Ambrotox and Limping Dick

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AMBROTOX

AND

LIMPING DICK

BY OLIVER FLEMING

1920

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I.--THE VISITOR'S SHADOW

II.--THE HEN WITH ONE CHICK

III.--"HUMMIN' BIRD'S WESKIT"

IV.--COFFEE

V.--AMBROTOX

VI.--AMARYLLIS

VII.--PERFUME

VIII.--THE SWINE THAT STANK

IX.--THE POLITICAL COVES

X.--THE GREEN FROCK

XI.--THE WINDOW

XII.--THE STAIRS

XIII.--THE KNIFE-THROWER

XIV.--PENNY PANSY

XV.--THE LIZARD

XVI.--"THE GOAT IN BOOTS"

XVII.--THE UNICORN

XVIII.--THE SERANG

XIX.--SAPPHIRE AND EMERALD

XX.--A ROPE OR SOMETHING

XXI.--THE BAAG-NOUK

XXII.--LORD LABRADOR

XXIII.--FALLING OUT

XXIV.--KUK-KUK-KUK-KATIE

XXV.--WAITERS

XXVI.--PRISONER AND ESCORT

XXVII.--AN INTERIM REPORT

AMBROTOX AND LIMPING DICK.

CHAPTER I.

THE VISITOR'S SHADOW.

Randal Bellamy's country house was a place of pleasant breakfasts. From
the dining room the outlook was delightful; grass, flowers and sunshine,
with the host's easy charm, made it almost as easy for Theophilus
Caldegard to drink his tea fresh, as for his daughter Amaryllis not to
keep her host, Sir Randal, waiting for his coffee.

This morning, while she waited for the two men, the girl, remembering
that this was the eighteenth of June, was surprised by the ease with
which the five weeks of her stay had slipped by; and she wondered,
without anxiety, at what point the guest merges into the inmate.

"I can't live here for ever," she thought; "but as long as there's room
for his test-tubes, and his dinner's good, dad thinks it's all right for
a girl."

And, as if it was all right, she laughed--just in time for Randal
Bellamy to get full benefit of the pleasant sound.

"Laughing all alone?" he said.

"That's when the funny things happen," replied Amaryllis.

Bellamy looked down at her, as if asking a share in her merriment.

"After all, I don't know why I laughed," she said. "I was only thinking
it's five whole weeks since we came here, and----"

"And you want to go somewhere else?"

Amaryllis shook her head. "And it's gone like five days, I was going to
say."

She took her seat at the table and poured out his coffee. "I'm not going
to let you wait a moment for father this morning; it was two o'clock
when he went to bed."

"How do you know that, you bad girl?" said Bellamy.

"Because dad can't get out of the habit of putting his boots outside his
door," she replied. "And when he's pleased with his work, he throws 'em
out."

"I've heard them," he said, laughing. "But last night I was in bed
before twelve; I suppose he took advantage of that and sneaked back to
the laboratory again."

"But I thought," said Amaryllis, after a pause, "that Ambrotox was
finished and ready to make its bow to the public."

"God forbid!" said Bellamy, in a tone of such intensity that the girl
was astonished.

"But surely you've been helping him to finish it--you wanted it
finished," she exclaimed.

"Yes, but not published," said the man.

The girl's next eager question was cut short by the entrance of the
parlour-maid with the morning's letters; and after her came Theophilus
Caldegard.

His person was as unlike the popular conception of a man of science as
can well be imagined. His sturdy figure, thick white hair, and the ruddy
complexion of his face, where the benevolence of the mouth attracted
attention before the keenness of the eyes, suggested rather the country
gentleman than the man of genius whose discoveries might move a world.

He kissed his daughter, and, "Tea quick--the kettle's boiling, Amy," he
said. "Morning, Bellamy."

And, as Bellamy made no response, "First time I ever saw him absorbed by
a letter," he remarked:

"Best one I've had for six months," said Bellamy, looking up. "That
young brother of mine's coming down by the three-ten."

"Rolling down, you mean," said Caldegard.

"Can't roll any longer--covered with moss," retorted Bellamy. "Aunt
Jenny died and didn't leave me a cent."

"Why didn't he come before?" asked Caldegard.

"Been looking for something to do," said the brother. "Now he's been a
soldier, I don't believe there's anything left."

"How long was he in the Army?"

"Twelve months in the trenches, two years in the Air Force, and, one
time with another, ten months in hospital," replied Bellamy.

"And as soon as he's clear of the Army, he finds he's got money to
burn," chuckled Caldegard. "No wonder it's six months before he pays a
visit to his respectable big brother."

