F.E. Mills Young (continued 4)

“And yet,” he said—“a man’s talents... It seems rotten things should pan out like that. I was never a white-haired boy exactly, but I had ideas once of doing something... Rot, of course—damned rot! And queer, too, how ideas run to seed before they fruit. I tell you a man needs to be ever on the alert, watching his ideas to prevent the growth exceeding the vitality. We don’t prune and tend enough. We’re so proud of our ideas that we let ’em run up rank and weedy, till they seed before time. It’s the man with the strength of mind to nip the young shoots and exert patience who sees the fruition of his ideas.”

“I confess I don’t understand,” said Lawless, “how you came to allow all yours to seed. With men like those,” and he waved his hand in the direction of the swearing, noisy group hitching the mules to the disselboom with many loud and unnecessary oaths, “it’s easy of comprehension. But—”

Graves filled in the pause with a laugh. “Ah well!” he returned... “Who can say? The secret to the riddle lies in what you spoke of just now... I’m a polygamist.”

Chapter Eighteen.

Lawless stood in the sunshine and watched the departure of this strange aggregate of human limitation setting forth on its journey into the infinitudes. The clumsy waggon, drawn by its team of four mules, with the dirty faded hood of yellowish green shading the wain, bumped and rumbled over the uneven ground. The jingling of the harness, the creaking of the heavy wheels, and the loud and too frequent cracking of the long whip, struck separate and not inharmonious notes of sound in the stillness of the morning air. And above these sounds a strong voice rang out heartily:

“Good-bye, Grit.”

The men in the waggon started to sing, “For he’s a jolly good fellow.” The rude music of their voices came back strongly to Lawless’ ears, and then grew fainter, and yet more faint, until only the silence reigned about him, and the waggon showed smaller and smaller as it trailed slowly across the veld, farther and farther into the illimitable blue distance. Hayhurst had ridden off some time before, taking an opposite direction to that followed by the waggon. The occupant of the shanty was left alone. The world seemed to have emptied suddenly and to have overlooked himself in its indiscriminate sweeping away of all life.

He gazed about him at the solitudes—waste land on all sides, stretching away league upon league in one great sameness,—vast, unchanging open spaces of veld, green and brown and orange, in which the yellow stones shone warmly in the sunshine, and the dew that lay heavily on the ground like a veil of silver flashed a prismatic defiance with the fire of myriads of gems.

He turned about and went into the house. The advent of these men had been unwelcome, their departure left a blank feeling of desolation behind. He had had as much of the solitudes as was good for him, he decided; if Van Bleit arrived, he would settle matters with him speedily and return to the beaten track. He felt depressed, and knew not that it was the influence of Graves’ personality working upon his mind. This man who had stirred up thoughts of failure by his talk, who in his person stood for waste—the result of neither competition nor intellectual incapacity, but of his own ineffectually—had set him thinking of the purposelessness of his life, its want of aim, of every high and right intention that once had actuated him, and which he had flung aside and trampled on in weak resentment against the tide of circumstances he had himself set loose and made no attempt to stem. He also stood for waste—the waste of powers which had left him stunted mentally and morally enervated. It is waste that is responsible for the world’s great failures.

He made an effort to shake off the mood that held him, and moving across the littered room surveyed the disordered breakfast-table with disgust. Empty bottles stood upon the table, and lay under it where they had been rolled the night before when they had yielded the last drop of their contents. They had been thirsty souls, these men who had happened out of the darkness and vanished again with the light,—failures, in a certain sense, each one of them,—a queer conglomerate of misdirected energy.

Lawless had a feeling that he ought to reduce the muddle to order, but he had only a vague idea how to set about it. He caught up the empty bottles, and going outside with them flung them out upon the veld.

“It’s no use, Grit, playing Aunt Sally with those bottles. You can’t hide your debauch from me.”

He turned his face with a laugh and a look of quick relief in the direction of the voice, and there stood Tottie in her short tweed skirt, with a golden lock straggling rakishly over one eye, and her lips unusually pallid.

“You! Gods! I’m glad,” he cried.

“Don’t stare at me like that,” she exclaimed,—“look somewhere else, can’t you? I won’t have the eye of man upon me until I have attended to my toilet. There wasn’t the vestige of a glass in the hut, you lunatic.”

He followed her into the house.

“What an orgy!” she exclaimed, with a swift glance round the untidy room. Her wandering gaze came back to his face and rested upon it curiously. “Reaction!” she murmured.

“Eh?” he said.

She put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him towards the door.

“You’re looking cheap. Clear out of this. I’ll put things right. Come back in half an hour, and you’ll find breakfast ready.”

“I’ve breakfasted,” he answered indifferently.

“Have you? Then you can return in half an hour and repeat the performance with me.”

“I want to ride into town,” he said.

“Yes, of course. I’ll go with you. You might put in your time now grooming the horses. It’ll keep you out of mischief, anyhow... It may be the last ride we’ll take together for many a day.”

He looked swiftly at her. She was trying to hide her feelings, but it was evident that the near termination of this life in the wilds which he had been contemplating with satisfaction, affected her differently. She had enjoyed the uneventful weeks with only his society to companion the long days. It had been a fresh experience which a really strong affection for him had made altogether agreeable. She turned her back on him, and putting up a hand jerked back the straying lock of hair impatiently.

“Get out, Grit. You’re in the way,” she said.

He faced about, and without a word strode out into the sunshine.

