Part 41 (1/2)

He flung aside the flap, he leaped from the opening. Spreading his knees, he landed on the convicts, a knee on each back, and then he brought his hands toward each other with all his strength, cuffing their skulls together with a resounding crack. They fell across Britt.

Vaniman was on his feet while Wagg was rising; the guard's slow mind was operating ineptly on his muscles. The young man felled Wagg with a vicious blow under the ear.

The convicts, knocked senseless, were on their faces, pinning Britt to the ground. The b.u.t.ts of the bulldog revolvers in their hip pockets were exposed. Vaniman s.n.a.t.c.hed out the weapons. He aimed one of the revolvers at Wagg, who had struggled to his knees. ”Your knife! Throw it to me!

Quick!”

Under the menace of the gun Wagg obeyed.

The young man pocketed the guns for a moment. He rolled the reviving convicts off Britt and slashed the prisoner's bonds and tore the towel from his face. It was in his mind to force Britt to crawl into the van.

He was regarding Britt as his chief witness and princ.i.p.al exhibit in the exposure he proposed to lay before the people of Egypt. In the back of Vaniman's head there may have been some sort of consideration for the man who had ruined him--scruples against leaving him with those renegades who had tortured him. However, the young man was conscious of the more compelling motive--to carry Britt along with him, to force Britt, before the eyes of men, to uncover the hiding place of the treasure.

He trained his guns on the three men, backing away from them in order to have them at a safe distance. Britt was on his knees. He was staring at Vaniman with unblinking eyes in which unmistakable mania was flaming.

The attack on him in his bed that night, the blow that had stunned him so that the a.s.sailants might tie him up, the ride in the strange conveyance, the dreadful uncertainty of what it was all about--these matters had wrought cruelly upon the victim's wits. The torture by the flame had further unsettled his mind. And at that moment, coming down from the heavens, so it seemed, a dead man had appeared to him.

Britt's recent experience had rendered him incapable of surveying the thing from a normal viewpoint. He saw the man whom he had disgraced by plot and perjury, the man who was buried under tons of rock, so the state had officially reported, the man to whose return after seven years of punishment Britt had been looking forward with dread. He had slept more peacefully since that tragedy had been enacted at the prison. Britt was not admitting that this was a human being in the flesh. Already partially crazed by the manhandling from which he had suffered, he peered at this apparition, a mystic figure in the aura of the fog--the shade of Frank Vaniman, so his frantic belief insisted--and leaped up, screaming like a man who had gone stark, staring mad.

Before Vaniman had time to issue a command Britt ran away along the lane by which the van had entered the wood. He was an extraordinary figure in flight. His night robe fluttered behind as he ran. For the most part he hopped on one foot; he yelped with pain when he was obliged to set the blistered foot on the ground in order to recover his balance.

Vaniman did not stay to threaten the three men. He had their weapons and he did not fear them.

He ran after Britt.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE FOX WHO WAS RUN TO EARTH

Vaniman's first impulse was to overtake the fugitive. He wanted to have Britt in his grip, holding to him, forcing him to confess and restore.

But when Britt reached the highway and started in the direction of the village, saner second thought controlled the pursuer. Britt had become a self-operating proposition; Vaniman felt that, although sudden fright were spurring Britt, a fear more inherently characteristic was pulling the usurer on his race to the village--he had betrayed the hiding place of hard cas.h.!.+ He was rus.h.i.+ng to protect it. By running to the treasure Britt would be betraying something of more moment to Vaniman than gold.

The young man kept his distance, keeping the quarry in sight, running a few feet behind Britt in the fog.

In the mist the two were like the flitting figures of a fantasy. The road was still well filled with wains and pedestrians, following after those who had gone on ahead. The wains stopped; the pedestrians halted and gaped and gasped. Women cried out shrilly. Vaniman and Britt furnished an uncanny spectacle. The eyes which beheld them saw them only for an instant; the fog's curtain allowed each observer scant time to determine what these figures were. Britt, hairless, his face sickly white, his night gear fluttering, was as starkly bodeful as if he were newly risen from the grave, garbed in death's cerements. Vaniman's presence on the scene added to the terrifying illusion produced by Britt.

This pursuer had been officially proclaimed dead. They who beheld believed they saw a dead man. The face was s.m.u.tched with blood. The eyes were wide and were set straight ahead. Vaniman was taking no chances on losing the man whom he was chasing.

After the first thrill of horror, wild curiosity stung the men of Egypt.

They dropped the reins, those who were driving horses, and joined those who had turned in their tracks and were following the phantoms of the night.

In this fas.h.i.+on, with the rout and rabble behind and Vaniman close on his heels, Tasper Britt arrived at Britt Block--and even the statue in its niche seemed to goggle with amazed stare.

Britt did not stop to lift the loop of the leather thong over his head; with a fierce tug he broke the cord. He unlocked the door and rushed in.

After Vaniman followed, the men outside hesitated only momentarily.

Their numbers gave them courage. They crowded into the corridor. Some of them were carrying the lanterns which they had used to light the way of the procession of carts.

Britt did not enter his office; he ran the length of the corridor and flung open the door which led to the bas.e.m.e.nt. The pursuers kept on at the heels of Vaniman. But they took the precaution to allow the men with the lanterns to go ahead.

Britt went frantically at his work, paying no attention to anybody. In fact, he did not seem to realize that others were present. There was a heap of furnace wood in one corner of the bas.e.m.e.nt; he began to heave that wood in all directions. One of the lanterns was smashed by a billet. The men in the place were obliged to dodge the flying sticks.