“Well, sir, there’ll be your uncle and William, who won’t have her get hurt if they can help it. And as I said, I wouldn’t bring a woman into this if there was any other way of fixing things, but your wife has grit, and she’ll take the risk.”
“Oh, Usk, please, please!” entreated Helene, squeezing his arm very hard. “You know it was my fault he wasn’t saved before. If I could really help to save him this time!”
Usk yielded, with a sufficiently bad grace, and they waited impatiently until Mr Hicks thought the mate’s party would be on its way back from Paranati, and then started for the frontier. The Gendarmerie officer at the Pannonian post came out and wished them luck as they passed, and they crossed the frontier-line and began to climb the street of the village, which lay some few hundred yards beyond it. Several of Helene’s old acquaintances came out to greet her, and while she talked to them through the imperfect medium of the customs-officer as interpreter, Mr Hicks and Usk went into the post-office for a moment. When they emerged, Usk looked noticeably stouter, a fact attributable to the length of thin, tough rope, knotted at intervals, which was wound round his body under his coat. This rope Mr Hicks had obtained in the morning through the postmaster, and ensuring his secrecy by a judicious gift and the promise of another, had employed him to make the knots. It would have been wholly inadequate had the asylum been a modern building, with smooth, well-finished walls, but the masonry had been rough when it was first laid, and was now so weather-beaten that a young and active man might almost have descended it without the aid of a rope at all.
Mr Hicks remained in the village to meet Mr Bradwell, and William, leaving his horse, took the driver’s seat in the buggy. Usk walked up the hill by the side of the carriage, and loitered about the gateway, while Helene, with much outward dignity and inward shrinking, paid her call upon the doctor. It was almost more than her husband could endure to let her enter the place by herself. What if she should be kidnapped too! But she looked round and smiled at him bravely when she went in at the gate, and after he had fidgeted about for the prescribed three or four minutes, he began to take an interest in the masonry, and to cross-question the porter. The man knew nothing of the history of the place, but he intimated that the noble gentleman was quite at liberty to walk round the outside, as far as the cliff afforded a foothold, and see what the rest of the walls were like. Usk waited only until he was out of sight of the gateway to unwind himself from the rope, and fasten the end of it round a suitable stone. Then he went on, along a very narrow ledge, until it ended suddenly, and he caught sight of Cyril looking over the wall some ten feet farther on. At first his heart stood still as he realised that he could not get under the wall at the right spot, but in a moment he saw that this did not really signify. The ledge was so narrow that it would have been next to impossible to throw the stone up perpendicularly with any hope of its lodging on the wall, but from the spot where he stood he could throw it diagonally with some chance of success. Cyril held up a finger as a warning to him not to begin yet, and he gathered the rope in his left hand and waited. Then the sound of a sudden tumult, shouts, yells, expostulations, and blows, mounted to them from the foot of the hill. Cyril nodded, and Usk threw the stone. After two or three attempts which fell short, Cyril caught it, and began to draw up the rope.
In the meantime, William and the gatekeeper were startled by the appearance of Jakob, who dashed up hatless and dishevelled to entreat that Dr Gregorescu would come down the hill at once. The lunatic from the Bluebird had suddenly become violent, and refused to mount the hill. He was fighting with such strength that Mr Hicks and Mr Bradwell feared they could not restrain him much longer. It would take at least six men to carry him up the hill, they thought. The doctor came out promptly, making final arrangements hastily with Helene as he handed her into the buggy, then hurried down the hill with three or four of his Dardanian servants, while William started the horses on the steep descent with cautious deliberation. At the turn in the track they paused, William almost as much excited as his mistress, until the tones of Usk’s voice as he asked the porter whether his wife had started without waiting for him reached their ears. Almost immediately there was the sound of hasty footsteps, and Cyril ran down the road. William had handed the reins to Helene, and was out of the carriage immediately, lifting the apron on the farther side, and in a moment Cyril was crouching in the vacant space and hidden under the apron.
“William, put up the hood, please,” said Helene, in a quick hard voice, and the servant, alarmed by her tone, turned to see Dr Gregorescu hurrying breathlessly round the turn in front of them. He might have no suspicion at present, but he could not but be surprised to see the carriage stopping and William standing in the road. Helene’s presence of mind saved the situation, and William obeyed at once.
“Surely you must find this place very windy?” said Helene, as the doctor passed them. “I feel quite cold. Will you kindly tell my husband that I have driven on, if you meet him? But don’t let me keep you. William, you had better lead the horses down the hill.”
“A thousand pardons!” ejaculated Dr Gregorescu. “I cannot stay, madame, for the poor fellow from the ship has escaped. We must organise a search at once. Pray excuse me.”
A gracious bow from Helene, and she drove on, her face so white and her hands so powerless that William, at the horses’ heads, feared the reins would be torn from her grasp. At the next turning he stopped.
“Excuse me, my lady, but if his lordship would change hats and coats with me, he might sit up aside of you and drive, and no one the wiser, without they looked close under the ’ood, if you’ll forgive me offerin’ advice.”