CHAPTER X
THE HAG TO THE RESCUE
I KNEW enough of the methods of the police not to lay too much emphasis at the outset upon the fact that they had blundered. The police are pretty much the same all the world over. Charge them with blundering, and they will exhaust every resource to disprove the charge; and in the meantime, you who have made it are getting badly squeezed.
Moreover, I was not certain that it was a blunder. I hoped they were after the villainous couple who lived in the house, and that in the haste and confusion of the moment we had been mistaken for them. But it was quite possible Volna and I had been tracked, and were really the prisoners they sought.
In any case it was highly dangerous for us to be in their hands, and we should need to keep cool heads to get out again, without the fact becoming known that we were fugitives.
As it was, only an accident prevented the incriminating papers from being immediately found. Just the luck that I had told Volna to try and burn them and had not taken them back from her. The search to which she was subjected was little more than formal; but my pockets were all overhauled, and my papers taken out and examined.
I was not so foolish as to resist; but I began to feel pretty indignant when papers, money, and all, were retained by the leader.
“How did you get this?” he asked, holding up the police revolver. He appeared to attach great importance to my possession of it. This interested me greatly. That I had taken it from the police agent on the Devil’s Staircase would certainly be known; and if he was in search of us, it was a sufficient proof that we were the persons wanted. I had to get at that indirectly.
“If you will permit me I will give you an exact report of what has happened here, and that will account for everything.”
“All I want is a plain answer to my question. No long round-about, lying story.”
There was no help for it. I must lie. So I did it boldly. “Most fortunately I got the revolver here,” I said.
“You’re a cool hand,” was the sneering reply. “But it won’t do you any good to lie to me.”
“Fortunately, I mean, because it saved my life and that of my sister here. We were attacked——”
“Do you mean there are any others in the house?” he broke in.
“Certainly I do. The two wretches who appear to have been living here are in a room above.”
Both the man and his wife had kept as quiet as mutes all this time. But they had evidently been listening, for at that moment the door above was opened, and the two came out.
“Is that the police? Is that the police?” cried the woman. “Heaven, and the blessed Virgin above be praised. We’ve been nearly murdered by the two villains there. You’ll protect us now, won’t you? Praise to the Holy Saints for having sent you to our assistance.”
“What’s all this?”
The couple came running down the stairs and threw themselves on their knees; the woman pouring out a voluble account of how they had been attacked by us and their lives threatened, mingled with thanks for their deliverance, entreaties to protect them, and an urgent warning to pay special attention to me as a dangerous and murderous villain.
I foresaw a very awkward complication. When two parties accuse each other, the police rule is to arrest both.
The leader was obviously perplexed. “What is your name?” he said to me; and before I could reply the woman burst in.
“Ivan Krempel, and that’s Nita, his wife,” she cried. “They’ve been using the house for days and days past.”
I attempted to deny this; but he silenced me. “And your names,” he asked the woman.
“This is my husband, Peter Vranowski, the woodcutter; I am Anna his wife. We came last week from Potzden in Silesia, and have been lodging here with these Krempels. We thought they were honest folks like ourselves.”
“You are the man I am searching for,” he said, turning to me. “Ivan Krempel, and his wife, Nita.”
This was good news in a way. He was not after the Garretts, and I could safely use that name.
“I can understand your perplexity,” I said calmly. “But this woman is lying. We are English; Robert Garrett and Margaret Garrett, brother and sister. Caught by the storm to-night, we came here for shelter, and narrowly escaped death at the hands of these two.”
“But these people say you are the Krempels.”
“So they are. So they are. The holy Virgin knows I speak the truth,” protested the old hag.
“The proof is in your hands. Our passports are among the papers which you have taken from me.”
“Go into the room there, all of you,” he answered, after a pause. I led the way with Volna and the rest followed. “Get a light,” he said to Volna, the candle having been extinguished in the former scrimmage.
“I don’t know where to look for one. There was a lamp here, but the woman took it away.”
“Listen to her. Listen to her. Oh, the liar, when she carried it upstairs with her own hands,” cried the hag.
“Go upstairs and see if it’s there,” he told his man, who went and returned carrying it.
“The woman was right in that,” said the officer significantly.
