Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks, Bracebridge Hemyng [the two towers ebook TXT] 📗

plays traitor to Pierre Lenoir a second time."

"Traitor is a wrong term," said Jack; "we are not sworn to share such confidences as yours. We shall leave you now, but——"

"Stop!"

They were moving towards the entrance when Lenoir sprang before them, and whipped out a brace of revolvers.

The position grew exciting and unpleasant.

"Stand out of the way, and let us pass," exclaimed Jack, impetuously.

"Don't come any nearer," said Lenoir, with quiet determination, "for I warn you that it would be dangerous. You can't move from this place until you have made terms with me."

"I for one will have nothing whatever to say to you," said Jack, haughtily. "I don't care to bargain with a coiner."

With his old foolhardy way he was stepping forward, in peril of his very life.

Lenoir was a desperate man, in a desperate strait.

His finger trembled upon the trigger.

"Stand back, on your life."

"You stand aside," cried Jack.

"Another step and I fire!" cried Lenoir.

"Bah!"

Jack pushed on.

Lenoir pulled the trigger.

Bang it went.

But the ball whistled harmlessly over Jack's head, and lodged in the slanting roof.

A friendly hand from behind the coiner had knocked up his arm in the very nick of time.

At the self-same instant some eight or ten men, fully armed, burst into the vault.

One of them, who was apparently in command, pointed to Lenoir, and said to the others—

"Arrest that man. He's the leader of them."

And before the coiner could offer any resistance, they knocked his weapons from his hands, and fell upon him.

But Lenoir was a powerful fellow—a desperate, determined man, and not so easily disposed of.

With wonderful energy, he tore himself from them, and, producing something from one of his pockets, he held it menacingly up.

"Advance a step," he exclaimed, "and I will blow you all to atoms, myself as well. Beware! I hold all our lives in my hand. Now who dares advance?"

CHAPTER XCIII.

LENOIR'S FLIGHT—MURRAY THE TRAITOR—HIS PUNISHMENT AND FLIGHT—A LONG RUN—THE AUBERGE—A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE.

There was a pause.

Pierre Lenoir looked like mischief.

His position was desperate, and they judged, and rightly judged, that he was a man not likely to stick at a trifle.

The men looked at their officer, and the latter, a man of intelligence and prudence, albeit no coward, reflected seriously.

Several terrible calamities, accidental and intentional, had of late opened the eyes of the public to the destructive properties of dynamite, and to that his thoughts flew.

He wavered.

The coiner saw his chance, and quick to act as to think, he made for the exit.

"Stand back!" he cried, fiercely, to the men who made a faint show of barring his passage. "I'll finish you all off at a stroke if you attempt to oppose me?"

They fell back alarmed.

Lenoir darted on through the inner vault, and so on until he gained the flight of steps.

Reaching the top, he darted through the cottage, and reaching the open, suddenly found himself in the midst of about a dozen men.

The first person upon whom his glance rested, was the doubly-dyed traitor who had betrayed him solely to serve his own ends, by entrapping Jack Harkaway—the Englishman, who must have been recognized by the reader, in spite of his assumed name, as Herbert Murray.

Instinctively Lenoir divined that his betrayer was the young Englishman.

No sooner did this conclusion force itself upon him than all thought of personal danger vanished from his mind, and he was possessed by one sole idea, one single desire. Revenge!

He lost sight of the peril in which he ran, but with a cry like the roar of a wounded lion he sprang upon the traitor.

A brawny, powerful fellow was Pierre Lenoir, and Herbert Murray was but a puny thing in his grasp.

"Hands off!" exclaimed Murray, in desperation.

Lenoir growled, but said nothing, as he shook him much as a terrier does a rat.

Before the police could interfere in the spy's behalf, Lenoir held him with one hand at arm's length, while with the other he prepared to deliver a fearful blow.

The energy of despair seized on the hapless traitor, and wrenching himself free from the coiner's grasp, he fled.

Pierre Lenoir stood staring about him a second.

Then he made after him.

Away went pursuer and pursued.

The terror-stricken Murray got over the ground like a hare, and although the coiner was fleet of foot, he was at first distanced in the race.

It became a desperate race between them.

Lenoir tore on.

He would have his betrayer now or perish.

But before he had got more than two hundred yards the pace began to tell upon him.

He felt that he would have to give in.

"I must go easier, or I shall fail altogether."

So reasoning, he slackened his pace, and dropped into that slinging trot that runners in France know as the pas gymnastique.

If your strength and wind are of average quality, you can keep up for a prodigious time at that.

Murray flew on, anxious to get away from his furious pursuer.

He increased his lead.

But presently the pace told upon him likewise.

He collected his thoughts and his prudence as he went, and rested.

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Lenoir come bounding along, a considerable distance in the rear.

"Savage beast!" thought Murray. "He means mischief."

Murray meant tiring him out.

This, however, was not so easily done.

The Englishman was a capital runner, and had been one of the crack men of his school-club.

But his forte was pace.

The Frenchman, on the contrary, was a stayer.

It looked bad for Murray.

On they went, and when a good mile had been covered, Murray, on glancing back, felt convinced that it was only a question of time.

He must tire out the Frenchman in the end, he thought.

He believed that an Englishman must always be more than a match for a Frenchman at any kind of athletics.

He reckoned without his host, for while he (Murray) was getting blown, Lenoir swung on at pas gymnastique, having got his second wind, and being, to all appearance, capable of keeping on for any length of time.

"I shall have to give it up," gasped Murray, when, at the end of the second mile, he looked over his shoulder again.

An unpleasant fact revealed itself.

While he was faltering, the Frenchman was rather improving his pace.

Yes.

