It was his one-time friend, Robert Despard, the man who had called himself his pal, whom he feared. Almost the last words the latter had spoken to him echoed ironically in his brain:
"I'll keep the secret about our radium mine, old man, never fear. It's safe with me!"
Various schemes flashed with lightning-like rapidity through Rupert's brain as he clung to his perilous position in the chimney above the furnace. He began to think that the men outside intended to remain there for the night—it seemed so long before they moved away, and he heard the beat of their ponies' hoofs growing fainter and fainter. But at last he knew they were really gone. Even then he waited awhile before he commenced to painfully clamber to the ground.
He was stiff and sore. His shoulder ached and throbbed where the stray buckshot had struck him. There was blood upon his hand, too, where he had cut it.
But he was still free. At first he moved cautiously, examining the country as much as was visible in all directions. The fog had partially cleared away, but it still lay in patches here and there.
There was not a soul in sight. Not a sound to be heard save the purling waters of the little Cherry Brook on his left. He knelt down and washed the blood from his hand, then took a drink. And suddenly he laughed under his breath.
It was good to be alive again—for he had not been living those past months in prison. He had been less alive than a caged animal. He had slept, eaten, worked, and exercised with mechanical-like precision. Even the agonies of mind he had undergone seemed unreal now. They did not even seem to matter—nothing mattered but the fact that he was free!
Free to sit or stand, to walk or run, to laugh or to cry. Free to move as he liked, look where he liked, do what he liked. He dug his hands into the soft peat and tore it up, and sniffed the sweet scent. He stood upright and stretched out his arms, then laughed aloud.
It was indeed good to be alive again. It was wonderful! The next moment he was trembling from head to foot, and his body broke out in a sweat. He was not to be alive for long. Even if he reached Blackthorn Farm and delivered his message he would have to give himself up and go back to prison. Back to that living grave!
He had told poor 303 that escape was absolutely impossible. Even if a man got outside Dartmoor and reached Tavistock or Exeter or Plymouth he was certain to be detected and brought back. His father would never hide him or help him—he knew that.