Sergeant Verity and the Blood Royal (26 page)

'Never call retreat, Mr Crowe!' he said fiercely. 'Ain't that what you say whore you conic from?'

Then he returned to the opening of the knife and, with a final effort, prized the blade out from the handle. After this, it was a matter of directing the blade downward, between the leather cuff and the skin of his wrist. To have cut through the entire cuff would have taken far too long, but Crowe had spotted the one great weakness in the equipment.

'Go for the eyelet, Mr Verity! Cut through the leather there and the chain must come free! Not more than an inch length!'

'Right, Mr Crowe!'

The little blade was sharp, but the inch of leather seemed to resist its edge for an eternity. And then Verity let out another cry.

'Done it, Mr Crowe!'

He was waving one arm triumphantly, attempting to restore circulation. He turned next to his left wrist and cut the eyelet there. The leather anklets had merely strapped his feet to the paddle-wheel ribs, since he ought never to have been able to reach within six feet of them to undo them. He pulled himself on to the narrow wooden ledge running round the box, and made his way to Crowe.

'Hang on, Mr Crowe, let's 'ave your hands free!'

By the time they had finished, there were no sounds to be heard from the deck above or from the hull of the ship. Verity looked at the little iron door which led back into the engine-room.

'No!' said Crowe in a soft whisper. 'It may not open on this side. If it does, you may find a gun pointing at you when you get through. It has to be the water.'

They lowered themselves fully dressed, into the dark water and edged under the housing of the paddle, surfacing in the open night outside. Crowe managed this easily enough but Verity's bulk made it impossible for him to slip down except at the side of the great iron wheel. He thought of the spikes on the other surface and shuddered at the prospect of what he and Crowe had just escaped.

He broke surface, gasping, about ten feet from the side of the
Anna
with the hull of the little ship between him and the islet. Crowe was already paddling almost soundlessly toward the sponson and hauling himself out with a muted rush of dripping water. Verity did his best to imitate the Marine's stealth. From the dense foliage of the little island there came the baying of the dog and a man's raucous laugh. Apart from Dacre and Jolly, there were the two girls now being hunted, the hired captain and engineer of the
Anna,
and the four men at Dacre's command, whom Verity now knew to be Lucifer, Cowhide, Bull-Peg and Raoul. How many of the men were with the hunting party and how-many had been left on board was mere conjecture.

The
Anna
,
below decks, consisted of an engine-room amidships, the large saloon aft, and a number of small cabins in the forward part of the ship. Crowe took up his boots, which he had carried in the escape from the paddlebox, laid a finger to his lips, and moved forward in stockinged-feet toward the smaller cabins. His progress was mapped by dark, wet footprints on the covered deck. With Verity just behind him, he made for a door whose little fanlight was illuminated and from which there came the voices of two men in conversation. They were, as Verity had expected, the captain and engineer, excluded from the evening's sport. Crowe cupped his hand over Verity's ear.

'Right, Mr Verity. We take one of'em apiece. But don't move until I do - and then go like lightning for 'em. Right?'

Verity nodded energetically. Crowe braced his back against the far wall of the little passageway, inviting Verity to follow his example, as he laced his boots again. Then, with a simultaneous blow, the two men drove their heels against the fastening of the cabin door opposite them and sent it flying back. The captain and the engineer looked up in astonishment from their hands of cards. The figures in the doorway looked like nothing so much as a pair of circus clowns whose pretentious clothes had just suffered a final ignominious dowsing. Verity was about to move but Crowe motioned him back. The captain's hand shot forward to a table drawer and, in that moment, Crowe jumped, bringing the man and chair to the floor with a splintering impact. The engineer looked helplessly at Verity, getting to his feet as though in a gesture of courtesy. Verity approached, folded his fingers like a ham, and hit the man very hard under the chin. The engineer fell sideways, struck the table, and then sagged to the floor. Behind him Verity heard a muffled blow and the unmistakable click of bone, as Crowe settled his account with the captain.

'Strip 'em!' said Crowe. 'Quick as you can!'

'You nearly left it too late, Mr Crowe! That one of yours was going for the drawer!'