It was rather a silent ride they took—that last ride together into Stellenbosch. Lawless was preoccupied, and the woman too appeared busy with her thoughts. She asked him once what he purposed doing if Van Bleit decided not to come up, and he answered shortly:

“If he doesn’t come to me, I go to him.”

She looked him straight in the eyes.

“You mean to best him, Grit,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Remember, I’m your lieutenant.”

“Yes,” he said again. And they fell into silence as before.

Van Bleit’s answer acted somewhat as a set-back to their plans. Lawless had never contemplated the addition of Denzil to their numbers. It came altogether as a surprise.

“This complicates matters,” he said. “Looks fishy... rather as though he had his doubts of me. And yet I’ll swear when I last saw him—”

He broke off and thought about the matter.

“It won’t be so easy to outwit two,” he said. Then a smile of satisfaction dawned in his eyes. “It’s safe to predict, if they’re both up here, we shall have a chance of seeing those letters...”

Van Bleit and Denzil on their arrival hired a Cape cart from the town and drove the twenty miles across the veld. They congratulated themselves long ere they reached their destination on the foresight that had decided them to bring only a small amount of luggage.

“No man,” Van Bleit observed to his companion, “could stick it here for long. What a cheek the fellow has to imagine a woman—and such a woman—is going to find his companionship sufficient to reconcile her to this sort of thing! It’s not surprising Tottie scooted.”

Denzil looked out across the unvarying scene with increasing dissatisfaction.

“Lots of chaps have the Turk in them. They’d like to veil their women,” he returned, with no particular interest in the subject.

He was watching without appreciation the wonderful effects of the sunshine on the inimitable blending of colour in the veld, and the slowly moving shadows that swept across it where the clouds veiled the golden light. A soft wind was blowing, a wind that had the warm feel of the spring in it with its promise of early summer. The Cape winter was passing, going its way unmarked, even as it had come. But here on the high veld the nights were cold yet, and the crispness of the mornings still reminded a man of the feel of an English spring.

Van Bleit examined his finger-nails—which was a habit with him—and laughed.

“That would be all right if the women didn’t prefer being looked at,” he said. “The Turk will have to awake to the fact one day that the veil is out of fashion.”

It was afternoon when they reached the shanty. They had had three stoppages on the journey owing to the breaking of different parts of the harness, that was, native fashion, repaired with string. The horses were outspanned, and left to graze, while the coloured driver flung himself face downwards in the full rays of the sun to sleep for a couple of hours before making the return journey. Van Bleit settled with him, and bade him return for them in three days.

“Make it four,” urged Lawless. “You’re in a devil of a hurry to quit.”

“I should think so,” Van Bleit responded. But he made the alteration in the time. “What on earth do you do with yourself up here? I’d want to cut my throat if I stayed a week.”

“Oh! it hasn’t been half bad. I was getting a bit sick of my own company, though.”

“All alone, eh?”

“All alone,” Lawless answered. “It was all right while she was here; but the life was too domesticated for her taste. I was on the point of chucking it myself when I sent you that wire. It occurred to me that this might suit your book.”

“Awfully decent of you,” Van Bleit replied. But his eyes narrowed vindictively. He had a score to pay off against this man. His treatment at the hands of Mrs Lawless was, he felt convinced, attributable to him somehow. Grit had played him false in more ways than one.

“It’s not a bad little hutch,” he said, as he looked round the interior.

“Oh! it’s all right... A bit cramped.” Lawless threw open a door. “The bedrooms lead out,” he explained,—“two of them. Boxes, of course; but they serve for single rooms. You and Denzil can make shift for a few nights. I’ll bunk up in here.”

Van Bleit walked into the bedroom.

“Nonsense!” he replied decidedly. “We aren’t turning you out of your room. Denzil and I will sleep together. I’ll not hear of any other arrangement, Grit.”

“As you like,” Lawless answered.

Van Bleit went into the inner room.

“Check number one, Master Grit,” he murmured. Aloud he said: “I’d like a wash, old man. And then, if you’ve anything to eat, we won’t say no.”

When they were alone together, Van Bleit drew Denzil’s attention to the thinness of the partition between the two rooms, and laid a significant finger upon his lips.

“Leaks,” he said, and winked expressively.

He put his eye to a crack in the boarding.

“That’s where he’ll spy upon us when he thinks we’re unsuspecting,” he whispered, coming back. Then, whistling cheerily, he divested himself of his coat and plunged his face into a basin of cold water.

Later, when, having eaten, they sat outside smoking and talking, while the sun dipped below the horizon and the low wind died away, Van Bleit spoke of his trial and the night at the bungalow, giving a word picture of the shooting which by constant repetition he was beginning to believe. The recital made him something of a hero, but it did not reflect well on Colonel Grey.

“It was a damned trap,” he finished, and blew a cloud of smoke into the quiet air. “People who set traps for me are apt to find themselves ensnared.”

“I knew Simmonds. He seemed a decent, harmless sort of chap,” Lawless remarked after a pause. “I can’t associate him with traps, somehow. He lent me ten pounds once, and never bothered me to return it. I’m glad to remember now that I settled my account with him.”

“I’ve settled my account with him too,” Van Bleit rejoined... “I don’t go back on my word whatever the consequences.”

He was growing excited. Denzil, whose impulses did not lead him into indiscretions, brought him up suddenly with the quietly uttered remark:

“No one could have been more upset than you were over Simmonds’ death, dear fellow.”

“That’s a fact,” Van Bleit returned readily. “It was a shock to me. But it was my life against his. I fancy most men value their own lives more highly than another’s. Simmonds tricked me to the bungalow, and he paid the cost. He meant mischief. It isn’t wise for any man to attempt that sort of game with me.”

