Chapter II

Consciousness came back to Kinloch at no definite moment. It was like rising slowly to the surface through deep waters. What he first recalled was a sound, a low murmuring that somehow had determination in it, and never ceased. For a time he thought the sound was in his head, and with that the remembrance returned that some one had just knocked him on the head. He felt horribly sick and shaken, and the instinctive attempt he made to move showed him he was lying full length on his back, helpless. So he lay still, nerving himself at first for the second blow he expected to fall, and was unable to avert. Then as the blow did not come at once he remained motionless in the hope of escaping another by pretending it was needless.

For a time he lay like that, still as death, but thinking brokenly about the nasty, violent business into which he had walked. He knew the man meant murder, knew that the flutter of an eyelid now would be enough to make him finish the job. So, shamming death, he listened hard, seeking to catch a hint of the other's movements in the room.

It was very difficult to hear anything because of that dull, continuous drumming in his head. He tried to ignore it, to listen, as it were, through the throbbing sound. But nothing else could he hear. In a dazed way he then began to be surprised that so soon he should feel so cold and stiff. It was exactly like what he had experienced when he lay for hours against a shattered wall at La Boiselle with his first wound.

But there was a difference. Then he had felt no resentment towards the hand that had struck him down. Then it had been a fight for life on equal terms. This time he had been helpless, defenceless in the hands of a man who had shown no mercy. And as he remembered how his broken spirit had forced from his lips the cry for mercy his shame gave birth to a hatred of the man, all the more intense and enduring because he must lie there incapable of fight. To have to die like a dog cowering on the floor in a corner. Was that to be his end? How much better to have died at La Boiselle then than in this sordid way, in some quarrel between two blackguards whose names he did not even know! He felt so sick and cold and stiff. Then with a start the question burst on him: had he been lying where he now found himself for a long time--a longer time, at all events, than the man was likely to stand over him to see if he were dead? A gleam of hope came. Remembering he had been struck down close to the wall on his right along which he had been feeling his way, he cautiously stretched out a hand with the notion of verifying that wall.

But it was not a wall he felt: it was something that recoiled from his touch with a smothered exclamation. The cry was instantly followed by a metallic click exactly like the sound made in releasing the safety catch in an automatic pistol.

"Oh, damn!" he cried, thinking that he had after all betrayed himself.

A hand was laid on him gently but firmly.

"No need to be afraid. You are safe now."

The voice was a woman's, and, remembering, he did not doubt it was she who had tried to stop the man's murderous attack.

"Has he gone?" he asked in a whisper.

Again there came that ominous, metallic click.

"You have a pistol," he said. Lifting his hand, he found his head and half his face swathed in bandages.

"No, no, that was the switch for the light under the dash you heard. I turned it on to see if you were all right. Try to sleep again. I must watch the road."

But he did not go to sleep. He lay awhile trying to piece together what she could mean, wondering most as to why she must watch the road. The noise in his head made thinking very difficult. It was like the word "thud" repeated unendingly, in a low, murmuring tone, yet infinitely more rapidly than mortal lips could articulate the word.

All at once he understood. That dull pain was indeed inside his head, but the drumming sound was an external sound. It was the beat of a motor engine. Instantly the woman's words about the light under the dash, and about having to watch the road became intelligible. She was carrying him off. She was taking him out of danger. They were out and away on the open road!

How that perception changed his feelings about that drumming engine! So long as he thought the noise was in his own head, it wearied him. Now it seemed unutterably friendly, and he lay prone, rejoicing in the sound, feeling from the engine's eager strokes that it was whole-heartedly on his side. He gave little or no thought to the woman, or where she was taking him; he did not then even wonder who she could be. His whole thought went to the purring engine that whispered continuous comfort to his ear. To him that engine was, even more than the silent woman, a living thing, making heroic efforts to carry him into safety. Lying prone he thrilled to think he was safe so that, sooner or later, he would get even with the man who had struck him down....

The next thing Kinloch remembered was the sound of a great bell, sonorous and so exalted that it might be the bell on some lofty cathedral tower. It struck six times, with a magnificent slow dignity between each stroke, and he began to wonder in a half dazed fashion what little town owned so great a clock. That it was a little town he knew because presently he felt from the ceasing of all echoes that the car had left the narrow streets and was speeding upwards on a straight, smooth road.

Afterwards, however, he was to be glad at having heard that bell, glad that its tone stuck in the memory. But just then such thought as he was capable of filled him with shame. The woman had heard him plead for his life, bleating like a sheep, he put it to himself. The remembrance made him shiver with mortification. Her pity flayed him like a whip, for he fancied there was in it a tinge of contempt. Later he heard the click of that switch again.

"You are putting on the light," he cried, almost involuntarily; for he did not wish to be seen by her at that moment.

"No, turning out the head-lights. It will soon be day."

They must then have been running along a wood-lined road, for now he could hear the twitter of birds, that preliminary twittering and trial of their notes they all seem to make in the early dawn. He lay awhile listening. The air was cold but dry. Presently the chatter of the birds faded and died out behind.

Almost at once the woman spoke:

"Why do you come to be associated with evil men? Your face is not--not altogether an evil face."

