Ambrotox and Limping Dick

O >> Oliver Fleming >> Ambrotox and Limping Dick

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The Reverend Mr. Dixon Mallaby looked him up and down with good-humoured
scrutiny.

"I can't object to being pulled out of a hole," he replied. "And I don't
think I should enjoy driving Mr. Grudger's cattle myself."

"Then if ye'll bid landlord have Ned Blossom sent on t' Ecclesthorpe
when he be sober, I'll get t' three-cornered team hitched up."

And Dick went towards the stable, but turned back.

"Ought t' 'ave said, sir," he explained, "as I'll drive 'ee, so be as
there's room for my daughter."

"The pretty girl on the bench there? Why, of course there's room. Does
she want to see the match?"

"Doctor's orders she's to take all the fresh air there be, sir, and
we're paying for't in shoe-leather. By same token, she looks after me
too. Wouldn't let me out 'lone to-day, 'cos yesterday Ah went too free,
an' got into a bit o' rough house."

"I see," said the clergyman. "That's a nasty cut on your cheek."

Dick laughed.

"One o' them others got a worse," he answered, and went in search of Tod
Sloan.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE UNICORN.

When Sam Bunce returned, he had a straw in one corner of his mouth, and
was leading a sturdy roadster, with whom he seemed already on terms of
intimacy.

Mr. Dixon Mallaby, meantime, had introduced himself to Amaryllis,
getting, for his pains, but the Araminta of the sun-bonnet; and Dick,
when he and the ostler had harnessed Tod in his lonely distinction, went
round to find her the centre of an admiring group competing, it seemed,
for her company in the brake; the girl answering with "Na-ay!" "Na-ay,
thank 'ee kindly," and "Thank 'ee, sir, Ah'll ask feyther," with a
genuine flush on her face due to fear of speech rather than of men,
which did much to heighten her attraction for these kindly labourers and
mechanics.

"You be set on box 'long o' me," said Dick, and took her not too gently
by the arm.

But his way was barred by a red-faced cricketer in strange flannels.

"'Tis not every Ecclesthorpe fixture," he said, "as we gets a comely
wench for maascot. Us be trustin' our hossflesh to you----"

"Hosses is Grudgers', an' t' lass is mine," interrupted Dick, smiling.

"But there be Parson Mallaby to make we mind our manners," objected
Redface.

"T' cloth," said Dick, "is a good thing. And blood's a better," and so
marched his daughter to the front of the brake.

As the last of the team were climbing to their seats, a motor-cycle with
a side-car, coming from the north, pulled up behind them.

"Don't turn your head," whispered Dick on the box to Amaryllis beside
him. "They'll pass us soon, if they're Melchard's men. I had to yank you
up here, you little devil, or you'd have cooked the whole show by
laughing. You were shaking like a jelly, and they thought you were
afraid of me. You! With your 'Naays' and your 'Thank 'ee kindlys!'"

A tall man in motor-cycling overalls, goggles pushed up over his cap,
sauntered leisurely past the brake from behind, on its off side. From
the near-side box-seat Amaryllis saw him, and then looked down at the
splash-board, shaking her head.

"Nay, daddy, na-ay!" she said in a clear drawl, imitating Dick's.
"Always feared, Ah be, o' talkin', when there's a many men makin' simple
jests. That were a gradely word o' yourn, 'Cloth be a fine thing, but
blood's a better!'"

And she finished with a low, cooing chuckle.

Then, loud and clear, came the parson's voice.

"You can let 'em go now, Mr. Bunce," he said.

The stableman stood away from Tod's bridle, and the three horses put
their necks into their collars like one.

A little chorus of approbation rose from the body of the brake; the man
in the middle of the road jumped aside, cursing.

As they passed him, gathering pace, "That's one of 'em," muttered Dick.

"He'll go into 'The Goat in Boots' and hear all about us," said
Amaryllis.

