Ambrotox and Limping Dick Part 21

"He's my chauffeur, Mrs. Brundage," he said. "He is of Spanish blood, born in the Republic of La Plata. With the skill which is second nature to him he has tracked me to your house--to tell me that my car is already repaired, and that the Earl of Toronto--er--the Marquis of Ontario is sending out party after party to search the whole countryside for us. With your permission, Pepe el Lagarto will remain here until the Lady Adelina is able to proceed, when he will guide us to the place where the car is concealed."

d.i.c.k led the way back to the Brundage kitchen, where he made this strange servant sit down, and set before him half a tumbler of rum.

"I hope," he said magnificently, "that you will pardon my listening to a full account of his doings. It is in the interest of the Lady Adelina that I should know everything; and the conclusion of my narrative to you, Mrs. Brundage, must, I regret to say, be postponed."

He turned to Pepe, and spoke in the lazy Spanish of the Argentine.

"And now, you dog," he said, with manner as smooth as his words were harsh, "how dare you come fawning on me, after helping these filthy, misbegotten sons of Satan to kidnap a lady?"

Pepe writhed with discomfort and apprehension, even while his eyes continued to adore his idol over the rim of the gla.s.s from which he sipped his rum. And this contradiction in expression interested Mrs.

Brundage so much that she went quietly about her work, hoping by hard listening to steal some meaning from the soft words which came pouring out in exculpation.

CHAPTER XV.

THE LIZARD.

Pepe el Lagarto was pleading his innocence of the only thing which he counted sin, and a.s.severating his devotion to the only being he loved; and this, condensed, is the story to which Mrs. Brundage attached all meanings but the right one.

He had been in THEIR hands, oh! many months. He did what THEY would, so long as they paid him in coca-leaf to chew, a little cocaine when the leaves ran out, and enough food to live by.

THEY could get coca-leaf--but the Lizard could get it from no other. Nothing mattered but the leaves--and Dicco el Cojeante. Five years it was since Pepe had seen him; Pepe had taken to the sea once more to find him, perhaps, in England.

Oh, yes! Last night they had brought in a woman--a lady abducted. He would have put his knife in her, had THEY so bidden him--until he knew that she was El Cojeante's woman. Now, he would knife THEM, any or all, before El Cojeante's woman should lose a hair.

As he knew the sun at his rising, so surely had he known El Cojeante when he had struck his first blow at the doctor that was a black bull.

He had run from the house lest El Cojeante should slay Pepe before knowing him.

Hidden as the Lizard they called him hides in winter, he had seen the black doctor in pursuit of El Cojeante escaping with his woman that was clad in Dutch Fridji's skirt and the loose coat of a man. And, since he knew that G.o.d and the Saints will take the side of the man whom none can outwit, Pepe crept back to the house.

Here d.i.c.k interrupted:

"You left your companero de grillos for fear of the Black Bull!" he exclaimed.

Pepe smiled, shaking his head.

"It was for fear of that which came to el toro erizado," he answered.

"Very wise was I, and prudent, for but three minutes since did I see him, and in his throat la navaja de la ramera Holandesa." He made a movement with his hand, and added: "I remembered the days when I and Dicco threw the knife."

He had gone back, he shamelessly continued, to learn how the land lay; for, should they be all dead, as he almost expected, for Pepe there would be pickings.

To find Dicco el Cojeante again, time was plenty, for la senorita con el pelo rojo must set the pace.

In the hall, Melchardo was not yet come back to his sense; that other that had fallen with him--Heberto, the London man--was pouring water on Melchardo's head, while upstairs screamed la Holandesa.

And then came imperious clamour of the telephone. Pepe felt it was angry.

Boldly he pushed past the London man and went to the room of the instrument.

Through the machine spoke one Bayliss, teniente de Melchardo--chief of THOSE in Millsborough, having charge of the tooth-drawing--el negocio dental, that was a cloak to cover great traffic in cocaine, opium and has.h.i.+sh. And Pepe knew this Bayliss for a man, if less subtle, even more prompt and terrible in action than Melchardo himself. But when Pepe answered with a pa.s.sword of Melchard's, Bayliss replied with questions in a stream--what of the venture of yesterday? Had they found the new drug? Were they safe from pursuit?

And it was well for Pepe that this questioning was broken by the hand that tore the instrument from his fingers and pushed him aside. It was Melchardo, the man of sweet odours, weak upon his feet, but strong in his mind.

