The Millionth Chance/Chapter 11

OU may believe, if you will, that it was the extreme cold that awakened me, but I prefer to think that it was a prescience of evil, which only my presence could avert, that roused me from my slumbers. I may as well admit right now that the Irish strain in me becomes dominant in times of stress.

No one, so far as I know, ever dared to question the veracity of my great-grandmother, and it is a matter of family record that she heard the banshee calling on the night my great-grandfather died. I shall always think it a sort of sub-conscious foreknowledge, calling to my consciousness, telling it that there was need of me, that made me awake.

However, I will admit that it was very cold in my room and that my only thought upon awaking was a desire for more blankets. Through the open window the cold poured in, seeping through my coverings, through my very flesh it seemed, until even my bones felt frozen.

Believer in fresh air that I was, I was no fanatic on the subject; sleep is fully as important as fresh air, and one can not sleep in too great cold, not unless one is numbed until circulation ceases, and I had no desire to reach that stage. I got up and closed the window.

Back in bed, my brain began working. Try as I might to dismiss the incidents of the day, to forget the tragedy and its mystery, my mind concentrated on it, to the exclusion of sleep. I counted sheep jumping over the stile until I had accounted for enough lamb chops to feed half Christendom; I tried all the devices warranted to make one the victim of self-hypnotism, but in vain. The slumber that I’d already had seemed to have been sufficient; it seemed impossible to win more. Moreover, the closing of the window seemed to have vitiated the air.

Now this was absurd, although I didn’t stop to reason so at the time. For sufficient fresh air seeped through the crack in the door, on this frigid night, to satisfy any one. But the room seemed close to me.

I got up and opened the window again. But the rush of icy air convinced me at once that, though its absence might have contributed to my wakefulness, its presence would have the same effect. And there were no more blankets in the room. I decided to go down-stairs and get my great coat, hanging on a hook in the office.

And before leaving the room I dressed completely, even to my shoes, with a heavy sweater in place of shirt and collar.

It may be asked why, if I possessed a heavy sweater, I bothered about my overcoat. It may also be asked why, when I intended merely to go down-stairs, I put on my shoes, when I had a pair of slippers under my bed. I can only revert to the theory, already advanced, of foreknowledge. There is no other way in which to account for it. The intense cold may have waked me up; the intense cold may have caused me to forget that I had clothing in the room sufficient for my needs; but I do not believe that the intense cold caused me to put on shoes for a trip down-stairs.

I am not a superstitious man; while I have the utmost reverence for the great-grandmother whom I never saw, and am willing to admit that times have changed and that things once fashionable no longer appeal to the present generation, still, not having myself heard the banshee recorded in the family archives, I will confess that I have always held grave doubts as to its existence. The estimable old lady might have heard the wind wailing. Her visitation, while I will never deny its authenticity, yet seems to lack definite proof of the existence of things supernatural.

For instance, the family records neglect to state whether the banshee spoke with a brogue, or with a cockney accent. And such matters, when dealing with the supernatural, are most important to the sober-minded, like myself.

No, I am not superstitious. But I do believe that somewhere in the world, for each and every one of us, a mate is waiting. We may never find that mate; we may marry one not the true mate. But somewhere a heart is calling, and if we wait and listen, we shall hear that call.

The heart that calls may not know of its cry; its owner may be content with things as they are; but the one who hears the call is lost in discontent until he has answered it, and has awakened the consciousness of its sender. No, I am not a eugenist; I believe in love.

So then, call it the cold, call it accident, put down my vague premonition to the condition of my nerves, if you will, I prefer to think that it was something else that sent me down-stairs in the middle of the night.

At the head of the stairs a lamp burned dimly. The other hall-lights had been extinguished.

On tiptoe, careful lest I disturb the sleepers, I made my way down the gloomy hall and descended the stairs to the office. I crossed swiftly to the wall where hung, among others, my coat. As I reached for it, a gust of wind that drove particles of snow ahead of it, struck my face. The front door was open.

Mechanically I put out my hand to close it. Then I withdrew my hand and stood staring stupidly into the night. Why was the door open? Surely Captain Perkins locked up every night! The door had not been blown open. Some one had unlocked it. Who? Why?

The icy air cleared my brain, a trifle stupid from my efforts to sleep. The snow particles stung my wits into action.