Amaryllis gathered up her half-read letters, and walked absent-mindedly
to the open french-window.

"Oh well," continued her father, "I'm afraid there aren't many
sensations left for your rolling stone."

Amaryllis went slowly down the steps into the garden, Bellamy watching
her until she was out of sight.

"Look here, Caldegard," he said, turning quickly. "Your daughter knows
it's a secret, but she does not know it's a deadly one."

"Well?" said Caldegard.

"My brother," continued Bellamy, "doesn't know there is a secret, and is
coming to live in the middle of it. I think that your daughter should
know the whole story; and, when you've met him, I hope you'll think it
good business to trust my young 'un as completely as I trust yours."

CHAPTER II.

THE HEN WITH ONE CHICK.

Under the cedar tree on the south lawn of Bellamy's garden sat Amaryllis
Caldegard. On the wicker table at her side lay a piece of needlework
half-covering three fresh novels. But when the stable-clock on the other
side of the house struck noon, it reminded her that she had sat in that
pleasant shadow for more than an hour without threading her needle or
reading a line.

Her reflections were coloured with a tinge of disappointment. Although
her life, passed in almost daily contact with an affectionate father,
who was a man of both character and intellect, had been anything but
unhappy, it had lacked, at one time or another, variety and beauty. But
the time spent in the exquisite Hertfordshire country surrounding the
old Manor House had been, she thought, the pleasantest five weeks in her
memory.

The worldly distinction of Sir Randal Bellamy gave point to the pleasure
she felt in his courtesy to her father and his something more than
courtesy to herself. She did not tell herself in definite thought that
she counted with Randal Bellamy for something more than the mere
daughter of the man whom he considered the first and most advanced
synthetic chemist of the day; but there are matters perceived so
instinctively by a woman that she makes no record of their discovery. If
not without curiosity as to the future, she was in no haste for
developments; and Bellamy's announcement of an addition to their party
cast an ominous shadow across the pleasant field of the indefinite
future.

On the twelfth stroke of the clock Amaryllis laughed in her effort to
brush aside the clouds of her depression. Expecting her father to join
her about this time, she was determined to show him the smiling face to
which he was accustomed.

When he came,

"What d'you think of the news?" he said.

"What news, dad?" she asked.

"Somebody coming for you to flirt with, while the old men are busy," he
replied.

"Flirt!"

"Well, I don't think it's likely that this Jack-of-all-trades has left
that accomplishment out of his list," said the father.

"Rolling stones get on my nerves," objected his daughter, having known
none.

"From what his brother says, this one's more like an avalanche."

Amaryllis laughed scornfully.

"Positively overwhelming!" she said. "But I'm sure I shall never----"

"Hush!" said Caldegard, looking towards the house. "Here's his brother."

Sir Randal was turning the corner of the house, with an envelope in his
hand.

"Telegram," said Amaryllis softly. "P'r'aps it's the avalanche
deferred."

"D'you mind having lunch half an hour earlier, Miss Caldegard?" asked
Sir Randal, as he came up. "Dick--my brother--is coming by an earlier
train. Just like him, always changing his mind." And he smiled, as if
this were merit.

Caldegard laughed good-humouredly. "You're like a hen with one chick,
Bellamy," he said.

"No doubt," said the brother. "Do you see, Miss Caldegard," he went on,
sitting beside her, "how the pursuit of science can harden a generous
heart? Both Dick and I were born, I believe, with the adventurous
spirit. I was pushed into the most matter-of-fact profession in the
world, which has kept me tied by the leg ever since. But Dick was no
sooner out of school than he showed the force of character to discover
the world and pursue its adventures for himself."

"But, Sir Randal, hasn't your brother ever followed any regular
occupation or business?"

"As far as I know," chuckled the man, "he's followed most of 'em, and
there are precious few he hasn't caught up with. Two years before the
war certain matters took me to South Africa. One evening, in the
smoking-room of the Grand Hotel at Capetown, a queer-looking man asked
if my name was Bellamy, and, when I told him it was, inquired if Limping
Dick was my brother."

"Limping Dick?" exclaimed Amaryllis.

"Yes," said Sir Randal. "That was the first time I ever heard the name
he is known by from Soeul to Zanzibar, from Alaska to Honolulu."

"Why do they call him that?" asked the girl.

The man smiled. "Because he has a limp," he said. "But how he came by it
is more than I can tell you. I told the fellow that I had indeed a young
brother Richard, and that my young brother Richard certainly had a limp.
We were saved the trouble of further description by the interruption of
a high-pitched voice:

"'Not a shade shy of six foot tall; shoulders like Georgees Carpenteer's
when he's pleased with life in the movies; hair black as a Crow Injun's;
eyes blue as a hummin' bird's weskit; and a grip--wa-al, he don't wear
no velvet gloves: Limpin' Dick Bellamy!'

