“By not cashiering your friend Captain Blaydes!”
“He is no friend of mine.”
“But I see you know him.”
“Yes — I just know him.”
“He is at your house to-night!” cried Erichsen, with uncontrolled excitement.
“No — he is not. We have had a dinner-party, but he was not there. I slipped out afterwards — I dare not stay long.” This to explain that incriminating backward glance.
“Then give me his address!”
“Tom — I cannot.”
“You cannot? You who said you would do anything in your power to help me? And this is all I ask — this villain’s address! Oh, Claire, he is not fit for you to speak to! Tell me where you met him — what you think of him — and then I will tell you what I know. Oh, if I had him here!”
Claire answered with deliberate reservations. Her duty was clear as the stars. Tom and Blaydes must be kept apart — that night at all events. Then many things must be done, but quietly, and with due forethought. Above all, no fresh fuel must be added to the vindictive fires now smouldering in her lover’s speaking eyes. So Claire decided to keep to herself her own opinion of Captain Blaydes.
She had noticed without comment the heavy stick lying in the grass; she turned faint at the thought of her fiery Tom encountering the Captain so armed and so aggrieved. But she insisted on his telling her of his wrong; at first he refused.
“Very well,” he said at last, “I’ll tell you, so that you may see how I have been cheated; then I think you won’t refuse to help me lay hands upon the cheat. It’s a long story, but I’ll cut it as short as I can. He had rooked me down to the last five-pound note. With that I had a little luck. I had won back five-and-thirty before we stopped playing, and Blaydes had lost more to the others than to me. He paid them in ready money. He said they were only acquaintances — his confederates! — while I was his friend. So we went back to our lodgings, and he wrote me a cheque for thirty-five pounds, with which I could have gone out to India after all, quite as comfortably as I deserved. But in the morning he had bad news, and had to go into the country, and he begged me not to cash the cheque till the end of the month; he was hard up himself. And I was loyal to the blackguard; and I needn’t tell you what happened when time was up. His cheque was a dummy; he had never had a penny in the bank it was drawn on! So I wrote to his club again and again, and used to go there and watch for him, till the porters had me moved on by the police. The month was last October. I have heard and seen nothing of him from that day to this. And to think he is in London, and you know both him and his address! You’ll give it to me now, Claire, I know!”
She steadfastly refused, and gave her reasons; then he promised not to seek an interview with Blaydes for two clear days, and not to harm him then; and on this understanding she at last confessed that the Captain had taken rooms for the summer in the village of West End — a bare mile from where they stood.
But first she wanted him to give her the flash cheque, and let her fight his battle with Blaydes; and this she still intended to do — that very night.
They had finished with Blaydes, however, and were beginning to say good-bye, when Claire started, and vowed she heard a rustle at the gate. At that instant there came a breath of wind; the gate shut with a clean metallic click; she was locked out, for on this side there was only the key-hole, and the key was within.
“What shall I do?” she cried. “Oh, what shall I do?”
“Have courage,” he answered, “and a little patience.” He was over the wall and back at her side within the minute. She was trembling terribly. All her nerve seemed gone. She must fly — she must fly — but he would come again the next evening? And again she was looking up divinely in his eyes, his right hand clasped in both of hers; and again the burden of past weakness bowed him down; but this time there was a counterpoise of hope and high resolve, a vision of atonement and self-respect regained, that gave to his voice a clearer, manlier note, and to Claire, in the thin moonlight, a first and last glimpse of the Tom Erichsen of Winwood uplands and red autumn afternoons. But it was now her turn to be refused.
