With growing uneasiness she felt for the inside handle of the door, but there was none. A search of the second door revealed a like state of affairs.
Her movements must have attracted the attention of the driver, for the glass panel was pushed back and a harsh voice greeted her.
“You can sit down and keep quiet! This isn’t Reeder’s car; I’ve sent it home.”
The voice went into a chuckle that made her blood run cold.
“You’re coming with me—to see life. Reeder’s going to weep tears of blood. You know me, eh? Reeder knows me. I wanted to get him tonight. But you’ll do, my dear.”
Suddenly the glass panel was shut to. He turned off the main road and was following a secondary, his object being, she guessed, to avoid the big towns and villages en route. She put out her hand and felt the wall of the car. It was an all-weather body with a leather back. If she had a knife she might cut—
She gasped as a thought struck her, and, reaching up, felt the metal fastening that kept the leather hood attached. Exerting all her strength, she thrust back the flat hook and, bracing her feet against the front of the machine, pulled at the leather hood. A rush of cold air came in as the hood began slowly to collapse. The closed car was now an open car. She could afford to lose no time. The car was making thirty miles an hour, but she must take the risk of injury. Scrambling over the back of the hood, she gripped tight at the edge, and let herself drop into the roadway.
Although she turned a complete somersault, she escaped injury in some miraculous fashion, and, coming to her feet, cold with fear and trembling in every limb, she looked round for a way of escape. The hedge on her left was high and unpenetrable. On her right was a low wooden fence, and over this she climbed, as she heard the squeak of brakes and saw the car come to a standstill.
Even as she fled, she was puzzled to know what kind of land she was on. It was not cultivated; it was more like common land, for there was springy down beneath her feet, and clumps of gorse bushes sent out their spiny fingers to clutch at her dress as she flew past. She thought she heard the man hailing her, but fled on in the darkness.
Somewhere near at hand was the sea. She could smell the fragrance of it. Once when she stopped to take breath she could hear the distant thunder of the waves as they rolled up some unseen beach. She listened, almost deafened by the beating of her own heart.
“Where are you? Come back, you fool—”
The voice was near at hand. Not a dozen yards away she saw a black figure moving, and had all she could do to stifle the scream that rose in her throat. She crouched down behind a bush and waited, and then to her horror she saw a beam of light spring from the darkness. Her pursuer had an electric lamp and was fanning it across the ground.
Detection was inevitable, and, springing to her feet, she ran, doubling from side to side in the hope of outwitting him. Now she found the ground sloping under her feet, and that gave her additional speed. She had need of it, for he saw her against the skyline, and came on after her, a babbling, shrieking fury of a man. And now capture seemed inevitable. She made one wild leap to escape his outstretched hands, and her feet suddenly trod on nothing. Before she could recover, she was falling, falling. She struck a bush, and the shock and pain of the impact almost made her faint. She was falling down a steep slope, and her wild hands clutched tree and sand and grass, and then just as she had given up all hope, she found herself rolling over and over on a level plateau, and came to rest with one leg hanging over a sheer drop of two hundred feet. Happily, it was dark.
Margaret Belman did not realize how near to death she had been till the dawn came up.
Below her was the sea and a stretch of yellow sand. She was looking into a little bay that held no sign of habitation so far as she could see. This was not astonishing, for the beach was only approachable from the water. Somewhere on the other side of the northern bluff, she guessed, was Siltbury. Beneath her a sheer fall over the chalky face of the cliff; above her, a terribly steep slope, which might be negotiated, she thought hopefully.
She had lost one shoe in her fall, and after a little search found this, so near to the edge of the cliff that she grew dizzy as she stooped to pick it up.
The plateau was about fifty yards long and was in the shape of a half moon, and almost entirely covered with gorse bushes. The fact that she found dozens of birds’ nests was sufficient proof that this spot was not visited even by the most daring of cliff climbers. She understood now the significance of the low rail on the side of the road, which evidently followed the sea coast westward for some miles. How far was she from Larmes Keep? she wondered—until the absurdity of considering such a matter occurred to her. How near was she to starvation and death was a more present problem.
Her task was to escape from the plateau. There was a chance that she
