The Complete Works of H. C. McNeile "Sapper". Sapper
find themselves looking down the barrel of Jim's revolver.
"I think not," he said pleasantly. "It will only be a quarter of an hour before our friend leaves us—for good. During that brief space we will all stop here."
And then the girl flung herself at me.
"Do something!" she screamed. "He is a savage—a monster! Beg him to save Pierre; he is my husband." But Jim only laughed.
"Mon Dieu! Monsieur," she cried, going down on her knees to him, "I entreat of you to spare him. I love him—you understand; I love him!"
Jim grunted, and lowered his revolver as if in thought.
"He is your husband, is he? Well, get me those Egyptian bonds at once. Is it smarting, Comte? Then you have no time to lose, Madame. Hand me those bonds, and I will consider whether I will save this man."
He stood aside and she rushed from the room like a woman distraught. The Comte was moaning in a corner with the two other men bending over him, and Jim caught my eye and winked. And so superb had been his acting, that it was only then, for the first time, that I began to wonder about the sumpitan and the poisoned dart. It occurred to me that it had looked much more like an ordinary long wooden cigarette holder.
But at that moment the girl returned. Feverishly she thrust the bonds into his hands, and with maddening deliberation Jim looked through them while she waited in an agony of impatience. At last he thrust them into his pocket, and produced the little bottle.
"Let this be a lesson to you," he snapped. "There is the antidote. See that he drinks it all—at once."
We waited just long enough to see the contents of that bottle go down the Comte's throat; then, on a quick sign from him, we left.
And finding the Delage waiting outside the door, it seemed but fitting that we should use it to take us back to Monte Carlo. We did.
* * * * *
It was not till much later on that he consented to allay my curiosity. At intervals through the afternoon he had shaken with silent laughter until he had almost driven me insane.
I knew there had been an interview with Jack, and the girl had been there too; a girl who had left with eyes misty with joy and happiness, and a boy who had left almost dazed by his good fortune.
The girl came up to me as I sat reading the paper, and I rose with a smile.
"He's just the most wonderful man in the world, Mr. Leyton," she said, and her voice trembled a little.
"He is that," agreed Jack fervently.
And with that they were gone, and I sat on waiting for Jim.
He came at last, a quiet smile on his face, and we decided it was cocktail time.
"A good bluff that, Dick," he said thoughtfully.
"Darned good!" I agreed. "What had you got on the darts?"
"Some stuff the chemist made up. Quite harmless, but irritates abominably."
And then he started to choke with laughter.
"What's the jest?" I demanded.
"My dear old man," he spluttered, "you haven't got the plum— the supreme gem of the affair. That lies in the antidote."
I looked at him. "What the deuce was the antidote?"
"It came to me in the chemist's shop this morning," he murmured gravely. "All great ideas come suddenly like that. The antidote, Dick, was just half a pint of castor-oil."
IV. — COLETTE
FROM Paris to Valparaiso is a long call, and what started us off in that direction for the life of me I can't remember. I know Jim's shoulder was a much longer job than we anticipated: I also have distinct recollections that Paris may have been partially responsible for the fact.
But that is neither here nor there: at Valparaiso we arrived one fine morning, and at Valparaiso we decided to stay. And in Valparaiso we ran into one of those adventures for which Jim seemed to have a special attraction. They came to him as a nail goes to a magnet, though he always swore he was the most peaceable of men. And, as a matter of fact, he never did look for trouble. It just came, and that saved him the bother.
It came this time right enough, and it nearly cost us both our lives. But since it didn't quite, and moreover was responsible for a magnificent work of art, all was well. It lies before me as I write—that work of art. It consists of a photo of a family group, taken by a local photographer down in Sussex and printed on a picture postcard. Sitting on a chair is a girl—a pretty girl with happiness written all over her lace, and on her lap are two remarkably healthy-looking infants. Standing behind her is the proud father arrayed in his best clothes, with a collar half an inch too small and an inch and a half too high. The girl's arms are round her babies, and it's only when I look very close that I can notice the difference between those two arms. For the right one was splintered to pieces, and the splintering saved us from death, and the girl from a fate far worse. Though even now, maybe, she hardly realises it, which is just as well.
* * * * *
The thing happened in MacTavert's bar. Incidentally, it was more than a mere bar; flamboyant notices and flaring lights in the street outside proclaimed it to be a dancing saloon. And even that fell short of the full truth, for Bully MacTavert knew—none better—the principal source of income from sailors just in from a voyage. When a man has taken forty days merely to get a wind-jammer round the Horn, on the top of the rest of the voyage, and has then beaten up the west coast of South America towards Valparaiso, it isn't only drink he wants. When the second officer, with a marlin-spike in his hand as an adjunct to speech, has discharged every possible member of the crew to save the wage-bill while unloading and loading, men are apt to run a bit wild. There's money to burn in their pockets, and when it's finished a crew will be wanted for some other boat. Until then— there are women.
That was MacTavert's principal line. It means a quicker return for your money, and not such a rapid depreciation of stock. Not that MacTavert laid out much money to start with; there are quicker and surer ways into which it is perhaps better not to enter. And MacTavert was a past master in them all. All that may be said is that once a girl was there, God help her! for she was beyond human aid. She was MacTavert's property body and soul, and as such she did his bidding for the price of her keep.
For MacTavert was no believer in letting them have any money. Money makes for independence, and independence was the very last thing he wished to encourage. He fed them, he housed them, he bought them their tawdry finery, because that was a good investment. But money—no; that was his side of the contract. They could be bought like his drink—no credit allowed—and MacTavert pocketed the cash.
Not often does one find a man so completely dead to every sense of human decency as he was. Originally, as his name implied, he was a Scotsman. Just about forty-eight years ago he had first seen the light of day in a Glasgow slum. There may be kind-hearted people who will say that he never had a chance; maybe he didn't. Born and nurtured in the gutter, at ten years old he was a man in vice, or at any rate, in his knowledge of it. At fifteen he went to sea in the three-masted ship Celandine, and Glasgow saw him no more. At thirty he decided that he could do better for himself than seafaring, and, helped by a strong will, an utterly unscrupulous character, and an intimate knowledge of what seamen wanted when they came ashore, he started on his own in Valparaiso.
He began small; perhaps the only Scotch trace left to him save his name was an unusual canniness over money. During those fifteen years while he roamed the seven seas from Newfoundland to Australia, from China to Suez, he managed to save a little out of his pay, which he had banked here and there all over the globe. And when he finally gave up the life and decided on Valparaiso as the scene of his future operations, he found that he had quite a respectable sum he could draw on for capital. He chose Valparaiso because the majority