The Dop Doctor Part 26

"I shall go away--ja--and here is the only way for you to reach me!"

As the fresh match glimmered blue, he held it at arm's length in front of him, counting silently up to ten, then blew it out, and set his heavy boot upon the faintly-glowing spark, and did the thing again.

Endeavouring not to breathe so as to be heard, W. Keyse flattened himself against the corrugated fence, and waited, looking ahead into the thick velvet darkness, sensing the faint human taint upon the tell-tale breeze, and counting with the Slabberts; and then, out in the blackness that concealed so much that was sinister, sprang into sudden life an answering bluish glimmer, and lasted for ten beats of the pulse, and went out as suddenly as though a human breath had blown upon it.

"Is that your pal?" she whispered.

"That is my pal now." He struck another match, and flared it, and screened it with his big hand, and showed the light again, and repeated the manoeuvre three times. "That is my pal now--and I have said to him 'No news to-night'; but to-morrow night and the night after, and so on for many nights to come, I shall be out there where he is, and after you have called me and I have answered, just as he has done, you will tell me what there is to tell. Can you spell your language?"

"Pretty middlin', Walty deer, though not as I could wish, owin' to me 'avin' to leave Board School in the Fif' Stannard when father sold up the 'ome in drink after mother went orf wiv the young man lodger. Some'ow, try all I could, I never ..."

"Hou jou smoel! With our Boer people, when men speak, the women listen; but you English ones chatter and chatter! Remember that this match-talk goes thus: For the letter A one flare, and hide the light as you saw me do just now. For B, two flares, and hide the light; for C, three, and hide; for D, four, and hide; and so on ... It is slow, of course, and matches will blow out when you do not want them to, and a cycle-lamp or a candle-lantern would be easier to deal with, but for the verdoemte patrols. Do you understand? Say now what I say, after me. For the letter A one flare and hide. For B ..."

He put her through the alphabet from end to end; she laboured faithfully, and pleased her taskmaster. He grunted approvingly.

"Zeer goed! See that you do not forget. And remember, you are to listen and watch, and tell me what you hear and see. If you are obedient, I will marry you--by-and-by."

He gave her a clumsy hug in earnest of endearments to come.

"But if you do not please me"--the grip of his heavy hand bruised her shoulder through the thin, flowery "blowse"--"I will punish you--yes, by the Lord! I will marry a fine Boer maiden who is the daughter of a landrost, and who has got much money and plenty of sheep. And you can give yourself to any dirty verdoemte schelm of an Engelschman you please, for I will have none of you! To-morrow you shall have a paper showing you how to tell me very many things in match-talk, and earn much money to buy presents for my nice little Boer vrouw. Alamachtig! what is this?"

"This" was the hard, cold, polished business-end of a condemned Martini poked violently out of the blackness into the Slabbertian thorax.

"Not in such a 'urry by 'arf, you perishin' Dopper," spluttered the ghastly little man in bandoliers behind the weapon. "Put up them dirty big 'ands o' yours, or, by Cripps! I'll let 'er off, you sneakin', match-talkin' spy!"

The arms of Slabberts soared as the tongue of Slabberts wagged in explanation.

"This is a.s.sault and battery, Meister, upon a peaceful burgher. You shall answer to your officer for it, I tell you slap. Voor den donder! Is not a young man to light his pipe as he talks to a young woman without being called spy by a verdoemte sentry! Tell him, Jannje, that is all I did do!"

W. Keyse felt a little awkward, and the rifle was uncommonly heavy. The Slabberts felt it tremble, and thought about taking his hands down and reaching for that Colts six-shooter he kept in his hip-pocket. But though the finger wobbled, it was at the trigger, and Walt was not fond of risks.

"Tell him, Jannje!" he spluttered once more.

She had not needed a second bidding.

As the domestic hen in defence of her chicken will give battle to the wilde-kat, so Emigration Jane, with ruffled plumage, blazing, defiant eyes, and shrill objurgations, couched in the vernacular most familiar to their object, hurled herself upon the enemy.

"You narsty little brute, you! To up and try an' murder my young man. With your jor about spies! Sauce! I'd perish you, I would, if I was 'im! Off the fyce o' the earth, an' charnce bein' 'ung for it! Take away that gun, you silly little imitation sojer--d' you 'eer?"

The weapon was extremely weighty. W. Keyse's arms ached frightfully.

Perspiration trickled into his eyes from under the tilted smasher. He felt damp and small, and desperately at a loss. And--as though in malice--the moon looked out from behind a curtain of thick, dim vapour, as he said with a lordly air:

"You be off, young woman, and don't interfere!"

