"Miss Mildare!"
The Chief's keen eyes had lightened suddenly. The whole face had darkened
and narrowed, and the clipped brown moustache lost its smiling curve, and
straightened into a hard line.
"Miss _Mildare_?"
"Why, yes, that is her name.... An orphan, I have heard, and with no
living relatives. But she seems happy enough at the Convent, judging by
what Mrs. Greening says."
The hearer experienced a momentary feeling of relief and of anger--relief
to think that dead Dick Mildare's daughter should have found refuge in
such a woman's heart; anger that the woman should have concealed from him
the girl's identity, knowing her the object of his own anxious search.
Then he understood. His anger died as suddenly as it had been kindled. He
recalled something that he had seen when the rearing horse had inclined
perilously towards the footway--that protecting maternal gesture, that
swift interposition of the tall, active, black-robed figure between the
white-clad, flower-faced, girlish creature and those threatening iron-shod
hoofs....
"She loves the girl--Dick Mildare's daughter by the treacherous friend who
stole him from her. Is there a doubt? With poor little Lady Lucy Hawting's
willowy figure and the same nymph-like droop of the little head, with its
rich twists and coils of dead-leaf-coloured hair, shaded by the big black
hat. That woman has taken her to her heart, however she came by her; the
parting would be agony, stern, proud, tender creature that she is! I
suppose she will be doing thundering penance for not having told me, a
fellow who simply walked into the place and assegaied her with my
death-news. Here's a marrowy bone of gossip Lady Hannah shall never crack.
And yet I wouldn't swear there's not an angel husked inside that dried-up
little chrysalis. For God made all women, though He only turned out a few
of 'em perfect, and some only just a little better than the ruck."
He roused himself from the brown study that brought into relief many
lurking lines and furrows in the thin, keen face, as the Chief Medical
Officer, fixing him through suspicious eyeglasses, demanded:
"Ye got your full allowance o' sleep last nicht?"
He nodded.
"Thanks to a Cockney babe in bandoliers, who was born not only with eyes
and ears, like other infants, but with the capacity for using 'em."
"Ay. It's remarr'kable how many men will daudle complacently through life,
from the cradle to the grave, wi'out the remotest consciousness that
they're practically blind and no better than deaf, as far as regards real
seeing and hearing. But who's your prodeegy?"
"One of Panizzi's Town Guardsmen. They put him on at the Convent with
another sentry, their first experience of a night on guard. By not being
in a hurry to challenge, and keeping his ears open while a conversation of
the confidentially-affectionate kind was going on between a Dutchman--a
fellow employed in the booking-office at the railway, on whom I've had my
eye for some little time past--and his sweetheart, my townie found out for
himself something that most of us knew before, and something else that we
wanted to know particularly badly...."
"Namely?"
"For one thing, that the town is a hotbed of spies, and that our friends
in laager outside are nightly communicated with by means of
flash-signals."
"And that's an indeesputable fact. Toch!" No other combination of letters
may convey the guttural, "Have I no' seen the lamps at warr'k mysel',
after darr'k, at the end o' the roads that debouch upon the veld! The
Dutchman would be able to plead precedent, I'm thinking."
"He will have plenty of time to think where he is at present. When the
sentry interfered he was instructing the young woman in a simple but
effective code of match-flare signals, by means of which she was to
communicate with him when he had cleared out. And he had announced his
intention of doing that without delay."
"An' skipping to his freends upo' the Borr'der.... Toch!" The network of
wrinkles tightened about the sharp little blue-grey eyes of the Chief
Medical Officer. "That would gie a thochtfu' man a kind o' notion that a
reese in the temperature may be expectit shortly. An' so you--slept
soundly on the strength o' many wakeful nichts to come? Ay, that would be
the kind o' information ye were badly wanting!"
"You're wrong, Major. The bit of information was this--from the spy to his
friends outside: '_No--news--to-night._'" The keen hazel eyes conveyed
something into the Northern blue ones that was not said in words: "'No
news to-night.' And the sender of that message was a railway man!"
The wiry hairs of the Chief Medical Officer's red moustache bristled like
a cat's.
"Toch! Colonel, you will have reason to be considering me dull in the
uptake, but I see through the mud wall now. And so the knowledge that ye
have no equal at hiding your deeds o' darkness even in the licht o' the
railway-yard was as good to ye as Daffy's Elixir. And when micht we reckon
on getting notification from what I may presume to ca' your double
surpreese-packet?"
He looked at his watch--a well-used Waterbury, worn upon the silvered
steel lip-strap of a cavalry bridle, and said:
"Ten o'clock. At a quarter past eleven I think we may count upon
something. The driver of Engine 123 has given me the word of an Irishman
from County Kildare; and the stoker, a Cardiff man, and the guard, who
hails from Shoreditch, are quite as keen as Kildare."
"You're sending the stuff up North?"
"In the direction of the stretch of railway-line they're busy wrecking, in
the hope that it may come in useful."