“No, Claire,” he said, “I am coming back no more. You have put it in my power not only to have my little own again, but to redeem the past, and I must set to work at once. If I don’t get that thirty-five pounds now, you may hear of me next in Horsemonger Lane! If I do, there’s an Indiaman — the Jean — sailing on Monday; and I sail in her if there’s a steerage berth still going. At all events my debts here will be paid and done with; there may even be a few pounds over to make me decent when I land; and if that firm won’t have me now, some other may. You shall hear of me from there. There are not going to be two false starts. And one day, Claire, I am coming back a better man than I go away; and it will all be thanks to you! Oh, thank you for your noble letter! It has saved me on the brink, little as I deserved it. I shall never stoop or sink — like this — again. That I promise you. But you should think no more of me! I was never worthy of you — I never can be that! It is best to forget me, dear; you must not spoil your life by waiting for a man—”
Her palm sealed his lips.
“For the only man I want,” she whispered through her tears. “Darling I could wait for ever!”
“I will write and tell you about the thirty-five pounds,” he continued, regaining control of his voice. “It will be all your doing, my own brave Claire. No! no! not my own! never that any more!”
“For ever, darling! For ever, and ever, and ever!”
“No! no! Only be happy yourself, and forgive me for all I made you suffer. I shall never forgive myself. Good-bye, beloved. Oh, good-bye, good-bye!”
He strained her to his breast, but left no kiss upon those pleading, praying, upturned lips. He was not worthy to touch them with his. He remembered this up to the end.
She leaned against the cold wall as he darted from her. The last thing she saw him do was to pick up the thick stick she had noticed lying in the grass; and that sinister final act struck a chill to her heart that was felt at the time, not afterwards imagined. That he could think of such a thing in such an hour! And she locked the gate and hurried down the gravel walks with eyes suddenly dried and a heart already at war with its own warmth. But when she came in sight of the arbour, and had to skulk once more behind the leaves, all in a moment she sounded the depth of her love and found it fathomless; for since the last like manœuvre the thought of Daintree had never once crossed her mind. Indeed he was recalled now chiefly by the smell of a particular cheroot which he smoked incessantly. He was smoking one at this moment in the arbour, where he had remained ever since she left him.
The other gentlemen were still at their wine — in those days they would sit over it till midnight — and Claire went first to her own room, which she gained unobserved. Here she changed her slippers for a precisely similar pair; also her stockings, which were wet to the ankles. Then she rang for her maid.
A pallid young woman, with black eyes set close together beneath a stunted brow, knocked promptly at the door, and entered with a downcast glance which swept straight to her mistress’s feet.
“Has Captain Blaydes arrived?”
The black eyes gleamed. “I haven’t heard, miss; shall I see?”
“Be so good, Hannah.”
In a minute Hannah returned.
“No, miss, he has not.”
“Thank you, Hannah, that will do.”
And Claire returned to the drawing-room after a truant hour, which, however, Daintree’s simultaneous absence from the dining-table explained satisfactorily enough to Lady Starkie and Mr. Harding. On her way Claire met the latter face to face in the hall. He was stark sober; indeed, his fresh face had lost colour, which was never the case in his cups.
“Seen anything of Blaydes?” he cried out to Claire, who started at the question, and then at her father’s face. —
“Nothing, papa: indeed, I hear he has not come.”
“So do I. Th
at’s just it; that’s just it!” repeated Mr. Harding, looking at his watch; and his hand was as unsteady as his voice was clear.
“I think he cannot be coming at all,” remarked Claire, innocently; and she never knew why her father turned so abruptly upon his heel; but his face was still ghastly when he rejoined his gentlemen, and the bumper of port which he tossed off left it ghastlier yet.
It was twenty minutes past ten by the ormolu clock upon the chimney-piece when Claire Harding re-entered the drawing-room.
It was twenty minutes past ten by Captain Blaydes’s gold repeater when through the window of a hackney-coach, creeping all too slowly along the Finchley Road, the Captain recognised a wayfarer who also recognised him, and thrust his iron-grey head through the opposite window to curse the coachman and bid him drive faster.
As he pulled it in again Tom Erichsen scrambled into the coach upon the other side, an unpleasant smile upon his set face and his thick stick in his hand. He had not promised to avoid Blaydes if chance threw them together, and chance had done so, for Tom was on his way to make his bed once more in the fields.
“You infernal ruffian,” roared the Captain. “Hi! coachman, the police!”
