A Fascinating Traitor: An Anglo-Indian StorySavage, Richard
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A Fascinating Traitor: An Anglo-Indian Story
Savage, Richard
India -- Fiction
“Run up and get my saber and your own pistol and join me! There’s foul
play here! The house is all right! Come on, for God’s sake!” shouted
Harry Hardwicke. He led his captive by the trebled bell cord passed with
double hitches around the burglar’s pinioned arms, and the Moonshee
now leaped back--ready to take a man’s part--for he easily divined the
treachery.
Out into the wild night they hurried, leaving behind them the barricaded
“Banker’s Folly,” now gleaming with lights. “Where in hell is Simpson?”
demanded Eric Murray, as he struggled along clutching the gleaming
tulwar tightly in his hand.
“Drunk at Rozel Pier, I suppose!” bitterly answered Hardwicke. “Come
here and just prick this fellow up into a trot!”
As they hastened on, Prince Djiddin succeeded at last in convincing the
two gardeners that he was not a ghost, but a reincarnated Englishman who
had been larking disguised as a Hindu Prince. “What’s the devilish game,
anyway?” puffed out Captain Murray, still in the dark, as they struggled
on in the darkness along the road.
“Hawke has tried to kidnap Nadine!” hastily cried Hardwicke.
“My God! what’s that?” They soon came up to an overturned carriage. The
traces had been cut, and the horses and driver were not visible. The
gardener’s lantern showed to them only the insensible form of the maid,
Mattie Jones, who lay moaning in a sheer exhaustion of terror. “How far
is it to the tower?” almost yelled Hardwicke, his heart frozen with a
new terror. “They have murdered her, my poor darling!”
“The tower is now about three hundred yards away!” said the gardener, as
Hardwicke sternly dragged his reluctant prisoner along.
“On, on!” he cried. “We may even now be too late!” They were only a
hundred yards from the tower, when the sound of rapid pistol shots was
heard, wafted down the wind, and a confused sound of cries on the cliff
was wafted to them, as a dozen twinkling lantern lights appeared on the
brow of the bluff.
“It’s a rescue party!” joyously cried Murray. “Hurry! hurry on to the
tower!”
With cheering cries, the pursuers neared the old Martello tower, and
a clump of dark forms vanished quickly into the shrubbery as the three
lanterns were flashed full upon the door. Eric Murray, sword in hand,
was the first man at the entrance, as a desperate assailant leaped from
the narrow door and sprang upon him, pistol in hand. There was the
snap of a clicking lock and then the sound of a hollow groan, for the
robber’s pistol had missed fire, and Captain Murray ran the wretch
through the body with the razor-bladed tulwar!
There was a silence broken only by the trampling of approaching feet, as
Red Eric flashed the light in the face of his fallen foe, for the storm
had spent its fury and the stars were gleaming out at last.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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