Max Carrados, Ernest Bramah [children's books read aloud .TXT] 📗

“Your recommendation carries weight. Suppose, for the sake of curiosity, that I decline?”

“You will still go there but your treatment will be commensurate with your behaviour. The car to take you is at this moment waiting in a convenient spot on the other side of the park. We shall go down the garden at the back, cross the park, and put you into the car—anyway.”

“And if I resist?”

The man whose pleasantry it had been to call himself Eustace Montmorency shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t be a fool,” he said tolerantly. “You know who you are dealing with and the kind of risks we run. If you call out or endanger us at a critical point we shall not hesitate to silence you effectively.”

The blind man knew that it was no idle threat. In spite of the cloak of humour and fantasy thrown over the proceedings, he was in the power of coolly desperate men. The window was curtained and shuttered against sight and sound, the door behind him locked. Possibly at that moment a revolver threatened him; certainly weapons lay within reach of both his keepers.

“Tell me what to write,” he asked, with capitulation in his voice.

Dompierre twirled his mustachios in relieved approval. Madame laughed from her place on the couch and picked up a book, watching Montmorency over the cover of its pages. As for that gentleman, he masked his satisfaction by the practical business of placing on the table before Carrados the accessories of the letter.

“Put into your own words the message that I outlined just now.”

“Perhaps to make it altogether natural I had better write on a page of the notebook that I always use,” suggested Carrados.

“Do you wish to make it natural?” demanded Montmorency, with latent suspicion.

“If the miscarriage of your plan is to result in my head being knocked—yes, I do,” was the reply.

“Good!” chuckled Dompierre, and sought to avoid Mr Montmorency’s cold glance by turning on the electric table-lamp for the blind man’s benefit. Madame Dompierre laughed shrilly.

“Thank you, Monsieur,” said Carrados, “you have done quite right. What is light to you is warmth to me—heat, energy, inspiration. Now to business.”

He took out the pocket-book he had spoken of and leisurely proceeded to flatten it down upon the table before him. As his tranquil, pleasant eyes ranged the room meanwhile it was hard to believe that the shutters of an impenetrable darkness lay between them and the world. They rested for a moment on the two accomplices who stood beyond the table, picked out Madame Dompierre lolling on the sofa on his right, and measured the proportions of the long, narrow room. They seemed to note the positions of the window at the one end and the door almost at the other, and even to take into account the single pendent electric light which up till then had been the sole illuminant.

“You prefer pencil?” asked Montmorency.

“I generally use it for casual purposes. But not,” he added, touching the point critically, “like this.”

Alert for any sign of retaliation, they watched him take an insignificant penknife from his pocket and begin to trim the pencil. Was there in his mind any mad impulse to force conclusions with that puny weapon? Dompierre worked his face into a fiercer expression and touched reassuringly the handle of his knife. Montmorency looked on for a moment, then, whistling softly to himself, turned his back on the table and strolled towards the window, avoiding Madame Nina’s pursuant eye.

Then, with overwhelming suddenness, it came, and in its form altogether unexpected.

Carrados had been putting the last strokes to the pencil, whittling it down upon the table. There had been no hasty movement, no violent act to give them warning; only the little blade had pushed itself nearer and nearer to the electric light cord lying there ... and suddenly and instantly the room was plunged into absolute darkness.

“To the door, Dom!” shouted Montmorency in a flash. “I am at the window. Don’t let him pass and we are all right.”

“I am here,” responded Dompierre from the door.

“He will not attempt to pass,” came the quiet voice of Carrados from across the room. “You are now all exactly where I want you. You are both covered. If either moves an inch, I fire—and remember that I shoot by sound, not sight.”

“But—but what does it mean?” stammered Montmorency, above the despairing wail of Madame Dompierre.

“It means that we are now on equal terms—three blind men in a dark room. The numerical advantage that you possess is counterbalanced by the fact that you are out of your element—I am in mine.”

“Dom,” whispered Montmorency across the dark space, “strike a match. I have none.”

“I would not, Dompierre, if I were you,” advised Carrados, with a short laugh. “It might be dangerous.” At once his voice seemed to leap into a passion. “Drop that matchbox,” he cried. “You are standing on the brink of your grave, you fool! Drop it, I say; let me hear it fall.”

A breath of thought—almost too short to call a pause—then a little thud of surrender sounded from the carpet by the door. The two conspirators seemed to hold their breath.

“That is right.” The placid voice once more resumed its sway. “Why cannot things be agreeable? I hate to have to shout, but you seem far from grasping the situation yet. Remember that I do not take the slightest risk. Also please remember, Mr Montmorency, that the action even of a hair-trigger automatic scrapes slightly as it comes up. I remind you of that for your own good, because if you are so ill-advised as to think of trying to pot me in the dark, that noise gives me a fifth of a second start of you. Do you by any chance know Zinghi’s in Mercer Street?”

“The shooting gallery?” asked Mr Montmorency a little sulkily.

“The same. If you happen to come through this alive and are interested you might ask Zinghi to show you a target of mine that he keeps. Seven shots at twenty yards, the target indicated by four watches, none of them so loud as the one you are wearing. He keeps it as a curiosity.”

“I wear no watch,” muttered Dompierre, expressing his thought aloud.

“No, Monsieur Dompierre, but you wear a heart, and that not on your sleeve,” said Carrados. “Just now it is quite as loud as Mr Montmorency’s watch. It is more central too—I shall not have to allow any margin. That is right; breathe naturally”—for the unhappy Dompierre had given a gasp of apprehension. “It does not make any difference to me, and after a time holding one’s breath becomes really painful.”

