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Show 1 ft ft ft ft ft ft IMPOSTOR By FRANK L. PACKARD 1 'I (Copyright.) CHAPTER VIII Continued. 12 "Do you think those devils out there will let us out of this alive? Do you think that hiding behind your skirts will save me or save you? There is food here see, the table is set that Is one reason why I chose the moment that I did. "They cannot starve us out. We are armed nmv, Ounga and I, and we can hold that door for longer than they will care to wait, for a heavier price than they will care to pay. They are not fools. They know that. And that Is the one chance for you that they will accept the terms I have to offer." "And I am safer here with a murderer, mur-derer, with an impostor who steals a dead man's name?" she asked evenly. The red surged into Wallen's face and died away again, leaving it pale and haggard. His eyes met hers and hold in a long gaze. They were hard, those fearless brown eyes, cruelly hard enough; but, too, they seemed to hold a strange challenge to him to refute what she had said. ".Shall I answer yon? Do you expect an answer?" he said steadily. "Then the answer is no. You are safer here only for a little while only for a moment." She started back with a little cry, retreating to her cabin door. "I did not mean to frighten you," said Wallen gently. "I mean that there is another danger quite apart from any on board. You know what Laynton and the others are afier, and you have been told by Gunga here that, though you may not choose to believe it, they are inviting their own destruction. In an hour, in twenty-four, twenty-four, there will not be a man alive aboard this ship, and " A terrific smash upon the door cut abort his words, and, whirling around, he jumped to Gunga's side. The shock I of some heavy object, used obviously as a battering ram, had loosened their makeshift prop, the door had yielded by perhaps an inch, and Gunga now was straining with might and main to force it back into place. Wallen flung his weight against the door not an instant too soon. It came again, the smash upon the door, but with it a scream of pain above the shouts and cries. Came another scream then again the scurrying of feet in retreat then silence. Gutjga had fired this time, but not at the floor. "Sahib," said Gunga calmly, "we were in too great haste. See" he jammed the dismantled cabin door more securely into position, wedging it against the iron base of the chair with a piece of wood that he wrenched from the chair's back "it will not sljp again." Wallen nodded, testing the barricade. barri-cade. It was firm now, and would hold as long as anything of the saloon door itself remained. He looked around. Helen MacKay had gone into her cabin and the door was shut. Possibly Pos-sibly half an hour passed, and they w aited Gunga on one side a little out of direct range from the door. And then Wallen distinguished a muffled sound of voices. For a moment he could not place the sound and then he smiled mirthlessly. Helen MacKay was talking through the porthole of her stateroom to someone some-one out on the deck. And then, abruptly, in a shout, came Laynton's voice, apparently from the top of the companionway : "You below there !" Wallen smiled grimly. He had been waiting a long while for that. "Well?" he answered indifferently. "Look here now !" Laynton's voice became modulated and unctuously smooth. "You ain't doing yourself any good by playing the fool this way. You come on out of there, give us the information in-formation we want, and we'll forget about this, for all that two of my chaps have got bullets through their shoulders." "What's the ship's position?" inquired in-quired Wallen coolly. There was a quick oath from Captain Cap-tain Laynton. "I guess you know blamed well !" he grow led. "We've Arru abeam, haven't we?" persisted Wallen quietly. "Yes." "Well," said Wallen slowly, "I'll tell you what you want to know on one condition." "Aha! So you do know, eh?" snarled Laynton. "I thought we'd get it out of you before we were through. You're beginning to show some signs of sense, my lad. What's the condition?" condi-tion?" "It's simple enough," Wallen replied shortly. "You'll stand in close to Arru opposite MacKnight's station and let Miss MacKay and Gunga bore go ashore." "I, sahib no!" Gunga had slipped quickly to Wallen's side and was clutching at Wallen's sleeve "I will not go. sahib. If the sahlo gives his life for the Miss MacKay, shall the