"I don't think he'll want to draw too much attention to himself," said
Dick. "But if he does go in, Ned Blossom and the two hayseeds in the
bar'll tell him all about Sam Bunce."

"Do you think he really believes in Bunce?" asked the girl.

"He believes already in three pounds, and the next drink'll make him
believe in everything."

"You _are_ clever," said Amaryllis, "and it's awfully funny."

"You," said Dick, "are astonishing."

"Why?" asked the girl.

"You laugh all the time, as if----"

"As if I weren't afraid? I'm not," she answered. "But it's not courage.
It's you. I feel safe."

For a moment Dick was silent; then he said:

"My leader's a good little nag, isn't he?"

"Yes. He likes you."

"How d'you know?"

"He feels you through the lines. He's not used to being all alone out
there, but he's only tried to look round once, and then all you did was
to talk to him, and he said to himself: '_He's_ all right'--waggled his
head a little and broke into his jolly canter again."

"I'll show you what they can do, after that side-car has passed."

"Will they come after us?"

Two or three back-fire explosions answered her, and very soon the
motor-cycle and side-car tore past the brake, alarming with its insolent
speed even Dick's sober and industrious leader.

The machine was soon out of sight.

"Did they mean to scare poor Tod?" asked Amaryllis.

"He's only disgusted. No," said Dick. "All that fuss and stink is to get
'em to Gallowstree Dip before we pass it."

"But they don't know we're here," she objected.

"They don't know anything. If we turn off towards Harthborough Junction,
or if anyone leaves the brake to walk that way, they'll follow."

"Wasn't there to be a picket at Harthborough itself?" asked the girl.

"Yes. But they haven't made contact with it yet, and don't even know
whether it's arrived. If it hadn't and we went that way, we could nip
into the first train and get clean away. But when this picket sees us
driving straight on to Ecclesthorpe, they'll sit down at the Dip to wait
till we never come. I shall spring the Dip at such a pace that these
flannelled fools'll yell like a school-treat, and the picket'll forget
'em."

"But why should they even suspect?"

"They're ordered to suspect everything. They've never seen either the
man or the woman they're after. They see one woman and a lot of men on a
beanfeast, and she's got to pass on to the next picket to be accounted
for."

"Then why didn't you make Mother Brundage dress me up as a boy?"

"Because like this you may be somebody else. In trousers, these blokes
would shoot you on sight. My dear child," said Dick, "there are a good
many men that could masquerade as women, but not one young woman in ten
thousand can look anything but painfully ridiculous in a suit of
dittoes."

Amaryllis was not quite sure whether or not to be offended, but
remembered her hair, and was comforted.

The road now began to drop away in front of them so sharply that Tod had
no work to do. A little further, and the slow trot, which gentle use of
the foot-break had made possible, was reduced to a reluctant,
pastern-racking walk, with slack traces and strained collar-chains for
the wheelers; while the leader, too much at leisure, began to remember
his loneliness.

And then, as they rounded an acute bend at the steepest point of the
grade, Amaryllis saw below her, just beyond the bridge of grey stone
from which their road began its ascent to the moor, a single ancient
oak-tree, from the twisted trunk of which was stretched out across the
by-road which followed the course of the bridged stream, that cruel,
heavy arm, upon which in one day were hanged fifteen of Sir Thomas
Wyatt's rebels in days popularly supposed merrier than ours.

Near the foot of this evil old tree, worthy of its huge bough, the girl
saw the two men whose behaviour had offended Tod, pretending themselves
occupied with some defect of side-car or cycle. By the time that Dick
had brought his team within a hundred and fifty yards of the bottom, he
could see that the interest of his two enemies had been diverted from
their own vehicle to his: they stood erect with their backs to the oak,
each hiding a hand in a right-side pocket.

Whether they had gathered matter of suspicion at "The Goat in Boots,"
whether they would dare, here in peaceful English country, so desperate
an attempt as shooting him and Amaryllis as they passed the Dip, were
questions Dick could not answer. But the goggles were down, masking the
faces, while he and the girl, perched high on the box, made fine targets
for a pair of Brownings.

