Ambrotox and Limping Dick Part 40

"Just so," said d.i.c.k, 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 grat.i.tude 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," d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k, 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," d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k, and thought he was not being watched.

But d.i.c.k saw, and gathered from that one flash of the eye that this was Pepe's "Heberto, 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 d.i.c.k 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, d.i.c.k?"

"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 d.i.c.k.

Apparently satisfied by this pledge, Amaryllis had almost fallen asleep in her corner, now the furthest from Melchard, when d.i.c.k said:

"What you want to-night, my prize-packet, is a fairy G.o.dmother."

"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 d.i.c.k, breaking it.

"Was it because you thought of the harm that he does, making drugs and selling them to sad people and bad people, d.i.c.k?"

"That might have been a good reason. It's not my line, though--if I'm on oath."

"Oh, but you're not, d.i.c.k. 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 d.i.c.k 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."