Blue Hand

by Edgar Wallace

  She feared him more now in his grotesque woman garb, with that smile of his playing upon his thin lips, than when he had held her in his arms, and his hot kisses rained on her face. It was the brain behind those dark eyes, the cool, calculating brain that had planned her abduction with such minute care, that she had never dreamt she was being duped—this was what terrified her. What was his plan now? she wondered. What scheme had he evolved to escape from Rugby, where he must know the station officials would be looking for him?

  Lady Mary had seen her and recognized her and would have telegraphed to the officials to search the train. The thought of Lady Mary started a new line of speculation. Her mother! That beautiful woman of whom she had been jealous. A smile dawned on her face, a smile of sheer joy and happiness, and Digby Groat, watching her, wondered what was the cause.

  She puzzled him more than he puzzled her.

  “What are you smiling at?” he asked curiously, and as she looked at him the smile faded from her face. “You are thinking that you will be rescued at Rugby,” he bantered.

  “Rugby,” she said quickly. “Is that where the train stops?” And he grinned.

  “You’re the most surprising person. You are constantly trapping me into giving you information,” he mocked her. “Yes, the train will stop at Rugby.” He looked at his watch and she heard him utter an exclamation. “We are nearly there,” he said, and then he took from the little silk bag he carried in his role of an elderly woman a small black case, and at the sight of it Eunice shrank back.

  “Not that, not that,” she begged. “Please don’t do that.”

  He looked at her.

  “Will you swear that you will not make any attempt to scream or cry out so that you will attract attention?”

  “Yes, yes,” she said eagerly. “I will promise you.”

  She could promise that with safety, for if the people on the platform did not recognize her, her case was hopeless.

  “I will take the risk,” he said. “I am probably a fool, but I trust you. If you betray me, you will not live to witness the success of your plans, my friend.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  SHE breathed more freely when she saw the little black case dropped into the bag, and then the speed of the train suddenly slackened and stopped with such a violent jerk that she was almost thrown from the seat.

  “Is there an accident?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Digby, showing his teeth mirthlessly. He had adjusted his wig and his bonnet and now he was letting down the window and looking out into the night. There came to his ears a sound of voices up the line and a vista of signal lamps. He turned to the girl as he opened the door.

  “Come along,” he commanded sharply, and she stood aghast.

  “We are not in the platform.”

  “Come out quickly,” he snarled. “Remember you promised.”

  With difficulty she lowered herself in the darkness and his arm supported her as she dropped to the permanent way. Still clutching her arm, they stumbled and slid down the steep embankment and came presently to a field of high grass. Her shoes and stockings were sodden by the rain which was falling more heavily than ever, and she could scarcely keep her feet, but the hand that gripped her arm did not relax, nor did its owner hesitate. He seemed to know the way they were going, though to the girl it was impossible to see a yard before her.

  The pitiless rain soaked her through and through before she had half crossed the field. She heard Digby curse as he caught his foot in his skirt, and at any other time she might have laughed at the picture she conjured up of this debonair man, in his woman’s dress. But now she was too terrified to be even amused.

  But she had that courage which goes with great fear. The soul courage which rises superior to the weakness of the flesh.

  Once Digby stopped and listened. He heard nothing but the patter of the rain and the silvery splash of the water as it ran from the bushes. He sank on his knees and looked along the ground, striving to get a skyline, but the railway embankment made it impossible. The train was moving on when the girl looked back, and she wondered why it had stopped so providentially at that spot.

  “I could have sworn I heard somebody squelching through the mud,” said Digby. “Come along, there is the car.”

  She caught the faint glimmer of a light and immediately afterwards they left the rough and soggy fields and reached the hard road, where walking was something more of a pleasure.

  The girl had lost one shoe in her progress and now she kicked off the other. It was no protection from the rain, for the thin sole was soaked through, so that it was more comfortable walking in her stockinged feet.

  The distance they had traversed was not far. They came from the side-lane on to the main road, where a closed car was standing, and Digby hustled her in, saying a few low words to the driver, and followed her.

  “Phew, this cursed rain,” he said, and added with a laugh! “I ought not to complain. It has been a very good friend to me.”

  Suddenly there was a gleam of light in the car. He had switched on a small electric lamp.

  “Where are your shoes?” he demanded.

  “I left them in the field,” she said.

  “Damn you, why did you do that?” he demanded angrily. “You think you were leaving a clue for your lover, I suppose?”

  “Don’t be unreasonable, Mr. Groat. They weren’t my shoes, so they couldn’t be very much of a clue for him. They were wet through, and as I had lost one I kicked off the other.”

  He did not reply to this, but sat huddled in a corner of the car, as it ran along the dark country road.

  They must have been travelling for a quarter of an hour when the car stopped before a small house and Digby jumped out. She would have followed him, but he stopped her.

  “I will carry you,” he said.

  “It is not necessary,” Eunice replied coldly.

  “It is very necessary to me,” he interrupted her. “I don’t want the marks of your stockinged feet showing on the roadside.”

