I pressed my fists against his chest, with a downward thrust now and then for emphasis. “Your fine Blenkinson’s a liar, do you hear? His evidence, as you call it, isn’t worth a pin. And if he whispers a word of his slander, and it comes to my ears, I’ll thrash him within an inch of his life, do you hear? And the same applies to you—you contemptible—”
I stood up quickly. Men were crowding out of the plantation near Whimble-foot and clamouring toward the House. Had the quarry turned? I must be present now at any cost.
This man was cowed sufficiently. He still lay supine; I prodded him with my foot. “Remember!” I warned him darkly, and commenced running toward the mansion, stooping to seize the knife where it glittered on the turf.
Once only I paused for a moment and looked back. Was there something—someone—moving stealthily toward the man, who was sitting up now and feeling himself for bruises? A moment later the figure of a woman emerged from the shadows, crossed quickly to Morgan, and seemed to lift him bodily from the ground. I did not immediately grasp that she had lugged him up by the ear. Now they were arguing, gesticulating, and though I had heard it seldom, I knew the prim voice of Miss Ardelia Lacy.
Smiling to myself, I pressed on.
The half-dozen men who reached the corner of the House more or less in a pack were in the nick of time to see the wretched Maryvale, driven from cover to cover like a hunted beast, drag his body, which had never before seemed ponderous, to the base of one of the gate-house towers. He carried what seemed a club with an enormous broadened head.
He turned there at bay while we closed in upon him, and the awful wreck of his face with its glaring eyes and bared teeth in the moonlight will haunt me to my death. He was a beast. While we stood speechless, he began to climb.
One hand gripped the queer-looking club, but grasping the ivy with one hand alone, he raised himself steadily. It was agony to watch this man-turned-ape mounting where none of us dared to follow. In the thick wavering growth that clung to the tower sometimes he swung pendulum-wise, sometimes was almost buried in the foliage, but his ascent was sure as if he climbed the stairs within. We cried out to him appeals and abuse; I do not think he heard us. Someone ran to the stables, shouting for a ladder.
Maryvale reached the angle where the covered bridge meets the wall of the tower. Here the ivy thins, and the man made a wide stop to the roof of the bridge. Then, surely, I felt the supreme horror, when Maryvale, using the base of a window-slit for foot-rest, lifted himself over the edge of the turret-roof and carefully but expeditiously crawled up the slope of stone toward the pointed top.
We held on shouting, some of us, in sheer desperation. Pendleton made a frenzied effort to climb the ivy, failed. Maryvale crept on, his whole body flat against the roof, save for the arm which held the club-like mass. He reached the pinnacle and lifted himself to a precarious standing posture, one foot firm on the very apex, the side of the other foot pressed against the slope.