Lawless smoked in silence, and Denzil, under the pretext of getting a light for his pipe, nudged his friend significantly. Van Bleit in his excitement was giving himself away.

“Well, anyway,” Van Bleit resumed more collectedly after a pause, “he’s gone, poor devil! Let him Rip. My resentment doesn’t cross the border.” He laughed. “I require a certain amount of the commodity this side the Styx... most chaps do. I reckon you’ve got an enemy or so yourself, Grit?”

“I’m pretty well at enmity with all mankind,” Lawless answered. “And my greatest enemy, I take it, is myself.”

“That’s rot,” Van Bleit returned. “Every man has at least a sneaking affection for himself, and no enemy entertains the slightest regard for the object of his animosity.”

“There is something in that,” Lawless agreed, and thought for a moment. “Nevertheless, a man who makes enemies has an enemy in himself,” he added with conviction. “It is so much easier to win friends.”

“My experience hasn’t tended to that conclusion,” Van Bleit replied. “Friends are like the diamonds men dig out of the bowels of the earth at great expense of time and labour, valuable on account of their scarcity.”

“You’ve had some good friends yourself, Karl,” Denzil interposed with a wink. “Take Lawless, for instance. How many men would stay on in this God-forsaken hole solely to accommodate another?”

“There wasn’t much sacrifice in that,” Lawless replied. “The house is mine till the end of the month. So long as I can get anyone to bear me company there isn’t any incentive to leave it. When you go I clear out also. I can’t stick it here alone. The place has served its purpose. I’ve had a good time on the whole. But, as anyone can see, it’s not intended for a single man. In all these weeks I haven’t seen a soul besides yourselves, except for a party of prospectors who outspanned one night.”

He rose and knocked the ash from his pipe. Away in the distance he had seen a pinpoint of light like a dull star low down upon the horizon, and he knew that Tottie had lighted her candle in the lonely hut a quarter of a mile away. He planted himself between Van Bleit’s vision and the hut.

“It’s getting chilly,” he said. “I’ve no particular fancy for watching the stars: Have you?”

“No,” Van Bleit answered, and he and Denzil rose and accompanied their host indoors.

“It’s a dashed sight more comfortable inside,” he remarked.

Lawless drew the outer door to and fastened it. Neither of them had observed that pinpoint of flickering yellow light that was more like the elusive glimmer of a firefly than the luminous brilliance of a star. He wondered how he would have explained it had they remarked on the unexpected illumination in the hut.

Chapter Nineteen.

The following morning Lawless suggested a ride as the only entertainment he had to offer. There were only two mounts, he explained, and looked at Van Bleit. Van Bleit remarked that it would be fairly slow for the third man.

“Let’s take our guns and tramp,” he said. “There ought to be something in that bush yonder.”

“There isn’t,” Lawless answered. “I’ve been there myself.”

“It would give some sort of object for the walk,” Van Bleit observed.

“I can loaf about here very well by myself,” Denzil put in obligingly, missing the venom of the glance Van Bleit shot at him, a glance that Lawless intercepted and read aright. Van Bleit was not minded to trust himself alone in his company. There was not a shadow of doubt in his mind any longer that the Dutchman was suspicious of his intentions. It remained for him to lull those suspicions if possible.

“Come on, Karl,” he said. “Take your gun with you if you’re keen on potting things. But don’t expect much. I’ve been over the ground too often to hamper myself with carrying a gun. I’ll leave the killing to you. Sure you don’t mind?” he asked, turning to Denzil.

“Not in the least. I’ll potter about here. It’s more in my line.”

Van Bleit did not like the arrangement, but he went. When a man has a gun loaded in both barrels slung across his shoulders, and a revolver charged in all six chambers in his right-hand pocket, he is fairly well provided against attack. It amused Lawless to observe how careful his companion was to ride on his left, and how persistently he kept his right hand in his pocket. He rode himself with both hands quite as ostentatiously displayed on the reins. Whenever he moved the right in the performance of the most simple office he was conscious of being observed until he returned it to its position on the rein. The knowledge that Van Bleit distrusted him gave him a peculiar sense of satisfaction. It was more to his liking to outwit a rogue who was prepared than to take advantage of a man’s trust. He was glad to feel at this stage that they faced one another as foes.

During that ride, between the fragments of conversation, Lawless decided that on some such expedition as the present he would lead Van Bleit to a given place, and, with Tottie’s assistance, overpower him and get hold of what he wanted. In view of the shortness of the time in which to carry out his designs, it was necessary to put his plans into prompt effect. He determined upon seeing Tottie that night. He would slip out when the others were asleep and make his way to the hut. Then, if he could induce Van Bleit to fall in with his arrangements in the morning, success would be fairly assured. His policy in the meantime was to allay Van Bleit’s suspicions. In this he had succeeded fairly well so far. On the homeward journey Van Bleit rode most of the way with his right hand on his thigh; and once, Lawless noticed, when he plunged his own right hand into his pocket his companion did not appear in the least apprehensive. However much he doubted him, it was plain he had given up all thought of treachery on that occasion.

“I suggest we stick indoors and play cards this afternoon,” Van Bleit proposed when they got back. He swung his heavy frame out of the saddle. “It’s warm,” he said.

Van Bleit was lucky at cards. He played for high stakes; it was one of his varied methods of obtaining a livelihood. Certainly that afternoon he became no poorer. He and Denzil between them swept in the stakes.

