CHAPTER VI
Under Arms
It must have been in my second year of humble office that the burglaryscare took possession of Witching Hill. It was certainly the burglars'month of November, and the fogs confirmed its worst traditions. On anight when the street lamps burst upon one at the last moment, like theflash of cannon through their own smoke, a house in Witching Hill Roadwas scientifically entered, and the silver abstracted in a style worthyof precious stones. In that instance the thieves got clear away withtheir modest spoil. It was as though they then made a deliberatesporting selection of the ugliest customer on the Estate. Their choicefell upon a Colonel Arthur Cheffins, who not only kept fire-arms butknew how to use them, and gave such an account of himself that it was amiracle how the rascals escaped with their lives.
The first I heard of this affair was a volley of gravel on my window atdead of night. Then came Uvo Delavoye's voice through the fog before Iquite knew what I was doing at the open window. Colonel Cheffins livedin the house opposite the Delavoyes', where he had lately started acramming establishment on a small scale; and on his rushing over theroad to the rescue, at the first sound of the fusillade, poor Uvo hadhimself been under fire in the fog. The good colonel was in a great wayabout it, I gathered, although no harm had been done, and it was onlyone of the pupils who had loosed off in his excitement. But would I careto come along and inspect the damage then and there? If so, they wouldbe glad to see me, and as yet there was whisky for all comers.
I turned out instantly in my dressing-gown and slippers, found Uvoshivering in his, and raced him to the scene. It took some finding inthe fog, until the lighted hall flashed upon us like a dark lantern atarm's length. In the class room at the back of the house, round the gasfire which obtained in all our houses, pedagogue and pupils were stilltelling their tale by turns and in chaotic chorus. Their audience wassmaller than I expected. A little knot of unsporting tenants seemed moredisposed to complain of the disturbance than to take up the chase; butindeed that was hopeless in the fog and darkness, and before long Uvoand I were the only interlopers left. We remained by special invitation,for I had made friends with the colonel over the papering and paintingof his house, while Uvo had just shown himself a would-be friend indeed.
"It's a very easy battle to reconstruct," said the crammer at the footof his stairs. "I was up there on the landing when I took my first shotat the scoundrels. You'll find it in the lower part of the front door.One of them blazed back, and there's the hole in the landing window. Ihad last word from the mat, and I've been looking for it in the gate,but I begin to hope we may find a drop or two of their blood insteadto-morrow morning."
Colonel Cheffins was a little bald man with a tooth-brush moustache, andbright eyes that danced with frank delight in the whole adventure. Helooked every inch the old soldier, even in a Jaeger suit of bedroomoveralls, and I vastly preferred him to his two young men; butscholastic connections are not formed by picking and choosing youroriginal material. Delavoye and I, however, made as free as they withthe whisky bottle as a substitute for adequate clothing, and the one whohad nearly committed manslaughter had some excuse in his depression andremorse.
"If I'd hit you," he said to Uvo, "I'd have blown my own silly brainsout with the next chamber. I'm not kidding. I wouldn't shoot a man fortwenty thousand pounds!"
And he shuddered into the chair nearest the glowing lumps of whiteasbestos licked by thin blue flames.
"God bless my soul, no more would I!" cried the crammer heartily. "Iaimed low on purpose not to do more than wing them; there's my bullet inthe door to say so, whereas theirs fairly whistled past my head on itsway through that upstairs window. They're a most desperate gang ofsportsmen, I assure you."
"There's certainly something to be said for keeping a revolver,"observed Uvo, eyeing the brace now lying on the cast-iron chimneypiece.
"Do you mean to say you haven't got one?" cried Colonel Cheffins.
"I do. I wouldn't keep one even out in Egypt. I hate the beastlythings," said Uvo Delavoye.
"But why?"
"Oh, I don't know. There's something so uncanny about them. They lie sosnug in your pocket, and you needn't even take them out to send yourselfto Kingdom Come!"
"Why yourself, Mr. Delavoye?"
"You never know. You might go mad with the beastly thing about you."
