by Jack Higgins
He raised his voice and said to the room in general, “Please do not let this unfortunate affair interfere with your enjoyment, ladies and gentlemen.” He nodded to the pianist, and as the ensemble struck up a waltz, walked from the room, Burke at his heels.
People stood in groups, their heads together as they discussed what had happened, and Clay gave his arm to Joanna and they moved out through the French windows onto the terrace.
Joanna leaned against a balustrade and gave a long sigh of relief. “Thank God you managed to stop him in time. If Shaun Rogan had been killed here tonight, the scandal would have rocked the country.”
“Why does your uncle hate him so much?”
She shrugged. “I don’t really know. Ask me why he hates so many things. I think it’s because Big Shaun has always refused to bow the knee. He’s like a rock, immovable, and my uncle doesn’t like that. He likes to think he can bend people to his will.”
“But he isn’t always successful, is he?” Clay said. “I wonder what he’d say if he knew his niece was addicted to moonlight gallops dressed like a man?”
She laughed lightly. “What he doesn’t know can never hurt him.” She shivered. “It’s turned rather chilly. Do you mind if we go back inside?”
As they entered the room, a young Hussar officer approached and claimed Joanna for a dance, and Clay went across to the buffet and helped himself to a large brandy. As he was drinking it, Vale came up, an expression of disgust on his face. “You look as though you could do with a drink,” Clay said.
Vale nodded. “I’ve just been listening to that swine Marley boasting about his latest affair. He’s as drunk as a lord, of course. It seems he’s got some wretched girl locked up in a room back at his house. Her mother’s a widow and he threatened to evict her for arrears of rent. The girl came this afternoon to plead with him and he made his terms pretty plain. Apparently, she turned him down flat and he locked her up, to give her time to consider the consequences, as he so delicately phrases it.”
He swallowed some brandy and excused himself as another dance started, and Clay turned away and stared out of the window, anger rising in him. He reached for the decanter, filled his glass to the brim and drained it, the brandy spreading through his body like liquid fire. Then he felt a hand on his sleeve and Joanna was beside him.
Her smile faded as she saw his face. “What is it, Clay?” she said. “What’s happened?”
He laughed harshly. “Why nothing. I suddenly feel in need of a little fresh air, that’s all.”
He beckoned to one of the footmen and asked to have his carriage brought round to the front door, and Joanna grasped his arm and said in a whisper, “Clay, I’m frightened. You look like the Devil himself.”
He smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry about me, my dear. I’m subject to these moods now and then. What I need is a gallop to blow the cobwebs away.”
She came with him to the door and he collected his cloak and hat. As they moved out onto the steps, she smiled up at him, face pale in the lamplight. “I’ll see you again?”
He took her hands in his and held them for a moment. “Try and keep me away.”
Her face broke into a radiant smile and she moved very close and said softly, “Don’t do anything foolish, Clay.”
He turned away down the steps, and as he climbed into his coach, one of the footmen said to a groom who lounged against the wall, “Mr. Marley wants his coach to be ready for eleven.”
For a moment, Clay paused as he watched the footman run back up the steps and enter the house, and then he knew, with complete surety, what he had to do. He hammered on the roof with his fist and Joshua whipped up the horses and took them away in a burst of speed.
5
When they reached Claremont, he went straight up to his bedroom and started to change. As he pulled on his riding boots, Joshua appeared in the doorway.
“You intend to go out again, Colonel?” he said.
Clay nodded. “You can saddle the mare, but first get that map I purchased the day we landed and find Kileen for me. If I remember rightly, we passed through it on the way here yesterday.”
Joshua opened the brown valise and produced a linen-backed map, which he spread on the bed. “I’ve got it, Colonel,” he said, after a moment. “About nine or ten miles from here.”
Clay moved beside him. “There should be a large estate nearby. It belongs to a man called Marley.”
Joshua glanced up, surprise on his face. “They were talking about him in the servants’ hall tonight. His coachman was there. Some of the stories left a bad taste.”
