The Man with the Clubfoot - Valentine Williams (top 100 books to read TXT) 📗

whirred faintly. There was a knock at the door.

"Come in!" roared Clubfoot and resumed his seat.

The clock was chiming twelve.

An officer stepped in briskly and saluted.

It was Francis!... Francis, freshly shaved, his moustache neatly trimmed, a monocle in his eye, in a beautifully waisted grey military overcoat, one white-gloved hand raised in salute to his helmet.

"Hauptmann von Salzmann!" ... he introduced himself, clicking his heels and bowing to Clubfoot, who glared at him, frowning at the interruption. He spoke with the clipped, mincing utterance of the typical Prussian officer. "I am looking for Herr Leutnant Schmalz," he said.

"He is not in," answered Clubfoot in a surly voice. "He is out and I am busy ... I do not wish to be disturbed."

"As Schmalz is out," the officer returned suavely, advancing to the desk, "I must trouble you for an instant, I fear. I have been sent over from Goch to inspect the guard here. But I find no guard ... there is not a man in the place."

Clubfoot angrily heaved his unwieldy bulk from his chair.

"Gott im Himmel!" he cried savagely. "It is incredible that I can never be left in peace. What the devil has the guard got to do with me? Will you understand that I have nothing to do with the guard! There is a sergeant somewhere ... curse him for a lazy scoundrel ... I'll ring ..."

He never finished the sentence. As he turned his back on my brother to reach the bell in the wall, Francis sprang on him from behind, seizing his bull neck in an iron grip and driving his knee at the same moment into that vast expanse of back.

The huge German, taken by surprise, crashed over backwards, my brother on top of him.

It was so quickly done that, for the instant, I was dumbfounded.

"Quick, Des, the door!" my brother gasped. "Lock the door!"

The big German was roaring like a bull and plunging wildly under my brother's fingers, his clubfoot beating a thunderous tattoo on the parquet floor. In his fall Clubfoot's left arm had been bent under him and was now pinioned to the ground by his great weight. With his free right arm he strove fiercely to force off my brother's fingers as Francis fought to get a grip on the man's throat and choke him into silence.

I darted to the door. The key was on the inside and I turned it in a trice. As I turned to go to my brother's help my eye caught sight of the butt of my pistol lying where Schmalz had thrown it the evening before under my overcoat on the leather lounge.

I snatched up the weapon and dropped by my brother's side, crushing Clubfoot's right arm to the ground. I thrust the pistol in his face.

"Stop that noise!" I commanded.

The German obeyed.

"Better search him, Francis," I said to my brother. "He probably has a Browning on him somewhere."

Francis went through the man's pockets, reaching up and putting each article as it came to light on the desk above him. From an inner breast pocket he extracted the Browning. He glanced at it: the magazine was full with a cartridge in the breech.

"Hadn't we better truss him up?" Francis said to me.

"No," I said. I was still kneeling on the German's arm. He seemed exhausted. His head had fallen back upon the ground.

"Let me up, curse you!" he choked.

"No!" I said again and Francis turned and looked at me.

Each of us knew what was in the other's mind, my brother and I. We were thinking of a hand-clasp we had exchanged on the banks of the Rhine.

I was about to speak but Francis checked me. He was trembling all over. I could feel his elbow quiver where it touched mine.

"No, Des, please ..." he pleaded, "let me ... this is my show...."

Then, in a voice that vibrated with suppressed passion, he spoke swiftly to Clubfoot.

"Take a good look at me, Grundt," he said sternly. "You don't know me, do you? I am Francis Okewood, brother of the man who has brought you to your fall. You don't know me, but you knew some of my friends, I think. Jack Tracy? Do you remember him? And Herbert Arbuthnot? Ah, you knew him, too. And Philip Brewster? You remember him as well, do you? No need to ask you what happened to poor Philip!"

The man on the floor answered nothing, but I saw the colour very slowly fade from his cheeks.

My brother spoke again.

"There were four of us after that letter, as you knew, Grundt, and three of us are dead. But you never got me. I was the fourth man, the unknown quantity in all your elaborate calculations ... and it seems to me I spoiled your reckoning ... I and this brother of mine ... an amateur at the game, Grundt!"

Still Clubfoot was silent, but I noticed a bead of perspiration tremble on his forehead, then trickle down his ashen cheeks and drop splashing to the floor.

Francis continued in the same deep, relentless voice.

"I never thought I should have to soil my hands by ridding the world of a man like you, Grundt, but it has come to it and you have to die. I'd have killed you in hot blood when I first came in but for Jack and Herbert and the others ... for their sake you had to know who is your executioner."

My brother raised the pistol. As he did so the man on the floor, by a tremendous effort of strength, rose erect to his knees, flinging me headlong. Then there was a hot burst of flame close to my cheek as I lay on the floor, a deafening report, a thud and a sickening gurgle.

