When Ghost Meets Ghost Part 135

"Let's see the money. How much have you got? Put it down on this here table." He seemed to imply that he was open to negotiation.

With a trembling hand M'riar got at her purse, and emptied it on the table. "That is every penny," she said--"every penny I have in the house. Now give it me!"

"Half a bean, six bob, and a mag." He picked up and pocketed the sixteen shillings and a halfpenny, so described.

"Now you _will_ give it back to me?" cried poor Aunt M'riar, with a wail in her voice that must have reached Dolly, for a pathetic cry answered her from the room above.

"Some o' these days," was all his answer, imperturbably. "There's your kid squealing. Time I was off.... What's that?"

Was it a new terror, or a thing to thank G.o.d for? Uncle Mo's big voice at the end of the court.

The convict made for the street-door--peeped out furtively. "He's turned in at young Ikey's," said he. Then to M'riar, using an epithet to her that cannot be repeated:--"Down on your knees and pray that your bully may stick there till I'm clear, or ... Ah!--smell that!" It was his knife-point, open, close to her face. In a moment he was out in the Court, now so far clear of fog that the arch was visible, beyond the light that shone out of Ragstroar's open door.

Another moment, and M'riar knew what to do. Save Mo, or die attempting it! If the chances seemed to point to the convict pa.s.sing the house un.o.bserved she would do nothing.

That was not to be the way of it. He was still some twenty paces short of Ragstroar's when old Mo was coming out at the door with the light in it.

Aunt M'riar, quick on the heels of the convict, who was rather bent on noiselessness than speed, had flung herself upon him--so little had he foreseen such an attack--before he could turn to repel it. She clung to him from behind with all her dead-weight, enc.u.mbering that hand with the knife as best she might. She screamed loud with all the voice she had:--"Mo--Mo--he has a knife--he has a knife!" Mo flung away the coat on his arm, and ran shouting. "Leave hold of him, M'riar--keep _off_ him--leave _hold_!" His big voice echoed down the Court, resonant with sudden terror on her behalf.

But her ears were deaf to any voice but that of her heart, crying almost audibly:--"Save _him_! Never give that murderous right hand its freedom!

In spite of the brutal clutch that is dragging the hair it has captured from the living scalp--in spite of the brutal foot below kicking hard to reach and break a bone--cling hard to it! And if, power failing you against its wicked strength, it should get free, be you the first to meet its weapon, even though the penalty be death." That was her thought, for what had Mo done that he should suffer by this man--this nightmare for whose obsession of her own life she had herself alone to blame?

The struggle was not a long one. Before Mo, whose weak point was his speed, had covered half the intervening distance, a kick of the convict's heavy boot-heel, steel-shod, had found its bone, and broken it, just above the ankle. The shock was irresistible, and the check on the knife-hand perforce flagged for an instant--long enough to leave it free. Another blow followed, a strange one that M'riar could not localise, and then all the Court swam about, and vanished.

What Mo saw by the light of the lamp above as he turned out of Ragstroar's front-gate was M'riar, dressing-gowned and dishevelled, clinging madly to the man he could recognise as her convict husband. He heard her cry about the knife, saw that her hold relaxed, saw the blade flash as it struck back at her. He saw her fall, and believed the blow a mortal one. He heard the voice of Dolly wailing in the house beyond, crying out for the missing bedfellow she would never dream beside again.

At least, that was his thought. And there before him was her slayer, with his wife's blood fresh upon his hands.

All the anger man can feel against the crimes of man blazed in his heart, all the resolution he can summon to avenge them knit the muscles of his face and set closer the grip upon his lip. And yet, had he been asked what was his strongest feeling at this moment, he would have answered:--"Fear!"--fear, that is, that his man, more active than himself and younger, should give him the slip, to right or to left, and get away unharmed.

But that was not the convict's thought, with that knife open in his hand. Indeed, the small s.p.a.ce at command might have thwarted him. If, for but two seconds, he could employ those powerful fists that were on the watch for him on either side of the formidable bulk whose slow movement was his only hope, then he might pa.s.s and be safe. It would have to be quick work, with young Ikey despatched by the screaming women at Ragstroar's to call in help; either his father's from the nearest pot-house, or any police-officer, whichever came first.

Quick work it was! A gasp or two, and the man's natural flinching before the great prizefighter and his terrible reputation had to yield to the counsels of despair. It had to be done, somehow. He led with his left--so an expert tells us we should phrase it--and hoped that his greater alacrity would land a face-blow, and cause an involuntary movement of the fists to lay the body open. Then his knife, and a rip, and the thing would be done.

It might have been so, easily, had it been a turn-to with the gloves, for diversion. Then, twenty years of disuse would have had their say, and the slow paralysing powers of old age a.s.serted themselves, quenching the swift activity of hand and eye, and making their responsive energy, that had given him victory in so many a hard-fought field, a memory of the past. But it was not so now. The tremendous tension of his heartfelt anger, when he found himself face to face with its dastardly object, made him again, for one short moment, the man that he had been in the plenitude of his early glory. Or, short of that, a near approach to it.

