Part 26 (1/2)

Brookfield chuckled himself purple in the face over this pleasantry, and declared that his lords.h.i.+p's wit grew sharper with every day of his existence. Meanwhile Tom o' the Gleam moved a step or two nearer to Wrotham.

”You're a lucky lord!” he said, and again he laughed discordantly. ”Very lucky! But you don't mean to tell me that while you're pounding along at full speed, you've never upset anything in your way?--never knocked down an old man or woman,--never run over a dog,--or a child?”

”Oh, well, if you mean that kind of thing!” murmured Wrotham, puffing placidly at his cigar--”Of course! That's quite common! We're always running over something or other, aren't we, Brookie?”

”Always!” declared that gentleman pleasantly. ”Really it's half the fun!”

”Positively it is, don't-cher-know!” and his lords.h.i.+p played again with his enamelled pig--”But it's not our fault. If things will get into our way, we can't wait till they get out. We're bound to ride over them. Do you remember that old hen, Brookie?”

Brookfield spluttered into a laugh, and nodded in the affirmative.

”There it was skipping over the road in front of us in as great a hurry as ever hen was,” went on Wrotham. ”Going back to its family of eggs per express waddle! Whiz! Pst--and all its eggs and waddles were over! By Jove, how we screamed! Ha--ha--ha!--he--he--he!”

Lord Wrotham's laugh resembled that laugh peculiar to ”society”

folk,--the laugh civil-sn.i.g.g.e.ring, which is just a tone between the sheep's bleat and the peewit's cry. But no one laughed in response, and no one spoke. Some heavy spell was in the air like a cloud shadowing a landscape, and an imaginative onlooker would have been inclined to think that this imperceptible mystic darkness had come in with Tom o' the Gleam and was centralising itself round him alone. Brookfield, seeing that his lordly patron was inclined to talk, and that he was evidently anxious to narrate various ”car” incidents, similar to the hen episode, took up the conversation and led it on.

”It is really quite absurd,” he said, ”for any one of common sense to argue that a motorist can, could, or should pull up every moment for the sake of a few stray animals, or even people, when they don't seem to know or care where they are going. Now think of that child to-day! What an absolute little idiot! Gathering wild thyme and holding it out to the car going full speed! No wonder we knocked it over!”

The hostess of the inn looked up quickly.

”I hope it was not hurt?” she said.

”Oh dear no!” answered Lord Wrotham lightly. ”It just fell back and turned a somersault in the gra.s.s,--evidently enjoying itself. It had a narrow escape though!”

Tom o' the Gleam stared fixedly at him. Once or twice he essayed to speak, but no sound came from his twitching lips. Presently, with an effort, he found his voice.

”Did you--did you stop the car and go back to see--to see if--if it was all right?” he asked, in curiously harsh, monotonous accents.

”Stop the car? Go back? By Jove, I should think not indeed! I'd lost too much time already through taking a wrong turning. The child was all right enough.”

”Are you sure?” muttered Tom thickly. ”Are you--quite--sure?”

”Sure?” And Wrotham again had recourse to his eyegla.s.s, which he stuck in one eye, while he fixed his interlocutor with a supercilious glance.

”Of course I'm sure! What the devil d' ye take me for? It was a mere beggar's brat anyhow--there are too many of such little wretches running loose about the roads--regular nuisances--a few might be run over with advantage--Hullo! What now? What's the matter? Keep your distance, please!” For Tom suddenly threw up his clenched fists with an inarticulate cry of rage, and now leaped towards Wrotham in the att.i.tude of a wild beast springing on its prey. ”Hands off! Hands off, I say!

d.a.m.n you, leave me alone! Brookfield! Here! Some one get a hold of this fellow! He's mad!”

But before Brookfield or any other man could move to his a.s.sistance, Tom had pounced upon him with all the fury of a famished tiger.

”G.o.d curse you!” he panted, between the gasps of his labouring breath--”G.o.d burn you for ever in h.e.l.l!”

Down on the ground he hurled him, clutching him round the neck, and choking every attempt at a cry. Then falling himself in all his huge height, breadth, and weight, upon Wrotham's p.r.o.ne body he crushed it under and held it beneath him, while, with appalling swiftness and vehemence, he plunged a drawn claspknife deep in his victim's throat, hacking the flesh from left to right, from right to left with reckless ferocity, till the blood spurted about him in horrid crimson jets, and gushed in a dark pool on the floor.

Piercing screams from the women, groans and cries from the men, filled the air, and the lately peaceful scene was changed to one of maddening confusion. Brookfield rushed wildly through the open door of the inn into the village street, yelling: ”Help! Help! Murder! Help!” and in less than five minutes the place was filled with an excited crowd.

”Tom!” ”Tom o' the Gleam!” ran in frightened whispers from mouth to mouth. David Helmsley, giddy with the sudden shock of terror, rose shuddering from his place with a vague idea of instant flight in his mind, but remained standing inert, half paralysed by sheer panic, while several men surrounded Tom, and dragged him forcibly up from the ground where he lay, still grasping his murdered man. As they wrenched the gypsy's grappling arms away, Wrotham fell back on the floor, stone dead.

Life had been thrust out of him with the first blow dealt him by Tom's claspknife, which had been aimed at his throat as a butcher aims at the throat of a swine. His bleeding corpse presented a frightful spectacle, the head being nearly severed from the body.

Brookfield, shaking all over, turned his back upon the awful sight, and kept on running to and fro and up and down the street, clamouring like a madman for the police. Two st.u.r.dy constables presently came, their appearance restoring something like order. To them Tom o' the Gleam advanced, extending his blood-stained hands.

”I am ready!” he said, in a quiet voice. ”I am the murderer!”