"God bless my soul!" cried the colonel, with cocked eyebrows. "You mightgo mad while you're shaving, and cut yourself too deep, for thatmatter!"
"Or when you're waiting for a train, or looking out of a window!" I putin, to laugh Uvo out of the morbid vein which I understood in him butothers might easily misconstrue. I could see the two young pupilsexchanging glances as I spoke.
"No," he replied, laughing in his turn, to my relief; "none of thoseways would come as easy, and they'd all hurt more. However, to be quiteserious, I must own it isn't the time or place for these littleprejudices against the only cure for the present epidemic. And yet formy part I'd always rather trust to one of my Soudanese weapons, withwhich you couldn't have an accident if you tried."
Over the way, his own rooms were freely hung with murderous trophiesacquired in the back-blocks of the Nile; but I felt more and more thatUvo Delavoye was wilfully misrepresenting himself to these threestrangers; and the best I could hope was that a certain dash of sardonicgaiety might lead them to suppose that it was all his chaff.
"Well," said the colonel, "if those are your views I only hope youhaven't many "valuables" in the house."
"On the contrary, colonel, everything we've got over there is a fewsizes too big for its place, and our plate-chest simply wouldn't gointo the strong-room of the local bank. So where do you think we keepit?"
"I've no idea."
"In the bathroom!" cried Uvo Delavoye, with the shock of laughter whichwas the refreshing finish of some of his moodiest fits. But you had toknow him to appreciate his subtle shades, especially to separate thetangled threads of grim fun and gay earnest, and I feared that thegallant little veteran was beginning to regard him as a harmlesslunatic. A shake of his bald head was all his comment on the statementthat moved Delavoye himself to sudden mirth. And on the whole I wasthankful when the return of a man-servant with a nervous constable,grabbed out of the fog by a lucky dip, provided us with an excuse forgroping our way across the road.
"What on earth made you talk all that rot about revolvers?" I grumbledas we struck his gate.
"It wasn't rot. I meant every word of it."
"The more shame for you, if you did; but you know very well you don't."
"My dear Gilly, I wouldn't live with one of those nasty little weaponsfor worlds. I--I couldn't, Gilly--not long!"
He had me quite tightly by the hand.
"I'm coming in with you," I said. "You're not fit to be alone."
"Oh, yes, I am!" he laughed. "I haven't got one of those things yet, andI shall never get one. I'd rather thieves broke in and stole every ounceof silver in the place."
So we parted for what was left of the night, instead of turning it intoday as we often did with less excuse; and for once my powers of sleepdeserted me. But it was not the attempted burglary, or any one of itssensational features, that kept me awake; it was the lamentableconversation of Uvo Delavoye on the subject of fire-arms, and that nolonger as affecting other minds, but as revealing his own. I had oftenheard him indulge his morbid fancies, but never so gratuitously orbefore strangers. To me he could and would say anything, but of late hehad been less free with me and I more anxious about him. He had now beenover eighteen months on the shelf. That was his whole trouble. It wasnot that he was ever seriously ill, but that he was always well enoughto worry because he was no better or fitter for work. His mind racedlike an engine, and the futile wear and tear was beginning to tell onthe whole machinery. To be sure, he had written a little in a desultoryway, but I never thought his heart was in his pen, and his fastidioustaste was a deterrent rather than a spur. Yet he railed about the breadof idleness, said a man sho
uld be fit or dead, and that his mother andsister would be better off without him. Those ladies were again fromhome, and the fact did not make it easier to dissociate such sayingsfrom an unhealthy horror of loaded revolvers.
So you may think what I felt the very next evening--which I did insiston spending at No. 7--when the distasteful conversation was renewed anddeveloped to the point of outrage. Daylight and less fog had failed toreveal any trace whatever of the thieves, and it became evident that thecolonel's moral victory (he had lost a few spoons) was also aregrettably bloodless one. I saw no more of him during a day of vainexcitement, but at night his card was brought up to Uvo's room, and theold fellow followed like a new pin.
