Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated)

by SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

  “But as he ran forward he felt his flesh go cold and creepy all over. He had heard hounds run into foxes many times before, but he had never heard such sounds as these. They were not the cries of triumph, but of fear. Every now and then came a shrill yelp of mortal agony. Holding his breath, he ran on until he broke through the interlacing branches, and found himself in a little, clearing with the hounds all crowding round a patch of tangled bramble at the further end.

  “When he first caught sight of them the hounds were standing in a half-circle round this bramble patch, with their backs bristling and their jaws gaping. In front of the brambles lay one of them with his throat torn out, all crimson and white-and-tan. Wat came running out into the clearing, and at the sight of him the hounds took heart again, and one of them sprang with a growl into the bushes. At the same instant, a creature the size of a donkey jumped on to its feet, a huge grey head, with monstrous glistening fangs and tapering fox jaws, shot out from among the branches, and the hound was thrown several feet into the air, and fell howling among the cover. Then there was a clashing snap, like a rat-trap closing, and the howls sharpened into a scream and then were still.

  “Danbury had been on the look-out for symptoms all day, and now he had found them. He looked once more at the thicket, saw a pair of savage red eyes fixed upon him, and fairly took to his heels. It might only be a passing delusion, or it might be the permanent mania of which the doctor had spoken, but anyhow, the thing to do was to get back to bed and to quiet, and to hope for the best.

  “He forgot the hounds, the hunt, and everything else in his desperate fears for his own reason. He sprang upon his mare, galloped her madly over the downs, and only stopped when he found himself at a country station. There he left his mare at the inn, and made back for home as quickly as steam would take him. It was evening before he got there, shivering with apprehension, and seeing those red eyes and savage teeth at every turn. He went straight to bed and sent for Dr. Middleton.

  “‘I’ve got ‘em, doctor,’ said he. ‘It came about exactly as you said — strange creatures, optical delusions, and everything. All I ask you now is to save my reason.’ The doctor listened to his story, and was shocked as he heard it.

  “‘It appears to be a very clear case,’ said he. ‘This must be a lesson to you for life.’

  “‘Never a drop again if I only come safely through this,’ cried Wat

  Danbury.

  “‘Well, my dear boy, if you will stick to that it may prove a blessing in disguise. But the difficulty in this case is to know where fact ends and fancy begins. You see, it is not as if there was only one delusion. There have been several. The dead dogs, for example, must have been one as well as the creature in the bush.’

  “‘I saw it all as clearly as I see you.’

  “‘One of the characteristics of this form of delirium is that what you see is even clearer than reality. I was wondering whether the whole run was not a delusion also.’

  “Wat Danbury pointed to his hunting boots still lying upon the floor, necked with the splashings of two counties.

  “‘Hum! that looks very real, certainly. No doubt, in your weak state, you over-exerted yourself and so brought this attack upon yourself. Well, whatever the cause, our treatment is clear. You will take the soothing mixture which I will send to you, and we shall put two leeches upon your temples to-night to relieve any congestion of the brain.’

  “So Wat Danbury spent the night in tossing about and reflecting what a sensitive thing this machinery of ours is, and how very foolish it is to play tricks with what is so easily put out of gear and so difficult to mend. And so he repeated and repeated his oath that this first lesson should be his last, and that from that time forward he would be a sober, hard-working yeoman as his father had been before him. So he lay, tossing and still repentant, when his door flew open in the morning and in rushed the doctor with a newspaper crumpled up in his hand.

  “‘My dear boy,’ he cried, ‘I owe you a thousand apologies. You’re the most ill-used lad and I the greatest numskull in the county. Listen to this!’ And he sat down upon the side of the bed, flattened out his paper upon his knee, and began to read.

  “The paragraph was headed, ‘Disaster to the Ascombe Hounds,’ and it went on to say that four of the hounds, shockingly torn and mangled, had been found in Winton Fir Wood upon the South Downs. The run had been so severe that half the pack were lamed; but the four found in the wood were actually dead, although the cause of their extraordinary injuries was still unknown.

