That lesson was followed by another operation, that of a much more effective tying up, with the horse-rug and halter that William had employed for the purpose. It was impossible to doubt that William had been the doctor’s assailant and that the girl had stumbled across him in her flight. [[63]]
“I’m not hurting you, am I, doctor? I should be frightfully sorry if I was,” said Ralph. “At any rate I’ll find you a more comfortable place than among these brambles and nettles,” he added, picking his prisoner up and carrying him deeper among the bushes. “Look, here’s a place you won’t find too uncomfortable to spend the night in. The moss is thick and dry here. No, no: don’t thank me—not a word. Believe me that if I could have helped it——”
His intention, at the moment, was to run after the two fugitives and catch them at any cost. He was furious at having been so balked. He must have been a fool! What! He had her in his claws and instead of wringing her neck he had amused himself by kissing her! How can one keep one’s mind clear under such conditions?
But it seemed inevitable that that night his intentions should always result in actions contrary to them. As soon as he had quitted the doctor, without abandoning his plan, he returned towards the station as hard as he could run with the new plan of getting astride the horse of one of the policemen and so making sure of catching the car.
As he hurried from his compartment to the station he had observed the three horses of the policemen in a shed with one of the porters looking after them. He made his way to that shed, to see, by the light of a lantern which lit it, that the porter was asleep. Instead [[64]]of slipping the bridle of one of the horses off the hook and leading it away, he set about cutting quietly and with every conceivable precaution the girths of the three horses and the straps of their bridles. So when the police or Marescal did discover the disappearance of the girl with green eyes it would be impossible to pursue her.
“I really don’t know what I’m doing,” Ralph said to himself as he regained the compartment in which Marescal had left him. “I’ve a perfect horror of this little devil; nothing would please me better than to hand her over to the police and keep my oath of vengeance. But all the efforts I do make help her to get away. Why?”
He knew quite well the answer to this question. If he had been interested in the girl because she had eyes the color of jade, how should he not be protecting her now that he had held her clasped to him, half-fainting and with his lips on hers? Does one hand a girl whose lips one has kissed over to the police? Murderess she might be; but she had quivered to his lips; and he knew well that henceforth nothing in the world would prevent him from defending her against every one and everything. For him that burning kiss in the darkness was the central point of the drama and swept away all the resolutions which his instinct rather than his reason had brought him to make.
That was why he felt obliged to resume contact with [[65]]Marescal, in order to learn the result of his inquiries about her; and he was almost as eager to get into touch with him again about the business of the English girl and the wallet which she had begged him to carry away.
Two hours later Marescal staggered into the compartment, harassed and exhausted, and dropped on to the opposite seat of the compartment in the detached railway car, in which the slumbering Ralph quietly waited for him. Ralph started up from his sleep, pulled down the lampshade, and seeing the distressed face, the parting all ruffled, the drooping mustache of the Commissary, cried out: