The Bittermeads Mystery/Chapter 2

From his hiding-place in the bushes Dunn slipped out, as the big man vanished into the darkness down the road, and for the fraction of a second he seemed to hesitate.

The lights in the house were coming and going after a fashion that suggested that the inmates were preparing for bed, and almost at once Dunn turned his back to the building and hurried very quickly and softly down the road in the direction the big man had just taken.

“After all,” he thought, “the house can't run away, that will be still there when I come back, and I ought to find out who this big chap is and where he comes from.”

In spite of the apparent clumsiness of his build and the ungainliness of his movements it was extraordinary how swiftly and how quietly he moved, a shadow could scarcely have made less sound than this man did as he melted through the darkness and a swift runner would have difficulty in keeping pace with him.

An old labourer going home late bade the big man a friendly good night and passed on without seeing or hearing Dunn following close behind, and a solitary woman, watching at her cottage door, saw plainly the big man's tall form and heard his firm and heavy steps and would have been ready to swear no other passed that way at that time, though Dunn was not five yards behind, slipping silently and swiftly by in the shelter of the trees lining the road.

A little further beyond this cottage a path, reached by climbing a stile, led from the high road first across an open field and then through the heart of a wood that seemed to be of considerable extent.

The man Dunn was following crossed this stile and when he had gone a yard or two along the path he halted abruptly, as though all at once grown uneasy, and looked behind.

From where he stood any one following him across the stile must have shown plainly visible against the sky line, but though he lingered for a moment or two, and even, when he walked on, still looked back very frequently, he saw nothing.

Yet Dunn, when his quarry paused and looked back like this, was only a little distance behind, and when the other moved on Dunn was still very near.

But he had not crossed the stile, for when he came to it he realised that in climbing it his form would be plainly visible in outline for some distance, and so instead, he had found and crawled through a gap in the hedge not far away.

They came, Dunn so close and so noiseless behind his quarry he might well have seemed the other's shadow, to the outskirts of the wood, and as they entered it Dunn made his first fault, his first failure in an exhibition of woodcraft that a North American Indian or an Australian “black-fellow” might have equalled, but could not have surpassed.

For he trod heavily on a dry twig that snapped with a very loud, sharp retort, clearly audible for some distance in the quiet night, and, as dry twigs only snap like that under the pressure of considerable weight, the presence of some living creature in the wood other than the small things that run to and fro beneath the trees, stood revealed to all ears that could hear.

Dunn stood instantly perfectly still, rigid as a statue, listening intently, and he noted with satisfaction and keen relief that the regular heavy tread of the man in front did not alter or change.

“Good,” he thought to himself. “What luck, he hasn't heard it.”

He moved on again, as silently as before, perhaps a little inclined to be contemptuous of any one who could fail to notice so plain a warning, and he supposed that the man he was following must be some townsman who knew nothing at all of the life of the country and was, like so many of the dwellers in cities, blind and deaf outside the range of the noises of the streets and the clamour of passing traffic.

This thought was still in his mind when all at once the steady sound of footsteps he had been following ceased suddenly and abruptly, cut off on the instant as you turn off water from a tap.

Dunn paused, too, supposing that for some reason the other had stopped for a moment and would soon walk on again.

But a minute passed and then another and there was still no sound of the footsteps beginning again. A little puzzled, Dunn moved cautiously forward.

He saw nothing, he found nothing, there was no sign at all of the man he had been following.

It was as though he had vanished bodily from the face of the earth, and yet how this had happened, or why, or what had become of him, Dunn could not imagine, for this spot was, it seemed, in the very heart of the wood, there was no shelter of any sort or kind anywhere near, and though there were trees all round just the ground was fairly open.

“Well, that's jolly queer,” he muttered, for indeed it had a strange and daunting effect, this sudden disappearance in the midst of the wood of the man he had followed so far, and the silence around seemed all the more intense now that those regular and heavy footsteps had ceased.

“Jolly queer, as queer a thing as ever I came across,” he muttered again.

He listened and heard a faint sound from his right. He listened again and thought he heard a rustling on his left, but was not sure and all at once a great figure loomed up gigantic before him and the light of lantern gleamed in his face.

“Now, my man,” a voice said, “you've been following me ever since I left Bittermeads, and I'm going to give you a lesson you won't forget in a hurry.”

Dunn stood quite still. At the moment his chief feeling was one of intense discomfiture at the way in which he had been outwitted, and he experienced, too, a very keen and genuine admiration for the woodcraft the other had shown.

