CHAPTER XXV

THE LAST CHANCE FAILS

The daughter of the millionaire and the draper's assistant stood eyeing each other for twenty seconds in growing mutual approval, and then the hearty ring of Miss Nettle Jimpson's rather powerful voice prevailed. Their hands met in a grasp that at once testified to true comradeship and to sympathy for the other's plight. Violet would have drawn the other down on to the couch beside her, but Miss Jimpson, with a glance at the door, resisted the friendly invitation.

"Better not," she said in her matter-of-fact way. "One of those beasts might take it into his head to come in at any minute, and it won't do for them to think that we're going to be thick together. I've just given one of them a smack in the face that will last him quite a while, but it wasn't exactly judicious. They know I'm not fond of them, but my cue isn't open rebellion till I'm driven to it."

So Miss Jimpson remained standing while at Violet's request she recounted the story of her enforced enlistment, and of all that had happened on the _Cobra_ since. She waxed humorous at her own expense over the inducement held out by Brant to pacify her--that she was to act as companion to a lady passenger; and she described her subsequent surmise that she was to assist at an elopement. Again she went on to relate how Leslie Chermside had shattered that latest theory, first in words and secondly by wild dismay on hearing Violet's voice in the launch alongside.

"I knew then that he might be your sweetheart, but that he certainly wasn't on board the _Cobra_ to run away with you," said Nettle simply. "He was like a crazy creature in his wish to stop you from coming aboard. He expected to be killed in the attempt, and he begged me to stand by you if he failed to get the better of the men in the launch."

Violet's eyes were moist with unshed tears. "You have been frank with me, and I will be frank with you," she said. "Mr. Chermside is my lover, and the people who are employing Brant in this cruel business induced him by a series of lying tricks to fly on the steamer from a charge of murder. They hoped, as has happened, that I should follow to dissuade him."

"The charge is trumped up, of course?" said Nettle, and it was rather an assertion than a question.

"He might have some difficulty in disproving it, the train was laid with such fiendish ingenuity," answered Violet gravely.

"That is rough luck. Then if he escaped from the ship to land he would be arrested and have to stand his trial?" And there was that in Miss Jimpson's voice that suggested that she was weighing chances with some definite idea at the back of her active brain.

"I am afraid so, but his arrest would be infinitely preferable to the fate destined for him if he does not escape," replied Violet. There was a little eager note of inquiry in her voice, for she had been quick to grasp the hesitation in her new friend's tone.

But, ignoring the challenge, Miss Jimpson refused to be drawn at present. "Tell me," she said--"that is if you care to--why Brant has been bribed to do this dirty work, and where the ship is bound for."

Wisely abstaining from forcing her ally's hand, Violet disclosed in such halting sentences as her pride would permit the object of the cunning intrigue that had centred round her. Nettle Jimpson's fearless eyes grew rounder and rounder as she listened to the crop of mischief sown by the Maharajah of Sindkhote 5,000 miles away to ripen in a quiet English village. And not being the direct object of the villainous outrage, she appreciated more fully than Violet was yet able to the ghastly tragedy looming ahead at the end of the _Cobra's_ voyage.

"There's one chance," she said when the story of the Eastern Prince's passion, aided by a western rascal's guile, came to an end. "Only a little one, but still a chance. On condition that I didn't play the giddy goat over being kidnapped Brant promised to put into Plymouth on the way down channel, so that I could send a letter ashore for my young man. He's a petty officer on the destroyer _Snipe_."

"The _Snipe_!" repeated Violet. The name struck her at once as familiar, and a moment later she remembered why. It had been ever on the impertinent lips of Enid Mallory as that of the diminutive warship commanded by her own particular naval hero, Reggie Beauchamp.

"Yes," said Nettle, "the _Snipe_ is attached to the torpedo flotilla there. If I could communicate your position to Ned he'd tell his commander, and something would surely be done to stop this steamer before she reaches her destination. It's a far cry to India, and the authorities would set the cables to work. It would go hard with us if the _Cobra_ wasn't snapped up by a man-of-war somewhere betwixt this and there."