Clay laughed grimly. “I had the doubtful pleasure of meeting the gentleman in person. You can believe anything you were told about him. Now saddle the mare. I haven’t much time.”
Joshua left the room and Clay examined the map. After a while, he gave a grunt of satisfaction. A track was marked which cut straight across the moor at the back of Drumore House, joining the Galway Road a mile from Kileen, shortening the distance considerably.
He folded the map and opened the leather travelling trunk which stood against the wall. After a moment, he found what he was looking for—his old felt campaign hat and the shabby grey military greatcoat with the caped shoulders which had served him so well during the last two years of the Confederacy.
He buttoned the coat up to his chin and belted the Dragoon Colt in its black leather holster about his waist. Finally, he pulled the brim of his hat down over his eyes and examined himself.
In the dim light of the oil lamps, a ghost stared out of the mirror, a man who had died the night before Appomattox. In some strange way, it was like meeting an old friend. For a moment, he was conscious of a feeling that was close to nostalgia and his mind jumped back into a past which was so near and yet so incredibly far away.
He sighed and opening a drawer in the tallboy, took out a black silk scarf, which he knotted behind his neck and pulled up over his face. The effect was startling. The man who now stood there in the shadows was a stranger, full of menace and utterly dangerous.
It was as if another person stared out at him, someone over whom he had no control, and for a moment he hesitated, a queer coldness seeping through him, while inside a tiny warning voice seemed to tell him to draw back before it was too late. But only for a moment. He pulled down the scarf, bowed mockingly at his reflection and, turning on his heel, left the room.
Joshua waited in the courtyard, one hand gently rubbing Pegeen’s muzzle. She whinnied softly with pleasure when Clay appeared and swung up into the saddle. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be,” he said. “It all depends on friend Marley.”
“I’ve seen that look on your face before,” Joshua said. “Presumably you don’t intend to pay him a social call.” He hesitated and then continued. “Excuse me if I’m talking out of turn, Colonel, but what happened back there? Did Mr. Marley insult you?”
“I think you could call it that,” Clay said.
“Then you aren’t visiting him for the sake of his health?”
“I wouldn’t say so,” Clay told him. “In fact, I may very probably have to shoot him before the night is out.” He clicked his tongue, and Pegeen moved quickly across the courtyard and took the path which led up toward the rim of the valley.
The night was clean and fresh, the darkness perfumed with the scent of gorse and the faint indefinable touch of autumn lay over the land, drifting up from the valleys below like wood smoke, filling him with a nervous excitement.
The track lay clear and white in the moonlight as he gave Pegeen her head and galloped across the moor and the lower slopes of the hills.
Somewhere laughter sounded faintly through the darkness, gay and carefree, touching him with an envious sadness, and he turned Pegeen onto the turf and moved forward at a careful walk. Drumore House lay below in the valley, still bright with lights, and music drifted up toward him.
He paused for a moment in the trees and listened. It was an old familiar waltz, sad and gay in the s
ame breath, with love and tender laughter in every line of it. He had last heard it in the month before the war began.
For a moment, time ceased to have any meaning, and he was back again in Georgia, arriving rather late for a ball to celebrate the coming-of-age of the sister of his best friend. Ahead lay a week of hunting and parties, and beyond that, the long, golden years.
As his father had often told him, it never paid to count on anything in this world. He sighed once for the summer that had gone and urged Pegeen through the trees and back onto the track. As the music faded into the night, he broke into a gallop again.
Half an hour later, he moved down onto the Galway Road and cantered toward Kileen. He splashed through a wide ford and walked Pegeen through the sleeping village.
Kileen House was two hundred yards on the other side, a black mass rearing out of the night, and he turned in through the gates and came to a halt before the front door.
A light showed in the hall, but otherwise the place was in complete darkness. He mounted the steps and pulled the bell chain. The sound jangled faintly in the hidden depths of the house and its echo was from another world.
