The Vengeance of Larose

II—The Coming of Larose-1

II—The Coming of LaroseTHE following day was a Saturday, and no member of the firm of the Malaga Wine & Spirit Company went up to the city. Instead, until late afternoon, they were busy trying to find out what was wrong with the engine of their motor launch.

There did not seem very much amiss, but still it was undoubtedly making unusual noises, which they feared might portend some major trouble later, perhaps when they were far out to sea. And trouble then they certainly did not want, for among their activities in anything that would earn easy money they smuggled in forbidden drugs.

A London-bound tramp steamer was due shortly and would drop a buoyed parcel of cocaine for them, well off the North Foreland, and they would have to be in the vicinity to pick it up with as little delay as possible.

As the day wore on, towards five o'clock, a fog began to creep from over seawards and accordingly they made all haste to return home. Fogs on the Denbigh marshes were never to be held lightly, as in many places, except in an exceedingly dry summer, the track to Marle House was always one to be negotiated with the greatest of care.

Their evening meal over, they were discussing once again the proposition put to Pellew by his visitor of the previous day, when they were all brought quickly to their feet by the sound of a loud explosion somewhere out to sea.

They ran outside on to the seawall and peered into the darkness; but the fog was now heavy and they could see nothing beyond twenty to thirty yards.

"That's funny!" exclaimed Royne, the ex-paymaster. "It was quite different from a signal of distress and nothing like, either, the boom of a gun."

They remained on the seawall for a few minutes and then, nothing more happening, returned into the house and resumed their interrupted conversation.

An hour and longer went by and then, a faint breeze stirring, the fog began to lift and stars to show through the haze. It was then approaching high water and the small waves were beginning to lap not far from the seawall.

Presently a black object could have been seen about a couple of hundred yards or so out to sea, gradually, however, drawing nearer and nearer to the shore. Then, anyone watching there, would have perceived the object to be a man. He was swimming on his back, very slowly and as if he were very tired.

Presently he turned over, and apparently finding he was no longer out of his depth, sank on to his feet and began to wade laboriously towards the shore.

He was quite a long time covering the last fifty yards; but, at length gaining the dry sand, he threw himself down as if in the extreme stages of exhaustion.

For some minutes he lay where he was, but then the waves now beginning to lap round him, he struggled to his feet again and with unsteady steps mounted upon the seawall. Marle House was then not 20 yards from him and, against the faint starlight, its walls stood out as a deeper shadow of the night. He gasped in amazement; and a great thankfulness surged through him as he perceived there were lights streaming from two windows.

Stumbling down the land side of the seawall, he made for the lighted window nearer to him, but his strength was not quite equal to the journey, and he sank down on to the ground when only a few yards away. He saw the window was open at the top and was about to call out for help, when what he heard made him stifle his cry.

A man was speaking inside the room and his words came clearly and distinctly. "But after we've spied out the place where we are to go, and it comes to the actual shooting, then we'll all use our guns together, so that it can't be proved which of us killed them. With six shots between us, we ought to be quite certain of getting them both."

Almost fainting with exhaustion as he was, the half-drowned man had yet strength enough to express his amazement. "Great Scot!" he murmured. "But who are these people here? Shooting and killing—what the devil does it mean?"

Then suddenly, as if nerved to greater strength, he rose to his feet and, passing beyond the window, proceeded to walk slowly along the side of the house. He turned a corner and came upon a door.

But a great weakness again seized him and he had just strength enough to kick twice upon the door before he collapsed in a dead faint on to the ground.

The next thing he remembered was finding himself lying upon a bed, in a dimly lighted and almost bare room. He was wrapped in a blanket and could feel there was a hot-water bag at his feet and another against his heart. An elderly woman with a kind face was giving him something hot and fiery to drink out of a cup. Three men were standing behind her and, subconsciously, he noticed they did not look so friendly as the woman, and that their expressions, indeed, were frowning ones.

"There, you'll be all right now," said the woman smilingly. "Do you feel quite warm?" and, too weak to speak, he nodded his thanks.

Then one of the men came nearer and bent over him. "Who are you?" asked the man, "and how did you come to get there?" but he made no answer and just stared at his interrogator as if he did not understand.

A second man moved up and laid his fingers upon his pulse. "He's not strong enough yet to talk," he said. "His pulse is still very thready and poor. We shan't get anything out of him to-night. He'll have to have some sleep first," and after a few moments the three men left the room.

"Now, you're quite comfortable," said the woman, "and can go off to sleep. I'll leave the light burning and will come in every now and then to see if you are all right. So don't you be worrying about anything."

The man upon the bed had been quite correct in his subconscious idea that the three men had not been too pleased to see him lying there, and he would have realised it most fully could he but have overheard what they were now saying among themselves.