"'That's him,' said the queer man. I agreed that the portrait was
unmistakable, and asked if either of them could tell me where he was
now, as I hadn't seen him for a long time. So the queer man told me that
two years before Dick, who was then overseer of a large rubber
plantation north of Banjermassin in Borneo, had given him a job. He
added, however, that my brother had left Borneo some six months later.
The American had first met him four years before in Bombay, and they had
joined forces in a pearl-fishing expedition which took them somewhere in
the Persian Gulf--the Bahr-el--Bahr-el-Benat Islands, I think; they had
separated four months later and had not met again for more than three
years, when the American had run across him as part owner of a cattle
ranch in Southern Paraguay."

Amaryllis was interested in spite of herself; but her father had heard
these things before, and was thinking of others.

"Jack-of-all-trades," he said, turning towards the house.

"And master of most," called Bellamy after him.

"What a good brother you are!" said Amaryllis softly.

"He's all the family I've got, Amaryllis," he said. "Besides, I'm almost
old enough to be his father, and I often feel as if I were."

"From what you've told me, he must be thirty at least," objected the
girl, "and I'm sure you're not fifty."

"Over," said Bellamy.

"You don't look it," she answered.

"Thank you."

"What for?"

"You make it easier."

"What easier?"

"What I'm going to say to you."

Amaryllis looked up, surprised.

"Before I met you, Miss Caldegard, I had got thoroughly into the way of
thinking of myself not as an elderly man, but as a confirmed bachelor.
For more than a month I have been enjoying your company and admiring
your goodness and beauty more and more every day, without perceiving,
until some few days ago, that I did so at great risk to myself. If I
were twenty years younger I should put off speaking like this, in the
hope of gaining ground by a longer association with you. But to-day I
have made up my mind that my best chance of winning at least your
affection lies in telling you simply and at once how completely you have
conquered mine."

That this must come sometime, Amaryllis no doubt had foreseen; yet at
this moment she felt as much surprised and embarrassed as if she had
never read the signs.

If a woman, mother or sister, could have asked her yesterday whether she
were willing to marry Randal Bellamy, she might, perhaps, have answered
that she liked him awfully, that she valued his love, and felt very sure
of being happier as his wife than as an old maid; but now, with the
famous lawyer's kind and handsome face before her, and that pleading
note mixing unexpectedly with the splendid tones of his voice, her
delicacy rebelled against taking so much more than she could give.

Twice she tried to speak; but, instead of words to her tongue, there
came a tiresome lump in her throat and a horrid swimminess over her eyes
which she was determined should not culminate in tears.

"What a dear you are, Sir Randal!" she said huskily. "But--but--oh! I do
like you most awfully, but--I can't say what I mean."

The new beauty in the face which he had from the first thought so
lovely, the new brightness of tears in the dark-brown eyes, and the
womanly tenderness which he had never before found in her voice, made
his heart quicken as never since he was thirty. That extra beat, if it
told him that he was still young, warned him also of the pain which is
the tribute imposed on conquered youth.

But before he found words, Caldegard appeared on the terrace, shouting
that it was five minutes past one, and lunch waiting.

The pair walked side by side to the house.

"Don't answer me to-day, Amaryllis," he said, "but just turn me and it
over in your mind now and then between this and Friday."

CHAPTER III.

"HUMMIN' BIRD'S WESKIT."

At a quarter past two that afternoon, Amaryllis, with her bull-dog, set
out for a walk.

Her father was in the laboratory, ostensibly at work, and Sir Randal,
beaming expectant, had driven off to St. Albans.

Tea-time, or even dinner was early enough, thought Amaryllis, to meet
the new-comer; and then, in spite of the mixture of bewilderment, pride
and regret which oppressed her, she remembered the words of the American
in the Cape Town bar: "Eyes blue as a hummin' bird's weskit."

"How absurd!" she exclaimed, laughing to herself.

Then she sighed, and was quite sure she really wanted to be alone, and
set herself, as she strolled down through the hazel copse towards the
London road, to think seriously of Randal Bellamy and his offer.

But the trouble was that Miss Caldegard had never seen a humming bird,
and therefore found herself brooding on the blueness of all the blue
things in her experience, from willow-pattern china to the waters of the
Mediterranean, instead of considering the answer which she must give to
Randal on Friday.

A quarter of a mile of winding path led her downward to the level of the
road. When she reached the stile, her thought was still far from the
matter she had promised to consider.