I was in those days none too nice about my clothes, and both of us youngfellows were more or less as we had been all day; but the sight of thedapper coach in his well-cut dinner jacket, with shirt-front shininglike his venerable pate, and studded with a couple of good pearls, mightwell have put us to the blush. Under his arm he carried a big cigar-box,and this he presented to Delavoye with a courtly sparkle.
"You rushed to our aid last night, Mr. Delavoye, and we nearly shot youfor your pains!" said the colonel. "Pray accept a souvenir which in yourhands, I hope, and in similar circumstances, is less likely to end in somuch smoke."
Uvo lifted the lid and the gas-light flashed from the plated parts of asix-chambered revolver with a six-inch barrel. It was one of the deadlybrace that we had seen on the colonel's chimneypiece in the middle ofthe night.
"I can't take it from you," said Delavoye, shrinking palpably from thepistol. "I really am most grateful to you, Colonel Cheffins, but I'vedone nothing to deserve such a handsome gift."
"I beg to differ," said the colonel, "and I shall be sorely hurt if yourefuse it. You never know when your turn may come; after your ownaccount of that plate-chest, I shan't lie easy in my bed until I feelyou are properly prepared against the worst."
"But my poor mother would rather lose every salt-cellar, ColonelCheffins, than have a man shot dead on her stairs."
"I shouldn't dream of shooting him dead," replied the colonel. "Ishouldn't even go as far as I went last night, if I could help it. Butwith that barrel glittering in your hand, Mr. Delavoye, I fancy you'dfind it easier to keep up a conversation with some intrusiveconnoisseur."
"Is it loaded?" I asked as Uvo took the weapon gingerly from its box.
"Not at the moment, and I fear these few cartridges are all I can spare.I only keep enough myself for an emergency. I need hardly warn you, bythe way, against pistol practice in these little gardens? It would bemost unsafe with a revolver of this calibre. Why, God bless my soul, youmight bring down some unfortunate person in the next parish!"
I entirely agreed, but Delavoye was not attending. He was playing withthe colonel's offering as a child plays with fire, with the same intentface and meddlesome maladroitness. It was a mercy it was not loaded. Isaw him wince as the hammer snapped unexpectedly; then he kept onsnapping it, as though the sensation fascinated ear or finger; and justas I found myself enduring an intolerable suspense, Uvo ended it with areckless light in his sunken eyes.
"I'm a lost man, Gilly!" said he, with a grim twinkle for my benefit. "Iwas afraid I should be if I once felt it in my paw. It's extraordinarilykind of you, Colonel Cheffins, and you must forgive me if I seem to havebeen looking your gift in the barrel. But the fact is I have always beenrather chary of these pretty things, and I must thank you for thechance of overcoming the weakness."
His tone was sincere enough. So was the grave face turned upon ColonelCheffins. But its very gravity angered and alarmed me, and I wasdetermined to have his decision in more explicit terms.
"Then the pistol's yours, is it, Uvo?" I asked, with the mostdisingenuous grin that I could muster.
"Till death us do part!" he answered. And his laugh jarred every fibrein my body.
I never knew how seriously to take him; that was the worst of hiselusive humour, or it may be of my own deficiency in any such quality. Iconfess I like a man to laugh at his own jokes, and to look as though hemeant the things he does mean. Uvo Delavoye would do either--orneither--as the whim took him, and I used sometimes to think hecultivated a wilful subtlety for my special bewilderment. Thus in thisinstance he was quite capable of assuming an alarming pose to pay me outfor any undue anxiety I might betray on his behalf; therefore I had toadmire the revolver in my turn, and even to acclaim it as a timelyacquisition. But either Uvo was not deceived, or else I was right as tohis morbid feeling about the weapon. He seemed unable to lay it down.Sometimes he did so with apparent resolution, only to pick it up againand sit twisting the empty chambers round and round, till they tickedlike the speedometer of a coasting bicycle. Once he slipped in one ofthe cartridges. The colonel looked at me, and I perched myself on thedesk at Uvo's side. But the worst thing of all was the way his handtrembled as he promptly picked that cartridge out again.
