He would have repeated the blow but the girl slipped between them.
“Michael, you shall die in good company,” she said in so matter of fact a tone that none of them realized immediately what she was saying; “that is, if you think I am good company.”
“What do you mean?” gasped the Colonel.
“Why, I think you will kill me, too,” she said with a serenity which to Michael was wonderful, “because I have betrayed you all.”
Garon came flinging through the door.
“They haven’t turned up,” he screamed, “the wagons have gone.”
“Gone,” said Gregori huskily, “gone where?”
“I have just been on the phone,” gasped the doctor; “they went to Lord Flanborough’s. He has got the stuff.”
There was a dead silence broken by the girl.
“They went to Lord Flanborough’s,” she repeated nodding her head. “I know that. I sent them there.”
The tension was dreadful, no man spoke, then suddenly Gregori swung round on the girl and his face was the face of a devil.
“You!” he grated and leaped at her throat.
In that one moment all the scattered atoms of race, of pride, of kinship united in the distorted brain of Colonel Westhanger. His lean arms shot out and Gregori fell headlong to the floor.
“Back, you dog!” roared the old man.
It was the last word he uttered. There was a stinging report from the floor and Colonel Westhanger fell limply across the table with a bullet through his heart.
The girl who was half fainting with terror shrank back against the wall as Gregori rose, his still smoking pistol in his hand.
“You are a prophet,” he said harshly; “you said you would die with Michael Pretherston and by God! you spoke the truth. Put them together,” he said, “I want to think things out.”
XIX
Michael Developed a Fondness for the Criminal Classes
The girl rose up from the chair where she had been sitting and crossed to where Michael lay on the floor where they had thrown him.
He looked up and smiled.
“Why, Kate,” he said faintly, “always … meeting … you.”
She sat down at his side and lifting his head laid it upon her lap.
“That’s nice,” he murmured.
“Why is it nice?” she asked curiously, “because I make a softer pillow than the stone?”
“That and something more,” he answered.
“What more?” she insisted.
“Oh—because it is you, I suppose,” he said vaguely.
Her lips twitched in amusement.
“But it would be just the same if it were any other person,” she said, “wouldn’t it, Mike?”
He looked up at her.
“Put your hand on my forehead,” he said.
“Like this?”
She laid her soft palm against his throbbing head.
“What does that do?” she asked after a long interval of silence.
“It just makes my head better—don’t ask a lot of questions.”
Her fingers stole down his face and she gently pinched his nose.
“Oh, Kate,” he murmured sleepily, “I was just going to sleep.”
“Then don’t,” she said, “what is the use of dozing—you’ll be dead soon and so will I.”
She said this very calmly, in the same matter-of-fact tone in which she might have announced that there would be a roast chicken for dinner.
“I hope they kill you first,” she said thoughtfully.
“You’re a bloodthirsty little beggar,” said Michael indignantly; “why do you wish that?”
She shrugged her shoulders and went on pressing back the hair from his forehead, never taking her eyes from his face.
“I don’t know,” she said at last, “only I want to make sure that you’re gone and nobody else can have you—and then I shan’t care.”
He did not move; for a second she saw his eyelids quiver, but he lay still staring past her to the dingy roof of the engine house.
“Say that again,” he whispered.
“Say what again? That I want you to be killed first?” she asked innocently.
“Mike,” she said suddenly, “who was the girl?”
“Which girl?”
“You know,” she said, “the girl you—care about.”
“Why, you of course,” he said in surprise.
Her hands slipped down from his forehead covering his eyes.
“Say that again,” she mimicked.
“You,” he repeated. “You see I am more obliging than you were.”
“And you would not come in with us, not even for me?”
“Not even for you.”
She did not speak for some time.
“How did you know we were here?” she asked.
“I knew you could be nowhere else,” he said.
“You are an awfully arrogant young man, aren’t you? Do you know how it was all done?”
He nodded.
“The train ran into the tunnel where you had a long motorcar mounted with flanged wheels and having three green lamps on the front and two red tail lamps behind. That was the ‘train’ which the signalman saw dashing through the rain and you had a horrible siren.”
She laughed softly.
“It was terrible, wasn’t it?” she admitted. “Do you remember that day you were in Crime Street? You heard it.”
He recalled the uncanny sound which had then excited his curiosity.
“When you got to the level crossing gates, the car was lifted off the rail and went on to the road. It followed the tram lines for some distance where it turned into a convenient garage, which I suppose you had already arranged for?”
“That’s right,” she nodded.
“The train went no farther than the tunnel. It then backed on to a side track. Gregori had his Italian workmen ready and fixed up the buffer which had been dropped—you know the rest. The hole behind the buffer and the green scum—that was your idea, I suppose.”
“It was cunning, wasn’t it, and did you see the rust I made?”
“It is a fortunate thing you are dying young, Kate,” he said; “you have a criminal mind.”
“But I haven’t a criminal mind,” she protested; “it is a game, a sort of highly complicated jigsaw puzzle. Do you ever read detective stories?”
“Very seldom.”
“But you have read them?” she persisted.
“I have read one or two,” he confessed.
“Did the men who wrote those have criminal minds? It was a game to them. It was a game to me. I know it is all wrong, horribly wrong, but I never thought I should realize that much. I thought nothing would turn me.”
“And
