Ambrotox and Limping Dick

O >> Oliver Fleming >> Ambrotox and Limping Dick

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He broke off, eyeing her face keenly; then finished his sentence
tenderly with an "if you please, my dear."

The girl blushed gloriously.

"I hurt its tender feelings, didn't I, when I barked?"

"Yes--for a moment. But it--it made me so angry, Dick, that I forgot to
be frightened. You're so clever! I believe you did it on purpose for
that." And, when he smiled at her, "I won't forgive you, then," she
murmured. "I'll just say thank you instead."

She kissed him.

There came a groan and a heavy sigh from Melchard.

"No, he's not awake, nor near it," said Dick, when he had examined his
patient. "But I'd better give him another dose. There's going to be fun
at Todsmoor, and I don't want any Millsborough back-talk mixed up with
it. Look out of that window while I physic him. It's not nice to watch."

It was nasty enough to hear, thought Amaryllis.

By the time it was over the train was slowing down. Before it stopped
Dick was out on the platform, and in two strides had caught the guard.

"There's been an accident. Man fell out of this carriage--next to mine,"
he said, in a low voice, speaking now in the assured tones of a
gentleman accustomed to obedience. "Don't make a fuss. Fetch the
station-master."

The bearded autocrat hesitated, eyeing this strange figure with the
"officer's swank," as he called it afterwards.

"I advise you to hurry," said Dick, his eyes opening a little wider.

The autocrat took the advice, and returned with another.

Dick was standing with his hand on the door of the compartment with one
traveller--the remaining motor-cyclist.

"Look here, station-master," he said, beginning before the man could
open his mouth; "I don't want to leave you with a nasty job like this on
your hands, without telling you what I know. I am Major Richard Bellamy
of the R.A.F. Never mind my clothes. Take it I've been celebrating. At
Harthborough I got into the next compartment with a lady, and a man I
have befriended. I am looking after him. He'll be all right to-morrow.
Just as we left--the train had actually started--two fellows in overalls
jumped into _this_ compartment. Half-way between this and Harthborough
we heard a row going on--the lady and I. It got worse and worse, and I
looked out of the window just in time to see one of the pair fall out
backwards."

Here Dick looked at his watch.

"Twelve minutes ago, it was. I took the time then. He hit the grass bank
and rolled. Shouldn't wonder if he's all right. Probably alive, anyhow."

"Why didn't you pull the communication cord?" asked the station-master,
pompously stern.

Now Dick had forgotten the communication cord. But it would have been
impossible for him to forget a few things he had once learned about
railways.

He glanced at the guard, and found uneasiness in his eye.

"It's a slip carriage," he said, smiling, tolerantly superior. "Was the
connection made?" he asked, looking hard in the guard's face.

The man flushed an awkward red. "No," he said. "'Tain't worth the
trouble for the little bit of a journey before we slip her."

"H'm!" said the station-master.

"Just so," said Dick, simultaneously. "So perhaps it'd be just as well
for me not to have thought of the communication cord, eh?"

The station-master said nothing. But the guard looked as if there were
gratitude in him somewhere.

"If the poor beggar's alive, he'll have gained by our not stopping,
because he'll get a doctor and a stretcher all the quicker," Dick went
on. "Now, I advise you to hold the fellow in this compartment here for
your local police. Look at him. He's sat there like that ever since we
ran in here. You can see he was in no hurry to give information
concerning what had happened to his friend."

The station-master turned to the guard.

"Did you see anything?" he asked.

"No. But I heard a door bang. I looked out, but I heard nothing. The
gentleman's quite right, though, about the two chaps scrambling in as we
pulled out of Harthborough."

The station-master turned to Dick with a face diffidently serious.

"I'm afraid you ought to wait here, sir," he said.

"I know I ought not. Duty's duty, and you can't keep me, my good
fellow," replied Dick, dredging the breast pocket of his coat and
producing and opening his cigarette-case. "Here's my card. The address
will always find me."

The station-master looked at the card, hesitating still, and turning it
about in his fingers.

"I can uncouple the through carriage," he said.

"And I can move my party to another," Dick blandly retorted. "And you'll
only inconvenience everybody up the line that meant to use it. See here,
man; I'm witness of what was possibly an accident. I give you the
information, and add my private opinion that it was something worse than
an accident. That's all. It's up to you to put your police on the job,
not to disturb a traveller that wasn't even in the man's compartment.
Ask this fellow here, who _was_ in it. Most likely he's got no ticket,
running it fine as they did at Harthborough. That'll give you reason
enough to make him miss the train while one of your men's fetching a
constable. And the constable won't let him out of sight till you've
found the other man, alive or dead. But he won't object to waiting,
unless he wants to rouse suspicion. Now I do object." And here Dick
laughed. "Why," he went on, "with your way of doing things, they'd have
to arrest a hundred witnesses every time a lorry ran into a lamp-post."