Evidently, all the time he had known, or at any rate, suspected, that he was being followed, and choosing this as a favourable spot he had quietly doubled on his tracks, come up behind his pursuer, and taken him unawares.

Dunn had not supposed there was a man in England who could have played such a trick on him, but his admiration was roughly disturbed before he could express it, for the grasp upon his collar tightened and upon his shoulders there alighted a tremendous, stinging blow, as with all his very considerable strength, the big man brought down his walking-stick with a resounding thwack.

The sheer surprise of it, the sudden sharp pain, jerked a quick cry from Dunn, who had not been in the least prepared for such an attack, and in the darkness had not seen the stick rise, and the other laughed grimly.

“Yes, you scoundrel,” he said. “I know very well who you are and what you want, and I'm going to thrash you within an inch of your life.”

Again the stick rose in the air, but did not fall, for round about his body Dunn laid such a grip as he had never felt before and as would for certain have crushed in the ribs of a weaker man. The lantern crashed to the ground, they were in darkness.

“Ha! Would you?” the man exclaimed, taken by surprise in his turn, and, giant as he was, he felt himself plucked up from the ground as you pluck a weed from a lawn and held for a moment in mid-air and then dashed down again.

Perhaps not another man alive could have kept his footing under such treatment, but, somehow, he managed to, though it needed all his great strength to resist the shock.

He flung away his walking-stick, for he realized very clearly now that this was not going to be, as he had anticipated, a mere case of the administration of a deserved punishment, but rather the starkest, fiercest fight that ever he had known.

He grappled with his enemy, trying to make the most of his superior height and weight, but the long arms twined about him, seemed to press the very breath from his body and for all the huge efforts he put forth with every ounce of his tremendous strength behind them, he could not break loose from the no less tremendous grip wherein he was taken.

Breast to breast they fought, straining, swaying a little this way or that, but neither yielding an inch. Their muscles stood out like bars of steel, their breath came heavily, neither man was conscious any more of anything save his need to conquer and win and overthrow his enemy.

The quick passion of hot rage that had come upon Dunn when he felt the other's unexpected blow still burned and flamed intensely, so that he no longer remembered even the strange and high purpose which had brought him here.

His adversary, too, had lost all consciousness of all other things in the lust of this fierce physical battle, and when he gave presently a loud, half-strangled shout, it was not fear that he uttered or a cry for aid, but solely for joy in such wild struggle and efforts as he had never known before.

And Dunn spake no word and uttered no sound, but strove all the more with all the strength of every nerve and muscle he possessed once again to pluck the other up that he might dash him down a second time.

In quick and heavy gasps came their breaths as they still swayed and struggled together, and though each exerted to the utmost a strength few could have withstood, each found that in the other he seemed to have met his match.

In vain Dunn tried again to lift his adversary up so that he might hurl him to the ground. It was an effort, a grip that seemed as though it might have torn up an oak by the roots, but the other neither budged nor flinched beneath it.

And in vain, in his turn, did he try to bend Dunn backwards to crush him to the earth, it was an effort before which one might have thought that iron and stone must have given away, but Dunn still sustained it.

Thus dreadfully they fought, there in the darkness, there in the silence of the night.

Dreadfully they wrestled, implacable, fierce, determined, every primeval passion awake and strong again, and slowly, very slowly, that awful grip laid upon the big man's body began to tell.

His breathing grew more difficult, his efforts seemed aimed more to release himself than to overcome his adversary, he gave way an inch or two, no more, but still an inch or two of ground.

There was a sharp sound, like a thin, dry twig snapping beneath a careless foot.

It was one of his ribs breaking beneath the dreadful and intolerable pressure of Dunn's enormous grip. But neither of the combatants heard or knew, and with one last effort the big man put forth all his vast strength in a final attempt to bear his enemy down.

Dunn resisted still, resisted, though the veins stood out like cords on his brow, though a little trickle of blood crept from the corner of his mouth and though his heart swelled almost to bursting.

There was a sound of many waters in his ears, the darkness all around grew shot with little flames, he could hear some one breathing very noisily and he was not sure whether this were himself or his adversary till he realized that it was both of them. With one sudden, almost superhuman effort, he heaved his great adversary up, but had not strength enough left to do more than let him slip from his grasp to fall on the ground, and with the effort he himself dropped forward on his hands and knees, just as a lantern shone at a distance and a voice cried:

“This way, Tom. Master John, Master John, where are you?”