He turned in his seat and spoke to his passengers, catching Dixon
Mallaby's eye.

"Ah be goin' to show 'ee, sir," he said, "how three ornary hacks,
rightly drove, can take a dip an' a rise, even with a load like you
gentlemen makes. Howd tight."

Then to Amaryllis he said, with paternal tenderness:

"Don't you be fallin' off now, my dear. And grab t' rail, not me, when
they bump into their collars."

Simultaneously he lifted his foot from the break, uttered an exotic,
mournful cry, and for the first time brought his long lash across his
horses--Tod first, then the wheelers; and as the three shot down the
remnant of the slope, he kept Tod's traces tight while the heavy load at
their tails compelled the pair to run from it for their lives.

What he had foretold befell; the men in the body of the carriage broke
into a boyish cheer of delight, which drowned for all his passengers but
Amaryllis the words of that stream of polyglot invective, exhortation
and endearment which the driver poured out over his cattle; a lost
jeremiad, for Dick says he does not remember, and Amaryllis that, though
she heard it all, there was much that she did not understand and a great
deal more which nothing on earth will ever induce her to repeat.

As they rattled across the little stone bridge, Dick glanced to his left
at the Hangman's Oak, the motor-cycle and the two men; saw foolish,
innocent grins break through the suspicion on the two bad faces, and,
jovially lifting his whip, waved them a salute.

In response, the two right hands came out of their pockets, forgetting
for that moment what they left there.

The circling lash took each wheeler in turn, while the load still ran
light behind them, and Tod, honest worker, answered relief with fresh
effort.

By the time that the hill had reduced them to a straining walk,
Gallowstree Dip was out of sight, and Dick let out his breath with a
little hissing noise between the teeth. Amaryllis heard it and
understood.

"Dad!" she said.

"Ay, lass?" he answered.

"Those two men," she said, lowering her voice and speaking in her
natural manner: "as we were coming down to the bridge they pushed up
their goggles, and their faces were beastly--just as if they meant," she
whispered, "to kill somebody."

Dick nodded.

"And then the men behind began cheering, and those two horrid faces grew
quite silly and good-natured. And when you waggled your whip at them
they grinned and waved their hands, and one of them shouted something
meant to be jolly."

"It just means, lovey," he answered, "that they made up their minds it
was a beano after all, and that they'd got wind up about nothing. The
mongrel sportsman and the bashful wench in a sun-bonnet were after all,
they thought, a genuine substitute for Ned Blossom."

"Did you play for that?" she asked.

"Oh, well!" he answered vaguely; then added: "Don't worry, my lass. 'Tis
all well for a while."

He kept his horses on a steady strain until the long rise was topped,
and then climbed down from his seat and let them breathe, tightening
this and feeling that about their tackle, until each horse was tricked
into believing itself the object of especial interest; a belief of which
Amaryllis saw the effect in three pairs of swivelling ears. At last,
having lighted a cigarette dug from a yellow packet which he must have
bought, she was sure, at "The Goat in Boots," he climbed back to her
with this unusual ornament hanging stickily from his under lip.

The team started again willingly as he drew the reins softly in through
his fingers; but for a while he kept them walking.

Then he turned to Mr. Dixon Mallaby.

"Parson," he said, "Ah've Ned Blossom's repitation to consider. Ah'll
take 'em along easy-like, leastways if you're not in a hurry. Then you
gives me the word when us be nobbut half mile from tha pull-up, an' I'll
let 'em out champion."

"You don't know Ecclesthorpe, then?" said Dixon Mallaby.

"I dunno this ro'd," replied Dick. "If 'ee play match in Rectory field,
Ah be to drive 'ee there, Ah reckon."

"They've got the Green in excellent shape again. The Ecclesthorpians,"
said the parson, "don't like the match outside."

