Читать книгу The Terrible People - Edgar Wallace - Страница 7

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HARRY THE LANCER! Arnold Long stared down into the gray face, almost unable to believe the evidence of his eyes. A brief examination showed the cause of the convict's death. He had been shot at close quarters from behind. Betcher picked up the rifle: the barrel was still hot, and there was a live cartridge in the chamber.

A few yards away was the hedge, and beyond this he discovered a steep bank leading down to a sunken road. There was no sign of life here, but the narrow road twisted out of sight fifty yards beyond, and there were wheel tracks on the white dust. He climbed the bank again to where the body lay, and was stooping when he heard the "pop-pop" of a motor-cycle, and caught a glimpse of the leather-covered head of its rider.

He was going along the road where the detective had left his car, and, raising himself, Long signalled the rider to stop. The man, whoever he was, must have seen him, but he did not arrest his speed, though he seemed to slacken a second as he came abreast of the car. In a few seconds, he was out of sight behind the alders that fringed the road.

The detective looked round for help The shots must have been heard. And then he saw in the distance a black barn which seemed peculiarly familiar, and he remembered that it was at this spot on the road that he had seen the Lancer that morning.

There was nothing for it but to drive into the nearest village and procure help. He was more than halfway across the field when he saw a bright, straight tongue of flame leap up from the place where he had stopped his car; there was a deafening explosion, and in a second the air was filled with scraps of flying wood and metal.

Betcher stood still, paralyzed by the shock, and then, sprinting the remainder of the distance, he leapt over the low hedge into the road. His car was a mass of twisted metal and smouldering wood; and then, by great luck, a cyclist policeman came along. He had heard the explosion and, bending over his handlebars, was flying toward the spot. He leapt off his machine as he came abreast of Arnold.

"What's happened to your car—blown up?"

"It has certainly blown up," said Betcher grimly; "and as certainly I am not troubling to look for the bomb that did it!"

"Bomb?" gasped the rural policeman.

The question of his wrecked machine was an unimportant one to Betcher Long. In a few words, he explained the tragedy and guided the policeman to the spot where the man lay.

"There are car marks in the sunken road," said Betcher, "but unless we have an airplane, I doubt whether we can overtake the two gentlemen responsible for this little surprise."

It was five o'clock that night when he came to the Yard and reported, and Colonel Macfarlane listened with a darkened brow.

"The whole thing is inexplicable and, I would have said, impossible," he said. "Shelton was hanged at eight, and there is no doubt about his being dead. You were unable to trace the motor-cyclist or the car?"

Betcher shook his head.

"No, sir, neither the car nor the bomb-thrower was seen, but that is very easily explained. The car could have turned right and doubled back, joining the main road west of Chelmsford. The only machine that passed through the village was a tradesman's Ford, evidently a greengrocer's, for there were baskets of cabbages and potatoes at the back. The cyclist—well, I know what happened to the cyclist. I want to be mysterious for a week or two. Chief, we're up against the Terrible People!"

Macfarlane frowned at him.

"I don't quite get you," he said. "Shelton worked on his own. He ran no gang, he had no friends. And certainly, as far as we know, there is nobody in the world sufficiently interested in the man's fate to care whether he lived or died."

Betcher bit his lip thoughtfully.

"All that is true," he said, "and yet—well, I'm standing for no Gallows Hand; that supernatural stuff doesn't get past me, not by so much as a millimetre! There's going to be trouble—bad trouble! I don't know where it's coming from, but it will be hot and fierce and gory.

The Terrible People will not sit still. They employed the Lancer, knowing he was a pretty good shot, to settle me on my way back from Chelmsford; and he was easy, because he hated me. When they found he'd missed the target, they shot him. If he hadn't missed the target they would have shot him. He was marked for death the moment he took on his dirty work. "

In the months that followed, Betcher Long found a new zest and interest in life. The knowledge of his own danger, the certainty that somewhere behind this lonely forger existed an organization more terrible than any that he had met with or even had read about in the grisly records of police headquarters, gave his step a new spring and brought a new brightness to his eye.

He had trailed the Lancer from the moment he had left Dartmoor; had interrogated the people with whom the convict had been brought into touch; and at every turn he was puzzled. None of the Lancer's acquaintances could give him the slightest clue that would lead to the detection of his employers.

The year that followed was one of fearful happenings. Murder upon murder was planned and carried into execution, and yet no word of these deeds appeared in any newspaper. Only the wise men in that dark building that broods on the Embankment knew of the terror that stalked abroad. Men, famous and notorious, were sent into the vales of death, and no startling headlines dominated the news pages of the London press.

For the Gallows Hand went cunningly to its task and left no trace of its devilish work.

And then, fate brought to Arnold Long's life an even more poignant interest, and, as it proved, a cause for a fear that had been a stranger to him hitherto. For he met the secretary of Miss Revelstoke.