"Weel, I will gie ye the guid wish that the affair may go off exactly as
ye are hoping."
"Thanks, Major! You could hardly word the sentence more happily."
They exchanged a laugh as the Mayor bustled up, rubicund, important, and
with a Member of the Committee to introduce.
"Colonel, you'll permit me to present Alderman Brooker, one of our most
energetic and valued townsmen, President of the Gas Committee, and an
Assistant Borough Magistrate. One of Major Panizzi's Town Guardsmen. Was
on sentry-go last night not far from here, and had a most extraordinary
experience. Worth your hearing, if you can spare time to listen to my
friend's account of it."
"With pleasure, Mr. Mayor."
Brooker, a stout and flabby man, with pouches under biliously tinged eyes,
bowed and broke into a violent perspiration, not wholly due to the shiny
black frock-coat suit of broadcloth donned for the occasion.
"Sir, I humbly venture to submit that I have been the victim of a
conspiracy!"
"Indeed? Step this way, Mr. Brooker."
Brooker, soothed by the courteous affability of the reception, his sense
of importance magnified by being led aside, apart from the others, into
the official privacy of the stoep-corner, began to be eloquent. He knew,
he said, that the story he had to relate would appear almost incredible,
but a soldier, a diplomat, a master of strategy, such as the personage to
whom he now addressed himself, would understand--none better--how to
unravel the tangled web, and follow up the clue to its ending in a den of
secret, black, and midnight conspiracy. A blob of foam appeared upon his
under-lip. He waved his hands, thick, short-fingered, clammy members....
"My story is as follows, sir...."
"I shall have pleasure in listening to it, Mr. Brooker, on condition that
you will do me first the favour of listening to a story of mine?"
Deferred Brooker protested willingness.
"Last night, Mr. Brooker, at about eleven-thirty to a quarter to twelve, I
was returning from a little tour of inspection"--the slight riding
sjambok the Chief carried pointed over the veld to the northward--"out
there, when, passing the south angle of the enclosure of the Convent,
where, by my special orders, a double sentry of the Town Guard had been
posted, I heard a sound that I will endeavour to reproduce:
"_Gr'rumph! Honk'k! Gr'rumph!_"
Brooker bounded in his Oxford shoes.
The face upon which he glued his bulging eyes was grave to sternness. He
stuttered, interrogated by the judicial glance:
"It--it sounds something like a snore."
"It was a snore, Mr. Brooker, and it proceeded from one of the sentries
upon guard."
"Sir ... I ... I can expl----"
"Oblige me by not interrupting, Mr. Brooker. This sentry sat upon a short
post, his back fitted comfortably into an angle of the Convent fence, his
head thrown back, and his mouth wide open. From it, or from the organ
immediately above, the snore proceeded. He was having a capital night's
rest--in the Service of his Country. And as I halted in front of him,
fixing upon him a gaze which was coldly observant, he shivered and ceased
to snore, and said":--the wretched Brooker heard his own voice, rendered
with marvellous fidelity, speaking in the muffled tone of the
sleeper--"'_Annie, it's damned cold to-night; and you've got all the
blanket._'"
"Sir ... sir!" The stricken Brooker babbled hideously.... "Colonel ... for
mercy's sake!..."
"I could not oblige the gentleman with a blanket, Mr. Brooker, but I
relieved him of his rifle and left him, to tell his picket a cock-and-bull
story of having been drugged and hypnotised by Boer spies. And--I will
overlook it upon the present occasion, but in War-time, Mr. Brooker, men
have been shot for less. I think I need not detain you further. Your rifle
has been sent to your headquarters--with my card and an explanation. One
word more, Mr. Brooker----"
Brooker, grey, streaky, and desperately wretched, was blind to the
laughter brimming the keen hazel eyes.
"I am entrusted by the Imperial Government with the preservation of Public
Morality in Gueldersdorp, as well as with the maintenance of the Public
Safety--and I should be glad of an assurance from you that Mrs. Brooker's
Christian name is really Annie?"
"I--I swear it, Colonel!"
Brooker fled, leaving the preserver of public morality to have his laugh
out before he rejoined the Staff, glancing at the Waterbury on the short
steel chain. Half-past ten. Would the Dop Doctor turn up to appointment,
or had the battle with habit and the deadly craving born of indulgence
ended in defeat? As his eyes moved from the dial, they lighted upon the
man:
"_Clothed and in his right mind...._"
His own words of the night before recurred to memory as he came forwards
with his long, light step, greeting the new-comer with the easy, cordial
grace of high-breeding.
"Ah, Dr. Saxham, obliged to you for being punctual. Let me introduce you
to Major Lord Henry Leighbury, D.S.O., Grenadier Guards, our D.A.A.G. Dr.
Saxham, Colonel Ware, Baraland Rifles, and Sir George Wendysh, Wessex
Regiment, commanding the Irregular Horse; Captain Bingham Wrynche, Royal
Bay Dragoons, my senior aide-de-camp, and his junior, Lieutenant Lord
Beauvayse, of the Grey Hussars. And Dr. Saxham, Major Taggart, R.A.M.C.,
our Chief Medical Officer."
