CHAPTER XII FLIGHT

The Abbé Villari slept at Benny's chalet that night, fearful of the storm, and not a little concerned at the absence of its master. This anxiety he shared with Jack, who suggested a hundred reasons which might have taken Benny to Sierre, but none which could have kept him there—unless it were the storm, which in the case of such a man seemed altogether insufficient.

"He'll have gone down to see if the stuff has come," Jack declared with conviction; "they say at the stables that he engaged a sleigh shortly after ten o'clock. I know he's ordered a lot of things, and he was particularly anxious to have the new steel arms for the frame. If the snow's very bad down there, the fellow who drives the sleigh may have refused to come up, and then Benny would be on his own. That wouldn't matter much to him, though, for he's as tough as old leather, and would just as soon walk up as ride. I can't think why he hasn't done it, Abbé."

The abbé agreed, although he had a poor opinion of some of the coachmen at Andana.

"The fellows like to spend a night in the town," he said, with a suggestion of ascetic regret. "It is difficult for a stranger to think of Sierre in such a light, but, after all, these things are a question of opportunity. A showman with a bear is a great person in a village where they have never seen bears, and so a man with a fiddle is an orchestra for people who have no music. I should imagine that André has refused to come back, and that your brother will remain at the Terminus Hotel. If so, he will be very comfortable, for the wines are excellent, and nobody would quarrel with the cooking. I think we had better say that he has done so, and go on with our work. There is nothing so unprofitable as speculation when time alone can tell us the truth."

Jack admitted the good sense of it, but he did little work, and after they had supped he went some way down to the road toward the village of Andana in the hope that he might discover Benny and the sleigh. It was a vain quest, however, and he returned to tell the abbé that the wind had nearly blown him off his legs, and that if Benny had refused to return from Sierre, he was no fool for his choice. Thereafter they ceased to speak about it, but neither suggested bed; and although they slept a little after twelve o'clock, the dawn found them wide awake and alert for tidings of the wanderer.

Benny was at Sierre—their guess was perfectly correct. Where they were at fault was in the matter of motive, which they failed entirely to comprehend. Which mystery is the better understood by harking back to the bridle track below Vermala, at an hour when a certain foreigner spoke of a strange affair upon the hillside, and those two masters of idiomatic but obsolete French, Bob Otway and Dick Fenton, responded incoherently to his vain appeals.

Benny, it will be remembered, had heard the Frenchman's story, and immediately understood its meaning. His knowledge of Luton Delayne convinced him that such an act of folly was to be expected from a man famous in two counties for the violence of his temper. He perceived that some scandalous affair had set the police upon the baronet's track, that one of them had been set to watch him and had been detected in the act. There had been an exchange of angry words, of abuse upon the one hand and of insolence upon the other—and then the blow. Just as Luton Delayne had invited the contempt of his neighbours at Holmswell by descending to a vulgar arena in which a butcher figured not ingloriously, so here in Switzerland had his temper got the better of him and this blow been struck. What the consequences might be, Benny did not care to ask himself; but he realised that they might be momentous, and remembering that the man was Lily's husband, he went up to Vermala at once and began to search the hillside. Was it possible that the affair had been nothing but an idle fracas after all? Had the gendarme gone off to report the matter to his superiors, as one calling for a prosecution which would amuse the community? It might be that, he said, and disbelieving it utterly, he turned to the heights.

The snow was firm and hard upon the narrow track, and revealed little even to his keen eyes. He perceived that luges had gone up to the hotel, and he could almost say how many. The track itself disclosed but gentle slopes, and none which could be called a precipice even by an imaginative person. The woods harboured deep drifts of snow, and were scarred here and there by the trails of skis; but at one spot alone was there any possible scene for such a drama as the Frenchman had described. This lay immediately below the hotel; a plateau upon which two men could stand side by side, with a sheer wall of rock falling fifty or sixty feet away from it and an arbour of the pines, which the sun could hardly penetrate, at its foot.

