The Brass Man by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2018-02-20T16:03:39+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

No greyhound on a course ever ran more swiftly than Weldon. The ammonia bottle crashed on the floor. Gun in hand, he bounded up the stairs and reached the library door to find it shut. He tried it—the key was turned. But he had his own way with doors in a time of emergency. He drew back and hurled his weight against it, using the bunched muscles of his right shoulder as a sort of pad against the shock. The door groaned under the impact and gave a little. He flung himself forward again, like a charging bull, and lurched through the wreckage of the door into the chamber, half stunned, but with his gun ready and swinging to find a victim.

There was no victim in sight. Only Aunt Maggie, half kneeling, half lying in the corner against the window. The same glance showed Weldon a little tangle of twine on the hearth.

Mysteriously Francesca had managed to free herself of the twine, had attacked the old Negress, then slammed and locked this door, and then … The window, perhaps. If she was tigress enough to manage the other two feats, she was tigress enough to manage this one.

He gained that window with a bound and leaned far out. The moon rode high and clear. All that face of the building was naked, except for the climbing vine, whose leaves shivered and winked like pale silver in the moonlight. He scanned the ground beneath the wall.

It seemed impossible that she could have managed to climb down the face of the wall so rapidly. Certainly, in the time since that door was slammed and locked, she could not possibly have got down the hall to escape in another manner.

His own room, perhaps? He went for it on the run—but though it was a woman for whom he searched, he had his teeth set and his gun ready. Beautiful she might be, and his heart full of her, but she was as dangerous as fire.

He gained his room. Both closets he jerked open in turn, and then he even glanced under the bed. She was not there. He stood still in the middle of the room, and, drawing a long breath, he tried to make his brain clear, and yet it would not.

How could she, in the first place, have freed her wrists? He knew something about securing hands in case of need, and he never had made a more careful job than he had with the small, soft hands of Francesca. Granted that her hands were free, with what did she attack the Negress?

He strode back into the library and found Aunt Maggie standing swaying, her hands pressed to her head.

“She freed herself from the twine and got at you, Aunt Maggie?” he asked quickly.

“She done that,” groaned the cook.

“How did you manage to let her get away?”

“You cain’t catch a lightning flash with your bare hands,” Aunt Maggie declared.

“Of course you can’t. And then?”

Aunt Maggie pointed to a stick of firewood that lay in the middle of the hearth.

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