The car rushed at the slope, and the shoulder of the cutting hid it from Melchard the fraction of a second before his next shot was heard.

Amaryllis took the double bend of the little caÑon with an assurance which satisfied Dick of her ability.

The sprint had exhausted his reserve of nervous force, for the moment slender; and he lay back in the ample seat of the tonneau scarcely more than half-conscious.

The road straightening before her and still climbing, Amaryllis glanced at him over her shoulder.

"There's some brandy left," she shouted, her eyes again on her work, "in your left pocket. Finish it."

Her voice roused him; with an effort he found and unscrewed the flask.

He had hardly drained it before sight came back to his eyes and he remembered the danger ahead.

Mut-mut!

They had reached a strip of road level and straight, some two hundred yards in length, which crossed the breadth of the ridge, on its way to a descent as steep as the climb already accomplished. But even this, the highest part of their road, ran in a cutting, or natural cleft, in the spine of the ridge; and rocks and bushes, with a few stunted trees, rose in jumbled terraces on both sides of the car.

Cover was there for a hundred Mut-muts; and for Dick Bellamy one was more than enough, while he could not see him.

With his heart in his mouth and Ockley's gun in his hand, he sat waiting.

But Amaryllis, in the false belief that both enemies were behind her, and well taught in the handling of a car, was not going to begin an unknown descent at full speed. About half-way across the level, she slackened the pace, turning her face a little to the left, as if to speak to the man behind her.

And in that moment, with the words in his mouth to bid her quicken, not relax the speed, Dick saw the bestial one-eared Malay, erect upon a boulder, not more than three feet on the off-side distant from the car.

The brute was on the point of leaping down upon them.

The girl saw Dick's revolver go up, turned, and saw its target.

The horrors of the morning, coming to a climax in this shock like a nightmare's crisis, seemed to stop her heart. With instinctive memory of her instructor's, "If you're taken bad, miss, throw out your clutch, jam on your breaks and faint comfortable," she stopped the car and lost consciousness.

In the same moment Dick fired.

The bullet was too late to stop that gorilla-like spring, and Mut-mut, with a glitter of steel flashing in one of his outspread palms, launched himself upon them, landing, like some huge and horrible cat of dreams, on all fours in the body of the car.

His left ribs were pressed against Dick's knees, his right hand tearing at and ripping the cloth and leather of the car's side-linings as he struggled to rise.

What was fastened in that right hand Dick had seen, and with Ockley's last bullet he blew out Mut-mut's brains.

Before even freeing himself from the weight of the corpse, he felt for its hip-pocket, and pushed what he found into his own belt.

Then, cursing himself for having finished the brandy, he searched the locker under the cushion of the seat and found, amongst a confusion of odds and ends, a sealed bottle of whisky and a corkscrew.

"Robbie Burns, Three Star, All-malt, Pre-War, Liqueur Highland Whisky," said the label, gay with pseudo-tartan colours, which, in happier hours, would have scared him worse than the words.

When he had stretched Amaryllis, still unconscious, in the road, with a cushion under her head and two beneath her feet, he let her lie awhile. Then, encouraged by the faint colour creeping back to her cheeks, he sat beside her in the road and lifted her shoulders in his left arm, coaxing her to life and forcing between her pale lips burning drops of "Robbie Burns."

So that, when her eyes came open, and a little sense into her ears, this was the kind of thing that she heard:

"Oh, yes, but you must! It's three stars, and there's only a pair of twins in your eyes. Proof strength, and yours isn't, you darling! Drink, will you, you wicked girl? I tell you, it's all-malt, and not a jim-jam to the cask. That's the way, my beauty! Now another! It's Pre-War—fitting prize for Our Brave Women Who Showed The Tommies How To Fight!"

"How silly you are, Dick, dear!" she said at last, wiping her lips. "And what perfectly beastly brandy!"

Dick tasted the stuff, and frankly spat it out.

"I suppose it might be worse, seeing its called whisky, and allowing for the label," he said. "Young woman, I'm going to kiss you somethin' crool in a minute. 'Course I'm silly! What was it you did, when I was only taking a snooze?"