The distance between them was lessening.

And now he could hear Lenoir's menaces quite plainly as the coiner gained upon him.

"I shall have you directly, and I shall beat your skull in!" the Frenchman said.

Murray's craven heart leapt to his mouth.

Already he felt as if his cranium was cracked by the brutal fist of the savage coiner.

Fear lent him wings.

He put on a spurt.

"Oh, if I had but a pistol," thought Murray; "what a fool I was to come unarmed on such a job as this."

He partially flagged again.

The distance between them was still decreasing.

This he felt was the beginning of the end, but just as he was thinking that there was nothing for it but to turn and make the best fight for it he could, he sighted a roadside inn—a rural auberge.

And for this he flew with renewed energy.

Dashing into the house, he pushed to the door and startled the aubergiste by gasping out in the best French he could command—

"Un assassin me poursuit. Cachez-moi, ou donnez-moi de quoi me défendre!"[3]

[3] "I am pursued by an assassin. Hide me, or give me something to defend myself with."

The landlord took Murray—and not unnaturally—for a madman.

He did not like the society of madmen.

To give a weapon to a furious maniac was out of all question.

And the landlord had nothing handy of a more deadly nature than a knife and fork.

Moreover, he would not have cared to place a dangerous weapon in a madman's hands.

So he met the case by humouring the fugitive with a proposal to go up stairs.

Murray wanted no second invitation.

Up he flew, and locked himself in one of the upper rooms just as Lenoir hammered at the door below.

"Où est-il?"[4] demanded the coiner, fiercely.

[4] "Where is he?"

"Qui?"[5]

[5] "Who?"

"Ne cherchez pas à me tricher," thundered Lenoir. "Il m'appartient. Où est-il, je vous le demande?"[6]

[6] "Seek not to deceive me," thundered Lenoir. "He belongs to me. Where is he, I ask you again?"

The coiner's manner made the aubergiste uneasy, and thoughtful for his own safety.

So he pointed up stairs.

Up went Lenoir, and finding a room door locked, he flung his whole weight against the door and sent it in.

This was the room which the fugitive had entered.

But where was Murray?

Gone!

Vanished!

But where?

CHAPTER XCIV.

THE COINER AND THE SPY—A REGULAR DUST-UP, AND WHAT CAME OF IT—THE CHASE—AN ODD ESCAPE—HUNTING IN THE HAY—A ROUGH CUSTOMER DONE FOR.

When Lenoir had puzzled himself for some time over the mysterious disappearance of Herbert Murray, he made a discovery.

The window was open, a circumstance which he had until then, in the most unaccountable manner imaginable, overlooked.

But when he got to the window and looked out, there were no signs of the object of his search.

He had followed so sharply that Murray could not have had time to get off.

He looked up and down the road eagerly.

The only thing in sight was a wagon-load of hay drawn by a team of horses, at whose head plodded a waggoner in a blue cotton blouse, whip in hand.

"Hé, la-bas!" shouted the coiner from the window.

The waggoner turned and looked eagerly up.

"Qu'avez-vous?" demanded the waggoner. "What's the matter?"

"Have you seen anyone jump out of window?" shouted Lenoir.

The waggoner responded tartly, for he fancied that his questioner was trying to chaff him.

"I've seen no one mad enough for that; in fact I've seen no one madder than you since I've been in this part of the country."

"Espèce de voyou!" cried the irritable Lenoir, "je te ficherais une danse si j'avais le temps pour t'apprendrs ce que c'est que la politesse. I'd dust your jacket for you if I had the time to teach you politeness."

"You're not likely to have time enough for that, as long as you live, espéce de pignouf."

"Idiot!"

"Imbécile!"

This interchange of compliments appeared to relieve the belligerent parties considerably.

Lenoir was obliged to give it up for a bad job.

Suddenly a singular idea shot into his head.

The hay cart!

What if Herbert Murray had got into it unseen and was there now, without his presence being suspected by the waggoner?

Lenoir reflected for a moment.

Then he darted down the stairs in pursuit of the waggon.

"Hullo, there, driver!" he shouted.

The waggoner looked over his shoulder and recognised Lenoir.

So he whipped up.

The best pace that even a stout team of horses could put on, with a big load of hay behind them was not to say racehorse speed, so the coiner soon caught them up.

The waggoner awaited his approach, grasping his whip with a nervous grip that foreboded mischief.

On came Lenoir.

"I say, my friend," he called out, "I think you have a man concealed in the cart!"

"Va-t-en!—get out!" retorted the waggoner.

"I am serious. Will you oblige me by pulling up and looking?"

"Not exactly."

Lenoir had a very limited stock of patience, and he soon came to the end of it.

He ran to the leading horse and pulled it up sharply.

The waggoner swore and lashed up.

But Lenoir, turning his attention next to the shaft horse, pulled the waggon up to a standstill.

And the waggoner, furious at this, lashed Lenoir.

The whip caught him round the head and shoulders, curling about so that the man could not get it free.

Lenoir caught at the thong, and with a sudden jerk, brought the waggoner down from his seat.

Now began as pretty a little skirmish as you could wish to see.

The waggoner fell an easy prey to the furious coiner at first.

He was half-dazed with being jerked down to the ground.

But he soon recovered himself.

Then he set to punching at Lenoir with all his strength.

Then they grappled fiercely with each other.

A desperate struggle for supremacy ensued.

At length Lenoir's superior strength and science prevailed, tough as the waggoner was.

The latter lay under the coiner, whose knee pressed cruelly upon his chest.

"Now ask my pardon," said Lenoir.

"Never!" roared the defeated waggoner, stoutly.

"I shall kill you if you don't,"