He watched the man keenly as he made the introductions, saying to himself
that this was better than he had hoped. The ragged black moustache had
been shaved away; the frayed but spotless suit of white drill fitted the
heavy-shouldered, thin-flanked, muscular figure perfectly; the faded blue
flannel shirt, with the white double collar and narrow black tie; the
shabby black kamarband about his waist, the black-ribboned Panama,
maintaining respectability in extremest old age, as that expensive but
lasting headgear is wont to do, possessed, as worn by the Dop Doctor, a
certain _cachet_ of style. His slight, curt, almost frowning salutations
displayed a well-graduated recognition of the official status of each
individual to whom he was made known, betokening the man accustomed to
move in circles where such knowledge and the application of it was
indispensable, and who knew, too, that slight from him would have given
chagrin. But another moment, and the junior Medical Officer, a
black-avised little Irishman from County Meath, had gripped him by both
hands, and was exclaiming in his juicy brogue, real delight beaming in his
round, rosy face:
"Saxham! Saxham of St. Stephens, and the grand ould days! Deny me now, to
my face. Say, 'Tom McFadyen, I don't know you,' if you dare."
The blue eyes shone out vivid gentian-colour in the kindly smile that
illumined them, the stern lips parted in a laugh that showed the sound
white closely-set teeth.
"Tom McFadyen, I do know you. But if you offer to pay me that cab-fare you
owe me, I shall say I'm wrong, and that it's another man."
"Hould your tongue, jewel," drolled the little junior, who delighted in
exaggerating the brogue that tripped naturally off his Irish tongue.
"Don't be after giving me away to the Chief and the Senior that believe
me, by me own account, to be descended from Ollamh Fodla, that was King of
Tara, and owned the cow-grazing from Trim to Athboy, and ate boiled
turnips off shields of gold before potatoes were invented, when the
bog-oaks were growing as acorns on the tree. And as to the cab-fare, sure
I hailed the hansom out of politeness to your honour's glory, the day that
saw me going off to the Army Medical School at Netley, wid all my worldly
belongin's in wan ould hat-box and the half of a carpet-bag. Wirra, wirra!
but it's some folks have luck, says I, as the train took me out av'
Waterloo in a third-class smoker, while you were left on the platform
sheddin' half-crowns out av every pore for the newspaper boys an' porters
to pick up, and smilin' like a baby dhramin' av the bottle. You'd passed
your exam in Anatomy wid wan hand held behind you an' a glove on the
other, you'd got your London University Scholarship in Physiology, and
you'd fallen head over ears in love with the prettiest and sweetest girl
that ever wore out shoe-leather. You wrote to me two years later to say
you'd been appointed an in-surgeon on the Junior Staff, an' that you were
engaged to be married. But divil the taste of weddin'-cake did I ever get
off you. What----"
The little Irishman, thoughtlessly rattling on, pulled up in an instant,
seeing the ghastly unmistakable change upon the other's face. He
remembered the grim black reason for the change in Saxham, and for once,
his habitual tact deserted him. His rosy gills purpled, even as had the
Mayor's on the Dop Doctor's entrance. His eyes winced under the heavy
petrifying, unseeing stare of Saxham's blue ones....
"Sorry to stem the flood of your reminiscences, McFadyen, but we're going
to overhaul the Hospital now."
It was the voice of the visitor who had come to the Harris Street house on
the previous night, the tall, loosely-built, closely-knit figure in the
easily fitting Service-dress that now stepped across the gulf that had
suddenly opened between the two old friends, and laid a hand in pleasant,
familiar fashion upon Saxham's heavy, rather bowed shoulders. But for that
scholar's stoop they would have been of equal height. He went on: "You
will be able to give us points, Saxham, where they will be needed most.
Can't expect Colonial institutions, even at the best, to keep abreast of
London."
The blue eyes met his almost defiantly.
"As I think I remember telling you, sir, it is five years since I saw
London."
"Well, I don't blame you for taking a long holiday while it was
procurable. There are a few of us who would benefit by a gallop without
the halter, eh, Taggart?"
Saxham would not stoop even to benefit indirectly by the shrewd, kindly
tact. He drew himself to his full height, and the words were spoken with
such ringing clearness that they arrested the attention of every man
present.
"My holiday was compulsory. I underwent--innocently--a legal prosecution
for malpractice. The Crown Jury decided in my favour, but my West End
connection was ruined. I resigned my Hospital and other appointments, and
left England."
"Ay!" It was the Chief Medical Officer's broad Scots tongue that droned
out the bagpipe note. "Weel, Doctor, it's an ill wind blaws naebody guid,
and ye canna expect Captain McFadyen or mysel' to sympatheese overmuch wi'
the West End for a loss that is our gain. And, Colonel, it's in my memory
that ye had set your mind on beginnin' wi' the Operating Theatre?..."