I brushed away a flake that hung to an eyelash, and the action suggested something. It could not have been snowing long, I thought, else the flakes would have been blown into my room. Still, there might be a difference in the air currents down-stairs here, caused by the overhang of the balcony, that caused the snow to swirl in. If, suppose, Dr. Reese, for reasons best known to himself, had decided to come back to the Inn for the night, some trace of his coming might be visible on the veranda, slight though the fall may have been.

I stepped through the open door and struck a match, shielding it from the wind with my curved palms.

There, faintly outlined on the veranda, in new snow that barely covered the boards, were footprints. But they pointed outward. Further, no man’s feet had made them. They were too small. I thought at once of Ruth Gilman.

I straightened up and stood there undecidedly. It was absurd! Why should she leave the Inn in the dead of night? It must be Polly or Myra, gone to perform some neglected duty. But I smiled at that idea. I could not fancy the frightened waitress or chambermaid going out into the night for anything, granted that they would not fear the dark, ordinarily. But I had seen the somewhat superstitious dread on their faces this evening. While the body of Major Penrose was in the room up-stairs neither of those young women would venture forth in the dark. And Nelly, the cook! Her shoes would leave a much larger imprint than those just revealed to me by the flickering match. It was Ruth Gilman.

I turned back into the hotel and seized my coat and hat. I flung them on and started through the door. As I did so I thought I heard a board creak in the hall above.

I hesitated a second and listened. It did not sound again. And yet I had an eerie feeling that some one was in that hall. But I set that down to my nerves. Who on earth, aside from Ruth Gilman and myself, would be abroad at this hour? I passed silently through the door, dosing it softly after me.

The moon had set long since, and the stars were hidden in the light fall of snow. Yet, by the aid of another match, I saw that the newly made footprints turned to the right. In that direction I plunged.

I use the word plunge advisedly. For it was more than a walk, and the drifts on either side of the path, into which I stumbled, made it less than a run.

I did not bother to look again for footprints. Along this path around the hotel and between the trees down to the lake was the only road the girl could have taken. Surely, unless she were insane, she would not try to make her way through the untrodden snow, in places some feet deep, that lay on either side of the path. She must be going down to the lake. And why?

Over and over again I asked myself that question as I plunged ahead. It was but natural that I should wonder if her uncle’s death had anything to do with it. Was she crazed by the tragedy? But she seemed too strong a character to let grief, no matter how poignant, or shock, however great, break down her will and brain.

That it was guilt, fleeing from the scene of tragedy, that impelled her, I am glad to say that I did not consider for a moment. While, according to the evidence, it was not a physical impossibility for her to have slain her uncle, it was a moral impossibility. The thought, I admit, flashed across my mind, but I can not help it that I have a vivid imagination and can see many sides to everything. The thing that counts is that the thought was instantly dismissed.

But that it was the mystery that existed previous to the tragedy that sent her forth I had little doubt. Yet that did not answer the why. What was this mystery and why should it impel her to such a doubtful, and mayhap dangerous, exploit as this?

But the answer to that would only come when I had caught up with her, if then. I raced down the path through the trees and stood on the edge of the lake. Something dark, only a few rods out upon the ice, loomed up through the snow-flakes. I had been right, then. The tracks on the veranda, and just over the veranda’s edge, had been made barely a minute before I discovered them.

She must have slipped by my door even as I was buttoning my coat-sweater, because the tracks had held in them only a casual flake or so of snow that had fallen after they were printed. And what little advantage of start she had had over me had been practically nullified by my greater speed in her pursuit.

I dashed out upon the ice in the direction of the moving blotch that I felt certain was she. For a minute the snow muffled my approach, but as I passed the snow-line and came out upon the ice the nails in my heels rang upon its smooth surface. The moving blotch paused. But I rushed on toward her until, a dozen yards away, I heard her voice.

“Don’t come any nearer!” Her voice shook, but I knew that it was with excitement more than with fear. “Go back—I’ll fire!”

I slowed down, though I still advanced.

“Don’t be frightened, Miss Gilman,” I said. “Please!”

“Oh! It’s you!”

I was close to her now, close enough to see that she held her automatic pistol in her hand, and that it pointed at me. But she lowered it.

“Oh,” she said again, “it’s you.”

I sensed a relief in her tones, and my heart beat a little faster. Plainly, during the night, her opinion of me had vanished. At least she no longer feared me. But her voice was cold with her next words.

“Why are you following me? What right have you?”

“No right except the wish to be of service,” I answered. “I want to help you—in whatever you need help.”

“But I don’t want any,” she stated. “I want to be let alone. Please go back.”