shame come upon me that I let the sahib die alone?" "Quiet, Gunga!" Wallen commanded softly. "I cannot hear what the captain cap-tain says." Then raising his voice: "What did you say, captain?" "I said you mean you'd kind of count on going along with them after loading us up to the eyes with some fake dope," Laynton flung back sarcastically. sar-castically. "Well, you can forget It. You'll never get away from this ship like that." "I don't expect to get away," said Wallen simply. "They are to go. When they are safe I'll tell you everything- you want to know. If what I tell you proves to be a lie I am still abo:i rd." "Well, that's fair," admitted Laynton. Layn-ton. "I'll take you up on that, and" His words were lost in a suddon furious fu-rious altercation in which Wallen coiild distinguish Mott's voice. Then came a bellow from the captain: "You close your jaw ! What's the girl compared to the other?" Almost a smile was on Wallen's lips a smile that was curiously like a prayer. It was his last card, and he had played it, and it was the master trump. Gunga, In low, passionate words, was still pleading with him. Captain Laynton shouted down the companion-way companion-way again : "I'll take you up on that. We'll stand in now and I'll send them ashore in a boat." "No," continued Wallen coldly; "you'll send a boat ashore and ask MacKnight to come out here in a proa. There's a slight difference. I said I wanted to see them safe, not rowed around the' ship and put aboard again on the other side." "Well, have it your own way," laughed Laynton unpleasantly. "I'm agreeable, and that goes. We'll " It seemed to come from the port quarter a muffled boom that rolled and reverberated over the water. And then another, and still another. And then a wild shout from the deck. Wallen, glanced quickly about him. For the first time he noticed that Helen Mat-Kay's door was slightly opened, and now stood ajar. Gunga rushed into the stateroom next to hers. Came that dull, distant boom again; then a crash, a ripping, tearing, rending rend-ing of wood and steel, and the Mon-leigh Mon-leigh heeled to the shock. Then Gunga called : "Sahib, it is too late! I see the flash of guns. He will come from behind be-hind one of the islands. It is Bam Gu-lab Gu-lab Singh." CHAPTER IX. The Man With One Finger. Wallen walked quietly across the saloon to his own cabin. A strange, unnatural calm seemed to have fallen upon him with Gunga's words. Too late ! He could not in justice reproach himself. There had been only one Elites ' " Made His Way Up the Companionway. chance and he had taken it Mac-Knight's. Mac-Knight's. Even if he bad defied Laynton Layn-ton and his sordid crew hours earlier, the result would have been the same it would have brought neither the land nor MacKnight's the sooner. It was only that Ram Gulab Singh had come first. He took his reserve supply of ammunition am-munition from its hiding place, stowed half the boxes away in his pocket, and with the balance of the cartridges in his hand, returned to the saloon and gave them to Gunga, motioning the other to remove the barricade. "What are you going to do?" She had come out from her stateroom and was standing now, a straight, resolute little figure, with eyes that were very wide as they fixed on him. The electric bulb in the saloon dimmed down and went out. The boom of the heavy gun came across the water wa-ter again, and unconsciously for a tense instant Wallen waited, expectant of the shock if the shell should find its mark. It missed. "I'm going on deck," he answered quietly. "They'll be too busy to notice me, and besides it's dark. Gunga will stay ltere and replace the barricade after I go out. We've got to know what's going on, Miss MacKay. The ship has been struck once, though not vitally, I think; but down here is no place to be caught in if another shot prove more successful. I will be back presently." Without giving her a chance to 1 -ply he slipped through the door as Gunga opened it and out into the alley way. It was black, empty, deserted, as he had expected. He made his way up the companion-way companion-way to the little lounging room and halted in the port doorway, looking out. He could see nothing at first. It was very dark not a light showed on the Monleigh. In that respect Laynton, Layn-ton, taught no doubt by his experiences experi-ences in the discreditable and varied trades he had boasted was the Mon-leigh's Mon-leigh's business, had been prompt to meet