第69章

THE BLACK VELVET TOQUE

Across Morsted Fen the day was breaking red and sullen. The brimming dykes, fringed with bare pollards, and the long sheets of water spread out across the lush meadows, threw back the fiery radiance of the sky from their gleaming surface. The, tall poplars about the Dyke Inn stood out hard and clear in the ruddy light; beyond them the fen, stretched away to the flaming horizon gloomy and flat and desolate, with nothing higher than the stunted pollards visible against the lurid background.

Upon the absolute silence of the scene there presently broke the steady humming of a car. A great light, paled by the dawn, came bobbing and sweeping, along the road that skirted the fen's edge.

A big open car drew up by the track and branched, off to the inn.

Its four occupants consulted together for an instant and then alighted. Three of them were in plain clothes; the other was a soldier. The driver was also in khaki.

"They're astir, Mr. Matthews," said one, of the plain clothes men, pointing towards the house, "see, there's a light in the inn!"They followed the direction of his finger and saw a beam of yellow light gleaming from among the trees.

"Get your guns out, boys!" said Matthews. "Give them a chance to put their hands up, and if they don't obey, shoot!"Very swiftly but very quietly, the four men picked their way over the miry track to the little bridge leading to the yard in front of the inn. The light they had remarked shone from the inn door, a feeble, flickering light as of an expiring candle.

Matthews, who was leading, halted and listened. Everything was quite still. Above their head the inn sign groaned uneasily as it was stirred by the fresh morning breeze.

"You, Gordon," whispered Matthews to the man behind him--they had advanced in Indian file--"take Bates and go round to the back.

Harrison will go in by the front with me."Even as he spoke a faint noise came from the interior of the house. The four men stood stock-still and listened. In the absolute stillness of the early morning, the sound fell distinctly on their ears. It was a step--a light step--descending the stairs.

Gordon and the soldier detached themselves from the party as Matthews and the other plain clothes man crossed the bridge swiftly and went up to the inn door. Hardly had Matthews got his foot on the stone step of the threshold than, a piercing shriek resounded from the room quite close at hand. The next minute a flying figure burst out of the door and fell headlong into the arms of Matthews who was all but overbalanced by the force of the impact.

He closed with the figure and grappled it firmly. His arms encountered a frail, light body, shaking from head to foot, enveloped in a cloak of some soft, thick material.

"It's a woman!" cried Matthews.

"It's Nur-el-Din!" exclaimed his companion in the same breath, seizing the woman by the arm.

The dancer made no attempt to escape. She stood with bowed head, trembling violently, in a cowering, almost a crouching posture.

Harrison, who had the woman by the arm, had turned her head so that he could see her face. She was deathly pale and her black eyes were wide open, the pupils dilated. Her teeth were chattering in her head. She seemed incapable of speech or motion.

"Nur-el-Din?" exclaimed Matthews in accents of triumph. "Bring her in, Harrison, and let's have a look at her!"But the woman recoiled in terror. She arched her body stiff, like a child in a passion, and strained every muscle to remain where she was cowering by the inn-door.

"Come on, my girl," said the man not unkindly, "don't you 'ear wot the Guv'nor sez! In you go!"Then the girl screamed aloud.

"No, no!" she cried, "not in that house! For the love of God, don't take me back into that room! Ah! For pity's sake, let me stay outside! Take me to prison but not, not into that house again!"She half fell on her knees in the mire, pleading, entreating, her body shaken by sobs.

Then Harrison, who was an ex-Guardsman and a six-footer at that, plucked her off her feet and carried her, still struggling, still imploring with piteous cries, over the threshold into the house:

Matthews followed behind.

The shutters of the tap-room were still closed. Only a strip of the dirty floor, strewn with sawdust, was illuminated by a bar of reddish light from the daybreak outside. On the table a candle, burnt down to the socket of its brass candlestick, flared and puttered in a riot of running wag. Half in the bar of daylight from outside, half in the darkness beyond the open door, against which the flickering candlelight struggled feebly, lay the body of a yellow-faced, undersized man with a bullet wound through the temple.

Without effort Harrison deposited his light burden on her feet by the table. Instantly, the girl fled, like some frightened animal of the woods, to the farthest corner of the room. Here she dropped sobbing on her knees, rocking herself to and fro in a sort of paroxysm of hysteria. Harrison moved quickly round the table after her; but he was checked by a cry from Matthews who was kneeling by the body.

"Let her be," said Matthews, "she's scared of this and no wonder!

Come here a minute, Harrison, and see if you know, this chap!"Harrison crossed the room and looked down at the still figure. He whistled softly.

"My word!" he said, "but he copped it all right, sir! Ay, I know him well enough! He's Rass, the landlord of this pub, that's who he is, as harmless a sort of chap as ever was! Who did it, d'you think, sir?"Matthews, who had been going through the dead man's pockets, now rose to his feet.

"Nothing worth writing home about there," he said half aloud.

Then to Harrison, he added"That's what we've got to discover... hullo, who's this?"The door leading from the bar to the tap-room was thrust open.

Gordon put his head in.

"I left Bates on guard outside, sir," he said in answer to an interrogatory glance from Matthews, "I've been all over the ground floor and there's not a soul here..."He checked himself suddenly.