The Complete Detective Sgt. Elk Series (6 Novels in One Edition). Edgar Wallace

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ he struck the footpath across the sloping plain that led to the shore, and the going was easier.

      It was his luck that his pursuers should have missed the path. His every arrangement worked smoothly, for the boat was waiting, the men at their oars, and he sprang breathlessly into the stern.

      It was a circumstance which might have struck him as strange, had he been in a condition for calm thought, that the horsemen who were of the party that surrounded him had not joined in pursuit.

      But there was another mystery that the night revealed. He had been on board the Doro — as his little ship was called — for an hour before he went to the cabin that had been made ready for him. His first act was to take his revolver from his pocket, preparatory to reloading it from the cartridges stored in one of his trunks.

      Two chambers of the pistol were undischarged, and, as he jerked back the extractor, these two shells fell on the bed. He looked at them stupidly.

      Both cartridges were blank!

      *

      Had he heard T.B. Smith speaking as he went flying down the road, Poltavo might have understood.

      “Where’s the dead man?” asked T.B.

      “Here, sir,” said Van Ingen cheerfully.

      “Good.” Then, in French, he addressed a figure that stood in the doorway.

      “Were you hurt, mademoiselle?”

      Catherine’s little laugh came out to him. “I am quite safe,” she said quietly. He was going away, but she called him.

      “I cannot understand why you allowed him to escape—” she began. “That you should desire blank cartridges to be placed in his revolver is not so difficult, but I do not see—”

      “I suppose not,” said T.B. politely, and left her abruptly.

      He sprang onto a horse that was waiting, and went clattering down the hill, through the Sole, down the narrow main street that passes the mosque; dismounting by the Custom House, he placed his horse in charge of a waiting soldier, and walked swiftly along the narrow wooden pier. At the same time as the count was boarding the Doro, T.B. and Van Ingen were being rowed in a cockleshell of a pinnace to the long destroyer which lay, without lights, in the bay.

      They swung themselves up a tiny ladder onto the steel deck that rang hollow under their feet.

      “All right?” said a voice in the darkness.

      “All right,” said T.B.; a bell tinkled somewhere, the destroyer moved slowly ahead, and swung out to sea.

      “Will you have any difficulty in picking her up?” He was standing in the cramped space of the little bridge, wedged between a quick-firing gun and the navigation desk.

      “No — I think not,” said the officer; “ — our difficulty will be to keep out of sight of her. It will be an easy matter to keep her in view, because she stands high out of the water, and she is pretty sure to burn her regulation lights. By day I shall let her get hull down and take her masts for guide.”

      It was the strangest procession that followed the southern bend of the African coast. First went the Doro, its passengers serenely unconscious of the fact that six miles away, below the rim of the horizon, followed a slim ugly destroyer that did not once lose sight of the Doro’s mainmast; behind the destroyer, and three miles distant, came six destroyers steaming abreast. Behind them, four miles away, six swift cruisers.

      That same night, there steamed from Funchal in the Island of Madeira, the Victor Hugo, Condé, Gloire, and the Edgard Quinet of the French Fleet; the Roon, Yorck, Prinz Adalbert, and the battleship Pommern of the German Navy, with sixteen destroyers, and followed a parallel ocean path.

      After three days’ steaming, the Doro turned sharply to starboard, and the unseen fleets that dogged her turned too. In that circle of death, for a whole week, the little Spanish steamer twisted and turned, and, obedient to the message that went from destroyer to cruiser, the fleets followed her every movement. For the Doro was unconsciously leading the nations to the “Mad Battleship.” She had been slipped with that object. So far every part of the plan had worked well. To make doubly sure, the news of Zillier’s escape from Devil’s Island had been circulated in every country. It was essential that, if they missed the Maria Braganza this time, they should catch her on the first of June at “Lolo.”

      “And where that is,” said T.B., in despair, “Heaven only knows.”

      Wearing a heavy overcoat, he was standing on the narrow deck of the destroyer as she pounded through the seas. They had found the southeast trade winds at a surprisingly northerly latitude, and the sea was choppy and cold.

      Young Marchcourt, the youthful skipper of the Martine, grinned.

      “‘Lolo’ is ‘nowhere,’ isn’t it?” he said.

      “You’ll find it charted on all Admiralty maps; it’s the place where the supply transport is always waiting on manoeuvres — I wish to Heaven these squalls would drop,” he added irritably, as a sudden gust of wind and rain struck the tiny ship.

      “Feel seasick?” suggested T.B. maliciously.

      “Not much — but I’m horribly afraid of losing sight of this Looker-ahead.”

      He lifted the flexible end of a speaking-tube, and pressed a button.

      “Give her a few more revolutions, Cole,” he said. He hung up the tube. “We look like carrying this weather with us for a few days,” he said, “and, as I don’t feel competent to depend entirely upon my own eyesight, I shall bring up the Magneto and the Solus to help me watch this beggar.”

      Obedient to signal, two destroyers were detached from the following flotilla, and came abreast at dusk.

      The weather grew rapidly worse, the squalls of greater frequence. The sea rose, so that life upon the destroyer was anything but pleasant. At midnight, T.B. Smith was awakened from a restless sleep by a figure in gleaming oilskins.

      “I say,” said a gloomy voice, “we’ve lost sight of that dashed Doro.”

      “Eh?”

      T.B. jumped from his bunk, to be immediately precipitated against the other side of the cabin.

      “Lost her light — it has either gone out or been put out. We’re going ahead now full speed in the hope of overhauling her—”

      Another oilskinned figure came to the door.

      “Light ahead, sir.”

      “Thank Heaven!” said the other fervently, and bolted to the deck.

      T.B. struggled into his clothing, and, with some difficulty, made his way to the bridge. Van Ingen was already before him. As he climbed the little steel ladder, he heard the engine-bell ring, and instantly the rattle and jar of the engines ceased.

      “She’s stationary,” explained the officer,” so we’ve stopped. She has probably upset herself in this sea.”

      “How СКАЧАТЬ