“We’ll give you your revenge,” he said to Lawless.

And after supper they resumed their game and played far into the night. It was Lawless who eventually insisted on leaving off. He had been chafing for some time, thinking of his thwarted plans. Van Bleit, he knew, was likely enough to play through into the dawn. He pushed back his chair at last and rose.

“If you fellows don’t want any sleep,” he said, “I do. We’ve another day before us.”

Van Bleit laughed, rose, and stretched himself with a huge yawn.

“Late, is it? I never regard the time I spend over cards—or women,” he said. He finished his glass of whisky and scooped in his gains. “To-morrow I’ll give you a chance of winning some of this back.”

Lawless lighted the candles.

“Right!” he said. “I have a feeling that the luck is on the turn.”

“Then you ought to play on... She’s a fickle jade, and will change her mind in the daylight.”

“I’ll risk that. A man can’t be expected to play cards if he’s dead asleep.”

Lawless’ look of alertness when he was alone in the bedroom belied the plea of fatigue. He made such sounds and preparations as he deemed suitable for a man retiring to rest, and kicking off his boots, blew out the light, and flung himself dressed upon the bed. He listened intently to the sounds from the adjoining room. The jerky scraps of conversation between the two men were perfectly audible to him. It was rather like people talking in the same apartment with a screen dividing them. It would require the exercise of the utmost caution to leave the house without arousing their attention.

“Old Grit always had the rottenest luck at cards,” he heard Van Bleit mumbling. “But it’s made up to him in other ways.”

And Denzil in a sleepy drawl replied:

“Don’t believe in luck... When a man gets a thing it’s because he goes for it in the right way.”

Van Bleit’s response to that sapience was a grunted “Good-night.”

For a long while after they had ceased to talk Lawless lay still, staring wide-eyed into the darkness, until by the continued silence,—the heavy soundlessness that enwrapped the house like some listening mystery, he judged the two men were asleep. Nevertheless, it was very warily he slipped his stockinged feet to the floor and then stood up. Noiselessly, one step at a time, feeling his way in the darkness with the unerring judgment of a man who has already in the light measured the distance carefully from wall to wall, he crept towards the door. Cautiously as he proceeded, his hand came in contact with the rickety washstand, and in the general hush the noise he made, though slight enough, sounded tremendous in his imagination. It brought him up all standing, the pulses in his ears beating like so many hammers. He remained quite still and almost held his breath while he listened for the faintest movement from the next room, where Van Bleit and Denzil lay in the dark waiting, as he waited, until they felt the time was ripe for discussing certain plans of their own.

Perfect silence reigned.

Lawless drew a slow breath of relief. There was no sound in the stillness other than that dull hammering of pulses in his ears. The noise he had made, he rightly conjectured, was not so audible as he had feared. But he did not mean running any risks; and so he remained where he was, rigid, waiting, listening, while the minutes slipped away, and the silence, heavy, portentous of lurking evil, remained absolutely unbroken.

He was about to advance a further step when an extraordinary interruption occurred. Stealthily, as though the striker sought to stifle the sound, a match was rubbed lightly against its box, and the next instant a light shone through the chinks in the partition, and from the sounds Lawless judged that someone was getting off the bed, and that in so cautious a manner as to suggest that whoever it was he was anxious not to be heard. For a few moments Lawless suspected that his own movements had aroused attention, and he waited, quiet-eyed and grim, for the next move in the game. But after a while he began to think that he was altogether mistaken. The occupants in the next room were as anxious as he had been not to be overheard. They were whispering together, and one of them moved stealthily across the floor, and a sound that was like the crackle of paper reached Lawless’ ears.

With even greater caution than he had used to cross the floor to the door he now retraced his steps and softly advanced towards the glimmer of light that showed through the chinks in the partition. He put his eye to the biggest crack. Van Bleit stood in his pyjamas beside the bed facing Lawless, a sealed packet, the sight of which gave the watcher a queer start, in his hand. He was speaking to Denzil, who, sitting up in bed, listened attentively with his eyes on the speaker. Van Bleit spoke in so low a tone that had he been facing the other way it was doubtful that Lawless could have heard. As it was he only made out part of what was said.

“I daren’t risk it,” Van Bleit was murmuring. “I don’t trust him... ride this morning... If it hadn’t been that I was armed he would... letters must be got out of this...”

He began to speak more slowly and with greater distinctness.

“We’ll wait for the dawn... there’s no hurry. If he hears you, I’ll say you have gone for a ride before breakfast... out of the window... no need to make a noise... ride slowly for the first half-mile, and keep going towards the bush. If he should happen to catch sight of you, he’d never suppose you were making for the town. I may be quite out in this, of course, but I have my suspicions... satisfied when those letters are safely out of...”

Lawless caught nothing more. But he had heard enough. He saw Denzil take charge of the packet, and he caught sight of the butt of a revolver sticking out obliquely from beneath the pillow.

He drew back softly, and smiled grimly to himself in the dark. Van Bleit in his eagerness to save the letters from falling into his hands was deliberately placing them there. The wily scoundrel had overreached himself.

He stepped softly back to the bed, and lying down, waited for the dawn. It seemed long in coming. And when at last the first pale glimmer of light showed wanly in the sky he began to think that sleep had overcome his companions. There was no stir from within. He lay quite still, listening. After a while he fancied, but could not be sure, that he heard someone moving. He listened more attentively. Without a doubt someone was pattering about the floor in bare feet while he struggled into his clothes as noiselessly as possible. He heard the window-sash slide open, and raising himself and looking out, saw Denzil drop from the low sill and pass beneath his window. He gave him time to reach the stable and saddle a horse. Then he got up quietly and made his careful exit by the door.

