Chapter Thirty-four

She looked at him bewildered, as though she could not grasp the meaning of his words.

“That I marry you?” she repeated.

“That you marry me to-morrow. I took the precaution this afternoon of going to Doctors’ Commons and securing a special licence, which allows me to be married to-morrow morning. I had some trouble in getting it, but it is here----” he tapped his breast pocket. “Before leaving London I telegraphed to the vicar of Leitworth, a village some thirty miles from here, and asked him to perform the ceremony at ten o’clock to-morrow morning.”

His face was white; he was obviously labouring under the stress of some tense emotion. Presently he went on in a lower voice:

“I will make you a rich woman. I will place you and your mother beyond want. I will give you a position in the world that you could not dream you would ever occupy. I’ll do something more.” He came closer to her, and before she realised what he was doing he had gripped her shoulders. “I will clear your mother’s name--I can’t give her back the years she has spent in prison----”

She drew back out of his grasp.

“No!” she said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. It may be true--all these things you say--but I can’t marry you, Mr. Praye, and I--I don’t believe you. My mother is in prison.”

“Your mother is in this house.”

He strode to the door and, pulling it open, called the doctor by name.

“Bring down Mrs. Pinder,” he said.

The girl stood at the farther end of the room, her hands clasped together, waiting, hoping, yet not daring to hope. She heard a light step on the stair, again the door opened and the woman came in.

One glance at that serene face was sufficient. In another second they were in one another’s arms, and the girl was sobbing on her mother’s breast.

For a minute there was silence in the room, and only the murmured endearments of the older woman interrupted. Then Mrs. Pinder held the girl at arm’s length and looked into her tear-stained face.

“My little Lois!” she said softly. “It hardly seems possible.”

Lois tried to speak.

“And have you come to take me away?”

Watching the girl, Chesney saw her nod, and his hopes bounded as he introduced himself.

“I am Chesney Praye,” he said awkwardly, “a--a friend of Miss Reddle.”

“Reddle? Then Mrs. Reddle gave you her name?” She looked at Chesney. “When do we go?” she asked.

“As soon as certain conditions are fulfilled. Will you leave us, Mrs. Pinder?”

The woman’s eyes fell upon the girl. Gathering her in her arms, she kissed her tenderly. Chesney, in his feverish anxiety, almost tore them apart in his urgency. He closed the door upon Mrs. Pinder and came back to the girl.

“Well?” he said. “I told you the truth?”

She nodded.

“And you’ll do this?”

“Marry you?” She shook her head.

“But you told your mother you would!” he said furiously. “You know what it means, don’t you, if you refuse?”

“I can’t, I can’t! How can I marry you, Mr. Praye? You’re engaged to the Countess of Moron----”

He interrupted her with an oath.

“Never mind about the countess! You know what I’m doing for you, don’t you? I’m saving your life, I’m giving you your mother----”

She looked past him at the closed door.

“I can’t!” she said helplessly. “How can you ask me to decide? I--I don’t know you, you must give me time.”

“I’ll give you as much time as it will take you to sign this paper.”

He pulled out a sheet of foolscap from his pocket and laid it on the table.

“What is that?” she said.

“It’s an agreement. You needn’t trouble to read it. Just put your signature here, and I’ll bring in the doctor to witness it.”

“But what is the document?” she asked, and tried to turn it back to the first page, but he prevented her.

Her suspicion was growing, and the reaction from that tremendous meeting had left her chilled and numb. Into her heart had crept an uneasy suspicion that the conditions he offered were not in his power to fulfil. All her instincts told her this man’s word was valueless.

“I can do nothing until I have seen Mr. Dorn.”

Why she mentioned the detective’s name at all, she could not understand. She wanted time. She mentioned the first name that occurred to her, and might as well have referred to Mr. Shaddles.

“Dorn! So that’s how the land lies, eh? Michael Dorn is the favoured gentleman? Well, Dorn or no Dorn, you’ll marry me to-morrow morning at ten o’clock. I’ve gone too far to pull back now. And Dorn’s dead, anyway.”

“Dead?” she cried in horror.

“He came here this morning, looking for you, and----”

The door was opening slowly.

“I don’t want you, Tappatt. Shut the door, damn you!”

But still it was moving, slowly, slowly. And then around the edge came the black muzzle of a pistol, an arm, and then, last, the smiling face of Michael Dorn!

“Put up your hands, Praye!” he said. “I want you!”

