The Bittermeads Mystery/Chapter 27

When he came to himself he was lying on his back, and bending over him was his father's familiar face, wearing an expression of great surprise and wonder, and still greater annoyance.

“What is the matter?” General Dunsmore asked as soon as he saw that his son's senses were returning to him. “Have you all gone mad together? You send me a mysterious note to meet you here at three, you turn up racing and running like an escaped lunatic, and with a disgusting growth of hair all over your face, so that I didn't know you till you spoke, and then there's Walter dodging about in the wood here like a poacher hiding from the keepers. Are you both quite mad, Rupert?”

“Walter,” Rupert repeated, lifting himself on one hand, “Walter—have you seen him?”

“Over there,” said the general, nodding towards the right. “He was dodging and creeping about for all the world like some poaching rascal. I waved, but he didn't see me, and when I tried to overtake him I lost sight of him somehow in the trees, and found I had come right out of my way for Brook Bourne Spring.”

“Thank God for that,” said Rupert fervently as a picture presented itself to him of his unsuspecting father trying in that lonely wood to find and overtake the man whose murderous purpose was aimed at his life.

“What do you mean?” snapped the general. “And why have you made such a spectacle of yourself with all that beard? Why, I didn't know you till you spoke—there's Walter there. What makes him look like that?”

For Walter had just come out of the wood about fifty yards to their right, and when he saw them talking together he understood at once that in some way or another all his plans had failed.

He was looking at them through a gap in some undergrowth that hid most of his body, but showed his head and shoulders plainly, and as he stood there watching them his face was like a fiend's.

“Walter,” the general shouted, and to his son Rupert he said: “The boy's ill.”

Walter moved forward from among the trees. He had a gun in his hand, and he flung it forward as though preparing to fire, and at the same moment Rupert Dunsmore drew from his pocket the pistol Deede Dawson had given him and fired himself.

But at the very moment that he pulled the trigger the general struck up his arm so that the bullet flew high and harmless through the tops of the trees.

Walter stepped back again into the wood, and Rupert said:—

“You don't know what you have done, father.”

“You are mad, mad,” the general gasped.

His face was very pale, and he trembled a little, for though he had heard many bullets whistle by his ears, that had happened in action against an enemy, and was altogether different from this. He put out his hand in an attempt to take the pistol that Rupert easily evaded.

“Give it to me,” he said. “I saved his life; you might have killed him.”

“Yes, you saved him, father,” Rupert muttered, thinking to himself that the saving of Walter's life might well mean the loss of Ella's, since very likely the failure of their plots would be at once attributed by the conspirators to her. “Father, I never wrote that letter you say you had. Walter forged it to get you here, where he meant to kill us both. That's why he looked like that, that's why he had his gun.”

General Dunsmore only stared blankly at him for a moment.

“Kill me? Kill you? What for?” he gasped.

“So that he might become Lord Chobham of Wreste Abbey instead of Lord Chobham's poor relation,” answered Rupert. “The poison attempt on uncle which Walter discovered was first of all his own doing; it was through him Charley Wright lost his life. He has committed at least one other murder. Today he meant to kill both of us. Then he would have been heir to the title and estates, and when uncle died he would have been Lord Chobham.”

“Nonsense, absurd, impossible. You're mad, quite mad,” the general stammered. “Why, he would have been hanged at once.”

“Not if he could have fixed the blame elsewhere,” Rupert answered. “That was to have been my part; it was carefully arranged to make it seem I was responsible for it all. I haven't time to explain now. I don't think he is coming back. I expect he is only loaded with small shot, and he doesn't dare try a long range shot or come near now he knows I'm ready for him.”

“But it's—it's impossible—Walter,” stammered the general. “Impossible.”

“The impossible so often happens,” answered Rupert, and handed his pistol to him. “You must trust me, father, and do what I tell you. Take this pistol in case you are attacked on the way home. You may be, but I don't think it's likely. Get the motor out and go straight to Wreste Abbey. An attempt on uncle's life will be made tonight, if they still carry out their plans, about dinner-time tonight. See that every possible precaution is taken. See to that first. Then send help as soon as you can to Bittermeads, a house on the outskirts of Ramsdon; any one there will tell you where it is.”

“But what are you going to do?” General Dunsmore asked.

