“A MAN? What man?” said Tuke.
“George, sir, looking from above, cries that ’tis him with the white hair.”
“Come with me and have your gun in readiness.”
Betty ran forward with clasped hands.
“Oh! don’t go, don’t go!” she whispered.
He smiled down upon her.
“I will parley voo from the passage, my dear; and Will shall point his barrel at the key-hole.”
He strode out of the room and cried in a sharp voice: “Who’s there?”
“John Fern, by your leave, sir.”
The answer sang in muffled by the thick oak.
“Are you tired of life, fellow?”
“I am a humble dependent on your bounty, Mr. Tuke. I come with a flag of truce, trusting to your honour.”
“I have none for vermin. We may shoot such sitting.”
“Be generous, sir. We are trapped. Frost and starvation have worked for you.”
“I am beholden to them. They are good agents of retribution.”
“Will you not be merciful? We surrender at discretion.”
“You are too late in coming to it.”
“For the love of God, sir, take me in and hear me!”
The gentleman hesitated and pondered. Were the man in truth alone, he could not see what ruse might be designed. His tale, too, was probable enough. Baulked in their outrageous plot at the very outset, what likelihood was there that the improvident scoundrels would have calculated against such a contingency as the present one?
“Wait!” he called suddenly, “and I will consider.”
He whispered his man to stand rigidly on guard, and, going softly, ascended the stairs to an upper room that would command view of the porch at an angle. Here cautiously he unbarred and opened the shutters and looked forth. The closing dusk played like smoke on the great snow-heaps that stretched all about the house and to the opening of the drive to his right, where a billowy rampart of whiteness marked the termination of the path cut by the besiegers. Thence, to the front-door, an irregular slur in the frozen carpet betokened the further passage to the house forced by his visitor below, whose broad squat figure he could distinguish set squarely in the shadow of the porch. Elsewhere there was no sign of life or movement. Dead winter reigned in the fields of fallen snow, in the stony sky, in the stark and sapless branches of the trees. The man was alone, as he had stated, and beyond the immediate reach of his comrades.
He descended swiftly to the hall once more. The faithful William stood at cock as he had left him.
“Are you there?” he cried.
“I am here, sir.”
“I will let you in. A twitch of treachery, and you get a bullet in your brain.”
“Mr. Tuke—you can trust me!”
He inside unhitched the fastenings—snapped key and bolts. “Cover him, Will,” he said, and swung open the door.
Mr. Fern walked in with a very humble obeisance. A white down of many days’ growth bristled villainously on his chin. He looked battered and unkempt, but not ill-nourished for a starving man.
The door re-locked and made secure: “Go before into that room,” said Tuke, “and remember that you tread on glass, sir.”
“I make no protest, Mr. Tuke. I assume your action guarantees me a safe-conduct, and that the fact that the muzzle of your servant’s piece actually touches my head argues no base intent on his part.”
“He is fairly efficient with his weapon, sir. I warn you he answers to the prick of discipline. Shoot this man at sight, William, if he attempts to move.”
He had signed to the smooth ruffian to stand with his back against the table.
“Sir,” said Fern, “will you not hear me speak?”
“Before witnesses, fellow. Believe me, I’ve had enough of your sole company to serve me a lifetime.”
He was turning to go, when he was aware of the girl standing, with frightened eyes, in the shadow of the hearth.
“Before God, sweetheart,” he cried, “I commit you to rare company! This is the hound, Betty, that wrought you a cur’s vengeance!”
The visitor pursed his lips and shut his eyes and shook his head in some patient dissent.
“You will not let me plead,” he murmured. “It is safe to slander the dumb.”
“Give me your piece, William, and go summon Sir David and Whimple hither. I will not let him out of my sight.”
The groom obeyed and hurried off. The moment he was vanished Betty came like a tassel-gentle to her master’s call.
“He is an old man,” she said. “He should have had pity for white hairs. Why were you so cruel to my grandfather, sir?”
“Young lady,” said Fern sorrowfully—“whoever it was worked you that wicked wrong—and I confess I have my suspicions—hath unwittingly, it seems, provided it a golden sequel. Like the beautiful phœnix, which you may have read of, you renew yourself in the ashes of your own destruction, and you shall wear fine feathers yet in a triumph over misfortune.”
“Don’t answer him, Betty,” said her master; “and go up-stairs, wench. I’ll not have you breathe in the same room with him.”
