As it was, I fell, rather than beat, against the door, and then drew myself back to gather breath. Almost immediately a step sounded coming down the passage beyond, the door was pulled inward, and I saw the figure of Jason standing in the opening.
“Ah!” I gasped, and was about to step in, when he gave a sickly screech and his hands went up, as if in terror to ward off a blow.
I felt a breath at my ear and turned quickly round—and there was the white face of Duke almost looking over my shoulder!
CHAPTER LVIII.
THE “SPECTER HOUND.”
That night when the flood waters rose to a head was a terrible one for Winton—one ghastly in the extreme for all lost souls whose black destinies guided their footsteps to the mill.
Perhaps a terror of being trapped—to what hideous fate, who knows?—somewhere in the tortuous darkness of the building, sent my brother leaping by a mad impulse into the waste uproar of the night. Anyhow, before my confused senses could fully grasp the dread nature of the situation, he had rushed past me, plunged into and up the yard, and was racing for his life.
As he sprang by, the cripple made a frantic clutch at him, nipped the flying skirt of his coat, staggered and rolled over, actually with a fragment of torn cloth in his hand. He was up on his feet directly, however, and off in pursuit, though I in my turn vainly grasped at him as he fled by.
Then reason returned to me and I followed.
It all happened in a moment, and there were we three hotly engaged in such a tragic game of follow-my-leader as surely had never before been played in the old city. And there was no fear of comment or interference. We had the streets, the wind and rain, the night to ourselves, and, before our eyes, if these failed us, the wastes of eternity.
Racing in the tracks of the cripple, as he followed in Jason’s, I managed to keep measured pace with him, and that was all. How he made such time over the ground with his crooked limbs was matter for marvel, yet, I think, in that mad brief burst I never lessened the distance between us by a yard. It was a comparative test of the fearful, the revengeful and the apprehensive impulses, and sorely I dreaded in the whirling scurry of the chase that the second would win.