Violet shook her head. "That promise was made to be broken," she smiled sadly. "I fear Brant would never incur such a risk as that."

"If he doesn't this is going to be a hot ship," rejoined Nettle with spirit. "But you are very likely right," she added after a pause. "When I asked the mate Cheeseman when we should be off Plymouth he tried to box my ears--by the captain's orders, he said. That was why I smacked his face."

Suddenly Violet rose and began pacing the saloon. "Oh, but I have been selfishly thinking of myself!" she cried. "I heard that brute say that Leslie--Mr. Chermside--was only stunned and that he was coming to, but for all that he may be badly injured and in pain. Can you find out for me, you dear kind girl? Not if it will entail insult or ill-treatment for you, though."

"I'll chance that," replied Nettle firmly. "They carried him down on to the lower deck somewhere, and I'll go and see. But I am forgetting my duties. I was to show you your sleeping cabin. It's next door to this."

Violet waved her away. "As if I could sleep," she protested with a petulance which she instantly regretted.

Nettle, with a large-hearted tolerance for her companion's over-wrought condition, nodded and went out on to the upper deck. The steamer was gliding through the calm water at half-speed, having reached the fishing grounds of the Brixham trawlers off Berry Head. The sturdy little craft were clustered thick as ants on either beam. It was necessary to thread a cautious track through them if an untimely collision was not to furnish a clue to Violet's disappearance as soon as it was discovered in the morning. Nugent's "sealed orders" had been explicit on this head, and Simon Brant was not the man to risk punishment and the loss of his huge reward for lack of attention to detail.

"The inference at Ottermouth when Miss Maynard is missed will be that she has voluntarily accompanied Chermside on his flight," these instructions run. "On the whole it will serve our purpose as well as another, but it is imperative that the direction of this flight be unknown. I have Mr. Maynard's confidence, and I shall do my best to foster the idea that Chermside, whom he will of course regard as a free agent, will be likely to make for America, blinding pursuit by taking an eastern course up channel, and then a northerly one round the Scottish coast into the Atlantic. In reality you will run down channel to the westward, and in doing so you must therefore avoid undue speed or anything that may draw attention to your vessel as the one in which the 'elopement' has been carried out."

Nettle Jimpson, knowing nothing about the reason, was nevertheless annoyed at the slow speed, because it would delay the "one chance" at Plymouth to which she had pinned her faith. But realizing that the delay was beyond her control, she devoted herself to the matter in hand.

Casting an upward glance at the bridge, where the quartermaster at the wheel and several other figures were dimly visible against the starlit sky, she skulked along in the shadows of the deck superstructure till she came to the companion stairs leading down to the main deck. It was but a short distance from the door of the saloon and she met no one, though both from the stern and the forecastle gruff whisperings told her that it was a wakeful ship. Stealing down the stairs, she reached the main deck unmolested, and looked about her. Evidently it was here that the officers and the engineers were berthed. Open cabin doors yielded glimpses of oilskin coats and tarpaulin hats, while a well-scrubbed table in the centre of the open space was spread with the remains of a meal that had been partaken of by half a dozen people.

But of the prisoner, or of any closed door behind which he could be confined, there was no sign. She continued to explore, and at the forward end of the deck found an open hatchway with a flight of almost perpendicular wooden steps running down into the pitch darkness of the lower deck. Undaunted by the steepness of the ladder and the absence of light, she descended into the abyss, where the smell of paint and cordage told her that she was near the ship's storeroom. Realizing at once that down here her eyes were useless for the quest, she raised her voice and called----

"Where are you, Mr. Chermside?"

Nothing but silence followed, and emboldened by the fact that none of the _Cobra's_ ruffian crew seemed to be on the lower deck, she called louder still, and this time she got an answer--an inarticulate utterance, half-sigh and half-groan, from out of the inky blackness. Picking her way towards it, her groping hands encountered the blank space of an open door.