As the door opened and the hand came in, Chesney Praye’s fingers closed around an ebony ruler, and then, at the hateful sight of Michael Dorn’s face, he struck at the oil lamp that stood on the table. There was a crash, a jangle of broken glass, and Lois screamed.

Praye darted past her; she heard the thud of the door, and a grunt from somebody. In another second the two men were at grips and she shrank back farther and farther into a corner of the room, as tables and chairs became involved in the struggle. She heard Chesney screaming for the doctor at the top of his voice.

“Doctor--help! Get this swine!” And there came to the frightened ears of the girl the sound of the door being wrenched open, the scurry of footsteps, and Chesney’s voice was silent.

“Stay where you are!”

The room reeked with the smell of kerosene.

“Don’t strike a light,” said Michael’s voice, but even as he spoke a white flame leapt up from the hearth. The flowing oil had reached some red-hot embers, and in a second the whole floor was blazing.

The girl was paralysed with fear, but before she could move he had picked her up and carried her into the passage.

“Go into the back, quick! The dogs won’t hurt you,” he said, and flew up the stairs, bursting into Mrs. Pinder’s prison.

The room in which Mrs. Pinder had been confined was empty. There was no sign of the doctor or of the woman. He came down into the hall again and ran to the front door. As he opened the door, he saw Chesney’s big car going full speed towards the closed gates. There was a crack and a crash, the gates flew open, and the tail lights disappeared as the car turned on to the road.

The front room was now blazing. He tried the housekeeper’s room: that also was empty. There was no need for further search. Dr. Tappatt had got away, and with him the unhappy mother of Lois.

He rejoined the girl and she told him what had happened before he came into the room.

“That is it,” he said bitterly. “The doctor was listening at the door and, thinking he was going to be left in the lurch, decided to make his getaway. When Praye turned your mother from the room he must have put her into the car, and probably unfastened the gate when he heard the fight.”

“Where will he have taken her? What will happen?” she asked fearfully.

Her nerve had gone, and she clung to him like a frightened child, and as he held the quivering figure in his arms, the world and all its sordid horrors dropped away from him and for a second he lived in a heaven of happiness.

“Child, child!” His hand trembled as it touched her cheek. “Your mother is not in danger--they dare not.”

“I am an hysterical fool!” she sobbed as she rubbed her face against his coat. “But, Michael, I am so frightened. What will happen to my mother?”

“Nothing; they will not dare injure her.”

The fire had taken hold; great tongues of flame were leaping up from the roof.

“It will burn like tinder. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” she said, in surprise.

“I mean I’m sorry to see property destroyed. I don’t suppose it is insured,” was his strange reply. “I’ll pull the Buick out of the shed before the fire gets to it.”

As they were walking across the yard to the extemporised garage, he caught her arm and drew her from the path, and, looking down, she saw the stiff figure of a dog.

“I had to shoot them,” he said. “I used a silencer, because I thought the doctor would hear.”

“But they told me you were dead?”

“I’ll tell you about it some day,” he answered briefly, and gave his whole attention to breaking the lock of the shed.

Presently he hauled out the car and examined the petrol tank.

“There is enough to get us to the nearest village,” he said; “the spare tin is full.”

He got the car round to the front of the house, and was standing watching the havoc of the flames when the first police cyclist came thunderously from the direction of Whitcombe.

“Nobody is hurt except me,” said Michael in answer to the man’s enquiry, “and in my case it is only a question of feelings. You didn’t pass a car on your way?”

“Yes, I passed a big car, with three or four people in it.”

“Which way did they go?”

“They took the Newbury Road.”

“Then we also will take the Newbury Road,” said Michael.

On the journey back to London he told Lois what had happened to him.

“I pretty well knew that he’d get you out of the house in the night, but I also knew that he couldn’t take you far. It was impossible to watch all sides of the house, and besides, it would have been as impossible to get back on foot in time to intercept him. As I expected, the house was empty when I made my search. I had formed a plan which was fairly elementary. When he showed me the underground cellar room, I slipped a spare gun and a small kit of tools amongst the bedding, for I guessed that would be the place he would put me--that is, if he managed to catch me. Honestly, I don’t believe he thought of drugging me until I suggested it myself, and then he did his work in the most clumsy way. He told me that he heard somebody moving outside in order to distract my attention, and of course my attention was distracted. When he had dropped the dope into my coffee, I had a little distraction of my own. I found an excuse to go out into the yard, poured away the coffee, and when I came back I stood in the doorway, giving him the impression that I was drinking. I was standing and he was sitting, so he couldn’t tell whether there was coffee in the cup or not. But he was so smugly satisfied that he did what I knew he would do--‘lured’ me down into the underground room--and I was glad to be lured. I knew that the moment I was safely under lock and key, he would bring you back again. I had cached my gun and tools, and when he came in and found me unconscious, he did not trouble to search the room again. If he had, he would have been shocked to have had a most unpleasant beating from the helpless creature on the bed!”