  He lifted her in his arms; it would have been foolish of her to have made resistance, and she suffered contact with him until he set her down in a stone passage in a house that smelt damp and musty.

  “Is there a fire here?” He spoke over his shoulders to the chauffeur.

  “Yes, in the back room. I thought maybe you’d want one, boss.”

  “Light another,” said Digby. He pushed open the door, and the blaze from the fire was the only light in the room.

  Presently the driver brought in an oil motor-lamp. In its rays Digby was a ludicrous spectacle. His grey wig was soaked and clinging to his face; his dress was thick with mud, and his light shoes were in as deplorable a condition as the girl’s had been.

  She was in a very little better case, but she did not trouble to think about herself and her appearance. She was cold and shivering and crept nearer to the fire, extending her chilled hands to the blaze.

  Digby went out. She heard him still speaking in his low mumbling voice, but the man who replied was obviously not the chauffeur, though his voice seemed to have a faintly familiar ring. She wondered where she had heard it before, and after awhile she identified its possessor. It was the voice of the man whom she and Jim had met coming down the steps of the house in Grosvenor Square.

  Presently Digby came back carrying a suitcase.

  “It is lucky for you, my friend, that I intended you should change your clothes here,” he said as he threw the case down. “You will find everything in there you require.”

  He pointed to a bed which was in the corner of the room.

  “We have no towels, but if you care to forgo your night’s sleep, or sleep in blankets, you can use the sheets to dry yourself,” he said.

  “Your care for me is almost touching,” she said scornfully, and he smiled.

  “I like you when you are like that,” he said in admiration. “It is the spirit in you and the devil in you that appeal to me. If you were one of thos
e puling, whining misses, all shocks and shivers, I would have been done with you a long time ago. It is because I want to break that infernal pride of yours, and because you offer me a contest, that you stand apart from, and above, all other women.”

  She made no reply to this, and waited until he had gone out of the room before she looked for some means of securing the door. The only method, apparently, was to place a chair under the door-knob, and this she did, undressing quickly and utilizing the sheet as Digby had suggested.

  The windows were shuttered and barred. The room itself, except for the bed and the chair, was unfurnished and dilapidated. The paper was hanging in folds from the damp walls, and the under part of the grate was filled with the ashes of fires that had burnt years before, and the smell of decay almost nauseated her.

  Was there any chance of escape? she wondered. She tried the shuttered window, but found the bars were so thick that it was impossible to wrench them from their sockets without the aid of a hammer. She did not dream that they would leave the door unguarded, but it was worth trying, and she waited until the house seemed quiet before she made her attempt.

  Stepping out into the dark passage, she almost trod on the hand of Villa, who was lying asleep in the passage. He was awake instantly.

  “Do you want anything, miss?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she replied, and went back to the room. It was useless, useless, she thought bitterly, and she must wait to see what the morrow brought forth.

  Her principal hope lay in her—her mother. How difficult that word was to say! How much more difficult to associate a name, the mention of which brought up the picture of the pleasant-faced woman who had been all that a mother could be to her in South Africa, with that gracious lady she had seen in Jim Steele’s flat!

  She lay down, not intending to sleep, but the warmth of the room and her own tiredness made her doze. It seemed she had not slept more than a few minutes when she woke to find Villa standing by her side with a huge cup of cocoa in his hand.

  “I’m sorry I can’t give you tea, miss,” he said.

  “What time is it?” she asked in surprise.

  “Five o’clock. The rain has stopped and it is a good morning for flying.”

  “For flying?” she repeated in amazement.

  “For flying,” said Villa, enjoying the sensation he had created. “You are going a little journey by aeroplane.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  JIM STEELE had had as narrow an escape from death as he had experienced in the whole course of his adventurous life. It was not a river into which he tumbled, but a deep pool, the bottom of which was a yard thick with viscid mud, in which his feet and legs were held as by hidden hands.

  Struggle as he did, he could not release their grip, and he was on the point of suffocation when his groping hands found a branch of a tree which, growing on the edge of the pond, had drooped one branch until its end was under water. With the strength of despair, he gripped, and drew himself up by sheer force of muscle. He had enough strength left to drag himself to the edge of the pond, and there he lay, oblivious to the rain, panting and fighting for his breath.

  In the old days of the war, his comrades of the Scout Squadron used to tick off his lives on a special chart which was kept in the mess-room. He had exhausted the nine lives, with which they had credited him, when the war ended, and all further risk seemed to an end.

  “There go two more!” he gasped to himself. His words must have been inspired, for as he drew himself painfully to his bruised knees he heard a voice not a dozen yards away, and thanked God again. It was Digby Groat speaking.

  “Keep close to my side,” said Digby.

  “I will,” muttered Jim, and walked cautiously in the direction where he had heard the voice, but there was nobody in sight. The train, which had been stationary on the embankment above—he had forgotten the train—began to move, and in the rumble of its wheels, any sound might well be drowned.

  He increased his pace, but still he did not catch sight of the two people he was tracking. Presently he heard footsteps on a roadway, but only of a man.