All this and more Dick knew already; for he had ears as keen as his
eyes, and words travel better to the coachman than from him.

"Then Ah'll drive 'ee to t' 'George,' sir," he said.

Twenty minutes later the St. Asaph's brake, wheelers at a swinging trot
and the leader cantering in his best form, bowled through
Ecclesthorpe-on-the-Moor, and drew up with a clatter and a scrape before
"The Royal George."

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE SERANG.

The inn stood midway in one side of the village green, which was already
surrounded with walking groups as well as stationary ranks awaiting
patiently the opening of the game. For Ecclesthorpe had a name in its
county, owning two families of hereditary professionals, as well as a
lord of the manor, who, before the war, had kept wicket in three Test
Matches, while the workman's club from Millsborough, captained this year
by Dixon Mallaby, a 'Varsity Blue, had already a quarter of a century's
repute of being hard to beat. So from far and wide those who had not
gone to Timsdale-Horton races came always on the third Saturday in June
to the "Ecclesthorpe Fixture."

As he brought his horses to a stand, Dick perceived that, while some
notice was given to the oddity of his team, scarce a glance was bestowed
on its unusual driver. The visiting eleven were the objects of interest
to the straggling crowd in front of "The George."

When he had helped Amaryllis down from her perch, he lit a fresh gasper
from the yellow packet, and methodically assisted the ostler to unhitch
the horses; but just as the leader stepped free, a smart motor, coming
from the south-west, hooted impatiently for space to reach the door of
the inn.

The ostler, leaving Dick with his detached horses, hurried bandily to
shift a farmer's gig, drawn up and abandoned in front of the porch.

Dick caught one glimpse of the car's driver, and took his wheelers by
their bridles.

"Hey, lass!" he said. "Move tha legs a bit, now, an' lead Tod into
staable."

By his tone she knew something evil was near, and obeyed with never a
look round, but disappeared with Tod into the stable-yard, Dick
following with his pair.

They found empty stalls, unbridled and haltered the horses without a
word, and, just as Dick had found the few he must say to her, there was
the ostler in the doorway.

"You be more helpin' like," he said, "'n owd Ned Blossom. I thank 'ee
kind, I do--and you, miss."

"Ah'll thank 'ee, owd hoss, to pass no word agen Ned Blossom. My friend
'e be."

Then, to the vast surprise of Bandy-legs, Dick pushed a half-crown into
his hand, and added, pleasantly as you please:

"Give nags feed an' rub down. And, when Ned comes rolling along to trot
'em home, tell 'im Sam Bunce won't forget Town Moor and Challacombe's
Leger."

Crossing the stable-yard with Amaryllis, "Don't walk like that--bit more
flat-footed, but don't clown it," said Dick. "And don't turn your face
towards the door of the inn--mind. Know why I made you lead Tod?"

The girl's face seemed shrunken, and shone white in the bluish shade of
her bonnet.

"There was a car," she stammered softly. "I didn't look. Was it----"

"Looked like Melchard driving," answered Dick. "I'd half a mind to take
you out into the lane at the back. But it's safest amongst the crowd.
And I must know whether----"

The crowd had grown dense before the open gates of the stable-yard, and
Dick's words were interrupted by the sudden outbreak of a quarrel in the
heart of it.

To a running chorus of jeers, expostulation, and fierce incentives to
retaliation, there came in sight, pushing his way through the crush, a
creature whose appearance immediately struck Dick and Amaryllis as
ominous of danger.

The man, although of middle height and erect carriage, had so vast a
spread and depth of chest, development of the deltoid muscles so
unusual, and length of arm so unnatural as to establish the effect at
once of power and deformity; to which the yellow skin, high cheek-bones,
small eyes, and the thin black moustaches, drooping long and
perpendicular from each corner of the broken-toothed mouth, added an
expression of cruelty so unmitigated that Amaryllis turned sick at the
sight, closing her eyes in dreadful disgust; while the European leather
and cloth costume of a chauffeur not only added horror to the outlandish
figure, but gave Dick Bellamy almost the certainty that here was yet
another accomplice of Alban Melchard.

