In Direst Peril Part 20

"This," cried Brunow, in a loud and quavering tone, "is not the s.h.i.+p I meant to board. There's some mistake here! Hi, you there!"

"Halloa!" said the man in the dreadnaught, approaching and speaking in broken English. "You can hoult your chaw. There is nothing for you to cry out about. Gom dis vays."

Still in growing wonderment, and feeling on the whole that I should have been much better satisfied if I had had with me the brace of revolvers I had bought that morning, I followed the man down the companion-ladder.

CHAPTER XV

The paddles had already begun to churn in the water, and the vessel to move slowly, but with a swift vibration in every plank of her which promised speed when once she had gathered way. I was suspicious enough already, though in so vague a fas.h.i.+on that I hardly guessed what I suspected, and I recall the fact that I was not in the least surprised when I heard a cry from Ruffiano's lips, and saw the old man struggling in the arms of a big sailor who had clipped him by both elbows from behind and held him in a position of the most serious disadvantage.

Without reflection, I sprang to his release. I felt a heavy blow between the shoulders, which would in all probability have taken effect upon my head but for my sudden movement, and in an instant I was in the middle of as severe a rough-and-tumble fight as I could remember anywhere.

There were eight or ten people engaged in it, and the whole thing was so rapid that I had not the faintest idea as to where my opponents came from. I only know that within five seconds of the time at which I had left the deck I was somehow back upon it, fighting, as it seemed to me at the moment, for bare life, though I cannot think at this time of day that any very serious personal violence was intended towards myself.

I was fighting like mad with half a dozen when we suddenly swerved altogether against some part of the bulwark which had not been properly secured, and was probably made to open to afford a gangway for pa.s.sengers, or for the unloading of baggage. The rail swung back, and I, clutching desperately at one of the fellows with whom I was struggling, fell overboard, and soused into the black water, with the bitter chill of a rainy spring in it. I think I may say quite honestly that on land I was a tolerably accomplished sportsman, but I was mainly inland bred as a boy, and though I could swim, after a fas.h.i.+on, and could also, after a fas.h.i.+on, handle a pair of sculls, I was a moderately poor creature in the water. The man I had clutched went down with me, and we both came up spouting the loathsome Thames water from our mouths and nostrils, and still holding to each other. As good luck would have it for me at that moment I came up on top, and a single blow disengaged me from my late adversary. The vessel from which we had fallen was already at a distance which seemed astonis.h.i.+ng, and as I trod the water and looked about me, all the twinkling lights of the river craft and the sh.o.r.e looked alarmingly distant. I made for the nearest of them all, and swam, dreadfully embarra.s.sed by my boots and soaked clothing. The light towards which I directed myself shone green over the black s.p.a.ces of the water, and concentrating all my observation upon it, I thought I approached it at quite a royal pace. In a very little while, however, I discovered that the light was bearing down on me at a much greater rate than that at which I was approaching it, and finally I had some ado to get out of the way of the boat which carried it, and was considerably tossed and tumbled about in the long furrowing wake it made. I sang out at my loudest, but I can only suppose that I was not heard, for the craft, whatever it might have been, swept swiftly down the stream, and in a few seconds was lost to me. I began to feel horribly cold and hopeless. I have been in danger a good many times in my life, but almost always when I could warm the sense of peril by action; but here I felt for a moment as if my time had come, and as if nothing I could do could avert it. The fancy fairly sickened me; and what with the chill of immersion, the sickening taste of the nauseous water, and my own sense of feebleness as a swimmer, I was on the edge of giving up; but all of a sudden, as I have felt more than once in my time, a perfectly calm and bright sensation succeeded to the panic, and I rolled over on to my back, determined to make the best of things and to husband my strength as far as possible. I had read scores of times, as everybody has, that a man floating in the water has only to throw his head back, to keep his hands down, and to rest quite still to be safe. I tried this promising experiment, and whether from the weight of my wet clothes or the irregularity of my breathing, I found that it would not answer, and that I was compelled to keep in motion. I could feel that the current was carrying me, and as I paddled along, most carefully husbanding my strength, I saw that I was bearing gradually nearer to a light on sh.o.r.e, whose position in reference to the various other lights determined me that it was a fixed and not a moving object. I swam towards it, carefully regulating my respiration and determined to avoid all flurry, but I saw that in spite of my utmost efforts I was being hurried past it. Then I drifted into a s.p.a.ce where there was something of a little broken, choppy sea, and got another fill of that beastly water, which tasted of tar and sewage and all abominations, and sickened me again to the very heart. Then, before I had fairly recovered from this, and while I was only automatically keeping myself afloat, I saw the wet, rotting piles of a wooden pier quite close to me, and swimming like a madman, touched the surface, and tried to get a grip of it. I failed, and was swept along, gripping and slipping in a most desperate endeavor, until at last the finger-nails of my right hand stuck somewhere in a crack of the water-soaked and slimy wood, and I held on, feeling that I was safe.

