The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack. R. Austin Freeman
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up the stragglers or accelerating their movements by vigorous hammerings from behind, and he now returned, straightening out his drill jacket and dusting the grimy sand from his pipe-clayed shoes with a silk handkerchief. The other white man had by this time returned to the gin-case, on which he was once more enthroned with one of the abandoned drums between his knees, and, as his compatriot approached, he executed a martial roll and would have burst into song but that the cigar, which had been driven into his mouth during the conflict, now dropped into his throat and reduced him temporarily to the verge of suffocation.
“Many thanks, dear chappie,” said he, when he had removed the obstruction; “moral s’pport most valuable; uphold dignity of white man; congratulate you on your style; do credit to Richardsons. Excuse my not rising; reasons excellent; will appear when I do.” In fact his clothing had suffered severely in the combat.
The stranger looked down at the seated figure silently and with tolerant contempt. A stern-faced, grim-looking man was this newcomer, heavy-browed, square-jawed, and hatchet-faced, and his high-shouldered, powerful figure set itself in a characteristic pose, with the feet wide apart and the hands clasped behind the back as he stood looking down on his new acquaintance.
“I suppose,” he said, at length, “you realize that you’re as drunk as an owl?”
“I s’spected it,” returned the other gravely. “Not’s an owl, though; owls very temp’rate in these parts.”
At this moment the headman rose from the cabin-trunk, on which he had seated himself to view the conflict, and, picking up the stranger’s helmet, brought it to him.
“Mastah,” said he, earnestly, “you go for house one time. Dis place no good. Dem people be angry too much; he go fetch gun.”
“You hear that?” said the stranger. “You’d better clear off home.”
“Ver’ well, dear boy,” replied the other, suavely. “Call hansom; we’ll both go.”
“Whereabouts do you live?” demanded the stranger.
The other man looked up with a bland smile. “Grosvenor Square, ol’ fellow, A1; brass knocker ’stinguishers on doorstep. Tell cabby knock three times and ring bottom bell.” He picked up the cigar and began carefully to wipe the sand from it.
“Do you know where he lives?” asked the stranger, turning to the headman.
“Yass; me sabby. He live for factory. You make him come one time, Mastah. You hear dat?”
The sound of the strange and dismal Efé alarm cry (produced by shouting or screaming continuously and patting the mouth quickly with the flat of the hand) was borne down from the farther end of the village. The headman caught up the trunk and started off up the street, while the stranger, having hoisted the seated man off the gin-case with such energy that he staggered round in a half-circle, grasped him from behind by both arms and urged him forward at a brisk trot.
“Here, I say!” protested the latter, “nosso fast, d’ye hear? I’ve dropped my slipper. Lemme pick up my slipper.”
To these protests the stranger paid no attention, but continued to hustle his captive forward with undiminished energy.
“Lemme go, confound you! You’re shaking me all to bits!” exclaimed the captive; and, as the other continued to shove silently, he continued: “Now I un’stand why you boosted those niggers so neatly. You’re a bobby, that’s what you are. I know the professional touch. A blooming escaped bobby. Well, I’m jiggered!” He lapsed, after this, into gloomy silence, and a few minutes’ more rapid travelling brought the party to a high palm-leaf fence. A primitive gate was unfastened, by the simple process of withdrawing a skewer from a loop of cord, and they entered a compound in the middle of which stood a long, low house. The latter was mud-built and thatched with grass like the houses in the village, from which, indeed, it differed only in that its mud walls were whitewashed and pierced for several windows.
“Lemme welcome you to my humble cot,” said the proprietor, following the headman, who had unceremoniously walked into the house and dumped down the cabin-trunk. The stranger entered a small, untidy room lighted by a hurricane-lamp, and, having dismissed the headman with a substantial ‘dash,’ or present, turned to face his host.
“Siddown,” said the latter, dropping into a dilapidated Madeira chair and waving his hand towards another. “Less’ have a talk. Don’t know your name, but you seem to be a decent feller—for a bobby. My name’s Larkom, John Larkom, agent for Foster Brothers. This is Fosters’ factory.”
The stranger looked curiously round the room—so little suggestive of a factory in the European sense—and then, as he seated himself, said: “You probably know me by name: I am John Walker, of whom you have—”
He was interrupted by a screech of laughter from Larkom, who flung himself back in his chair with such violence as to bring that piece of furniture to the verge of dissolution.
“Johnny Walker!” he howled. “My immortal scissors! Sh’ld think I do know you; more senses than one. I’ve got a letter about you—I’ll show it to you. Where is that blamed letter?” He dragged out a table-drawer and rooted among a litter of papers, from which he at length extracted a crumpled sheet of paper. “Here we are. Letter from Hepburn. You ’member Hepburn? He and I at Oxford together. Merton, y’know. Less see what he says. Ah! here you are; I’ll read it: ‘And now I want you to do me a little favour. You will receive a visit from a pal of mine who, in consequence of certain little indiscretions, is for the moment under a cloud, and I want you, if you can, to put him up and keep him out of sight. His fame I am not permitted to disclose, since being, as I have said, ‘sub nube,’ just at present, and consequently not in search of fame or notoriety he elects to travel under the modest and appropriate name of Walker.’” At this point Larkom once more burst into a screech of laughter. “Funny devil, Hepburn! awful rum devil,” he mumbled, leering idiotically at the letter that shook in his hand; then, wiping his eyes on the gaudy ‘trade’ tablecloth, he resumed his reading. “‘He need not cause you any inconvenience, and you won’t mind his company as he is quite a decent fellow—he entered at Merton just after you went down—and he won’t be any expense to you; in fact, with judicious management, he may be made to yield a profit, since he will have some money with him and is, between ourselves, somewhat of a mug.’ Rum devil, awful rum devil,” sniggered Larkom. “Doncher think so?” he added, grinning foolishly in the other man’s face.
“Very,” replied the stranger, stolidly. But he did not look particularly amused.
“‘I think that is all I have to tell you,’” Larkom continued, reading from the letter. “‘I hope you will be able to put the poor devil up, and, by the way, you need not let on that I have told you about his little misfortunes.’” Larkom looked up with a ridiculous air of vexation. “There now,” he exclaimed, “I’ve given old Hepburn away like a silly fool. But no, it was he that was a silly fool. He shouldn’t have told me.”
“No, he should not,” agreed Walker.
“’Course not,” said Larkom with drunken gravity. “Breach o’ confidence. However, ’s all right. ’Pend on me. Close as a lock-jawed oyster. What’ll you drink?”
He waved his hand towards the table, on which a plate of limes, a stone gin jar, a bottle of bitters with a quill stuck through the cork, and a swizzle-stick, stained purple by long service, invited to conviviality.
“Have a cocktail,” said Larkom. “Wine of the country. Good old swizzle-stick. I’ll mix it. Or p’rhaps,” he sniggered, slyly, “p’raps you’d rather have a drop of Johnny Walker—ha! ha! Hallo! Here they are. D’ye hear ’em?” A confused noise of angry voices was audible outside the compound and isolated shouts separated themselves now and again from the general hubbub.
“They’re callin’ us names,” chuckled Larkom. “Good thing you don’t un’stand the language. The nigger can be rude. Personal abuse as a fine art. Have a cocktail.”
“Hadn’t