Array Sapper - The Complete Works of H. C. McNeile Sapper

"Was it you who pulled my stool away?" asked the man at length in a guttural voice which shook so that we could scarcely hear what he said.

"Was it you who deliberately barged into my back, upset my drink, and failed to apologise?" retorted Jim icily.

And then the man broke loose. Every vestige of self-control left him. He cursed, he swore, he used the foulest language—and all the time Jim watched him unblinkingly. The barman with a terrified look on his face had beckoned to me when it started, and from him I found out the gorilla's name.

"It's Baron Stockmar," he whispered to me, "and he goes mad if he's crossed. For God's sake, sir, get your friend out of it! He ain't a man—the Baron; he's a devil in human form."

And assuredly there was a good deal of truth in what the barman said. This thick-voiced, foul-mouthed brute was not a man—he was a maniac. Many less dangerous cases have been locked up in madhouses for life; men whom no warder would dare to go and see alone. But as to removing Jim, I would as soon have tried to remove a leopard from its kill.

He had put down his drink on the bar beside him and was standing up. His breath was coming a little faster than usual, but his eyes never left the other's face. Not a word had he spoken; not a word did he speak even when the Baron gave up generalities and became personal. And it wasn't until the Baron admitted that it had been no accident but an intentional insult when he entered the bar, and launched into his private opinions of Englishmen in general and Jim in particular, that Jim did anything. Then like everything Jim did, it was clean and decisive, and showed the perfect fighting man that he was.

The Baron's great head was thrust forward, the last foul insult was not cold on his lips, and his two hands were coming up slowly towards Jim, when there came the sharp, crisp noise of two billiard balls meeting. With every atom of weight in his body behind the blow, Jim Maitland struck Baron Stockmar on the point of his jaw—and Jim, at one period of his life, had held the Amateur Heavyweight Championship of Great Britain. And the Baron crumpled up, like a horse that is shot through the brain, and toppled over backwards.

For a moment we stood there watching the heavily breathing, unconscious figure, and then for the first time we realised that an excited and terrified crowd of spectators had thronged in at the door.

"Get him out of here, Leyton," said Peddleton urgently in my ear. "There's going to be trouble over this, and we must get to the Chief at once."

So one on each side of him we formed up, and Jim was grinning.

"I think," he murmured happily, "though I wouldn't swear to it, that I heard his jaw break."

"Come on, Jim, old man," said Peddleton insistently.

"There are reasons, very important reasons, which I'll explain as I go along. Oh! yes—you can come back afterwards and finish him off...Rather."

We dragged him through the crowd at the door, casting longing glances over his shoulder at the man who still lay prostrate on the floor— and we rushed him into the street.

"Confound you!" he said, stopping at the entrance to the hotel. "Why are you taking me away? That swine hasn't apologised yet."

"Doesn't matter, old man," laughed Peddleton. "For the next few hours he'll be too busy wondering whether a horse kicked him in the jaw or not to bother about apologising."

Still arguing and protesting he suffered us to pull him along, and not till we turned into the mess at Kasr-el-Nil, did Peddleton breathe freely again.

"Sit down, Jim," he said, "and get outside a whisky and soda. I want to talk to you for a moment, and then I'm going to take you straight up to the Chief. I didn't realise when that swine first came into the bar who he was. Then I heard what the barman told Leyton. He's a gentleman about whose coming we've been warned. We were told he had a peculiar temper; we were not told that he was a raving maniac. And there are diplomatic reasons, Jim, which render it a little unfortunate that you removed that seat just as he was going to sit down."

"Well, what the deuce did he want to barge me in the back for?" demanded Jim angrily.

"I know, old man—I know," said Peddleton soothingly. "Personally, I've never been so pleased in my life as when you laid the brute out. And from that point of view the Chief will probably want to kiss you. But diplomatically, old man, it is unfortunate."

Peddleton's good-natured face was looking quite worried, and suddenly Jim leant across to him with his wonderful, understanding smile.

"Pumpkin, old boy," he said quietly, "I shall make it absolutely clear to the Chief that it was nothing whatever to do with you. But you wouldn't have had me not hit the blighter?"

"Heaven forbid!" answered the Pumpkin fervently. "I very nearly gave three cheers as you laid him out." He got to his feet. "Look here, Jim, come along and see the Chief, now. Leyton—you won't mind waiting here, will you? Shout for anything you want."

"Of course," I answered. "Don't worry about me. I shall probably stroll over to Ghezireh."

But though I went over to the Sporting Club, and tried to concentrate on a game of polo, I could not get the extraordinary scene at Shepheard's out of my mind. At the time it had all been so quick, had all seemed so naturally continuous, that one had had no time to wonder. But now, looking back on it at my leisure, the whole thing seemed like a dream—like one of those sudden desert sand storms which rise out of nothing, pass by and are gone.

In an instant murder—raging, hot-blooded murder—had been let loose in an hotel full of the most commonplace tourists. There had been murder in Baron Stock-mar's eyes as his hands went out towards Jim; the difference between the blow that stunned him and a bullet through his heart had been small in motive. And the original cause—a push in the back. Intentional—true: a deliberate insult by a foul-mouthed bully. But knowing Jim, as I did, I couldn't disguise from myself the fact that even had it been an accident, the result would have been the same. He was not a man who took kindly to accidents, especially those for which no apology was rendered. And it was just before the last chukka finished, while I still felt as mentally confused as ever, that I saw Jim coming towards me.

"Can you leave for Khartoum with me tonight?" he remarked, as he came up.

"I can," I answered. Then my curiosity got the better of me. "What's happened?"

"The Pumpkin was right," he said, lighting a cigarette. "Unofficially the Chief kissed me on both cheeks—so to speak; officially he cursed me into fourteen different heaps. There are certain things I can't tell you, old man—but our friend the gorilla is the accredited agent of a certain government. He has arrived, apparently, on some question of trade concessions in the Sudan, and he is not welcome even officially.

"Unofficially, I believe special prayers are now being offered that his jaw is broken in two places, and that he'll never eat again. He has not endeared himself to anyone in Cairo. But the funny thing is that the job the Pumpkin was actually speaking to me about before the swine came in this morning is concerned directly with the brute. It is to frustrate—this between ourselves—the very thing he has come out to do. And it must be done—unofficially. Hence—me. I have been told unofficially exactly what the Chief wants officially—and I leave tonight." A lazy grin spread over his face. "I gather Baron Carl Stockmar proposes to visit Khartoum in the near future."

"Things become clearer," I murmured. "Jim—the man's mad."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"From quiet inquiries made, Dick—since our little episode in the bar, we have found out that the beggar had been drinking before he came in. And when he gets into the condition of 'drink-taken'—I gather he never gets drunk—he is a very ugly customer. He man-handled a sailor who annoyed him on his dahabeah the other night and nearly killed him. And his principal hatred is for the English. I trust most fervently that we shall renew our friendship in Khartoum."