After a while, steps approached and he pulled the scarf up over his face and drew his revolver. As the door started to open, he pushed his way in and closed it behind him.
The man who faced him was old and round-shouldered in a shabby frock coat, skin yellow and wrinkled with age. His eyes widened in terror and his mouth opened in a cry of alarm.
Clay seized him by the throat and deliberately roughened his voice. “One word and you’re a dead man. Who are you?”
He released his grip slightly and the old man replied in a cracked voice, “Only the butler, sir. God save us, if it’s Mr. Marley you want, he’s not at home.”
“Who else is here?” Clay demanded.
“The servants, sir, but they’re all abed at the back of the house.”
“You’re forgetting the young woman who came to see your master this afternoon,” Clay told him. “Where is she?”
“Eithne Fallon, you mean, sir?” The old man was shaking with fright as he picked up the lamp from a nearby table. “This way, sir. This way.”
Clay followed him across the hall and they mounted a wide staircase. The old man moved along the landing and paused outside a door at the far end. He produced a bunch of keys from his pocket, and after several attempts, managed to find one to fit the lock. As he opened the door, Clay pushed him forward into the room.
The girl had been lying on the bed and now she stood against the wall, face pale and sickly in the lamplight, eyes swollen with weeping. She could not have been more than fifteen, her figure young and unformed in the shabby brown dress.
She flung herself forward wildly, making for the door, and Clay caught her by one wrist and swung her round to face him. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I’ve come to take you home to your mother.”
She stood still and stared up into his masked face, eyes burning into his, and then her head moved slowly from side to side, as if she couldn’t comprehend that this was really happening. “Oh, God, sir, and here was I nearly going out of me mind.”
She picked up her shawl and wound it about her head, slow, bitter tears oozing from her eyes. “No one will harm you ever again,” Clay assured her, iron in his voice. “You have my word on it.”
He touched her shoulder gently with one hand, and she stepped back as if she had been stung. “For God’s sake, let’s go, sir, before he returns,” she said urgently.
She moved out onto the landing and Clay took the lamp from the butler and pushed him back into the room. “He’ll kill me when he gets back,” the old man said tearfully, wringing his hands.
“I shouldn’t count on that,” Clay told him, and closed the door and locked it.
He tossed the keys into the shadows and followed the girl, who was already down below in the hall fumbling at the lock of the front door. When he went out into the porch, she was leaning against one of the pillars, half-fainting and he slipped an arm about her shoulders and carried her down the steps.
All strength seemed to have deserted her and he lifted her onto Pegeen’s back and swung into the saddle. As he cantered down toward the gate, she turned her head into his coat and burst into a storm of weeping.
By the time they reached the village, she had recovered sufficiently to indicate her home. He dismounted, lifted her down to the ground and then hammered on the door with his right fist.
The girl’s weeping had subsided, and as steps sounded inside, she looked up at him and said in a faint voice, “Who are you?”
“A friend,” he said simply. “You’ve got nothing to fear, my dear, now or at any time in the future.”
As the door started to open, he turned and swung lightly into the saddle and Pegeen moved quickly away out of the village and back toward Drumore.
There was a clump of trees by the Kileen side of the ford and he paused in their shadow. He did not have long to wait. Faintly on the night air came the sound of an approaching vehicle, and then a coach pulled by two horses appeared round a bend in the road and came toward him, clear in the moonlight.
The driver pulled on the reins to slow the horses as they entered the water and splashed across. They paused, heads down to drink, and Marley leaned out of the window and cried petulantly, “For God’s sake, why are we stopping, Kelly? Lay your whip across their damned hides.”
Clay urged Pegeen forward out of the trees, the Dragoon Colt ready in his right hand. Marley had withdrawn his head and the driver was reaching for his long whip.
He was a sullen, dangerous-looking fellow with brutal features and great sloping shoulders. His mouth opened slowly in amazement as Clay paused on the other side of the ford and said cheerfully, in an Irish accent, “A fine night for a walk, thanks be to God, and your master not needing you.”