But she no longer threatened with her weapon, and her tone did not seem insistent to me.

“I can’t let you wander about this lake by yourself in the middle of the night,” I told her. “You might get lost. This may be a blizzard coming up.”

“And suppose I am lost?” Her voice was frigid again, as if she had mastered a momentary weakness. “What concern is that of yours?”

“I intend to make it mine,” I said sternly. “If I didn’t and anything happened to you, I’d feel a murderer. But why are you out here? What made you do such a rash thing?”

“If I could trust you,” she began. “Dr. Reese told me who you really were. Or who you claimed to be. He didn’t think you were like the other two. But I don’t know. Please go back!”

“Not unless you come with me,” I returned.

“But I can’t!” Her voice was almost a wail. “I must give—” She clutched my wrist. “You are honest? You’ll help me?”

“You know it,” I told her.

“Then keep them—stop them—no, perhaps they haven’t seen us. Come!”

She pulled at my wrist and I turned with her, toward the farther shore of the lake, but not before I had seen the two blotched figures on the shore, at the foot of the path I had descended, which had made her decide to trust me.

So, then, I had been right—right in my vague premonition that danger brooded over me, right when I thought I had heard a step in the hall above me. But it was no time to reason or to think at all. Hand in hand, slipping and almost falling because each of us ran on our toes, lest the nails in our heels signal the two behind, we dashed across the ice. And though I knew that Ravenell and Minot were dangerous men, though somehow I felt certain that they were the men behind us, I had at first, no thought for them. I only knew that I held Ruth Gilman’s mittened hand, and that the firm clasp of her fingers led me into an earthly heaven. She trusted me!

After all the misunderstandings, after all the suspicious circumstances, she trusted me! And I? Though she had rifled my bag and wallet a score of times and I had caught her in the act, there would have been no room in my heart for doubt of her.

What her business was on the surface of this lake at such an hour, what the mysterious something was, that Ravenell and Minot desired, I neither knew nor cared. I only knew that she held my hand and that while I ran a fierce desire to stay and tear an explanation from the two detectives possessed me, an explanation of why they dared harass Miss Gilman. And I didn’t really care for the explanation. It would have been enough to drive my fists into the faces of the men who dared presume to annoy her. Their mercenary motives were nothing to me in that moment of exaltation, as we raced across the ice. I merely wanted to fight for her, and hated the caution that suggested flight before fight.

But fight was to come soon enough to gratify my suddenly hot blood. Miss Gilman stumbled. As I lifted her she glanced over her shoulder.

“They’re coming,” she cried. "They’ve seen us. They”

I looked. Less than fifty yards away, as nearly as one could tell in the snowy gloom, I could see the two oncoming figures. In silence they had followed us, and grimly they bore down upon us. Something hard was thrust into my hand. It was her automatic. But I pressed it back in her hand.

“If I stop them,” I asked, “could you—do whatever it is you’ve come to do—by yourself?”

“If you can stop them, yes.”

“Then run,” I said. I gave her a little shove. “Run!”

She hesitated but a moment.

“Oh, I—can’t leave you.”

But if her business, whatever it was, was important enough for her to risk what already she had risked, I would not let her hesitate on my account.

“I’ll stop them,” I promised. “And I’ll come after you—if I can. Run!”

I pushed her again. With a little gasp of protest she forged ahead. As for myself, I braced myself against the rush of the two Greenham men. Somehow, I forgot that a while ago I had protested against her risking herself in the storm. Somehow, I felt a sudden great confidence in her; that she would front the perils of the night without harm; that she ought to front them.

This feeling I can not explain, unless it was because, in the back of my mind, I held the feeling that Ruth Gilman would not have risked this nocturnal journey for mere gain; that she did it for something greater than anything measured in money; that she did it because of duty, and that duty should be done.

I measured the two oncoming men. The burly Ravenell was slightly in the lead, and I was glad of that. If I could render him hors de combat at the start I would have little trouble with the slighter Minot. Whereas, if I came to clutches with Minot, and did not dispose of him at once, Ravenell, with his great strength, and with me handicapped by Minot, would prove too much for me. My only hope lay in putting one of them out of the fight with a blow, and my chances were greater if that one were Ravenell.

But Minot was cunning. He swerved as they drew closer.

“’Tend to him, Ravenell,” he cried. “I’ll follow the girl.”

And I knew that he would catch her; that she could not possibly escape him. I feared that she would not use the pistol she carried; that at the last moment her feminine shrinking from blood would deter her. Further, I feared that she would not dare use it. She had not informed the town authorities of their attack upon her in the path. She did not want publicity.