  “‘So, you see,’ said the doctor, looking up, ‘that I was wrong when I put the dead hounds among the delusions.’

  “‘But the cause?’ cried Wat.

  “‘Well, I think we may guess the cause from an item which has been inserted just as the paper went to press: —

  “Late last night, Mr. Brown, of Smither’s Farm, to the east of Hastings, perceived what he imagined to be an enormous dog worrying one of his sheep. He shot the creature, which proves to be a grey Siberian wolf of the variety known as Lupus Giganticus. It is supposed to have escaped from some travelling menagerie.

  “That’s the story, gentlemen, and Wat Danbury stuck to his good resolutions, for the fright which he had cured him of all wish to run such a risk again; and he never touches anything stronger than lime-juice — at least, he hadn’t before he left this part of the country, five years ago next Lady Day.”

  THE THREE CORRESPONDENTS

  There was only the one little feathery clump of dom palms in all that great wilderness of black rocks and orange sand. It stood high on the bank, and below it the brown Nile swirled swiftly towards the Ambigole Cataract, fitting a little frill of foam round each of the boulders which studded its surface. Above, out of a naked blue sky, the sun was beating down upon the sand, and up again from the sand under the brims of the pith-hats of the horsemen with the scorching glare of a blast-furnace. It had risen so high that the shadows of the horses were no larger than themselves.

  “Whew!” cried Mortimer, mopping his forehead, “you’d pay five shillings for this at the hummums.”

  “Precisely,” said Scott. “But you are not asked to ride twenty miles in a Turkish bath with a field-glass and a revolver, and a water-bottle and a whole Christmas-treeful of things dangling from you. The hot-house at Kew is excellent as a conservatory, but not adapted for exhibitions upon the horizontal bar. I vote for a camp in the palm-grove and a halt until evening.”

  Mortimer rose on his stirrups and looked hard to the southward. Everywhere were the same black burned rocks and deep orange sand. At one spot only an intermittent line appeared to have been cut through the rugged spurs which ran down to the river. It was the bed of the old railway, long destroyed by the Arabs, but now in process of reconstruction by the advancing Egyptians. There was no other sign of man’s handiwork in all that desolate scene.

  “It’s palm trees or nothing,” said Scott.

  “Well, I suppose we must; and yet I grudge every hour until we catch the force up. What would our editors say if we were late for the action?”

  “My dear chap, an old bird like you doesn’t need to be told that no sane modern general would ever attack until the Press is up.”

  “You don’t mean that?” said young Anerley. “I thought we were looked upon as an unmitigated nuisance.”

  “‘Newspaper correspondents and travelling gentlemen, and all that tribe of useless drones’ — being an extract from Lord Wolseley’s ‘Soldier’s Pocket-Book,’” cried Scott. “We know all about that, Anerley;” and he winked behind his blue spectacles. “If there was going to be a battle we should very soon have an escort of cavalry to hurry us up. I’ve been in fifteen, and I never saw one where they had not arranged for a reporter’s table.”

  “That’s very well; but the enemy may be less considerate,” said

  Mortimer.

  “They are not strong enough to force a battle.”

  “A skirmish, then?”

  �
�Much more likely to be a raid upon the rear. In that case we are just where we should be.”

  “So we are! What a score over Reuter’s man up with the advance!

  Well, we’ll outspan and have our tiffin under the palms.”

  There were three of them, and they stood for three great London dailies. Reuter’s was thirty miles ahead; two evening pennies upon camels were twenty miles behind. And among them they represented the eyes and ears of the public — the great silent millions and millions who had paid for everything, and who waited so patiently to know the result of their outlay.

  They were remarkable men these body-servants of the Press; two of them already veterans in camps, the other setting out upon his first campaign, and full of deference for his famous comrades.