Benny climbed to the plateau, and kneeling there he peered down to the depths. A great drift of snow had culminated about the trunks of three trees which appeared to grow straight out of the hillside. On the plateau itself there were footprints which clearly indicated that two people had faced each other, and that a scuffle had taken place. But, and this was the more remarkable thing, save for a curious wraith of snow some twenty feet down the abyss, there was no scar upon the unbroken sheet of white which stretched from the plateau to the trees; not a mark which would have invited the suspicions of the most watchful. Many men, satisfied with the scrutiny, would have gone on at once, convinced that the glen could tell them nothing; but Benny was not that kind of man, and when he had reflected upon it a little while, and had made sure that his acts would not be observed, an idea came to him, and he put it into practice immediately. It was nothing less than this: to descend the precipice by the help of the trees, and to discover for himself the secret of the snow wraith, if secret there were.

The feat was not a little difficult, perhaps really dangerous. But here was a man who had ploughed the "roaring forties" in an old Scotch brig, and had the foot of a goat upon a height. Swinging himself out upon a branch, to which he leaped, Benny climbed over to other branches; then he slid down the trunk of a pine as a sailor down a pole. He was five minutes in the hollow below the plateau, and a quarter of an hour making his way back through the heavy drifts to the path he had quitted. Then he went straight on to the hotel at Vermala—a silent man, with set face and eyes which saw nothing but the track before him.

To the porter who told him that the Englishman, Mr. Faikes, was engaged in his private room Benny merely replied: "Go back, and say he'll have to see me." Thereafter, he waited, standing immobile in the hall, and quite unconscious of the guests who studied him with critical eyes. Some of these knew him for the winner of the Grand Prix down at Andana, and wondered that such a man should interest himself in Alpine sports; but others made a jest upon his earnestness, and said, behind their papers, that he looked like the impersonification of tragedy.

Luton Delayne had a sitting-room looking over toward the Weisshorn, and here Benny discovered him a few moments later. A whisky-and-soda stood at his side, and the ends of innumerable cigarettes lay in a tawdry Swiss ash-tray. Evidently he had but recently returned from the open, for he still wore heavy boots and puttees, and these were wet with the snow. His manner was characteristically aggressive, and his question, "Well, what the devil do you want with me?" quite in the expected tone.

Benny shut the door of the room carefully behind him, and then crossed it on tip-toe, an unnecessary proceeding, but one in keeping with his own desire for secrecy. His hands were thrust deep in his trousers pockets, and he had quite forgotten to take off the old Alpine hat without which his best friends at Andana would not have recognised him. Delayne could not but see that this man had a right to come to him as he did, and his face blanched suddenly.

"You know why I have come here, Sir Luton—none but a d——d fool would ask that question. I've come to save your neck!"

Delayne puffed hard at his cigarette, and then laid the end of it down with the others.

"Oh," he exclaimed in the grand manner; "so you know about the row, then?"

Benny went to the window and looked out. The plateau lay a hundred yards from the hotel, but was hidden by a belt of trees. He wondered if others had already made their way there—searching for what he had found. The minutes were precious if he would save this madman for a woman's sake.

"Yes," he said, swinging round on his heel, "I know about the row. Half the place is talking about it. I suppose you'll be joining in yourself just now—when the police come along. That should be before morning with any luck—it won't be much later anyway."

The baronet rose and walked across to the window. Benny could see that his hands were twitching, while his eyes almost danced in his head.

"The man followed me," he said inconsequently. "It was the most damnably impertinent thing I ever saw in all my life. When I asked him what he wanted, he wouldn't say a word. I warned him to keep off, and he was on my heels again in five minutes. Would you stand that yourself? You're a man, and can judge between us? Would you stand it?"

Benny shrugged his shoulders.

"What we have to stand depends on our footing. The man who grubs in dirty soil mustn't complain that his hands are black. You came to blows, I suppose, and he went over. Is that what you would say?"

"I struck him on the face, and he tried to draw a revolver on me—we were on the plateau, and he went over. If he's hurt, I'll pay compensation. What more do you want?"

Benny looked at him curiously. Was he lying outright, or merely reciting a defence he had rehearsed in the interval? It was difficult to say. The truth must be told without delay, for the truth alone could move him.

"You say the man went over. Did you see him after he fell?"

"See him! What do you mean?"

"I ask if you saw him after he fell—he might have been injured, you know?"

Delayne returned to the table, and took a deep draught from the tumbler there.

"You know something," he said, averting his eyes. "Well, I'm not a child; tell me."

Benny crossed over, and looked him full in the face.

"It's a pity you didn't stop," he said quietly—"the man's dead—!"

Delayne began to tremble, a little at first and then as one stricken by an ague. Reaction had come in an instant—the man's hands were as cold as ice, he could not keep still.

