"There he goes! Grab him!"
Wheeling, the light made a green and black whirlpool among the trees. Saplings crackled, and feet sloshed on marshy ground. Budge's thoughts, in this moment, were as elementary as the thoughts of an animal. The only distinct impression in his mind was that here, crackling through these bushes, ran Guilt. He had a confused idea that there were several flash-lamps darting beams around the runner.
A head and shoulders were suddenly blocked out against the moon. Then Budge saw the runner
Budge, fat and past fifty, felt the flesh shaking on his big body. He was neither Budge the swashbuckler nor Budge the butler; he, was only an unnerved man leaning against a tree. Now, when the moonlight fell as with a shining of raindrops, he saw the other man's hand; it was encased in a big gardener's glove, and the forefinger was jammed through the trigger-guard of a long-barrelled pistol. Through Budge's mind went a vision of youth, of standing on a broad football field, wildly, and seeming to see figures coming at him from every direction. It was as though he were naked. The other man plunged.
Budge, fat and past fifty, felt a great pain in his lungs. He did not drop behind the tree. He knew what he had to do; he was solid, with a quiet brain and a very clear eye.
"All right," he said aloud. "All right!" and dived for the other man.
He heard the explosion. There was a yellowish spurt, like a bad gas-range when you apply a match to it. Something hit him in the chest, swirling him off balance as his fingers ripped down the other man's coat. He felt his finger nails tear in cloth, falling, and his hip was suddenly twisted into weakness. There was a sensation as though he were flying through the air. Then his face squashed into dead leaves, and he dimly heard a thud as of his own body hitting the ground.
That was how Budge the Englishman went down.
Chapter 16
"I don't think he's dead," said Rampole, going down on his knees beside the flattened figure of the butler. "Buck up, please! Hold your light down here while I roll him over. Where the devil is what's-his-name-Sir Benjamin?"
Budge was lying on his side, one hand still stretched out. His hat was crushed along one side with an almost rakish effect, and his respectable black coat had burst a button. Tugging at the dead weight, Rampole wrenched him over.
The face was like dough and the eyes were closed, but he was breathing. Since the wound was high along the left breast, blood had begun to soak through.
"Halloa!" Rampole shouted. "Halloa, there! Where are you?"
He lifted his head to glance at the girl. He could not see her distinctly; she was looking away, but the light did not waver much.
There was a crackling in the bushes. Sir Benjamin, his cap crushed down like a gangster in a motion picture, pushed through. His long arms dangled out of his sleeves, and you could see the freckles against the muddy pallor of his face.
"He — he got away," the chief constable said rather hoarsely. "I don't know who he was. I don't even know what happened. Who's this?"
"Look at him," said Rampole. "He must have tried to stop… the other one. Didn't you hear the shot? For God's sake let's get him to your car and down to the village. Take his feet, will you? — I'll get his head. Try not to jolt him."
It was a heavy weight. It had a habit of sagging between them, as when two people try to move a large mattress. Rampole found his chest tight and his muscles aching. They staggered through the scratching arms of bushes, and out across the long slope to where Sir Benjamin's Daimler was parked in the road.
"You'd better stay here on guard," the chief constable said, when they had steadied Budge in the tonneau. "Miss Starberth, will you ride in to Dr. Markley's with me and hold him on the rear seat? Thank you. Steady, now, while I turn round."
The last sight Rampole had was of her holding Budge's head in her lap as the motor churned into life, and the big headlamps swung. When he turned to go back towards the prison, he found he was so weak that he had to lean against the fence. His brain, tired and stupid, moved round like a creaky wheel. So there he was, clinging to the fence in the clear moonlight, and still holding Budge's crushed hat in one hand.
He glanced at it, dully, and let it fall. Herbert Starberth
A light was coming closer. Dr. Fell's bulk waddled above the grey meadow.
"Halloa there!" the doctor called, poking his chins forward. He came up and put his hand on Rampole's shoulder. "Good man," he said after a pause. "Well? What happened? Who was hurt?"
The doctor tried to speak levelly, but his voice grew high. He went on:
"I saw most of it from the balcony. I saw him run, and called out, and then I thought he fired at somebody… "
Rampole put a hand to his head. "That butler fellow — what's his name-Budge. He must have been watching us from the wood. God knows why. I'd just hoisted him — you know, the dead one — over the edge of the well, and I heard you call, and somebody start to run. Budge got in his way, and took it in the chest."
"He isn't-?"
"I don't know," the American answered, despairingly. "He wasn't dead when we put him in the car. They've taken him in to Chatterham."
Both of them stood silent for a while, listening to the crickets. The doctor took a flask from his pocket and held it out. Cherry brandy went down Rampole's throat with a choking bite, and then crawled along his veins in a way that made him shudder.
"You've no idea who the man was?" Dr. Fell asked.
Rampole said, wearily: "Oh, to hell with who it was. I didn't even get a glimpse of him; I just heard him running. I was thinking about what I'd seen down there…. Look here, we'd better get back to the dead one."
"I say, you're shaking. Steady on―"
"Give me a shoulder for a second. Well, it was this way―"
Rampole swallowed again. He felt that his nostrils would never be free of the odour from that well, or from crawling things. Again he saw the rope curling down from the balcony, and felt the stone against his corduroy trousers as he swung himself over the edge.:.
"It was this way," he went on, eagerly. "I didn't have to use the rope very far. About five or six feet down there are stone niches hacked into the side, almost like steps. I'd figured it wouldn't be very far down, because heavy rains might flood out any hiding place Anthony had made. You had to watch yourself, because the niches were slimy; but there was one big stone scraped almost clean. I could see an 'om' and a 'me' cut into a round inscription. The rest was almost obliterated. At first I thought I couldn't move the stone block, but when I braced myself, and tied the rope round my waist, and put the edge of the trench-mattock into the side, I found it was only a thin slab. You could push it in fairly easily, and if you kept it upright there was a hole at one side where you could get in several fingers to pull it back again…. The place was full of water-spiders and rats…."
He shuddered.
"I didn't find a room, or anything elaborate. It was just an opening hollowed out of the flat stones they'd used for the well, and a part of the earth around; and it was half full of water, anyway. Herbert's body had been squeezed into it along the back. The first thing I touched was his hand, and I saw the hole in his head. By the time I had hauled him out I was as wet as he was. He's pretty small, you know, and by keeping the rope tied round my waist to brace me I could hoist him on my shoulder. His clothes were full of some kind of overblown flies, and they crawled on me. As for the rest of it…"
He slapped at himself, and the doctor gripped his arm.
"There wasn't anything else, except — oh yes, I found the handkerchief. It's pretty well rotted, but it belonged to old Timothy; T. S. on the edge, bloody and rolled in one corner. At least, I think it's blood. There were some candle-ends, too, and what looked like burnt matches. But no treasure; not a box, not a scrap. And that's all. It's cold; let me go back and get my coat. There's something inside my collar… "