FALLING OUT.
"Is it they?" asked Amaryllis
"Two to one on," he answered.
"Next compartment?"
"Yes."
"Did they see us get in?"
"No."
"Then how can they know?"
"They saw the car outside, and the porter shutting this door. If they
hadn't, they'd have bundled in right opposite the entrance, instead of
running down the train," reasoned Dick.
"Will they try to come in here, then?" she asked.
"There's no corridor," said Dick.
"But outside? There was a murder--I read about it----"
"Take it easy, little wonder," he answered, with a smile which made of
his patronage a tribute. "I haven't got this far to crack in the last
lap. I'm thinking out a pretty story for the _Sunday Magazine_; so no
murders, please. They make me nervous. We're all right for a bit--next
station's fifteen miles ahead. They're getting their wind next door, and
talking it over."
He rose, and lifting Melchard's legs, made him lie at full length along
the seat farthest from the engine and the motor-cyclists. Next, he drew
down the little corner-blinds of each window, leaving the door-blinds
up; then sat down again resuming his attitude of abstraction.
In the silence which followed Amaryllis watched him until confidence
crept into her unawares, and she found herself becoming sleepily
interested in smaller matters than life and death. She did not believe
any longer that anyone could prevail against "Limping Dick."
She smiled to herself over the strange figure he cut, forgetting her
own.
His bulging pockets amused her into trying to remember all the things he
had stowed away in them.
The newest seemed to be an oily piece of cotton rag, sticking out from
the side pocket of his Norfolk jacket, which looked already, since she
had seen it first, three years older.
At last she spoke.
"Is the little plot finished?" she asked.
"Very nearly," he replied
"And is it decorous in episode, cheerful in tone, and forcible in moral
tendency?"
"All these it is, and more."
"Then--please, sir, I have a question to ask."
"Ask, maiden," said Dick.
"I want to know why you keep that filthy cloth in your pocket."
"And why this sudden curiosity about a trifle?" His hand felt the thing
as if he had forgotten it.
"Because," said Amaryllis, "I can't possibly sit closer to you if you
don't throw it away."
Dick rose, taking the bundle carefully from his pocket.
"It's a curio--a relic. I'll show it you some day," he said, laying it
in a corner of the rack.
"Not now?"
"Not now."
And then there came over his face an expression of mixed humour and
triumph.
"By the bloomin' idol made of mud!" he cried, "you've given me the
climax. It makes the story more moral than ever."
And he murmured, as if only for himself: "Which side, O Bud! Which
side?"
A little later he put up both windows.
"It'll be awfully hot," said Amaryllis.
"Let's be absolutely silent for a bit," said Dick. "With our ears to the
partition, we might hear something."
With intense concentration, they listened for several minutes.
"It's no good," said Dick at last. "Talking, talking all the time, but
the train makes too much row, and the padding's too thick."
"I heard something," said the girl. "Not words--but the different tones
of two voices, arguing. One wants to do something, and the other
doesn't. He's afraid, I think."
"M'm!" grunted Dick.
"The brave one's here--with his back to me. He's strong and heavy, I
think, because his voice is growly, and he sits back hard now and then,
and I can feel the partition bulge a little. And then--he keeps fiddling
with something that clicks."
"Clicks? How? Like the hammer of an empty gun?" asked Dick, puzzled.
The girl leaned forward and touched the spring lock of the carriage
door.
"No. Heavier than a pistol. Clicky and thumpy, like this lock if you
pull it and let go."
Dick's face beamed with satisfaction.
"Don't touch it--I know," he said. "I suppose you'll be wanting half the
proceeds, and your name as part author."
"What on earth d'you mean, Dick?"
"Collaboration. You've completed the plot."
He changed his seat to face her from the opposite corner; looked at his
watch, and thereafter gazed steadily from the window with down-bent eyes
for so long that Amaryllis grew bored and nervous.
"Two minutes to do a mile," he said at last, having again looked at his
watch. "It's fifteen minutes since we left Harthborough--seven miles and
a half. That's another seven and a half to go--Todsmoor's the station, I
think. They'll try it on within five minutes, or give it up. What did
you do with that snoring beast's automatic?"
Amaryllis thrust her hand deep into the Brundage pocket, rummaging.
"What an awful pouch!" he exclaimed.
"It is a bottomless pit, certainly. But it's much discreeter than yours
are, Dick. They bulge so interestingly, and make you an awfuller sight
than all the rest of your funny things together," she replied, laughing
at him.