"How do you know he's dead?"

"I have seen him, touched him! He's stone dead at the foot of the clump of pines: that's what I came here to tell you."

Delayne said: "My God!" and sank into the chair. He began to blubber like a child; his whole body twitched in a nervous collapse to be expected of such a temperament. The truth had stricken him; it prevailed above any thought of his own safety, which was left to the man who had come to him with so little ceremony.

"You have twenty hours at the best, six at the worst," Benny said, ignoring the outbreak and knowing that it would pass. "If the little Frenchman who saw him fall doesn't blab, the police may not be here until the morning. You'll have to answer for this sooner or later, but you'll answer it better across the frontier. Are you going to start at once, or wait for them to come for you? Take another drop of that whisky, and then tell me. I can give you that long."

The man obeyed him like a child. He was already trying to excuse himself, to make a case which might be put to a jury subsequently.

"It's no more than mischance, look at it how you like. He provoked me—I had no intention to kill him. If he'd have gone away, it would have been all right. What business had he to follow me, I ask you, what business had he? Is this a free country? Then why did he spy on me? Let the police answer that: what right had he to spy on me?"

Benny became contemptuous now.

"They'll answer it sharp enough when they are here. You'll learn pretty quick whether it's a free country or not. If I were you, I would choose another, and let my lawyers do the talking from there. You could catch the afternoon train through the tunnel, if you were quick about it. You'd be in Italy to-morrow, and in my house opposite Magadino the day after. There's nobody there but an old Italian woman, and she couldn't pronounce your name if she knew it. I have the shanty until the winter—the hydroplanes I was running in the fall are still there, and some other stuff. Say you come on my business, and no one will question you. That's what I would do if I were you, and I wouldn't be long in doing it either."

He stood waiting for an answer, his arms still thrust deep into his trousers pockets and his hat awry. The expression of low cunning which crept upon the baronet's face did not deter him in any way. He cared not a straw for any imputations of motive, whatever they might be. A determination to save Lily Delayne from the shame of this madness drove him as a spur. Had it been otherwise he would not have crossed the street at this man's beck.

Delayne understood the situation perfectly, and was upon the point of confessing as much. He knew how sure was his wife's influence over men, and for an instant a savage impulse of jealousy impelled him to turn on the man who would have befriended him for his wife's sake and to say all that was in his mind. From this an instinct of prudence saved him at the last moment. He remembered the words: "The man is dead," and began to shudder. Yes, flight was his only chance—but flight must imply guilt!

"Oh," he exclaimed, after a moment's hesitation, "that's all very well, but if I go, what will they say? And my valet, Paul—what of him? Is he ready to hold his tongue, do you think?"

"I think nothing. Send him to Paris by the Simplon to-night. Tell him you're following later. You're not going to say that you've been mad enough to take him into your confidence?"

"Nothing of the kind; but he's a Swiss. They may question him about me?"

"In Paris—"

Delayne shrugged his shoulders.

"If I go, I admit that the police had the right to molest me."

"If you stay, by God, they'll guillotine you. Don't you understand that—don't you see that this man was in the service of the State? Lord, a child would know better. And you're losing the minutes. I say, the minutes; and every one may be the most precious you'll ever live."

Delayne still hesitated, pacing the room, and muttering all the jargon of defence he had recited a hundred times since the instant of his passion. Despite his dilemma, certain instincts of his pride remained. How should he tell this bull-dog of an engineer that he was at his wits' end to pay his hotel bill? He would never have told him had not Benny guessed it from the first.

"You want money, perhaps?" he said, speaking in a new tone, which a sense of delicacy forced upon him. "Well, I'll see you through this, and you can pay me when you like. I'll give you a hundred at Brigue, and you can run the shanty with that until I come. Ten pounds should see your man to Paris—let him go to a back-street hotel until you come. You know the place well enough for that, and can direct him. I'm going down to order the sleigh. It'll be at the cross-roads above the Palace in half an hour. If you're not there when I bring it, a telegram will go to Sierre. As sure as I stand here, I'll dispatch that if you keep me waiting five minutes. Now go, and do what I tell you—you've played the fool long enough."

