THE TRAP
The moon, nearing the full, was high over the hills, but its light did
not enter Patsy’s room, which was in almost black darkness.
Sitting on the bed, Mr Fanshawe could see the window, a square of vague
light. But for a faint perfume of stables, he would not have known that
Mr Lyburn was seated on the bed beside him, so silent and motionless was
that individual.
Suddenly “Boom! boom!”—the great clock in the turret began striking
twelve. The echo of the last stroke died away, and the awful silence
returned.
Mr Fanshawe began to fidget.
“They ought to be here soon now,” he said.
“Yes, sor,” replied a voice at his elbow.
“You aren’t frightened, are you?”
“No, sor.”
“You can feel the rope all right?”
“Yes, sor.”
“Mind, when I give the word, you pull for all you’re worth.”
“Yes, sor.”
“For,” said Mr Fanshawe, “if we don’t secure the bounder, he’ll most
likely knife us.”
“Yes, sor.”
“Patsy!”
“Yes, Misther Fanshawe?” came a voice from beside the window.
“When his shoulders are through, mind and yell out ‘Right.’”
“You lave that to me, sir.”
Five minutes passed.
“Hounds meet here at ten to-morrow,” said Mr Fanshawe.
“Yes, sor.”
Mr Fanshawe moistened his lips. The awful composure of Mr Lyburn
impressed him with an eerie sensation. The man did not seem to breathe
or move; it was like being seated beside a statue. The smell of stable
that came in waves, now faint, now more powerful, the mechanical voice,
were beginning to tell on his nerves.
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And here, whilst Mr Fanshawe waits, let me interpolate a few lines.
When Mr Boxall left the shade of the trees and emerged into the full
moonlight, the clock of Glen Druid House was striking eleven. Beneath
the anger boiling in his soul lay the deep satisfaction a man
experiences when he has kicked his antithesis. He made his way across
the park-land and lawn, and, on tiptoe, crossed the gravel path to the
front steps; reaching the hall door, he turned the handle gently and
found the door locked.
Patsy had no hand in the locking of the door. The idea of inveigling Mr
Boxall out on the lawn to interview Mr Mooney was one of those
flash-in-the-pan ideas constantly occurring in his harum-scarum brain;
he had forgotten all about the business in the preparations for the
burglar, and, had he known of Mr Boxall’s plight, he would have been the
first to let him in. Of course, the excluded one could have knocked, but
that would have meant explanations, so he temporised; in the midst of
his indecision, the clock in the turret struck the half-hour after
eleven. Mr Boxall was on the point of knocking, when the idea occurred
to him to go round the house on the chance of finding a back door open,
and, in putting this scheme into operation, he lost his way in the
“scrubbery.” It had gone twelve, when through an opening in the laurels
he saw Patsy’s window and two dark forms standing before it. Mr Boxall
paused to watch.
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Ten minutes passed; they seemed an hour. Could anything have happened to
Mr Murphy? Then, all at once, a faint noise, as of a foot upon gravel,
came from the outside, and, dim and vague as a fish at the pane of a
twilit aquarium tank, a figure blurred the window.
Mr Fanshawe gave Larry Lyburn a prod with his elbow, half to awaken that
individual’s wits to their full activity, half for company’s sake.
The form of the house-breaker darkened the window space; they could hear
the rubbing of his shoulders against the sash. A stick was thrust into
the room, and tapped upon the floor, then came the sound of the
millifluous voice of Mr Murphy.
“Patsy, avick,” said Mr Murphy.
“Is that yourself, Mr Murphy?” came Patsy’s voice.
“Meself and no other, thrue to time. Is the ould lady a-bed?”
“She is.”
“Then it’s I that’ll be takin’ her up the warmin’-pan and the
cough-drops if so be you have them ready—wan minute, till I say a word
to Con Cogan.”
He turned and spoke in a low voice to some one beside him on the path,
then he turned again to the window.
“Right!” cried Patsy; the rope flew through the pulley, an ear-splitting
yell pierced the house, then a voice from the ceiling.
“Holy Mary! I’m upside down. Help! Murther! Thieves! Lave go of the band
of me britches!—who are yiz at all? Patsy! Con!—the divil’s got a hold
o’ me! Help! I’m shtranglin’!”
“Strike a light, quick!” cried Mr Fanshawe. “Keep a hold of the rope,
Larry! Stop that row, you idiot! Here—give us the matches—keep tight
hold of the rope, Larry!”
A match flared up.
From the upper part of the house, through the ear-splitting shouts of
the captured one, could be heard the sounds of hurried feet, doors
banging, and all the sound of a house full of people awakened by
catastrophe at dead of night.
