They marched on for some time. The landscape showed little variety, revealing sandy plains and hills, stretches of mud, rivers and pools, of water left by the sea and filled with fish which had taken refuge there. It was all monotonous, without beauty or majesty, but strange, as anything that has never been seen before or anything that is shapeless must needs be strange.
“We are getting near,” said Simon.
“Yes,” said the Indian, “the tracks are coming in from all directions; and here even are marauders returning northwards, laden with their swag.”
It was now four in the afternoon. Not a rift was visible in the ceiling of motionless clouds. Rain fell in great, heavy drops. For the first time they heard the overhead roar of an aeroplane flying above the insuperable obstacle. . . . They followed a depression in the ground, succeeded by hills. And suddenly a bulky object rose before them. It was the Queen Mary. She was bent in two, almost like a broken toy. And nothing was more lamentable, nothing gave a more dismal impression of ruin and destruction than those two lifeless halves of a once so powerful thing.
There was no one near the wreck.
Simon experienced an extreme emotion on standing before what was left of the big boat which he had seen wrecked so terribly. He could not approach it without that sort of pious horror which one would feel on entering a mighty tomb haunted by the shades of those whom we once knew. He thought of the three clergymen and the French family and the captain; and he shuddered at remembering the moment when, with all the strength of his will and all the imperious power of his love, he had dragged Isabel towards the abyss.
A halt was called. Simon left his horse with the Indians and went forward, accompanied by Antonio. He ran down the steep slope which the stern of the vessel had hollowed in the sand, gripped with both hands a rope which hung beside the rudder and in a few seconds, with the assistance of his feet and knees, reached the stern rail.
Although the deck had listed violently to starboard and a sticky mud was oozing through the planking, he ran to the spot where Isabel and he had sat. The bench had been torn away, but the iron supports were still standing and the rug which she had slung to one of them was there, shrunk, heavy with the water dripping from it and packed, as before the shipwreck, in its straps, which were untouched.
Simon thrust his hand between the wet folds of the rug, as he had seen Isabel do. Not feeling anything, he tried to unfasten the straps, but the leather had swollen and the ends were jammed in the buckles. Then he took his knife, cut the straps and unrolled the rug. The miniature in its pearl setting was gone.
In its place, fixed with a safety-pin, was a sheet of paper.
He unfolded it. On it were these hastily-written words, which Isabel evidently intended for him:
“I was hoping to see you. Haven’t you received my letter? We have spent the night here — in an absolute hell on earth! and we are just leaving. I am uneasy. I feel that some one is prowling around us. Why are not you here?”
“Oh!” Simon stammered, “it’s incredible!”
He showed the note to Antonio, who had joined him, and at once added:
“Miss Bakefield! . . . She spent the night here . . . with her father . . . and they have gone! But where? How are we to save them from so many lurking dangers?”
The Indian read the letter and said, slowly:
“They have not gone back north. I should have seen their tracks.”
“Then. . . . ?”
“Then. . . . I don’t know.”
“But this is awful! See, Antonio, think of all that is threatening them . . . of Rolleston pursuing them! Think of this wild country, swarming with highwaymen and foot-pads! . . . It’s horrible, horrible!”
PART THE SECOND
CHAPTER I. INSIDE THE WRECK
THE EXPEDITION SO gaily launched, in which Simon saw merely a picturesque adventure, such as one reads of in novels, had suddenly become the most formidable tragedy. It was no longer a matter of cinema Indians and circus cow-boys, nor of droll discoveries in fabled lands, but of real dangers, of ruthless brigands operating in regions where no organized force could thwart their enterprises. What could Isabel and her father do, beset by criminals of the worst type?
“Good God!” exclaimed Simon. “How could Lord Bakefield be so rash as to risk this journey? Look here, Antonio, the lady’s-maid told you that Lord Bakefield had gone to London by train, with his wife and daughter. . . .”
“A misunderstanding,” declared the Indian. “He must have seen the duchess to the station and arranged the expedition with Miss Bakefield.”