He strode from the room and the hotel. Half an hour afterwards, Luton Delayne and the valet, Paul, met him at the cross-roads above Andana, and stepped aboard the sleigh he had hired from Karl Meyer, the jobmaster at the Park. Benny's excuse, that he wished to go down alone to bring up "stuff" from Sierre, satisfied the phlegmatic German, who had a good customer in this active Englishman. He promised to telephone for a second horse to be at the Terminus Hotel in the valley that night, and gave no further thought to the matter.

Benny, in the meantime, discovered powers of prevision which were quite remarkable. His immediate object was to get this madman across the Pass, and to harbour him in his own shanty on Lake Maggiore without the loss of an hour. He foresaw that the departure of a certain Mr. Faikes from the hotel at Vermala, and the journey of that worthy's valet to Paris, would be in his favour. Luton Delayne must take his own name at Domo d'Ossola, where his presence would be of no concern to the Swiss authorities, and would never be associated with such a crime. The better to attain this object, he set down the valet, Paul, at the station in Sierre, and then, under the pretence that he himself and Sir Luton were to pass a few days at the Terminus Hotel, he returned at once to the great high road through the valley of the Simplon, and set out boldly for Visp.

Here, and here only, luck went with him. He had been but three hours upon the road when the storm overtook him—another hour brought him to a hamlet, where the lights of a railway station shone warmly through the blinding haze of snow. He inquired of the station-master, and learned that a train would leave for Milan within the hour. Nothing could be more opportune; he believed that he had succeeded in his task beyond all hope, and that the story of the tragedy at Vermala would never be known to the world.

"Go straight through to Domo d'Ossola without a word to anybody," he said to Delayne. "I will telegraph instructions to the old woman at the shanty to-morrow, and you can make your way there as soon as you please. If there is any danger, I will warn you of it. That's my part of the business: yours is to hold your tongue, whatever the consequences."

Sir Luton hardly answered him. A certain contempt for himself because he had let this masterful personage persuade him to an ignominious flight now took possession of him, and entirely banished any thought of gratitude. The money which was thrust upon him he received with the air of a master borrowing from a servant. Distance had dwarfed his understanding of danger, and he had forgotten already his own platitudes of defence. Was he not an Englishman, and what right had that d——d fool to spy upon him? For two pins he would have returned to Sierre and told the authorities as much.

Of this resolution he quickly repented, and, being bundled into the train for Milan, condescended to offer his hand to the man who had saved him. It chanced, however, that Benny had turned his back at this particular moment, and thus missed the proffered grasp which was to be the laurel upon his altruism. Five minutes later he set out through the blinding storm for Sierre, where he arrived at the Terminus Hotel in time for dinner. All thoughts of going up to Andana that night had now been abandoned. He decided to sleep at the hotel, and to return as soon as daylight would let him.

Perhaps such a change from his normal way of life was not unwelcome. There is bustle of a kind at Sierre, where stranded tourists are wont to gather and excited English folk to indulge in the platitudes of travel. This pleasant little town, too, is honoured by the great Simplon express, which calls after nine o'clock, and is to be stopped by the station-master's whistle when there are passengers to take up. Benny dined at his leisure, and having lighted a cigar, he strolled over to the station and waited for the express to come in. The snow fell heavily, and the wind moaned in the heights; but there was good shelter here at the heart of the valley and a sense of sanctuary very welcome. Benny knew that he had done as good a day's work as he would ever do; and, perhaps, he began to think that after all he was not such an unlucky mortal—for, surely, the greatest of good luck is the possibility to help others.

Half an hour passed in optimistic reflections, and then the express from Milan came in. There were three English passengers, and the station-master ran out on the rails and blew a shrill whistle when the great flaming headlights of the engine appeared round the bend. Then the English folk were hauled up into a wagon-lit and the train went on, scattering flaming sparks into the haze of snow. When all was silent in the station, Benny returned toward the hotel, and had taken some twenty steps across the courtyard when he came almost face to face with Paul, the valet, who walked arm-in-arm with a diminutive gendarme, to whom he was talking earnestly. Benny watched him as though he had seen a ghost. Should not the fellow have been on his way to Paris three hours or more ago!

He did not know what to do: whether to speak to the man or merely to watch him. Delayne had spoken little of this servant, nor did Benny know whether he were to be trusted or feared. On the face of it, the latter opinion should have been preferred; for what had a valet to do with the police, and how came it that this particular valet postponed his visit to Paris to confab with one of them? Benny detected danger and drew back into the shadows.

"They may take him at the frontier after all," he said.