As the monster drew near, making his way savagely towards the stables,
there thrust himself in the way Bob Woodfall, the good-natured champion
of the village--six feet two inches and fourteen stone of bone and
muscle, good cricket and five years' war record, dressed in country-made
flannels, ready for his place in the Ecclesthorpe team.

"Hey, man!" he cried good-naturedly. "Be no manner o' sense bargin'
thro' decent throng like a blasty tank into half battalion o' lousy
Jerrys."

Then, quite close, the Malay turned his face full on Amaryllis, and Dick
saw that its right ear had a large gold ring hanging from a hole in the
lobe--a hole that was stretched by the mere weight of the metal to three
times the size of its thickness.

But on the left side of the head was no ring to match, for the reason
that no ear was there to support it. In some unclean strife in Hong-Kong
or Zanzibar it had been torn away, leaving, to mark its place, only the
orifice in the head, staring in ghastly isolation most horrible of all.

Amaryllis saw the face again, this time in its full lopsided
monstrosity, and turned to Dick, clutching him and hiding her eyes
against his shoulder.

Hearing her gasp, a woman in the crowd cried out:

"Howd t' heathen! He flays t' lasses, and he'll curd t' milk."

"Gi' 'im a flap on jaw, Bob Woodfall," cried a youth. "One's all '_e_'ll
take."

It was. Bob, perhaps, was too kindly to put his full weight into the
blow, and got no chance for a second.

With a savage cry, between a grunt and a squeal, the Malay ran in,
clutching with his great horny sailor's hands. Too quickly for any eye
but Dick's to see how it was done, he had Bob Woodfall by the nape of
the neck and the band of his trousers and lifted the long body high
above the crowd at full-length of his terrible arms, brandishing it
helpless, like some Mongolian Hercules a Norse Antaeus; took three steps
to the stone wall of the stable-yard, and would have flung the village
hero over it to break upon the cobble-stones, but for a gloved hand laid
upon his shoulder, and a soft, high-pitched voice, saying: "_Taroh, plan
plan, Mut-mut_!"

And the monster obeyed the voice and touch of his master, restoring
Woodfall to his feet with a docility that made him, if possible, more
hateful to the crowd than before.

"_Akau baleh_," continued Melchard. "_Dan nante sana_."

And Mut-mut, the crowd yielding passage, made his way to the car, and
sat at the wheel.

Arrived at the gates of the stable-yard almost simultaneously with
Melchard, was Dixon Mallaby; and Dick observed not only that there was
acquaintance between them, but also that, while the parson endured
recognition, Melchard sought it.

"I'm ashamed of that fellow of mine," he said. "Yet I cannot help being
attached to the ruffian. He would die to serve me; but the ribaldry of
an English crowd is too much for his temperament."

"If you don't want him to die without serving you, Mr. Melchard,"
replied the parson, "I should advise you to keep him in better control."

"Ah, well! I owe him so much already, you see. The strange fellow saved
my life in the Persian Gulf. Serang--boat's swain, you know, to the
Lascar crew. Sharks in the water--horrible!"

The parson thought that even in this the serang had done the world poor
service.

Having delicately wiped his face with a ladylike handkerchief in memory
of his danger and gratitude, Melchard tried again.

"I saw you arrive with your quaint team, sir," he said; "the unicorn, I
mean, not the eleven."

But the parson allowed no outsider to poke fun at the St. Asaph's
cricket club.

"Handled his horses in fine style, your driver. Why!" exclaimed
Melchard, as if noticing Dick and Amaryllis with her head on his
shoulder for the first time, "there he is--and pleasantly occupied. I
mean the fellow with the girl in his arms, and the cut on his face. I
wonder how he got it."

Amaryllis heard the voice and the words, and, to keep her breath from
gasping and her body from trembling, she caught and ground between her
teeth a wrinkle of Dick's coat.

