Then, a half smothered cry arose, as the three waiting thugs leaped upon their prey. Simpson was taken off his guard! His muscles were all relaxed by drink. He fell prone as the heavy black jacks descended upon his head, muffled in the hood of his “dreadnaught.”
“Ah! V’la un affaire bien fini! Allons! Jettez-le!” growled the grim boatswain, dropping his loaded club, as all three spurned the prostrate body, and then, with a heavy lurch, it bounded off the sodden bank plunging downward, over the cliff.
For a moment, there was no sound! Then skirting the furze bushes of the headland, the three assassins dragged their stiffened limbs along in the darkness, hastening to where the stout Hirondelle rocked easily in the dead water of the one protected cove to the north of Rozel Point.
They were all safely stowed away in the forecastle before half an hour, and, with grunts of satisfaction, examined the largess of their mysterious employer, “C’est un gaillard—un vrai coq d’Anglais!” growled the boatswain, as his chums produced another bottle, and the three doffed their drenched clothing. Then cognac drowned their scruples against murder—for the price was in their pockets.
It was half past eleven o’clock when gaunt old Andrew Fraser led his half-fainting ward ashore from the Stella, at St. Heliers pier. But one covered carriage had remained on the storm-beaten pier, braving the rigors of this terrible night. “Never mind the luggage, man,” shouted the Professor to the driver. “Here’s ten pounds to drive us over to Rozel, to my home! And, I’ll bait yere horses, put ye up, and give ye a tip to open yere eyes.” The hardy islander whipped up his horses, and soon cautiously climbed the hill of St. Saviours, crawling along carefully over the wind-swept mows toward St. Martin’s Church. The exhausted maid was fast asleep. Nadine Johnstone herself lay in a semi-trance, while the fretful old scholar consulted his watch by the blinking carriage lights, and then wildly urged the driver on. It was long after midnight when they reached St. Martin’s Church, with three miles yet to go. A dreary and a dismal ride!
And all was silent, in the Banker’s Folly where the old hall clock loudly rang out twelve, rousing Mistress Janet Fairbarn from her first beauty sleep. She started in terror as an unfamiliar sound broke upon the haunting stillness of the night. The hollow sound of a smothered cough in the Master’s study, a man’s deep-toned cough, unmistakably masculine, aroused the spinster whose whole life had been haunted by phantom burglars.
For the first time since her coming to the Folly, her loneliness appalled her. “My God! There is the plate! The master away, and no one near.” Her nerves were thrilling with nature’s indefinable protest against the dangers of the creeping enemy of the night. A sudden ray of hope lit up her heart. “Had the Professor returned?” He had the keys. It would be his way. Yes, there was the sign of his presence. And, so, timorously moving on tip-toe, she crept down the hall in her white robes, and barefooted. Yes, he had returned, for she had left the study door open. It was closed now. There was a pencil of light shining through the keyhole, and, yet, silently she stood at the door, and listened. There was the sound of muffled blows within. A panic seized upon her. “Thieves, thieves—at last!”
Scarcely daring to breathe, she fled, ghostlike, up the stair, and in a wild paroxysm of fear dashed into the room at the angle of the hall, where “Prince Djiddin” lay extended upon his couch of Oriental shawls and cushions. He was restless, and still dreaming, open-eyed, of his absent love.
The young man leaped to his feet as the frantic woman, with affrighted gestures, besought his aid and protection, pointing down to the stairway. Hardwicke’s ready nerve failed him not.
Grasping a heavy revolver from under the pillow, a mechanical arrangement, a memory of his Indian life in the midst of untrusted subordinates, the officer seized in his left hand the Sikh tulwar, which was his own “property saber” of Thibetan royalty. Its naked, wedge-shaped blade was as keen as that of a razor.