CHAPTER XIX.

THE SECOND MAN.

The evening had come; it was seven o'clock. Towards where London lay, something--a murky, grimy-looking ball, had sunk away half an hour ago, its disappearance being followed after a very short interval by darkness and an increase of the fog, so that those who were out in the night could not see thirty paces ahead of them. Nor of artificial light was there any hereabouts in these gloomy, miserable marshes, except a glimmer that shone from one window of the "Red Rover." Yet, nevertheless, another light was dawning that, later, served to brighten somewhat the dense mist and to make it possible by degrees to see objects fifty yards away, but no further. The light of a moon approaching her second quarter and consequently rising at this time.

Nearer to London than where the inn was--nearer by some three or four hundred paces--and upon the bank close by, where there was a rough causeway running out into the river and down to the point which the lowest tide touched, two men paced slowly--Algernon Bufton and Lewis Granger. Each was now wrapped in a long cloak, that which the latter wore being almost the counterpart of the one that Anne had laid her hand upon that morning in his house--nay, in the mist and grime through which the sickly light of the moon shone fully, it was the counterpart, Bufton's being very similar to it. Each, too, held in his hand, though he had not yet assumed it, a vizard mask.

"You hear that sound?" Granger said to his companion, as now upon his accustomed ear, if not upon the other's, there came a deep grunting noise, a noise as regular as the ticking of a clock. "You hear it and know what it is?"

"I hear nothing yet. Ah! yes; now I catch it. What is the noise?"

"The thumping of oars in rowlocks. It is the quarter-boat of the schooner coming ashore for its victims. And, alas! I fear now that it will get none."

"I fear so, too," said Bufton, glancing under the flap of his hat at the other, who was peering forward along the river-bank as though he might be imagining that still there was a hope of Ariadne and Anne coming. "I fear so, too," Bufton repeated, though as he spoke he knew that nothing could now well prevent there being one victim.

"No time must be wasted," Granger said. "The schooner sails to-night as soon as the boat returns to her. Empty or full, that boat must go back within half an hour."

"What shall we do?" Bufton asked, feeling that he was trembling with excitement.

"Best go on a hundred yards or so up the road they should come. Then, after a quarter of an hour, bid the boat put off. Tell them that we are unable to provide what was expected."

"Yes. Yes. Quick. Let us do that," his companion said, while as he spoke they heard the keel of the boat grate against the causeway. They heard also a whistle given.

"A quarter of an hour," cried Granger, casting his voice towards the spot where the sound had come, "a quarter of an hour. Wait so long," and, doubtless because of the filthy reek and mist around, that voice sounded different in Bufton's ears from usual.

"Ay, ay," was called back hoarsely, in a subdued tone, from the boat. "Shall we come ashore? Shall we be needed?"

"What shall I say?" asked Granger, appearing to hesitate. "What need of----"

"Nay," his companion replied, feverishly it seemed, and in great agitation. "Tell them to do so. To--do so. They may be needed. The women may come."

"So be it." Then Granger called back, "Ay, get ashore, and be ready. You know your work."

"We know it."

"The fool!" thought Bufton. "He has signed his own death-warrant--or as good as a death-warrant."

"Come," said Granger now. "Let us go on a few hundred yards. Then, if nothing appears when ten minutes are past, 'tis very certain we have lost them."

"Ay, of course. Come."

So they walked forward those few hundred yards--they were, indeed, but three hundred--when Granger stopped near a dry dyke, along the bank of which some stunted, miserable bushes grew that, in summer, had sparse leaves upon them, but were now dank and dripping, and said--

"'Tis useless waiting. All is still as death; if wheels were coming we should hear them, as well as the jangle of harness or crack of whip. 'Tis useless. Best go back and send the boat away."

Bufton was trembling even more than before with excitement by this time, and could scarcely stammer, "Yet--yet--'tis best that one--should wait. One go back--to--the boat--and--one wait. They may--they--the women--may come yet."