We had said not a word, but Uvo rattled on with glib vivacity and thelaugh that got upon my nerves. His new possession was his only theme. Hecould no more drop the subject than the thing itself. It was therevolver, the whole revolver, and nothing but the revolver for UvoDelavoye that night. He was childishly obsessed with its unpleasantpossibilities, but he treated them with a grim levity not unredeemed bywit. His bloodthirsty prattle grew into a quaint and horrible harangueeked out with quotations that stuck like burs. More than once I lookedto Colonel Cheffins for a disapproval which would come with more weightfrom him than me; but decanter and syphon had been brought up soon afterhis arrival, and he only sipped his whisky with an amused air that mademe wonder which of us was going daft.
"Talk about bare bodkins, otherwise hollow-ground razors!" cried Uvo,emptying his glass. "I couldn't do the trick with cold steel if I tried;but with a revolver you've only got to press the trigger and it does therest. Then--I wonder if you even live to hear the row?--then, Gilly,it's a case of that 'big blue mark in his forehead and the back blownout of his head!'"
"That wasn't a revolver," said I, for he had taught me to worship hismodern god of letters; "that was the Snider that 'squibbed in thejungle.'"
Delavoye looked it up in his paper-covered copy.
"Quite right, Gilly!" said he. "But what price this from the very nextpiece?
"'So long as those unloaded guns We keep beside the bed, Blow off, by obvious accident, The lucky owner's head.'
"That's a bit more like it than the big blue mark, eh? And my giftedauthor is the boy who can handle these little dears better than anybodyelse in the class; he don't only use 'em for moral suasion under arms,but he makes you smell the blood and hear the thunder!"
Colonel Cheffins seemed to have had enough at last; he rose to go withrather a perfunctory laugh, and I jumped up to see him out on the pleaof something I had to say about his damaged door and window.
"For God's sake, sir, get your revolver back from him!" was what Iwhispered down below. "He's not himself. He hasn't been his own man forover a year. Get it back from him before he takes a turn for the worseand--and----"
"I know what you mean," said the colonel, "but I don't believe it's asbad as you think. I'll see what I can do. I might say I've smashed theother, but I mustn't say it too soon or he'll smell a rat. I must leavehim to you meanwhile, Mr. Gillon, but I honestly believe it's all talk."
And so did I as the dapper little coach smiled cheerily under the halllamp, and I shut the door on him and ran up to Uvo's room two steps at atime. But on the threshold I fell back, for an instant, as though thataccursed revolver covered me; for he was seated at his desk, his back tothe room, his thumb on the trigger--and the muzzle in his right ear.
I crept upon him and struck it upwards with a blow that sent the weaponflying from his grasp. It had not exploded; it was in my pocket beforehe could turn upon me with a startled oath.
"What are you playing at, my good fellow?" cried he.
"What are _you_?"
And my teeth chattered with the demand. r />
"What do you suppose? You didn't think I'd gone and loaded it, did you?I was simply seeing--if you want to know--whether one would use one'sforefinger or one's thumb. I've quite decided on the thumb."
"Uvo," I said, pouring out more whisky than I intended, "this is morethan I can stick even from you, old fellow! You've gone on and on aboutthis infernal shooter till I never want to see one in my life again. Ifyou meant to blow out your brains this very night, you couldn't havesaid more than you have done. What rhyme or reason is there in suchcrazy talk?"
"I didn't say it was either poetry or logic," he answered, filling hispipe. "But it's a devilish fascinating idea."
"The idea of wanton suicide? You call that fascinating?"
"Not as an end. It's a poor enough end. I was thinking of the means--thecold trigger against your finger--the cold muzzle in your ear--the onefrightful bang and then the Great What Next!"
"The Great What Next for you," I said, as his eyes came dancing througha cloud of birdseye, "is Cane Hill or Colney Hatch, if you don't takecare."
"I prefer the Village mortuary, if you don't mind, Gilly."
"Either would be so nice for your mother and sister!"
"And I'm such a help to them as I am, aren't I? Think of the bread I winand all the dollars I'm raking in!"
"It would be murder as well as suicide," I went on. "It would finish offone of them, if not both."
