Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks Part 79

"I for one will have nothing whatever to say to you," said Jack, haughtily. "I don't care to bargain with a coiner."

With his old foolhardy way he was stepping forward, in peril of his very life.

Lenoir was a desperate man, in a desperate strait.

His finger trembled upon the trigger.

"Stand back, on your life."

"You stand aside," cried Jack.

"Another step and I fire!" cried Lenoir.

"Bah!"

Jack pushed on.

Lenoir pulled the trigger.

Bang it went.

But the ball whistled harmlessly over Jack's head, and lodged in the slanting roof.

A friendly hand from behind the coiner had knocked up his arm in the very nick of time.

At the self-same instant some eight or ten men, fully armed, burst into the vault.

One of them, who was apparently in command, pointed to Lenoir, and said to the others--

"Arrest that man. He's the leader of them."

And before the coiner could offer any resistance, they knocked his weapons from his hands, and fell upon him.

But Lenoir was a powerful fellow--a desperate, determined man, and not so easily disposed of.

With wonderful energy, he tore himself from them, and, producing something from one of his pockets, he held it menacingly up.

"Advance a step," he exclaimed, "and I will blow you all to atoms, myself as well. Beware! I hold all our lives in my hand. Now who dares advance?"

CHAPTER XCIII.

LENOIR'S FLIGHT--MURRAY THE TRAITOR--HIS PUNISHMENT AND FLIGHT--A LONG RUN--THE AUBERGE--A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE.

There was a pause.

Pierre Lenoir looked like mischief.

His position was desperate, and they judged, and rightly judged, that he was a man not likely to stick at a trifle.

The men looked at their officer, and the latter, a man of intelligence and prudence, albeit no coward, reflected seriously.

Several terrible calamities, accidental and intentional, had of late opened the eyes of the public to the destructive properties of dynamite, and to that his thoughts flew.

He wavered.

The coiner saw his chance, and quick to act as to think, he made for the exit.

"Stand back!" he cried, fiercely, to the men who made a faint show of barring his pa.s.sage. "I'll finish you all off at a stroke if you attempt to oppose me?"

They fell back alarmed.

Lenoir darted on through the inner vault, and so on until he gained the flight of steps.

Reaching the top, he darted through the cottage, and reaching the open, suddenly found himself in the midst of about a dozen men.

The first person upon whom his glance rested, was the doubly-dyed traitor who had betrayed him solely to serve his own ends, by entrapping Jack Harkaway--the Englishman, who must have been recognized by the reader, in spite of his a.s.sumed name, as Herbert Murray.

Instinctively Lenoir divined that his betrayer was the young Englishman.

No sooner did this conclusion force itself upon him than all thought of personal danger vanished from his mind, and he was possessed by one sole idea, one single desire. Revenge!

He lost sight of the peril in which he ran, but with a cry like the roar of a wounded lion he sprang upon the traitor.

A brawny, powerful fellow was Pierre Lenoir, and Herbert Murray was but a puny thing in his grasp.

"Hands off!" exclaimed Murray, in desperation.

Lenoir growled, but said nothing, as he shook him much as a terrier does a rat.

Before the police could interfere in the spy's behalf, Lenoir held him with one hand at arm's length, while with the other he prepared to deliver a fearful blow.

The energy of despair seized on the hapless traitor, and wrenching himself free from the coiner's grasp, he fled.

Pierre Lenoir stood staring about him a second.

Then he made after him.

Away went pursuer and pursued.

The terror-stricken Murray got over the ground like a hare, and although the coiner was fleet of foot, he was at first distanced in the race.

It became a desperate race between them.

Lenoir tore on.