"Cried," she answered.

"And I laugh to see you all right again."

But Amaryllis was looking about her.

"Is it gone, that awful thing?" she asked, whispering.

"Gone for good," said Dick.

"And, oh! the car? How did you ever stop it?"

"You stopped it, you wonder-child. And there's a great deal more 'how' about that."

"Then—then it's the same thing as last time?" she said, her face paling once more.

"The same thing," admitted Dick. "It was him or us, you know. And there's not much egoism in saying we're better worth keeping, is there?"

Though she shuddered again and bore a grave face, he could see that she was relieved.

Rising with the help of his hand, she tried to smooth her rumpled feathers, and said:

"Hadn't we better go on?"

"I've got to move something from the car first," he replied, with ambiguity merely euphemistic. "You stand here and keep a look-out towards Harthborough."

"All right," she answered, understanding very well what he had to do. She turned away, and then, with an effort, her face still averted, "Can't I help you, Dick?" she asked.

"Yes—by sitting on that stone and not turning round till I let you."

And he went back to the car, taking the "Robbie Burns" with him.

In his shaken and exhausted condition, the task of dragging that revolting corpse from the car was not easy. Heavy he had known the body would be, but when he had opened the door on the off-side, and would have pulled the dead thing out by the heels, he was surprised to find that he could not move it. On a second effort the slight yielding of the mass was accompanied by a sound of rending and he remembered Mut-mut's right hand, armed with a weapon of unspeakable cruelty, which only once before in his life had he seen—the Mahratta baag-nouk, or Tiger's Claw.

He went round to the car's-near side, and there found, as he had expected, the dead right hand anchored to the lining-cushions by what was, he supposed, a unique specimen, made to the fancy of the creature that wore it; for, in addition to the leather strap across the back of the hand, two rings were welded to the instrument, through which to pass the second and third fingers, thus keeping in position the four short, razor-edged steel claws hidden in the palm.

Dick loosened the buckle of the strap, and drew the hand, already cold, from the rings; picked the baag-nouk from the cushion, wrapped it in a greasy cloth out of the tool-box, and hid it under the seat.

The thought of that gruesome weapon, more frightful than the unsheathed claws of the royalest Bengal tiger, hanging over the head of his chosen among women, stung Dick Bellamy to very unceremonious removal of the body, which, after rifling it of a handful of cartridges, he flung by the roadside; and then, lest Amaryllis should see the awful head again, even in death, he covered the whole corpse with an overcoat of Melchard's from the car.

The engine had run down. As he cranked it up, Dick was seized by a sudden savage desire to have in his hands the man who had brought all his outrage, suffering and terror to the girl whose uncovered head and patient back he could see waiting for him down the road.

A fierce rage, such as he had seldom felt, and never since boyhood, flooded his body with a dry heat, and stimulated his intelligence.

For with these thoughts of the evil Melchard came sudden insight into the man's purpose at the foot of the Bull's Neck, and his probable action at the present moment.

"He was shooting to drive us into Mut-mut's arms, and to make us believe our danger was all behind us," he reasoned. "And it's a white elephant to a dead rat he's trudging up this road now to find what Mut-mut's left of us. Perhaps he's heard the two shots, and me cranking up."

Not daring to call Amaryllis, he trusted her precise obedience to his orders, and sank, almost as swiftly as PÉpe into the landscape.

Crouching, crawling, worming himself on his belly from tree-stump to boulder he mounted some ten feet above the road on the side away from the car, and then, invisible from the road level, continued his course until he had retraced about fifty yards of the way they had travelled.

Then he stopped, lying prone where two rocks, standing so little apart that they seemed long years ago to have formed a single mass, gave him view of the road's whole width.

He laid one ear against the rock, and over the other a hand.

After a minute's waiting, footsteps; three more, and a weary figure came in sight where the level road began.

The joy he felt kept him patient until Melchard, unmistakable, was right beneath him.

"Hi! Melchard!" he cried.

Melchard started, stopped, and looked anxiously round.