For never was a movement swifter than old Mo's duck to the left, which allowed his opponent's "lead off" to pa.s.s harmless over his right shoulder. Never was a cross-counter more deadly, more telling, than the blow with his right, which had never moved till that moment, landing full on the convict's jaw, and stretching him, insensible or dead, upon the ground. The sound of it reached the men who came running in through the arch, and made more than one regret he had not been there a moment sooner, to see it.

Speechless and white with excitement, all crowded down to where Mo was kneeling by the woman who lay stretched upon the ground beyond. Not dead, for she was moving, and speaking. And he was answering, but not in his old voice.

"I'm all as right as a trivet, M'riar. It's you I'm a-thinkin' of....

Some of you young men run for the doctor."

One appeared, out of s.p.a.ce. Things happen so, in events of this sort, in London. No--she is not to be lifted about, till he sees what harm's done. Keep your hands off, all!

By some unaccountable common consent, the man on the ground, motionless, may wait his turn. Two or three inspect him, and one tentatively prods at the inanimate body to make it show signs of life, but is checked by public opinion. Then comes a medical verdict, a provisional one, marred by reservations, about the work that knife has done. A nasty cut, but no danger. Probably stunned by the fall. Bring her indoors. Ragstroar's house is chosen, because of the children.

Uncle Mo never took his eyes off M'riar till after a stretcher had come suddenly from Heaven knows where, and borne his late opponent away, with a crowd following, to some appointed place. He thought he heard an inquiry answered in the words:--"Doctor says he can do nothing for _him_," and may have drawn his inferences. Probably it was the frightened voices and crying of the children that made him move away slowly towards his own house. For he had asked the boy Micky "Had anyone gone to see to them?" and been answered that Mrs. Burr was with them. It was then that Micky noticed that his voice had fallen to little more than a whisper, and that his face was grey. What Micky said was that his chops looked awful blue, and you couldn't ketch not a word he said.

But he was able to walk slowly into the house, very slowly up the stairs. Dave, in the room above, hearing the well-known stair-creak under his heavy tread, rushed down to find him lying on the bed in his clothes. Mo drew the child's face to his own as he lay, saying:--"Here's a kiss for you, old man, and one to take to Dolly."

"Am oy to toyk it up to her now this very minute?" said Dave.

"Now this very minute!" said Uncle Mo. And Dave rushed off to fulfil his mission.

When Susan Burr, a little later, tapped at his door, doubting if all was well with him, no answer came. Looking in and seeing him motionless, she advanced to the bed, and touched his hand. It never moved, and she listened for a breath, but in vain. Heart-failure, after intense excitement, had ended this life for Uncle Mo.

THE END

A BELATED PENDRIFT

"I can tell you exactly when it was, stupid!" said a middle-aged lady at the Zoological Gardens to a contented elderly husband, some eighteen years after the foregoing story ended. "It was before we were married."

"That does not convey the precise date, my dear, but no doubt it is true," said the gentleman unpoetically. At least, we may suppose so, as the lady said:--"Don't be prosy, Percy."

A little Macacao monkey in the cage they were inspecting withdrew his left hand from a search for something on his person to accept a nut sadly from the lady, but said nothing. The gentleman seemed unoffended, and carefully stripped a brand-label from a new cigar. "I presume," said he, "that 'before we were married' means 'immediately before?'"

"What would you have it mean?" said the lady.

The gentleman let the issue go, and made no reply. After he had used a penknife on the cigar-end to his satisfaction, he said:--"Exactly when was it?"

"Suppose we go outside and find my chair, if you are going to smoke,"

said the lady. "You mustn't smoke in here, and quite right, because these little darlings hate it, and I want to see the Hippopotamus."

"Out we go!" said the gentleman. And out they went. It was not until they had recovered the lady's wheeled chair, and were on their way towards the Hippopotamus, that she resumed the lost thread of their conversation, as though nothing had interrupted it.

"It was just about that time we came here, and Dr. Sir Thingummybob came up when we were looking at the Kinkajou--over there!... No, I don't want to go there now. Go on through the tunnel." This was to the chairman, who had shown a tendency to go off down a side-track, like one of his cla.s.s at a public meeting. "I suppose you remember that?"

"Rather!" said the gentleman, enjoying his first whiff.

"Well--it was just about then. A little after the accident--don't you remember?--the house that tumbled down?"

"I remember all about it. The old lady I carried upstairs. Well--didn't you believe _then_ it was all up with Sir Adrian's eyesight? _I_ did."

"My dear!--how you do overstate things! Shall I ever persuade you to be accurate? We were all much alarmed about him, and with reason. But I for one always did believe, and always shall believe, that there was immense exaggeration. People do get so excited over these things, and make mountains out of molehills."

The gentleman said:--"H'm!"

"Well!" said the lady convincingly. "All I say is--see how well his eyes are now!"

The gentleman seemed only half convinced, at best. "There was something _rum_ about it," said he. "You'll admit that?"

"It depends entirely on what you mean by 'rum.' Of course, there was something a little singular about so sudden a recovery, if that is what you mean."

"Suppose we make it 'a little singular!' I've no objection."