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

He smiled grimly.

"I had no small difficulty in preventing James putting the whole bunch in irons on the spot, but finally I got him to agree to a plan of mine. We changed the cargo round—he and I. Their chests containing nitro-glycerine we filled with gold, and the specie boxes we filled with nitro-glycerine and some lead and iron as a make-weight. And then we let the plan proceed. We banked on the fact that they wouldn't fool around with an hysterical old woman or a man in the throes of fever. Good girl, Miss Armstrong; she kept her mother below all the morning. And that, I think, is all."

"I'm hanged if it is!" I cried. "What made that stuff blow up, if it had been taken out of the prepared boxes?" Jim drained his glass.

"Well, old Dick," he said, "it may be that the Reverend Samuel dropped his Corona inadvertently. Or maybe something hit one of those boxes very hard—perhaps a bullet from a gun fired from this ship. Come down to my cabin."

I followed him, and he shut the door. On the bed was lying Mrs. Armstrong's pink parasol. Through a hole that had been split in the silk near the ferrule stuck out the muzzle of an Express rifle. Jim took it out and cleaned, it carefully, then he looked at the parasol.

"Beyond repair, old man. And since I told the old dear I'd dropped her gamp overboard, well—"

He rolled it up loosely, and threw it far out through the port- hole.

Table of Content

AND now, in order to keep things in their correct chronological order, I must put down the story Jim told us himself only a month ago. It was news to me, and it happened while I was otherwise occupied in Cairo. Of which—more later.

But before I give his story I must mention quite briefly the circumstances which led up to it.

* * * * *

Lady Hounslow, wife of Sir George Hounslow, is a very wonderful woman, as is only right and proper in the wife of a Cabinet Minister. She has the gift, as all the world knows, of giving just the right dinner-parties to just the right people. She also has the gift of flirting so mildly that not even the most censorious can really call it flirting; and she does it with just the right man. Private secretaries adore her—she is so impartially charming to them all; under-secretaries ask her advice, and not infrequently take it. And, of course, her labours on behalf of charity are too well known to need description.

In fact, it was only the other day that she came down to open the new wing of the hospital in the village near Jim Maitland's house. A local deputation, with cinematograph operator complete, met her at the station, and she flashed her well-known smile on all those waiting on the platform as she stood for a moment framed in the carriage door. Then she entered the waiting motor-car: the band delivered itself of a noise, and the ceremony proper started.

It was a ghastly performance, as such ceremonies invariably are, and why Jim insisted on attending it defeated us all. But he would give no reason beyond an inscrutable smile, and when the actual opening was over, we found ourselves sitting in the second row in the village school waiting for the speeches.

Lady Hounslow specialised in little brief speeches—charming little speeches in which she said just the right thing. And if each charming little speech brought a peerage for her husband one step closer— well, surely the labourer is worthy of her hire.

And that afternoon was no exception. She listened prettily to the perspiring effort of the mayor; then, when the cheering had subsided, she rose to her feet. Just three minutes—no more, was her invariable rule. And for two minutes she rippled on, her theme being the sacred cause of devoting one's energy, one's time and one's money to the sick.

"Was it possible," she asked, "for us, who were in the full possession of our health, who were endowed, perhaps, a little more than some others with this world's goods—though in these days of this dreadful Income Tax it was only very little—was it possible to do too much for the sick and suffering?"

Her sweet, pathetic smile as she said it drew a sympathetic response from her audience, which changed suddenly to a little murmur of alarm. For with amazing suddenness the sweet smile faded from her lips, to be replaced by what was almost a look of terror. There was a hunted expression in her eyes, and her cheeks showed blotchy through her makeup. There were lines in a face grown strangely haggard, and she faltered and swayed towards her chair. And she was staring at Jim Maitland.

In an instant a doctor was beside her, and the reporter sitting below the chair heard her murmur something about the heat. Not surprising, of course; opening hospitals is tiring work for frail and delicate women. But it ended the meeting, and in the general confusion we departed. And it was as we got to the door that Jim stopped and deliberately turned round. Over the heads of the people he stared at the platform, and after a moment or two their eyes met. And in hers terror had been replaced by defiance: one could almost hear a spoken message.

Then Jim swung on his heel and we left. For a while he strode along in silence: then, as the band started again behind us, he stopped suddenly and laughed.

"Wife of a Cabinet Minister," he remarked thoughtfully. "A leader of philanthropic work in this country: probably a future peeress of the realm. And rotten—utterly rotten to the core. You don't mean to say you've forgotten her, Dick?"

Now, as she had stepped on to the platform, some vague chord of memory had stirred in my mind, but it had remained at that.

"Of course, you didn't see her as much as I did," went on Jim. "And it's some time ago. But don't you remember Mrs. Dallas in Cairo?"

"But you don't mean to say—!" I cried, and Jim grinned.

"But I do mean to say," he said. "Mrs. Dallas and Lady Hounslow are one and the same person. And with Mrs. Dallas I travelled for a month right up the White Nile. She did what she wanted, and she found what she wanted, and she proved herself to be what I said she was—a rotten woman, rotten to the core."

* * * * *

And now memory was stirring in earnest. Still on our homeward journey, we had left the Andaman at Port Said. And the first person we ran into was a dark-skinned man in European clothes who halted dead in his tracks as he saw Jim. Then without a word he turned away down a side street and Jim followed him.

"Wait for me at the hotel," he said curtly, and there was a gleam in his eyes that had not been there a moment before.

It was an hour before he rejoined me, and the gleam was more pronounced than ever. "Dick," he said, "I'm going on in the Andaman as far as Malta. Wonderful sea-bathing in Malta in August and September. I'm going to spend all day and every day bathing. Care to come? You'll probably get some polo at the Marsa."

"Somewhat sudden," I murmured mildly. "What's the game?"

"It's the game, Dick: the Great Game. The only game in the world worth playing. Sometimes I've been tempted to chuck up roving and take to it permanently. Do you know who that fellow was that I followed?"

"Some Egyptian of sorts, I suppose."

"That was Victor Head, of the Loamshires, temporarily seconded for service with the Government. He's officially A.D.C., I believe, to some General, and he's been on leave of absence for a year." Jim grinned. "That's the sort of General to have."

And suddenly it dawned on me.

"Secret service work!" I cried.

Jim lifted a deprecating hand.

"Let us call it research work amongst the native population," he murmured. "You don't suppose, do you, old man, that the British Government runs five hundred million black men here and in India by distributing tracts to 'em?"