And he stood by, lighting his pipe, while the station-master attempted
to extract information from the man in overalls.

He proved docile enough; mumbled a halting tale of dozing in his corner
when his friend, leaning from the window, had been launched from the
train by the sudden opening of the door. Supposed it hadn't been
properly latched; his friend had been fooling with the lock a few
minutes before. No, there'd been no words--not to say quarrel; they'd
talked a bit--nothing more. Oh, yes, of course he'd get out and wait
over, and do his bit to help 'em find his chum--poor, silly blighter!

The man cast one sly side-glance at Dick, and thought he was not being
watched.

But Dick saw, and gathered from that one flash of the eye that this was
Pepe's "Heberto, the London man," and that 'Erb was not even yet sure
whether this was or was not the wild man who had leapt upon him from the
stairs in the hall at "The Myrtles," eight or nine hours ago.

As the train ran out of Todsmoor, "I shouldn't wonder," said Dick
comfortably to Amaryllis, "if that's the last fence, and a straight run
home for us."

But there was fear as well as disgust in the glance which Amaryllis
threw at the gross slumber of their prisoner.

She had felt his power stretched over half a county, and who should fix
its limit for her?

But she merely said:

"What time do we get to King's Cross, Dick?"

"Ten-thirty--on paper; but we're twenty minutes late already."

"Then--what'm I going to do then? Eleven o'clock, and me so tired!"

"You'll be all right. I'll see that you are," said Dick.

Apparently satisfied by this pledge, Amaryllis had almost fallen asleep
in her corner, now the furthest from Melchard, when Dick said:

"What you want to-night, my prize-packet, is a fairy godmother."

"She would save lots of trouble," admitted Amaryllis.

"And all you've got is that mildewed chaperon, snoring there."

Amaryllis shuddered.

"I don't know even yet," she said, "why you brought it--a thing you
might have left tied in a bundle by the roadside. He's only been
dangerous and disgusting. And you said----"

"Said it wasn't to take it out of him that I did it. Did I? If I did,
it's right."

There was a silence.

"I suppose you could guess," said Dick, breaking it.

"Was it because you thought of the harm that he does, making drugs and
selling them to sad people and bad people, Dick?"

"That might have been a good reason. It's not my line, though--if I'm on
oath."

"Oh, but you're not, Dick. You needn't say anything unless you want to
tell me."

"I do. That reason wasn't mine. I don't feel like that about people in
the lump. And now they say _the_ people is free and democratic--doing
things, you know, off its own bat, when it hasn't a cat's notion of
cricket--now I think, as far as I think about the lump at all, that it'd
better have a fair run at its own game. Result may be anything; might be
a new and a good one. But I simply hate seeing the old professional
groundsman pretending that the new mob of boys likes cricket, and
sweating himself all for nothing.

"As for the drug business, it cures in the end by killing, and
grandmotherly legislation belongs to dear old tyranny; and I'm not at
all sure, if five-eighths of the people said that the rest mustn't kill
pigs to eat 'm, that you and I would be wrong to have an illicit rasher
when we could get it. Anyhow, the immoral remnant of the nation doesn't
trouble my dreams. It rubs itself out in the end. So, you see, it wasn't
the dope evil that made me bind him in the chains of tangle-foot and
force his putrid company on an angel. Guess again."

"I'm too tired," said Amaryllis "to have a guess left in me. Tell me."

"My dear," he answered, "the cherry's always been bigger than the bunch
to me. You are just the greatest, and the roundest and the reddest, and
the sweetest cherry on the big tree. And the cherry nearest to you----"

"My dad?" she asked, interrupting with a catch of the breath.

He nodded.

"Yes," he said. "It was for him I took the dope from that scented
ape--because he'd have been hurt if it'd got loose to ravage the world.
And when I got the chance I just pouched the ape too for the same
reason--so that the man that cursed you shall not only feel that his
patent curse hasn't done any damage, but has even helped to chain up a
lot of rival plagues. These men of science are like benevolent Jupiters:
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday colloguing with Vulcan to forge heavier
and sharper thunderbolts; Thursday, Friday and Saturday conferring
anxiously with all Olympus as to how they shall be blunted and
lightened, lest they hurt poor mortal fools too much.