  They had reached better going than the field, thought Jim, and moved over in the same direction. He found the lane, and as he heard the footsteps receding at the far end he ran lightly forward, hoping to overtake them before they reached the car, the red rear-light of which he could see. The wheels were moving as he reached the open road, and he felt for his revolver. If he could burst the rear tyres he could hold them. Jim was a deadly shot. Once, twice, he pressed the trigger, but there was no more than a “click,” as the hammer struck the sodden cartridge, and before he could extract the dud and replace it the car was out of range.

  He was aching in every limb. His arms and legs were cramped painfully, but he was not deterred. Putting the useless pistol in his pocket, he stepped off at a jog-trot, following in the wake of the car.

  He was a magnificent athlete and he had, too, the intangible gift of class, that imponderable quality which distinguishes the great race-horse from the merely good. It served a double purpose, this exercise. It freed the cramped muscles, it warmed his chilled body and it cleared the mind. He had not been running for ten minutes before he had forgotten that within the space of an hour he had nearly been hurled to death from the roof of a train and had all but choked to death in the muddy depths of a pond.

  On, on, without either slackening or increasing his pace, the same steady lop-lopping stride that had broken the heart of the Oxford crack when he had brought victory to the light-blue side at Queen’s Park.

  It was half an hour before he came in sight of the car, and he felt well rewarded, although he had scarcely glimpsed it before it had moved on again.

  Why had it stopped? he wondered, checking his pace to a walk. It may have been tyre trouble. On the other hand, they might have stopped at a house, one of Digby Groat’s numerous depots through the country.

  He saw the house at last and went forward with greater caution, as he heard a man’s voice asking the time.

  He did not recognize either Villa or Bronson, for though he had heard Villa speak, he had no very keen recollection of the fact. “What to do?” murmured Jim.

  The house was easily approachable, but to rush in with a defective revolver would help neither him nor the girl. If that infernal pond had not been there! He groaned in the spirit. That he was wise in his caution he was soon to discover. Suddenly a man loomed up before him and Jim stopped dead on the road. The man’s back was towards him, and he was smoking as he walked up and down, taking his constitutional, for the rain had suddenly ceased. He passed so close as he turned back that, had he stretched out his hand towards the bushes under which Jim was crouching, he would not have failed to touch him.

  In a little while a low voice called:

  “Bronson!”

  “Bronson!” thought Jim. “I must remember that name!”

  The man turned and walked quickly back to the house, and the two talked in a tone so low that not a syllable reached Jim.

  At the risk of discovery he must hear more, and crept up to the house. There was a tiny porch before the door and under this the two men were standing.

  “I will sleep in the passage,” said the deep-throated Villa. “You can take the other room if you like.”

  “Not me,” said the man called Bronson. “I’d rather stand by the machine all night. I don’t want to sleep anyway.”

  “What machine?” wondered Jim. “Was there another motor-car here?”

  “Will the boss get there tonight?” asked Villa.

  “I can’t tell you, Mr. Villa,” replied Bronson. “He might not, of course, but if there are no obstacles he’ll be at the Hall before daybreak. It is not a very good road.”

  At the Hall! In a flash it dawned upon Jim. Kennett Hall! The pile of buildings which Mrs. Weatherwale had pointed out to him as the one-time ancestral home of the Dantons. What a fool he had been not to remember that place when they were discussing the poss
ible shelters that Digby Groat might use!

  Both Villa and Bronson were smoking now and the fragrance of the former man’s cigar came to the envious Jim.

  “She won’t give any trouble, will she, Mr. Villa?” asked Bronson.

  “Trouble?” Villa laughed. “Not she. She’ll be frightened to death. I don’t suppose she’s ever been in an aeroplane before.”

  So that was the machine. Jim’s eyes danced. An aeroplane… where? He strained his eyes to beyond the house, but it was too dark to distinguish anything.

  “Nothing funny will happen to that machine of yours in the rain?”

  “Oh no,” said Bronson. “I have put the sheet over the engines. I have frequently kept her out all night.”

  Then you’re a bad man, thought Jim, to whom an aeroplane was a living, palpitating thing. So Eunice was there and they were going to take her by aeroplane somewhere. What should he do? There was time for him to go back to Rugby and inform the police, but—

  “Where is Fuentes?” asked Bronson. “Mr. G. said he would be here.”

  “He’s along the Rugby Road,” replied Villa. “I gave him a signal pistol to let us know in case they send a police-car after us. If you aren’t going to bed, Bronson, I will, and you can wait out here and keep your eye open for any danger.”

  Fuentes was in it, too, and his plan to get back to Rugby would not work. Nevertheless, the watchful Fuentes had allowed Jim to pass, though it was likely that he was nearer to Rugby than the place where he had come out on to the road. They might not get the girl away on the machine in the darkness, but who knows what orders Digby Groat had left for her disposal in case a rescue was attempted? He decided to wait near, hoping against hope that a policeman cyclist would pass.