"Mr. Chermside, are you in there?" she asked, excitement rather than fear of being overheard causing her to drop her voice to a whisper.

Again that curious sound but no informing reply, and Nettle crept into the cabin. She had penetrated but a few feet when she stumbled over something, and, stooping down, she felt a soft substance which her sense of touch informed her was the body of a man. The next instant she gave vent to a cry of horror when her searching hands came into contact with a steel chain which her busy fingers quickly traced to a metal circlet grasping a man's leg.

"Mr. Chermside!" she scarcely breathed. "Give me water," came the faint response from the unseen.

Nettle Jimpson's presence of mind, which had never really left her, reasserted itself in full force. "Shan't be a moment," she said, and whisking out of the cabin, retraced her steps as best she could to the ladder, climbed to the main-deck, and seized a jug of water from the table where the ship's officers had supped. She looked around for a portable lamp or candle, but this deck, like the rest of the vessel, was electrically lit, and she had abandoned the hope of providing herself with a light, when she espied a box of wax matches among a heap of tobacco ashes on a plate.

A minute later she was down on the lower deck again, holding the jug to Leslie's parched lips, and by the tiny flare of one of the matches examining the dungeon which Brant's malevolent spite had devised for his prisoner. Leslie was lying on a plank bench, securely chained from the ankles to an iron ring firmly set in the stanchion over his head. His face was covered with blood, and he was white with the loss of it, though he revived fast when he had drained the water. By the time Nettle had lit her third match she had assured herself that his injuries were not dangerous, though she was equally convinced that to release him from his cruel durance was beyond her powers.

"Miss Maynard--they have not harmed her?" gasped Leslie, as soon as he could speak.

His ministering angel hastened to reassure him, exaggerating sturdily in a good cause. "She's treated like a queen, with every deference and respect," said the girl, as she eased his cramped position. "Of course, she's worried about you. But see here, Mr. Chermside, we've no time for talking. I must get back to the saloon without being caught if I'm to be of any use. There are only us two women to stand between you and these fiends, and there's only God Almighty to stand between us and--the end of the voyage. There's a bare chance that we may be able to send word into Plymouth, if I can fool or browbeat the captain, and I must be on hand to run that chance for all it's worth. You understand that I can't stay here with you?"

"Yes, go at once," murmured the injured man. "Never mind me, but for heaven's sake do what you can for her. Above all, let me beg of you not to harrow her with a description of all this."

The clank of the chain was eloquent of what he meant, and, promising to observe his wishes, Nettle withdrew. She regained the saloon after her adventure without meeting any one, and to Violet's eager questions she gave the evasively truthful answer that Leslie was recovering from his injuries, but that he was kept a close prisoner on the lower deck, and that she had had to converse with him without seeing him, leaving it to be inferred that she had not entered his cabin. By this means she avoided imparting the gruesome details of the _Cobra's_ "black hole."

Violet steadily refused to retire to the sleeping cabin prepared for her, and the two girls spent what remained of the hours of darkness in the saloon together. In the grey of dawn Nettle went out on to the upper deck, self-possessed as usual, but despondent of success in the task before her. Brant was on the bridge, stumping to and fro to keep himself warm, for there was a chilly nip in the breeze that had sprung up during the night. The little atomy of a skipper seemed in an ominously genial mood, for at sight of Miss Jimpson's fluttering garments he leaned over the bridge-rail and hailed her.

"Hullo, my Weymouth linen-tearer!" he called down. "Shaking into your job nicely, eh? How's her Royal Highness the Maharanee of Sindkhote this morning? I've no doubt that she's confided in you about her brilliant destiny. The day will come when she will look on Simon Brant as a sort of fairy godfather."