"This chap Melchard, properly handled, will give the show away, and the
League of Nations or some other comic crowd'll corral the lot."

"What lot?" asked Amaryllis.

"The crew your father told us about. My dear, I wanted to please you by
pleasing him. To do it I had to let you run a shade more risk and endure
a lot more discomfort. Was that--was it----"

For once Dick Bellamy could not find his words. Yet his eyes, it seemed
to Amaryllis, were hardened--stabbing hers with steel points barbed with
curiosity.

She knew what he meant, and said so.

"Of course it was nothing against me--against love," she answered. "It
was just the hook, dear, that's going to hold this fish for ever."

When they had expressed the inexpressible and explained the obvious, he
returned to that fish-hook phrase of hers.

"What made you put it like that, young woman?" he asked.

"Your eyes, Dick. For a moment you were afraid, wondering whether I
should toe the line exactly. Your eyes got hard. They stabbed right into
me, and they had a sort of backward wings, like fish-hooks--father's got
a horrid arrow like that--won't come out again without tearing. Yours
won't ever, Dick."

CHAPTER XXIV.

"KUK-KUK-KUK-KATIE."

Soft, even light filled the wide entrance hall of No. -- Park Lane.

The single, expressionless footman appeared almost hopeful, knowing his
release was near; for the time was only twenty minutes short of
midnight.

The road between the front door and the park railings was almost as
peaceful as the houses on its one side, and the grass and trees on the
other. Hardly a hoof on the wood, and but a rare motor rushing, at
intervals, with soft, apologetic speed over the thoroughfare from north
to south.

But there came at last a taxi--Charles, in spite of thick door and
perfect roadway, recognised its venal characteristics--a taxi which
hesitated, stopped, started again, and came to rest at the very door of
No. --.

Though his ears could scarce believe it on that Saturday night, when
there was not within earshot any function or reception going on, there
came feet up those splendid, shallow steps--feet which seemed to halt,
and even vacillate beneath a swaying body.

The mere suspicion was shocking; but even worse, to that cultivated ear,
was the clamour of the bell which followed.

But when, having opened the door, Charles examined the ringer, he was
astounded, not to say appalled.

The man, though his eyes were heavy and his voice that of one driving
himself to the limit of his strength, was certainly not intoxicated; for
in that matter, Charles the footman knew and trusted the nicety of his
own judgment. But the condition of the dress, the cut cheek-bone, the
puffy eye above it, the dirty hands with raw knuckles, and the pockets
grotesquely bulging, made a picture so painfully in contrast with the
house and its quarter, that the footman's face lost its habitual
expression of restrained good-humour under a mask of severity altogether
tragic.

For a moment he hesitated: to ask this scarecrow his business would
concede him the right to exist; and the ruffian's undamaged eye and his
assured carriage were plain warning against any concession whatsoever.

The visitor, therefore, spoke first, even as if he had been respectable.

"I want to see Mr. Bruffin," he said.

"Not at home," replied Charles, trying to boom like a butler.

"Then I'll wait till he comes," said Dick Bellamy, taking a step forward
in spite of the door and the footman's hand upon it.

"Impossible to see Mr. Bruffin to-night--sir," said Charles. "I'm afraid
I must ask you to step outside."

His vision of what might be in those bloated pockets was only a little
less alarming than the reality.

But Dick felt he had only a drop or so of physical energy left; and so,
lest they should trickle from him, he used them now.

And Charles, lifted most disconcertingly by the slack of his breeches
and the stiffness of his resisting neck, was shifted quickly and
painfully to the doorstep, to hear the door close upon him before he
could turn to face it.

The house was new, even to its owners. Its rebuilding and exquisite
refitting had been a marvel for the magpie chorus of the occasional
column. The public already knew more of his new house than George
Bruffin could ever forget.

But Dick, who never read more of a newspaper than he must, knew only its
address and the day when George and his wife should go into residence.
This, he had remembered, was the first day of their second week, and,
even if George had already learned his way to his own study, Dick must
find means to reach him more expeditious than geographical exploration.

He looked about him, and his eye fell upon a thing of which George had
told him with pride almost boyish; a framework of shell-cases, graduated
from the slender treble of a shortened soizante-quinze to the deepest
base of a full-length monster from some growling siege-gun.

For George had done his portion of fighting and had collected this
material for a dinner gong, on which one might play with padded stick
anything from the "Devil's Tattoo" to "Caller Herrin'" or the "Wedding
March."

