The Lost Million. Le Queux William
minutes, and as we slowly ascended the steep incline to Stony Coombe, between Totnes and Newton Abbot, I passed along the corridor and entered the compartment of the fugitive.
His quick, wary eyes were upon me in an instant, and I saw him start visibly in alarm, as I shut the door behind me leading to the corridor.
“I believe,” I exclaimed next moment, “that you are Mr Arthur Dawnay?”
In an instant – before, indeed, I was aware of it – I found myself looking down the big barrel of a heavy Browning pistol.
“Well?” asked the man with the red tie, without moving from his seat, yet covering me with his weapon. “And what if I am, eh?”
Upon his face was a hard, evil grin, and I saw that he certainly was not a man to be trifled with.
“You think you’ve cornered me this time, eh?” he said in a hard, dry voice. “But raise a finger, and, by Gad! I’ll put a bullet through you. So you’d best own yourself beaten, and let me slip out at Newton Abbot. Understand?”
Then, next moment, the train unfortunately entered the tunnel, and we were plunged in complete darkness.
Chapter Five
The Sign of the Gloves
Those moments of security seemed hours as I sat there with the pistol turned upon me.
Truly his was a strange greeting.
At length, however, daylight showed again as we commenced to descend the incline towards Newton Abbot, yet I saw that his hand – practised, no doubt, with a weapon by the manner he had whipped it forth – was still uplifted against me.
“Really, sir, you have no cause for alarm,” I assured him, with a laugh. “I could not approach; you openly, so I adopted the ruse of travelling with you in order to speak. You came to Totnes to-day in order to meet me, did you not?”
“No, I certainly did not,” he said, the expression upon his countenance showing him to be much puzzled by my words.
“Then perhaps you came to meet Mr Melvill Arnold?” I suggested.
“And why do you wish to know that, pray?” he asked, in the refined voice of a gentleman, still regarding me with antagonism. His small, closely set eyes peered forth at me with a ferret-like expression, while about his clean-shaven mouth was a curious hardness as his hand still held the weapon pointed in my direction.
“Because you are wearing the signs – the scarlet tie, the carnation, and I see that you carry the ebony walking-stick,” was my cool reply. I was trying to prevent myself from flinching before that grim, business-like weapon of his.
“And what if I am? What business is it of yours?” he asked resentfully, and in evident alarm.
“My business is with you if your name is Alfred Dawnay,” I said. “Mr Melvill Arnold is, I regret to say, dead, and – ”
“Dead!” he gasped, lowering his weapon and staring at me, the colour dying from his face. “Arnold dead! Is this the truth – are you quite certain?”
“The unfortunate gentleman died in my presence.”
“Where? Abroad, I suppose?”
“No; in a small hotel off the Strand,” was my reply.
The news I had imparted to him seemed to hold him amazed and stupefied.
“Poor Arnold! Dead!” he repeated blankly to himself, sitting with both hands upon his knees – for he had flung the pistol upon the cushion. “Ah!” he exclaimed suddenly, raising his eyes to mine.
“Forgive me for receiving you in this antagonistic manner, sir, but – but you don’t know what Mr Arnold’s death means to me. It means everything to me – all that – ” But his lips closed with a snap without concluding his sentence.
“A few moments before he died he gave me this letter, with instructions to meet you at Totnes to-day,” and I handed him the dead man’s missive.
Eagerly, with trembling fingers, he broke open the black seals; but the letter was in a second envelope, also carefully sealed with black wax. This he also tore open, and breathlessly read the closely scribbled lines which it contained – the message from the dead.
He bit his full red lips, his cheeks went ashen pale, and his nostrils dilated.
“I – I wish to thank you for carrying out Arnold’s injunctions,” he managed to gasp. “I went to Totnes for the purpose of meeting him, for he had made the appointment with me three months ago. Yet it seemed that he must have had some presentiment that he could not keep it himself, or he would not have suggested me wearing a red tie, a carnation, and carrying this old-fashioned ebony stick which he gave me long ago.”
Briefly I recounted my meeting with him when he came on board at Naples, his sudden illness, and its fatal termination in the Strand hotel.
“Ah, yes,” sighed the man Dawnay – the man whom I was to help, but not to trust. “Poor Arnold was a great traveller – ever on the move; but for years he knew that he had a weak heart.”
I was about to make further inquiry regarding the man who had so strangely left me a legacy, but Dawnay suddenly exclaimed —
“You and I must not be seen together, Mr Kemball – for I notice by this letter that that is your name.”
“Where can I meet you again?” I inquired; for I recollected the dead man’s words that my strange companion might be in sore need of a friend.
“I hardly know,” was his hasty answer, as he replaced his pistol in his pocket. “I am closely watched. Probably you saw the man – a fellow in a straw hat.”
“Yes – and the old woman.”
“Ah! then you are observant, Mr Kemball,” he exclaimed, with a slight grin. “Yes, I am in danger – grave danger at this moment; and how to escape I know not.”
“Escape from what?”
“From arrest.”
“Is that young-looking man a police-officer?” I asked, much surprised.
“Yes; he’s older than he looks. I ought never to have dared to go to Totnes.”
“Why not Totnes?” I asked.
“I was lying low – for a certain reason, Mr Kemball. All of us have to wash in dirty water sometimes, you know,” he smiled grimly. “You are an honest man, no doubt – I too was, once.”
“And now the police are in search of you – eh?”
I asked. So my estimate of the man was not very far wrong.
He nodded slowly in the affirmative.
A silence fell between us. This discovery, coupled with Arnold’s mysterious connection with the trial of the adventuress who called herself Lady Lettice Lancaster, caused me to ponder. Arnold had warned me not to trust him entirely.
The train was now rushing down the incline, and in a few moments would be at Newton Abbot, the junction for Torquay.
Without a word, my companion suddenly sprang to his feet, and taking a railway key from his pocket, went out into the corridor and locked both doors at either end of the carriage so that no one could pass along.
Then, returning to me, he said —
“Perhaps it would be better, Mr Kemball, if you went into the next compartment while we are stopping. We must not appear to have knowledge of each other.”
Scarcely had I time to enter the adjoining compartment when the train pulled up. I lit a cigarette, and sat gazing lazily out of the window, when, sure enough, the man in the straw hat who had travelled in the rear of the train strolled aimlessly along, and as he passed the compartment occupied by Dawnay glanced in to satisfy himself that he was still there.
The wait was long, for the corridor coaches from Torquay for London were being joined on. But at last we moved off again, and as soon as we did so I returned