“She would very naturally know where she herself took it,” I exclaimed; but he was as pig-headed as his class, and repeated his statements, adding to my concern, “I don’t see how I can decide this. It’s beyond me.”
“There are my papers,” I reminded him. “But surely you have only to look at that man and his wife, and contrast them with my sister and myself to see the difference. You must have some description of them.”
He mumbled to himself and began to finger my papers. “I don’t see anything here to guide me.”
“Those are the passports;” and I pointed to them.
He unfolded them. “I don’t read English,” he said.
“You can read the names at any rate and, of course, as a responsible official so near the frontier you know a passport by sight.”
“He stole that from an Englishman. He boasted of it to us,” interjected the woman, who had been watching closely.
“How am I to know this is yours?” he asked immediately, taking the cue suggested.
“There are twenty proofs in those papers, that I am an Englishman; as well as on myself. See, the pocket book there has the address of a London maker. Here, the tab on my coat has my tailor’s name in London. Don’t you hear that I speak with a foreign accent?”
He examined the pocket book, and the tab on my coat; and appeared to be impressed. “They seem right; but you may have stolen them,” he said grudgingly.
I pressed the advantage. Picking out a couple of Sylvia’s letters I shewed him they were in English, and addressed to me.
“That is not Robert—that is B-o-b,” he said suspiciously.
“Robert in England is shortened into Bob,” I explained; but he shook his head.
“Here is one on the same paper, Wyrley Court, Great Malverton. It is from my mother, ‘My dear son Robert.’ You can read that?” and I stuck at him until I had deepened the impression. Then I told him briefly what had happened in the cottage, pointed to the heap of soaked shavings, the two ropes and a cask of petroleum.
This was not done without many interruptions from the woman, who vociferously denied the whole story.
“You say you were to be drugged? How do you know?” I told him of the attempt to make the man drink a cup of the coffee. This appealed to him; and he smiled grimly.
“Have you still the cup you saved?”
Volna got it and handed it to him.
“The woman shall drink it now,” he declared. But the old hag swore that it was we who had made the coffee, not she; and that we had tried to rob her.
“Why should we wish to rob a woodcutter,” I asked. I had his ear now and he began to have a glimmer of reason. “Besides, our horses are outside in the shed.”
“They are our horses,” asserted the woman.
“Go and look at them. See if a woodcutter, just a week here from Silesia, as she says, would possess two such animals and saddles. One is a side saddle, too.”
He sent his man out; and sat silent. Matters were going better, so I left him to absorb the points I had made.
“Will you drink that coffee?” he asked the woman suddenly, very sternly.
“Why should I drink the poison we refused before?” she cried, and pointing her scraggy finger at Volna added: “She made it, let her drink it.”
“You see,” I said; and he nodded in agreement.
Then his man came back and reported that the horses were two good ones and that the saddles were soaked as if they had been exposed to the fury of the storm; thus bearing out my story.
But at that point I made a serious blunder. As he turned to listen to his man’s report I picked up the passports. He saw me, and snatched at the rest of the papers.
“You mustn’t touch those,” he said angrily. “Return me those two you have taken.”
Instead, I put them back in my pocket. “They are our passports,” I answered; “I am an Englishman, and have a right to retain them.”
“Give them to me,” he repeated.
“They are necessary to me, and I must keep them. I am doing no more than is my right.”
Just then his man bent, and whispered in his ear. “I had forgotten,” he said. “My man here reads English well. Let him see them.”
“They have already been examined, and I must keep them.”
“We shall see,” he exclaimed very angrily. With that he gave the rest of the papers to the man who went through them carefully.
“I am inclined to believe your story, but your conduct is in some ways very suspicious. Will you return me those papers?”
“No. I have shown them. That is enough.”
Then the man drew his attention to a paper.
“Ah! What do you say your name is?”
“Robert Garrett, an Englishman.”
“Then who is Robert Anstruther?”
In a moment my heart fell. I knew what was coming.
“I don’t understand you.”
“Here is a letter of credit for a large sum of money, the name on it is Robert Anstruther. Explain your possession of it.”
I tried to affect indifference. “Oh, that!” I exclaimed. “Robert Anstruther is my cousin, and I am taking it to him to Cracow.”