“Monsieur,” declared Dompierre earnestly, “there was no intention of submitting you to injury, I swear. This Englishman did but speak within his hat. At the most extreme you would have been but bound and gagged. Take care: killing is a dangerous game.”

“For you—not for me,” was the bland rejoinder. “If you kill me you will be hanged for it. If I kill you I shall be honourably acquitted. You can imagine the scene—the sympathetic court—the recital of your villainies—the story of my indignities. Then with stumbling feet and groping hands the helpless blind man is led forward to give evidence. Sensation! No, no, it isn’t really fair but I can kill you both with absolute certainty and Providence will be saddled with all the responsibility. Please don’t fidget with your feet, Monsieur Dompierre. I know that you aren’t moving but one is liable to make mistakes.”

“Before I die,” said Montmorency—and for some reason laughed unconvincingly in the dark—“before I die, Mr Carrados, I should really like to know what has happened to the light. That, surely, isn’t Providence?”

“Would it be ungenerous to suggest that you are trying to gain time? You ought to know what has happened. But as it may satisfy you that I have nothing to fear from delay, I don’t mind telling you. In my hand was a sharp knife—contemptible, you were satisfied, as a weapon; beneath my nose the ‘flex’ of the electric lamp. It was only necessary for me to draw the one across the other and the system was short-circuited. Every lamp on that fuse is cut off and in the distributing-box in the hall you will find a burned-out wire. You, perhaps—but Monsieur Dompierre’s experience in plating ought to have put him up to simple electricity.”

“How did you know that there is a distributing-box in the hall?” asked Dompierre, with dull resentment.

“My dear Dompierre, why beat the air with futile questions?” replied Max Carrados. “What does it matter? Have it in the cellar if you like.”

“True,” interposed Montmorency. “The only thing that need concern us now——”

“But it is in the hall—nine feet high,” muttered Dompierre in bitterness. “Yet he, this blind man——”

“The only thing that need concern us,” repeated the Englishman, severely ignoring the interruption, “is what you intend doing in the end, Mr Carrados?”

“The end is a little difficult to foresee,” was the admission. “So far, I am all for maintaining the status quo. Will the first grey light of morning find us still in this impasse? No, for between us we have condemned the room to eternal darkness. Probably about daybreak Dompierre will drop off to sleep and roll against the door. I, unfortunately mistaking his intention, will send a bullet through——Pardon, Madame, I should have remembered—but pray don’t move.”

“I protest, Monsieur——”

“Don’t protest; just sit still. Very likely it will be Mr Montmorency who will fall off to sleep the first after all.”

“Then we will anticipate that difficulty,” said the one in question, speaking with renewed decision. “We will play the last hand with our cards upon the table if you like. Nina, Mr Carrados will not injure you whatever happens—be sure of that. When the moment comes you will rise——”

“One word,” put in Carrados with determination. “My position is precarious and I take no risks. As you say, I cannot injure Madame Dompierre, and you two men are therefore my hostages for her good behaviour. If she rises from the couch you, Dompierre, fall. If she advances another step Mr Montmorency follows you.”

“Do nothing rash, carissima,” urged her husband, with passionate solicitude. “You might get hit in place of me. We will yet find a better way.”

“You dare not, Mr Carrados!” flung out Montmorency, for the first time beginning to show signs of wear in this duel of the temper. “He dare not, Dompierre. In cold blood and unprovoked! No jury would acquit you!”

“Another who fails to do you justice, Madame Nina,” said the blind man, with ironic gallantry. “The action might be a little high-handed, one admits, but when you, appropriately clothed and in your right complexion, stepped into the witness-box and I said: ‘Gentlemen of the jury, what is my crime? That I made Madame Dompierre a widow!’ can you doubt their gratitude and my acquittal? Truly my countrymen are not all bats or monks, Madame.” Dompierre was breathing with perfect freedom now, while from the couch came the sounds of stifled emotion, but whether the lady was involved in a paroxysm of sobs or of laughter it might be difficult to swear.

It was perhaps an hour after the flourish of the introduction with which Madame Dompierre had closed the door of the trap upon the blind man’s entrance.

The minutes had passed but the situation remained unchanged, though the ingenuity of certainly two of the occupants of the room had been tormented into shreds to discover a means of turning it to their advantage. So far the terrible omniscience of the blind man in the dark and the respect for his markmanship with which his coolness had inspired them, dominated the group. But one strong card yet remained to be played, and at last the moment came upon which the conspirators had pinned their despairing hopes.

There was the sound of movement in the hall outside, not the first about the house, but towards the new complication Carrados had been strangely unobservant. True, Montmorency had talked rather loudly, to carry over the dangerous moments. But now there came an unmistakable step and to the accomplices it could only mean one thing. Montmorency was ready on the instant.

“Down, Dom!” he cried, “throw yourself down! Break in, Guido. Break in the door. We are held up!”

There was an immediate response. The door, under the pressure of a human battering-ram, burst open with a crash. On the threshold the intruders—four or five in number—stopped starkly for a moment, held in astonishment by the extraordinary scene that the light from the hall, and of their own bull’s-eyes, revealed.

Flat on their faces, to present the least possible surface to Carrados’s aim, Dompierre and Montmorency lay extended beside the window and behind the door. On the couch, with her head buried beneath the cushions, Madame Dompierre sought to shut out the sight and sound of violence. Carrados—Carrados had not moved, but with arms resting on the table and fingers placidly locked together he smiled benignly on the new arrivals. His attitude, compared with the extravagance of those around him, gave the impression of a complacent modern deity presiding over