He smoked in silence with a fatuous, drunken smile, though he was assober as a man could be. That made it worse. And it was worst of allwhen the smile faded from the face to gather in the eyes, in a liquidlook of unfathomable cynicism, new to me in Uvo Delavoye, and yetmysteriously familiar and repellent.
"Yes; they're certainly a drawback, Gillon, but I don't know thatthey've a right to be anything more. We don't ask to be put into thisworld; surely we can put ourselves out if it amuses us."
"'If it amuses us!'"
"But that's the whole point!" he cried, puffing and twinkling as before."How many people out themselves for no earthly reason that anybody elsecan see, and have their memory insulted by the usual idiotic verdict?They're no more temporarily insane than I am. It's their curiosity thatgets the better of them. They want to go at their best, with all theirwits about them, as you or I might want to go to Court. If they couldtake a return ticket, they would; they don't really want to go for goodany more than I do. They're doing something they don't really want todo, yet can't help doing, as half of us are, half our time."
"They're weak fools," I blustered. "They're destructive children who'venever grown up, and they ought to be taken care of till they do."
He smiled through his smoke with sinister serenity.
"But we all are children, my dear Gilly, and on the best authority mostof us are fools. As for the destructive faculty, it's part of humannature and three parts of modern policy; but our politicians haven't thechild's excuse of wanting to know how things are made--which I see atthe back of half the brains that get blown out by obvious accident."
"Good-night, Uvo," I said, just grasping him by the arm. "I know you'reonly pulling my leg, but I've heard about enough for one night."
"Another insulting verdict!" he laughed. "Well, so long, if you reallymean it; but do you mind giving me my Webley and Scott before you go?"
"Your what?"
"My present from over the way. It's one of Webley and Scott's bestefforts, you know. I had one like it, only the smaller size, when I wasout in Egypt."
I thought he had forgotten about the concrete weapon, or rather that hedid not know I had picked it up, but expected to find it in the cornerwhere it had fallen when I knocked it out of his hand. My own handclosed upon it in my side pocket, as I turned to face Uvo Delavoye, whohad somehow slipped between me and the door.
"So it's not your first revolver?" I temporised.
"No; you've got to have one out there."
"But you didn't think it worth bringing home?"
I was trying to recall his very first remarks about revolvers, after theburglary the night before. And Delavoye read the attempt with hisstartling insight, and helped me out with impulsive candour.
"You're quite right! I did say I hated the beastly things, but it was aweakness I always meant to get over, and now I have. Do you mind givingme my Webley?"
"What did you do with the other one, Uvo?"
"Pitched it into the Nile, since you're so beastly inquisitive. But Iwas full of fever at the time, and broken-hearted at cracking up. It'squite different now."
"Is it?"
"Of course it is. I'm not going to do anything rotten. I was onlyragging you. Don't be a silly ass, Gillon!"
He was holding out his hand. His face had darkened, but his eyes blazed.
"I'm sorry, Uvo----"
"I'll make you sorrier!" he hissed.
"I can't help it. You couldn't trust yourself in your fever. It's yourown fault if I can't trust you now."
He glared at me like a caged tiger, and now I knew the wild sly look inhis eyes. It was the look of the Kneller portrait at Hampton Court, butthere was no time to think twice about that, with the tiger in himgnashing its teeth in very impotence.
"Oh, very well! You don't get out of this, with my property, if I canhelp it! I know I'm no match for you in brute strength, but you lay afinger on me if you dare!"
He was almost foaming at the mouth, and the trouble was that I couldunderstand his frenzy perfectly. I would not have stood my own behaviourfrom any man, and yet I could not have behaved differently if I hadtried, for his insensate fury was all of a piece with his delirioustalk. I kept my eye on him as on a wild beast, and I saw his rovinground the uncouth weapons on the wall. He was edging nearer to them; hishand was raised to pluck one down, his worn face bloated and distortedwith his passion. Neither of us spoke; we were past the stage; but inthe grate the gas fire burnt with a low reproving roar. And then all atonce I saw Uvo turn his head as though his sensitive ear had caught someother sound; his raised hand swept down upon the handle of the door; andas he softly opened it, the other hand was raised in token of silence,and for one splendid second I looked into a face no longer possessed bythe devil, but radiant with the keenest joy.
