THE WORLD WAR COLLECTION OF H. C. MCNEILE (SAPPER). Sapper
But that scratch has got to be cauterised."
He picked up the wire, and there was a sudden smell of burning flesh. One involuntary moan of pain did she give; then, white-faced, she stood stock still. "Good," he said quietly. "I congratulate you on your pluck."
He was staring at her gravely, and when she made no reply, he continued still in the same quiet voice. "As soon as you feel fit enough, perhaps you will go. I have to cauterise myself now, where your signet ring opened up my cheek, and it won't be a pleasant operation to witness."
He rang a bell, and a man-servant came into the room.
"Dennett, outside the gate you'll find a dead dog. Please bury it in the garden. On no account touch its mouth. Where's Binks?"
A joyful scurry of fat, flopping legs, and a spaniel shot through the door, yelping deliriously. For a moment or two the girl watched it jumping round the man; then she laughed harshly. "Are you going to kill him now?"
"Is it possible," he said in amazement, "that you are still in ignorance of why I killed your dog?"
"Complete," she answered. "I can only assume that you're mad."
A faint smile flickered across his lips. "The ailment is right; but you've got the wrong sufferer. Your terrier was mad."
"I don't believe you," she cried incredulously.
"That, I fear, does not alter the fact. When you have seen as much rabies as I have—which I trust you never will—you don't make a mistake about it. And when you've seen as many people die of hydrophobia as I have, you don't take any risks."
"He could have been cured," she said furiously.
"Impossible," he answered curtly. "Now do you mind going? I don't want to leave this place on my cheek any longer than necessary without attention."
"Yes; I'll go. And if ever I have a chance of getting even with you over this, I'll take it."
It was a rotten thing to say; it was a silly thing to say—and even as she said it she realised she was being unutterably cheap. But she was not quite prepared for the answer she received—an answer which fanned her anger to bursting point. "You want smacking with the business side of a hairbrush, but I really haven't time to attend to you at the moment. There is the door."
Which also was a stupid remark to make—very stupid. But Dacres had lost his temper with a woman for the first time in his life.
The trouble is that the mischief is always caused by foolish remarks of that type. Two days later the dog belonging to the fisherman having run amok, was duly put under by the vet., and Sydney had to admit to herself that Dacres had been right. But all the time ringing through her head were the words, "You want smacking—"
Out of a sort of morbid curiosity she had made inquiries about what happened to people bitten by mad dogs; had heard something of what hydrophobia meant. But it was "the business side of a hair-brush" that seemed more important than any symptoms.
And then an uncle of hers—a general who had done most of his soldiering abroad—came to stay. And from him she heard something about Dacres.
"A magnificent fellow, my dear," he had said. "One of the bravest men I've ever known. He's spent his life tackling foul diseases in fouler spots, with remarkably little hope of reward save death if he made a mistake. I wonder what he's doing here?"
Sydney neither knew nor cared. He was the man who "hadn't time to attend to her at the moment." Heavens! how she hated him! Conceited, overbearing brute—how dared he speak to her like that? And if at odd moments the thought stole into her mind that she fully deserved what he had said, and that she was deliberately fanning her rage to keep it alight, she dismissed it at once. How dare he say such a thing to her? How dare he? He might be a magnificent fellow, as her uncle said, but tackling foul diseases seemed to have caused the same adjective to apply to his manners.
Her father, when he heard what had happened—or, rather, a slightly expurgated version of what had happened—had straightway gone up to call on Dacres. And he had returned full of gratitude to the man who had acted so promptly.
"He asked me to tell you, my dear, how sorry he was at having had to do such a thing right in front of your eyes. But it never dawned on him that you wouldn't know Jack was mad. I suppose it's been such a common occurrence in his life that he assumed you, too, would recognise rabies."
Sydney had grunted noncommittally.
"His eye is all bound up," had gone on her father. "Tripped up and cut it, I gather. He also said you were the pluckiest girl he'd ever met."
And Sydney, who had been brushing her hair, had paused for a moment and looked at the brush. "How kind of him! I'm terribly nattered."
And then, as the days went on and lengthened into weeks, the feeling that she was behaving like a spoilt baby could no longer be beaten down. Twice had he been to dinner, and on each occasion she had almost openly ignored him. And when he had returned the compliment and invited them to his house, Sydney had suddenly developed a headache and refused to go.
But at last she forced herself to face matters fairly; things couldn't go on as they were. And because she was as straight as a die, she knew there was only one thing to do; and because, also, she was now being honest with herself, she knew that at the bottom of her heart she'd been wanting to do it for days.
He'd be an easy man, too—she felt that instinctively. If she just walked up to him, held out her hand and said: "I'm sorry," he'd take it in just the same spirit as she said it. There would be no arriere pensee about Reggie Dacres.
And so on the afternoon of the day which had brought this momentous decision, she told Uncle Jimmy to fall in for a walk.
"My dear," he said, "I'm going up to see Dacres this afternoon. He's about to carry out a very big experiment, and I'm frightfully curious to see what it is. He's refused to tell me up till now."
"Excellent, Jimmy, my dear," said Sydney. "I'll come with you. I want to talk to him."
"It struck me you didn't like him much," commented her uncle as they started.
"My maidenly modesty, dear uncle," she answered. "I just want to say one word to him, and then I'll leave you."
Which was once again the signal for the Fates that move the pieces to sit up and take notice. Things mustn't be allowed to adjust themselves quite as easily as that.
Certainly Uncle Jimmy gave her wonderful opportunity. Whether that incorrigibly sentimental warrior imagined that the one word was the answer to a very important question or not is beside the point. The only sure thing is that on some utterly fatuous excuse he left them alone in the very room where their last interview had taken place. And the words were trembling on her tongue; her hand was actually lifting when Dacres spoke.
"Still singing your little hymn of hate in the morning, Miss Marsham?"
Her hand dropped to her side, and she stared at him speechlessly. There was a faintly amused—to her mind almost contemptuous— glint in his eyes. So this was the man she'd been going to apologise to—this— this sneering brute. "Good heavens, my dear man!" she said contemptuously, "you don't imagine you were ever worth as much trouble as that, do you?"
And suddenly the smile flashed out on his face. "You perfectly adorable child!" he remarked. "What do you mean by telling such unholy tarradiddles?"
And the next instant he was gone, leaving her gasping. The conceit of the man; the ineffable conceit. To call her a child—an adorable child; to dare to imagine that she'd thought about him. The fact that she had, without cessation, had nothing to do with it; he couldn't know that...
She stared round the laboratory blankly; was there no way she could pierce the brute's abominable swank? And at that moment her eyes rested on a small bottle with a distinctive red label on it. She recognised it at once; it was the bottle he had taken out of his pocket the day he'd killed Jacko—the bottle the contents of which were to save millions of lives. For a moment she hesitated; then, glancing through the window, she