“Then they’re alone, those two?”
“No, they have two men-servants with them. It’s the four riders whose tracks we picked up.”
“What imprudence!”
“Imprudence, yes. Miss Bakefield told you of it in the intercepted letter, counting on you to take the necessary measures to protect her. Moreover, Lord Bakefield had given orders to his secretary, Williams, and his valet, Charles, to join them. That is why those two poor fellows were put out of action on the road by Rolleston and his six accomplices.”
“Those are the men I’m afraid of,” said Simon, hoarsely. “Have Lord Bakefield and his daughter escaped them? Did the departure of which Miss Bakefield speaks take place before their arrival? How can we find out? Where are we to look for them?”
“Here,” said Antonio.
“On this deserted wreck?”
“There’s a whole crowd inside the wreck,” the Indian affirmed. “Here, we’ll begin by questioning the boy who is watching us over there.”
Leaning against the stump of a broken mast, stood a lean, pasty-faced gutter-snipe, with his hands in his pockets, smoking a huge cigar. Simon went up to him, muttering:
“Very like one of Lord Bakefield’s favourite Havanas. . . . Where did you sneak that cigar?” he asked.
“I ain’t sneaked nuffin, sure as my name’s Jim. It was giv’ me.”
“Who gave it you?”
“My old man.”
“Where is he, your old man?”
“Listen. . . .”
They listened. A noise echoed beneath their feet in the bowels of the wreck. It sounded like the regular blows of a hammer.
“That’s my old man, smashin’ ’er up,” said the urchin, grinning.
“Tell me,” said Simon, “have you seen an elderly gentleman and a young lady who came here on horseback?”
“Dunno,” said the boy, carelessly. “Ask my old man.”
Simon drew Antonio to where a companion-ladder led from the deck to the first-class cabins, as a still legible inscription informed them. They were going down the ladder when Simon, leading the way, struck his foot against something and nearly fell. By the light of a pocket-torch he saw the dead body of a woman. Though the face, which was swollen and bloated and half eaten away, was unrecognizable, certain signs, such as the colour and material of clothes, enabled Simon to identify the French lady whom he had seen with her husband and children. On stooping, he saw that the left hand had been severed at the wrist and that two fingers were lacking on the right hand.
“Poor woman!” he faltered. “Unable to remove her rings and bracelets, the blackguards mutilated her!” And he added. “To think that Isabel was here, that night, in this hell!”
The corridor which they entered as they followed the sound of hammering led them astern. At a sudden turning a man appeared, holding in his hand a lump of iron with which he was striking furiously at the partition-wall of a cabin. Through the ground-glass panes in the ceiling filtered a pale white light which fell full upon the most loathsome face imaginable, a scoundrelly, pallid, cruel face, with a pair of bloodshot eyes and an absolutely bald skull dripping with sweat.
“Keep your distance, mates! Everybody do the best he can in his own! There’s plenty of stuff to go round!”
“The old man ain’t much of a talker,” said the urchin’s shrill voice.
The boy had accompanied them and stood, wit
h a bantering air, puffing great whiffs of smoke. The Indian handed him a fifty-franc note:
“Jim, you have something to tell us. Out with it.”
“That’s all right,” said the boy. “I’m beginnin’ to twig this business. Come along ’ere!”
Guided by the boy, Antonio and Simon passed along other corridors where they found the same fury of destruction. Everywhere fierce-looking ruffians were forcing locks, tearing, splitting, smashing, looting. Everywhere they were seen creeping into dark corners, crawling on their hands and knees, sniffing out booty and seeking, in default of gold or silver, bits of leather or scrap-metal that might prove marketable.
They were beasts of prey, carrion brutes, like those which prowl about a battlefield. Mutilated and stripped corpses bore witness to their ferocity. There were no rings left upon the bodies, no bracelets, watches, or pocket-books; no pins in the men’s ties; no brooches at the women’s throats.