The man started to reach under his seat and Clay raised the Colt and aimed it, the moonlight glinting on its brass frame. “I shouldn’t try it.”
The man dropped the reins and jumped down into the water. Marley leaned out of the window and said angrily, “What’s happening, Kelly? Didn’t I tell you to get those damned horses moving?” In the same moment, he saw Clay and withdrew hastily into the coach.
Kelly moved out of the water no more than a yard from Pegeen’s head. He made as if to pass and then turned and flung himself forward, hands reaching up to drag Clay from the saddle.
Clay pulled sharply on the reins, and as Pegeen danced away, he lifted his right boot into Kelly’s face. The man staggered backward with a groan and collapsed into the grass at the side of the road.
There was no sound from inside the coach and he moved Pegeen forward until she was standing in the shallows of the ford. “You’ve got five seconds to come out of there, Marley, before I start shooting.”
There was a slight pause before the door opened and Marley scrambled down into the stream. He stood there, the ice-cold water lapping about his knees. “I’ll see you hang for this.”
He started to wade forward and Clay shook his head. “Stay where you are. I want to talk to you.”
“Talk and be damned then,” Marley said. “You’ll get little else from me. I’ve no more than a sovereign in my purse.”
“I’m not interested in your money,” Clay said. “Only in certain unpleasant aspects of your nature. I understand you consider yourself a ladies’ man?”
“What the devil are you driving at?” Marley demanded, a frown on his face.
Clay shrugged. “Apparently, the ladies have another opinion. I’ve got a message from Eithne Fallon. She thanks you for your hospitality, but prefers to spend the night with her mother.”
Marley’s face was white in the moonlight. “You’ll pay for this.”
Clay cut him short. He pressed the muzzle of the Colt against the man’s forehead. “This is your only warning, Marley,” he said calmly. “If I hear that you’ve bothered the child or her mother again, you’ll get a
bullet through the brain one dark night.”
“Who are you?” Marley said, and there was the beginning of fear in his voice.
Clay laughed mockingly. “Surely you received my letter? I told you to look for me.”
Marley’s jaw sagged and an expression of utter astonishment appeared on his face. “Captain Swing!” he said in a whisper.
“Correct!” Clay told him. “Now take off your coat.”
Marley glared up at him. “What are you going to do?” he demanded, and there was a crack in his voice.
Clay raised the Colt threateningly without replying and Marley stripped off his expensive evening cloak and then his tailcoat. He stood shivering in his shirtsleeves, a revolting, almost pathetic figure, and Clay pointed up the road toward Kileen. “You know where your house is. If I were you, I’d start running.”
By now Marley was thoroughly frightened. He backed away, his mouth trembling, and then he turned and started to run toward the village.
Clay holstered his Colt and urged Pegeen toward the coach. He pulled the long horse-whip from its socket by the driver’s seat and turned and cantered back to Kileen.
Marley was still twenty or thirty yards from the first cottage when he caught up with him. The whip rose and fell, the long lash settling across the man’s fleshy shoulders, shredding the white cambric shirt.
Marley screamed and stumbled onto his face. Again the lash curled around his body and he staggered to his feet and lurched forward, arms raised protectingly. Clay thought of Eithne Fallon and others like her and of the things he had heard about this man, and all pity died in him. The lash rose and fell mercilessly, driving Marley toward the center of the village.
Already lights were appearing in cottage windows and dogs barked and scratched at doors. He delivered one last vicious blow with all his strength, and as the whip curled around Marley’s shoulders, the end of it sliced across his face, laying it open to the bone. He gave a dreadful cry and fell forward onto his face, unconscious.
Clay flung the whip down to the ground. As he did so, a cottage door opened and a man came forward uncertainly. Keeping a cautious eye on Clay, he dropped to one knee beside Marley’s insensible body and turned him over. His breath hissed between his teeth. “God save us all, but it’s the squire.”
