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

"'It is the truth,' I answered, and she began pacing up and down like a caged tigress.

"'How am I to get to him?' she cried, snatching at the straw.

"But I wasn't going to let her off that way.

"'I will take you to him,' I answered.

"There came the sound of approaching footsteps, and she seized my arm.

"'Where can I see you again?' she whispered. 'I must have time to think.'

"I arranged a meeting place out beyond Mena House for the following day, and then I disappeared to make room for dear George."

Jim smiled a little grimly.

"I don't profess to know what she said to him, or how she accounted for her sudden determination to go up the White Nile. As I said before, she was a rotten woman, and she was an unscrupulous woman—but she certainly was not a fool. And whatever may have been the secret which had caused the man called Brown to bury himself—at the time, of course, I didn't know it—his charming lady-wife was not unacquainted with the law on bigamy. She had to go, and she knew it: and she had to go without arousing dear George's suspicions. She certainly succeeded: the poor boob was eating out of her hand when I met them near the Sphinx the next day."

* * * * *

"It appeared that Toby Bretherton had been consulted as to my reliability, and I smiled inwardly as I wondered what he had thought about the matter. But true to the instincts of all those who play the game, he had not given me away. And to Mr. George Hounslow and his fiancÚe I was still Ibrahim—a thoroughly reliable Arab.

"The next day we started by train for Khartoum. There I got the necessary boys, and a fortnight later we came to the place where the man called Brown was awaiting his wife. Throughout the whole journey she had hardly spoken to me, save to ask how much farther it was. To her I was just an Arab guide, and when we arrived that was all I was to the man. I don't think he even recognised me: he had eyes for no one but his wife. She—this wonderful woman—had not failed him: his dreams had come true. And with his arms outstretched he went to her, heedless of everyone else.

"'Oh! my dear,' I heard him say, 'I can hardly believe that it's true.'"

Jim paused.

"Ever seen a dog jump up suddenly to welcome his master, and get a biff over the head for his pains? Ever seen a child run up to kiss someone and get rebuffed? Of course you have. And you've seen the light—the love-light die out of their eyes? Just so did the light die out of the eyes of the man who called himself Brown. You'd have thought that she might have acted a bit—Lord knows, she was a good, enough actress when it suited her book. You'd have thought that she might have had the common decency to pretend she was glad to see the poor devil, even though her plans had been knocked on the head. But I suppose it wasn't worth her while to act in front of a bunch of Arabs: she reserved her histrionic abilities for dear George and the callow subalterns of Cairo.

"'What on earth have you done this for?' she snapped a him. 'They told me you were dead a year ago.'

"There was no mistaking her tone of voice, and the man called Brown looked as if someone had hit him hard between the eyes.

"'But, my dear,' he stammered, and then suddenly he began to cough. A dreadful, tearing cough, which shook him from head to foot; a cough which stained his handkerchief with scarlet. And into the eyes of the woman there came a look of shrinking fear, to be replaced almost at once by something very different. Her husband, doubled up in his paroxysm, saw nothing, and a bunch of mere natives didn't count. Hope, triumph, the way out, replaced fear in her eyes: she knew the poor brute who had been waiting for her for four years was dying. Her path was clear—or would be very soon.

"'Jack—you're ill,' she said solicitously as the attack spent itself, and he looked pathetically grateful for the change of tone. He snatched at it—the one crumb of comfort he'd had, and putting his hand through her arm he led her towards his bungalow. He didn't see the hand away from his clenched rigidly: he didn't sense the strained tension of her whole body as she tried not to let him draw her too close: he didn't notice the horror which had come into her eyes again."

Jim laughed savagely.

"'Was it possible to do too much for the sick and suffering?'" he mimicked. "Great heavens! Dick, I tell you that woman was wild with terror at the thought of getting infected herself. She knew it was consumption: no one could help knowing it. And, as I say, the soul of the philanthropic lady who opened our hospital this afternoon was sick with fear.

"Then they disappeared—she and the man called Brown. What happened at that interview I cannot tell you, but it lasted about an hour. And then she came out of the bungalow alone, and came towards me.

"'Ibrahim,' she said, 'we will start back tomorrow.'

"Then she went to her tent, which the boys had just erected. I waited till she had disappeared: then I walked across to the bungalow. And the man sitting at the table, with a face grown suddenly old, stared at me for a while uncomprehendingly. Then he recognised me, and his shoulders shook a little.

"'Thank you for all you've done,' he said, and his voice was dead. 'I'm sorry to have troubled you uselessly.'

"'Why uselessly?' I asked.

"'It would have been better if I had left her to think I was dead,' he went on. 'I shall be pretty soon: and I realise now that I was asking too much of any woman. It's exposing her to too great a risk: it was selfish of me—damned selfish. But, you see, it was for her sake that I defrauded the firm I was employed with in London of several thousand pounds, and I thought, somehow, that—' He broke off, and buried his face in his hands. 'Oh, God! Maitland—what that woman has meant to me through these four years! I got away—out of the country: I buried myself here. And I used just to picture the time when she would join me. When I saw her arrive today, I thought I'd go mad with joy.' He raised his face and stared at me sombrely. 'Of course, I ought to have known better. Her coming here would inevitably lead to questions. And besides—there's my health.'

"'And what does Mrs. Dallas propose?' I inquired curtly.

"He looked at me with a strange smile.

"'She proposes to join me,' he remarked quietly, 'as soon as I am well again—in some other country, under some other name. So if you would be good enough to escort her back to Cairo tomorrow we will await that happy day.'

"I looked at him quickly, but his face was inscrutable.

"'There comes a time, my friend,' he went on, when one ceases to see through a glass darkly.'

"And that time had come to the man called Brown. At the moment I didn't realise the full meaning to him of the quotation—later I did. For I hadn't gone ten steps from his bungalow when I heard the crack of a revolver in the room behind me. It's not much good waiting to die of consumption in the back of beyond when the woman you've built your life on turns out rotten to the core.

"I took her to see him," went on Jim, after a while. "I dragged her there—whimpering: and I held her there while she looked on the man who had blown his brains out. He'd done it with a big-calibre service revolver, and she stood it for about five seconds. Then she fainted."

Jim Maitland gave a short laugh.

"Which is very near the end of the story—but not quite. I have sometimes wondered whether I would have told Hounslow if I hadn't gone down with fever at Khartoum. If I'd gone straight back to Cairo with her— well, I might have, and I might not. The situation, in parliamentary parlance, did not arise. It only arose considerably later, when Ibrahim the Arab emerged from hospital in European clothes, with eyeglass complete. Astonishing how quickly the colour fades away when you're indoors; astonishing how an eyeglass alters a man. So Ibrahim went in with fever, and yours very truly came out—a little sunburnt perhaps, but otherwise much as usual. And yours very truly went back to Cairo."