching for Mallalieu, but of country folk who had been into the town and were now returning home by the lower path in the wood. But it suited her purposes to create a spirit of impending danger in the Mayor, and so she kept him there, her hand still on his arm, until the last sound died away. And while she thus held him, Mallalieu, who had often observed Miss Pett in her peregrinations through the Market Place, and had been accustomed to speaking of her as a thread-paper, or as Mother Skin-and-Bones, because of her phenomenal thinness, wondered how it was that a woman of such extraordinary attenuation should possess such powerful fingers--her grip on his wrist was like that of a vice. And somehow, in a fas.h.i.+on for which he could not account, especially in the disturbed and anxious state of his mind, he became aware that here in this strange woman was some mental force which was superior to and was already dominating his own, and for a moment he was tempted to shake the steel-like fingers off and make a dash for the moorlands.

But Miss Pett presently moved forward, holding Mallalieu as a nurse might hold an unwilling child. She led him cautiously through the trees, which there became thicker, she piloted him carefully down a path, and into a shrubbery--she drew him through a gap in a hedgerow, and Mallalieu knew then that they were in the kitchen garden at the rear of old Kitely's cottage. Quietly and stealthily, moving herself as if her feet were shod with velvet, Miss Pett made her way with her captive to the door; Mallalieu heard the rasping of a key in a lock, the lifting of a latch; then he was gently but firmly pushed into darkness. Behind him the door closed--a bolt was shot home.

"This way!" whispered Miss Pett. She drew him after her along what he felt to be a pa.s.sage, twisted him to the left through another doorway, and then, for the first time since she had a.s.sumed charge of him, released his wrist. "Wait!" she said. "We'll have a light presently."

Mallalieu stood where she had placed him, impatient of everything, but feeling powerless to move. He heard Miss Pett move about; he heard the drawing to and barring of shutters, the swish of curtains being pulled together; then the spurt and glare of a match--in its feeble flame he saw Miss Pett's queer countenance, framed in an odd-shaped, old-fas.h.i.+oned poke bonnet, bending towards a lamp. In the gradually increasing light of that lamp Mallalieu looked anxiously around him.

He was in a little room which was half-parlour, half bed-room. There was a camp bed in one corner; there was an ancient knee-hole writing desk under the window across which the big curtains had been drawn; there were a couple of easy-chairs on either side of the hearth. There were books and papers on a shelf; there were pictures and cartoons on the walls. Mallalieu took a hasty glance at those unusual ornaments and hated them: they were pictures of famous judges in their robes, and of great criminal counsel in their wigs--and over the chimney-piece, framed in black wood, was an old broad-sheet, printed in big, queer-shaped letters: Mallalieu's hasty glance caught the staring headline--_Dying Speech and Confession of the Famous Murderer_....

"This was Kitely's snug," remarked Miss Pett calmly, as she turned up the lamp to the full. "He slept in that bed, studied at that desk, and smoked his pipe in that chair. He called it his sanctum-something-or-other--I don't know no Latin. But it's a nice room, and it's comfortable, or will be when I put a fire in that grate, and it'll do very well for you until you can move. Sit you down--would you like a drop of good whisky, now?"

Mallalieu sat down and stared his hardest at Miss Pett. He felt himself becoming more confused and puzzled than ever.

"Look here, missis!" he said suddenly. "Let's get a clear idea about things. You say you can keep me safe here until I can get away. How do you know I shall be safe?"

"Because I'll take good care that you are," answered Miss Pett. "There's n.o.body can get into this house without my permission, and before I let anybody in, no matter with what warrants or such-like they carried, I'd see that you were out of it before they crossed the threshold. I'm no fool, I can tell you, Mr. Mallalieu, and if you trust me----"

"I've no choice, so it seems," remarked Mallalieu, grimly. "You've got me! And now, how much are you reckoning to get out of me--what?"

"No performance, no pay!" said Miss Pett. "Wait till I've managed things for you. I know how to get you safely away from here--leave it to me, and I'll have you put down in any part of Norcaster you like, without anybody knowing. And if you like to make me a little present then----"

"You're certain?" demanded Mallalieu, still suspicious, but glad to welcome even a ray of hope. "You know what you're talking about?"

"I never talk idle stuff," retorted Miss Pett. "I'm telling you what I know."

"All right, then," said Mallalieu. "You do your part, and I'll do mine when it comes to it--you'll not find me ungenerous, missis. And I will have that drop of whisky you talked about."

Miss Pett went away, leaving Mallalieu to stare about him and to meditate on this curious change in his fortunes. Well, after all, it was better to be safe and snug under this queer old woman's charge than to be locked up in Norcaster Gaol, or to be hunted about on the bleak moors and possibly to go without food or drink. And his thoughts began to a.s.sume a more cheerful complexion when Miss Pett presently brought him a stiff gla.s.s of undeniably good liquor, and proceeded to light a fire in his prison: he even melted so much as to offer her some thanks.

"I'm sure I'm much obliged to you, missis," he said, with an attempt at graciousness. "I'll not forget you when it comes to settling up. But I should feel a good deal easier in my mind if I knew two things. First of all--you know, of course, I've got away from yon lot down yonder, else I shouldn't ha' been where you found me. But--they'll raise the hue-and-cry, missis! Now supposing they come here?"

Miss Pett lifted her queer face from the hearth, where she had been blowing the sticks into a blaze.

"There's such a thing as chance," she observed. "To start with, how much chance is there that they'd ever think of coming here? Next to none!

They'd never suspect me of harbouring you. There is a chance that when they look through these woods--as they will--they'll ask if I've seen aught of you--well, you can leave the answer to me."

"They might want to search," suggested Mallalieu.

"Not likely!" answered Miss Pett, with a shake of the poke bonnet. "But even if they did, I'd take good care they didn't find you!"