  This first one, who had just dismounted from his bay polo-pony, was Mortimer, of the Intelligence — tall, straight, and hawk-faced, with khaki tunic and riding-breeches, drab putties, a scarlet cummerbund, and a skin tanned to the red of a Scotch fir by sun and wind, and mottled by the mosquito and the sand-fly. The other — small, quick, mercurial, with blue-black, curling beard and hair, a fly-switch for ever flicking in his left hand — was Scott, of the Courier, who had come through more dangers and brought off more brilliant coups than any man in the profession, save the eminent Chandler, now no longer in a condition to take the field. They were a singular contrast, Mortimer and Scott, and it was in their differences that the secret of their close friendship lay. Each dovetailed into the other. The strength of each was in the other’s weakness. Together they formed a perfect unit. Mortimer was Saxon — slow, conscientious, and deliberate; Scott was Celtic — quick, happy-go-lucky, and brilliant. Mortimer was the more solid, Scott the more attractive. Mortimer was the deeper thinker, Scott the brighter talker. By a curious coincidence, though each had seen much of warfare, their campaigns had never coincided. Together they covered all recent military history. Scott had done Plevna, the Shipka, the Zulus, Egypt, Suakim; Mortimer had seen the Boer War, the Chilian, the Bulgaria and Servian, the Gordon relief, the Indian frontier, Brazilian rebellion, and Madagascar. This intimate personal knowledge gave a peculiar flavour to their talk. There was none of the second-hand surmise and conjecture which form so much of our conversation; it was all concrete and final. The speaker had been there, had seen it, and there was an end of it.

  In spite of their friendship there was the keenest professional rivalry between the two men. Either would have sacrificed himself to help his companion, but either would also have sacrificed his companion to help his paper. Never did a jockey yearn for a winning mount as keenly as each of them longed to have a full column in a morning edition whilst every other daily was blank. They were perfectly frank about the matter. Each professed himself ready to steal a march on his neighbour, and each recognised that the other’s duty to his employer was far higher than any personal consideration.

  The third man was Anerley, of the Gazette — young, inexperienced, and rather simple-looking. He had a droop of the lip, which some of his more intimate friends regarded as a libel upon his character, and his eyes were so slow and so sleepy that they suggested an affectation. A leaning towards soldiering had sent him twice to autumn manoeuvres, and a touch of colour in his descriptions had induced the proprietors of the Gazette to give him a trial as a war-special. There was a pleasing diffidence about his bearing which recommended him to his experienced companions, and if they had a smile sometimes at his guileless ways, it was soothing to them to have a comrade from whom nothing was to be feared. From the day that they left the telegraph-wire behind them at Sarras, the man who was mounted upon a 15-guinea 13-4 Syrian was delivered over into the hands of the owners of the two fastest polo-ponies that ever shot down the Ghezireh ground. The three had dismounted and led their beasts under the welcome shade. In the brassy, yellow glare every branch above threw so black and solid a shadow that the men involuntarily raised their feet to step over them.

  “The palm makes an excellent hat-rack,” said Scott, slinging his revolver and his water-bottle over the little upward-pointing pegs which bristle from the trunk. “As a shade tree, however, it isn’t an unqualified success. Curious that in the universal adaptation of means to ends something a little less flimsy could not have been devised for the tropics.”

  “Like the banyan in India.”

  “Or the fine hardwood trees in Ashantee, where a whole regiment could picnic under the shade.”

  “The teak tree isn’t bad in Burmah, either. By Jove, the baccy has all come loose in the saddle-bag! That long-cut mixture smokes rather hot for this climate. How about the baggles, Anerley?”

  “They’ll be here in five minutes.”

  Down the winding path which curved among the rocks the little train of baggage-camels was daintily picking its way. They came mincing and undulating along, turning their heads slowly from side to side with the air of a self-conscious woman. In front rode the three Berberee body-servants upon donkeys, and behind walked the Arab camel-boys. They had been travelling for nine long hours, ever since the first rising of the moon, at the weary camel-drag of two and a half miles an hour, but now they brightened, both beasts and men, at the sight of the grove and the riderless horses. In a few minutes the loads were unstrapped, the animals tethered, a fire lighted, fresh water carried up from the river, and each camel-boy provided with his own little heap of tibbin laid in the centre of the table-cloth, without which no well-bred Arabian will condescend to feed. The dazzling light without, the subdued half-tones within, the green palm-fronds outlined against the deep blue sky, the flitting, silent-footed Arab servants, the crackling of sticks, the reek of a lighting fire, the placid supercilious heads of the camels, they all come back in their dreams to those who have known them.