Then I was at his elbow, and our ears bent together at the open door.Gas was burning on the landing as well as in the hall below; everythingseemed normal to every sense. I was obliged to breathe before anothersound came from any quarter but that noisy stove in the room behind us.And then it was more a vibration of the floor, behind the curtains ofthe half-landing, than an actual sound. But that was enough; back westole into Uvo's room.
"They've come," he whispered, simply. "They're in the bathroom--now!"
"I heard."
"We'll go for them!"
"Of course."
He reached down the very weapon he had meant for my skull a minutebefore. It was a great club, studded with brass-headed nails, and also amost murderous battle-axe, so that the same whirl might fell one foe andcleave another. I had taken it from Uvo, and his dancing eyes werethanking me as he loaded the revolver I had handed him in exchange.
There were three stairs down to the half-landing, but Uvo sat up toolate at nights not to know the one that creaked. We reached the oldmaroon curtain without a sound; behind it was the housemaid's sink onthe right, and straight in front the bathroom door with a faint lightunder it. But the light went out before we reached it, and then the doorwould not open, and with that there was a smothered hubbub of voices andof feet within. It was like the first shot from an ambuscade, but it wasour ambuscade, and Uvo's voice rang out in triumph.
"Down with the door or the devils'll do us yet!"
And they sounded as though they might before bolt or hinges gave. As webrought all our weight to bear, we could hear them huddling out of thewindow, and somebody whispering sharply, "One at a time; one at a time!"And at that my companion relaxed his efforts inexplicably, but I flew atthe key-hole with flat foot and every ounce of my weight behind it; thecrash fined off i
nto the scream of splintered wood, and I should haveentered head foremost if the man on the other side had not stemmed thetorrent of torn woodwork. Even as it was I went down on all fours, andwas only struggling to my feet as his figure showed dimly in the openwindow. Delavoye fired over my head at the same instant, but hisrevolver "squibbed" like that far-away Snider, and before I could hackwith his battle-axe at their rope-ladder, the last of the thieves wassafe and sound on _terra firma_.
Delavoye fired over my head.]
"Don't do that!" cried Delavoye. "It's our one chance of nabbing 'em."
And he was out of the window and swinging down the rope-ladder while theruffians were yet in the yard below. But they did not wait to punish hisfoolhardihood; the gate into the back garden banged before he reachedthe ground, and he hardly had it open when the last of the bunch ofropes slid hot through my hands.
"After them!" he grunted, giving chase to shadowy forms across thesoaking grass. His revolver squibbed again as he ran. They did not stopto return his fire; but across the strawberry bed, at the end of thegarden, the high split fence rattled and rumbled with the weight of theflying gang; and there was a dropping crackle of brushwood on the otherside, as I came up with Delavoye under the overhanging branches of thehorse-chestnuts.
"Going over after them?" I panted, prepared to follow where he led.
"I'm afraid it's no good now," he answered, peering at his revolver inthe darkness. The chambers ticked like the reel of a rod. "Besides,there's one of them cast a shoe or something. I trod on it a momentago." He stooped and groped in the manure of the strawberry bed. "A shoeit is, Gilly, by all that's lucky!"
"You wouldn't like to dog them a bit further?" I suggested. "The fellowwith one shoe won't take much overhauling?"
"No, Gilly," said Delavoye, abandoning the chase as incontinently as hehad started it, but with equal decision; "I think it's about time to seewhat they've taken, as well as what they've left."
Their rope-ladder was still swaying from the bathroom window, and itserved our turn again since Uvo was without his key. He climbed upfirst, and the window flared into a square of gas-light before I gainedthe sill. The scene within was quite instructive. The family chest wasclamped right round with iron bands, like the straps of a portmanteau,and the lock in each band had defied the ingenuity of the thieves; sothey had cut a neat hole in the lid and extracted the contentspiecemeal. These were not strewn broadcast about the room, but set outwith some method on a dressing-table as well as in the basin and thebath. Apparently the stage of selection had been reached when weinterrupted the proceedings, and the first thing that struck me was theamount of fine old plate and silver, candelabra, urns, salvers and thelike, which had not been removed; but Delavoye was already up to theright armpit in the chest, and my congratulations left him grim.
