Thunder On The Right (24 page)

"You fool!" cried Jennifer. "Even if you do get away, you can't hide forever."

"No? Spain's a big place. My money's over there, and I have friends."

"She'll recover," said Jennifer brutally. "She'll remember. Do you imagine she'll stay with you then?"

"Why not? I'm good to her."

She said desperately, "You're crazy! You'll never get clear!"

He turned on her then, with something of a resumption of his old manner. "Shut your mouth, you little fool! D'you think I've run the risks I have, keeping her, to let her go now? You may as well save your breath,
petite anglaise
. She goes with me."

"And I?" said Jenny quietly.

He eyed her. "You'll stay here. But I'm not leaving you loose to spy on the way we go. I said I'd not hurt you, and I won't. But I've got to put you out of action for a while, my dear. It might be quite some time before they think of looking for you here, and by that time we should be well away."

He lifted a coil of rope from the back of a chair, and moved toward her.

Before he had taken more than a step the cottage door opened again. Jennifer whirled toward it, hope widening her eyes and parting her lips. But it was only Gillian, breathless from the buffeting of the storm, which had whipped color into her pale cheeks, and set a sparkle in her eyes.

She said, "The mule's ready, Pierre."

"Good. Get your coat. We're going."

Gillian ran into the inner room. Bussac came around the table toward Jennifer, rope in hand. She shrank back, and, as he grabbed for her, she dodged his hand, and ran around the table, facing him again breathlessly. He cursed, and lunged after her. His hand scraped her sleeve, but she ducked and ran, facing him again. It was like some dreadful nursery game, playing tag with terror around the lamplit table, dodging and panting on the edges of the little pool of light, while behind them their shadows danced and swelled, hugely, up wall and ceiling. There was no sound but the scrape of feet, and their quick, hard breathing, and the quiet voice of the clock in the corner ticking the seconds away . . . but to Jennifer that monstrous pouncing darkness was pierced with her own, frantic cry—
Stephen! Stephen! Stephen. . . !
He would come; he had to come; he had to come. .. .

The terrible little game went on.

The shadow loomed, struck, as Bussac flung himself across the table, a long arm shooting out to grab. She jumped backwards from the clutching hand. He overbalanced, falling heavily forward. The lamp rocked. In the split second when his weight was on the table, she sprang through the reeling shadows toward the door.

Her hand was on the latch when he caught her. His arms closed around her from behind in a powerful grip, and he dragged her back from the door. She struggled, wild now with terror, and lashed out with her feet, kicking him on the legs. He cursed again and shifted his grip. One arm was tight around her body; his other hand bit into her arm. Vaguely, through whirling panic, she heard Gillian's voice say,
"Pierre!"
and his breathless, almost savage reply, "Go on. I'll catch you up in a minute. You know the way as far as the fall."

"But the girl?"

"I can't leave her to follow us, you know that. I've got to shut her up. Now for God's sake, Marie------"

"All right."

The door opened. The wind whirled in. Jennifer screamed once, "Gillian!
Don't go!
"

His hand clamped brutally over her mouth. The door banged. Seconds afterwards, surging back on the wind, came the beat of retreating hoofs.

She felt his muscles relax a little. She jerked her head sharply, and the hand loosened. She bit viciously, blindly, like a terrified animal, and felt the skin break under her teeth. He pulled his hand away with an oath, and his grip tightened fiercely.

She was held helpless against him, his one arm around her, pinioning her, while with the other hand—the bitten one—he forced her head up till her eyes met his.

She saw through her sick terror that he was laughing.

"Snow Queen, eh?" he said, thickly. "So you bite, you little devil? Who'd have thought it? It's a pity I've no time to teach you your manners."

Before she realized what he meant to do, he bent his head and kissed her full on the mouth.

She made a tiny sound of protest, then the shadows whirled up to, engulf her, and she went limp in his arms.

The gap in her consciousness cannot have lasted many seconds, but Bussac had moved fast. She found herself lying on her back on what appeared to be a bed, blinking up dazedly, half-sick, at the low ceiling where the lamplight swelled and dwindled in the drafts. The sound of the clock came unnaturally loud, distorted by her semiconscious state into a hurrying rattle, like the faraway clicking of rapid little hoofs. ...

