Again the whistle, and the two great shapes crouched down, and even from that distance Dick saw that they were trembling violently. The sound of a breaking twig, and a man stepped into the clearing.
It was Stalletti.
In one hand he held a whirling dog-whip, in the other the moon gleamed on something bright and sinister.
“Ah! so, my little children, I have found you, in what strange circumstances! Extraordinary and bizarre, is it not? Come, Beppo.”
The lash curled above their heads as the bigger man crouched lower to the earth.
“Come, you!”
He said something in Greek, which Dick could not understand, and immediately the two huge shapes shuffled after him and passed into the wood. Still Dick did not move. Where was Cawler? He had vanished as into the ground. And then suddenly the detective saw him, moving swiftly in the shadow of the trees, following the course which Stalletti and his slaves had taken. In another instant Dick was on their heels.
For a moment he had been paralysed by the fantastic sight, but now the spell was broken. Whatever happened, Stalletti should not escape. He did not see Cawler, but knew that he was somewhere ahead in the darkness, moving, as Dick had moved, from tree to tree, silently, ominously, for the unconscious man who by some mischance had failed to see him.
They did not follow the steep path down to the valley, but went along the slope. The detective, who had not explored the wood, wondered where the chase would end. Once, as the trees thinned, he saw the two cowering figures following Stalletti, but they were lost to view again, and he did not sight them until he heard the harsh purr of a motor engine, and dashed forward. He was too late. There was some sort of road here, of which he knew nothing, and the car was moving along this. As he looked he saw a figure shoot out of the bushes and grip the back of the machine.
Now he located the road; it was that which ran over the top of Selford Quarry. He saw the white gash of the chalk cliff in the moonlight as he flew along in pursuit of the car. The road was bad, he guessed, and they could not make any great speed, and Dick Martin was something of a runner.
The rough roadway began to climb, and this gave him an additional advantage, for, heavily laden—more heavily than Stalletti at the wheel imagined—the machine slowed perceptibly, and he was gaining hand over hand, when he saw the man that was hanging on to the back suddenly pull himself over the hood.
What followed he could only guess. There was a scream from Stalletti, and suddenly the car lurched violently to the left and broke through a clump of bushes. For a second there was silence, and then a horrible crash. Dick ran to the edge of the quarry and saw the car tumbling over and over down the almost precipitous slope. Down, down, down it went, into the deep, still pool in which the moon was reflected.
XXX
Dick looked round for a safe way to the bottom, and presently was clambering down a projecting shoulder of the hill. He reached the edge of the lake as a figure came wading ashore, blubbering and sobbing in grief and fury. Dick seized him by the shoulder and swung him round.
“Cawler!” he said.
“My God! My God! He’s dead!” sobbed the chauffeur. “Both of ’em! And that swine! I ought to have killed him first!”
“Where are they?”
The man pointed with a shaking hand to a small triangular object in the centre of the lake.
“The car turned over. I tried to pull him out,” he wailed. “If I’d only killed him that night I found what they’d done! Do something, Mr. Martin.” He gripped Dick frenziedly. “Save him. I don’t care what happens to me. Perhaps we could get the car turned over?”
Without a word, Dick threw off his coat and waded into the shallow water, followed by the half-demented Cawler. At the first attempt he realized that the task was impossible; in turning, the machine had wedged itself under a projecting rock. He dived down and sought to pull clear the huge creature his hand touched; and all the time Tom Cawler was sobbing his fury and anguish.
“If I’d only killed him when I found out! That night I listened at the window when Cody was there. I killed him tonight. You can take me for it, if you like, Martin. I smashed in his head with a spanner.”
“Who killed Cody?”
“My brother killed him. God! I’m glad of it! He killed him because Stalletti told him to.”
“Your brother?” said Dick, hardly believing the evidence of his ears.
“My brother—the big fellow,” sobbed the man. “Stalletti experimented on him first, before he took the other boy.”
It needed all Dick’s strength to drag to safety this man, half mad with sorrow and remorse. Leaving him at the edge of the lake, Martin began to work his way back to the valley. No assistance he could procure could rescue the three men who were pinned down beneath the car, but he must make some attempt.
As he mounted the slope towards the farm he heard a police whistle blow shrilly, and almost immediately there came a strange red glow from behind the trees. Dick threw away the coat he was carrying and sprinted, but before he could reach the farmyard wall he saw the red flames leaping up to the sky.
Again the police whistle shrilled. And now, as he turned the corner of the farm buildings, Dick Martin saw …
Selford Manor was ablaze from one end to the other. Red and white tongues of flame were leaping
