‘I heard you, I heard you,’ she exclaimed. ‘Get back; you mustn’t come here.’
There was a desperate and dangerous look on her face, and her form shook with scarcely controlled passionate energy.
‘Now see here, Miss Spencer,’ Racksole said calmly, ‘I guess we’ve had enough of this fandango. You’d better get up and clear out, or we’ll just have to drag you off.’
He went calmly up to her, the lantern in his hand. Without another word she struck the knife into his arm, and the lantern fell extinguished. Racksole gave a cry, rather of angry surprise than of pain, and retreated a few steps. In the darkness they could still perceive the glint of her eyes.
‘I told you you mustn’t come here,’ the woman said. ‘Now get back.’
Racksole positively laughed. It was a queer laugh, but he laughed, and he could not help it. The idea of this woman, this bureau clerk, stopping his progress and that of Prince Aribert by means of a bread- knife aroused his sense of humour. He struck a match, relighted the candle, and faced Miss Spencer once more.
‘I’ll do it again,’ she said, with a note of hard resolve.
‘Oh, no, you won’t, my girl,’ said Racksole; and he pulled out his revolver, cocked it, raised his hand.
‘Put down that plaything of yours,’ he said firmly.
‘No,’ she answered.
‘I shall shoot.’
She pressed her lips together.
‘I shall shoot,’ he repeated. ‘One--two--three.’
Bang, bang! He had fired twice, purposely missing her. Miss Spencer never blenched. Racksole was tremendously surprised--and he would have been a thousandfold more surprised could he have contrasted her behaviour now with her abject terror on the previous evening when Nella had threatened her.
‘You’ve got a bit of pluck,’ he said, ‘but it won’t help you. Why won’t you let us pass?’
As a matter of fact, pluck was just what she had not, really; she had merely subordinated one terror to another. She was desperately afraid of Racksole’s revolver, but she was much more afraid of something else.
‘Why won’t you let us pass?’
‘I daren’t,’ she said, with a plaintive tremor; ‘Tom put me in charge.’
That was all. The men could see tears running down her poor wrinkled face.
Theodore Racksole began to take off his light overcoat.
‘I see I must take my coat off to you,’ he said, and he almost smiled. Then, with a quick movement, he threw the coat over Miss Spencer’s head and flew at her, seizing both her arms, while Prince Aribert assisted.
Her struggles ceased--she was beaten.
‘That’s all right,’ said Racksole: ‘I could never have used that revolver--to mean business with it, of course.’
They carried her, unresisting, upstairs and on to the upper floor, where they locked her in a bedroom. She lay in the bed as if exhausted.
‘Now for my poor Eugen,’ said Prince Aribert.
‘Don’t you think we’d better search the house first?’ Racksole suggested; ‘it will be safer to know just how we stand. We can’t afford any ambushes or things of that kind, you know.’
The Prince agreed, and they searched the house from top to bottom, but found no one. Then, having locked the front door and the french window of the sitting-room, they proceeded again to the cellar.
Here a new obstacle confronted them. The cellar door was, of course, locked; there was no sign of a key, and it appeared to be a heavy door. They were compelled to return to the bedroom where Miss Spencer was incarcerated, in order to demand the key of the cellar from her. She still lay without movement on the bed.
‘Tom’s got it,’ she replied, faintly, to their question: ‘Tom’s got it, I swear to you. He took it for safety.’
‘Then how do you feed your prisoner?’ Racksole asked sharply.
‘Through the grating,’ she answered.
Both men shuddered. They felt she was speaking the truth. For the third time they went to the cellar door. In vain Racksole thrust himself against it; he could do no more than shake it.
‘Let’s try both together,’ said Prince Aribert. ‘Now!’ There was a crack.
‘Again,’ said Prince Aribert. There was another crack, and then the upper hinge gave way. The rest was easy. Over the wreck of the door they entered Prince Eugen’s prison.
The captive still sat on his chair. The terrific noise and bustle of breaking down the door seemed not to have aroused him from his lethargy, but when Prince Aribert spoke to him in German he looked at his uncle.
‘Will you not come with us, Eugen?’ said Prince Aribert; ‘you needn’t stay here any longer, you know.’
‘Leave me alone,’ was the strange reply; ‘leave me alone. What do you want?’
‘We are here to get you out of this scrape,’ said Aribert gently. Racksole stood aside.