Gillian.

Memory flooded back. She moved sharply, only to find that something was gripping her hands, holding her down. Her whole body was weighted as if with lead . . .

helpless, stifled. . . . She realized, incredulously, that she was lying, bound and gagged, on the bed in the inner room of the cottage.

Her first feeling was one of pure rage that anyone should have handled her so. The rope was not cruelly tied, but the knots seemed to gnaw at her wrists and ankles, and the gag was sheer horror. Something had been stuffed into her mouth, and then a scarf tightly bound around the lower part of her face. It pressed on her tongue, drying her mouth painfully, and setting her teeth screamingly on edge. She made a frantic little sound of protest, and turned her head agonizingly to where the lamplight streamed in an oblique shaft through the half-open door.

Then shrank into herself, watching with wide-open eyes and thudding heart.

Pierre Bussac was by the jamb of the door, his big body filling the wedge of light.

He was not looking at Jennifer. He was standing very still; his whole attention riveted on something in his hand.

A letter? She thought she recognized the torn folds. He must have found it in her pocket. . . . Yes, she knew now....

It was Isaac Lenormand's letter.

She thought wildly what this new discovery might mean. He now had part—half—of what must be Doña Francisca's blackmailing lever in his hand. He would know that Jennifer, too, had read it. And he might think that she knew where the other half was still concealed. But if he was going away tonight, surely neither Jennifer's knowledge nor Doña Francisca's defeat could matter? And he had said he would not hurt her. . .

. The flesh seemed to flinch on her bones as she went small in her bonds, her dazed mind insisting, childishly, on that one brittle hope. ... He had said he would not hurt her. ... He was not all bad; his treatment of Gillian, self-interested though it was, surely showed that? True, he had compelled Gillian to accept him ruthlessly enough, but he was a creature of his passions, ferociously indifferent to any claims but his own, and driven by desires and hates equally compulsive and uncomplicated. Hates?

She remembered the look in his face as he confronted Doña Francisca the night before, and, oddly enough, felt reassured. Pure hatred, banked and smoldering through long years of frustration toward some sudden and terrible explosion . . , compared with what she had seen in him then, his conduct to her tonight had been almost gentle. He wouldn't hurt her. All he wanted was to put her out of action for a while. That was what he'd said. He wouldn't hurt her.
He wouldn't
. . .

He thrust the letter into his pocket and turned toward the bed. His shadow seemed to swell and darken all the room. He took a step toward her; the shadow reared up the wall, over the ceiling, and hung there, waiting.

He had stopped and turned his head to listen.

Outside, the wind whined down a petulant diminuendo scale. Feet clicked across the cobbles.

Stephen!
. . . It was a soundless, mindless scream. It seemed to her to fill the night and drown the wind. . . .
At last! Stephen!

The outer door opened quickly. From her place in the shadowed corner Jennifer could not see it, but Bussac had stiffened like a pointer, and now he whipped out into the lamplight, pulling the door to behind him.

The door failed to shut, and swung back a little way, creaking, its wedge of light once more widening across the roughly boarded floor. She could see the corner of the table with the loaf still on it as Gillian had left it, the bottle of wine glowing like a ruby, the slim glitter of the knife under the lamp. Beyond the table leg glimmered the dying logs of the fire.

Bussac had moved out of sight, toward the door. She saw the logs sputter sparks in the draft, then the outer door closed quietly.

She heard him say on a quick-drawn breath: "You! Already? How did you get away so early?" Through the breathed words came soft footsteps and the whisper of silk.

Jenny stirred in her bonds. She had forgotten—unbelievably she had forgotten the other terror that stalked the stormy night. Doña Francisca's voice carne, pitched low.

"You've let her go?"

The words were softly spoken, but it was apparent that she was furiously angry, and Bussac's reply was automatically defensive. He hedged. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't be a fool! I heard your beast!
Where has she gone?
"

"Where you'll not find her, my lady!"

There was a pause. "You're going to do as I told you?"

