FLIGHT AND PURSUIT
When he came to himself he was lying on his back, and bending over him was his father's familiar face, wearing an expression of great surprise and wonder, and still greater annoyance.
"What is the matter?" General Dunsmore asked as soon as he saw that his son's senses were returning to him."Have you all gone mad together? You send me a mysterious note to meet you here at three, you turn up racing and running like an escaped lunatic, and with a disgusting growth of hair all over your face, so that I didn't know you till you spoke, and then there's Walter dodging about in the wood here like a poacher hiding from the keepers.Are you both quite mad, Rupert?""Walter," Rupert repeated, lifting himself on one hand, "Walter - have you seen him?""Over there," said the general, nodding towards the right."He was dodging and creeping about for all the world like some poaching rascal.I waved, but he didn't see me, and when I tried to overtake him I lost sight of him somehow in the trees, and found I had come right out of my way for Brook Bourne Spring.""Thank God for that," said Rupert fervently as a picture presented itself to him of his unsuspecting father trying in that lonely wood to find and overtake the man whose murderous purpose was aimed at his life.
"What do you mean?" snapped the general."And why have you made such a spectacle of yourself with all that beard? Why, I didn't know you till you spoke - there's Walter there.What makes him look like that?"For Walter had just come out of the wood about fifty yards to their right, and when he saw them talking together he understood at once that in some way or another all his plans had failed.
He was looking at them through a gap in some undergrowth that hid most of his body, but showed his head and shoulders plainly, and as he stood there watching them his face was like a fiend's.
"Walter," the general shouted, and to his son Rupert he said: "The boy's ill."Walter moved forward from among the trees.He had a gun in his hand, and he flung it forward as though preparing to fire, and at the same moment Rupert Dunsmore drew from his pocket the pistol Deede Dawson had given him and fired himself.
But at the very moment that he pulled the trigger the general struck up his arm so that the bullet flew high and harmless through the tops of the trees.
Walter stepped back again into the wood, and Rupert said:
"You don't know what you have done, father.""You are mad, mad," the general gasped.
His face was very pale, and he trembled a little, for though he had heard many bullets whistle by his ears, that had happened in action against an enemy, and was altogether different from this.He put out his hand in an attempt to take the pistol that Rupert easily evaded.
"Give it to me," he said."I saved his life; you might have killed him.""Yes, you saved him, father," Rupert muttered, thinking to himself that the saving of Walter's life might well mean the loss of Ella's, since very likely the failure of their plots would be at once attributed by the conspirators to her."Father, I never wrote that letter you say you had.Walter forged it to get you here, where he meant to kill us both.That's why he looked like that, that's why he had his gun."General Dunsmore only stared blankly at him for a moment.
"Kill me? Kill you? What for?" he gasped.
"So that he might become Lord Chobham of Wreste Abbey instead of Lord Chobham's poor relation," answered Rupert."The poison attempt on uncle which Walter discovered was first of all his own doing; it was through him Charley Wright lost his life.He has committed at least one other murder.Today he meant to kill both of us.Then he would have been heir to the title and estates, and when uncle died he would have been Lord Chobham.""Nonsense, absurd, impossible.You're mad, quite mad," the general stammered."Why, he would have been hanged at once.""Not if he could have fixed the blame elsewhere," Rupert answered.
"That was to have been my part; it was carefully arranged to make it seem I was responsible for it all.I haven't time to explain now.
I don't think he is coming back.I expect he is only loaded with small shot, and he doesn't dare try a long range shot or come near now he knows I'm ready for him.""But it's - it's impossible - Walter," stammered the general.
"Impossible."
"The impossible so often happens," answered Rupert, and handed his pistol to him."You must trust me, father, and do what I tell you.
Take this pistol in case you are attacked on the way home.You may be, but I don't think it's likely.Get the motor out and go straight to Wreste Abbey.An attempt on uncle's life will be made tonight, if they still carry out their plans, about dinner-time tonight.See that every possible precaution is taken.See to that first.Then send help as soon as you can to Bittermeads, a house on the outskirts of Ramsdon; any one there will tell you where it is.""But what are you going to do?" General Dunsmore asked.
