The Man from Brodney's

by George Barr McCutcheon

THE PERSIAN ANGEL

The man called Abou suddenly leaped to his feet, and, with the cry of an eager animal, sprang to her side. His arms closed about her slender figure with the unmistakable lust of the victor. A piteous, heart-rending shriek left her lips as he raised her clear of the ground and started toward the dense shadows across the road. Her terror-stricken face was turned to the light; her cries for mercy were directed to the brute's companions.

They did not respond, but another did. A hoarse, inarticulate cry of rage burst from Deppingham's lips. His figure shot out through the air and down the short slope with the rush of an infuriated beast. Even as the astonished Abou dropped his struggling burden to meet the attack of the unexpected deliverer, he was felled to the earth by a mighty blow from the rifle which his assailant swung swift and true. His skull was crushed as if it were an eggshell.

Lady Agnes struggled to her feet, wild-eyed, half crazed by the double assault. The next instant she fell forward upon her face, dead to all that was to follow in the next few minutes. Her glazed eyes caught a fleeting glimpse of the figures that seemed to sweep down from the sky, and then all was blank.

There was no struggle. Chase and Selim were upon the stupefied islanders before they could move, covering them with their rifles. The wretches fell upon their knees and howled for mercy. While Deppingham was holding his wife's limp form in his arms, calling out to her in the agony of fear, utterly oblivious to all else that was happening about him, his two friends were swiftly disarming the grovelling natives. Selim's knife severed the cords that bound Bobby Browne's hands; he was staring blankly, dizzily before him, and many minutes passed before he was able to comprehend that deliverance had come.

Ten minutes later Chase was addressing himself to the four islanders, who, bound and gagged, were tied by their own sashes to trees some distance from the roadside.

"I've just thought of a little service you fellows can perform for me in return for what I've done for you. All the time you're doing it, however, there will be pistols quite close to your backs. I find that Lady Deppingham is much too weak to take the five miles' walk we've got to do in the next two hours—or less. You are to have the honour of carrying her four miles and a half, and you will have to get along the best you can with the gags in your mouths. I'm rather proud of the inspiration. We were up against it, hard, until I thought of you fellows wasting your time up here in the woods. Corking scheme, isn't it? Two of you form a basket with your hands—I'll show you how. You carry her for half a mile; then the other two may have the satisfaction of doing something just as handsome for the next half mile—and so on. Great, eh?"

And it was in just that fashion that the party started off without delay in the direction of the château. Two of the cowed but eager islanders were carrying her ladyship between them, Deppingham striding close behind in a position to catch her should she again lose consciousness. Her tense fingers clung to the straining shoulders of the carriers, and, although she swayed dizzily from time to time, she maintained her trying position with extreme courage and cool-headedness. Now and then she breathed aloud the name of her husband, as if to assure herself that he was near at hand. She kept her eyes closed tightly, apparently uniting every vestige of force in the effort to hold herself together through the last stages of the frightful ordeal which had fallen to her that night.

With Selim in the lead, the little procession moved swiftly but cautiously through the black jungle, bent on reaching the gate if possible before the night lifted. Chase and Bobby Browne brought up the rear with the two reserve carriers in hand. Browne, weak and suffering from torture and exposure, struggled bravely along, determined not to retard their progress by a single movement of indecision. He had talked volubly for the first few minutes after their rescue, but now was silent and intent upon thoughts of his own. His head and face were bruised and cut; his body was stiff and sore from the effects of his valiant battle in the cavern and the subsequent hardships of the march.

In his heart Bobby Browne was now raging against the fate that had placed him in this humiliating, almost contemptible position. He, and he alone, was responsible for the sufferings that Lady Agnes had endured: it was as gall and wormwood to him that other men had been ordained to save her from the misery that he had created. He could almost have welcomed death for himself and her rather than to have been saved by George Deppingham. As he staggered along, propelled by the resistless force which he knew to be a desire to live in spite of it all, he was wondering how he could ever hold up his head again in the presence of those who damned him, even as they had prayed for him.