Edgar Wallace - The Angel of Terror

"Do you think he was firing at me?" asked Lydia in horror.

"I am certain of it," said Briggerland. "I realised it the moment I saw the fellow."

"How am I to thank you?" said the girl impulsively. "Really, it was wonderful of you to tackle an armed man with your bare hands."

Mr. Briggerland closed his eyes and sighed.

"It was nothing," he said modestly.

Before dinner he and his daughter were left alone for the first time since the accident.

"What happened?" she asked.

"It was going to be a little surprise for you," he said. "A little scheme of my own, my dear; you're always calling me a funk, and I wanted to prove——"

"What happened?" she asked tersely.

"Well, I went out yesterday morning and fixed it all. I bought the rifle, an old English rifle, at Amiens from a peasant. I thought it might come in handy, especially as the man threw in a packet of ammunition. Yesterday morning, lying awake before daybreak, I thought it out. I went up to the hill—the land belongs to an empty house, by the way—and I located the spot, put the rifle where I could find it easily, and fixed a pair of glass goggles on to one of the bushes, where the sun would catch it. The whole scheme was not without its merit as a piece of strategy, my dear," he said complacently.

"And then——?" she said.

"I thought we'd go bathing yesterday, but we didn't, but to-day—it was a long time before anybody spotted the glasses, but once I had the excuse for going ashore and investigating, the rest was easy."

She nodded.

"So that was why you asked me to keep her on the raft, and make her stand up?"

He nodded.

"Well——?" she demanded.

"I went up to the spot, got the rifle and took aim. I've always been a pretty good shot——"

"You didn't advertise it to-day," she said sardonically. "Then I suppose somebody hit you on the head?"

He nodded and made a grimace, but any movement of his injured cranium was excessively painful.

"Who was it?" she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Don't ask fool questions," he said petulantly. "I know nothing. I didn't even feel the blow. I just remember taking aim, and then everything went dark."

"And how would you have explained it all, supposing you had succeeded?"

"That was easy," he said. "I should have said that I went in search of the man we had seen, I heard a shot and rushed forward and found nothing but the rifle."

She was silent, pinching her lips absently.

"And you took the risk of some peasant or visitor seeing you—took the risk of bringing the police to the spot and turning what might have easily been a case of accidental death into an obvious case of wilful murder. I think you called yourself a strategist," she asked politely.

"I did my best," he growled.

"Well, don't do it again, father," she said. "Your foolhardiness appals me, and heaven knows, I never expected that I should be in a position to call you foolhardy."

And with this she left him to bask in the hero-worship which the approaching Mrs. Cole-Mortimer would lavish upon him.

The "accident" kept them at home that night, and Lydia was not sorry. A settee is not a very comfortable sleeping place, and she was ready for a real bed that night. Mr. Stepney found her yawning surreptitiously, and went home early in disgust.

The night was warmer than the morning had been. The Föhn wind was blowing and she found her room with its radiator a little oppressive. She opened the long French windows, and stepped out on to the balcony. The last quarter of the moon was high in the sky, and though the light was faint, it gave shadows to trees and an eerie illumination to the lawn.

She leant her arms on the rail and looked across the sea to the lights of Monte Carlo glistening in the purple night. Her eyes wandered idly to the grounds and she started. She could have sworn she had seen a figure moving in the shadow of the tree, nor was she mistaken.

Presently it left the tree belt, and stepped cautiously across the lawn, halting now and again to look around. She thought at first that it was Marcus Stepney who had returned, but something about the walk of the man seemed familiar. Presently he stopped directly under the balcony and looked up and she uttered an exclamation, as the faint light revealed the iron-grey hair and the grisly eyebrows of the intruder.

"All right, miss," he said in a hoarse whisper, "it's only old Jaggs."

"What are you doing?" she answered in the same tone.

"Just lookin' round," he said, "just lookin' round," and limped again into the darkness.

Chapter XXIII

So old Jaggs was in Monte Carlo! Whatever was he doing, and how was he getting on with these people who spoke nothing but French, she wondered! She had something to think about before she went to sleep.

She opened her eyes singularly awake as the dawn was coming up over the grey sea. She looked at her watch; it was a quarter to six. Why she had wakened so thoroughly she could not tell, but remembered with a little shiver another occasion she had wakened, this time before the dawn, to face death in a most terrifying shape.

She got up out of bed, put on a heavy coat and opened the wire doors that led to the balcony. The morning was colder than she imagined, and she was glad to retreat to the neighbourhood of the warm radiator.

The fresh clean hours of the dawn, when the mind is clear, and there is neither sound nor movement to distract the thoughts, are favourable to sane thinking.

Lydia reviewed the past few weeks in her life, and realised, for the first time, the miracle which had happened. It was like a legend of old—the slave had been lifted from the king's anteroom—the struggling artist was now a rich woman. She twiddled the gold ring on her hand absent-mindedly—and she was married ... and a widow! She had an uncomfortable feeling that, in spite of her riches, she had not yet found her niche. She was an odd quantity, as yet. The Cole-Mortimers and the Briggerlands did not belong to her ideal world, and she could find no place where she fitted.

She tried, in this state of mind so favourable to the consideration of such a problem, to analyse Jack Glover's antagonism toward Jean Briggerland and her father.

It seemed unnatural that a healthy young man should maintain so bitter a feud with a girl whose beauty was almost of a transcendant quality and all because she had rejected him.

Jack Glover was a public school boy, a man with a keen sense of honour. She could not imagine him being guilty of a mean action. And such men did not pursue vendettas without good reason. If they were rejected by a woman, they accepted their congé with a good grace, and it was almost unthinkable that Jack should have no other reason for his hatred. Yet she could not bring herself even to consider the possibility that the reason was the one he had advanced. She came again to the dead end of conjecture. She could believe in Jack's judgment up to a point—beyond that she could not go.

She had her bath, dressed, and was in the garden when the eastern horizon was golden with the light of the rising sun. Nobody was about, the most energetic of the servants had not yet risen, and she strolled through the avenue to the main road. As she stood there looking up and down a man came out from the trees that fringed the road and began walking rapidly in the direction of Monte Carlo.

"Mr. Jaggs!" she called.

He took no notice, but seemed to increase his limping pace, and after a moment's hesitation, she went flying down the road after him. He turned at the sound of her footsteps and in his furtive way drew into the shadow of a bush. He looked more than usually grimy; on his hands were an odd pair of gloves and a soft slouch hat that had seen better days, covered his head.