‘I guess that's something else they never taught you at Scotland Yard, Mr Verity. We're going to need his weapon, and one sure way to find it was to give him just the chance to start moving for it. I reckon it wouldn't be much use asking him for directions in his present state.'

Crowe had opened the drawer and drawn out a clumsy-looking pistol with an elaborately-engraved butt and a barrel that seemed absurdly long.

'Hudson!' he said disparagingly. 'A toy for rich young gentlemen who fancy fighting duels without the risk of hitting anyone! Still, most guns look alike when pointing close to a man's guts!'

The cabin locker provided ample cord, used as throwing-line for the ship's main ropes. Crowe used this to truss the naked bodies of the captain and the engineer, while he and Verity did their best to struggle into the dark blue corduroy-trousers and jerseys. After a quick inspection to confirm that the other forward cabins were empty, Crowe glanced down at his ill-fitting clothes.

'Not that we look much like 'em, I guess,' he said ruefully, 'but in the dark, it'll make Dacre's bullies stop just long enough to give us first chance at a shot. With four of them and two of us, we could use an advantage.'

' 'ow many bullets that thing got in it, Mr Crowe?'

'Two, Mr Verity. But they aren't likely to know that from a distance.'

They went forward as far as the engine-room. Crowe inspected several of the small iron wheels and the dials above them. He turned one of the wheels energetically to open it and closed another so tightly that the veins in his forehead were swelling with the exertion. Then he motioned Verity toward the saloon. The oil lamps on the polished table were still lit, the glasses half empty, and a fog of stale cigar smoke in the warm air. Of Dacre's accomplices and the girls there was no sign.

'I guess,' said Crowe thoughtfully, 'I guess Mr Verity we must all be hunting men at heart.'

Lucifer continued to simper, but Bull-Peg in his simple and rough manner was guffawing with sheer pleasure and with anticipation of the delights to come. Cowhide and Raoul stood back a little and watched the white men with quiet amusement. Maggie and Jennifer clung naked to one another, the blonde girl's eyes wandering hopelessly with terror, while Jennifer's dark eyes flashed with a half-cowed resentment at her tormentors. Under Lucifer's supervision, Cowhide and Raoul stood the two victims side by side. With locking cuffs they joined them at their adjacent ankles. Then, by bending them, they looked each girl's outer wrist to the same cuff-chain. Lucifer giggled.

'And now, if you two beauties aim to cheat the hunt by swimming off the island, you are surely welcome to try!'

Bull-Peg untied the leash from a tree and held the straining bloodhound.

'You'll find, my dears,' said Lucifer to the two stooping girls, 'that you'll go better on elbows and knees. Now, in five minutes more we shall come for you. Cowhide and Raoul come beating and the dog come looking for his dinner. The harder you go, the longer you live. Within reason, of course.'

Lucifer nodded to Cowhide and Raoul. There were two sudden movements, two sharp reports and young women stumbled grotesquely forward on their terrified career.

'Four abreast,' said Lucifer to the others, 'dragging the ground end to end of the island. Cowhide and Raoul beat with them whips to flush 'em out if they go to ground. Bull-Peg, give that brute another good sniff at the Khan girl's things, then let it follow its nose. And remember, it's the dog that does the business. That way it looks like misadventure.'

'Ain't it time yet?' pleaded Bull-Peg, his large crude features contorted in an expression of genuine anxiety.

'Now,' said Lucifer reprovingly, 'ain't you been let do everything you asked with Miss Jennifer? Nothing but selfishness to spoil this for the rest of us by rushing at it now!'

Bull-Peg lowered his head submissively, not raising it again until Lucifer in his wisdom decided that the time had come for the hunters to move after their prey.

Crawling, stumbling, weeping with fright engendered by days of ill-treatment and the promise of death, the two young women scrambled through thickets and mud. There was no sense of direction, no thought of purpose, only the insane zeal of trying to escape a death that was inevitable. Somewhere to one side of them, as it seemed, the sound of Cowhide slashing at the undergrowth with his thong was ominously clear. Behind them, the howl of the dog, though more remote, carried the chill of death to their hearts. The tawny sheen of Jennifer's hips and thighs, her ribs and upper arms, bore the fresh scars of brambles and rough twigs. Maggie's pale body was so splashed and smeared with the black mud that it was hardly lighter than Jennifer's. Despite their mutual affection, each girl now wept in her own solitary terror.