"I'm going to do as I please. And now get out of here. I'm going, too."

"I'll wait. I'll see you when you come back."

He said deliberately, "Then you'll wait a long time. I shan't be back."

"What d'you mean? No, wait. Wait! Fool! What d'you intend to do? You can't have thought------"

He interrupted roughly. "We'll not start that again. There's been enough talk of fools and folly, and this particular folly's over for me. You can do as you like, but I'm going. Now get out of my way."

"Pierre Bussac! You don't mean this?"

"No? Will you get away from that door, or do I have to make you?"

Her voice blazed with fury and contempt. "Don't dare lay a hand on me, you clod!"

He laughed, and there was a self-confidence, almost a triumph, in his voice that must have shaken her. He said, "Do you want to wait here with me for the police?"

"The police? Here?"

"Yes. Here."

She said on a long-drawn breath of hatred, "The English girl. . .."

"As you say." His feet scraped the floor, and Jennifer, rigid in her shadowed corner, waited for exposure. But he had only moved to the table. She saw his hand lift toward the lamp to turn it out. He said over his shoulder, "Now will you go?"

But she moved quickly to cross the room. Her long robes swished across the glow of the fire. She was in Jennifer's field of vision now, as she leaned over the table toward Bussac. Her face, lit from below by the lamp, was like a mask thrown dramatically on a screen, a thing of sharp shadows and hard highlights, with great pits of darkness for eyes.

She said, almost breathlessly, "No. Wait. Has that girl really found anything out?"

"Just about everything, I imagine," he said coolly. "About me?"

"Oh, yes. She was up here last night and heard our conversation."

Her hands went down flat on the table with an urgent little slapping sound. Beside them the knife blade jumped and glittered.

"She's been up here tonight as well?"

"Yes."

"And what have you done with her? Let her go to tell her story?"

There was a fractional pause. The blade gleamed stilly by the thin hand. Then Bussac said slowly, "There was no point in keeping her. She'd already told it."

The woman made a sharp little sound, and her teeth gleamed as she bit her lower lip.

"Then—I can't stay here either. I don't want to face an inquiry. I can't. You must know I can't."

He said unpleasantly, "Then that's just too bad for you. You should have thought of that before you blackmailed me into giving you half my takings. You should have stopped to consider that you were making yourself equally guilty— and that there'd come a time when diamond could cut diamond, Doña Francisca!"

He, too, had moved right up to the table. He was leaning across it toward her, and his face came into Jennifer's range of vision, dark, formidable, with a look in the black eyes that Jennifer had seen before—the same flash of naked ferocity when he had attacked Stephen, but this time without either fear or uncertainty to cloud it.

This—it was patent—was no longer the angry brute that Doña Francisca had been used to hold at bay; this was a dangerous animal all at once very sure of itself. As their glances met and locked she must have seen this, for her gaze widened as if in surprise, and she drew back a little, shifting her ground.

"You're talking nonsense. Equal guilt. It was never the same, never! It's just that I don't choose to face an inquiry, and perhaps have to return what I've purchased with your money."

He gave his hard little laugh. "Yes?"

She said fiercely, "They can't touch me! All I did was take the money from you, a common criminal—a murderer, and use it for good!
For good!
I took nothing for myself! It was for the house of God!"

"That's as it may be, but you knew where I was getting it. You knew I was helping criminals, and murderers, to escape. You were condoning murder, Doña Francisca. .

. ." He smiled unpleasantly. "They call it being accessory after the fact, don't they?"

Her nostrils quivered to a sharp breath, and the thin lips thinned still further. She leaned forward again with one of her swift, striking movements, her face sharp in the lamplight. "All the same, Pierre Bussac, we're in this together. Diamond can cut diamond both ways, my friend! I'll not sit here waiting for the police while you walk out and leave me. . . ! You've got to take me with you!" Her voice dropped to a thin urgent whisper. "I know the way you go," said Doña Francisca. "Take me with you—to Spain. ..."

But Bussac laughed in her face. "Not on your life!" he said. His hand went again to the wick of the lamp. "Now get out. You're wasting my time, and I've still—something—to do before I go."