The procession was descending the stair, when there was heard a vigorous knocking on the front door. As it opened, the excited “Moonshee” leaped into the hallway. “What’s up?” he cried, forgetting his assumed character. “I came over, for I had a telegram that the Stella was in with old Fraser and Nadine. The General sent a special messenger to me.”
“Run up and get my saber and your own pistol and join me! There’s foul play here! The house is all right! Come on, for God’s sake!” shouted Harry Hardwicke. He led his captive by the trebled bell cord passed with double hitches around the burglar’s pinioned arms, and the Moonshee now leaped back—ready to take a man’s part—for he easily divined the treachery.
Out into the wild night they hurried, leaving behind them the barricaded “Banker’s Folly,” now gleaming with lights. “Where in hell is Simpson?” demanded Eric Murray, as he struggled along clutching the gleaming tulwar tightly in his hand.
“Drunk at Rozel Pier, I suppose!” bitterly answered Hardwicke. “Come here and just prick this fellow up into a trot!”
As they hastened on, Prince Djiddin succeeded at last in convincing the two gardeners that he was not a ghost, but a reincarnated Englishman who had been larking disguised as a Hindu Prince. “What’s the devilish game, anyway?” puffed out Captain Murray, still in the dark, as they struggled on in the darkness along the road.
“Hawke has tried to kidnap Nadine!” hastily cried Hardwicke.
“My God! what’s that?” They soon came up to an overturned carriage. The traces had been cut, and the horses and driver were not visible. The gardener’s lantern showed to them only the insensible form of the maid, Mattie Jones, who lay moaning in a sheer exhaustion of terror. “How far is it to the tower?” almost yelled Hardwicke, his heart frozen with a new terror. “They have murdered her, my poor darling!”
“The tower is now about three hundred yards away!” said the gardener, as Hardwicke sternly dragged his reluctant prisoner along.
“On, on!” he cried. “We may even now be too late!” They were only a hundred yards from the tower, when the sound of rapid pistol shots was heard, wafted down the wind, and a confused sound of cries on the cliff was wafted to them, as a dozen twinkling lantern lights appeared on the brow of the bluff.
“It’s a rescue party!” joyously cried Murray. “Hurry! hurry on to the tower!”