Once outside his movements were less cautious. He hurried to the stable, and saddling the second horse, started in pursuit. He rode behind the house, trusting that Van Bleit if he heard would ascribe the sounds to Denzil, and followed the directions he had heard given in the whispered instructions of the previous night.

It was not long before he descried his quarry. Denzil was riding easily, as a man rides for exercise with no particular object in view. He did not once turn his head to look back, but jogging quietly on his way made steadily for the dense cover behind the hut. Lawless quickened his pace and overtook him about a mile from the house. On hearing someone behind him Denzil looked round, and reining in his horse waited for him to come up.

“Hallo!” he said, a trifle uneasily, it seemed to Lawless. “You’re early astir. I thought I had the day to myself.”

“Any objection,” Lawless asked, “to a companion on your ride?”

Denzil laughed awkwardly.

“On the contrary,” he said. “I hate riding alone. But I thought you chaps were dead asleep. This to my thinking is the best time of the day.”

“Yes,” Lawless agreed. “I usually ride before the sun is up.”

They drew abreast, and walked their horses alongside the dense bush. Denzil talked continuously as a man might who was ill at ease and anxious to gain time. It was evident to Lawless that he scented danger, and would gladly have been without his companionship. Once or twice he looked about him furtively, as though some idea of flight possessed his mind; but either his nerve was not equal to the attempt or the possibility of being mistaken in his deductions suggested the prudence of awaiting developments.

The development, when it came, was startling and unpleasant.

He had been looking about him in his furtive, shifty, nervous way, as though wishful yet fearful of attempting escape, when suddenly facing about, impelled by some force other than conscious volition, he found himself staring blankly into the shining barrel of a revolver.

“If you so much as lift a finger,” Lawless said coolly, “I’ll blow your brains out. Halt!”

The horses came to a standstill. Lawless, still covering the other man, freed his foot from the stirrup and swung himself out of the saddle.

“Dismount!” he said, standing with the rein over his left arm, the right raised with the revolver gripped in his hand.

Denzil reddened, but complied with the curt command.

“What’s your game?” he stuttered, as he stood on the veld facing that business-like weapon at uncomfortably close quarters. “What are you up to?”

“Hands up!” Lawless said. And Denzil, alarmed and reluctant, held his hands high above his head.

“I’ll not keep you in that undignified and uncomfortable position longer than necessary,” Lawless went on. “It depends upon yourself how long you have to endure the annoyance. You have in your possession a packet of letters which it is my intention to relieve you of. You will save me trouble, and yourself continued inconvenience, by telling me in which pocket I shall find what I require.”

“Oh! that’s it, is it?” Denzil smiled uneasily. “You might have spared yourself trouble. Van Bleit has the packet. He wouldn’t trust it with me.”

Lawless dropped the rein, leaving it hanging down in front of the forelegs after the Colonial custom with standing horses, and advanced upon the speaker.

“If you waste my time by lying,” he said, “I’ll shoot you. Which pocket is it in?”

Denzil’s eyes snapped; but he was too genuinely alarmed at the cold feel of the revolver against his temples to attempt further procrastination.

“Breast... right-hand side,” he answered shortly.

“This spells ruin for me,” he muttered, as Lawless plunged his left hand inside his coat and drew out the sealed packet Van Bleit had given into his charge in the bedroom a few hours before. “I don’t know how I’ll face Karl. He’ll be for shooting me himself.”

“He’s had one escape from hanging,” Lawless responded drily; “he’ll not risk a second.”

He withdrew to a short distance, briefly examined the packet, and slipped it into his own breast pocket with an extraordinary sense of exultation. He had succeeded where others had failed. He had boasted to Colonel Grey that he would get the letters or kill his man, and here were the letters that had cost so much safely in his possession...

He walked to where he had left his horse standing, and putting his foot in the stirrup, vaulted into the saddle. Then he gathered up his rein, and caught at the rein of the other horse.

“You can lower your hands,” he said; “but be careful what you do with them; I’m not uncovering you yet.”

Denzil dropped his hands to his sides, and watched with considerable interest the movements of the man who had so completely outwitted him.

“You are leaving me to tramp it, I suppose?” he said.

“I’m depriving you and Van Bleit of the means of following me,” was the brief answer.

“Van Bleit will never believe how entirely you surprised me,” Denzil returned dejectedly. “He’ll think I ought to have stuck to the packet at all costs. Man, I wonder if you know the value of what you’ve got there? Look here! ... Stop a bit!” ... His manner became eager and confidential. “Can’t we do a deal, you and I? ... Let me stand in with you—or, better still, give me a sum down, and I’ll let you into the know how to work those letters to the best advantage... What do you say, eh?”

“What I have to say won’t interest you,” Lawless replied. “If I hadn’t passed my word, I wouldn’t touch the damned letters, and the first thing I mean to do with them is to get rid of their charge... But not to you... If you had your deserts you would find yourself on the breakwater. Now, march!” he added. “Turn your back, and keep going.”

He had hardly issued the order when something happened that put an altogether different aspect upon the face of things. Inexplicably, he saw Denzil grinning as he abruptly turned about, and the next moment something hurtled through the air and fell about his shoulders, tightening with a suddenness that pinned his arms to his sides. The revolver flew from his hand, and simultaneously he was jerked violently out of the saddle. He fell heavily to the accompaniment of raucous laughter, and, lying on the veld, straining impotently at the cords that held him, he realised with bitter mortification that Karl Van Bleit had securely lassoed him by a cowboy trick he was an adept in.