Nettle looked round warily. Land was visible on the starboard beam, but so far off that its contour could not be distinguished in the blue haze that preceded sunrise. The distance between the coastline and the steamer, which was now running at full speed, was hardly compatible with an intention to make for an English port. Miss Nettle's Sunday walks and talks with a sailor sweetheart had given her a smattering of sea-lore, and she did not like the look of it. But she was there to assert herself, and did not mean to haul down her colours without striking a blow.

"Drat you for a fairy godfather--you and your Maharanees!" she exclaimed, with a well-feigned indifference to the larger issue, "It's me and my young man I'm thinking about. When do you run into Plymouth, so that I can send my letter?"

"Is it written?" Brant grinned down at her.

"That won't take five minutes. It will be ready long before you can put me within reach of a post office."

Brant grinned again as he followed the direction of her gesture towards the distant land.

"Then don't trouble to write it," he croaked. "I admire your cheek so that I'd break orders for you if I could. But there's five thousand pounds to it, my dear, and the _Cobra_ isn't going to call at Plymouth or any other port till we dump our cargo. If you want a young man, I've no doubt you can be accommodated on board, or if there's none here to your fancy, perhaps the lady will fix you up with a blacky husband in India."

Miss Jimpson's eyes glinted. "Is that your last word?" she said.

"As to calling at Plymouth? Yes, it's my very last word; and now you can start abusing me. I rather like it," came down the captain's shrill treble. And he added maliciously, "We passed the opening of Plymouth Sound an hour ago if it's any use to you to know it."

The girl turned on her heel without further waste of breath. She had never in her heart relied on the miscreant's promise, but she had clung to it as the last chance. And now their last chance had failed. CHAPTER XXVI

ENID IS "MIXED UP"

Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Mallory were too accustomed to their daughter's erratic habits to be perturbed by her non-appearance at the dinner-table. It came natural to them to account for her absence by an invitation, given and accepted on the spur of the moment, to spend an informal evening at the house of some friend, and they would be quite satisfied if she turned up any time before midnight.

It was Mr. Mallory's practice on three evenings of the week to go down to the club after dinner to enjoy a little bridge or whist with some of his cronies, and this being one of the appointed nights he sallied forth about nine o'clock without giving Enid a second thought. If he had known that she was shut up in Travers Nugent's grotto, his opponents at the card-table would have had reason to rejoice; for, always a sound player, he was more than usually deadly that evening.

On going downstairs at the conclusion of the play, he came upon the lantern-jawed Mr. Lazarus Lowch, the foreman of the adjourned inquest. Mr. Lowch was seldom to be found at the club so late, and he was mooning about the ante-room with an abstracted air which promptly changed to purposeful alertness at sight of Mr. Mallory. A less shrewd observer than the old servant of the Foreign Office would have seen that he was the object of this unwonted visitation.

"I should be glad if you could spare me a few minutes, Mallory," said Lowch, in his funereal tones. "It is rather important and in a way personal to yourself. We are on the eve of some striking developments in this murder case, I think."

In common with most of his fellow-members, Mr. Mallory had no great liking for the dismal Lazarus, but, like the old war-horse he was, he pricked up his ears at the reason for the desired interview.

Glancing into the reading-room, he saw that it was unoccupied. "Come in here," he said shortly. "There is no one to overhear us."

"Your mention of overhearing brings me at once to what I want to say," Mr. Lowch proceeded ponderously. "The other day, in this very club, I overheard the most astonishing confirmation----"

"I know. I saw you listening on the stairs when Nugent and Chermside were together in the card-room," Mr. Mallory could not resist the interruption. "Incidentally, you led me into a bit of eavesdropping too, for when I was at pains to inform myself who it was who was so engrossed in that conversation, I couldn't help hearing a few words of what was interesting you."

The sarcasm fell quite flat on Mr. Lazarus Lowch. His hide was as that of a rhinoceros to any such delicate irony. He was one of those who think that the end justifies the means, provided that the end in question entails the discomfort or disparagement of some unfortunate fellow-creature.

