Tom Tiddler's Island, стр. 72
The detective nodded with tacit approval.
“By the way, there are four of these fellows here,” he pointed out. “The last of them died a minute or two before you came down. The one outside makes five. But there were six altogether, weren’t there? If the sixth man’s got away he may give trouble.”
Northfleet suddenly remembered that his own earlier doings at Wester Voe were still unknown to Wenlock. The fourth body in the room was Cockatoo’s. If the detective chose to imagine that he had died with the others, there was no harm done.
“The sixth man’s down in a subterranean tunnel. His back’s broken, he says. He won’t give any trouble. It’s Zelensky: the one who ratted at Heather Lodge.”
Wenlock made a non-committal gesture.
“If he’s alive, shouldn’t we get him out?”
“I’m not keen,” Northfleet admitted frankly. “In Zelensky’s case I feel less like a good Samaritan than almost anything you can think of.”
“I’m not keen, either,” Colin declared. “Still—it doesn’t look well to leave him, does it?”
“Not good form, eh?” Northfleet translated with a rather ugly smile.
Leven surprised them by offering to help.
Oh, then, I go with the majority,” Northfleet conceded. “Get a ladder, will you, Trent? We’ll need it. And some ropes too.”
The detective with his disabled arm was useless for any work of the kind. Leven went ahead with a flash-lamp, while Colin and Northfleet carried the ladder down into the subterranean passage. Leven reached the trap while they were still manoeuvring the ladder round the right-angled turn before the pit. Northfleet saw him step over the trip-bar cautiously and test the greasy surface beyond. Evidently he found a foothold on it—a clear spot which Northfleet had left on purpose for his own retreat—and he stepped to the edge of the pit and bent over.
“Ha! Zelensky,” he said in a taunting tone, “quite comfortable, I hope? No regrets? Still, between ourselves, I think you’d have done better not to change sides.”
Zelensky did not seem to resent Levens tone.
“Veil, veil,” he answered faintly, yet with something of his old genial tone. “Ve all make mistakes, efen ze clefferest of us, nicht wahr? Perhaps I did blonder zat time. Bot zen zero vas your niece, ze beautiful Hazel. A goot old sober-sided fellow like you, Leven, you cannot appreciate ze strong appeal zat female beauty makes to onscientific people like me. You are moch too dry ant ascetic for soch zhings, eh? So you make your own little mistakes—in my case, for instance.”
Colin saw the irony and wondered at Zelensky’s insolence in alienating his possible rescuers. That speech was meant to irritate both Leven and Northfleet.
“Ant, after all,” Zelensky went on philosophically, “I haff always managed to keep my own name. It most be curious to lose one’s name: to be called Leven yesterday, ant to-day to be called Arrow, and to-morrow to be called Nomber So-ant-So, viz no name at all. A curious experience.”
“Shut your mouth!” Leven exclaimed sharply.
“A dying man is priffeleged,” Zelensky pleaded, not without a certain dignity. “Bot if you do not like it, I say no more. I haff somzhing important to tell you—somzhing that will get you out of zhis little trouble of yours.”
He seemed to find difficulty in speaking.
“Bendt down, please. I cannot raise my voice.”
Leven stooped over the edge of the pit to catch the faint tones, and as he did so Zelensky raised his concealed pistol and shot him through the head.
As the body fell into the pit Colin made a movement to dash forward, but luckily Northfleet restrained him.
“Anybody else care to komm forwardt?” Zelensky’s voice inquired with some of the old jocosity. “Each ant all, I giff zem ze same velcome. It is ze only amusement I haff, down here, viz a broken back. Mr. Norzhfleet? You care to step forwardt?”
“No, thanks,” Northfleet said, dryly. “I believe you mean it. And as I haven’t much taste for your choice in last words we’ll leave you, I think. Come along, Trent. There’s nothing for us to do here.”
Colin recognised the futility of persisting. Zelensky meant what he said; he preferred to die where he was, and wanted no interference. And one of his utterances had given Colin food for thought, which he resolved to put to the test as soon as he saw Wenlock.
The detective was waiting for them at the head of the stairs.
“Where’s Zelensky?” he asked, seeing that they were alone. “And Leven, have yon left him down there?”
“Yes,” said Colin, with a slightly hysterical laugh, “he’s down there. Zelensky put a bullet through his head. You were trying to net him, weren’t you, Wenlock? Well, there’s a hole in the fence.”
“Shot him?” Wenlock was evidently unsympathetic. “H’m, there’s a hole in the fence, as you say.”
Something in the phrase seemed to catch Northfleet’s attention.
“Your brand of humour verges on the macabre, Wenlock,” he commented.
But that sentence completed Colin’s illumination. Things fitted together in his mind, and at last he saw the whole mystery of Ruffa in its true perspective.
“Well, I’m——,” he exclaimed, as the light broke on him.
But Northfleet had no intention of wasting time. His main idea was to get the two girls away from a place which must be loathsome to them after the strain through which they had gone. He went across to the case and extracted some rockets of a particular pattern.
“These ones are a sort of S O S in the code,” he explained. “It’s no time of night to attract attention, but some of the fishing-fleet may be at work round about here, and they might see them. No harm in trying, anyhow. Take them outside and set them up, will you, Wenlock? The rocket-stand’s in the case there. Come on, Trent. We’ll bring the girls down now, touch off the rockets