Chapter Twenty.

“Check number two, Master Grit Lawless!”

Van Bleit stood over his victim with a smile of satisfaction widening his features, the end of the long rope which he had used to such purpose coiled upon his arm. He took a shorter length from his pocket and tossed it to Denzil, who, in thorough appreciation of the trick, was still laughing immoderately over the discomfiture of the man who had believed himself upper dog. Lawless sat up and swore vigorously.

“Fasten his wrists,” Van Bleit commanded.

He twirled the ends of his moustache complacently while he watched the execution of this order, and offered a few suggestions for the more efficacious tightening of the bonds.

“Oh! you can squirm as much as you like,” he said. “You are about as helpless as a trussed fowl.”

When Lawless’ hands were securely bound behind him, Van Bleit loosened the noose that had tightened until it stopped the circulation, and drew the loop over the captive’s head. Then he picked up the revolver that lay on the veld and sat down facing him. He was enjoying himself immensely. The security of his position as captor, Lawless’ utter helplessness, and the certainty of no outside interference, completed a situation which, having no element of risk about it, appealed to him amazingly. He rested his right elbow on his knee, and levelled the revolver at Lawless’ breast.

“It would be so simple and so safe to settle you for ever,” he remarked pleasantly, “that I wonder I don’t do it... Denzil, just hobble those left-overs from the Ark. We shall need them presently. They look as though they’d stand till the crack of doom, but there’s just a chance that if this revolver should happen to go off we might lose them, and that would be awkward. When you have done that you can relieve long-eared Grit of what he sneaked from you.”

Lawless set his teeth and said nothing. He was beginning to understand that while he had been busy trying to devise a trap for Van Bleit, the Dutchman had got ahead of him, and that in so wily a manner that he had not had the faintest suspicion of trickery when he had listened at the partition with his eye to the crack. And yet the mere lighting of the candle should have warned him... There would have been no need for a light had it not been intended that he should see. He cursed his folly for tumbling into a pit the digging of which he had been permitted to witness. And the letters! ... The letters that he had been allowed to handle, that he believed he had got so secure...

When Denzil bent over him and drew the sealed packet from his pocket, he made a frantic but futile effort to burst the bonds that fastened his wrists. The rope, already uncomfortably tight, cut into the flesh and caused such pain he was fain to desist. Denzil dangled the packet before his face, jeering, then he gripped it tighter and struck him with it across the eyes.

“One day,” Lawless said grimly, “when my hands aren’t tied, you’ll pay for that.”

Van Bleit laughed loudly. The bully in him enjoyed watching aggression that feared no retaliation. To strike a man with his hands tied was infinitely amusing.

“Thought you had a wonderful find in that packet, eh?” he sneered. “Going to make your fortune—were you?—in another man’s gold mine.”

“I shouldn’t have objected to that idea so much,” Denzil interposed in a tone of deep disgust. “But he wouldn’t confess to that... He was posing virtuous.”

“Ah!” returned Van Bleit, grinning. “Looks virtuous, don’t he? ... Job on his rubbish heap! Well, it may ease his virtuous mind to know that so far as the value of that packet is concerned he might be allowed to keep it. It’s a fake, old man... got up for your amusement, and that of other fellows of an inquiring turn of mind. Almachtig! you don’t imagine I’m so green as to carry around letters that are worth a fortune?” He snapped his fingers in derision. “For a cute boy, Grit, you are surprisingly credulous. Those letters that so many mouths are watering for are safe—where you won’t get them. I don’t cart them round in my suit-case.”

He laughed again at the expression of Lawless’ face.

“Sold all round, eh? Lord! ain’t it funny?”

Then, his mood changing suddenly, he fell to scowling, and eyed Lawless malevolently above the revolver that still pointed direct at his heart.

“You fancy because Tom Hayhurst got hold of them once, it’s any man’s job. Well, it isn’t. And Tom wouldn’t have had the chance, only I was fool enough to bring them from Jo’burg to Cape Town. I deserved to lose them for not leaving them safe where they were. But I’m not taking any further risks. That packet of dummy letters is all I carry about... And I carry them with a purpose—the purpose of discovering such treacherous scoundrels as yourself. You’re in Grey’s pay. I know that... I found it out long ago. And you profess friendship for me... start out to win my confidence with the intention of robbing me—killing me, perhaps. You deserve to pay dearly for that. I’ve half a mind to shoot you... I’ll punish you somehow.”

He got up, and, pocketing the revolver, approached menacingly. Lawless watched him in silence. Van Bleit, it was clear, meant mischief; and he was powerless to defend himself, incapable of hitting back. The knowledge of his helplessness galled him unspeakably. To have had his hands free! ... just his bare hands, and nothing more...

“It’s a safe game you’re playing,” he observed drily. “If I faced you with my bare fists you wouldn’t take this tone.”

“Safe game or not,” Van Bleit shouted, “I’m going to punish you, my boy. There’s a treatment for treachery that has been found efficacious before.”