I had not the faintest sensation of pain at the time, but I clung to the slimy pillar of that pier so urgently with both hands that my nails were half torn away, and for a fortnight later it was only with great difficulty that I could handle a pen, or b.u.t.ton or unb.u.t.ton a collar, or use a knife and fork. I tried to bottom the stream, but found I was quite out of my depth, and so worked cautiously along with the current from post to post until I came to the end of the structure, and then feeling my way round it in grim darkness, found myself at last with my feet embedded in soft mud. I held on there for a minute or two to take breath, and then fought on again. In a little while I found myself on dry land, but so used up by the pull and by the unwonted exertion that I fell all in a heap at the water's edge, and lay there so prostrated that I could move neither hand nor foot. At first the air was tenfold colder than the water had been, but the natural heat rea.s.serted itself gradually, and my forces so far gathered themselves together that I could stand upon my feet and walk. I went on blindly just at first, with such lights as were visible dancing wildly all about me, and it must only have been by sheer good fortune that I did not wander back into the river from which I had so narrowly escaped. Sometimes I saw hundreds of lights, green and red and dazzling white, which had no existence at all, but in the midst of these I made out one which was stationary and real, and I went towards it. When I reached it I found that it hung above the door of that identical public-house at which we had found our boatman, and there at the doorway, gla.s.s in hand, was the hackney driver who had brought us down. The man looked amazed to see me, and was more surprised still when I hailed him. He undertook immediately to drive me back to town; helped me into the cab, wrapped me up from head to foot in a rough oilcloth, got me a stiff gla.s.s of hot brandy-and-water, and drove away.

The journey down had been long, but the return seemed actually interminable, and it seems so now in my recollection of it. I plead guilty to a confusion of mind which for a while left me powerless to think about anything. Notwithstanding the wraps with which the driver had supplied me, the cold of the March night pierced me to the bone, and the brandy I had taken seemed rather to stupify than to revive me; but when at last I did get home, and Hinge had helped me to a scorching rub-down with rough towels, and had a.s.sisted me to dress in dry raiment, I felt more myself again, and sent downstairs for the cabman, who was still waiting there for his fare. The man could tell me absolutely nothing of any value, and I soon found out that the fellow was as much surprised at the turn events had taken as I was myself. A servant girl, it seemed, had come upon the street and had told him that he was wanted a few doors off. He gave me correctly and with no unwillingness Brunow's address, and told me that the gentleman who chartered him had bidden him to drive first to the Italian restaurant, and then to our ultimate destination. I took the man's number and dismissed him with a handsome gratuity. Hinge at first wanted to insist on my immediate retirement to bed, but with every moment that went by I felt better, and when I had drunk a cup of his excellent coffee I was quite myself again, except in so far as all the events of the night seemed to have a curiously unreal and dreamlike feeling about them. The more I turned the thing over in my mind the more I felt inclined to doubt Brunow's _bonafides_, and yet our long acquaintance and the downright horrible character of the betrayal which had really been committed made the doubt seem so criminal that I tried to drive it away. The more I refused to harbor it the more emphatically it came back again. I recalled Brunow at every instant at which I had consciously or unconsciously observed him, and I _knew_ that there had somehow been a burden on his mind. I could recall his cry when he had said that we were aboard the wrong s.h.i.+p; and let me do what I might, I could not rid myself of the belief that his voice and look at that moment were artificial and theatrical. Once, in the middle of that rough-and-tumble which ended in my involuntary plunge into the water, I had caught sight of him in the gleam of a sickly oil-lamp which swung above the deck. He was held, yet not restrained, by a burly seaman, and the picture was burned into my mind as if by fire. The man was peering over his shoulder, ten thousand times more interested in watching the progress of the struggle than in guarding Brunow, and Brunow was watching the struggle too, but not in the least with any look of amazement, but only with one which I could not for the life of me help construing into fear and shame and self-reproach. It was like a scene beheld by lightning, divided and apart from everything else, and I found it ineffaceable.