  Scott was breaking eggs into a pan and rolling out a love-song in his rich, deep voice. Anerley, with his head and arms buried in a deal packing-case, was working his way through strata of tinned soups, bully beef, potted chicken, and sardines to reach the jams which lay beneath. The conscientious Mortimer, with his notebook upon his knee, was jotting down what the railway engineer had told him at the line-end the day before. Suddenly he raised his eyes and saw the man himself on his chestnut pony, dipping and rising over the broken ground.

  “Hullo! Here’s Merryweather!”

  “A pretty lather his pony is in! He’s had her at that hand-gallop for hours, by the look of her. Hullo, Merryweather, hullo!”

  The engineer, a small, compact man with a pointed red beard, had made as though he would ride past their camp without word or halt. Now he swerved, and easing his pony down to a canter, he headed her to-wards them.

  “For God’s sake, a drink!” he croaked. “My tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth.”

  Mortimer ran with the water-bottle, Scott with the whisky-flask, and Anerley with the tin pannikin. The engineer drank until his breath failed him.

  “Well, I must be off,” said he, striking the drops from his red moustache.

  “Any news?”

  “A hitch in the railway construction. I must see the general.

  It’s the devil not having a telegraph.”

  “Anything we can report?” Out came three notebooks.

  “I’ll tell you after I’ve seen the general.”

  “Any dervishes?”

  “The usual shaves. Hud-up, Jinny! Good-bye!”

  With a soft thudding upon the sand, and a clatter among the stones the weary pony was off upon her journey once more.

  “Nothing serious, I suppose?” said Mortimer, staring after him.

  “Deuced serious,” cried Scott. “The ham and eggs are burned! No — it’s all right — saved, and done to a turn! Pull the box up, Anerley. Come on, Mortimer, stow that notebook! The fork is mightier than the pen just at present. What’s the matter with you, Anerley?”

  “I was wondering whether what we have just seen was worth a telegram.”

  “Well, it’s for the proprietors to say if it’s
worth it. Sordid money considerations are not for us. We must wire about something just to justify our khaki coats and our putties.”

  “But what is there to say?”

  Mortimer’s long, austere face broke into a smile over the youngster’s innocence. “It’s not quite usual in our profession to give each other tips,” said he. “However, as my telegram is written, I’ve no objection to your reading it. You may be sure that I would not show it to you if it were of the slightest importance.”

  Anerley took up the slip of paper and read: —

  Merryweather obstacles stop journey confer general stop nature difficulties later stop rumours dervishes.

  “This is very condensed,” said Anerley, with wrinkled brows.

  “Condensed!” cried Scott. “Why, it’s sinfully garrulous. If my old man got a wire like that his language would crack the lamp-shades. I’d cut out half this; for example, I’d have out ‘journey,’ and ‘nature,’ and ‘rumours.’ But my old man would make a ten-line paragraph of it for all that.”

  “How?”

  “Well, I’ll do it myself just to show you. Lend me that stylo.” He scribbled for a minute in his notebook. “It works out somewhat on these lines”: —

  Mr. Charles H. Merryweather, the eminent railway engineer, who is at present engaged in superintending the construction of the line from Sarras to the front, has met with considerable obstacles to the rapid completion of his important task —

  “Of course the old man knows who Merryweather is, and what he is about, so the word ‘obstacles’ would suggest all that to him.”

  He has to-day been compelled to make a journey of forty miles to the front, in order to confer with the general upon the steps which are necessary in order to facilitate the work. Further particulars of the exact nature of the difficulties met with will be made public at a later date. All is quiet upon the line of communications, though the usual persistent rumours of the presence of dervishes in the Eastern desert continue to circulate. — Our own correspondent.