"'Tis so. Well, go you back! If Anne should see you!--if--go back, I say--I--will--follow--I will follow;" and he, ordinarily so cool and collected, stammered somewhat himself.

"So be it. You will follow? Soon! Will you not?"

"Ere you have gone a hundred yards, half the distance. Go. Go. Walk slowly--to--to--give--them--the women time even now to come. Yet--stay--those guineas--for--the master."

"He has not earned them," Bufton said, appearing to hesitate about parting with his money. "He has not earned them. He----"

"No matter! Give them to me. When I come up to you we will send them off by the man in charge of the boat. The master will earn them--later. When he returns to England."

With still an affectation of disliking to part with the money, Bufton, nevertheless, drew a silken purse forth and handed it to the other, chuckling inwardly to himself at how Granger, who was now to be the "second man," would carry upon his own person the price of his enslavement--of his doom.

Then he prepared to set forth towards the causeway, where the boat was.

"Walk slowly, there is no hurry," Granger whispered; "the quarter of an hour is not yet passed. And pause once or twice--look--back; may wish you to return--to assist, if--if--at the last moment I should hear them coming."

"I will," Bufton said, "I will"; and added to himself, "I will walk slowly, and look back more than once--to make sure of you."

Whereon he set out.

As he did so, and before he had gone thirty paces Granger went off swiftly at left angles to the path the man was following--off into the mist and fog, so that none on that path, not even Bufton could see him. Yet, still, there was a figure standing where he had stood--a figure enshrouded in a long cloak, with, hanging over its brows, a flapping broad-brimmed hat--a figure that, as Granger vanished, stepped out from behind the bush by the dyke's side and stood there for some moments.

And that figure saw the man ahead turn back and look at it, while, when Bufton had done so a second time, it called out in a gruff, fog-choked voice, "Hist! I am coming now. 'Tis useless."

"Ay, come on," replied Bufton. "Come on now. 'Tis useless."

While, as he spoke, he went on himself.

Yet, because of the state of the atmosphere, he did not know that ahead of him a "first man" (who had been listening with straining ears for his oncoming footsteps--who had, by a detour, come panting to the spot sixty yards ahead of where he was) was now walking along towards the causeway. A figure, masked as those behind him were, which, hearing a deep, husky voice close by say, "You are the 'first.' Is the 'second' coming?" answered from beneath the folds of the cloak he held across his mouth, doubtless to keep out the fog--

"Ay, he is coming."

"And--he is to be taken at all hazards?"

"At all hazards."

In truth the other was coming, though still turning and turning again, to see that his supposed victim was following him. And he did see that that supposed victim was following in his footsteps. Then he turned for the last time, gloating in his triumph, rejoicing that now--in a few moments--Granger would be gone from out his path for ever; turned to find himself confronted by three shadowy forms close to him, which, ere he could utter a cry, had sprung at him; one, the biggest and most burly, almost choking the life out of him with the brawny hands that were clenched upon his windpipe. Yet now he struggled to be free, as the rat in the trap, the panther caged, will struggle for freedom when snared and doomed; struggled so, that, at last, one of those figures struck him on the head with a bludgeon, and knocked him senseless.

"Away," that burly figure cried now. "Away with him to the boat. The time is past. Hark to the anchor cable grating through the hawse-hole; they are making ready. Away with him."

Whereupon they bore the miserable man off to the causeway, carrying him face downwards, and with still upon his face the vizard over which blood streamed now from the wound upon his crown, when, throwing him into the boat, they made off for the _Nederland_.

Then Granger stepped out from the dark obscurity to which he had retreated after speaking to the sailor who had greeted him as the "first man" and had asked if the second was coming, and went back to meet that other shrouded figure which had taken his place.

"He is gone," he said; "we are avenged and you are free. You heard?" Then, suddenly, he cried, as he saw Anne reel towards him, "What is it? You do not regret, surely?"

