Chapter 16: A Modern Instance of an Ancient Practice

Skittles, when he had, apparently with an effort, mastered the nature of Mr. Lawrence’s instructions, grinned from ear to ear.

He went to where a number of iron rods with broad heads were heaped together on a shelf. They were branding-irons. Selecting one of these, he thrust it into the heart of the fire which glowed on the blacksmith’s furnace. He heaped fuel on to the fire. After a movement or two of the bellows it became a roaring blaze.

Lawrence turned to Mr. Paxton--

“Still once more--are you disposed to tell us where the Datchet diamonds are?”

“No.”

Lawrence smiled. He addressed himself to the two men who held Paxton’s arms.

“Hold him tight. Now, Skittles, bring that iron of yours. Burn a hole under Mr. Paxton’s right shoulder-blade, through his clothing.”

Skittles again moved the iron from the fire. It had become nearly white. He regarded it for a moment with a critical eye. Then, advancing with it held at arm’s length in front of him, he took up his position at Mr. Paxton’s back.

“Don’t let him go. Now!”

Skittles thrust the flaming iron towards Paxton’s shoulder-blade.

There was a smell of burning cloth. For a second Paxton stood like a statue; then, leaping right off his feet, he gave first a forward and then a backward bound, displaying as he did so so much vigour that, although his guardians retained their hold, Skittles, apparently, was taken unawares. Possibly, with an artist’s pride in good workmanship, he had been so much engrossed by the anxiety to carry out the commission with which he had been entrusted thoroughly well, that he was unprepared for interruptions. However that may have been, when Paxton moved his grip on the iron seemed to suddenly loosen, so that, losing for the moment complete control of it, it fell down between Paxton’s arms, the red-hot brand at the further end resting on his pinioned wrists. A cry as of a wounded animal, which he was totally unable to repress, came from his lips--a cry half of rage, half of agony. But the red-hot iron, while inflicting on him frightful pain, had at least done him one good service; if it had burned his flesh, it had also burned the cords which bound his wrists together. Exerting, in his passion and his agony, the strength of half a dozen men, he severed the scorched strands of rope as if they had been straws, and, hurling from him the two fellows who held his arms--who had expected nothing so little as to find his arms unbound--he stood before them, so far as his limbs were concerned, free.

Once lost, he was not to be easily regained. He was quicker in his movements than Skittles had ever been, and the latter’s quickest days were long since done. Dropping on to one knee, plunging forward under Skittles’ guard, he butted that gentleman with his head full in the stomach, and had snatched the iron by its handle from his astonished hands before he had fully realised what was happening. Springing with the rapidity of a jack-in-the-box, to his feet again, he brought the dreadful weapon down heavily on Skittles’ head. With a groan of agony, that gentleman dropped like a log on to the floor.

Armed with the heated iron--a kind of article with which no one would care to come into close contact--Paxton turned and faced the others, who as yet did not seem fully alive to what had taken place.

“Now, you brutes! I may be bested in the end, but I’ll be even with one or two of you before I am!”

Lawrence stood up.

“Will you? That still remains to be seen. Shoot him, Baron!”

The Baron fired. Either his marksmanship, or his nerve, or his something, was at fault, for he missed. Before he could fire again Paxton’s weapon had crashed through his grotesquely tall high hat, and apparently through his skull as well, for he too went headlong to the floor. Quick as lightning as he fell Cyril took his revolver from his nerveless grasp. Lawrence and his two colleagues were--a little late in the day, perhaps--making for him. But when they saw how he was doubly armed and his determined front they paused--and therein showed discretion.