emergencies. And then gradually, discernible only to a sailor's eye, like a dark blotch on the water, Wallen made out another steamer almost abeam. An instant later, as though in grim Indorsement of his vision, from the blotch there leaped a great red flame, came the heavy, resonant roar of the gun's report, re-port, and overhead a shell whistled ominously by. About a mile Wallen now placed the distance between the two vessels, though as to the size of the other he could form no estimate. But did it matter? She was well armed at all events; and it was Ram Gulab Singh, once a government official, always a robber and a murderer the man who had brought his mother to her death, his father to his death, and now it was his own turn ! But he knew neither excitement nor dismay. He was only conscious of something smoldering dully within him, and that was because Helen MacKay Mac-Kay was here. He shook his head a little. Helen MacKay, of course, would never fall into Ram Gulab Singh's hands alive. On the bridge he could hear Laynton Layn-ton calling down the engine room tube, frantically imploring the engineer for speed ; and then Laynton's voice was drowned out by a din from forward by the crew. Wallen, hugging the shadows of the deckhouses, moved forward to a position posi-tion under the bridge. Mott was talking excitedly overhead. "She's coming up hand over hand, I tell you. If that fellow Wallen's story is straight after all and I guess there ain't much doubt of it now we haven't a hope if that chap out there gets aboard us, providing he don't sink us first. I say go full astern until we get away off her, and then take to the boats. W'e could give him the slip in the dark if we don't wait till he gets too near to see what we're about, and " Another voice cut in, Larson's, as hurrying from aft he ran up the starboard star-board ladder to the bridge. "Help yourself, Mott," he invited sarcastically. "One boat's in splinters and the other's carried away ; the deck aft is a wreck from that shell that struck us." "Light that Morse lamp," ordered Laynton abruptly. "Yes, and give him our position," sneered Mott. "He's got it fast enough now," growled Laynton. "But we'll give him something else. You there, Larsen, light it, d'ye hear? And Morse, tell him that if it's that swine that's masquerading masquer-ading as Wallen he wants, we'll turn him over and my God !" with a rip and crash, staggering the ship, a shot tore the wireless house to matchwood. "Quick !" yelled Laynton. "Tell him ! Tell him. D'ye hear tell him ! He'll have us at the bottom in another five minutes !" A strange, awed silence held for an instant following the shot ; and now, over his head, Wallen could distinctly hear Uig clicking of the Morse set. He strained his eyes seaward, watching fee- an answering signal, and after a moment it came but not in Morse. It was the belching flare of the gun again, and again the rend and smash of the projectile as it tore into the Monleigh's hull. There was no doubt about the range now, nor the tenor of Ram Gulab Sing's answer. It was as Gunga had said the principle that dead men tell no tales. Ram Gulab Singh's tactics, from Ram Gulab Singh's 1 standpoint, 'were faultless that a ship might disappear dis-appear off the face of the earth and be never heard of again was one thing, but that she or anyone on board her should return to report that she had been attacked in these waters, suspiciously suspi-ciously those of Ram Gulab Singh, was quite another! And then to Wallen came a space of time that he could not estimate, each moment recording some wild, unreal, bewildering,, kaleidoscopic change in the scene around him. Again that terrific ter-rific crash from a striking shell, and then a scream, unearthly, not human, from the very bowels of the ship a tremor of the vessel from stem to stern, a groaning, screeching, wrenching wrench-ing of mangled machinery, a tottering thud as though the engines had collapsed col-lapsed upon their bedplates, a cloud of steam volleying skyward from the engine room hatch, and there was no more vibration and the Monleigh lay a helpless thing, with only a sullen movement now from the momentum of a moment gone. He drew back against the captain's room. They were rushing down from the bridge, Mott and Larsen, to hurl themselves them-selves down the forward ladders from the boat deck to the flush forcdeck below, be-low, shouting a confusion of orders to the crew as they ran. (TO BE CONTINUED.) |