“But how did you get out?”

“That was easy. Almost any key could have opened that old-fashioned lock, and I came prepared with several. I waited all day because I was certain that he would not bring you back until night. The handcuffs were the most difficult part; I hadn’t a key to fit them. It took me two hours’ hard work and a nearly dislocated thumb to slip them off.”

They stopped at an all-night filling station, replenished the tank, and continued their way to London.

“I know one person who will be happy to-night,” said Michael, as the car sped up the Bayswater Road. “I wonder whether she got the day off?”

“Whom do you mean?” asked the girl, aroused from an unpleasant reverie.

“Miss Elizabeth Smith.”

“Mr. Dorn, do you really think that there’s no danger to my mother?” she asked, for the moment oblivious to everything except the woman’s danger.

“None, I should imagine,” he said.

The car stopped before the house in Charlotte Street, and Mr. Mackenzie answered the knock.

“Have you Miss Smith with you?” he asked, after he had welcomed the girl.

“Lizzy?” said Lois in surprise. “She wasn’t with me. I haven’t seen her. Why do you ask?”

“She went to Gallows Farm with his lordship.”

“With his lordship?” said Michael, in surprise. “Do you mean Lord Moron?”

“They left at eight o’clock,” said the old man, “in a hired car.”

Michael and the girl were in the old man’s room when he gave them this information, and the two exchanged glances. Here was an unforeseen complication.

“I saw no sign of a car, hired or otherwise,” he said. “And Moron--phew!” He whistled.

“Perhaps they lost their way,” suggested Lois, and he seemed prepared to accept the suggestion.

“If you don’t mind, Miss Reddle, I’ll wait here until they have returned,” he said, and then: “You don’t wish to call up Lady Moron, I suppose?”

Lois shuddered.

“No, no, not that terrible woman.”

“So you know--or rather, you guess?”

Lois shook her head.

“I know nothing. The whole thing is a mystery to me. It is so confusing that I think I should go mad, only I’m so grateful to be here,” she smiled, and held out her hand. “And I knew that it would be you who would come for me, just as I know it will be you who will restore my mother to me.”

He took her hand and held it, his eyes searching hers.

“I’m going to tell you something,” he said in a low voice. They were alone in the little room, and she felt her heart beating in time with the cheap American clock on the table. “I suppose I really oughtn’t to say anything,” he said, “because I have no right. But I feel if I don’t tell you I may never have another opportunity.”

She had dropped her eyes before his, but now she looked at him again.

“I love you,” he said simply. “I can’t marry you, I won’t ask you to marry me, and that is what makes this folly of mine all the more mad! But I want you to believe that it has been a happiness to work for you.”

“For me?” she said. “Why, of course, you’ve worked very hard for me.”

“And I have been paid very well,” was the disconcerting rejoinder. “But I would do it again and pay all the money I have in the world for the privilege.”

Suddenly he released her hand, and when she smiled up at him he, too, was smiling.

“Two declarations of love in one night is more than any reasonable girl can expect,” he said flippantly.

“One declaration of love,” she said in a low voice, “and one offer of marriage--quite different, isn’t it?”

“I’m not an authority on these matters,” he said with a sigh, and looked up at the loud-ticking clock.

Michael saw the hour and frowned.

“I’m rather worried about these people; where on earth can they have got? You don’t feel worried about sleeping here to-night alone--if you have to sleep alone?”

She shook her head.

“I’m troubled about Lizzy,” she said. “Poor Lord Moron! I wonder what his mother would say if she knew.”

“She probably knows,” said Michael.

It was at that moment they heard Lizzy’s voice in the hall and the sound of feet on the stairs.

Lois ran out to the landing and looked down into the lighted hall.

“Michael!” she called wildly, and he was at her side. “Look--oh, look!” she said in a hushed voice.

And Michael Dorn looked--and wondered!