From the doorstep, the frantic Charles, with eyes rolling, saw the taxi.
What was in it he could not see, for the chauffeur stood blocking the
open window, watching, it appeared, whatever the cab might contain--wild
Bolshevists with bombs, perhaps, or soft litters of pedigree pups.

From Apsley House to Marble Arch, he felt, was never a policeman. He
could have embraced the hoariest of specials.

The service entrance was too far round. Before he could reach it all
might be over.

So, forgetting the bell, he turned and beat, with fists none too hard,
upon the door that was anything but soft. And cursed, as he had never
cursed man before, the architect whose enlightened scheme had found no
place for a knocker.

And with his first blow there burst out in the hall the wild, indecorous
strains of "Kuk-kuk kuk-Katie," pealing out louder and ever louder as
the musician found confidence.

With his left hand supporting half his tired weight on the frame of
these bells, translated by some twentieth-century Tubal Cain to a music
so strangely different from the first they had uttered, Dick was
absorbed in his rendering of such bars of the vulgar melody as he could
remember, when he heard, far behind him, a slow, unimpassioned voice.

"What's all this hell's delight?" it asked.

A confused chorus of protesting explanation, interwoven with the yapping
cries and hysterical laughter of women, was all his answer.

In a fresh surge of enthusiasm "Katie" drowned it.

Then George Bruffin shouted--almost, the servants felt, as if he might
some day lose his temper.

"How did this freak minstrel get in?" he roared.

"Don't know, sir."

"Who was on duty here?"

"Charles, sir," chimed the chorus.

"Where is he?"

The music died in a last tinkling "Kuk-kuk." And then, as the minstrel
swung round to face his audience, the whole company heard the beating on
the great door.

"That," said Dick with a wave of his baton towards it, "is Charles."

While George stared heavily at the intruder's battle-worn visage, the
second footman flung open the door.

With a face livid and distorted by passion, Charles made a rush at his
enemy--to be brought up short by the sight of his master, wringing the
rascal's hand and patting his disgraceful shoulder.

"You silly goat," were all the words George could find for his laughter.

"I had to see you," said Dick. "And I do."

"Why couldn't you have me fetched decently?"

The chorus had vanished; they two were alone, with Charles, abashed.

"Your man wanted to put me out. I'm all in, George, so I just put him
out, and rang the bells for you." He sighed wearily, and added: "Anyhow,
it worked."

George turned a heavy face on the footman, but Dick spoke first.

"Charles is a damned good servant," he said. "I know what I look like.
He was in the right, so I had to evict."

"What's your trouble, Dick?" asked George, speaking, thought the
servant, as if this Dick were the first of all Dicks and all men.

"I've got a girl in a cab out there. She's worse beat than I am, George.
I want you and Liz to look after her till to-morrow."

Bruffin turned to his servant.

"Lady Elizabeth is in my study," he said. "Ask her to come to me here."
Then, to Dick, "Sit down," he went on, and disappeared, to return
quickly with a tumbler in his hand.

With half-closed eyes, Dick continued as if the other man had never left
him.

"She's mounting guard," he said, "with the shuvver to help, over our
catch--the worst blackguard unhung."

A handsome woman of some thirty years, with masses of darkest hair
cunningly disposed, neck and shoulders beautiful beyond criticism, and
dressed in a peignoir of delicate simplicity, came to her husband with a
rush smooth as the full-sailed speed of a three-masted schooner.

Charles, with recovered dignity, followed in her wake.

"George! What is it, George?" she exclaimed, before she had even time to
get her eyes focused upon his companion.

"That," answered George, with a derisive gesture.

"Why, it's--oh, _Dick_!" she cried.

With her long, slender hands on his shoulders, she peered close and
eagerly into the battered countenance.

"Oh, Dickie dear, whatever have they been doing to its good old face?"
she demanded, with tenderness for the one, and anger for the many
mingling in her voice.

"Nothing to what they got from him, Betsy--unless I'm an ass. But he'll
tell us when that whisky's worked in his veins a bit. He's got a lady
out there, waiting. Shall I fetch her in--or you?"

Dick half rose from his chair. But Lady Elizabeth Bruffin pushed him
back into it.

"I will, of course," she said, and made for the front door so quickly
that Charles only just had it open in time.

As he told the butler before he slept that night, "It'd've done your
kind heart good, Mr. Baldwin, to see how they were eating 'im with their
eyes. His word law, you know, and do what he wanted, almost before he
could say what it was, and it might be an hour before he could tell 'em
why. And the terrible object he was--but with something strong and
compelling, one might say, underneath."

