“Remember what I told you,” he whispered.
There was a shout outside, it was from Xavier, and Masters dashed out ahead of his employer. Jim’s back was turned to the open door, and Digby signalled. Immediately the rope slipped round Jim’s neck and he was pulled breathlessly to the ground; his face grew purple and his hands were tearing at the cruel noose. They might have choked him then and there, but that Eunice, who had stood for a moment paralysed, flew out of the room and, thrusting Masters aside, knelt down and with her own trembling hands released the noose about her lover’s neck.
“You beasts, you beasts!” she cried, her eyes flashing her hate.
In an instant Digby was on her and had lifted her clear.
“Rope him,” he said laconically, and gave his attention to the struggling girl. For now Eunice was no longer quiescent. She fought with all her might, striking at his face with her hands, striving madly to free herself of his grip.
“You little devil!” he cried breathlessly, when he had secured her wrists and had thrust her against the wall. There was an ugly red mark where her nails had caught his face, but in his eyes there was nothing but admiration.
“That is how I like you best,” he breathed. “My dear, I have never regretted my choice of you! I regret it least at this moment!”
“Release my hands!” she stormed. She was panting painfully, and, judging that she was incapable of further mischief, he obeyed.
“Where have you taken Jim? What have you done with him?” she asked, her wide eyes fixed on his. There was no fear in them now. He had told her that he had seen the devil in her. Now it was fully aroused.
“We have taken your young friend to a place of safety,” said Digby. “What happened this morning, Eunice?”
She made no reply.
“Where is Villa?”
Still she did not answer.
“Very good,” he said. “If you won’t speak I’ll find a way of making your young man very valuable.”
“You’d make him speak!” she said scornfully. “You don’t know the man you’re dealing with. I don’t think you’ve ever met that type in the drawing-rooms you visited during the war. The real men were away in France, Digby Groat. They were running the risks you shirked, facing the dangers you feared. If you think you can make Jim Steele talk, go along and try!”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he said, white to the lips, for her calculated insult had touched him on the raw. “I can make him scream for mercy.”
She shook her head.
“You judge all men by yourself,” she said, “and all women by the poor little shop-girls you have broken for your amusement.”
“Do you know what you’re saying?” he said, quivering with rage. “You seem to forget that I am—”
“I forget what you are!” she scoffed. The colour had come back to her face and her eyes were bright with anger. “You’re a half-breed, a man of no country and no class, and you have all the attributes of a half-breed. Digby Groat, a threatener of women and an assassin of men, a thief who employs other thieves to take the risks whilst he takes the lion’s share of the loot. A quack experimenter, who knows enough of medicines to drug women and enough of surgery to torture animals—I have no doubt about you!”
For a long time he could not speak. She had insulted him beyond forgiveness, and with an uncanny instinct had discovered just the things to say that would hurt him most.
“Put out your hands,” he almost yelled, and she obeyed, watching him contemptuously as he bound them together with the cravat which he had torn from his neck.
He took her by the shoulders and, pushing her feet from her ungently, sat her in a corner.
“I’ll come back and deal with you, my lady,” he growled.
Outside in the hall Masters was waiting for him, and the big, uncouth man was evidently troubled.
“Where have you put him?”
“In the east wing, in the old butler’s rooms,” he said, ill at ease. “Mr. Groat, isn’t this a bad business?”
“What do you mean, bad business?” snarled Digby.
“I’ve never been mixed up in this kind of thing before,” said Masters. “Isn’t there a chance that they will have the law on us?”
“Don’t you worry, you’ll be well paid,” snapped his employer, and was going away when the man detained him.
“Being well paid won’t keep me out of prison, if this is a prison job,” he said. “I come of respectable people, and I’ve never been in trouble all my life. I’m well known in the country, and although I’m not very popular in the village, yet nobody can point to me and say that I’ve done a prison job.”
“You’re a fool,” said Digby, glad to have some one to vent his rage upon. “Haven’t I told you that this man has been trying to run off with my wife?”
“You didn’t say anything about her being your wife,” said Masters, shaking his head and looking suspiciously at the other, “and, besides, she’s got no wedding-ring. That’s the first thing I noticed. And that foreign man hadn’t any right to strike with his cane—it might have killed him.”
“Now look here, Masters,” said Digby, controlling himself, for it was necessary that the man should be humoured, “don’t trouble your head about affairs that you can’t understand. I tell you this man Steele is a scoundrel who has run away with my wife and has stolen a lot of money. My wife is not quite normal, and I am taking her away for a voyage…” He checked himself. “Anyway, Steele is a scoundrel,” he said.
“Then why not hand him over to the police,” said the uneasy Masters, “and bring him before the justices? That seems to me the best thing to do, Mr. Groat. You’re going to get a bad name if it comes out that you treated this gentleman as roughly as you did.”
“I didn’t treat him roughly,” said Digby coolly, “and it was you who slipped the rope round his neck.”
“I tried to get it over his shoulders,” explained Masters hastily; “besides, you told me to do it.”
“You’d have to prove that,” said Digby, knowing that he was on the right track. “Now listen to me, Masters. The only person who has committed any crime so far has been you!”
“Me?” gasped the man. “I only carried out your orders.”
“You’d have to prove that before your precious justices,” said Digby, with a laugh, and dropped his hand on the man’s shoulder, a piece of familiarity which came strangely to Masters, who had never known his employer in such an amiable mood. “Go along and get some food ready for the young lady,” he said, “and if there is any trouble, I’ll see that you get clear of it. And here.” He put his hand in his pocket and took out a wad of notes, picked two of them out and pressed them into the man’s hand. “They are twenty-pound banknotes, my boy, and don’t forget it and try to change them as fivers. Now hurry along and get your wife to find some refreshment for the young lady.”
“I don’t know what my wife’s going to say about it,” grumbled the man, “when I tell her—”
“Tell her nothing,” said Digby sharply. “Damn you, don’t you understand plain English?”
At three o’clock that afternoon a hired car brought two passengers before the ornamental gate of Kennett Hall, and the occupants, failing to secure admission, climbed the high wall and came trudging up towards the house.
Digby saw them from a distance and went down to meet the bedraggled Bronson and the dark-skinned Spaniard who was his companion. They met at the end of the drive, and Bronson and his master, speaking together, made the same inquiry in identical terms;
“Where is Villa?”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
THE room into which Jim was thrust differed little from those chambers he had already seen, save that it was smaller. The floorboards were broken, and there were holes in the wainscot which he understood long before he heard the scamper of the rats’ feet.