He snatched at a riding-whip which one of the men had dropped, and struck the strong quiet face he hated again and again with it, raising a dozen weals on the thin tanned cheeks. One blow cut Lawless’ lip open, and the blood spurted out and ran down his chin, and stained the blonde moustache. At each blow he winced though he made no sound, but the wince gave Van Bleit immense satisfaction. The score he had to pay off against this man was heavy. To his influence he attributed the coldness of Zoë Lawless... That could only be expatiated with his life; but the taking of human life meant a risk Karl Van Bleit would not again lightly undertake. He had a morbid horror of the hangman’s rope since it had dangled so perilously near his own neck.

When he had flogged Lawless in the face, he flogged him again across the shoulders with even greater venom. This being borne without flinching, soon ceased to amuse him, and he flung the whip from him with an oath.

“That’s enough for the present, damn you! If we meet again you’ll know what to expect. I shan’t spare your life a second time... It’s almost a pity,” he reflected, inclination weighing against discretion, “to lose this chance of quieting you. Who’s to know if I settle your account for ever?”

For the next few seconds Lawless felt his life hung in the balance. His whole being revolted against the thought of death at this man’s hands without ever a chance of repaying the insult he had suffered. If his life were spared that day he vowed he would never rest until he had squared their account finally. Some idea of this probability seemed to possess Van Bleit, and inclined him strongly toward committing the foul deed he contemplated; but Denzil, the more timorous, stood out against murder.

“There are the horses, Karl,” he urged... “Any amount of awkward questions may be asked.”

“All right,” Van Bleit said shortly. “We’ll leave him as he is. It will take him all he knows to worry his hands free.”

He struck his foe again in the face with his open hand, and turning away, walked towards the horses. He mounted, and Denzil following his example, they rode off, leaving their victim seated on the veld, his wrists securely bound, without, so far as they knew, any prospect of freeing them, and with no available means of pursuit. It was a safe game, as Lawless had said.

He remained seated until they were out of sight. Not on any consideration would he have given Van Bleit the satisfaction of watching him rise and proceed on his way with his arms in their present undignified position. When the two men finally disappeared from view he got up, and walking painfully, for the fall from his horse had injured him, made his way slowly back towards the hut. The riders had passed quite close behind it after climbing the rise, little guessing that it was tenanted. The noise of the horses’ hoofs awoke Tottie. She rubbed her eyes, and half sat up, and so, resting on her elbow, remained still, listening, till the sounds died away in the distance and complete silence reigned once more. No suspicion crossed her mind that anything was amiss.

“Grit’s early astir,” her thoughts ran as she settled down to sleep again.

She was half-wakeful, half-dozing, when something happened that roused her fully and brought the languid eyes open with a jerk. Abruptly, without warning, the light from the doorless exit was obscured, and a man’s figure, bending from the waist, entered, and, straightening itself, stood upright, looking uncertainly about with eyes unaccustomed to the dimness, upon unfamiliar surroundings.

Tottie sat up on her improvised mattress of bush and dried rushes and stared in amaze at the appearance presented by the intruder. The swollen, inflamed face with the ugly weals across it was scarcely recognisable, the blood running down the chin on to the front of his shirt gave it a savage, even a sinister look, that was strangely repellent. She wondered why he made no effort to wipe the blood away, and noticed that he kept his hands behind him, but did not realise that this was owing to compulsion, until he turned suddenly about and requested her shortly to undo the “damned knots.”

“Good God! Grit,” she said, “what’s happened?”

“Van Bleit’s scored this time,” he answered. “It’s first game to him... But the rubber isn’t won yet. I’ve merely got my deserts for being a gullible idiot.”

She worked at the knots with her teeth, and after a while unbound his raw and bleeding wrists and flung the rope to the floor.

“My word! but they’ve used you ill,” she said... “If I’d only guessed...”

Lawless made no response. He was peering with half-blinded eyes at a huddled object on the ground that he had taken for a bundle of old rags, but now that his sight was growing used to the obscurity discovered to be the sleeping form of a native woman, who lay curled up against the mud wall, like an animal, with her superb arms flung high above her head. She was either fast asleep or feigning slumber, for she made neither sound nor movement, but lay like a dead woman, save for the gentle rise and fall of her bosom under the ochre blanket that formed its sole covering.

“What is the meaning of that?” he said sternly, pointing to the recumbent figure, his burning gaze on Tottie’s face.

She laughed with a slight embarrassment. In the surprise of his entry she had forgotten that the woman was there.

“Oh! that’s all right,” she answered jerkily. “Couldn’t turn her out, you know... The hut belongs to her—in a way. She happened along the first evening, and was for running like a scared rabbit at sight of me, but,”—Tottie laughed again. “Even a nigger is companionable,” she said.

Lawless looked hard at her.

“She’s raw,” Tottie explained... “Zulu... only speaks her own tongue. I know a few words, and so we rub along.”

“And her belongings?” Lawless asked. “Has it occurred to you that there’s a nigger husband somewhere? If she makes this place her home she doesn’t live alone here.”

“He hasn’t shown up so far,” Tottie answered comfortably. She touched significantly a holster at her waist. “I’m not scared of niggers, Grit.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’ve done with this. Van Bleit’s gone—Denzil too... And they’ve taken the horses. It’s twenty miles to the town, but we’ve got to do it.”

Tottie looked thoughtful.

“There’s a nearer way than that, baas,” she said. She jerked her head in the direction of the sleeping native. “There’s some sort of a farm within reasonable walking distance... She makes the journey for sour milk. They’d let us have a conveyance if we paid enough, I expect... It’s better than tramping, anyhow. We’ll rouse her, and make her show us the way.”

