For all the characteristic cunning and agility of his brain, he was no longer living in the same world that he lived in before he murdered Flay. Something had altered. It was his mind. His brain was the same but his mind was different. He was no longer a criminal because he chose to be. He had no longer the choice. He lived now among the abstractions. His brain dealt with where he would hide and what he would do if certain contingencies arose, but his mind floated above all this in a red ether. And the reflection of his mind burned through his eyes, filling the pupils with a grizzly bloodlight.
As he stared down like a bird of prey from its window’d crag, his brain saw, far below him a canoe. It saw Titus standing on the stone balcony. It saw him turn and after a moment’s hesitation enter the rotting halls and disappear from view.
But his mind saw nothing of all this. His mind was engaged in a warfare of the gods. His mind paced outwards over no-man’s-land, over the fields of the slain, paced to the rhythm of the blood’s red bugles. To be alone and evil! To be a god at bay. What was more absolute.
Three minutes had passed since the Earl had disappeared into the maw of the building below him. Steerpike had given him time to move well into the fastness before he took action. There had been the chance of the sudden reappearance of the youth, for the lower halls were dark and sinister. But he had not reappeared, and the time was now ripe for Steerpike to make his leap. The descent was of a sickening duration. The blood hammered in the murderer’s head. His stomach turned over and for a while he lost consciousness. When his reflection, flying upwards from the depths to meet him was shattered at the surface, and as the spume of water rose like a fountain, Steerpike’s body, far below the surface, continued its descent until, at last, as his feet touched lightly upon the submerged head of a weather-cock, he began to rise again to the surface.
The disturbed water had become quite smooth again.
Dazed with the effort of the long fall, sick with swallowed water and with painful lungs, yet it was only a moment or two before he had struck out for the stone stairway.
When he reached it and climbed the few steps to where the canoe lay quietly upon her side, he wasted not a moment in setting her upon the water. Boarding her nimbly he grasped the paddle that lay within and with the first half-dozen strokes was speeding beneath the ivy-covered walls towards one of the few windows which coincided with the water level.
It was of course necessary for Steerpike to make immediately for cover. The great bay ahead was a death trap, where, were a fish to raise its head above the surface it would be seen at once!
At any moment the young Earl might return. It was for him to skid unseen through the first of the flood windows leaving no trace. As Steerpike sped rapidly over the water he had, as far as possible kept his head turned back over his shoulders for the possible reappearance of the earl. Were he to be seen it would be necessary for him to make his way at once to one of his hiding places. There would be no possibility of his being overtaken, but to be sighted would, for many reasons, be unfortunate. He had no wish for the castle to know he could travel by water – nor that he roamed so far afield as to these frowning headlands; the sentries might well be reinforced, the vigilance sharpened.
So far he had been fortunate. He had survived his fall. His enemy had been out of earshot when he had splashed into the water; he had sighted a window through which he would pass with ease and behind the dark jaw of which he could remain until darkness descended.
For a few minutes at a time, as he slipped along the base of the dark walls he was forced to turn his head, to correct the course of the canoe, but for the most part his eyes were fixed upon the empty balcony to which at any moment his enemy might return.
It was when he had but three or four lengths of his canoe to go, before he turned her into the castle that, concentrating upon a faultless entry, he was unable to see that Titus had stepped out upon the open balcony.
He could not see that on immediately discovering the disappearance of his boat, Titus had started forward and had then swept his eyes across the bay until they had come to rest upon the only moving object – the far canoe as it began its curve into the cliff. Without a thought Titus drew backwards into the doorway around which he now peered, his body shaking with excitement. Even at that distance there was no mistaking the hunched shoulders of the marauder. It was well that he had stepped backwards so quickly, for as the canoe took its curve and straightening out, slid rapidly at the castle, as though to crash its delicate prow against its flank, Steerpike, certain of a perfect entry, returned his attention to the distant balcony, and as he noted its emptiness he disappeared into the wall like a snake into a rock.
