'You said you thought! Well, never mind; I call him sane—practically; only under a delusion. But we will test him. You charge me with being a certain Australian bushranger, Mr. Edmonstone. Of course you have some evidence?'
An awkward sensation came over Dick: a consciousness that he had committed a mistake, and a mistake that was giving the enemy a momentary advantage. He choked with rage and indignation: but for the moment he could find no words. Evidence? He had the evidence of his senses; but it was true that he had no corroborative evidence at hand.
The bushranger's eyes glittered with a reckless light. He knew that the sides were too uneven to play this game long. He felt that he was a free man if he quietly accepted fate as he had accepted it before at this man's hands. The odds were overwhelming; but he was seized with a wild desire to turn and face them; to turn upon his contemptible foe and treat him as he should have treated him in the beginning. It might cost him his liberty—his life—but it was worth it! The old devilry had sprung back into being within him. He was desperate—more desperate, this half-hour, than ever in the whole course of his desperate existence. His life had seemed worth having during the past weeks of his cowardice; now it was valueless—more valueless than it had been before. He was at bay, and he realised it. His brain was ablaze. He had played the docile Miles too long. Wait a moment, and he would give them one taste of the old Sundown!
'At least,' he sneered in a low, suppressed voice, 'you have someone behind you with a warrant? No? Nothing but your bare word and the dim recollection of years ago? That, my friend, seems hardly enough. Ah, Colonel, I'm glad you are there. Is there any truth in this message that has been given me, that you have had enough of me?'
'I wish you to go,' said Colonel Bristo, sternly. 'I wash my hands of you. Why refuse a chance of escape?'
'What! Do you mean to say you believe this maniac's cock-and-bull yarn about me?' He pointed jauntily at Dick with his forefinger. But the hand lowered, until the forefinger covered the corner of white handkerchief peeping from Edmonstone's breast-pocket. For a moment Miles seemed to be making some mental calculation; then his hand dropped, and trifled with his watch-chain.
'I believe every word that he has told me,' declared the Colonel solemnly. 'As to warrants, they are not wanted where there is to be no arrest. We are not going to lay hands on you. Then go!'
'Go!' echoed Edmonstone hoarsely. 'And I wish to God I had done my duty the night I found you out! You would have been in proper hands long before this.'
'Suppose I refuse to go? Suppose I stay and insist on evidence being brought against me?' said Miles to the Colonel. Then turning to Dick with fiery, blood-shot eyes, he cried: 'Suppose, since there is no evidence at all, I shoot the inventor of all these lies?'
The hand was raised sharply from the watch-chain and dived into an inner pocket. That moment might have been Dick Edmonstone's last on earth, had not a white fluttering skirt appeared in the passage behind him.
The hand of Miles dropped nervelessly.
Colonel Bristo heard in the passage the light quick steps and rustling dress, and ran to the door. At the same instant Pinckney jumped up from his writing to see what was the matter. They met in the passage, and followed Alice to the steps. Her father seized her hand, to draw her back, but she snatched it from his grasp. Her hand was icy cold. Her face was white as death—as immovable—as passionless. She stood on the steps, and glanced from Edmonstone at her side to Miles on the path below. On Miles her calm glance rested.
'You seem to forget!' she said in a hard voice that seemed to come from far away. 'You are forgetting what you said to me a few minutes ago, on the road. I understand your meaning better now than I did then. Yes, it is true; you know it is true: you are what he says you are!'
Miles watched her like one petrified.
She turned to Dick at her side. And now a sudden flush suffused her pallid cheeks, and her eyes dilated.
'It is you,' she cried impetuously, 'you that we have to thank for this! You that have brought all this upon us, you that allowed us to be preyed upon by a villain—screened him, helped him in his deceit, plotted with him! Being what he was, it was in his nature to cheat us. I forgive him, and pity him. But you I shall never forgive! Go, Mr. Miles. Whatever and whoever you are, go as you are asked. And go you too—true friend—brave gentleman! Go, both of you. Let us never see you again. Yet no! Stay—stay, all of you' (her face was changing, her words were growing faint)—'and hear what it was—he said—to me—and my answer, which is my answer still! Stay—one moment—and hear——'
Her words ceased altogether. Without a cry or a moan she sank senseless in her father's arms.
Philip Robson rushed forward. They stretched her on the cold stone. They tore open the collar round her neck, breaking the pretty brooch. They put brandy to her lips, and salts to her nostrils, and water upon her brow. Minutes passed, and there was no sign, no glimmer of returning life.
When Alice fell, Miles took one step forward, but no more. He stood there, leaning forward, unable to remove his eyes from the white lifeless face, scarcely daring to breathe.
There was no noise, no single word! The doctor (to his credit be it remembered) was trying all that he knew, quickly and quietly. The Colonel said not a word, but silently obeyed his nephew, and chafed the chill hands. Edmonstone fanned her face gently. Pinckney had disappeared from the group.
Robson suddenly looked up and broke the silence.
'Where is the nearest doctor?'
'Melmerbridge,' murmured someone.
'He should be fetched at once. We want experience here. This is no ordinary faint.'
Before the doctor had finished speaking, Miles wheeled round and darted to the gate. And there he found himself confronted by a short, slight, resolute opponent.
'You sha'n't escape,' said Pinckney through his teeth, 'just because the others can't watch you! You villain!'
Pinckney had heard only the end of what had passed on the steps, but that was enough to assure him that Miles had been unmasked as a criminal. Of course he would take the opportunity of all being preoccupied to escape, and did; and David faced Goliath in the gateway.
