The Datchet Diamonds Part 24

"Mr. Ireland, save him! What shall we do?"

"Don't put yourself out, Miss Strong. This may turn out to be the best thing that could have happened to Mr. Paxton. Bill, where's this crib of theirs?"

Cooper pushed his hat on to the side of his head.

"I don't know as how I could rightly describe it to you--Brighton ain't my home, you know. But I daresay I could show it to you if I was to try."

"Then you shall try. Listen to me, Bill Cooper. If you take me to this crib of theirs, and if what you say is true, and you don't try to play any of those tricks of yours, I'll add something of my own to this lady's fifty, and it'll be the best stroke of business that you ever did in all your life."

Ireland called a cab. He allowed Daisy to enter first. Cooper got in after her.

"The police-station, driver--as fast as you can."

Cooper immediately wanted to get out again.

"Where are you a-taking me to? I ain't going to no police-station!"

"Stay where you are, you idiot! So long as you act fairly with me, I'll act fairly with you. You don't suppose that this is a sort of job that I can tackle single-handed? I'm going to the station to get help.

Now then, driver, move that horse of yours!"

The cab moved off, leaving Miss Wentworth and Mr. Franklyn to follow in another if they chose.

CHAPTER XIV

AMONG THIEVES

Cyril was vaguely conscious of the touch of some one's hand about the region of his throat; not of a soft or a gentle hand, but of a clumsy, fumbling, yet resolute paw. Then of something falling on to him--falling with a splas.h.i.+ng sound. He opened his eyes, heavily, dreamily. He heard a voice, speaking as if from afar.

"Hullo, chummie, so you ain't dead, after all?--leastways, not as yet you ain't."

The voice was not a musical voice, nor a friendly one. It was harsh and husky, as if the speaker suffered from a chronic cold. It was the voice not only of an uneducated man, but of the lowest type of English-speaking human animal. Cyril shuddered as he heard it. His eyes closed of their own accord.

"Now then!"

The words were accompanied by a smart, stinging blow on Mr. Paxton's cheek, a blow from the open palm of an iron-fronted hand. Severe though it was, Paxton was in such a condition of curious torpor that it scarcely seemed to stir him. It induced him to open his eyes again, and that, apparently, was all.

"Look here, chummie, if you're a-going to make a do of it, make a do of it, and we'll bury you. But if you're going to keep on living, move yourself, and look alive about it. I ain't going to spend all my time waiting for you--it's not quite good enough."

While the flow of words continued, Cyril endeavoured to get the speaker's focus--to resolve his individuality within the circuit of his vision. And, by degrees, it began to dawn on him that the man was, after all, quite close to him: too close, indeed--very much too close.

With a sensation of disgust he realised that the fellow's face was actually within a few inches of his own--realised, too, what an unpleasant face it was, and that the man's horrible breath was mingling with his. It was an evil face, the face of one who had grown prematurely old. Staring eyes were set in cavernous sockets. A month's growth of bristles accentuated the animalism of the man's mouth, and jaw, and chin. His ears stuck out like flappers. His forehead receded.

His scanty, grizzled hair looked as if it had been shaved off close to his head. Altogether, the man presented a singularly unpleasant picture. As Paxton grasped, slowly enough, how unpleasant, he became conscious of a feeling of unconquerable repulsion.

"Who are you?" he asked.

His voice did not sound to him as if it were his own. It was thin, and faint like the voice of some puny child.

"Me?" The fellow chuckled--not by any means in a way which was suggestive of mirth. "I'm the Lord Mayor and Aldermen--that's who I am."

Paxton's senses were so dulled, and he felt so stupid, that he was unable to understand, on the instant, if the fellow was in earnest.

"The Lord Mayor and Aldermen--you?"

The man chuckled again.

"Yes; and likewise the Dook of Northumberland and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Let alone the Queen's own R'yal physician, what's been specially engaged, regardless of all cost, to bring you back to life, so as you can be killed again."

The man's words made Cyril think. Killed again? What had happened to him already? Where was he? Something seemed suddenly to clear his brain, and to make him conscious of the strangeness of his surroundings. He tried to move, and found he could not.

"What's the matter? Where am I?"

