The Complete Works of H. C. McNeile "Sapper". Sapper
and turned to leave the bar. But before he had taken two steps Cornish had stretched out a hand and caught him by the arm.
"Will you kindly leave go of my arm?" said Hildebrand quietly, though two ugly red spots had appeared on his face.
"When you have drunk my toast, Mr. Hildebrand; not before."
For a moment John James, fifteenth Marquis of Sussex, stood very still. He was no fool, and he knew that if it came to a scrap he might with luck last exactly one second with the man who held his arm. At the same time he came of a stock to whom the meaning of the word fear was unknown.
"And what is your toast?" he asked at length.
"Damnation to the English—especially their aristocracy," answered the other mildly. "Your glass, Mr. Hildebrand."
The Marquis of Sussex smiled faintly, as he took the glass in his right hand. "Do you play cricket, Mr. Cornish?" he asked.
"I do not," returned the other, looking slightly surprised. "Because if you had ever fielded at cover point, you would realise that this is a very good return to the wicket keeper."
It was done in one movement like a flash of light, and the heavy glass broke in pieces on Cornish's face. He staggered back a step with a curse, letting go of the other's arm, and without undue hurry, but also without undue pause, John James Hildebrand left the room. For a moment or two I expected Cornish to rush after him, but he didn't. He stood in the centre of the room wiping the whisky from his face. Then, without a word, he too turned and left the bar by the door which led into the street.
* * * * *
It was the miner by the counter who broke the silence.
"Good for the youngster!" he cried ecstatically. "But, my word, boys! Pete will kill him for that!"
A murmur of assent went round the room, which was stilled by the sudden reappearance of Hildebrand. He stood by the door, and glanced about him; then he smiled.
"Oh! he's gone, has he?" he said cheerfully. "It struck me after I got upstairs that I had left a bit quickly, and that he might think I was afraid of him. But you see, gentlemen—my wife is with me, and one doesn't want to get mixed up in a scrap."
The miner at the counter took a couple of steps forward.
"See here, Mr. Hildebrand," he said earnestly, "you've proved yourself. You've got guts; you've got nerve, and I want to apologise here and now for ragging you. But for God's sake, man, get away out of this! I know Pete Cornish, and I know his reputation, and I tell you straight he'll pretty near kill you for bunging that glass in his face. He ain't a man; he's a blind, mad, roaring devil when he gets going. Get away now—with your wife. Them greys of yours are good for another fifty miles. We'll get you into your trap, won't we, boys?"
A murmur of assent came from the others present, and the man by the door gave a quick smile.
"I thank you, gentlemen," he said, quietly. "But if you imagine that my wife and I are going a fifty-mile drive, or for that matter a fifty-yard one, because some renegade Irishman gets gay, you misunderstand the situation. And while I am at it I must apologise for a small deceit I have practised on you. I'm really Lord Sussex. Hildebrand is a sort of family name."
With another smile he was gone, and a sort of sigh went round the room. And it struck me that the general feeling was voiced by One-eyed Mike as he pessimistically finished the whisky.
"I don't know nothing about Sussex—nor family names," he remarked. "But what I do know is that there's going to be dirty work here to-night, and I guess he's going to be the dirt."
I found Jim at the shanty when I got back. He had shaved, and changed his clothes, and with his feet on the mantelpiece he was reading a month-old newspaper. He glanced up as I came in, and dropped the paper on the floor.
"Anything doing?" he asked.
"Quite a lot," I answered. "Your friend John James Hildebrand has quite distinguished himself."
He listened while I told him what had occurred, and a faint look of surprise crossed his face.
"I didn't know he had it in him," he remarked thoughtfully. "In fact, I have always been under the impression that his principal claim to notoriety lay in the fact that being his father's eldest son, he would in the fullness of time become a duke."
And for, I think, the first time in our friendship I saw Jim Maitland sneer.
"What of it, Jim?" I said. "Why the sarcasm?"
"Nothing, old man," he answered. "At any rate nothing that I care to go into. It's an old story anyway, and I thought it had died in my mind years ago. Only seeing him unexpectedly this evening brought it back—that's all."
"Well, from what I gathered there is every possibility of trouble to- night," I said. "I must say that that man Cornish is quite the ugliest- looking customer I've ever seen. And I didn't like the absolute silence in which he left the bar. If he'd sworn or made a fuss it would have been more natural."
Jim shrugged his shoulders.
"John James must fight his own battles."
"He seems quite capable of it," I answered shortly. "But I wish his wife weren't there."
"His wife?" said Jim very slowly. "His wife, did you say?"
"Certainly. Stopping at the hotel with him."
He was staring at me almost dazedly.
"Ruth—at that hotel? Good Heavens! man—she can't be!"
I made no comment on his use of her Christian name.
"He told us so," I answered, "at the same time as he announced who he was."
And now Jim was pacing up and down the room with his hands in his pockets. He was frowning deeply, and every now and then he paused and stared out of the window.
Already some of the boys had begun their celebrations, and occasional shouts of half-drunken laughter came from the street outside.
"The fellow must be mad!" exploded Jim suddenly. "Stark, staring mad to bring her to a place like this on Christmas Eve. Confound it! has he left his nurse in England?"
"It's not the boys I'm worried about, Jim," I said gravely. "They won't hurt a woman even if they are a bit tight. And, anyway, presumably she will stop in her room. It's that man Cornish who frightens me. I tell you the men at that bar dried up like so many frightened puppies as he came in. And he means murder."
Jim laughed contemptuously.
"You've got Cornish on the brain, Dick."
And even as he spoke the door was flung open and One-eyed Mike came in. He had been running and he spoke in gasps.
"Cornish!" he cried. "Pete Cornish! He's raving mad up in the hotel. He's got that Lord fellow who threw the liquor in his face, and he's got his wife, and he's doing trick-firing with a couple of revolvers."
And as he finished I realised we were alone: Jim was, racing up the darkening street towards the hotel.
I heard six shots ring out like bullets from a machine-gun; as I followed him, and just ten seconds behind Jim I turned, into the bar I had so recently left. It was an amazing' scene, and that first impression of it is photographed indelibly on my brain. Huddled in small groups sat some twenty miners, and even the drunkest of them seemed to have sobered up. In the centre of the room and hanging from a beam swung a smoking naphtha lamp. Underneath it stood Pete Cornish, holding in one arm a girl, whose look of frozen horror failed to hide her loveliness.
Seated on a chair against the wall was the fifteenth Marquis of Sussex, and like a halo round his head there was a row of holes in the wall. As Mike said, Pete Cornish was trick-firing.
The man on the chair was sitting bolt upright, while his knuckles gleamed like ivory where his hands gripped the seat. His face was white, but with rage—not fear: and his blazing eyes met those staring blue ones without a quiver.
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