Читать книгу Red Lion and Blue Star - John Arthur Barry - Страница 11

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In spite of his wound, which smarted, Combo Carter slept until awakened by voices at the mouth of his shelter, where Sam Johnson and a group of his men were conversing.

"It's the most extraordinary thing I ever heard of!" remarked Johnson. "He's disappeared as if he was a ghost."

"The storm did it," said another. "He got away under cover of that, with the traps close at his heels."

"But where to?" asked a boyish voice. "The police swear they were close to him when the storm broke—just near our fence here. I wouldn't have him escape for the worth of my right hand! I can't help fancying, yet, that he's planted somewhere about the waterside. If you don't mind, Mr. Johnson, I'll just have one more look?"

"Look and welcome, Master Stratton," replied the owner of the foundry. "But every corner's been turned upside down, and no sign. I believe, myself, he's collared a boat, and is out at sea by this time."

At the name of Stratton the hidden listener had pricked up his ears. Could this be the son of the bank manager that he had shot, after killing his father? It was funny if such should be the case. And he was not left long in doubt.

"Poor young chap," remarked one of the men. "I knew his father well, afore that brute Combo did for 'im. Plugged the kiddy, too, didn't he, boss?"

"Wounded him badly," replied Johnson. "His mother wanted him to take a billet in the bank after he came out of the hospital. They offered him one at once, but he couldn't bear the notion. So they apprenticed him to me. Smart and handy he's turned out, too. Did most of the work on the 'Red Warder' here, besides drawin' the plans for him. Now, lads, some of you go up to the Marine Storeyard and get the trolly to put the 'Warder' on. They're going to take him out in the afternoon, as soon as poor Ashton's buried."

"Yes, decidedly," thought the murderer, hardly able to repress a chuckle, as he crouched away from the circular globe of light, "it was funny that the son of the man he had shot because he wouldn't put up his hands when ordered should have been the one to have the biggest share in building this splendid hiding place. No one would ever dream of searching there. That was evident. At nightfall he would come out, and, if he could but steal a horse, he might yet be able to snap his fingers at them all. And they were, apparently, going to take the thing he was in away somewhere. Up country; perhaps on the railway. Likely enough it was a sort of new-fangled tank for use on a station; maybe to dip sheep in. If they'd only drop a bit of tucker in, he'd be fixed right up to the knocker. But, failing that, the bacca'd have to stand to him." So ran the villain's thoughts, as already in his minds eye he saw himself once more free, and back again in his old haunts, or even farther out—right across to the Territory.

By-and-by, he heard a voice close to the hole say: "No news?"

"None," was the reply, in the same youthful tones he recognised as young Stratton's. "Port Endeavor's been searched from top to bottom without success. Now a party has gone inland, and another one down the harbor shore. I came back because I thought the 'Warder's' lid was a trifle big for the slot, and I knew the Board people wouldn't care about being kept waiting now they've got their moorings ready at the reef."

There was a sound of chipping as of a cold chisel upon iron, and, presently, something was clapped into the man hole, fitting so closely as to show not the faintest gleam of light. Suddenly the buoy was rolled over, shaking and bruising its occupant considerably, and causing him to mutter deep curses as he picked himself up and sought vainly for something to hold on to. The darkness was intense, and the heat, engendered by the sun beating on the iron plates all the morning, grew almost unbearable now that the only opening was closed. In desperation, the wretch stripped off his clothes and lay naked upon them with the hot iron burning his skin wherever it touched. All at once he felt that his shelter had been lifted up bodily, and was moving. The heat grew fiercer, and the sweat poured off him like rain. But he set his teeth and suffered it. Presently he felt the thing he was in moving with a new motion. Swinging through the air, this time; whilst a dim rattle came to his ears. This was when the "Warder" was being hoisted on to the Marine Board tender Thetis, Captain Haynes; and the rattle was the noise of her steam winch.

It grew somewhat cooler now. But presently, another and an altogether novel motion puzzled him. He had certainly never experienced anything like it before. It was not that of a railway. And what could be making him pant so distressfully, and draw his breath with such difficulty? Air! air, in Heaven's name! He fumbled vainly about in the inky blackness for the lid he had seen them put on, bruising his fingers and tearing his nails against clenched rivets. But he had lost all sense of locality, and kept groping upwards for the manhole when it was, in fact, under his feet. Nor would it have availed him any could he have found it—cunningly turned and slotted, and caulked with red lead and okum, already as hard as adamant. Denser and denser grew the atmosphere; his breath came and went in wheezy pantings. There was a weight as of tons pressing on his chest, and his heart hit his ribs like a hammer.

For, perhaps the first time in his life terror came upon him. Where was he? What was being done to him? And as he staggered here and there, bruised and bleeding, against the hot sides of his prison, gasping for breath, all at once his feet touched the murdered Constable's handcuffs that, together with his belt, he had put on years ago—it seemed—in the gaol. Picking them up he battered with all his feeble, sobbing might against the iron plates of the dreadful trap in which he had been snared.

Suddenly the thing changed its position to an upright one and he fell headlong down to the bottom of it and lay there doubled up, the burning heat of his body turned in a moment to chilling cold; his chest felt as if it were bursting, and strange, flaming shapes rushed hither and thither before his staring eyes. The dismal tolling of a bell, too, in his ears! Ah, how he hated bells! . . . . Ding-dong-dong-ding! . . . Now he knew. . . . They had hanged him at last. . . . That was the prison bell. . . . He wasn't quite dead yet, though. . . . Swinging at the end of the rope. . . . . Curse them all!

"Didn't you fancy you heard something rattling and knocking when we lowered the 'Warder' over the side, Haynes?" asked the President of the Marine Board as the Thetis steamed homewards from the Cat and Kittens.

"Rivet heads and an odd bolt or two," replied the old skipper, shortly, casting a look back to where the great red buoy swung well out of the water, rocking and nodding to a westerly cross-swell, whilst to their ears came very distinctly the sullen booming of the bell.