Tales of Mysteries & Espionage - John Buchan Edition. Buchan John
Bechstein! I heard you were ill in bed. I’m afraid you are taking liberties with your health… I can’t see very well, but can it be Radin, and, by Jove, Molinoff, too? The Devil has looked after his own to-day.”
“He hasn’t looked after you, my friend,” said Mollison. “Your number’s up all right. You’re going to be a quiet little corpse within sixty seconds, as soon as we have tossed for who is to have the pleasure of sending you to hell.”
“Well, let go my arm and let me draw my last breath in comfort. I haven’t a gun.”
The giant ran one hand down the prisoner’s figure “True enough,” he said, and relaxed his grip. “But don’t move, or you won’t have sixty seconds.”
“It’s my right to kill the swine,” said the doorkeeper. “I was Kubek’s second-in-command and I owe him one for the chief.”
The plea seemed to meet with general acceptance, and the prisoner saw his time of probation shortened by this unanimity. For a moment he seemed at a loss, and then he laughed with a fair pretence of merriment.
“By the way, you haven’t told me what you have against me. Isn’t it right that I should hear the charge?”
“Damn you, there’s no time to waste,” said the door-keeper. “You have been the mainspring of this tomfool revolution, which has already done in our best pals and will make life a bloody hell for the rest of us. W are going to give ourselves the satisfaction of shooting you like a dog before we scatter.”
“You don’t even know my name.”
“We know your game and that’s enough for us.”
The prisoner seemed to be anxious to continue the talk. He spoke slowly, and in a pleasant, soft voice. It might have been noticed that he held his head in the attitude of a man listening intently, as if he expected to hear more steps on the cobbles of the yard.
“There’s one here who knows me,” he said. “Tim—Tim Lariarty,” and he addressed the sphinx-like figure on the barrel. “You remember Arbuthnot. I was at Brodie’s when you were at Ridgeway’s. We got our twenty-two together, and we were elected to Pop the same day. You were a bit of a sap and got into the Sixth, while I never got beyond the First Hundred. You remember Sandy Arbuthnot?”
The face of the man on the barrel did not change perceptibly, but there was a trifle more life in his voice when he spoke. “You are Arbuthnot? Of course you would be Arbuthnot. I might have guessed it.”
“Then for God’s sake, Timmy, tell that blighter behind me to put down his gun. I’ll take my medicine when it comes, but I’d like to tell you something. You’re a clever chap with a future, and I’ve got something to say to you about the Gran Seco which you ought to hear. Give me five minutes.”
There was a protest, but the sphinx nodded. “Give him five minutes,” he said and took out his watch.
The prisoner began to talk in his compelling way, and unconsciously the interest of his executioners awakened.
Being on the edge of death, he had no reticences. He divulged the whole tale of the revolution, and he made a good story of it. He told of Blenkiron’s coming to the Gran Seco, of the slow sapping of the loyalty of the Mines police, of the successful propaganda among the technical staff, of the organising of the Indian pueblas, in which he claimed a modest share. The others dropped their pistol-hands and poked forward their heads to listen. The five minutes lengthened to six, to eight, to ten, and he still held his audience. He addressed himself to the man on the barrel, and sometimes he lowered his voice till the door-keeper took a step nearer. Then he became more confidential, and his voice dropped further. “How do you think it was managed? A miracle? No, a very simple secret which none of you clever folk discovered. We had a base and you never knew it. Go into the pueblas and the old men will speak of a place which they call Uasini Maconoa. That means the Courts of the Morning—Los Patios de la Mariana. Where do you think it is? Listen, and I will tell you.”
They listened, but only for his words, while the speaker was listening for another sound which he seemed at last to have detected. He suddenly caught two of the heads bent forward, those of Radin and Molinoff, and brought them crashing together. The doorkeeper could not shoot, because Mollison was in his way, and in an instant the chance was gone, for a blow on the head felled him to the ground. Mollison with a shout swung the dazed Radin and Molinoff aside and had his pistol in the air, when a report rang out and he toppled like a great tree, shot through the brain. The hut had filled with men, and the two whose heads had crashed and the fever-stricken Bechstein were throttled from behind and promptly pinioned. Then the prisoner showed what the strain had been by fainting at the feet of the man on the barrel.
He came to himself, and found Peters holding a brandy-flask to his mouth. Peters had a whitish face. “My God, sir,” he stammered, “you will never be nearer death.”
The young man seemed to have recovered, for he had strength enough to laugh. “I cut it pretty fine, but there was no other way. I had to make myself ground-bait if we were to catch these pike. We’ve got them all now… I think I could have held them for another five minutes, but I chose to precipitate things. You see, I saw by the nicker of the lantern that the door was opening, and that meant you. If I hadn’t thought of that head-crashing dodge, I think I might have stopped a bullet.”
The man on the barrel had risen and was looking sombrely on. The policeman jerked his head towards him. “What about that fellow?” he asked.
“Oh, let him alone,” was the answer. “He is free to go where he likes. He was at school with me, and I owe him a good turn for this evening.”
BOOK II.
THE COURTS OF THE MORNING
I
Just about the hour of sunrise a girl sat perched on a rock from which the ground fell westward into an abyss of blue vapour. East of her, after a mile of park-like land, the steep woods rose black as coal, and above them soared into the central heavens a great mountain of rock and shale, which, so sheer was the face, showed even to a viewpoint so near its summit cone of snow. The face and the plateau were still dipped in shadow, but beyond the mountain the sun was up, and its first beams, flooding through a cleft on the north shoulder, made a pool of gold far out on the Western sea. The peak was the great Choharua, which means, in the speech of the old races, the Mountain of the Two Winds, for it was held to be wind-shed as well as water-shed.
The tropic dawn broadened fast, though the sun did not show himself. Presently all the plateau to the east was washed in a pure, pale light. The place seemed to sparkle with a kind of hoarfrost, though the air was mild, and its undulations, and the shallow glen of the stream which descended from Choharua, were sharp-rimmed black shadows in that silver field. Then greenness broke through the monotint, like the flush of spring in an English wood, and what had been like a lunar landscape sprang suddenly into clean, thin colours. The far cone of snow became rosy-red and crystalline, so that for one moment, it hung like a translucent jewel in the sky. Then it solidified; the details of the shady face sprang into hard reality; what had been unfeatured shadow showed now as sheer crag and intricate couloirs, specked with snowdrifts which were leaping waters. At last came the orb of the sun, first a crescent of red gold, and then by quick gradations a great burning archway in which the mountain seemed to be engulfed. The air changed to a glow of essential light, and in a moment it seemed that the faint scents of night became the warm spicy odours of day.
The girl was looking to the sea. The line of light, which a minute before had been on the horizon, ran shoreward, as if a tide of sheer gold was flowing in from the west, But the ocean was some thousands of feet below, and the shore waters remained in dusk long after the morning had conquered the plateau. Below her the chasm of blue mist slowly became luminous, and features detached themselves tall trees near at hand clinging to scarps, outjutting head-lands of green far down. The noise of