They were close to the end of the islet, with death by drowning before them and the jaws of the hound at their backs. The sound of a man's breath stilled them in their fear, knowing that it was his soft expression of triumph. Now there would be no more but Cowhide's flushing-out until the arrival of the killer-hound, and the last appalling moments. The hand which trailed the thong moved back, and the man spoke in a sharp whisper.

'Right, miss,' he said firmly, 'now you just act like a pair o' good brave girls, and these villains are going to get the shock o' their bleedin' lives!'

As they had arranged on leaving the
Anna,
it was Verity who was to guide the girls back to the little ship, while Crowe remained at large in the swampy wilderness. Maggie was, at first, too far gone in terror even to understand Verity's words, but Jennifer had begun to recover her composure and he addressed himself to her.

'Now, miss, it ain't as bad as you might fear. That blood 'ound of theirs keeps losing the scent. Having tried to abuse you by making you crawl through mud like this, o' course it do mask the scent. Villains is stupid in the end, miss. And the crueller they are, the more stupid, generally.'

The Asian girl looked at him sceptically.

'The cuffs and chains,' she said urgently, 'we can go nowhere like this.'

Verity examined them.

'I'm a detective officer, miss, and I know that cuffs, like most things, can be opened if necessary. These ain't even proper police handcuffs. Good sharp bang might spring 'em.'

As the two young women crouched naked and mud-spattered, clutching one another, he found a stone with a blunted point and set to work. After several attempts the anklets still held fast.

'Miss,' said Verity, trying to rouse Maggie, 'I gotta do something more. You and your chum must wet the side o' your foot with mud and then pull as far apart as you can. There's a pistol in my pocket. What I must do is put the muzzle to the chain and fire it. The ball will go into the mud, safe enough. But there's bound to be a flash and a burn. We gotta get these things off, and quick!'

The girl nodded, the movement of her soiled blonde curtains of hair indicating that she had understood him at last. When they were both ready, Verity applied the barrel of the Hudson pistol to the centre of the stretched chain, about two inches from each girl's ankle. He chose the weakest part of the metal link, knowing that any fracture would be enough to destroy all Cowhide's careful manacling. He held his breath and squeezed the trigger. There was a roar, a flash that seemed to light the river itself, and a double cry from the two girls. With the acrid smoke in his nostrils, Verity inspected the chain, noticing for the first time the pain in his right arm from the recoil of the gun. There was a gap in the thin metal link of the little chain, quite wide enough to work the entire system of fetters loose.

As he completed this, Verity could hear shouts from the darkness, quite close by. Lucifer was petulantly inquiring which of his companions had fired a gun. Then came Raoul's voice.

'Cap'n! Cap'n! Quickly here! Here's Cowhide lying, Cap'n! Looks like he fall and break his neck!'

Verity motioned the two girls away from the voices, toward the dark water of the river. He had watched Sergeant Crowe, with the effortless skill of a trapper, stalk Cowhide and bring the man down with a single, terrible blow to the neck. Raoul was now at the same spot, and Lucifer must still be with him. Only Bull-Peg with the dog was now between Verity and the
Anna.
Yet Bull-Peg would be hunting for the girls in the tangled brushwood, not in the shallows.

He led his two dishevelled charges into the water to kill any scent which the dog might pick up, and waded back, parallel to the track they had followed. They were about half-way to the
Anna
when there was a booming like distant gunfire, followed by a whistling and hissing close at hand. Verity had a brief visual recollection of Sergeant Crowe in the engine-room of the
Anna
turning the wheels of her valves. To one who had heard a ship's boilers blow, the sound was unmistakable. By the time that he caught sight of her, steam was seeping through every outlet, and Lucifer's hope of escape had taken on a significant list toward the shore.

Of Verney Dacre there was still no sight or sound. It had been Lucifer's voice which seemed to command the hunting-party. With the girls crouching to one side of him, Verity settled down in the shadows with the Hudson pistol, and its last bullet, to watch the
Anna.
So far as he knew anything about trapping, this was his snare and the crippled steamer the inevitable bait.