It seemed to me obvious that the first thing to be done was to communicate with Ruffiano's friends, for whether he had been spirited away by design or not, it was undeniable that he was in a strange predicament. I set out at once for our ordinary meeting-place, taking Hinge with me, and a brisk walk of a quarter of an hour brought me to the spot. The room in which we held our meetings was approached by an entrance which ran beside the lower room of the restaurant. I left Hinge in this narrow pa.s.sage, and mounted the stairs rapidly. Before I reached the room I heard the hum of excited voices, and when I tried the door I found that it was locked; I gave the signal known to every member of our fraternity, and the door was opened. The man who opened it, a swarthy Neapolitan whom I barely knew by name, started with amazement as he saw me, and gave vent to an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. There were perhaps a score of men in the room, and as I stepped forward they all started to their feet and began to press about me with questionings, of which I could barely understand a phrase. One man only hung aloof, and that man was Brunow. I was so amazed to see him there, and so bewildered by the din of welcome and inquiry, that I had no opportunity for a real observation of anything; but I am a mistaken man indeed if Brunow were not to the full as much amazed at seeing me as I at seeing him.

"My good friends," I called out at last, "let me have silence for a minute. Where is Count Ruffiano?"

Every one pointed at once to Brunow. He advanced, and I read treason in his face.

"My dear Fyffe," he cried, holding out his hand to me, "I had never hoped to see you alive again."

This time it was I who refused to see Brunow's hand, as he, only a few hours ago, had declined to see mine. If I had laid bare his villainy there and then, I have no shadow of doubt that there would have been murder done. If I had even hinted at suspicion, his life would have been barely worth a minute's purchase. If my a.s.sociates had a fault with which both foes and friends alike would have credited them, it was that they were dangerously p.r.o.ne to act first and to argue afterwards.

There had been treason in the camp already; when was ever a revolution conducted without it? But I could not make it my business to denounce a fellow-countryman, and a man who had once called himself my friend, unless I could proceed on actual certainty. It took an hour of excited talk to do it, and I had to describe my own share in the adventure twice or thrice; but I got Brunow away at last, and as we went down the stairs together I slipped my arm through his and held him with a grip which I dare say he found significant.

"You will come to my rooms," I said. He made no answer, and I walked along with him, Hinge following at a distance of a yard or two, and so far, of course, suspecting nothing. Not a word was spoken by the way, and Brunow walked like a man who was going to the scaffold. When we came to iny own rooms I locked the door and faced him.

"What have you done with Ruffiano?" I asked him, sternly.

"G.o.d only knows what has become of him," cried Brunow, casting his hands abroad with a gesture which was meant to convey at once irritation and wonder. "I made my way straight back to tell the story of the extraordinary incident of to-night, and I have told it. The men we have just left can confirm me in the statement that I did not lose a minute."

He was defending himself already, though no accusation had been brought against him.

"You escaped from the s.h.i.+p?" I asked him, curtly.

"Yes," he answered, with a gasp; "I escaped from the s.h.i.+p."

"How?" I asked.

"I followed your example," he returned, "and leaped overboard."

"To arrive here," I said, "in dry clothes, having made no change?"

He gave a sudden start at this, and cast a hurried glance at his own figure. Then he looked at me with an expression I shall not readily forget. It was that of a hunted creature trapped, and recognizing the fact that he was caught.

"I swam ash.o.r.e," he said, "and I have changed my clothes at home."

I moved without a word to the door, and, opening it, called out to Hinge, who stood waiting for me in the darkening pa.s.sage, bidding him to mount. He came and stood at attention.

"Mr. Brunow," I said, "will give you the key of his rooms, and you will go from here to there, and by his orders will bring back to me a soaked suit of clothes which you will find there. Oblige me by handing my man your key," I added, turning again on Brunow.

He shot a whisper at me.

"Do you wish to have me murdered?"

"I wish to know," I answered, "and I mean to know, the truth. What have you done with Ruffiano?"

