Part 51 (1/2)

”By way of Celsa, where an infant awaits baptism--and my friends, I dare to hope, will excuse the short delay--to Messina. Where else, my good Luigi? That surely is the place where your guests can most conveniently adjust their misunderstandings.”

The smuggler shrugged his shoulders.

”I am at your service, father,” he said, and looked vacantly at the opposite wall. But the tail of his eye, Aylmer noted, was on Landon. Was there a message, or inquiry, in it?

”All of us,” said Landon, smoothly, ”must find your proposition a very practical one. May I hasten to add my approval of it?”

He looked smilingly at Aylmer, at Claire, lastly at Muhammed. The Moor--was it Aylmer's fancy?--answered with a tiny nod. There was sarcasm in this glance of Landon's; there was menace; there was--so Aylmer told himself--malignant triumph.

Padre Sigismondi nodded absently. He presented his coffee-cup to the Moor to be refilled, and as the brown liquid ran from the spout, watched it with a slow, stolid abstraction. His mental alertness seemed to be relaxing with physical refreshment. He offered no further remarks; he plied his spoon upon the polenta slowly, and yet more slowly.

Suddenly Emmanuele, the sailor, dropped his cup in the act of taking a more than usually copious draught. He looked stupidly at the coa.r.s.e crockery as it broke upon the floor.

Sigismondi shook a finger at him, a finger which, somehow, he seemed to have under no proper command. ”Careless one!” he mumbled. ”Careless one!

Where are your manners?” And then, suddenly, as if he heaved back a weight, he rose unsteadily to his feet. He threatened Luigi with his clenched fist.

”Traitorous dog!” he cried, and fell senseless to the floor.

His companion stared at him stupidly, plunged forward as if to bring him aid, and then fell, too, at his feet. The pair lay where they had fallen, unmoving.

At the back of the room Landon broke out into pleasant laughter.

Aylmer darted forward and bent to shake Sigismondi fiercely by the shoulder. Claire cried to him warningly.

Too late!

Landon and Luigi had flung themselves upon him from behind. Muhammed had dropped a looped cord across his shoulders. There was a moment's confusion--the corner of the table smashed under a chance blow--and then stillness. Lashed with cords into rigidity, Aylmer lay upon the planks, and Landon, gazing down, spat upon his upturned face.

”You clever fool!” he derided. ”To think to have cornered me--me!”

He looked rapidly at his watch and turned to Luigi.

”It is five hours to dawn,” he said. ”Where is it we are to take them?

There is no possibility for delay?”

The smuggler threw out his hands with an air of fatalism.

”The headquarters of the Society--there is no other place!” he said.

”With this wind, four hours or less will see us there. They will charge a commission; you will have to bear with that. But we shall have perfect privacy and, if you will, perfected means of dealing with this man's obstinacy. And there will be adepts, who will give you their a.s.sistance for the pleasure of the thing.”

Landon nodded.

”Do you hear, my friend, do you hear?” he cried, thrusting his foot against Aylmer's cheek. ”You have wriggled well in my coils--I grant you that. You have twisted and, for the moment, escape seemed open--wide open--before you. But against me? No one prevails there, no one!”

”One may--yet.”

The voice was Claire's. Landon wheeled towards her.

”That shows a very determined optimism, sister-in-law,” he said. ”And who, if the knowledge is not privileged?”