After his kindly thoughts of the woman and the car the question surprised and wounded him.

"Is it light enough to see that?" he asked in sarcasm.

She hesitated a moment as if not quite understanding.

"If you will sit up and look you will see the daybreak," she said, "and the light creeping through the trees, and--and"--a catch came in her words--"and the birds." The horn sounded for something on the road. "But," she added in a changed voice, "I suppose a person like you cares for none of these things."

"No--not--not now," Kinloch said.

"Used you to? I would like to think you not a bad man at heart."

There was an almost eager note in her voice that irritated him again.

"Look here," he said shortly, "don't you start worrying yourself about my heart. My heart is no better than my face."

Now, at all events, he began to wonder who this woman could be. Evidently she had mistaken his previous hesitation, and imagined her description of the morning had touched his better nature. She was so sure of his badness too! No doubt, he admitted to himself, he must look, that morning, with his bandaged head, torn clothes, frowzy, unshaved and unwashed as he was, an offence to the pure dawn. He could imagine the contrast present itself to her. But, after all, he was no criminal. His mild feeling of irritation deepened.

No more was said then. But she had started him off thinking things out, and presently, when the car turned a corner, and was clearly taking a side road at a reduced pace, it occurred to him that he had a right to put a few questions on his own account.

"Where are you taking me?" he demanded.

"Not much farther; I am going to drop you on the road."

"Drop me by the road! What for?"

"To get rid of you--a better fate than you deserve," she said.

On that he awakened to realities.

"Is that man dead?" he asked in a whisper.

"Oh, yes. There are worse things than death, you know."

Kinloch shuddered violently. He thought she was referring to his own pitiful pleading for mercy, and tried to be cynical.

"Are there? I wonder if--if _he_ thinks so?" He paused, breathing heavily. "This is a hanging business, then."

"Well, you will be out of it--unless the police take you," she said.

"I see, it is for the murderer's safety, all this. You thought I saw the man who did the deed, and on his account it was judged better that I should not fall into the hands of the police. An awkward witness I might have been against that man! So you propose to drop me by the roadside."

She heard him out in silence. Then after a pause she coolly said:

"Yes, you so far profit by my interest in his safety."

It was her calm assumption of his badness that he found exasperating. She took his evil character for granted, and seemed to regard it as an accident that he himself had not committed the murder. He struggled to a sitting posture, cold with anger.

"Your interest in the murderer must be very deep," he retorted. "How is it you come to be associated with such an evil man--you who seem to have such high standards of morality, and care so much for the clean sunrise and the guileless birds?"

That touched her up. He heard her sharp indrawn breath. Presently, with the car slowing down to a creep, she said:

"After all, I've had some trouble to save you from arrest, and may have saved your life. Why shouldn't I be glad to know that life not so worthless as it looks?"

"Drop me here," Kinloch said shortly. "Your preaching makes me sick."

Promptly the brakes were applied.

While he was fumbling with the catch of the door she bent forward and undid it herself, flinging the door wide open. Kinloch stumbled on to the road.

"By Heaven, you are a cool creature," he remarked. "How old are you?"

"Not so old as I look this morning."

Standing there on the road he laughed derisively, and then got his parting-shot ready. For he had a parting-shot, and a nasty one, he considered it.

"If you only knew it, you might have gone to bed, and left your car in the garage: there was no need to carry me so far."

"Oh, Jane doesn't mind," she said.

"Jane?" he repeated, mystified.

"That is what I call my little car. Plain Jane, for she has no frills."

The flippant tone of the remark, and the fact that it delayed the retort with which he meant to crush her, irritated him again.

"And you are plain too?" he said.

There was no response to this impertinence, except that the engine began to throb more quickly, as if in indignation. Then the brake was taken off with a sharp clatter of metal over the stops.

"If you will kindly remove your hand from the door--" she said icily.

But he held on, grimly nodding up at her, taking the opening at last given him.

"I'd like you to know this first," he said. "I never saw the man who was murdered nor the man who--who did the deed, so I could never have been a damaging witness against him."

"That is incredible," she said coolly. "Impossible unless you were quite blind."

"Quite impossible," he agreed, "unless I were quite blind."

It took her a moment or two before she understood. Then the engine ceased racing as if her foot had slipped from the accelerator.

He knew she was staring hard at him now.

"Blind," she whispered. "Oh--it--it--can't be--it can't be! I'd need to be blind myself not to have seen that."

The man laughed harshly.

"Sharper sight than yours missed seeing that last night, in that fog, which makes you all grope about like the blind," he said.

But she did not seem to be listening.

"Oh, dear God, what am I to do now? What am I to do?" she said, her own eyes riveted on the careworn face and the unseeing eyes of the man on the road.

Kinloch was taken aback by the blank horror in her voice. What difference could this make to the plans she had formed for his disposal? She ought to feel safer. He recalled the man in the fur coat. That man had been glad to discover he was blind. It had made him laugh aloud with relief. So ought she to be glad--at least after, as was natural, a little irritation over her needless journey. Why didn't she say something? Why didn't she clear out? The news of his blindness should be good news to her and to--Then his ear caught an unexpected sound; it was like some one quietly weeping.