Pay the Devil - Jack Higgins [32]
For a moment, time ceased to have any meaning, and he was back again in Georgia, arriving rather late for a ball to celebrate the coming-of-age of the sister of his best friend. Ahead lay a week of hunting and parties, and beyond that, the long, golden years.
As his father had often told him, it never paid to count on anything in this world. He sighed once for the summer that had gone and urged Pegeen through the trees and back onto the track. As the music faded into the night, he broke into a gallop again.
Half an hour later, he moved down onto the Galway Road and cantered toward Kileen. He splashed through a wide ford and walked Pegeen through the sleeping village.
Kileen House was two hundred yards on the other side, a black mass rearing out of the night, and he turned in through the gates and came to a halt before the front door.
A light showed in the hall, but otherwise the place was in complete darkness. He mounted the steps and pulled the bell chain. The sound jangled faintly in the hidden depths of the house and its echo was from another world.
After a while, steps approached and he pulled the scarf up over his face and drew his revolver. As the door started to open, he pushed his way in and closed it behind him.
The man who faced him was old and round-shouldered in a shabby frock coat, skin yellow and wrinkled with age. His eyes widened in terror and his mouth opened in a cry of alarm.
Clay seized him by the throat and deliberately roughened his voice. “One word and you’re a dead man. Who are you?”
He released his grip slightly and the old man replied in a cracked voice, “Only the butler, sir. God save us, if it’s Mr. Marley you want, he’s not at home.”
“Who else is here?” Clay demanded.
“The servants, sir, but they’re all abed at the back of the house.”
“You’re forgetting the young woman who came to see your master this afternoon,” Clay told him. “Where is she?”
“Eithne Fallon, you mean, sir?” The old man was shaking with fright as he picked up the lamp from a nearby table. “This way, sir. This way.”
Clay followed him across the hall and they mounted a wide staircase. The old man moved along the landing and paused outside a door at the far end. He produced a bunch of keys from his pocket, and after several attempts, managed to find one to fit the lock. As he opened the door, Clay pushed him forward into the room.
The girl had been lying on the bed and now she stood against the wall, face pale and sickly in the lamplight, eyes swollen with weeping. She could not have been more than fifteen, her figure young and unformed in the shabby brown dress.
She flung herself forward wildly, making for the door, and Clay caught her by one wrist and swung her round to face him. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I’ve come to take you home to your mother.”
She stood still and stared up into his masked face, eyes burning into his, and then her head moved slowly from side to side, as if she couldn’t comprehend that this was really happening. “Oh, God, sir, and here was I nearly going out of me mind.”
She picked up her shawl and wound it about her head, slow, bitter tears oozing from her eyes. “No one will harm you ever again,” Clay assured her, iron in his voice. “You have my word on it.”
He touched her shoulder gently with one hand, and she stepped back as if she had been stung. “For God’s sake, let’s go, sir, before he returns,” she said urgently.
She moved out onto the landing and Clay took the lamp from the butler and pushed him back into the room. “He’ll kill me when he gets back,” the old man said tearfully, wringing his hands.
“I shouldn’t count on that,” Clay told him, and closed the door and locked it.
He tossed the keys into the shadows and followed the girl, who was already down below in the hall fumbling at the lock of the front door. When he went out into the porch, she was leaning against one of the