“You miserable swindler,” retorted Tom, “if you don’t stop the coach at once and step outside with me you’re a ruined man. I’ll go on to the Hardings with you and expose you—”
“The Hardings!”
“Yes; you see, I know all your little plans.”
“Little plans!!”
The Captain gasped and stopped the coach.
CHAPTER V
A BLOODLESS VICTORY
THE half-pay officer was a thick-set, youngish man, with a smooth, sly, yellow face, and hair like spun steel. He walked with a chronic limp and a stout, gold-headed cane, and was seldom without the genial, flattering smile that had tempted Tom Erichsen, and other young flies before him, into a parlour from which no pocket returned intact.
But since then Tom fancied Blaydes had found a richer dupe; he looked a much more prosperous scamp. The coach-lamps struck sparks from a very brilliant pin in his high satin stock. The coachman must have been handsomely paid off, to depart as he did, with benedictions. And the Captain himself had evidently recovered a temper notoriously serene; for a soft hand fell like a feather upon Tom’s square shoulder; and he heard once more the soothing accents of the gentlest rascal of his time.
“Come now, my good fellow,” said his normal voice, “what the deuce is all this? You have treated me very cavalierly, and I you very obligingly, I think, for the elder man. What is it you want, Mr. — Mr. — upon my soul I’ve forgotten your name!”
“You’re a liar, Blaydes,” replied Tom, as quietly. “You always were one; but it won’t do YOU much good to-night!”
“You trade upon our different stations,” murmured the other. “I have shot a man for less than that; but you are only a boy. Have the goodness to say what you want.”
“My thirty-five pounds!”
“Your thirty-five pounds? Yours? Look here, I begin to remember you. Your name is Eric — Eric something or other. And I was fool enough to play with you, Eric. I remember that too. You were going off to the Cape, or somewhere; you begin to take shape in my mind; but thirty-five pounds! I recall nothing of the kind. My impression was that we settled up and parted friends.”
“We did,” said Tom. He had allowed the other to lead him along the turnpike road, back towards the city. The moon sailed high on their left, and the sky was full of stars. On either hand the hedgerows were dusted with pale, bursting buds, like spray; and no figure but these two broke the long, still parallels, or blotted the white road between.
“You admit it?” cried Blaydes, stopping in his walk. “Then why on earth come to me?”
“You know why! You settled with a cheque not worth the paper it was written on. Your name was unknown at the bank! It was a cheque for thirty-five pounds, and I want the money.”
“Have you got that cheque?”
“It is in my pocket.”
“I should like to see it.”
“No doubt you would!”
“You distrust me,” observed Blaydes, calmly. “I see now that you have some reason to do so. At least you won’t mind telling me whether it was drawn on Stuckey’s Bank?”
“It was.”
“Exactly!” cried the Captain. “It’s as plain as a pikestaff now. My dear young fellow, I apologise from the very bottom of my heart, for it has been my mistake after all. What do you think I did? Wrote out my cheque in Dick Vale’s cheque-book — you recollect Dick Vale? He banks at Stuckey’s. That’s it, of course; and no wonder you thought me a thundering rogue! Now I’ll be frank with you, Erichsen. Of course I knew you well enough; but I wasn’t over-anxious to renew acquaintance with the man who had written threatening letters to my club. Especially as I couldn’t understand ‘em! But I do now, and ‘pon my soul I’m sorry; here’s my hand!”
“I prefer your money.”
“What! you dare to doubt my word?”
“Until I see your money — most certainly.”
“Well, you shall see it to-morrow. I don’t carry thirty-five pounds about in my evening clothes.”
“Then suppose we turn back to your rooms, and you pay me there and now!”
“And where are my rooms, pray?” —
“In the village of West End.”
Blaydes swore a puzzled oath, and thumped his cane upon the ground. “You know a lot!” he snarled. “What you don’t know is when to leave well alone. I have told you I am sorry about that mistake. I have told you I can let you have the money to-morrow; yet you have the insolence to doubt my word! Very well — have your way; I shall waste no more time upon you. I am going. You know where to find me when you come to your senses!”