"Nay," the girl replied, falling almost fainting into his arms. "Nay. There is no regret, and he deserves his fate--whatsoever it may be. Yet--yet--actress as I have been--the strain was too much. Granger, help me now to get back to your house to change my clothes, and, next, to get on board the _Mignonne_."

"First come to the 'Red Rover' and have something to revive you. Come."

"Hark," she said, pausing in the step she had taken towards the inn, "hark. What is that out there in the river? That shouting?"

"It is the men's cries as they haul on to the halyards, so as to be ready when the wind comes. Yet the schooner has enough tide beneath her to carry her swiftly down to the open. Listen, Anne, their voices are becoming fainter.

"I hear. They are moving."

"They are moving. In ten minutes they will be gone."

As they sat together later, and he ministered to her wants, recognising well that, without her bravery to assist him, he could never have turned the tables so thoroughly upon Bufton's villainous scheme as he had done, he remembered the fifty guineas which the latter had handed over to him at the last moment. Whereupon he passed them over to the girl.

"They are yours, Anne. You are his lawful wife--soon, doubtless, you will be his executrix. He has still money about him, which I make no doubt the skipper of the _Nederland_ will appropriate. He will land a beggar. Heaven help him!"

"You say that?" Anne exclaimed, "Heaven help him! Help him who ruined you. You can say that?"

"No," he cried savagely. "No. I do not say it. I retract. Damn him! he forged Lord Glastonbury's name, but passed the bill to me, since he owed me one-half the sum, and I paid it into Child's bank. Then, when Glastonbury caused me to be arrested on board the ship I served in, and I stated where I had obtained the bill, that craven hound now going to his fate swore he knew nought about it--that my story was a fabrication. But that his lordship and I loved the same woman, and she sacrificed herself to save my neck--unknown to me--as well as paid the money to the bankers, I should have swung at Tyburn."

"Wherefore," said Anne, "you forgave him for the time--with an end in view."

"With an end in view. An end, my determination to reach which never slackened. And it is reached. Anne, it is borne in on me that he will never come back. If he does, then----"

"He never will return," said Anne. "It is also borne in on me. Now let us go," and she moved towards the door, throwing over her the great cloak which she had removed after the drawer had quitted the room, and replacing the hat.

"You have forgotten the guineas," said Granger, noticing that she had let them lie unheeded where he had originally placed them.

"The guineas!" the girl cried. "The guineas! His money! I will never take them--never touch them. Except," she cried, seizing on the packet, "to fling them into the river. Never! Never!"

"Be not foolish. They are yours. Can you devise no means to which you can put them?"

"Ay," she said a moment later, and after thinking deeply while she stood gazing down at the table. "Ay, I can. Kitty's grave is a lonely, desolate one. Now it shall be brightened and made cheerful with the money of the man who drove her to death. Come," and as she spoke she took the packet and dropped it into her pocket. "Come, I must get back."

So Lewis Granger took the girl back to Brunswick Stairs and sent her off by a shore boat to the _Mignonne_, he learning on shore, and she when she, stepped on board the frigate, that Sir Geoffrey had set out an hour ago to board the _Nederland_, so as to take from out of her some of the men who were now so much required.

"For," said Ariadne, whom she found in the state cabin, "Sir Edward Hawke sails in a fortnight for Torbay, thence to set out and attack the French. And, Anne, the _Mignonne_ goes as one of the frigates. Oh, Anne!"

"It must be so. Be brave, darling. Sir Geoffrey is a sailor, as your father and my father were. It is duty. But--Ariadne--be cheered also with one small thing. Sir Geoffrey will be back to-night in an hour."

"In an hour?"

"Ay, in an hour. The _Nederland_ has sailed."

"Sailed! With all those wretched trepanned creatures on board!"

"With them all. And with one other besides, trepanned as he would have trepanned you and me had he had his will, and as he would have done to Lewis Granger, too."

Whereon she told her foster-sister everything.