"Never heard the voice before? You'll hear it often, and lots of it, soon, Melchard. Pull out your gun."

The man in the road made no attempt to obey. From Mut-mut's revolver Dick sent a bullet which threw up the dust at Melchard's feet.

"Two inches to the right of your feet."

He fired again. Again the little puff of dust.

"An inch and a half to the left of your feet," he sang out cheerfully. "The next'll be half-way between and three feet higher. Put down your gun."

Melchard produced his automatic and dropped it.

"Kick it away from you."

Melchard obeyed, and his weapon lay three yards out of reach.

"Move an inch, and I'll put a hole in your slimy heart."

Melchard stood, still game enough to control in some measure the trembling which had seized him.

Then Dick raised his voice.

"Miss Caldegard!" he shouted.

"I'm coming," came the clear voice in reply, and a patter of light feet.

Dick could just see the car, and Amaryllis when she reached it.

"Where are you?" she called, bewildered.

"Keep straight on. You see a thing something like a man, standing in the road, don't you?"

"Yes," answered Amaryllis.

"Near it you will find an automatic pistol, on the ground. Pick it up, please, and go back to your seat," shouted Dick.

Amaryllis obeyed him. But, after going a little way, she called back to him and instinctively she imitated his formality in presence of the unclean.

"Mr. Bellamy!" she cried. "Please—not this one."

To this allusion Melchard had no clue. But there was in her tone something which turned the blood cold in him.

The invisible Dick, however, answered in a laughing voice so joyous that Amaryllis was vaguely distressed.

"Rather not," he replied. "I've something much better for this guy."

With intense pleasure, while his observation-slit gave him sight of her, he watched the girl returning to her post.

Then he shot a fresh order at the prisoner.

"Turn round," he said.

Melchard obeyed.

"If you move a foot or lift a hand before I speak again, it's a bullet between the shoulders."

Judging this to be the position most demoralizing, Dick descended with more haste than precaution. Melchard, his entrails shaking, stood, to all appearance, firm as a rock. When Dick tapped his shoulder, he turned, showing a face white and drawn.

"The man Bunce!" he exclaimed.

"Silly liar!" said Dick. "You knew who I was the moment you saw my cheek—guessed I was the man who was queering your game. I have queered it, and I'm going to queer you. Walk in front of me, and don't forget, that, if I have to disappoint myself by killing you, I shan't lose any sleep about it."

Melchard walked silent and erect, with the unseen pistol-barrel behind him.

Dick could see even in the shoulders before him the ripple of fear controlled, but not conquered.

And the sight brought, not indeed compassion, but a separated measure of respect.

When they had almost reached the car, he called a halt.

"I shan't keep on threatening you," he said "You're down and out. Understand, once for all, that, on the least movement, I shoot to kill."

He pointed to the coat spread over what had been Mut-mut.

"That's yours," he said. "Put it on."

The man was reeking with sweat, exhausted and in mortal fear. A chill might endanger the success of Dick's design.

Melchard, guessing well what it covered, lifted the fawn-coloured overcoat with resolution; but the earless side of that frightful head, with another and bloody hole making a pair of dead eyes to stare up at him, was too much for the shaken nerve, and Alban Melchard collapsed on his face in the road.

Dick turned him over, lifted an eyelid, and, convinced that the man was unconscious, fetched from the car his bottle of the strange device, and poured a stream from its neck into Melchard's half-open mouth.

For some moment's after, he was afraid that the fit of choked coughing his rough remedy had caused would compel him to leave a second corpse by the roadside.

When it was over, however, it appeared that the stimulant had been partly assimilated, for Melchard was able to stand. When he had got his arms into the overcoat, Dick led him to the car.

From the locker under the seat he produced a thick tumbler.

"Get in," he said, and half-filled the glass from the bottle.

Melchard lay back exhausted in the near-side corner, examining with dull eyes the havoc made by Mut-mut's claw.

"Drink that," said Dick.

Melchard shook his head.

"I hate spirits," he objected feebly. "That's his stuff—Mut-mut's."