From time to time, here and there, in this workyard of death and hideous theft, the sound of a quarrel arose; two bodies rolling on the ground; shouts, yells of pain, ending in the death-rattle. Two plunderers came to grips; and in a moment one of them was a murderer.
Jim halted in front of a roomy cabin, the lower part of whose sloping floor was under water; but on the upper part were several cane-deck chairs which were almost dry.
“That’s where they spent the night,” he said.
“Who?” asked Simon.
“The three what come on horseback. I was the first on the wreck with my old man. I saw ’em come.”
“But there were four of them.”
“There was one what lay down outside to guard the horses. The other three went to get something out of the rug where you didn’t find nuffin; and they ‘ad their grub and slept in ’ere. This mornin’, after they left, my old man come to go through the cabin and found the old gent’s cigar-case here.
“So they went away again?”
The boy was silent.
“Answer my question, can’t you, boy? They left on horseback, didn’t they, before the others got here? And they’re out of danger?”
The boy held out his hand:
“Two notes,” he demanded.
Simon was on the point of flying at him. But he restrained himself, gave the boy the notes and pulled out his revolver:
“Now then!”
The boy shrugged his shoulders:
“It’s the notes is making me talk, not that thing! . . . Well, it’s like this: when the old gent wanted to start this mornin’, he couldn’t find the old chap what was guarding the four horses near the stern of the vessel, what you got up by.”
“But the horses?”
“Gone!”
“You mean, stolen?”
“‘Arf a mo! The old gent, his daughter and the other gent went off to look for him, following the track of the ‘osses alongside the wreck. That took them to the other part of the Queen Mary, just to the place where the starboard lifeboat was stove in. And then — I was on deck, like I was just now, and I see the whole business as if it was the movies — there was five or six devils got up from behind the lifeboat and rushed at ’em; and a great tall bloke a-leadin’ of ’em with a revolver in each fist. I wouldn’t say everythink passed off quiet, not on neither side. The old gent, ’e defended himself. There was some shootin’; and I see two of ’em fall in the scrimmage.”
“And then? And then?” Simon rapped out, breathlessly.
“I don’t know nuffin about then. A change of pickshers, like at the movies. The old man wanted me for somefink; he took me by the scruff o’ the neck and I lost the end o’ the film like.”
It was now Simon’s turn to seize the young hooligan by the scruff of the neck. He dragged him up the companion-ladder and, having reached a part of the deck where the whole wreck was visible, he said:
“It was over there, the lifeboat?”
“Yuss, over there.”
Simon rushed to the stern of the vessel, slid down the rope and, followed by the Indian and the boy, ran alongside the steamer to the lifeboat which had been torn from the Queen Mary’s deck and cast on the sands some twenty yards from the wreck. It was here that the attack had taken place. Traces of it remained. The body of one of those whom the boy had described as “devils” was half-hidden in a hollow.
But a cry of pain rose from behind the boat. Simon and the Indian ran round it and saw a man cowering there, with his forehead bound up in a bloodstained handkerchief.
“Rolleston!” cried Simon, stopping short in bewilderment. “Edward Rolleston!”
Rolleston! The man whom all accused! The man who had planned the whole affair and recruited the Hastings blackguards in order to make a dash for the wreck and steal the miniature! Rolleston, the murderer of Dolores’ uncle, the murderer of William and Charles! Rolleston, Isabel’s persecutor!
Nevertheless Simon hesitated, profoundly troubled by the sight of his friend. Fearing an outburst of anger on the Indian’s part, he seized him by the arm:
“Wait a moment, Antonio! . . . First, are you really certain?”
For some seconds, neither stirred. Simon was thinking that Rolleston’s presence on the battle-field was the most convincing proof of his guilt. But Antonio declared:
“This is not the man I met in the corridor of the hotel.”
“Ah!” cried Simon. “I was sure of it! In spite of all appearances, I could not admit. . . .”