"I tell you," he cried, desperately, "I have done nothing! I know nothing! You were there yourself, and you can tell as well as I that the whole thing was a surprise. How was I to know we were being carried aboard an Austrian craft? How could I suspect the man who came to me of treachery?"

"You swam ash.o.r.e?" I asked. "I am not to be charged with hunting you to death because I ask for a sight of the clothes you swam in. Give Hinge your key!"

"He's quite welcome to it," he answered, turning his white, defiant face on me, and fumbling in his pocket with a hand so unnerved that he could grasp nothing with it for a minute. "There you are," he said at last, drawing out his latch-key and handing it to Hinge. "Do as you are told."

Hinge accepted the key, and, saluting, left the room without a word, though with a curious look both at Brunow and myself. When he had gone Brunow threw himself into a chair and drew out a cigar-case. He opened it, and selected and lit a cigar, though he shook so that he only succeeded with an expenditure of some half a dozen matches. When he had got a light at last he threw himself back and puffed away with as complete an expression of _insouciance_ as he could command. I, of course, had nothing to say until Hinge returned, though I knew perfectly well beforehand what the result of his errand would be. He came back at last, and when his step was heard upon the stair Brunow looked more ghastly than ever as he turned his face towards me. When Hinge came in empty-handed the poor detected wretch rose with a pretence of bl.u.s.ter which was miserable to see.

"Why the devil," he cried, "haven't you done what you were told to do?

This is a pretty servant of yours. Why hasn't he brought the things back as he was told to do?"

Hinge said nothing, but looked from me to my visitor in some bewilderment.

"You hear!" cried Brunow, rising and throwing the stump of his cigar into the grate with a sickly pretence of anger.

"Beg your pardon, sir," said Hinge; "there's Mr. Brunow's key, sir.

Seems to me I've been sent on a fool's errand. Mr. Brunow's man wants to know what I mean by coming with a message like that. He says Mr. Brunow hasn't been at home since half-past six this evening. Mr. Brunow's man, sir," Hinge pursued, "seemed to think I was trying to make a fool of him."

"That will do," I answered. "You have obeyed your orders, and that is all you have to think about. Go and wait outside."

He went, but I could see that he nursed a little sense of injury. I turned to Brunow and asked him: "Is the game played out yet, or have you any other s.h.i.+ft to show me?"

He made no answer at the minute, but fumbled in his pocket again for his cigar-case, with the same shaky and uncertain motion as before. He avoided my eyes, though every now and then he looked towards me as if in spite of himself. For my own part, I could not look away from him, and I do not know now whether I felt more rage or more contempt or more pity for him. I had not thought him so cowardly as he showed himself to be.

"It is for you," I told him at last, "to explain your actions of to-night. You know what the situation means. I charge you here with having betrayed a comrade whom you had sworn, in common with the rest of us, to stand by to the last. If I had brought the charge I am making now against you a little more than half an hour ago it would have gone hard with you. You are as well aware of that fact as I am, and you know that nothing could have saved you from my just renunciation but the memory of an old friends.h.i.+p, of which you have proved yourself utterly unworthy."

"I know you're talking nonsense," he responded, trying to brave it out still. "What should I want to betray old Ruffiano for?"

A sudden gust of wrath swept through me, and blew away before it the last sense of compunction in my mind.

"Understand," I said, "that I am in earnest in this matter, and that I mean to carry out my threat at once. Unless I receive from you a full confession of this night's infamy, I shall detain you here, and shall send Hinge to summon a meeting here; and at that meeting I shall denounce you as a traitor to the cause you have sworn to forward. I shall bring my proofs, and I shall leave you to justify yourself as best you may. What the consequence of that step may be it is for you and not for me to calculate. I will give you five minutes in which to make up your mind."

"You can do what the devil you please," he said; and I rang the bell.

Hinge came in, and I bade him go out and call a cab. He obeyed, and taking a seat at the table I began to write out a series of addresses.

I read them aloud to Brunow when I had finished, and he recognized the names of half a dozen of the most resolute of our leaders.

"You are playing with your own life!" I cried. "You have only to tell the truth to have a chance for it. You have only to go on lying in this futile way to throw your last chance into the gutter. I will palter with you no longer, and unless by the time at which Hinge returns you have made a clean breast of it, I shall send for the men whose names are here, I shall bring my charge, and you will have to stand the consequences."