XXXIX

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 racehorse 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 motorcar 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 onetime ancestral home of the Dantons. What a fool he had been not to remember that place when they were discussing the possible 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.

Villa struck a match to start a new cigar and in its light Jim had a momentary glimpse of the two men. Bronson was in regulation air-kit. A leather coat reached to his hips, his legs were encased in leather breeches and top-boots. He was about his height, Jim thought, as an idea took shape in his mind. What an end to that adventure! Jim came as near to being excited as ever he had been in his life.

Presently Villa yawned.

“I’m going to lie down in the passage, and if that dame comes out, she’s going to have a shock,” he said. “Good night. Wake me at half-past four.”

Bronson grunted something and continued his perambulations up and down the road. Ten minutes passed, a quarter of an hour, half an hour, and the only sound was the dripping of the rain from the trees, and the distant clatter and rumble of the trains as they passed through Rugby.

To the north were the white lights of the railway sidings and workshops; to the west, the faint glow in the sky marked the position of a town. Jim pulled his useless pistol from his pocket and stepped on to the roadway, crouching down, so that when he did rise, he seemed to the astonished Bronson to have sprung out of the ground. Something cold and hard was pushed under the spy’s nose.

“If you make a sound, you son of a thief!” said Jim, “I’ll blow your face off! Do you understand that?”

“Yes,” muttered the man, shivering with fright.

Jim’s left hand gripped his collar. The automatic pistol under his nose was all too obvious, and Felix Bronson, a fearful man for whom the air alone had no terror, was cowed and beaten.

“Where is the bus?” asked Jim in a whisper.

“In the field behind the house,” the man answered in the same tone. “What are you going to do? Who are you? How did you get past⁠—”

“Don’t ask so many questions,” said Jim; “lead the way⁠—not that way,” as the man turned to pass the house.

“I shall have to climb the fence if I don’t go that way,” said Bronson sullenly.

“Then climb it,” said Jim, “it will do you good, you lazy devil!”

They walked across the field, and presently Jim saw a graceful outline against the dark sky.

“Now take off your clothes,” he said peremptorily.

“What do you mean?” demanded the startled Bronson. “I can’t undress here!”

“I’m sorry to shock your modesty, but that is just what you are going to do,” said Jim; “and it will be easier to undress you alive than to undress you dead, as I know from my sorrowful experience in France.”

Reluctantly Bronson stripped his leather coat.

“Don’t drop it on the grass,” said Jim, “I want something dry to wear.”

In the darkness Bronson utilized an opportunity that he had already considered. His hand stole stealthily to the hip-pocket of his leather breeches, but before it closed on its objective Jim had gripped it and spun him round, for Jim possessed other qualities of the cat besides its lives.

“Let me see that lethal weapon. Good,” said Jim, and flung his own to the grass. “I am afraid mine is slightly damaged, but I’ll swear that yours is in good trim. Now, off with those leggings and boots.”

“I shall catch my death of cold.” Bronson’s teeth were chattering.

“In which case,” said the sardonic Jim, “I shall send a wreath; but I fear you are not born to die of cold in the head, but of a short sharp jerk to your cervical vertebra.”

“What is that?” asked Bronson.

“It is German for neck,” said Jim, “and if you think I am going to stand here giving you lectures on anatomy whilst you deliver the goods, you have made a mistake⁠—strip!”