"They've got my mother's jewel-case all right!" said he. "She has one ortwo things worth all those put together; but we shall see them againunless I'm much mistaken. Come into my room and hear the why andwherefore. Ah! I was forgetting young ambition's ladder; thanks, Gilly.I hope you see how hard it's hooked to the woodwork on this side? It'sonly been their emergency exit; we shall probably find that they tooktheir tickets at the pantry window. Now for a drink in my room and a bitof Sherlock Holmes' work on the lucky slipper!"
I wish I could describe the change in Uvo Delavoye as he sat at his deskonce more, his eager face illumined by the reading gas-lamp with thesmelly rubber tube. Eager was not the word for it now, neither was itonly the gas that lit it up. At its best, for all its bloodless bronzeand premature furrows, the face of Uvo was itself a lamp, that onlyflickered to burn brighter, or to beam more steadily; and now he was athis best in the very chair and attitude in which I had seen him at hisworst not so many minutes before. Was this the fellow who had toyed sotremulously with a deadly weapon and a deadlier idea? Was it UvoDelavoye who had deliberately debauched his mind with the thought of hisown blood, until to my eyes at least he looked capable of shedding it atthe morbid prompting of a degenerate impulse? I watched him keenlyexamining the thing in his hands, chuckling and gloating over a trophywhich I for one would have taken far more seriously; and I could notbelieve it was he whom I had caught with a revolver, loaded or unloaded,screwed into his ear.
It was in a silence due to two divergent lines of thought that we bothat once became aware of a prolonged but muffled tattoo on the doorbelow.
"Coppers ahoy!" cried Uvo softly. "I thought you hauled the rope-ladderup after us?"
"So I did; but how do you know it's a copper?"
"Who else could it be at this time of night? Stay where you are, Gilly.I'll go down and see." And in a moment there was a new tune from thehall below: "Why, it's Colonel Cheffins!... How sporting of you,colonel!... Yes, come on up and I'll tell you all about it."
The colonel's answers were at first inaudible up above; but on thestairs he was explaining that he had awakened about an hour ago with aconviction that yet another house had been attacked, that in hisinability to get to sleep again he had ultimately risen, and seeing alight still burning across the road, had ventured to come over toinquire whether we were still all right. And with that there entered theJaeger dressing-suit and bedroom slippers, containing a very differentcolonel from the dapper edition I had seen out on the other side ofmidnight, and for that matter but a worn and feeble copy of the one wehad both admired the night before.
"That's Witching Hill all over!" cried Uvo as he ushered him in. "Youdreamed of what actually happened at the very time it was actuallyhappening. And yet our friend Gillon can't see that the whole place ishaunted and enchanted from end to end!"
"I'm not sure that I should go as far as that," said the colonel,sinking into a chair, while Delavoye mixed a stiff drink for him in hisold glass. "In fact, now you come to put it that way, I'm not so surethat it was a dream at all. I sleep with my window open, at the front ofthe house, and I rather thought I heard shots of sorts."
"Of such a sort," laughed Uvo, "that you must be a light sleeper if theywoke you up. Do you mind telling me, colonel, where you used to keepthose cartridges you were kind enough to give me?"
"In my washstand drawer. I hope there was nothing the matter with them?"
"They wouldn't go off. That was all."
"God bless my soul!" cried Colonel Cheffins, putting down his glass.
"The caps were all right, but I am afraid you can't have kept yourpowder quite dry, colonel. I expect you've been swilling out that drawerin the heat of your ablutions. Devil a bullet would leave the barrel,and I tried all three."
"But what an infernal disgrace!" cried the colonel, shuffling to hisslippered feet. "Why, the damned things ought to go off if you raisedthem from the bottom of the sea! I'll let the makers have it in nextweek's _Field_, libel or no libel, you see if I don't! But that won'tconsole either you or me, Mr. Delavoye, and I can't apologise enough. Ionly hope the scoundrels were no more successful here than they were atmy house?"