“You say you are English, and this lady your sister?”
“You have seen our passports proving that.”
“Now you can speak to her,” he said to his man. I saw the scheme of course, instantly.
“You are Miss Garrett?” the man asked in excellent English.
Lies, like curses, have a nasty habit of coming home to roost; and for the moment I was at the end of my wits. The game was nearly up.
“Yes,” said Volna, very nervously.
“My superior doubts that you are English; just tell me anything you please that I may hear you speak English!”
“Don’t bother with him, Peggy,” I declared in English, putting up a last bluff of indignation. “I’m not going to have my sister bullied. Put your questions to me.”
“It is a very simple test.”
“Hang your simple tests. We’ve had more than enough of your tomfoolery.”
“You refuse to speak?” he asked her again.
“Yes. At all events I refuse to allow you or any one else to browbeat her. We have nearly lost our lives here; and now, when she is all to pieces, you not only take us for a couple of murderous ruffians and want to arrest us, but you try this sort of infernal nonsense.”
I left him in no doubt that I was English, and voluble enough, too. He shrugged his shoulders, and told his chief the result of the test; and they whispered together.
“You are Robert Garrett of Wyrley Hall, Great Malverton?” he asked me then in English.
“I’ve told you who I am.”
“Then how is it that Robert Anstruther in the letter of credit, is described as of that address?”
“Can’t one relative live with another?” I laughed.
“Permit me to see the address on the passport.”
“There is none. You ought to know that;” and with a scoff I unfolded it and shewed him.
“I don’t mean there. I mean on the outside, where the name and address are both written.”
“I am going to be baited no longer,” I rattled back sharply, and was putting the papers away again when he snatched them from me. A glance was enough to prove the inconsistency of my statement; and he reported this to his chief, who put my papers away and rose.
“We shall take you all four to the police office at Schirmskad,” he decided.
I had not the least intention of letting him do anything of the kind; but my unwillingness was as smoke to fire compared with that of the woman and her husband. She broke out into a violent tirade swearing she was innocent and would not go.
“Resist at your peril,” cried the chief in a loud ringing tone; and he and his man drew their revolvers.
There was a moment of dead silence. My eyes were on the chief, and I saw a shadow of perplexity cloud his face. I read it to mean that he had his doubts how to get us all four away if we resisted.
It was a queer turn of the wheel that Volna and I should have to make common cause with the wretches who had attempted our lives. I did not wish them to escape; but our own escape was much more to us than their capture at that moment; and like the chief I was thinking intently what to do.
Glancing round the room his eye fell on the two ropes.
“Hand me those cords,” he said to me, curtly.
“I am no police agent,” I shot back.
“I call on you to help me.”
“You forget; you have arrested me. You must do your own work.”
The old hag’s eyes were on us as she drank in every word; and she nudged her husband and whispered to him.
“Don’t you mean to charge them with attempting your lives?” asked the chief.
“You have arrested me,” I returned, shortly.
“Tie those two together,” he said, turning to his assistant.
To get the cords the man had either to pass the woman or drive her before him to the end of the room. He tried the latter course and pushed her violently. She fell to the ground, and, letting out a yell shrill enough to wake a cataleptic, clasped his legs, and pulled him down; and in a moment, a noisy rough and tumble scuffle was set going between the three.
The chief ran to help his man, and I took advantage of the moment to open the door and put Volna outside.
“Stop there,” cried the chief, holding me up with his levelled revolver.
“I am merely putting my sister out of the way of trouble.”
“Move an inch and I shall fire,” he shouted.
But the words scarcely passed his lips before he came staggering wildly toward me; his arms went up and his pistol was fired in the air. The woman had in some way extricated herself from the struggle on the floor, and his back being turned to her as she rose, she pushed him violently toward me. I caught him and helped myself to his revolver.
We were struggling together when the woman, who had seized hold of the lamp, passed us and dashed it violently into the heap of saturated hay and shavings.
The effect was instantaneous. A blinding flare of flame burst out, almost like an explosion, and a volume of pungent suffocating smoke filled the place.
Volna, quick-witted as ever, wrenched the door open, and I staggered out after her into the night, dragging the chief with me.