CHAPTER XXXIII

"Hallo--what's that?"

A red glare of light saturated the low hanging clouds and suddenly vanished. Close, windless air vibrated under the detonation of heavy artillery. A Sergeant, who had been concealed in the shelter of a stone wall which ran round Captain Cherriton's cottage, turned to the man at his side.

"What d'you reckon it is, Nobby?"

"It must be night practice."

"Not it," answered the Sergeant, "that's the 'nine-inch' at Heatherpoint, with a full charge!"

As the words left his lips a second crashing roar reverberated from the fort. Then, almost before Sergeant Watson could further comment upon the fact, a sound like rapid beating of a tom-tom came to them. Busy, drum-like notes, some deep and long-drawn, as if coming from the bowels of the earth, some sharp, short, and angry, took up the refrain.

"Hallo!" exclaimed Watson, amazed, "they're all at it. There's something up."

He stared at the sky, thence out to sea.

"Hallo, where's all our searchlights?" exclaimed Nobby.

"That's just what I was going to ask you," Watson answered; then instantly dropped down behind the wall, pulling his companion with him. Watson had seen a figure approaching from the road. The stranger wore mufti and a soft felt hat, and as he came stumbling and hurrying through the grass, leaping artillery flashes momentarily lifted him into view, and again plunged him into utter darkness.

Watson, with Nobby and two other men, had, under John's directions, kept a three-days' watch on Cherriton's cottage. At the present moment Cherriton himself was alone in the low, single-storied building which, from two workmen's dwellings, had been converted into an artistic residence.

Watson waited. And presently, in the silence between the roll of drumfire at the western end of the island, he could hear the fall of footsteps, and presently, through the screen of bushes, and in the light of gunfire he made out the figure of a tall young man, whose face for a moment looked familiar to him, then caused him to pull Nobby by the arm.

"Who is it, Nobby?" he asked.

The new-comer had reached Cherriton's gate and was hurrying into the little garden.

"Why, it's Lieutenant Treves!"

"What's he doing out of uniform?"

"I don't know," answered Nobby. "It's him right enough. Look again."

"He looks as if he'd had the fright of his life--I've never seen him look like that."

"Nor me, neither," answered Nobby, eyeing the figure hurrying towards Cherriton's door.

Both men watched the visitor disappear into the cottage, then discussed the matter in low tones. There was something that puzzled them about Treves's visit to Captain Cherriton--there was something that to Sergeant Watson's intelligent mind seemed altogether wrong about that visit, and yet he could not tell what.

Cherriton had been at the back window of his cottage peering out since the heavy gunfire began, and a look of triumph animated his pallid, hollow-cheeked countenance. He was startled at length by a low, feverish rapping at the cottage door. He paused a moment in thought before answering, then shifted a Mauser pistol from his hip pocket to the left hand pocket of his coat. He was a left-handed man, a fact which at certain moments of crisis was apt to redound to his advantage. With a due amount of caution he drew open the door, and the man from the threshold strode in upon him.

As Cherriton's eyes fell upon the stranger in the candle light the lines of his mouth altered.

"Why, it's you, Treves--this is a surprise!" he exclaimed. He gripped the young man's hand and drew him forward into the room.

Bernard Treves, pale, haggard, swept the room with his restless glance. His likeness to John Manton was striking even now.

"Have you got anybody here?" he asked quickly.

"No."

"Where's Manners?"

"He isn't here," answered Cherriton.

"Where is he?" Treves came forward and laid a hand on the other's arm. "I must see Manners."

"Why?"

Cherriton looked at him with sudden malice. He felt that this man who had tricked and betrayed them from the beginning, was still pursuing his deep game. However, they were playing now upon even terms. Mrs. Beecher Monmouth's information had opened wide his eyes. Moreover, a mandate had been issued. General von Kuhne had spoken....

A sickly smile crossed the visitor's pallid, handsome countenance. "It's no good trying to keep it quiet," he said; "but I must have cocaine. It's a matter of life and death with me. Look at my hands!"

He held out his hands which shook visibly.

"I don't mind saying it," he went on; "but I've been pretty nearly over the brink two or three times lately. Yesterday I tried every chemist's shop in Ryde and Newport, but I couldn't get anything."

He wiped his brow with a handkerchief. Cherriton was regarding him closely, puzzled at the change in him.

"You managed to get along without it for a long time," retorted Cherriton, looking at him coldly.

"I had to--there was nothing else for it. That damned nursing home----" Suddenly he put out his hand and laid it on the German's arm. "Where's Manners, for God's sake tell me--tell me? I must have some----"

Then he became aware of a narrowing of the other's gaze. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

The Captain laughed.

"Don't do it; it makes my blood run cold," Treves protested.

"I was thinking of your drug habit--how conveniently it comes and goes."