Something twitched a little on the ground and then lay still.

We rose to our feet together.

"Des," said my brother unsteadily, "it seems rather like murder."

"No, Francis," I whispered back, "it was justice!"

CHAPTER XX CHARLEMAGNE'S RIDE

The hands of the clock pointed to a quarter past twelve. Funny, how my eyes kept coming back to that clock! There was a smell of warm gunpowder in the room, and the autumn sunshine, struggling feebly through the window, caught the blue edges of a little haze of smoke that hung lazily in the air by the desk in the corner. How close the room was! And how that clock face seemed to stare at me! I felt very sick....

Lord! What a draught! A gust of icy air was raging in my face. The room was still swaying to and fro....

I was in the front seat of a car beside Francis, who was driving. We were fairly flying along a broad and empty road, the tall poplars with which it was lined scudding away into the vanishing landscape as we whizzed by. The surface was terrible, and the car pitched this way and that as we tore along. But Francis had her well in hand. He sat at the wheel, very cool and deliberate and very grave, still in his officer's uniform, and his eyes had a cold glint that told me he was keyed up to top pitch.

We slackened speed a fraction to negotiate a turn off to the right down a side road. We seemed to take that corner on two wheels. A thin church spire protruded from the trees in the centre of the group of houses which we were approaching so furiously. The village was all but deserted: everybody seemed to be indoors at their midday meal, but Francis slowed down and ran along the dirty street at a demure pace. The village passed, he jammed down the accelerator and once more the car sprang forward.

The country was flat as a pancake, but presently the fields fell away a bit from the road with boulders and patches of gorse here and there. The next moment we were slackening speed. We drew up by a rough track which led off the road and vanished into a tangle of stunted trees and scrub growing across the yellow face of a sand-pit.

Francis motioned me to get out, and then sprang to the ground himself, leaving the engine throbbing. His face was grey and set.

"Stay here!" he whispered to me. "You've got your pistol? Good. If anybody attempts to interfere with you, shoot!" He dashed into the tangle and was swallowed up. I heard a whistle, and a whistle in answer, and a minute later he appeared again helping Monica through the thick undergrowth.

Monica looked as pretty as a picture in her dark green shooting suit and her muffler. She was as excited as a child at its first play.

"A car!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Francis, I'll sit beside you!"

My brother glanced at his watch.

"Twenty to one!" he murmured. He had a hunted look on his face. Monica saw it and it sobered her.

They got up in front, and I sat in the body of the car.

"Hang on to that!" said Francis, handing me over a leather case. I recognized it at a glance. It was Clubfoot's dispatch-box. Francis was thorough in everything.

Once more we dashed out along the desolate country roads. We saw hardly a soul. Houses were few and far between and, save for an occasional greybeard hoeing in the wet fields or an old woman hobbling along the road, the countryside seemed dead. In the cold air the engine ran splendidly, and Francis got every ounce of horse-power out of it.

On we rushed, the wind in our ears, the cold air in our faces, until we found ourselves racing along an avenue of old trees that led straight as an arrow right into the heart of the forest. It was as silent as the grave: the air was dank and chill and the trees dripped sorrowfully into the brimming ruts of the road.

We whizzed past many tracks leading into the depths of the forest, but it was not until the car had eaten up some five kilometres of the main road that Francis slowed to a halt. He consulted a map he pulled from his pocket, then glanced at his watch with puckered brow.

"I had hoped to take the car into the forest," he said, "but the roads are so soft we shan't get a yard. Still we can but try."

We went forward again, very slowly, to where a track ran off to the left. It was badly ploughed up, and the ruts were fully a foot deep. Monica and I got out to lighten the car, and Francis ran her in. But he hadn't gone five yards before the car was bogged up to the axles.

"We'll have to leave it," he said, jumping out. "It's ten minutes to two ... we haven't a second to lose."

He pulled a cloth cap from the pocket of his military overcoat, then stripped off the coat, showing his ordinary clothes underneath, and very shiny black field-boots up to his knees. He put his helmet in the overcoat and made a roll of it, tucking it under his arm, and then donned his cap.

"Now," he said, "We'll have to run for it, Monica, I'm afraid: we must reach our cover while the light lasts or I shan't be able to find it and it will be dark in these woods in about two hours from now. Are you ready?"

We struck off the track into the forest. There was not much undergrowth, and the trees were not planted very close, so our way was not impeded. We jogged on over a carpet of wet leaves, stumbling over the roots of the trees, tearing our clothes on the brambles, bringing down showers of raindrops from the branches of pine or fir we brushed on our headlong course. Now a squirrel bolted up his tree, now a rabbit frisked back into his hole, now a soft-eyed deer crashed away into the bushes on our approach. The place was so still that it gave me confidence. There was not a trace of