"A confounded nuisance," scowled Pellew. "We ought to have let him croak."

"And he'd have croaked easily enough," nodded Rising, the one-time medical practitioner, "if we had only left him for half an hour where we found him. He had no pulse at all." He shook his head. "Still, with this damned woman about, we couldn't have let him die. Curse her and her first aid."

Royne shook his head. "But it wouldn't have done to have had the body of a dead man found anywhere near here. It would have meant an inquest and all that. Then if any of us had had to give evidence about finding the body, the devil only knows what might have happened. Our photographs might even have appeared in the newspapers."

"But do you imagine I meant we should have left the body at our very front door?" queried Pellew, sarcastically. "Couldn't we have carried it half a mile or so away?"

"But that would have been risky," commented Royne. "We might easily have been seen as the fog's practically all gone now."

"Another thing," supplemented Rising. "Wherever he'd been found, when they came to make the post mortem it would have been seen he had not been drowned, as there would have been no water in his lungs. Then that in itself would have aroused a lot of interest. Can you imagine the newspapers with headlines. 'Unfortunate man swims ashore, but escapes drowning only to die of exposure!' A-ah—" his arm shot out in his agitation—"perhaps that explosion we heard had something to do with his coming here! I never thought of that." He looked uneasy. "Damnation, we may have publicity forced upon us, in spite of all we can do."

The next morning Royne and Rising were still asleep when Pellew burst into their room.

"Here, you fellows," he burst out excitedly, but for all that speaking in low tones. "Look what I've just found on the sands. This jacket and, inside it, this paper." He made a grimace of some amusement. "Our friend, whom we saved last night, and who is now eating bacon and eggs, is a ticket-of-leave man. See, the paper is not very clear because of these oil marks, and the salt water, but it's a ticket-of-leave licence, sure enough, and his name is Bracegirdle, or something like that." He nodded grimly. "I'm going to have a talk with the gentleman straight away."

Gilbert Larose, the one-time international detective, for the nearly-drowned man was he, had passed quite a good night, and, except that he was feeling very stiff and that his eyes were inflamed and sore from the salt water, was very much his strong, vigorous self again.

Going over in his mind all that had happened the previous night, he was of opinion he was a very fortunate man for, until he had turned over from his back when within a hundred yards of the shore, he had not had the remotest idea whether he was close to land or half a dozen miles away from it. He had been quite aware, however, that he could not keep himself afloat much longer.

He had left Great Yarmouth the previous morning, in the motor boat Annette, belonging to his wife's cousin, in company with Kenneth Bracegirdle, the ex-convict.

All had gone well with them until they were close to the South-West Gunfleet buoy, in the King's Channel, and making for the River Crouch. Then a thick fog had suddenly descended upon them, blotting out all view of everything beyond a few yards, and he had thought it best to anchor, hoping that in a few minutes the fog would disappear as quickly as it had come.

He had sent the man down into the cabin to prepare a meal and was sitting on the bow of the boat with his legs dangling over the side, idly watching the sullen-looking water streaming by.

Then he did not know exactly what happened, but he found himself suddenly struggling in the sea, with his head spinning like a top and a feeling that his eardrums were going to burst. He had a confused recollection of having heard a most tremendous clap of thunder.

His thoughts, however, soon began to take definite shape and, perceiving that the surface of the sea was covered with oil, he realised there must have been an explosion on the boat. Then, seeing no pieces of floating wreckage anywhere about, he knew the boat must have sunk like a stone and taken his companion down with it.

He turned over on to his back and allowed himself to drift with the tide.

All that followed afterwards was like a dreadful dream. He felt so stunned and giddy that his brain would not function properly, but he thought he must have been drifting for hours and hours, with each minute the sea becoming colder and colder and his finding it more and more difficult to keep himself from going under.

Then he remembered at last reaching the shore and throwing himself down in exhaustion. He thought he must have fainted. Next, he remembered, and, strangely enough, his recollection was very clear there, sitting under a window and hearing someone say they must all shoot together, so that no one would know whose bullets had actually killed two men.

This remark stood out most clear-cut in his mind, and his professional instincts returning, he began to dwell upon the situation, turning it over and over in his mind, in his waking moments during the night.

The men in this house, he told himself, were planning cold-blooded murder. So, naturally, they had not been pleased that a stranger had been suddenly thrust among them, and he could quite understand why they had been regarding him with such unfriendly eyes as they had stood round the bed.

He had sensed instinctively then that it had been only the woman who had had any sympathy with him in his half-dead condition.

The next morning, with his strength coming back and his perceptions now perfectly clear, he slowly formed the resolve to find out what this talk about shooting signified. It would be just such an adventure as he would love; and the more risk he ran the greater the thrill he would get out of it.