"Don't sneer at me, for God's sake," pleaded Treves. "I'm desperate." He walked the floor in a state of nervous tension, which would have been pitiable to witness, had there been in Cherriton any spirit of mercy. "It seems there's been a law passed forbidding chemists--you can't get cocaine anywhere," he jerked out, hopelessly.

Cherriton's dark gaze was again upon him.

"I can't give you cocaine, Treves," he said, "but if you come into my bedroom there, I'll give you something else."

Treves clutched his arm.

"What?"

"Morphia," answered Cherriton.

He led the way into a low-ceilinged bedroom at the end of the cottage, carrying the candle from the parlour table as he went. He placed the light on the dressing table near the window, took a key from his pocket, and opened a drawer in the only chest of drawers in the small room.

Treves, watching him with impatient eyes, moistened his lips and waited.

Cherriton searched in the drawer and drew out a syringe and a small bottle.

"Here," he said to Treves, "sit over on the chair near the dressing table."

Treves greedily eyed the syringe, and obediently seated himself with his back to the little mirror. The candle on the white dimity cloth of the dressing table threw its light full upon him. He watched Cherriton fill the syringe with morphia, and almost clutched it from his hand.

"Wait," said the German, holding him off, "you shall have it full."

"Thanks--thanks--thanks."

Treves watched him as a famished dog watches a bone.

"You don't know what I've suffered, Cherriton--that nursing home, St. Neot's, curse it--it's been hell!"

"You are so clever, Treves, I wonder you didn't get cocaine before?"

"My God, if you knew how I've tried."

Cherriton was standing about a yard away from Treves, with his big chin thrust forward. The expression of his face at that moment would have shot terror into his visitor's heart, if he had lifted his eyes. But Treves was busy. He was pulling back his sleeve, and in another instant he had dug the needle into the flesh of his forearm. His lips tightened as he forced the morphia into his blood. Then he slowly raised his head, a look of ecstatic happiness glowed in his eyes; he drew a deep sigh of contentment.

"A-h-h," he exclaimed.

And Cherriton, who had been standing still as a statue, still as death, moved. The veiled light in his eyes blazed into murder. With swiftness and stealth he whipped the Mauser from his pocket, aimed and fired. His shot passed through Treves's heart.... Before the reverberation had died, he fired into Treves's body a second time, and this time so near was he that the blaze scorched his victim's waistcoat. He had made assurance doubly sure, and his next quick move was to lean forward, blow out the candle, drop his pistol near the body, that had fallen heavily, and fling open the window.

Two minutes later he was speeding swiftly across the yard at the back of the cottage. As he ran a gun-flash from Heatherpoint lifted the darkness for a moment, and again he was enveloped in the surrounding gloom.

Before Sergeant Watson and his three men could reach the door of the cottage, Cherriton had vanished into a clump of trees.

"There's something wrong!" said Watson. "I'm going in." He took Nobby with him, hurried along the path, and knocked at Cherriton's portal.

No answer came. He thrust open the door and found the living-room in darkness; he struck a match, lit a candle from the mantelshelf, and held it aloft.

"Hallo, there's nobody here."

The door of the bedroom was open, and the draught--a puff of close air--from the open window beyond suddenly blew shut the front door with a crash.

Sergeant Watson was a man of steady nerve, but he did not like the crash, neither did he like the silence, the heavy, brooding silence. Nevertheless, he lifted his voice valiantly.

"Is there anybody there?" he called.

He could hear the curtain rings faintly rattling in the bedroom, but no answer came to him. Then with the candle in his hand and followed by Nobby, gripping his rifle, he went into Cherriton's bedroom. On the floor beyond the end of Cherriton's bed, near the dressing table, they could see a foot and the lower part of Treves's trouser leg.

"My God!" exclaimed Watson, hurrying forward with a fleeting glance at the open window.

The figure lying near the dressing table with a revolver near it, and a morphia syringe a little distance away, was huddled and motionless.

* * * * *

Three minutes later, Watson, Nobby and two other men stood in an open space on the downs, forty yards before Cherriton's cottage. Watson was busy rearing a tripod stand about five feet in height. When the tripod was ready Nobby handed him a lantern, which was dexterously screwed upon its apex. He struck a match, lit the lantern and flicked open a shutter.

"Stand back out of the line of light," he cried to one of his men.

Then with little scraping clicks of the lantern shutter, the single eye of light turned westward, he began to spell out a message.

Three times he gave his opening call before receiving an answer by signal lantern from behind the fort at Freshwater. Having achieved connection he patiently spelt out the following message:

"Report to officer in command Heatherpoint."

"Who are you?" came the answer.

"Watson, emergency light number 6."

"Yes, what is it?"

"Lieutenant Treves been murdered. Lying dead Heather Cottage."

The lantern at Freshwater took the message, and before signalling on said, "Repeat."

Watson, with a grim face, repeated the message and added:

"Shot by Captain Cherriton. Murderer escaped, running north by east."