The Good Samaritan
The thing was successful because so unexpected. The car was started,
quickened its pace, and was out of the park before, probably, any of
Beaton's pursuers understood what was being done. It was a triumph of
impudence. The car had joined the other traffic, and was running along
Piccadilly, without anyone lifting so much as a finger in an attempt to
stop it. It turned up Bond Street, crossed Oxford Street, and began to
thread its way among the maze of streets which constitute Marylebone.
The unexpected passenger continued unconscious throughout the entire
run. The night and morning had completed the havoc wrought by the last
few weeks; the works had run down at last. On his seat sat the
chauffeur, a youngish man, clad in immaculate livery; he had apparently
paid not the slightest heed to the incident of picking up in such
strange fashion so singular a passenger. Although he had received no
instructions as to the route he was to take, he drove steadily on
without the slightest hesitation, as if carrying out a prearranged
programme. By Sydney's side sat the woman who had opened the door,
beckoned to him, and assisted him to enter. In spite of its being an
open car, she was scarcely dressed in what is generally known as a
motoring costume, but was rather attired as a lady might be who is
taking the air in the park, or paying a morning call. It was not easy,
from her appearance, to determine her age. Where a woman is concerned
it seldom is, but she was certainly not old; she might have been
anywhere between twenty-five and thirty-five. Nor was she ill-looking.
At times, as she glanced at the man beside her, her face was lit by a
smile which made it even more than pretty, then the smile went, and was
succeeded by an expression which had in it something hard and cruel and
even sinister; but even then, after some uncomfortable fashion, it was
a handsome face, though scarcely one which one would have chosen for a
friend. Her immobility was striking. Although she had been guilty of
such a quixotic action as to rescue a man, a vagabond, who obviously
was flying from the police, so soon as she was in the car her interest
in him had seemed to cease. One might have supposed that this was a
sentimental person, whose emotional nature was prone to lead her into
what she supposed to be acts of kindness which afterwards she would
have reason to regret, but there was nothing suggestive either of
sentiment or emotion as she sat by Beaton. He presented such a pitiable
spectacle, huddled there in the corner of the car, limp and lifeless,
that the average woman would surely have shown some sign either of
interest or sympathy. Not only did she do nothing to relieve his
position, which was a more than sufficiently uneasy one, but she made
no effort, even by speaking to him, to win him back to consciousness.
She regarded him almost continually, but rather as if he were a lay
figure than a living man. One wondered if she proposed to use him as a
model for a picture; she seemed to be studying him with so curious an
air. She was observing him closely enough; one felt that nothing about
him escaped her scrutiny--that she noted the well-cut clothes as well
as the state that they were in; the hand which dangled helplessly by
his side, that it was not that of a man who had done much manual
labour; the face, which, unshaven and unwashed though it was, was not
only a handsome one, but also the face of a man of breeding. Possibly
she was putting these things together, and from them drawing her own
conclusions.
Whatever her conclusions were, she kept them to herself. Clearly,
instead of being the prey of her own emotions, this was a woman who
kept her own feelings in the background; whose face was a mask; who was
mistress of herself; who, to judge from her bearing, was as cool and
calm and calculating as if she had been thrice her years. Which made
this thing she had done seem all the stranger.
The car drew up in a short street of dull, old-fashioned houses, with
stuccoed fronts, tall, narrow, dingy. The moment it stopped, before the
lady had the chance to alight from the car, the door of the house flew
open, and a tall, clean-shaven man appeared on the doorstep who might
have been a servant. Crossing the pavement, he opened the door of the
car; the lady got out. As she moved towards the house she made one
remark, which seemed an odd one:
"I've got him."
That was all she said. Moving easily--one noticed as she did so what a
charming figure she had--she passed into the hall. The chauffeur sat
still; he did not so much as glance round at the man who had come out
of the house. That individual shared the general calmness of demeanour.
He exhibited no surprise at what the lady had said or at the sight of
the figure which was huddled in the car. He said nothing. Leaning
forward, he put his arms under Beaton and raised him as if he were a
child, carried him into the house, up a flight of stairs, into a room
at the back, and laying him on a couch which it contained, looked down
at him with an air of detached curiosity without showing any sign of
having turned a hair. Beaton had grown lighter of late, but he had
nearly six feet of bone and muscle, and still weighed something. The
man must have been possessed of unusual strength, as well as knack; it
is something of a feat to lift a big and unconscious person out of a
vehicle and carry him up a steep flight of stairs as if he were a baby.