He was thinking, perhaps of the hand which had lifted him over the
threshold.

Charles had followed his mistress to the taxi.

The driver, turning on her approach, stood back, touching his cap;
amazed by this condescension of jewels and silk to beauty ill-clothed,
draggled, dirty and exhausted.

Suddenly Lady Elizabeth remembered that she did not know even the girl's
name.

"Open the door, please," she said to the driver. And then, to Amaryllis,
"My dear, you're to come in," and stretched her hands out with a motion
so inviting that the girl laid her own in them, taking all their support
to rise and get out on the pavement.

"Take my arm. Poor little thing, you're tired to death," said Lady
Elizabeth, with what the girl called a coo in her voice.

"You don't even know my name----" began Amaryllis.

"I know something better--you're Dick Bellamy's friend. That is a
passport and an introduction, my dear."

Charles followed them up the steps. On the third his mistress stopped
and turned. Charles halted on the second step.

"There's a man in the taxi?" said Lady Elizabeth interrogatively.

"Yes," replied the girl. "We're keeping him. He's drunk."

"Charles," said Lady Elizabeth, "assist the driver in keeping the person
inside from getting out."

"Yes, my lady," said Charles; and, feeling that haply he was mixing in
great matters, he went back to the cab and stood sentry very loftily
over its further exit.

When they were inside, Lady Elizabeth shut the big door.

"George!" she said; and Bruffin took his eyes from Dick, to see his wife
leading towards them a pale-faced, tear-smudged girl, with a battered
sun-bonnet flung back on her shoulders and a great halo of untidy red
hair topping a graceful, weary figure habited in clothes which, in their
present state, would have disgraced the woman they had come from.

George took a step forward, and Dick half rose in courtesy.

"This is Miss ----" said Lady Elizabeth, and stuck.

"Oh, Liz!" cried Dick. "Beginning an introduction, when you haven't been
introduced yourself! Lady Elizabeth Bruffin, you have on your arm Miss
Caldegard, daughter of the eminent Professor Caldegard. George, you
behold the same. Miss Caldegard, Lady Elizabeth Bruffin, and her
husband, Mr. George Bruffin. He is famous for immeasurable wealth which
he can't use and a few brains which he uses in all sorts of queer ways,
and hasn't yet spent."

He limped towards the two women.

"Liz, dear," he went on, "please put her to bed. She's had the deuce and
all of a day. She'll tell you, only don't let her talk too much."

Lady Elizabeth nodded.

"Would you like to go to bed now, dear?" she asked.

A smile, radiant on the tired face, illuminated Amaryllis.

"Oh, please, yes. I can see it--all white!" she answered.

And without a word from any of the four, the women left the men standing
in the hall.

It was empty when Lady Elizabeth returned. She found George in his
study.

Her eyes shone with a kind of maternal satisfaction, but she looked at
her husband without speaking.

"How's the young woman?" he asked. "She looked about done in."

"She's had a bath. Suzanne's done her hair. She's in bed, so sleepy that
I left Suzanne with her to keep her from spilling her bouillon and toast
before she's finished it. Oh, George, she's a ripper--perfectly lovely,
without all those horrid clothes."

George took his cigar from his mouth.

"I shouldn't wonder," he said.

Lady Elizabeth ignored the interruption.

"And I _believe_ she's Dick's," she went on. "Who is this Professor
Caldegard?"

"Scientific--coal-tar--big bug of the first magnitude," answered
Bruffin. "Some day he'll synthesize albumen, and then all the farmers'll
go into the workhouse."

"But are they--what sort of people are they? It's _Dick_, George."

"You've seen the girl, Betsy."

"Yes," admitted Lady Elizabeth.

"And when you catch Dick Bellamy making a break over a man, a horse, a
dog or a woman, Bet, p'r'aps you'll let me know."

Lady Elizabeth sighed contentedly, as if he had removed the last doubt
from a happy mind.

"That's quite true," she said. Then she looked round the room. "Is he in
your bath-room, or in bed, or where? You oughtn't to leave him alone."

"He's left me," replied George. "Wouldn't stay a moment after he knew
Miss Caldegard was in your clutches. He's gone off with his intoxicated
captive. He's made a conquest of Charles by pitching him out of the
house, and the taxi-man would help him do murders."

"Is he coming back to bed here?"

"Didn't ask."

"Oh, George, why not?"

"He'll come if he wants to."

"Didn't he tell you where he was taking his prisoner?"

"Only said, 'Must get a move on. Got a man to be hanged,' and went."

"Then it's Scotland Yard," said Lady Elizabeth.

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