Kit slid the dirk home. He was surprised to find how smoothly the steel ran in. It was not hard, then, to kill a man, and it was strangely pleasing.

The man shivered and relaxed.

_"Is that old Toadie you've got there?"_ called the Gentleman, crawling leisurely along.

"It was."

_"What you doing to him?"_

"Killing him."

_"Ah, well,"_ said the Gentleman, _"I never cared much for old.

Toadie. We weren't simpatico. If you care to wait a minute I'll--"_

"Can't," gasped Kit. "No time. Now, boy, hurry!"

Blob crawled out from beneath the dead man.

"Anudder pennorth for Blo-ub!" he gurgled, and added jealously, one hand on the corpse, "He's moine. Oi killed un first."

"Never mind about that! This way."

There was one chance and one only. The door blocked one end; the Gentleman the other; the only exit was the man-hole. They must risk it.

"Here, Blob!--up here!--quick now!--give us a leg!"

Blob gave him a heave. Up he went into the light, like a cork from a bottle. Staying himself on his elbows, he hung, half in the hole, half out of it, the light dazzling him.

A roar of laughter smote him in the heart.

Blinking, he looked about him.

Above waved the sycamores, breeze-stirred and dark, and walling him round, the Gap Gang.

Kit's first thought was to drop.

Two soft arms seized him from behind; a sickening breath was on his cheek; a smooth face pressed his; and a fawning treble was saying in his ear with appalling tenderness,

"Let ole George elp you, Lovey."

CHAPTER LIV

THE PARSON'S AGONY

I

The Parson stamped up and down the loft, gnawing his thumb.

Those long shots from the rear had ceased half an hour ago. A tall Grenadier drooped across the wall. How should he have known there was one in the cottage could reach out a fatal finger and tap him on the forehead at two hundred yards?

The Parson's jolly face was haggard.

Now and then he peered out of the seaward window, listening. On the knoll all was still. He could see nothing, could hear nothing. Blue Knickers had withdrawn; he could mark no prowling figures. Only among the tree-trunks a pale wisp of smoke meandered upwards, telling of a camp-fire behind.

About him was the drowsy buzz-z-z of an August noon. A cabbage b.u.t.terfly sailed by. The creature's insufferable airs annoyed him. The fate of Nelson, the life of a n.o.ble lad, these were nothing to it, curse it for its callousness!

The minutes pa.s.sed. The silence was so oppressive that he could hear it. It stifled him.

What an age the boy was! Good heavens!--he could have got to the mouth of the drain and back half-a-hundred times by now! What was the delay?--Things must have gone awry! Yet how could they?--It was always the way! There was no trusting any living soul but yourself! Why the devil couldn't he be in two places at once?--It was _d.a.m.nable!_

He pulled himself together with a jerk.

Here he was becoming unjust, irritable, womanish; everything he had always most despised in a man of action.

A shout came to him from seaward.

A shot followed.

The perspiration started to his forehead. He ran to the ladder-head.

In the dimness below he could see the old foretop-man sitting alert beside the black square of the open trap.

Piper was stooping forward, one great hand curved at his ear, listening intently.

"Piper!"

"Sir."

"All well below there?"

"Well, sir, I'm not justly sure. A minute back I seemed to feel like a gush o wind--"

"Then hail the boy, man!"

"Boy Hoad! below there!" in stentorian tones.

The only answer was a rush of air through the open trap, and the m.u.f.fled slam of a door, house-shaking.

II

The Parson ran down into the cellar.