The girl went to the door, looked back wistfully, and obeyed, at the moment that the groom, followed by the two he had been dispatched for, entered the dining-hall.
Sir David’s face expressed sufficient astonishment.
“Who the thunder’s this?” said he, stopping blank on the threshold.
“This is the affable Mr. Fern, Blythewood, who comes to surrender himself into our hands. The frost, he says, has demoralized his gang.”
“Do you scent a trick? Have a care, Tuke.”
“Sir David,” quoth the other, mindful of his prisoner’s face, “how is our company disposed?”
“Why, man—here are we four; Captain Luvaine and Jim are on guard; Lord Dunlone is above, and the boy, a sterling lad, keeps watch at the window.”
Mr. Fern slurred an irrepressible start into a change of position.
“Did you speak?” said Mr. Tuke politely.
The man muttered something in the nature of a negative.
“Oh!” said the gentleman—“I thought perhaps you fancied you had put your head into a hornet’s nest. Is that you, Whimple? Were you successful?”
“I cannot find it, sir. The girl must have concealed it.”
The servant spoke in a strange pre-occupied voice. He stood in the shadow of the flung-back door, and from his covert he looked upon the old enemy of his peace with tranced, motionless eyes, and the expression of one who dreamed a nightmare “and woke to find it truth.” Even Mr. Fern showed some embarrassment under the pitiless scrutiny.
“May I speak at last?” he said, uneasily shifting his head, so that his glance fell upon the opening of the door. “I own us bested at every turn, Mr. Tuke—and—here’s for you, by God!”
The room was lighted only by some candles burning in a sconce within his short reach on the table; and by a sudden adroit movement he had thrown these down.
“Here!” he shrieked shrilly, and leapt forward and sideways.
A fiery tooth tore itself through Tuke’s shoulder, while an explosion shook the room. In one wild instant all was uproar and confusion, in the midst of which the groom ran to the hearth and kicked the smouldering logs into a blaze. Light leapt up, and revealed a struggling and swaying block of men down by the door, and in the aperture above a dark figure standing irresolute.
“Where are the others?” gasped Fern. “Shoot, you fool!”
The hoary scoundrel had played his jack to an ace. Seeing the long shadow of his partner creeping forward in the light of the hall, he had assumed him supported by their full force and had struck on the instant. His blow was miscalculated. Brander, it seemed, was alone. The latter stooped forward eagerly, a pistol raised in his hand. His difficulty was to hit the pigeon and not the crow. The flash of indecision cost him dear. Tuke, trailing on his knees, fired full at him, and the fellow doubled and collapsed on the step like a kinked sand-bag.
Fern was under Whimple and Sir David. He struggled like a madman. The taut strength of the old villain was amazing. The groom was hurrying to help, when the baronet, spun aside as if he were a child, crashed against him and both tumbled on the floor in a heap. In the same moment the robber tore his remaining adversary beneath him, scrambled up and squatted on the man’s legs, and, his eyes streaked with passion, clubbed his discharged pistol to brain him. With a desperate effort Dennis jerked up his knees, and shot the fellow face downwards upon himself once more. Fern gave a cry like a lashed dog, and rolled off and over on to his back. The servant had simply held his knife upwards and hurled the other to his own immolation.
The victor, quite maddened and overwrought, rose to his knees, and crying: “For my father that you murdered!” drove his blade over and over again into the quivering body. Then, suddenly, he cast the weapon from him and himself upon the boards, where he buried his face in his hands and fell crying and sobbing.
Now this was all a matter of a few seconds, but the noise had roused the household; and steps were heard hurrying down the stairs—as Sir David and the groom having come to their feet again were all re-making for the combatants—when the climax of the tragedy broke in a clap of fury to which the prelude had been a whisper. For, in some quarter of the house, a sudden shot rang out, and immediately there was a roar like a peal of subterranean thunder, and on its heels a hell of clanging and splintering sounds and the explosion of shattered glass—and the very floor of the room seemed to yawn and belch forth flame and cloud, as if a crater were formed beneath the foundations of the building.
Half-blinded and half-stunned, Tuke staggered to his feet and stood reeling. A monstrous silence succeeded the uproar, accented only—as a spout of black smoke rose to the ceiling and blossomed out there into a great fungus of death—with falling and tinkling sounds as of glass and dropping plaster. Then, close at hand, he heard voices crying to him, and he tottered towards them.