Pay the Devil (v5) by Jack Higgins

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 pillars, half-fainting and he slipped an arm about her shoulders and carried her down the steps.
    All strength seemed to have deserted her and he lifted her onto Pegeen’s back and swung into the saddle. As he cantered down toward the gate, she turned her head into his coat and burst into a storm of weeping.
    By the time they reached the village, she had recovered sufficiently to indicate her home. He dismounted, lifted her down to the ground and then hammered on the door with his right fist.
    The girl’s weeping had subsided, and as steps sounded inside, she looked up at him and said in a faint voice, “Who are you?”
    “A friend,” he said simply. “You’ve got nothing to fear, my dear, now or at any time in the future.”
    As the door started to open, he turned and swung lightly into the saddle and Pegeen moved quickly away out of the village and back toward Drumore.
    There was a clump of trees by the Kileen side of the ford and he paused in their shadow. He did not have long to wait. Faintly on the night air came the sound of an approaching vehicle, and then a coach pulled by two horses appeared round a bend in the road and