When Pepe would have sidled away, Melchardo bade him keep close. Driven desperate by his enemies, he must trust what friend was at hand. "Stand by lest I need thee," he had said. "For very soon there will be h.e.l.l to pay, if I act not now and with vigour."

So Pepe el Lagarto sunned himself in the window, and listened. And he heard Melchardo put the whole cuadrilla de morfinistas under orders to draw a net around the man who had fled with the precious powder of the new drug and the girl who knew too much.

"For I tell you, Senor Dicco," he said, "that it is the web of a spider.

He is the great Arana that sits in the midst, to run out and to seize and to devour. It began in the Millsborough and Lowport sleeping-houses of the slant-eyed men of the sea, and spreads every day wider and wider its meshes and stays. Some day the web will cover the great towns and countries of the world, unless----"

"Unless a great Ticodromo come, Pepe. Tell thy tale quickly," said d.i.c.k.

Five parties had Melchard sent out from Millsborough; two cars, as if going to the fair and cricket match at Ecclesthorpe, or the races at Timsdale-Horton, each with four men; and three motor-cycles with sidecars, two men apiece. And their five bases, as Pepe showed upon the table with bread-crumbs, were set at Gallowstree Dip, in the hollow half-way between "The Goat in Boots" and Ecclesthorpe; again, hard by the railway-junction of Harthborough; thirdly, at the joining of the Ecclesthorpe parish-road with the highway to London; fourthly, between this and Millsborough, at "The Coach and Horses" Inn; and fifth, by Margetstowe village, where the woodland track from Monkswood Cottage runs into the seaward road over against "The Goat in Boots."

"And so, you are caught," said Pepe, "in a cage, with horse road and rail road beyond the bars."

"And you heard all this, in the talk which Melchard made with his teniente through the telephone?" asked d.i.c.k.

"All this," replied Pepe, "is what I tell you, from what I hear, from what I know, and from what I have seen."

"Pepe, I have an automobile of great speed. It is over there at 'The Coach and Horses.' You must take us across the moor, I will creep in and get the car, while you keep the lady hidden. I will drive out, and----"

"It is too late, Dicco. For while Melchardo talked and made commands, there was a sound from above of the breaking of wood and blows of a hammer, and the screaming of the woman was hushed. And before he had come to an end with the ordering, that Dutch Fury, set free by Heberto, springs into the room of the telephone, with blood in her eyes, and half-naked. When she knew what he was about, she asked him in her sharp voice:

"'Have you told him first to find the man's car?'

"'What car? What man?' says Melchardo.

"'The devil that laid me out, and you fools too,' quoth Fridji. 'The man that knew who stole the girl; the man that knew where you'd taken her; the man who had her out of this house three hours after we fetched her in. He came--he _must_ have come in a car, and by the London Road. And he must have left the car near by,' she cried, cursing Melchardo. 'Give me a little writing on a paper, with a signature which none can decipher, saying that the gentleman sends for his car which he left in keeping, when the master of "The Coach and Horses" put him on the way to "The Myrtles." And give me money, so that I pay him more than was promised. If that devil get to his car, he will hang us all. But I will myself drive it half-way hither,' said la Holandesa, 'and send it over the road's edge by the way.'"

And after these things, said Pepe, she went to clothe herself, Melchardo sat him down to write, and Heberto, the London man, was set to cleaning and preparing for the road that automobile in which they had fetched la senorita roja from the south; and him, Pepe, they despatched scouting after Ocklee the Bull, to learn what might have been his luck in dealing with El Cojeante and the girl.

"And behind my teeth," he concluded, "I smiled, knowing well that I went to learn how thou hadst dealt with Ocklee."

"And how, Lagarto marrullero, shall we now deal with ourselves?" asked d.i.c.k. "Tell me that."

"Melchardo waits awhile for me and my news," murmured the Lizard thoughtfully, s.h.i.+fting his geographical bread-crumbs. "If I be too long away, he will move without my words to misguide him."

Then he set forth how, since Bayliss had taken his orders, there had elapsed full time for each one of the pickets to reach its post, though perhaps not yet for regular contact to have been established by the patrols betwixt point and point. But the Senorita must be waked at once and take the road with Dicco, moving towards the best, or weakest, bars of the cage; for, though the net was spread, the great spider himself was not yet amove down its spokes and round the felloe.

"Come soon," said Pepe, "and I will set you in the best way, and then back to send the Spider on the worst."

And under his soft, dog's eyes Pepe for the first time showed white, smiling teeth.

"Amigo de grillos," said d.i.c.k, in the voice which Pepe knew so well, but had never before heard unsteady, "she has not slept an hour since I thought her mind astray."