Tom Tiddler's Island, стр. 66
Northfleet’s hand went to his pocket and clenched on the butt of his pistol. He waited, on the rack, for the reception of Zelensky’s broad hint. To his relief, Leo went dead against the mercenary’s suggestion.
“No good,” he said sharply. “The gold’s what we’re after, and how’re we gonna get it if we meddle with these skirts upstairs? You tell me that, mister; you was there when the bargain was struck.”
But to Northfleet’s dismay the tempter had his plan cut and dried.
“Zat is not very difficult, Leo. Quite simple, really. You remember ze precise bargain? Ve keep ze little girls until zose fellows haff handed over ze gold. Vonce ve haff got ze gold, ve haff got it. Zen ve turn ze little girls loose, bot not before. Zey can tell zeir story after zat—if zey like—bot zat will not matter. I do not soppose ve shall giff op ze gold in payment of damages? No, not likely.”
Northfleet sensed that this cool proposition had gained the ear of the audience. There was a stir among the men in the lounge. The leader was evidently hesitating—not from any moral scruples, but merely on grounds of expediency.
“It’s not for me to say,” Leo declared at last. “You boys must settle it the way——”
A clamour of drunken approval drowned the end of his sentence. Northfleet now bitterly regretted that he had refused to let Colin accompany him. With two of them, a sudden attack at this moment might have had a sporting chance of success, since it would have come like a bolt from the blue; but a single-handed effort was foredoomed. Still, it would have to be made. As his anger rose, he grew cooler and cooler, calculating his best course of action as he crouched at the panel and listened to the brutal jests of the group in the lounge. At last Zelensky’s oily voice dominated the rest.
“Komm along, Cockatoo. Ve go opstairs and invite zem down. If zey refuse, ve persuade zem, nicht wahr? Take no denial, efen if zey feel shy.”
“I like ’em shy,” said Cockatoo’s voice, with gusto in its tone.
Northfleet slipped the panel wide open, stepped swiftly through the gap, and sheltered himself behind the projecting end of the staircase. Almost at the same moment at the open door of the lounge appeared a gunman whom Northfleet had not yet seen—Cockatoo, evidently —and behind him was Zelensky, with a leer of anticipation on his broad face.
Northfleet had no intention of taking Cambronne’s legendary courtesy as a model. He fired first, and he meant to kill if he could. At that range a miss was impossible. Two shots took effect on Cockatoo, who dropped with a yell of agony. The third, more hastily aimed, hit Zelensky, though evidently it inflicted only a flesh-wound. Then Northfleet in two strides was behind the panel, which he slammed after him.
A general engagement with the gunmen had been no part of his plans. That could have ended in only one way. What he wanted was to create a diversion which would give the girls a respite; and, if possible, he hoped to lure the gunmen to follow him into the underground maze. That would occupy time, if he could manage it.
He waited until he heard sounds of blows on the woodwork and then fired again through the panel. The bullet-hole would show them where the passage lay, and he counted on the stoutness of the door to delay them for a few moments while he got into safety.
“Get an axe!” he heard Zelensky shout, and smiled as he saw that his scheme was working out as he had hoped. Then came more sounds of blows on the panel, and Zelensky’s voice:
“You let me go first. I owe him von for zis.”
Northfleet had no time to listen further. He sprang down the stairs and continued his flight until he had crossed the first chasm in the maze. He pulled up his rope behind him and ensconced himself on the brink of the pit. For a few moments the blows on the door echoed dully down the passages, then came a final crash as the panel gave way, and Northfleet could hear the eager shouts of his pursuers.
Zelensky’s voice raised itself above the tumult, loud enough for Northfleet to catch some of the words. Apparently the stout mercenary had constituted himself the tactician of the party.
“It would be lunatic to go down zere, all togezzer in ze dark, to hunt him out. No goot. Ve’d be shooting von anozzer by accident. I go down first; and sommbody brings a light, quick. Natorp has a flash-lamp. You get it, Leo.”
Evidently this suggestion was adopted. The noise died down. Then, after a pause, Northfleet’s straining ears heard stealthy steps in the corridor adjacent to his own. He flashed his lamp against the wall nearest to him, so that only the very faintest diffused illumination could reach the end of the passage where the chasm was. Zelensky’s eyes, sensitised by the dark, evidently caught the dim glow on the wall beyond the pit, though it was too feeble to reveal the trip-bar to him.
“Aha! So zat is vere you are, Mr. Norzhfleet?”
“Yes. Just round the corner from you.”
He heard another cautious advance made by Zelensky, and calculated that the mercenary must now be close to the trip-bar.
“Nice that I have a light and you’ve none, Mr. Zelensky. I shall see you as you round the corner.”
“Ant so fery convenient for