Would she dare use the gun? Wouldn’t Minot know that she’d fear to use it? There was but one hope for her—that I should knock Ravenell out with a punch.

I crouched slightly and drew my right fist back. This was no boxing match; there was no time for sparring. I must get in the knock-out before he came to a clinch.

He came in with no diminution of his rush, his right arm drawn back, and our blows were launched at the same moment. His fist caught my shoulder, but its force was gone. For I had stepped in as he swung and driven my clenched hand to his jaw.

His knees sagged; his fingers clutched at my body. I stepped back and he slid to the ice. It had all taken but a fraction of a second.

Minot was within my reach. I sprang for him, but Ravenell, not completely knocked out, or with the convulsive clutch of the man losing consciousness, caught at my ankle. As I sprang for Minot Ravenell’s fingers tripped me.

I fell forward, reaching outward as I did. And my hands caught at Minot’s knees in an unmeant tackle. He came down with me. I heard him curse; I felt something hard that I guessed to be the barrel of a gun strike my arm, numbing it from the elbow down. My fingers, that had been gripping Minot’s knee, relaxed and the knee bent, to straighten in a moment, driving the booted foot against my shoulder. A wriggle, another kick, and he was free.

He was standing up when I reached my knees, my arm, the left, utterly useless from the blows on elbow and shoulder. Then, for one second, I wished that I had retained the automatic pistol which I had returned to Ruth Gilman for two reasons: first because I would not disarm her, and second, because I wished to kill no man, and I had feared in the fury of my wrath against Ravenell and Minot that if I held a pistol I would shoot.

But now, practically helpless, with my sound right arm held over my head to ward, if possible, the blow of the revolver barrel which I knew was imminent, I regretted that squeamishness had been any part of my reason for refusing the gun. For, cursing like a mad man, Minot circled about me, looking for an opening in my guard.

It would only be a second before, twisting on the ice to face him, my right hand would be lowered to steady myself. I could not rise, for rising would mean that my good hand would be thrown out to steady myself, and Minot’s chance would come.

But every moment of delay, every second, in this gathering snow-storm, meant that Ruth Gilman would have so much more time in which to escape. I knew, from the mutterings that fell from Minot’s lips, the snarls of anger, that he knew the same thing, and that he feared me too much to let me gain my feet, for he knew that I would follow. And I guessed that part of his anger was because he dared not risk a shot. Though angry enough, I judged, to do murder, he was cautious enough to know that a shot might bring aid from the hotel. So he circled me.

Suddenly he wheeled. I threw my body around, but not quickly enough; I was off balance and falling forward. Instinctively my right hand dropped to the ice to steady myself and I threw my head as far to one side as possible to avoid the arc of his revolver barrel. But his aim was good. It landed fairly upon my forehead, the cold steel cutting open the skin.

But no more. The muzzle fell upon my forehead, did not crash down upon it. The arm that had propelled it had gone suddenly as limp as my own left arm. For like a wraith in the snowy gloom, but more muscularly substantial, I thanked God, Ruth Gilman had stolen up behind the one-idea Minot and the barrel of her own automatic had done for him what he had planned to do for me. His figure crumpled into itself and he lay in a heap on the ice.

I gained my feet and brushed away the blood that had trickled down into my eyes. The girl stood staring down at the form of Minot, and even in the gloom I could see that her slight form shook terribly.

The pistol with which she had knocked the Greenham man out slipped from her fingers and clattered on the ice. I bent over and picked it up. I placed my hand inside Minot’s coat; his heart was beating. For the first time in my hitherto prosaic life I experienced the lustful feeling of vindictive-

“Will he die?” she gasped.

“No such luck,” I said bitterly.

“But we must take him back—get a doctor—and I must go on.”

Ravenell stirred; he groaned. I pointed to him.

“He’ll look after his precious companion,” I whispered. “Come, before he sees which way we go.”

But still she lingered, trembling.

“You’re sure he’s able to?”

“Sure,” said I. “I only hit him once.”

To my surprise, for I did not at first recognize the naivete of my remark, she laughed.

“And if you’d hit him twice it would have meant death, of course.”

I grinned in the darkness. Her mirth seemed to have steadied her.

“Come, then,” she said.

Again we took up our interrupted race across the lake. And as we ran I could think only of the wonderful, glorious fact that when safety had been hers she had jeopardized it for me.