“I'm going to find Walter, if he's still hiding in the wood here, as he may be,” Rupert answered. “I should like a little chat with him.” For a moment he nearly lost his self-control, and for a single moment there showed those fiery and tempestuous passions he was keeping now in such stern repression. “Yes a little talk with him, just us two,” he said. “And if he's cleared out, or I can't find him I'm going straight on to Bittermeads. There's some one there who may be in danger, so the sooner I am there the better.”

“But wait a moment,” the general cried. “Are you armed?”

“Yes, with my hands, I shall want no more when Walter and I meet again,” Rupert answered, and, without another word, plunged into the wood at the spot where Walter had vanished.

At first the track of Walter's flying footsteps was plain enough for he had fled full speed, panic having overtaken him when he saw Rupert and his father together and understood that in some way his deep conspiracy had failed and his treachery become known.

For a little distance, therefore, he had crashed through bracken and undergrowth, heedless of all but the one need that was upon him to flee away and escape while there was yet time. But, after a while, his first panic subsiding, he had gone more carefully, and, as the weather had been very dry of late, when he came to open ground his footmarks were scarcely visible.

In such spots Rupert could make but slow progress, and he was handicapped, too, by the fact, that all the time he had to be on his guard lest from some unsuspected quarter his enemy should come upon him unawares.

For, indeed, this enterprise he had undertaken in the flood tide of his passion and fierce anger was dangerous enough since he, quite weaponless, was following up a very desperate armed man who would know that for him there could be henceforth no question of mercy.

But there was that burning in Rupert's heart that made him heedless of all danger, and indeed, he who for mere love of sport and adventure, had followed a wounded tiger into the jungle and tracked a buffalo through thick reeds, was not likely to draw back now.

Once he thought he had succeeded, for he saw a bush move and he rushed at once upon it. But when he reached it there was nothing there, and the ground about was hard and bare, showing no marks to prove any one had lately been near. And once he saw a movement in the midst of some bracken and caught a glimpse of what seemed like Walter's coat, so that he was sure he had him at last, and he shouted and ran forward.

But again no one was there, though the bracken was all trampled and beaten down. The tracks Walter had made in going were plain, too, but Rupert lost them almost at once and could not find them again, and when he came a little later to the further edge of the wood, he decided to waste no more time, but to make his way direct to Bittermeads so as at least to make sure of Ella's safety.

He told himself that he had failed badly in woodcraft and, indeed, he had been too fierce and hot in his pursuit to show his wonted skill.

The plan that had been in his mind from the moment when he left his father was to take advantage of the fact that on this edge of the wood was situated a farm belonging to Lord Chobham, where horses were bred and where he was well known.

Some of these horses were sure to be out in the fields, and it would be easy for him, wasting no time in explanation, to catch one of them, mount bare-backed and ride through the New Plantation—the New Plantation was a hundred years old, but still kept that name—over the brow of the hill beyond, swim the canal in the valley, and so straight across-country to Ramsdon.

Riding thus direct he would save time and distance, and arrive more quickly than by going the necessary distance to secure a motor-car which would have also to take a much more circuitous route.

He jumped the hedge, therefore, that lay at the wood's edge and slid down the steep bank into the sunken road beyond where he found himself standing in front of Walter, who held in his hands a gun levelled straight at Rupert's heart.

“I could have shot you time after time in there you know,” he said quietly. “From behind that bush and from out of the bracken, too. I don't know why I didn't. I suppose it wasn't worth while, now I shall never be Lord Chobham.”

He flung down his gun as he spoke and sprang on a bicycle that he had held leaning against his legs.

Quickly he sped away, leaving Rupert standing staring after him, realizing that his life had hung upon the bending of Walter's finger, and that Walter, with at least two cold-blooded murders to his account, or little more to hope for in this world or the next, had now inexplicably spared him for whose destruction, of life and honour alike, he had a little before been laying such elaborate, hellish plans.

With a gesture of his hands that proved he failed to understand, Rupert ran on and crossed a field to where he saw some horses grazing.

One he knew immediately for one of his father's mares, and he knew her also for an animal of speed and endurance.

The mare knew him, too, and suffered him to mount her without difficulty, and without a soul on the farm being aware of what was happening and without having to waste any precious time on explanations or declaring his identity, Rupert rode away, sitting the mare bare-backed, through the New Plantation towards Bittermeads, where he hoped, arriving unexpectedly, to be able to save Ella before the danger he was sure threatened her came to a head.

Of one thing he was certain. Deede Dawson would never do what his companion in villainy had just done, he would spare no one; fierce, malignant and evil to the last, his one thought if he knew they had and vengeance approached would be to do what harm he could before the end.