She turned to call her dog, and, knowing his insatiable curiosity, was
less surprised than annoyed to find that she had let him stray. She
could not remember whether she had last seen him behind her, in front,
or blundering through the undergrowth, still confident, in spite of
perpetual disappointment, in his power to overtake a rabbit.

Now the dog's temper, admirable with his friends, was uncertain with
strangers, and Amaryllis was accustomed to keep him close at heel in
public places. So, having whistled and called in vain, she crossed the
stile and looked down the road towards Iddingfield.

There was the tiresome beast, if you please, a hundred yards away,
gambolling clumsily round the legs of a man walking towards her.

Her second whistle brought the animal to a sense of duty, and he trotted
towards her, with many pauses to look back reluctantly at his new
friend.

She caught the dog's collar with the crook of her stick, and bent down,
slapping his muzzle in mild reproof.

As the stranger passed, his glance was downward, for the dog, rather
than the woman. As she stood erect, she saw him standing with his back
towards her, in the middle of the road, with face turned to the stile
she had just crossed.

Then he swung round, raising his hat as he approached her.

"Please tell me if that path leads to the Manor House," he said.

Amaryllis saw a tall, well-made figure, a face clean-shaven and deeply
sun-burnt, and under the lifted hat caught a glimpse of sleek black
hair. But when she saw his eyes, she knew his name, for they were the
bluest she had ever seen.

"Yes," she said. "I think you must be Mr. Richard Bellamy."

"I am," he said. "How did you know?"

"Sir Randal Bellamy was telling us about you," she answered. "I am Miss
Caldegard. My father and I are staying with Sir Randal. Yes, over the
stile is your quickest way to the house." And she looked down the road.

"Aren't you coming, too?" asked Dick Bellamy.

Amaryllis looked at him for a moment.

"Perhaps I'd better," she said, going towards the stile.

"Why 'better'?" he asked.

"There is no one to receive you," she replied. "Besides, the village
isn't very interesting."

"Awful," said Dick. "Worst beer in England."

Amaryllis did not reply. When they were amongst the trees, he spoke
again.

"I know Randal was to meet me at St. Albans, but I 'phoned from
Iddingfield and told 'em to send him back at once. I got my car back
from the vet. at mid-day, and if I hadn't had a bit of a smash just
outside Iddingfield, I'd have got here before."

Amaryllis was a quick walker, and had set a good pace up the slope from
the stile. Suddenly she remembered her companion's nick-name, and,
slackening her speed, involuntarily glanced down to see if indeed this
man were lame.

He came up beside her.

"It's all right, Miss Caldegard," he said kindly. "My action's a
blemish, not a handicap."

"Oh, Mr. Bellamy!" she said. "I never even noticed it until this
minute."

"I thought that was how you recognised me in the road," said the man.

"It wasn't that," said Amaryllis, and in fear of further questioning,
whistled her dog back to the path.

"Silly old thing," she said. "He won't believe that Mr. Bunny is too
quick for him; he's never caught one yet except in his dreams."

They were making their way towards the house when they heard the car
drive up to the front door, and before they reached the windows of the
dining-room, Randal Bellamy turned the corner.

Amaryllis stood apart watching with a certain curiosity the meeting of
the brothers.

The elder's face was beaming with welcome, the younger's she could not
see, but something in his bearing suggested a pleasure no less. All she
heard, however, was: "Hullo, young 'un!" and "Hullo, Bill!"

And, when they came towards her, the expression of the two faces was
that of men who, having breakfasted together, had met again at luncheon.

"Somebody's forestalled my solemn introduction, I see," said Randal.

"Gorgon performed the ceremony," said Amaryllis.

CHAPTER IV.

COFFEE.

Randal Bellamy at fifty was the most successful patent lawyer of his
day. He had taken silk before he was forty, and for many years had
enjoyed, not only the largest practice, but a distinction unrivalled in
his own country and unsurpassed in the world.

Such a man's knowledge in physics, chemistry and biology, though less
precise, is often wider than that of the individual specialist. His
friendship with Theophilus Caldegard, begun at Cambridge, had lasted and
grown stronger with the years.

On the evening of his brother's arrival he dressed for dinner later than
was his custom. His bath had filled him with a boyish desire to whistle
and sing; and now, as he tied his bow and felt the silk-lined comfort of
his dinner-jacket, he heard with a throb of elation the soft sound of a
skirt go by his door.

He murmured as he followed:

"--lentus in umbra
Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas."

But before he reached the stairhead, all other sounds were drowned by
shouts of laughter from the billiard-room--good laughter and familiar;
but the smile left his face and his pace slackened. He was, perhaps, too
old to wake the echoes, and Dick's laugh, he thought, was infectious as
the plague.