"Then if you heard it too, it will simplify my task," he went on serenely. "Mr. Mallory, it will be my duty at the adjourned inquiry to let daylight into the coroner about that fellow Chermside. He is the murderer, as sure as we stand here, and Nugent is shielding him because he wishes to avoid incurring the odium of having introduced a scoundrel into this peaceful spot."

Mr. Mallory could not entirely control the disgust which crept into his face at this open avowal of petty spite. But he was old diplomatist enough to control his voice. "That is not my view of the case," he said, with frigid politeness. And then, as if stung by a scorpion, he for an instant lost the grip in which he was holding himself, and added quickly, "But why am I the recipient of your--what shall I call it--confession? What have your spyings and deductions to do with me more than another?"

Mr. Lowch essayed to impart to his saturnine features an expression of sympathetic concern, and made a failure of the job. Indeed, the facial antics in which he indulged rather suggested the anticipation of malevolent triumph. "You surely, my dear sir, have not forgotten the first sitting of the inquest, and the evidence given thereat by Lieutenant Beauchamp?" he said, trying to adopt an ingratiating tone, but only succeeding in croaking like a raven.

Mr. Mallory guessed what he was making for, but declined to provide the opening. "Well?" was all he said.

"Mr. Beauchamp admitted that on the night of the murder he was on the marsh, close to where the body of Levison was found--at least, I elicited as much from him," said Lowch, warming to his work.

"Yes?" snapped Mr. Mallory, still refusing to be helpful.

"And that he heard a strange cry?"

"So I understood."

"Leaving an impression on the mind of the jury that he knew more of the occurrence than he chose to tell?"

"Not having been on the jury, it is impossible for me to answer that," Mr. Mallory rejoined drily.

Lazarus Lowch bowed slightly as though willing to make the concession, but conscious of his magnanimity in doing so. "Now Mr. Mallory," he went on, clearing his throat as a prelude to the real issue, "I do not mean any offence, but I am more or less in an official position in this inquiry. Mr. Beauchamp had a companion on that evening, and though the name did not transpire in court, it is common knowledge who that companion was. Gossip may be pernicious, but in a place like this it does not err. It will not be denied, I think, that it was your daughter, Miss Enid Mallory, who accompanied Lieutenant Beauchamp on that evening walk?"

Mr. Mallory contrived to keep the curb on himself. He was very angry, but he wanted to know what was coming. Evidently this fatuous busybody had not yet sprung the full force of the tremendous battery with which he believed himself armed.

"There is no need for any mystery," Mr. Mallory replied suavely. "Enid and Reggie Beauchamp are engaged to be married. I am aware that they were together that evening, and with my entire sanction--if that is what you are driving at."

Mr. Lazarus shook his head, as one who is misjudged. "Really, no," came his protesting croak. "I should be the last to impute that kind of secrecy to Miss Mallory. On the contrary, I am sure that she would be quite open about anything of that sort. Nor would it be my business if she wasn't."

"Well, look here, Lowch. What the devil is it that she hasn't been open about that is your business?" exclaimed Enid's father, losing patience at last. "You have got something up your sleeve, I can see. Would it not be better to pull it down and have done with it? But I warn you first that you must be careful how you handle my daughter's good name."

The chronic scowl that made little children run when the local kill-joy approached lifted at the prospect of striking a blow beneath the belt. Lowch even smiled in sickly fashion as he struck it.

"I was on the golf links this afternoon," he began his indictment, "and I happened to see Miss Enid leave at the end of her round, as I thought, for home. Instead of accompanying her friends, however, she parted from them outside the pavilion, and went away alone in the opposite direction. In fact, entirely in the interests of justice, I watched her----"

"Where from?" came the knife-like interruption.

"From behind a gorse-bush," was the unblushing rejoinder. "She went into Mr. Travers Nugent's garden door, which, as you know, abuts on the moor. In a little while she was followed by a disreputable-looking man, who also disappeared into Nugent's garden. He, too, had been taking advantage of a convenient gorse-bush. The deduction is obvious. Nugent and his friend Chermside are deeply implicated in the murder which I am officially investigating, and--er--it looks very much as if Miss Enid, innocently perhaps, is mixed up in it too."

