Jane Feather - Charade by Unknown (howl and other poems .TXT) 📕

Suddenly Danielle stopped running, recognizing the tall figure on thebeach who had been watching her gyrations. She called the traitor'sname with all the force of her lungs.

"St. Estephe!" Jules exclaimed just as a scream of pain came from oneof the Cornishmen. A bullet had caught him in the shoulder and hecollapsed gasping over the oars.

"Take over, man, damn your eyes!" Jules, with a brutal foot, kicked theFrenchman cowering with his wife and child in the bottom of the boat."If you do not, you will never reach safety. Quick!" he said urgentlyto the others. "Into the water, but silently. There are too many ofthem and our only hope is in surprise." He turned to the uninjuredCornishman. "Tell Jake to hold

DreamGirl

offshore until we signalagain." The man merely grunted, all breath and energy devoted to histask, and the four discarded boots, cloaks, swords, and pistols,keeping only thewickedly sharp daggers, before slipping into the now deep water wherethe current ran strongly but the dark night hid them from the confusionon the beach.

St. Estephe swore as he saw one-half of his prey make its escape, butthere was nothing he could do. It was a moonless night and the boat hadalmost vanished, swallowed into the blackness long before it would havebeen out of range of the muskets. But he

did

have the most importantobject and, for a moment on the cliff top as he'd watched them pileinto the dinghy, he had thought to lose that also. Why she had suddenlyleapt from the boat and straight into his arms was of littleinterest—suffice it that she had done so. He, walked toward her,withdrawing from his pocket the wad of cloth.

It had taken three men eventually to subdue her, but although her bodywas held imprisoned, arms bent painfully behind her back, her tonguewas still virulent and the defiance glared from the brown eyes as

shespat in the

comte

's face.

He smiled and wiped his cheek with the back of his hand. "You will payfor that later,

ma belle

," hesaid and suddenly clamped the wad ofcloth over her mouth and nose.

Danielle smelled the sickly sweetness of the chloroform and struggleduntil a vicious jerk of her arms made her cry out in pain against thesmothering cloth. The last thing she saw was the flat gleam of thosefishy eyes and her last conscious thought was that the simile waswrong. They were the eyes of a cobra preparing to strike . . .

Her friends, cowering in the freezing water against the black overhangof a jutting rock, could see little detail of the events on the beach.There was nothing they could do at this point since they werehopelessly outnumbered and armed only with knives—-good enough weaponsin single, close quarters combat, but of no use at all against ten menwith muskets.

They waited until the beach party had reached the top of the cliffbefore dragging their soaked bodies onto the sand of the small cove.

"What the devil has St. Estephe to do with this?" Westmore led the wayup the narrow path.

"Only the devil's work," Philip answered. "Why else would he takeDanny?"

Hidden behind the windswept scrub of the cliff top they watched St.Estephe and his men mount and

take off across the fields, Danny's limpbody hanging across the

comte

'ssaddle bow.

"They are not going immediately to Paris then." Jules spoke for thefirst time. "We can be of little use without dry clothes and horses andnow we know their direction we will find it easy to follow theirtracks."

"And what of Danny?" Tony demanded.

"If St. Estephe intended to kill her he would have done so already,"Jules replied. He seemed to be now simply a cold thinking machine, allemotion banished. He was responsible for the safety of his cousin'swife and they could afford no hasty impulsive action. St. Estephe wouldnot himself have carried her dead body in that way, he would have leftsuch a burden to a minion. So, whatever they had done to her on thebeach had simply immobilized her. Their task was to find where she hadbeen taken and effect her rescue—simple enough if one went about it inthe right way. "Come, let us go to the village. We will retrieve thehorses from the Legrands and find fresh clothes. If we succumb to theague we will be of little use to Danny."

It was cold common sense and no one demurred. They now had friends inthe village, fisherfolk who accepted them with undemanding hospitalityand no questions, receiving more than adequate recompense for theirkindness. In an hour or so, they would be able to follow the tracks ofDanielle's captors— eleven horsemen could not disappear without tracein this isolated region where all strange occurrences would benoticed—and her friends had the advantage of surprise.

*  *  *

Danielle woke to hammer blows in her skull, rhythmic, regular, each oneseemingly intended to split her head in two. A violent wave of nausea,the inevitable aftermath of the chloroform, left her retching into thepillow in helpless self-disgust as she tugged futilely at whatever itwas that held her wrists fast above her head. Then the merciful blackwave of unconsciousness swallowed her yet again.

The next time she awoke it was when something warm and soothing spongedher face and hair and the soiled pillow was removed, leaving her achinghead to lie flat.

"She'll not vomit again," St. Estephe said to the pasty-faced girlministering to the still figure on the bed. There's no further need tokeep her head raised. You may go now, and you will come in here onlywhen

I tell you—do you understand?"

The girl stammered her promise of obedience and stumbled from the room.The two guards outside the door caught her, their hands straying ingross familiarity over her body as she shuddered and begged

them toleave her be. They laughed and let her go with a generous salting ofcoarse remarks and promises.

Danielle opened her eyes and looked into the snake