Part 27 (1/2)

”He had driven her to the other corner on the window side of the room.

As I leaned forward ready to fasten on the man when he should offer violence I heard a peculiar sound as of a loose piece of wood or iron striking the sill.

”'Keep away!' the girl said in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. 'If you drive me to desperation I swear I will kill you.'

”There followed a vicious laugh from Henshaw and I could tell from the panting which followed that a struggle was going on. Just then the moon came out and I could see that Henshaw was trying to get some object--a weapon, I guessed--away from the girl. It is a wonder that neither of them saw me. In the dark opening I must have still been practically hidden, and they too intent on their struggle to notice anything beyond.

”I was just on the point of springing out to the girl's a.s.sistance when she staggered back and, turning, made a rush for the door. In a moment Henshaw was after her, but in his blind haste he either tripped or stumbled and fell heavily. I think it likely that in the dark he struck against the corner of the rather ma.s.sive oak table in the centre of the room and was thrown off his balance. He rose immediately, but I was now close behind him, and as he put out his arm to clutch the girl, who was then half through the doorway, I gripped him by the collar and with all my strength swung him back into the room.

”He must have been most horribly surprised, for he uttered a gasping cry as he spun round, and instead of keeping his feet and rus.h.i.+ng at me as I expected he went down with a thud by the window.”

They had stopped in their walk now, and Edith Morriston was listening almost breathlessly to Gifford's graphic story. Never for a moment had he suggested the lady's ident.i.ty; for all that had pa.s.sed neither of them might have known it.

”I turned quickly to the door,” Gifford continued, ”but to my surprise the lady whom I expected to find there had disappeared. I could neither see nor hear any sign of her.

”I took a step back into the room, fully expecting an onslaught from the infuriated Henshaw. 'You cowardly brute!' I exclaimed in the heat of my anger and excitement. But no reply came, and to my wonder he lay still on the floor where he had fallen.”

CHAPTER XXII

HOW GIFFORD ESCAPED

”I waited for some time in silence, expecting him every moment to rise and retaliate. He was a big, muscular man, but it never occurred to me to be in any fear of him physically. For one thing my indignation was too hot to admit fear; I happen to be quite good enough at boxing to be able to take care of myself, and I was sure--all the more from his continuing to lie there--that such a despicable bully must be a coward.

”'You had better get up and clear out of this house,' I said wrathfully, 'before you get the thras.h.i.+ng you so richly deserve.'

”No answer came. As I waited for one there was, save for my own breathing, dead silence in the room. Before speaking I had heard something like a long drawn sigh come from the man on the floor, but now, listening intently, I could hear nothing. Two explanations suggested themselves to account for his still lying there. One, shame at his vile conduct having been witnessed by a third person, the other that he had struck his head against the wall in falling and was stunned.

”Naturally I was not greatly concerned at the fellow's condition, whichever it was; still it would, I concluded, be well to settle the matter, and if he was merely skulking see that he cleared out of the house. I shut the door, and then crossing to where the man lay, struck a match and held it out to get a view of him.

”He lay on his face with his arms bent under him. I prodded him with my foot, but he did not stir; he lay absolutely, rather uncannily still. The match burned out; I struck another and leaned over to get a sight of his face. To my horror there met my eyes a dark wet patch on the floor which I instinctively felt must be blood. You may imagine the terrible thrill the conviction gave me. Yet I could not believe even then that anything really serious had happened.

”I struck a fresh match and holding it up with one hand, with the other took the man's shoulder and turned him over on his back. Then I knew that I was there with a dead man. The hue of the face was unmistakably that of death. And the cause of it was plainly to be seen. There was a wound in the man's neck from which blood came freely.

”How had the wound--clearly a fatal one--been caused? I searched for an explanation. That which forced itself upon me was that the girl had in her desperation stabbed her persecutor with some weapon she had found there or brought with her. It was a horrible idea to entertain, although the act would have been almost justified. I wondered if by chance the weapon was still there. Striking a match I looked round. Yes; there on the floor near the spot where Henshaw had first fallen, lay a narrow blood-stained chisel.

”Whatever my first conclusions were I can see now the most probable explanation of how Henshaw came by his death-wound. He had forced the chisel away from the girl; he had kept it in his hand; in his eagerness to prevent his victim's escape he had not realized that he was holding it point upwards, and when he fell it had pierced him with all the force of his heavy body falling plump on it.”

”Then you know it was an accident?” Edith Morriston drew a great breath of relief from the painful tension with which she had listened.

”I can see it was a pure accident,” Gifford answered. ”All the same it was an accident with an ugly look about it, and I quickly realized that I was in an equivocal--not to say dangerous, situation.”

”It was a terrible predicament for you,” the girl said sympathetically.

”It was indeed. And one which called for prompt action. Moreover the very fact that I was not in evening clothes made it all the more suspicious. I pulled my wits together and proceeded to make quite sure that the man was actually dead. That I found was beyond all doubt the case, and it now remained for me to make my escape before being found there in that hideous situation.

”I went out to the landing, closing the door after me, with the idea of getting down the stairs and escaping into the garden as secretly as I had come in. I had crept down a very few stairs when I found this was not to be. A chatter of voices just below told me that people were in the tower, and leaning over I could see couples pa.s.sing between the pa.s.sage to the hall and the room below me.

”At any moment, I realized, some of them might take it into their heads to explore the topmost room, when the result would be disastrous.

Certainly in my mufti I could not get past the next floor just then without exciting fatal notice, and to wait for an opportunity when the coast might be clear was too dangerous, seeing the risk of someone coming up.