“Better still, I know where you’re going, and I’m coming too. I don’t lose sight of you to-night!”
“We shall see about that.”
“We shall!”
And they stepped out with no more words, though Blaydes ground his teeth and gripped his cane and tried his best to drop a foot or two behind. But Tom’s eye was on him. So he stopped at a stile; whereupon Tom stopped too; and, as they stood, there passed a labourer who stared and wished them good-night.
“See here, Erichsen!” exclaimed the Captain. “I object to discussing private matters on a turnpike road. Here’s a path that’s a short cut back into town; suppose I come a part of the way with you, and talk this thing over without fear of being heard? What do you say?”
“As you like; your way is mine.”
Blaydes shrugged his broad shoulders, tucked his cane under one arm, and laboriously crossed the stile. Tom then followed him into a sloping field, with a beaten right-of-way running uphill through the dewy grass. They climbed this path with the young moon in their eyes, but not a word upon their lips, and Tom’s thick stick grasped tight by the knob. The ascent brought them to a second hedge, backed by a row of horse-chestnuts all hazy with tiny leaves, and to a hollow beech beside the second stile. Here the Captain dropped his cane in the grass, and limping pitiably, begged the other to pick it up. But Tom merely shifted it with his foot, keeping a strange eye on Blaydes as he did so. The cane in the grass had no gold knob, and the Captain’s right hand was tucked inside his cloak.
“Very prettily planned,” said Tom, with a sneer; “but I should like to see the rest of that sword-stick!”
The other laughed.
“I only drew it in case of need — you are such a violent young blood! Ah! you will have it, will you? There, then — and there — and there!”
The yard of thin, tempered steel had been casually produced, and Tom had instantly struck at it with his stick. Next moment the point was within an inch of his body, but Tom retreated nimbly, hitting high up the blade with all his might. It snapped at the third blow, whizzed in the air, and came down sticking in the grass. Only the gold head and three inches of blade were left in the Captain’s tingl
ing hand.
“Chuck it away,” said Tom, “and I drop my stick. That’s better; now about that money. You didn’t bring me up here to run me through the body, of course! What was your object?”
“To settle with you — fairly,” said Blaydes, with a lurch in his low voice. “I am overdue elsewhere, as you have found out — the Lord knows how! If I had the money on me, it should be yours this minute. As I haven’t it, I propose this compromise: wait till to-morrow and I’ll make it fifty — and give you an! O U on the spot!”
“No, no, Blaydes. Once bit — once bit! Very sorry, but it can’t be done.”
Blaydes muttered an oath as he took out his watch, pressed the spring, and it struck ten, and then the three-quarters, like fairy bells. He did not put the watch away again, but stood with it in his hands and presently detached the chain from his waistcoat. He had already turned his face to the moon, and he now glanced over his shoulder and beckoned to Tom.
“Just have a look at this,” said he. “No, take it in your hands and examine it properly.”
The watch was a repeater of a type even then old-fashioned. It was very handsome and heavy and fat, with a yellow dial and a back like a golden saucer. Tom turned it over, and the moon shone on the Captain’s monogram.
“Well, but what have I got to do with this?”
“Pawn it!”
“Pawn your watch?”
“And send me the ticket, and never pester me again! It won’t be the first time it’s been in. I’ve had forty pounds for it before to-day, and never less than thirty. You may get what you can; all I want is the paw-ticket, and your undertaking to leave me alone from this day on!”
“Leave you alone! I shall get a berth of some sort aboard an Indiaman that sails on Monday. Do you mean it, Blaydes? Do you mean what you say?”
“Mean it? Of course I mean it; put the watch in your pocket, and give me a pencil.”
“And the chain?”
“And the chain.”
It was made of long gold links and short silver ones, with a huge bunch of seals at one end. Tom pocketed the lot without compunction, and then produced his stump of lead-pencil.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 78