Presently the woman entered. The man was still standing by the couch,
with a watch and chain and sovereign purse held in his hand. He was
examining the watch. He nodded towards it as the woman appeared.
"What does this mean?"
He spoke quietly in a not unmusical voice; his accent was that of an
educated person; his tone, though respectful, was that of one who
addresses an equal, not that of a servant who speaks to his mistress.
"What's what?" She glanced at what he was holding. "It looks as if it
were a watch and the usual appendages. Where were they?"
"In his jacket pocket. There's a name on the watch--Charles Carter--and
a crest, and there are a couple of sovereigns in the purse."
"So that's why they wanted him."
"Who's they?"
"I was coming through the park when I saw that something interesting
was taking place on one side of me: one man was trying to get away from
a number of others. When I saw the way he bowled over a policeman I
said to myself, 'That's the gentleman I want,' and here he is."
"I presume that watch and chain and sovereign purse explain the
interest the crowd was taking in him. I imagine that they are articles
that have only very recently come into his possession. He's a
gentleman."
"I felt sure he was from the way he handled that policeman."
"There's his name on the jacket." He picked up the garment in question,
of which he had relieved the still unconscious Sydney, and which was
hanging over the back of a chair. "Here it is on the tab. The jacket
was made in Savile Row, and here's his name: Sydney Beaton."
"It might, of course, have been made for someone else and come into his
possession; he alone knows how."
"No; it was made for him, it fits too well. His name is Sydney Beaton,
and he's a swell who's down on his luck."
"That's the kind of person we want, isn't it?"
For the first time the man's and woman's eyes met. In hers there was a
gleam as of laughter. In his there was no expression at all. His was
one of those square faces whose blue cheeks and chin show how strong
the beard would be which is not allowed to grow. He glanced from the
woman to the unconscious figure on the couch before he spoke.
"Perhaps. When will he be wanted?"
"By to-morrow morning. I ought to write at once to say that he is
coming; it will be safer."
"Safer!" The man's thin lips were parted by what was rather a sneer
than a grin, as if the word she had used had borne an odd significance.
He continued to survey the unconscious Sydney, as a surgeon might
survey a body which he is about to dissect. "He'll have to be ready."
"There's time; and no one can do that sort of thing better than you."
Again the lips parted in that curious substitute for a smile, as if the
woman's words had conveyed a compliment.
"Oh, yes, there's time; and, as you say, I dare say I'll be able to
make a decent job of him."
When the woman left him it was to remove her hat and coat. Then she
went into a good-sized apartment, in which there was a blazing fire. In
a corner was a bookshelf filled with books; she took one down, it was
Burke's "Landed Gentry." She took a case out of some receptacle in her
bodice, and lit a cigarette. Settling herself in a big arm-chair before
the fire, she put her feet upon a second chair, and set to studying
Burke. She found what she wanted among the B's.
"There it is: 'Beaton, Sir George, seventh baronet,' and all the rest
of it. 'Seat, Adisham, Wilts; unmarried; next heir, his brother,
Sydney, D.S.O., the Guards, captain, twenty-eight years old.' If that
coat was built for him it looks as if that ought to be our man."
She closed the book and let it fall upon the floor. She inhaled the
smoke of her cigarette, staring with a contemplative air at the flaming
fire.
"I wonder what's his record? One can, of course, find out, but there
will be hardly time before he's wanted. An heir to a baronetcy, a
captain in the Guards, and a D.S.O. hardly comes to snatching watches
and chains without good and sufficient reasons. And yet, in spite of
the state he's in, he hardly looks it, and by this time I ought to be a
judge of that kind of thing. He must have had some queer experiences,
that young gentleman. I wonder if any of them have been queerer than
the one he'll have to-morrow. And what'll become of him afterwards? It
seems a pity, but so many things are pitiful which have to be."
As she indulged in the expression of that almost philosophical opinion
she expelled the smoke of her cigarette from between her pretty lips,
and she smiled. Then she sat up straighter in her chair, and threw her
scarcely half-consumed cigarette into the fire.
"And there are those who pretend that this is a very good world that we
live in!"