Gawd! she knew him in spite of the smasher hat. Her rage burst the flood-gates. She screeched:

"You!... It's you. 'Oo I done a good turn to--an' this is 'ow I gits it back?" She gasped. "Because you're arter one young woman wot wouldn't be seen dead in the syme street wi' you ..."

Pierced with the awful thought that the adored one might be listening, W.

Keyse lifted up his voice.

"Sentry.... 'Ere!... Mister!" he cried despairingly, "You on the other side, can't you hear?"

In vain the call. The stout fellow-townsman of W. Keyse, comfortably propped in an angle of the opposite fence, the bulk of the Convent and the width of its garden and tennis-ground being between them, continued to sleep and snore peacefully and undisturbed.

Emigration Jane continued:

"Because that sly cat wiv the yeller 'air-plait won't 'ear o' you, you try to git a pore servant-gal's fancy bloke pinched! Yah, greedy! Boo! You plate-faced, erring-backed, s'rimp-eyed little silly, with your love-letters an' messages! Wait till I give 'er another o' your screevin'--that's all!"

"Patrol!" cried W. Keyse in a despairing whimper.

She advanced upon him closer and closer, lashing herself as she came, to frenzy. How often had W. Keyse seen it outside the big gaudy pubs in the Tottenham Court Road, and the Britannia, Camden Town! Perhaps the recollection staring, newly awakened, in the pale, moonlit eyes of the little perspiring Town Guardsman stung her to equal memory, and provoked the act. Who can tell? We may only know that she plucked the weapon of lower-cla.s.s London from her hat, and jabbed at the pale face viciously, and heard the victim say "Owch!" as he winced, and knew herself, as her Slabberts gripped the rifle-barrel, and wrested it with iron strength from the failing hands of W. Keyse, the equal of those dauntless Boer women who killed men when it was necessary. But, oh! the 'orrible, 'ideous feeling of 'aving stuck something into live flesh! Sick and giddy, the heroine shut her eyes, seeing behind their lids wondrous phantasmagoria of coloured pyrotechny, rivalling the most marvellous triumphs of the magician Brock....

W. Keyse's beheld, at the moment when his weapon was wrenched from him, two long grey arms come out of the darkness and coil about the largely-looming form of Slabberts. Enveloped in the neutral-tinted tentacles of this mysterious embrace, the big Boer struggled impotently, and a quick, imperative voice said, between the thick pants of striving men:

"Get the gun from him, will you, and call up your picket. Don't fire; blow your whistle instead!"

"_Pip-ip-ip-'r'r! Pip-ip-r'r!_"

The long, shrill call brought armed men hurrying out of the darkness on the other side of the Cemetery, and considerably quickened the arrival of the visiting patrol.

"Communicating with persons outside the defences by flashlight signals. We can't shoot him for it just yet, but we _can_ gaol him on suspicion,"

said the Commander of the picket. And Slabberts, with a stalwart escort of B.S.A. troopers, reluctantly moved off in the direction of the guard-house.

"Who was the fellow who helped you, do you know?" asked the officer who had ridden up with the patrol. "Threw him and sat on him until the picket came up, you say," he commented, on hearing W. Keyse's version of the story. "A tall man in civilian clothes, with a dark wideawake and short pointed beard! H'm!"

"Coming from the veld, apparently, and not from town," said the picket Commander. "Must have known the countersign, or the sentries out there would have stopped him. I--see!"

He looked at the patrol-officer, who coughed again. The moonlight was quite bright enough for the exchange of a wink. Then:

"Hold on, man, you're bleeding," said W. Keyse's Sergeant, an old Naval Brigade man. "How did ye get that 'ere nasty prod under the eye?"

W. Keyse put up his hand, and gingerly felt the place that hurt. His fingers were red when they came away.

"The young woman wot was with the Dutchman, she jabbed me with a 'at-pin, to git me to let 'im go."

"There's a blindin' vixen for you!" commented the Sergeant. "Two inch higher, and she'd have doused your light out. Where did she come from, d'ye know?"

"Have you any idea who she was?" asked the Commander of the picket.

W. Keyse shook his head.

"'Aven't the least idear, sir. Never sor 'er before in my natural!" he declared stoutly.

"Well, you'll know her again when you meet her--or she will you," said the patrol-officer, about to move on, when a deplorable figure came staggering into the circle, and the rider reined up his horse. "What's this? Hey, Johnny, where's your gun?"