"As for what's the matter, why, there's one or two things as is the matter. And, as for where you are, why, that's neither here nor there.

If I was you, I wouldn't ask no questions."

Mr. Paxton looked at the speaker keenly. His eyesight was improving.

The sense of accurate perception was returning to him fast. The clearer his head became, the more acutely he realised that something beyond the normal seemed to be weighing on his physical frame, and to clog all the muscles of his body.

"What tricks have you been playing on me?"

The man's huge mouth was distorted by a mirthless grin.

"There you are again, asking of your questions. Ain't I told yer, not half a moment since, that if I was you I wouldn't? I've only been having a little game with you, that's all."

The man's tone stirred Paxton to sudden anger. It was all he could do to prevent himself giving utterance to what, under the circ.u.mstances, would have been tantamount to a burst of childish petulance. He tried again to move, and immediately became conscious that at least the upper portion of his body was sopping wet, and he was lying in what seemed to be a pool of water.

"What's this I'm lying in?"

For answer the man, taking up a pail which had been standing by his side, dashed its contents full into Cyril's face.

"That's what you're lying in--about eighteen gallons or so of that; as nice clean water as ever you swallowed. You see, I've had to give you a sluicing or two, to liven you up. We didn't want to feel, after all the trouble we've had to get you, as how we'd lost you."

The water, for which Mr. Paxton had been wholly unprepared, and which had been hurled at him with considerable force, had gone right into his eyes and mouth. He had to struggle and gasp for breath. His convulsive efforts seemed to amuse his a.s.sailant not a little.

"That's right, choke away! A good plucked one you are, from what I hear. Fond of a bit of a sc.r.a.p, I'm told. A nice little job they seem to have had of it a-getting of you here."

As the fellow spoke, the events of the night came back to Cyril in a sudden rush of memory. His leaving the hotel, flushed with excitement; the glow of pleasure which had warmed the blood in his veins at the prospect of meeting Daisy laden with good tidings--he remembered it all. Remembered, too, how, when he had scarcely started on his quest, some one, unexpectedly, had come upon him from behind, and how a cloth had been thrown across his face and held tightly against his mouth--a wet cloth, saturated with some sticky, sweet-smelling stuff. And how it had dragged him backwards, overpowering him all at once with a sense of sickening faintness. He had some misty recollection, too, of a cab standing close beside him, and of his being forced into it. But memory carried him no further; the rest was blank.

He had been kidnapped--that was clear enough; the cloth had been soaked with chloroform--that also was sufficiently clear. The after-effects of chloroform explained the uncomfortable feeling which still prostrated him. But by whom had he been kidnapped? and why? and how long ago? and where had his captors brought him?

He was bound hand and foot--that also was plain. His hands were drawn behind his back and tied together at the wrists, with painful tightness, as he was realising better and better every moment. He had been thrown on his back, so that his whole weight lay on his arms.

What looked like a clothes line had been pa.s.sed over his body, fastened to a ring, or something which was beneath him, on the floor, and then drawn so tightly across his chest that not only was it impossible for him to move, but it was even hard for him to breathe.

As if such fastenings were not enough, his feet and legs had been laced together and rendered useless, cords having been wound round and round him from his ankles to his thighs. A trussed fowl could not have been more helpless. The wonder was that, confined in such bonds, he had ever been able to escape the stupefying effects of the chloroform--even with the aid of his companion's pail of water.

The room in which he was lying was certainly not an apartment in any modern house. The floor was bare, and, as he was painfully conscious, unpleasantly uneven. The ceiling was low and raftered, and black with smoke. At one end was what resembled a blacksmith's furnace rather than an ordinary stove. Scattered about were not only hammers and other tools, but also a variety of other implements, whose use he did not understand. The place was lighted by the glowing embers of a fire, which smouldered fitfully upon the furnace, and also by a lamp which was suspended from the centre of the raftered ceiling--the gla.s.s of which badly needed cleaning. A heavy deal table stood under the lamp, and this, together with a wooden chair and a stool or two, was all the furniture the place contained. How air and ventilation were obtained Paxton was unable to perceive, and the fumes which seemed to escape from the furnace were almost stifling in their pungency.