"I'm afraid they didn't go quite so empty away."
"God bless my soul! Those cartridge makers ought to indemnify you. Butperhaps they left some traces? That was the worst of it in mycase--neither footmark nor finger-print worth anything to any body!"
"I'm afraid they left neither here."
"But you don't know that, Mr. Delavoye; you can't know it beforemorning. The frost broke up with the fog, you must remember, and theground's as soft as butter. Which way did the blackguards run?"
"Through the garden and over the wall at the back into----"
"Then they _must_ have left their card this time!" said ColonelCheffins, ten years younger in his excitement, and even more alert andwide-awake than we had found him the night before. He did not concealhis anxiety to conduct immediate investigations in the garden. But Uvopersuaded him to wait till we had finished our drinks, and we got him tosit down at the desk, trembling with keenness.
"You see," said Uvo, leaning forward in the arm-chair and opening adrawer in the pedestal between t
hem, "one of them did leave something inthe shape of a card, and here it is."
And there lay the cast shoe, in the open drawer, under the colonel'seyes and mine as I looked over his shoulder.
"Why, it's an evening pump!" he exclaimed.
"Exactly."
"Made by quite a good maker, I should say. All in one piece, without aseam, I mean."
"I see. I hadn't noticed that; but then I haven't your keen eye,colonel. You really must come out into the garden with us."
"I shall be delighted, and we might take this with us to fit into anytracks----"
"Precisely; but there's just one thing I should like you to do first, ifyou would," said Uvo deferentially, and I bent still further over thecolonel's shiny head.
"What's that, Mr. Delavoye?"
"Just to try on the glass slipper--so to speak, ColonelCheffins--because it's so extraordinarily like the one you were wearingwhen you were here before!"
There was a moment's pause in which I saw myself quite plainly in thecolonel's head. Then, with a grunt and a shrug, he reached out his lefthand for the shoe, but his right slid inside his Jaeger jacket, and thatsame second my arms were round him. I felt and grabbed his revolver assoon as he did, and I held the barrel clear of our bodies while heemptied all six chambers through his garments into the floor.
Then we bound our fine fellow with his own rope-ladder, reloaded bothrevolvers with unexpurgated cartridges discovered upon his person, andprepared to hold a grand reception of his staff and "pupils." But thoseyoung gentlemen had not misconstrued the cannonade. And it was some daysbefore the last of the gang was captured.
They were all tried together at the December sessions of the CentralCriminal Court, when their elaborate methods were very much admired. Theskilful impersonation of the typical Army coach by the head of the gang,and the adequate acting of his confederates in the subordinate posts ofpupils and servants, were features which appealed to the public mind.The taking of the house in Mulcaster Park, as a base for operationsthroughout a promising neighbourhood, was a measure somewhatovershadowed by the brilliant blind of representing it as the scene ofthe first robberies. It was generally held, however, that in presentinga predestined victim with a revolver and doctored cartridges, the masterthief had gone too far, and that for that alone he deserved theexemplary sentence to which he listened like the officer and gentlemanhe had never been. So the great actor lives the part he plays.
It is a perquisite of witnesses to hear these popular trials with acertain degree of comfort; and so it was that I was able to nudge UvoDelavoye, at the last soldierly inclination of that bald bad head,before it disappeared from a world to which it has not yet returned.
"Well, at any rate," I whispered, "you can't claim any Witching Hillinfluence this time."
"I wish I couldn't," he answered in a still lower voice.
"But you've just heard that our bogus colonel has been a genuinecriminal all his life."
"I wasn't thinking of him," said Uvo Delavoye. "I was thinking of astill worse character, who really did the thing I felt so like thatnight before we heard them in the bathroom. Not a word, Gilly! I knowyou've forgiven me. But I'm rather sorry for these beggars, for theycame to me like flowers in May."
And as his face darkened with a shame unseen all day in that dolefuldock, it was some comfort to me to feel that it had never been less likeits debased image at Hampton Court.