Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks Part 80

He would have his betrayer now or perish.

But before he had got more than two hundred yards the pace began to tell upon him.

He felt that he would have to give in.

"I must go easier, or I shall fail altogether."

So reasoning, he slackened his pace, and dropped into that slinging trot that runners in France know as the _pas gymnastique_.

If your strength and wind are of average quality, you can keep up for a prodigious time at that.

Murray flew on, anxious to get away from his furious pursuer.

He increased his lead.

But presently the pace told upon him likewise.

He collected his thoughts and his prudence as he went, and rested.

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Lenoir come bounding along, a considerable distance in the rear.

"Savage beast!" thought Murray. "He means mischief."

Murray meant tiring him out.

This, however, was not so easily done.

The Englishman was a capital runner, and had been one of the crack men of his school-club.

But his _forte_ was pace.

The Frenchman, on the contrary, was a stayer.

It looked bad for Murray.

On they went, and when a good mile had been covered, Murray, on glancing back, felt convinced that it was only a question of time.

He must tire out the Frenchman in the end, he thought.

He believed that an Englishman must always be more than a match for a Frenchman at any kind of athletics.

He reckoned without his host, for while he (Murray) was getting blown, Lenoir swung on at _pas gymnastique_, having got his second wind, and being, to all appearance, capable of keeping on for any length of time.

"I shall have to give it up," gasped Murray, when, at the end of the second mile, he looked over his shoulder again.

An unpleasant fact revealed itself.

While he was faltering, the Frenchman was rather improving his pace.

Yes.

The distance between them was lessening.

And now he could hear Lenoir's menaces quite plainly as the coiner gained upon him.

"I shall have you directly, and I shall beat your skull in!" the Frenchman said.

Murray's craven heart leapt to his mouth.

Already he felt as if his cranium was cracked by the brutal fist of the savage coiner.

Fear lent him wings.

He put on a spurt.

"Oh, if I had but a pistol," thought Murray; "what a fool I was to come unarmed on such a job as this."

He partially flagged again.

The distance between them was still decreasing.

This he felt was the beginning of the end, but just as he was thinking that there was nothing for it but to turn and make the best fight for it he could, he sighted a roadside inn--a rural auberge.

And for this he flew with renewed energy.

Das.h.i.+ng into the house, he pushed to the door and startled the aubergiste by gasping out in the best French he could command--

"_Un a.s.sa.s.sin me poursuit. Cachez-moi, ou donnez-moi de quoi me defendre!_"[3]

[3] "I am pursued by an a.s.sa.s.sin. Hide me, or give me something to defend myself with."

The landlord took Murray--and not unnaturally--for a madman.

He did not like the society of madmen.

To give a weapon to a furious maniac was out of all question.

And the landlord had nothing handy of a more deadly nature than a knife and fork.

Moreover, he would not have cared to place a dangerous weapon in a madman's hands.

So he met the case by humouring the fugitive with a proposal to go up stairs.

Murray wanted no second invitation.

Up he flew, and locked himself in one of the upper rooms just as Lenoir hammered at the door below.

"_Ou est-il?_"[4] demanded the coiner, fiercely.