The Riddle of the Mysterious Light. Hanshew Mary E.

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the cellar with him, lads. All we have to do now is to wait for the rat to come to the trap!"

      To the accompaniment of another laugh, Mr. Narkom was pulled down into the vaults below, where, dazed with hunger, pain, and anxiety lest Cleek should indeed be led into fresh danger, he sweated an hour away.

      Upstairs all was renewed merriment, and in the midst of it the door opened and a familiar figure slouched in – evil of face, disfigured with scars and bruises. As a shout arose at his appearance, there was no question as to his identity. "Merode. Nom de dieu, Gustave!" cried Margot. "But a pretty picture you cut!"

      "Sacré nom!" he growled through his clenched teeth. "So would you, if you had been fighting for your life! The pigs of police are after me. Give me a drink and take me down through the cellar. The boat goes back to-night, doesn't it?"

      "It does," said Margot. "Here's your drink – and drink to Jules there for he caught the turkey gobbler. Cleek the Rat's man – Narkom!"

      "Nonsense – impossible!" cried Merode with an oath.

      "But not so, my friend, you shall see him," cried half a dozen voices.

      "See him? I'll mark him for life, the devil. Someone go for the vitriol – here!"

      With dirty, scratched, and bloodstained hands, Merode threw a coin to one of the Apaches who vanished in the blue fumes of smoke and wine, while Merode slouched deeper into the shadows as there came the sound of a gendarme's clattering sword on the cobbles outside.

      "Mon dieu, Margot, I mustn't be caught."

      Margot gave orders swiftly. "Down with him, Jeannette, into the vaults, while I hold the fort."

      Jeannette clutched Merode's arm. "Come, mon ami, through here! You know the way!"

      Stumbling, cursing, praying all in one breath, Merode followed down the rickety wooden ladder, down, it seemed, into the very bowels of the earth.

      Thrusting open another door, Jeannette grumblingly lighted a torch stuck in the woodwork, and as Merode's eyes fell upon the figure of Mr. Narkom an oath of triumph burst from his lips.

      "Dieu, but Margot spoke the truth. It's the pig himself. I've half a mind to take him with me and make him dance with a hot iron or two! Better than vitriol – " He gave vent to a hoarse, chuckling laugh, at the sound of which the Superintendent shivered, even though the confined space was close enough on the hot summer's night.

      "Margot will never stand that," said Jeannette. "She means to keep him here till Cleek the Rat comes – "

      "Margot! Nom du pipe! If she is Queen, I am King. Leave him to me and give me the key of the door."

      Jeannette wheeled suddenly on him.

      "What key – what door?" she asked. Then without waiting for an answer she snatched the torch from the wall and thrust it in Merode's face.

      He drew back from her piercing gaze.

      "Hola!" she cried in triumph. "I was right – it is not Merode!" For Merode knew of the trap-door. And as the man followed her glance toward it he realized his mistake.

      "And you, who are you?" she cried.

      As the man shrank back she advanced, and with a swift gesture plucked at the matted hair. It came away in her hand, and her own cry of triumph as it revealed the smooth head beneath drowned the Superintendent's cry of "Cleek!" even as he realized the double peril of himself and the man whose friendship was dearer to him even than life itself.

      "Aha, I know you now," cried Jeannette. "The great Cleek himself! And it is I who have got you —moi– whom she laughed at."

      "And will again, ma petite," said Cleek, for he indeed it was. "Jeannette, be merciful, as you hope for mercy. Let me get my friend here through the door into the boat and you shall deliver me up to Margot. I will come back – I swear it – if you set him free."

      "Free to bring the gendarmes on us —pas si bête. No, my friend," laughed the girl.

      "He will not do that, I swear it. Did Cleek the Cracksman ever break his oath?"

      "No, but Cleek of what do you call your quarters – eh – ah – Scot-land Yard – eh – yes, he might!" said the girl.

      Swiftly, in a torrent of French patois that Narkom could not follow, Cleek pleaded, disregarding the Superintendent's own pleas to exchange his life for that of Cleek himself.

      Minutes passed and the girl remained obdurate. Suddenly she looked up.

      "They say you have a white-and-gold lady to be your woman over on the other side – is it not so?"

      Cleek shivered and shut his eyes in a veritable agony of spirit at this reference to Ailsa Lorne – his adored Ailsa who awaited him in the rose-clad riverside home, and who within a few brief days was to have been his wife.

      A low, sibilant laugh burst from Jeannette's painted lips.

      "Eh, but she would not like to know of this little meeting, my friend? She would scorn the poor Jeannette, eh? But it is Jeannette who holds you like that!" She snapped her finger and thumb in triumph, and as the bursts of merriment above them seemed to roll nearer, Cleek grew very, very still. This was indeed the end, and though he would die for the sake of his friend, the blow would be none the less bitter.

      Jeannette stood silent, too, looking at him. One, two, perhaps three minutes passed before she turned again.

      "Well, mon ami, I don't know that I owe anything to Margot up there. What happens to me if I let you go? How do you pay me – eh?"

      "Jeannette, you will? You have only to tell me what to do in return."

      Cleek's voice trembled despite himself at this shadow of renewed hope, and Jeannette flushed in the dark.

      "Bah, but I am the fool she calls me," she muttered, "But death comes soon enough. Pay me – " She came close to him, thrusting her face close to his. "No lover have I. I am old and plain; you are Cleek, once the lover of Margot the Queen. Kiss me! Nay, as you value your life and that of your friend there, kiss me as you would your woman over there – that is the price you shall pay!"

      For one brief second Cleek's soul revolted. The thought of offering his lips – which he held sacred to the one fair woman who had led him up from depths such as these to her own pure level – sickened him. He would sooner yield life itself. Yet Narkom's life depended on his own, and with a secret prayer for forgiveness he bent over, took the thin, shaking figure literally into his arms, and kissed the painted lips, not once, but thrice. "God bless you, Jeannette!" he murmured. "He alone can reward you."

      With a little moan of pain Jeannette clung to him as if indeed he were the lover she craved; then, slipping from his arms, she turned, sped across the room, and tugged at a small, half-hidden trap-door.

      "Quick," she panted. "Slash his ropes and go – before I repent! I'll tell them you've gone!"

      Without another look or sound she disappeared up the staircase, leaving Cleek to make good the escape of them both, in his heart a prayer of gratitude, and a resolution to save Jeannette from this den of crime if he but lived to escape into safety.

      Hardly daring to breathe, he and Narkom stumbled down another СКАЧАТЬ