‘Who is that fellow?’ said Eugen sharply.
‘That is my friend Mr Racksole, an Englishman--or rather, I should say, an American--to whom we owe a great deal. Come and have supper, Eugen.’
‘I won’t,’ answered Eugen doggedly. ‘I’m waiting here for her. You didn’t think anyone had kept me here, did you, against my will? I tell you I’m waiting for her. She said she’d come.’
‘Who is she?’ Aribert asked, humouring him.
‘She! Why, you know! I forgot, of course, you don’t know. You mustn’t ask.
Don’t pry, Uncle Aribert. She was wearing a red hat.’
‘I’ll take you to her, my dear Eugen.’ Prince Aribert put his hands on the other’s shoulder, but Eugen shook him off violently, stood up, and then sat down again.
Aribert looked at Racksole, and they both looked at Prince Eugen. The latter’s face was flushed, and Racksole observed that the left pupil was more dilated than the right. The man started, muttered odd, fragmentary scraps of sentences, now grumbling, now whining.
‘His mind is unhinged,’ Racksole whispered in English.
‘Hush!’ said Prince Aribert. ‘He understands English.’ But Prince Eugen took no notice of the brief colloquy.
‘We had better get him upstairs, somehow,’ said Racksole.
‘Yes,’ Aribert assented. ‘Eugen, the lady with the red hat, the lady you are waiting for, is upstairs. She has sent us down to ask you to come up. Won’t you come?’
‘Himmel!’ the poor fellow exclaimed, with a kind of weak anger. ‘Why did you not say this before?’
He rose, staggered towards Aribert, and fell headlong on the floor. He had swooned. The two men raised him, carried him up the stone steps, and laid him with infinite care on a sofa. He lay, breathing queerly through the nostrils, his eyes closed, his fingers contracted; every now and then a convulsion ran through his frame.
‘One of us must fetch a doctor,’ said Prince Aribert.
‘I will,’ said Racksole. At that moment there was a quick, curt rap on the french window, and both Racksole and the Prince glanced round startled. A girl’s face was pressed against the large window-pane. It was Nella’s.
Racksole unfastened the catch, and she entered.
‘I have found you,’ she said lightly; ‘you might have told me. I couldn’t sleep. I inquired from the hotel-folks if you had retired, and they said no; so I slipped out. I guessed where you were.’ Racksole interrupted her with a question as to what she meant by this escapade, but she stopped him with a careless gesture. ‘What’s this?’ She pointed to the form on the sofa.
‘That is my nephew, Prince Eugen,’ said Aribert.
‘Hurt?’ she inquired coldly. ‘I hope not.’
‘He is ill,’ said Racksole, ‘his brain is turned.’
Nella began to examine the unconscious Prince with the expert movements of a girl who had passed through the best hospital course to be obtained in New York.
‘He has got brain fever,’ she said. ‘That is all, but it will be enough. Do you know if there is a bed anywhere in this remarkable house?’
Chapter Eighteen IN THE NIGHT-TIME
‘HE must on no account be moved,’ said the dark little Belgian doctor, whose eyes seemed to peer so quizzically through his spectacles; and he said it with much positiveness.
That pronouncement rather settled their plans for them. It was certainly a professional triumph for Nella, who, previous to the doctor’s arrival, had told them the very same thing. Considerable argument had passed before the doctor was sent for. Prince Aribert was for keeping the whole affair a deep secret among their three selves. Theodore Racksole agreed so far, but he suggested further that at no matter what risk they should transport the patient over to England at once. Racksole had an idea that he should feel safer in that hotel of his, and better able to deal with any situation that might arise. Nella scorned the idea. In her quality of an amateur nurse, she assured them that Prince Eugen was much more seriously ill than either of them suspected, and she urged that they should take absolute possession of the house, and keep possession till Prince Eugen was convalescent.
‘But what about the Spencer female?’ Racksole had said.
‘Keep her where she is. Keep her a prisoner. And hold the house against all comers. If Jules should come back, simply defy him to enter--that is all.
There are two of you, so you must keep an eye on the former occupiers, if they return, and on Miss Spencer, while I nurse the patient. But first, you must send for a doctor.’
‘Doctor!’ Prince Aribert had said, alarmed. ‘Will it not be necessary to make some awkward explanation to the doctor?’