Hell's Hatches

by Lewis R. Freeman

A spasm of passion twisted the girl's face to the seeming of an ape's as she caught the drift of my words, and her reply was almost a scream. "Not ke-el Bel-la? 'Slan' do worse than ke-el. He—"

The chorus of the leashed pack that checked her words came from so close at hand that it made itself heard above the now unbroken roar of the storm. There was the clang of shod hoofs on a metalled road, too, and I thought I could distinguish the shouts of men. The hunt was closing in for the kill.

"I think I go now, Tuan. I like the better to fight outside." Ranga's voice was as quiet and controlled as when he had told me the news from the hospital a few minutes before; but there was the lust of battle in his flashing eyes, eagerness for action in the quick heave of his chest.

There was no time to debate and decide the question as to who had committed the outrage upon Hartley Allen, or of what justification there might have been for it. One thing only was clear to me, and that was that I was not going to throw either Rona or Ranga to the dogs—no, nor to the law either—if there was any way of avoiding it. My mind—as was always the case when I had fasted long and drunk absinthe sparingly—worked with lightning swiftness.

"Don't fight unless you have to," I said, stepping closer to Ranga as the wind and thunder threatened to drown my voice. "Follow down the stream over the falls. Jump won't hurt you—plenty of water at the bottom. That'll throw off the dogs. Then follow the path by the flume down to the sea. The rain'll kill your trail for the dogs. It ought to be starting any minute now. Wait for me on the pier by the old sugar mill. I'll come for you in a boat as soon as I can."

Baring his teeth in a quick grin of comprehension, the big fellow wheeled and started for the front door. I caught his arm and checked him just in time. "This way!" I shouted. "Through my bedroom window. Beat it! Lekas!"

Again that intelligent tooth-flash of understanding. Ranga's foreshortened bulk was making a blurred blot against the blue-green lightning flash playing across the rear bedroom window as I turned to answer a heavy banging at the front door. Everything considered, I have always felt that I got away fairly well with the situation with which I now found myself confronted. It was Harpool, the Chief of Police, who staggered into the room, bracing back against the push of the still rising wind. The flutter of the lightning revealed two or three horses in the driveway, and three or four men following a bunch of howling dogs around the corner of the house.

I was on the point of opening up at the Chief with a facetious sally about the way he was sending his hounds around to frighten my lady visitors, when I chanced to glance to the corner where Rona had been, and lo—I had no lady visitor! The girl was gone, but whether under the couch or out of one of the windows I could not guess. So I only gaped rather stupidly and said nothing, leaving the Chief to open the attack. I was glad the face on the canvas was covered, and only wished there had been time to throw something over the crumpled remnants of the big black-and-tan.

"I am quite satisfied it isn't you we want, Mr. Whitney," Harpool began, with a shade of embarrassment, I thought. "But the fact remains that Rawdon's hounds have followed a live scent straight to this house, and I have every reason to believe they are on the trail of the man who tied up Hartley Allen. Perhaps you can explain—"

"I think I can," I cut in, anxious to gain time for the fugitive, but realizing that no end would be served by trying to conceal his identity. "You're right that it was a hot scent. Just a few degrees too hot for your canine deputy there in the corner. It's the end of his trail, I'm afraid."