And he rushed up to his friend, saying:
“Wounded, Ted? It’s not serious, is it, old man?”
The Englishman murmured:
“Is that you, Simon? I didn’t recognize you. My eyes are all misty.”
“You’re not in pain?”
“I should think I was in pain! The bullet must have struck against the skull and then glanced off; and here I’ve been since this morning, half dead. But I shall get over it.”
Simon questioned him anxiously:
“Isabel? What has become of her?”
“I don’t know. . . . I don’t know,” the Englishman said, with an effort. “No . . . no . . . I don’t know. . . .”
“But where do you come from? How do you come to be here?”
“I was with Lord Bakefield and Isabel.”
“Ah!” said Simon. “Then you were of their party?”
“Yes. We spent the night on the Queen Mary . . . and this morning we were set upon here, by the gang. We were retreating, when I dropped. Lord Bakefield and Isabel fell back on the Queen Mary, where it would have been easier for them to defend themselves. Rolleston and his men were not firing at them, however.”
“Rolleston?” echoed Simon.
“A cousin of mine . . . Wilfred Rolleston, a damned brute, capable of anything . . . a scoundrel . . . a crook . . . oh, a madman! A real madman . . . a dipsomaniac. . . .”
“And he’s like you in appearance isn’t he?” asked Simon, understanding the mistake that had been made.
“I suppose so.”
“And it was to steal the miniature and the pearls that he attacked you?”
“That . . . and something else that he’s even more keen on.”
“What?”
“He’s in love with Isabel. He asked her to marry him at a time when he hadn’t fallen so low. Then Bakefield kicked him out.”
“Oh, it would be too awful,” stammered Simon, “if that man had succeeded in kidnapping Isabel!”
He stood up. Rolleston, exhausted, said:
“Save her, Simon.”
“But you, Ted? We can’t leave you. . . .”
“She comes first. He has sworn to have his revenge; he has sworn that Isabel shall be his wife.”
“But what are we to do? Where are we to look for her?” cried Simon, in despair.
At that moment Jim came up, all out of breath. He was followed by a man whom Simon at once recognized as a groom in Lord Bakefield’s service.
“The bloke!” cried Jim. “The one what looked after the horses. . . .
I found him among the rocks . . . d’you see? Over there? They’d tied him up and the horses were tied up in a sort of cave like. . . .”
Simon lost no time:
“Miss Bakefield?”
“Carried off,” replied the man. “Carried off . . . and his lordship as well.”
“Ah!” cried Simon, overwhelmed.
The man continued:
“Rolleston is their leader, Wilfred Rolleston. He came up to me this morning at sunrise, as I was seeing to the horses, and asked me if Lord Bakefield was still there. Then, without waiting for an answer, he knocked me flat, with the help of his men, and had me carried here, where they laid an ambush for his lordship. They didn’t mind what they said before me; and I learnt that Mr. Williams, the secretary, and Charles, my fellow-servant, who were to have joined us and increased the escort, had been attacked by them and, most likely, killed. I learnt too that Rolleston’s idea was to keep Miss Bakefield as a hostage and to send his lordship to his Paris banker’s to get the ransom. Later on, they left me alone. Then I heard two shots and, a little after, they returned with his lordship and Miss Bakefield. Both of them had their hands and feet tied.”
“At what time did all this happen?” asked Simon, quivering with impatience.
“Nine o’clock, sir, or thereabouts.”
“Then they have a day’s start of us?”
“Oh, no! There were provisions in the saddle-bags. They sat eating and drinking and then went to sleep. It was at least two o’clock in the afternoon when they strapped his lordship and Miss Bakefield to a couple of horses and started.”
“In what direction?”
“That way,” said the man-servant, pointing.
“Antonio,” cried Simon, “we must catch them before night! The ruffian’s escort is on foot. Three hours’ gallop will be enough. . . .”
“Our horses are badly done up,” objected the Indian.
“They’ve got to get there, if it kills them.”
Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17) Page 374
