The mention of officers was an instant alarm to Shinsuké. Should he be caught on the spot, all his explanations would not clear him, after the preceding cases, of the misdeed he was no party to. Yet he could not think of leaving the two in the lurch. He rallied to aid Tsuya. Between them, the pair dragged Tokubey to his feet, hauling him by the shoulders; they half-carried and half-led him, as they started off, soon breaking into a run.
Taking a deserted path along between the postern walls of the mansions and the rice fields, the three had run on for five or six minutes, when they crawled into the shadow of some shrubbery growth, to snatch a while to recover their wind. Fortunately, there were no signs of their being tracked. Shinsuké took a hand towel out of his bosom and, ripping it into strips, bound the wounds which were still profusely bleeding.
“For all this you’re doing for me, Shinsuké-san, I am grateful to you!” said Tokubey who sat crumpled, leaning on the lap of Tsuya who sat over the edge of the road—and his voice carried a depth of feeling.
“—Just get me back home, and I’ll be saved. And I shall owe my life to you!”
“Look, master, are you sure you are steady? Do you think you can manage to walk?” inquired Tsuya, after some time of rest, and her voice was full of kindness, and heartfelt concern. “If you can’t walk, we two will carry you on our shoulders. Just get up and try how you can go.”
“Oh, I am well enough, now,” he answered, labouring to his feet, only to totter on his knees. He barely caught himself against her arms, again.
“Listen, man, I can see you’re in no shape to go. But why should we let you suffer so long, when I could give you what you need and speed you on—to hell!”
A sudden sweep of her arm, Tsuya took the reeling man by a cluster of his hair and hurled her whole weight upon him, who went down crushed, heavily thudding on the ground. She flashed out of her sash folds a razor, carried there concealed, and swung it over the upturned face. Barely in time he met her hand; straining what mortal strength still left in him, he turned his body and threw her off. As soon, he was up on his feet—
“If I must die I’ll take you along, too!” he snarled, and rushed for a counterattack, swinging his carving knife. What with the suddenness of it and the blinding darkness, Shinsuké was quite helpless to think of aught but to mope in his dismayed confusion about the two bodies in a deadly grip. While in this aimless agitation, his groping hands felt out Tokubey’s neck cramped somewhere between her feet. Instantly, he wedged in his weight and pulled them apart.
“You are with her to get me, I suppose! Come, you dog! Get me if you can!” said the wounded man, and now, in fiendish desperation, came upon Shinsuké who, however, quickly wrested the weapon out of his hand.
In the meanwhile, Tsuya pulled herself to her feet, and brought him down by sweeping his feet off the ground. Again, there ensued a fierce, closed struggle. Wounded as he was, he was more than her match. She was at last pinned down, flat on her back, hands closing around her neck to choke out her life. A particle more of strength left in the wounded man, and she would have been dead, straightway. Tokubey’s strength had carried him thus far, but no farther; suddenly he felt himself sapped of force.
“Come, what are you doing, Shin-san?” Tsuya called out for help, straining her half-choked voice.
“—He’s killing me!—Don’t you see here is our chance, tonight?—Finish this Tokubey—this dog’s dying, anyway—and it means we’ll be free—no more bother—you as well as me. Never a better chance to crack his head!—For heaven’s sake, come!—come and get him—”
Even while she went on trying to shriek out her appeal, her life seemed fast sinking, her voice grew fainter and ever fainter, until every second threatened to crop it short, once for all.
“Fiend you! Oh, I’m choking! Help me, Shin-san!” Her voice was good yet for that another shriek.
Scarce had she spent out her breath, before Shinsuké drove the knife, the spoil of a moment ago, into the back of the man placed astride her fallen body. Little worse for the blow, the other shot himself into his arms, kicking, battering, biting, ripping with nails, in frenzied rage. Shinsuké did not experience such resistant force when he killed Santa or the boatman’s woman. Nor were they always on their feet. Rolling and tumbling, dragged in dirt and pulled by hair, the two men fought on what appeared a fight of neither men nor beasts. It was after some moments that Shinsuké, almost by chance, buried his knife into the flabby side of his foe.
“He—he—here, Tsuya! I die, but my curse be on your head!” With this outburst on his lips, Tokubey gave a convulsive shudder. In the same instant, a second blow was sent through his heart. One sharp whine of pain, hanging yet on the other’s arms, he stiffened.
“What of the curse of a gutter rat! Serves you right, too!” said Tsuya.
“It’s the third one I’ve killed! I am damned!—For heaven’s sake, die with me, now!” Shinsuké said, when he had shoved the corpse off, having freed himself from the dead man’s clutch; his jaw sagged, in an uncontrollable tremble.
“What talk, man! If that’s what you do, what’s the sense of killing this man? You have gone down deep enough, why not stay there and take all good things coming your way? Who will know this thing, if we keep our mouths shut? Why this chickenhearted idea? Come, you buck up. I don’t want to die—no, never!”
Shinsuké