The rope had caught Mr Murphy below his centre of gravity. He was
hanging head down. He was kicking the plaster to pieces with his feet,
and striking wildly about him with his arms. He had been carrying an
open clasp-knife but had dropped it; it lay on the floor, and Mr
Fanshawe kicked it under the bed.
“Lave holt of me!” cried Mr Murphy, when the light showed him an
upside-down view of his proper position, and the fact that the devil had
not got him by the band of his breeches. “Lave holt of me, and I’ll go
quiet.”
“Lower, away, Larry,” said Mr Fanshawe; “get him half-way down till I
feel his pockets to see if he’s got any arms about him.”
Larry let the rope slip through the pulley till the suspended one was
three feet from the floor, looking not unlike a lobster on the end of a
string.
“That’s all right,” said Dicky, after a hurried investigation. “Down
with him—he’s not armed.”
Next moment Mr Murphy was seated on the floor with not a sign of fight
in him. He put his hand to the top of his head as if to see whether it
was on, and then he glanced round him at his captors, the rope, the beam
and the pulley, taking the situation in with a dazed grin.
“Faith, I thought I was goin’ to hiven,” said Mr Murphy, “back-side up.
Sure, it was as nate a trap as ever I was caught in. Larry Lyburn, who’s
the gintleman at all? Open your ugly gob and introjuice me.”
“He’s Mr Fanshawe,” said Larry.
“Faith, thin,” said Mr Murphy, “he’s a fine figure of a gintleman, and
it’s I that am proud to make his acqueentance; and now that he’s done
pokin’ his fun at me, maybe he’ll be lettin’ me say good-marnin’ to him,
for it’s home I ought to have been an hour ago.”
“Look here,” said Mr Fanshawe, half amused at the cool impudence of this
speech, “what are you doing here?”
“Faith, I’m sittin’ on the flure,” said Mr Murphy, with an ape-like
grin. Then, like a flash, he flung himself forward, seized Mr Fanshawe
by the foot, and next moment the two men were struggling in a
life-and-death embrace.
“Hit him a belt on the head wid the hammer!” cried Patsy. “Have at him,
Larry, or he’ll be murdherin’ the masther.”
“Don’t hit, don’t hit,” cried Dicky, “I’ve got him under!”
He had, in fact, got a knee on either arm of his opponent, and Mr
Murphy, helpless as a baby, lay on the flat of his back staring up at
his captor panting, and with a grin on his broad, red face.
“Now, you bounder,” cried Dicky, “what do you mean—eh!”
“Aisy, aisy!” gasped the recumbent one. “I gives in—sure, I was only
makin’ a thry.”
“Which is the better man?” asked Dick.
“You, is, begorra!” cried Mr Murphy, with a genuine ring in his tone.
“Let me up on me pins, and I’ll go aisy, but don’t be bindin’ me, or
I’ll tear the house down.”
“Up you get,” said Dicky. “You know you have no chance with me, so I
won’t bind you.”
“Faith, and I knew I was daelin’ wid a gintleman,” said the other,
standing up and shaking himself. “Glory be to God, who’s this?”
It was General Grampound at the door in a dressing-gown. He held a flat
candlestick in his hand; behind him, old James, the butler, and Uncle
Molyneux appeared like shades.
“What’s all this?” cried the General. “What’s this infernal row? Why,
God bless my soul, sir, do you know in whose house you are? Who’s that
ruffian? What’s the groom doing here? What’s that rope?”
“Who’s the ould gintleman, Larry?” asked Mr Murphy, looking the strange
figure of the General up and down in an interested manner.
“If you ask me one question at a time,” said Dicky, to whom all the
General’s questions had been addressed, “I may be able to answer you.
This is a burglar I have just caught—I caught him with that rope, and
the infernal row, as you call it, was made by him.”
“Then what the devil are you doing with him?” cried General Grampound.
“Why don’t you bind him, eh? Why haven’t you sent for the police?”
“Oh don’t bother,” cried Dicky, “I’ve caught him when you were all
snoring in bed, asleep, and now you come down abusing me, and asking
questions. He’s mine, and I’ll do jolly well what I like with him. Here,
Murphy, or whatever your name is, come along. Patsy, lead the way to the
potato room; you said there were bars to the windows of it, we’ll lock
him up there.”
“Do you mean to tell me you are not going to take the precaution to tie
the ruffian’s hands?” cried General Grampound.
“Listen to the ould cuckatoo!” cried Mr Murphy.
“Shut up!” said Dicky. “Go before me. Patsy, lead the way.”
He caught Mr Murphy by the arm and pushed him along protesting. Larry
Lyburn and old James followed to help in the incarceration, and Uncle
Molyneux and the General retired upstairs to quiet the women folk—the
General, like Mr Murphy, protesting.