Mr. Mallory's clean-shaven, ascetic face had gone as white as snow. The absence from dinner took on a new complexion by the light of this misbegotten information that she had ventured into the danger zone, and had been shadowed into it by one of its dangerous master's creatures. But the old man's sudden pallor was due as much to the contemptuous rage that overmastered him as to fear for his only child.

"You amazing idiot!" he cried. "Why couldn't you have told me the bare fact of my daughter having been to The Hut at first, without your string of silly insinuations? The delay may mean--but there, words are wasted on such as you----"

He turned to hurry from the room, and there in the doorway, where she had stood for the last half-minute, in defiance of the most stringent rule of the club, was the pretty subject of his anxiety, her sun-browned cheeks all seamed with bramble scratches, her corona of golden hair tumbling over her shoulders, her golf skirt in tatters.

"Don't look so scared, father," she said. "I'm all right. But that person has hit the correct nail about my being very mixed up in it, and you must come away at once, please. I have a lot to tell you."

Ignoring the incoherences of the inquisitive Lazarus, whom they left babbling his willingness to overlook the infraction of the rule against the admission of ladies if they would only have their say out there, father and daughter passed out of the club into the quiet and deserted street. Alive to the value of every second, Enid condensed the narrative of her experience in the grotto into a few words, but she missed no vital point, from her imprisonment by "The Bootlace Man" to her escape twenty minutes ago by the aid of her fellow-prisoner, the French onion-seller. Nor did she omit to repeat the fantastic notions held by Pierre Legros, and the final mystery of Violet Maynard's voice being heard in the garden so late at night.

In his absorption in the momentous tale, Mr. Mallory came to a halt under a street lamp, for they had intuitively turned their steps up the hill homewards. Enid saw the dawn of a great fear in the well-chiselled features she knew so well. But she would not have abstained from slang on the Judgment Day.

"What is it, dad," she said, laying a grimy paw on the sleeve of her father's dinner jacket. "Have I enabled you to spot the winner?" "This is what I make of it on a rough calculation," Mr. Mallory replied. "The Frenchman's suspicions as to Nugent taking Louise Aubin away on a steamer are, of course, all moonshine. It is Violet Maynard who is being decoyed on to the steamer, with Chermside and the murder of that miserable Jew as items in a nice little plot of Nugent's. I have had inquiries made in London lately, and I find that he was thick with that Indian prince whose name was coupled with Violet's in the society rags. I know Bhagwan Singh for an arrogant and pitiless libertine, Enid. That steamer is bound for India."

The old man and the girl stared at each other, comprehending the tragedy in all its naked horror.

"How long ago was it that you heard Miss Maynard passing through the grounds of The Hut on her way to the beach?" Mr. Mallory asked, breaking the strained silence.

"It must have been more than half an hour. I got out through the roof of the grotto almost immediately afterwards; then I went home, and, finding you out, ran down to the club as hard as I could," Enid replied. Then, glancing up at her father's stern, set face, she said abruptly----

"What time does the telephone exchange close?"

"Hours ago--at eight o'clock, and it's now nearly midnight," replied Mr. Mallory, looking at her as if she had gone daft.

"But if we made it all right with the exchange people we could get the wire, I suppose?"

"If you could persuade or bribe them--certainly," said Mr. Mallory, with a touch of impatience. "But what good would it do? You cannot telephone to any one who can prevent Miss Maynard from going on board a steamer which, by your own showing, must have been reached by her long ago."

Enid linked her arm in her father's and began dragging him to the shop where the exchange was worked. "Come along and see," she exclaimed excitedly. "The worst of you clever people is that you never give any one else credit for a gleam of intelligence."

A couple of minutes later they had rung the bell at the private door of the shop, and were parleying with a sleepy individual at an upper window, who was at last induced to come down and open to them.