Melchard, she felt, had taken a step towards her.

"I don't know how he got it," the clergyman was saying. "But something
painful, I understand, happened to the other man. The girl is his
daughter, recovering from an illness."

Melchard took another step towards the couple.

"Better let well alone, Mr. Melchard," said Dixon Mallaby sternly. "Your
servant has already made trouble enough."

Throughout these few strained moments Dick had borne himself as a man
concerned only with his daughter. But at this moment Dixon Mallaby
caught a gleam from his eyes which assured him that the least
familiarity or impertinence of Melchard's would be resented in a manner
likely to divert the crowd's lingering anger from Mut-mut to his master.
Much as he disliked Melchard and his indefinitely unpleasant reputation,
he was not going to have his match spoiled by the beating and kicking to
a jelly of a scented and dandified Millsborough dentist.

So, ignoring Melchard, he went up to Sam Bunce.

"I am afraid your daughter is hardly as strong as you thought, Mr.
Bunce," he said.

Melchard, with a finicking air of nonchalance, stood where he was left,
lighting a cigarette.

"'Tis nowt but she's frit with that flay-boggart of a Chinaman," said
Dick, "wi'out it be she trembles lest 'er daddy gets fightin' agen.
There, then, little lass," he said, stooping to her ear, and coaxing
back courage, thought the parson, with a voice extraordinarily tender.
"Way out o' t' crowd her vitals'll settle back to rights and she'll foot
it another six mile singing."

"Then you won't see our match, Mr. Bunce?"

"'T' lass knows nowt o' cricket," replied Dick. "'Mornin' seemed like
she relished going to t' fun and press o't. But now she's feared o'
seein' that blasted ogre again. So, thankin' you, sir, for your lift and
your good heart to us, we'll just foot it along o'er t' moor."

Dixon Mallaby shook hands with him; the girl, as she drew away from Sam
Bunce's arm, bobbed the parson a curtsey. But she never turned her face
to him, and Mallaby, thoughtfully watching the pair down the road to the
south-west, observed that she never once looked back; for even when,
being almost indistinguishable among the moving crowd at the corner of
the green, they were hailed by the ostler, toddling quickly from the
yard, waving a handkerchief and crying: "Hey, Mr. Bunce, Mr. Sam'l
Bunce!" it was only the man who turned his head, waving his hand as if
in reply to a belated farewell.

The parson swung round in time to see Melchard snatch the handkerchief
from the ostler's hand.

Feeling the clergyman's eyes upon him, he muttered: "Looks like one of
mine," and ran the hem quickly through his fingers, prying into the
corners.

At the third, he found a mark, and dropped the handkerchief on the
stones.

"Of course not," he said, and laughed. "Stupid of me, when I hadn't been
in the stables."

Dixon Mallaby picked it up.

"Tis t'yoong wumman's," objected Bandy-legs. "Dropped un inside,
stablin' t' 'osses."

But the parson put the handkerchief in his pocket.

"I am acquainted with Miss Bunce," he said. "Perhaps I shall see them
again."

With a feeling which he found unreasonable, that he had protected a good
woman from a bad man, Mr. Dixon Mallaby went to the dressing-room in
"The Royal George."

Out of Melchard's sight, he examined the handkerchief--a lady's, marked
with the embroidered initials A.C., and it struck him, once more with a
sense of unreason, not only that the beastly dentist had discovered that
these letters did not stand for Araminta Bunce, but that he knew the
names which they were here intended to represent.

CHAPTER XIX.

SAPPHIRE AND EMERALD.

"What is it?" asked Amaryllis, as Dick turned to a shout, waving his
hand.

"I don't want to know what he wants, so I take his antics for good byes.
Come on--let's get into the thick of this lot."

"Was he suspicious?" she asked, when a bend in the road had hidden "The
Royal George" and even the village green.

"Melchard? Yes--on general principles. No more than that--unless----"

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