"You'll hate it worse soon," was all the answer he got; and drank, gasping between gulps.

Knowing that the man had not a kick left in him, Dick ventured, rather than fetch Amaryllis into sight of the uncovered corpse, to mount the front seat and drive the car to the place where she sat waiting.

When she was beside him, he asked if she were fit to drive.

"Yes," she answered. "But I nearly went to sleep waiting for you, Dick."

"I don't think either of us is fit to drive her to town," he said, looking at his watch. "I'm pretty tough, but I'm nearly all in. How you've stuck it as you have, I can't understand. So we'll have a shot at that five-fifteen. We've about seven miles to go. Thirty m.p.h.—that's fourteen minutes. Bar hold-ups, that's good enough. It's just five to five now, but I must fix up my passenger."

Amaryllis looked round at Melchard.

"What are you going to do with him?" she asked, turning back upon Dick a face of disgust.

"Take him up to town," said Dick.

"How beastly!" said Amaryllis.

"Doped, my child—most royally doped—with a kindly poison that he loathes."

He left her and took his seat beside the prisoner. Amaryllis, not a little vexed by the addition to their party, started the car.

As they glided down the wide bends of the descent, Dick plied the wretched Melchard with dose after dose of throat-rasping spirit. After the second half-tumbler the man wept, sobbing out entreaties for mercy. And Amaryllis felt a wave of cold fear run down her spine when she heard the voice and words of her lover's reply—words not meant for her hearing she knew for the voice was so low that it was only the precision of the speaker's passion which carried them, against the wind, to her ears.

"Pity! Pity on a filthy creature that never felt it—not even for his own filthy servants! Pity for a lickspittle parasite that battens on the passions and vices of hopeless gaol-birds, abandoned women, jaded pleasure-hunters and terrified neurasthenics! Pity on a speculator calculating huge revenues from the festering putrefaction of human disease! I haven't hit you yet, because your flesh is foul to me—but—drink that down, or, by God! I'll smash every bone in your face."

A gasp, a spasmodic sound of gulping, another gasp—and silence.

Two-thirds of the bottle's contents was down the man's throat. Dick poured the remnant into his flask and sat watching the effects.

Satisfied at last that he had induced complete alcoholic coma, he touched Amaryllis on the shoulder.

"Stop her as soon as you can," he said. "I'll drive now."

When they were off again, she asked, in a voice none too steady, what he had been doing to the wretched man behind her.

"Made him absolutely blind—blotto," he answered.

"You sounded rather dreadful, Dick," she said; adding, after a hesitation, "Cruel—almost."

His face was set on the road ahead of him, and his profile, she thought, though not definitely vindictive in expression, was hard as stone.

"Cruel?" he asked.

"You said awful things in a very dreadful voice."

"The awful thoughts I had account for the voice, beloved," he explained. "They couldn't be said to him. I thought of his hands touching you—his voice speaking to you—you, young as an angel, as beautiful as the goddess that floated in upon the world in a mother-of-pearl dinghy! As clever as that other one with the fireman's tin hat, as game as Jimmy Wilde, and as kind as Heaven. Spoke to you—touched you—looked at you—blasphemy, profanation and sacrilege! And barged into your bedroom, when—. My God! woman," cried poor Dick, as if a flame came from the marble lips of him, "I could have watched him through an hour of rack and thumbscrew, when I thought of you up in that room of his. It's the cruelty I haven't done that's my claim to the next vacancy in halos. Cruel? Just for pouring down him a few tumblerfuls of a mixture of arrack and spud-spirit that he'd bought for his damned Caliban! And I only did that because there weren't any handcuffs handy."

Uttered in a voice wonderfully soft, yet vibrating with a quality which thrilled him like some tone of a celestial violin, her answering question reached him through the rush of their speed.

"Do you love me like that?" she asked.

To the short nod of his white silhouette he added curtly:

"Be quiet, please. I'm driving."

She chuckled softly to herself, thinking how well already she began to understand his ways—ways so odd and dear, she told herself, that never, she was sure, would she tire of them.