In the wide, comfortable hall used instead of the drawing-room which
Bellamy hated, he found Amaryllis smiling with a sparkle in her eyes, as
if she too had been laughing.

"Did you hear them?" she asked.

Randal nodded.

"Father hasn't laughed like that for years--billiards!" she said. "Your
brother is just telling him shocking stories, Sir Randal."

"How d'you know?" he asked.

"I dressed as quickly as I could, and went to the billiard-room. Father
couldn't speak, but just ran me out by the scruff of the neck."

At this moment her attention was distracted by the bull-dog, sliding and
tumbling down the stairs in his eagerness to reach his mistress.

"Gorgon's behaving like a puppy," said Randal, smiling.

"Oh, he's been laughing, too," said Amaryllis, fondling the soft ears.
"And he wants to tell me all the jokes."

And then Caldegard and Dick Bellamy came down the stairs together.

"What have you been doing to Gorgon?" asked Amaryllis.

"Never mind the dog," said her father. "It's what this 'vaudeville
artist' has been doing to me!"

"Oh, Gorgon, Gorgon! If those lips could only speak!" laughed the girl.
"Don't you think Gorgon's a good name for the ugly darling, Mr.
Bellamy?" she said, as they went in to dinner.

"Surely the Gorgon was a kind of prehistoric suffragette," objected
Dick.

"There you are, Amy," said her father, and turned to him. "Your brother
and I have quite failed to convince my illiterate daughter that the word
_Gorgon_ is of the feminine gender."

"Anyhow," said Amaryllis defiantly, as she took her seat at the
dinner-table, "I looked it up in the dictionary, and all it said was: A
monster of fearful aspect.'"

"He deserves it," said Dick.

"He seems to have taken a great fancy to you, Mr. Bellamy," said the
girl.

"Dogs always do," said Randal.

"Always at the first meeting?" asked Amaryllis.

"Nearly always. But that doesn't prove that I don't travel without a
ticket when I get the chance," replied Dick.

"What _do_ you mean?" asked the girl.

"Oh, the dog-and-baby theory's not dead yet. But I assure you, Miss
Caldegard, that the hardest case I ever met couldn't walk through a town
without collecting every dog in the place. That's why he never succeeded
in his first profession."

"What was he?" asked the girl.

"Burglar," said Dick.

"That's all very well," said his brother. "I know nothing about babies,
but I've noticed that the man whom all dogs dislike is no good at all."

"That's quite true," said Caldegard. "Remember Melchard, Amy?"

Dick Bellamy caught the quiver of disgust which passed over the girl's
face before she answered.

"Horrible person!" she said. "Trixy bit him, the dachshund next door
always ran away from him, and Gorgon had to be chained up."

"Who is this Melchard, Caldegard?" asked Randal.

"He came to me about eighteen months ago, and stayed about nine; a very
capable practical chemist; had worked for some time in the factory of a
Dutch rubber company. Sumatra, I think, or the Malay Peninsula. Tried
unqualified dentistry after he came home, went broke and got an
introduction to me. That's what he told me. An accurate and painstaking
worker, and never asked questions."

Dick began to be interested.

"But I really can't see anything horrible in all that," said Randal.

"At first it was what he was, not what he did," said Caldegard. "Tall,
slender, effeminate, over-dressed, native coarseness which would not be
hidden by spasmodic attempts at fine manners, and a foul habit of
scenting his handkerchiefs and even his clothes with some weird stuff he
made himself; left a trail behind him wherever he went. It smelt
something like a mixture of orris-root and attar of roses."

Amaryllis wiped her lips, and Dick Bellamy thought her cheeks nearly as
white as the little handkerchief.

"What did the fellow do?" asked Randal.

"For one thing, I discovered that he carried a hypodermic syringe; so I
watched him--morphia--not a bad case, but getting worse. And then," said
Caldegard, looking towards his daughter, "he had the presumption----"

"Oh, father, please!" cried Amaryllis.

"I'm sorry, my dear," said her father. "I was only----"

He was interrupted by a crash, a fumbling and a burst of flame. One of
the four-branched candlesticks had been upset, and its rose-coloured
shades were on fire. Very coolly the two Bellamys' pinched out the
flames and replaced the candles.

"Hope that didn't startle you, Miss Caldegard," said Randal.

"Not a bit," said Amaryllis, smiling.

"What a clumsy devil you are, Dick," he continued.

"I was trying to get the sugar," said Dick.

Randal tasted his coffee. "Cook's got one fault, Dick," he said. "She
can't make coffee; and we've been spoiled."

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