The potato room was a large stone chamber. It had bars to the window,
and the window looked out on the stable-yard. It was really a
store-room, where all sorts of things were kept—sacks of flour and meal,
hams, sides of bacon, everything but potatoes.
“In you go,” said Mr Fanshawe, when they reached the door. “I’ll get you
a mattress or something to sleep on, and you can tell your story to the
police in the morning. Sit down on that sack there and wait till we come
back.”
“Misther Fanshawe!” said Paddy Murphy, as he took his seat on the sack.
“Yes?”
“I’m powerful dhry.”
“I’ll get you some water.”
“Sure, I’m not a dhromedary to be drinkin’ wather at this hour of the
night,” said Mr Murphy in a wheedling tone.
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Dicky. He shut the door and locked it.
“He can have the mattress off my bed, sir,” said Patsy.
“Yes, that’ll do. And, see, here Patsy, run up to the dining-room and
get a glass of whisky for him out of the tantalus stand; give him a good
big one.”
Five minutes later Mr Fanshawe re-entered the potato room followed by
Patsy dragging the mattress.
Mr Murphy was smoking a short black pipe.
“Is the ould gintleman a-bed?” asked Mr Murphy, in the tone of a
fellow-conspirator, and speaking in a half-muted, confidential voice.
“He is,” said Dicky.
“Me respects,” said Mr Murphy, tasting the half tumbler of John Jameson.
He grinned with satisfaction, and Dicky contemplated him for a moment.
This was a type of the human animal he had never come across before.
Quite well he knew that, if there were a ghost of a chance, Mr Murphy
would have attacked him with the ferocity of a tiger.
An atrocious villain—that was Mr Murphy in three words. Yet there was a
certain humour and a certain amount of _bonhomie_ in the man that,
contrasted with his other qualities, made him, in a way, attractive.
“Put the mattress be the furthest corner from the door, Patsy,” said Mr
Murphy, as though he were directing a chamber-maid. “And you may lave me
the candle, for it’s afeared I am of the rats.”
“There aren’t any rats,” said Dicky, “and I’m going to leave you no
candle—don’t want the house burnt down. Here—get on your mattress before
I take away the light.”
Mr Murphy rather grumblingly complied.
“I’ll take this ould bit of a sack for a pilla’,” said he, rolling an
old sack up and putting it under his head. “Musha! but it smells of
onions; no mather, beggars can’t be chosers. Patsy, haven’t you got a
blankit to cover me wid?”
“Bother the chap!” cried Mr Fanshawe, “we’ve forgot a blanket; hurry
off, Patsy, and fetch one.”
Patsy did as he was told, and returned in a moment with a blanket.
Mr Murphy took it, spread it over himself, drank off the remains of the
whisky at a gulp, placed his pipe on the stone floor at his elbow, and
turned on his side.
“Plesint dhrames,” said Mr Murphy in a drowsy voice.
“Same to you,” said Mr Fanshawe. “Now then, Patsy, go before me.”
They left the room and locked the door. Just as the key turned Mr
Murphy’s voice came sleepily:
“Patsy!”
“Yes, Misther Murphy?”
“Bring me me hot wather at eight.”
“Well,” said Mr Fanshawe, “that chap takes the bun!”
“It’s only his way, sir,” said Patsy. “He pretinds to joke with you, but
all the same he’d slit your throat if he had the chanst for two brass
farthin’s.”
Then Patsy went off to his room, but he did not go to bed. He sat on the
side of it for a long time debating matters in his mind.
He had saved Lady Molyneux’s jewels, he had not betrayed his trust, he
had helped in the capture of the worst character in the county. He had
done his duty, in fact, but he was not thinking of that.
He had proposed, it will be remembered, that Mr Fanshawe should load a
gun with bullets and blow Paddy Murphy’s head off, and he had made the
proposition in all seriousness.
But Paddy free and Paddy in prison were different people. All the
sympathy in his queer nature was aroused for the man in the potato room,
for prison, to the Celtic imagination, is a far more terrible thing than
death.
Patsy got off his bed and, candle in hand, left his room; he came down
the passage to the cupboard where the under-gardener kept his
tool-chest.
He took a file from it, came back up the passage to the potato room
door, slipped the file under the door, and knocked.
A loud snore was the only answer. He knocked again without eliciting a
reply.
“He’s aslape,” muttered Patsy; “but maybe he’ll see it when he wakes.”
Upstairs, Mr Boxall, who had taken advantage of the open window to enter
the house during Mr Murphy’s incarceration in the potato room, was
making plans to leave Ireland to the Irish as soon as might be.
The incident of Mr Mooney, the outcries of Mr Murphy, the whole affair,
in short, was incomprehensible to his mind, and only to be summed up in
one formula: “D——d savages.”
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