Successful at last, she produced the Browning pistol which Melchard had
surrendered on the Roman road. "But it bumped horribly when I
walked--and it _would_ always knock the same place on my knee. Oh, Dick,
shall we ever get into clothes that'll feel nice again?"
"To-night, damsel, shalt thou sleep in fine linen, and to-morrow, so it
please you, shalt fare homeward in thy father's chariot, leaving in that
progress a ravaged Marshall and Snelgrove, an eviscerated Lewis, and the
house of Harrod but a warehouse of mourning."
Softly he let down both windows, fearing glass little less than bullets.
"Sit there," he said, pointing to the corner opposite to Melchard's
head; and, when she was seated, gave her back the pistol.
"If anything comes, cover it with that."
"But, Dick--," she faltered, "I know I'm silly, but I--I don't want to
kill anybody. I'm afraid."
"P'r'aps they'll funk it. But I've an idea they're more afraid of
him--if they know we've got him--than of us." He glanced at Melchard,
and then out of the window.
The train was running on an embankment with steep, grassy sides--not a
house nor a highway in sight.
"This side would be safer to fall from," said Dick. "On yours it's the
down-line rails. Tails up, dear! In three minutes it'll be over or off.
Don't shoot--only show you're heeled, and look fierce."
He reached for the oily cloth in the rack. Catching her fascinated eyes
fixed on him:
"Watch the window, will you," he snapped; and a sting of indignation at
being so addressed gave Amaryllis the stimulant she needed.
It should be obedience now, but a royal exhibition of displeasure
afterwards!
So, with the mouth and eyes of a goddess incensed, Amaryllis watched, in
lofty silence, her rectangle of sunlight.
But from the preparations of Dick Bellamy dignity was altogether absent.
From the dirty cloth he unwrapped Mut-mut's baag-nouk, slipped his right
hand into its straps and rings, and sank to his knees on the floor of
the carriage, facing the door and its open, unblinded window.
Leaning to his right, he lifted the corner blind away, bringing his left
cheek against the glass; and from this spy-hole kept that eye on the
point where the door of the next compartment should just show itself,
were it opened at right-angles to the train in letting a man creep out
upon the footboard.
And then, as he waited, came a dreadful thought: the door on this side
of the compartment, the train running on the left-hand track, was
hinged, of course, upon its forward jamb, and must therefore be passed,
by one creeping from the direction of the engine, before it could be
opened so as to give entrance. On the other side the position was
reversed.
Might not this advantage of the door defended only by the girl have been
noted by the men on the other side of that partition?
And she? Her back was to the engine and her corner blind pulled down.
She would see nothing till her door began to open; and even had she
nerve for killing, she could not shoot; for, in pity of her white hands,
he had fixed the safety-catch of Melchard's gun.
He pictured the moment's wavering, and a struggle, ending, perhaps, in a
double fall from the train.
While still his eye was steady at the loophole, his mind reached the
decision to change his dispositions. But before he could move to rise
the black, upright line of the enemy's door swung slowly into his field
of vision. His position at the window gave him a bare inch to see it in,
but the sight lifted his fighting soul into the heaven of certain
success.
Still watching, he saw that the door's edge remained steady, fixed, he
argued, by the hand of the man that watched his companion, too low for
Dick's line of sight, handing himself along by the brass rail, nearer
and nearer.
While that door was held, Amaryllis was safe.
Dick sank back upon his haunches, bowing his bare head to bring it below
the level of the open window.
There followed a stillness of waiting--stillness wrapped in the roar of
the train.
A brushing sound on the door's window-ledge!
Throwing his head backwards, Dick saw, without raising his head, thick,
dirty fingers on the split sill.
Lightly he touched them with his left hand. A head came in sight, rising
diagonally across the frame it entered; and as it rose, so rose Dick's
right hand, showing the steel blades of the Tiger's Claw.
The white face was jerked backward, the black-nailed fingers lost hold,
and with a choked scream the whole body fell outward from the train,
describing a curve towards the rear which just carried it free of the
ballast, to land sideways on the turf of the slope, and roll.
The bank was high and steep, and the body was still rolling, when Dick
turned his head to the sound of a door closing. His remaining enemy had
shut himself in.
"Got 'em both," he said, facing Amaryllis, and dropping his greasy
parcel once more in the rack.
"What's happened? Oh, that horrid scream!" she said, shaking.
"Your brave villain's taken a toss, darling," said Dick, sitting with an
arm round her. "And the white-livered accomplice is dithering with funk
in there." And he thumped the cushion of the partition. "We shall pull
up at Todsmoor in a few minutes. Let's compose ourselves. You must be
asleep in your corner----"
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
Pépe's "Hebérto, 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."