She stood up, shook out the folds of her skirt, and surveyed herself in the glass she had brought from the house and hung by a nail on the wall. One cheek was hectic with artificial colour, the other, on which she had been lying, was white and red in streaks.

“What a guy!” she murmured. “I’ll need to repair the ravages before we start, old man... You wouldn’t look any the worse for a wash yourself.”

She laid a hand affectionately on his arm.

“We’ll wipe out that score—you and I—pretty thoroughly. It’s come to a point now where I shall be able to help. It won’t do for you to follow him, because, plainly, he’ll be expecting you. He’ll be on the look out. I don’t know whether you’ve got a plan, but I have. We won’t follow him... He shall follow me.” She chuckled wickedly. “I’ve always had an idea I should elope with old Karl... You go back to Cape Town, Grit, and leave this to me. When I’ve got him safely in tow, I’ll communicate with you, and you can drop down on us and finish him, if necessary.”

Lawless regarded her earnestly.

“How will you get on his trail?” he asked.

She smiled significantly.

“I’m going to turn up in the same town; then, if I know anything of him, the pursuit will be all on his side. You must give me a cheque for something killing in the way of a trousseau... I’ll manage the rest.”

He appeared not altogether pleased with the arrangement.

“You’ll overplay the part,” he objected.

“You trust me,” she answered confidently.

“Besides, he doesn’t carry the letters on him... He boasted this morning that they were safely out of reach.”

She turned round from the glass to stare at him.

“Then what’s the good—Well, in any case,” she finished, in the manner of one who clinches an argument, “there’s got to be a settlement over that bashed face of yours.”

Chapter Twenty One.

Late that afternoon, with their scant belongings, Lawless and his companion drove into Stellenbosch in the broken-springed buggy which, after much persuasion, they had induced the owner of the farm to which the Zulu woman had led them to hire out to them.

The difficulty had arisen, not from disinclination to oblige a stranger, but on account of having no spare hand to act as driver. In the end the farmer drove them himself, not because he could best spare the time, but because he knew he was least likely to waste it. He and a small son of the house harnessed the horse, while Lawless looked on, and Tottie waited in the shade of the stoep where the farmer’s wife sewed, and eyed her askance, responding distantly to her tentatives towards conversation.

Afterwards she observed to her husband: “I was glad you gave in over the buggy. It was a relief when that woman was out of sight. One could have grown a crop of mealies in the dirt on her face, only nothing so wholesome could thrive in such rubbish. I didn’t see her left hand because she kept her gloves on; but if there was a wedding-ring on every finger, I’d know she wasn’t married to that man. It’s one of those cases one recognises by instinct.”

“The man’s no good either,” the farmer answered... “Been fighting—unless he drinks, and she mauled him like that when he couldn’t defend himself. She looks capable of it... She’s fond of him too. Did you notice how she helped him into the cart, seeing he was a bit sick?”

“Oh, that!” The wife looked unconvinced. “She’s probably afraid of him when he’s sober; he’s a savage-looking man.”

“Well, I’m glad we’re quit of them,” he returned. “One’s best without neighbours if one can’t have them respectable... But they paid me well.”

“Ah! he’s one of that sort,” she responded... “more money than morals. The want of money’s a curse, and the having it is a curse as often as not.”

“The latter,” her husband said, smiling, “is a curse that would be to my taste.”

She smiled too.

“That’s because you know you’ll never have it, you old stodger, you.”

Lawless learnt on inquiry after arriving in Stellenbosch that Denzil and Van Bleit had separated, the former having departed earlier for the coast, while Van Bleit had left only a quarter of an hour before they arrived. He had taken a ticket for Worcester.

“That, then, is my destination,” Tottie announced, when he told her the result of his investigations.

“Better take a ticket for a couple of stations beyond, and work your way back to Worcester,” he advised.

“Not a bad idea,” she returned readily. “But I’m going to stay a couple of days here with you before running after Karl.”

“What for?” he asked. “It’s losing time.”

“You’re a bit keen to get rid of me, Grit,” she said.

He wheeled round abruptly and took her by the arm.

“Don’t get any of those fool ideas into your head,” he said quickly. “When we’ve put this job successfully through, we’ll go on the spree together—to Jo’burg, or anywhere you’ve a fancy for. You’re a first-class chum.”

She flushed with pleasure even through the paint, and emitted a little awkward laugh.

“I’d enjoy that more than enough. Just ourselves, and no need for this fooling round. But I’d like to stay and do first aid for twenty-four hours, anyhow... You won’t go down to the coast with your face like that?”

“Then, stay,” he said, giving in with the spiritless manner of a man unequal to further contention. “I’ll be glad enough of your company. I’m stiff and sore and jolly well out of conceit with myself. If anyone can reinstate me in my own opinion it’s you.”

They put up at the hotel, and Tottie, whose ideas of first aid were practical if crude, was only deterred from putting them into effect by Lawless’ irritable refusal to be touched. He bathed his sore and swollen face himself with warm water, and swore at the stiffness and its unfamiliar contours. In the morning the face was even less comfortable than on the day of assault, and he could not see out of one eye. But he was firm in insisting that Tottie should start on her journey. He bought her ticket and saw her off by the train. She parted from him reluctantly, and leaning half-way out of her compartment as the train was moving out, called to him:

“Go and see a doctor, Grit. I don’t like that eye of yours.”

He nodded to her, and because he was in haste to be rid of the inconvenience of his injury, took her advice; and for the next few days was forced to go about wearing a shade, to his no small discomfort and disgust.

As soon as he was able to dispense with the shade he started for Cape Town.

A strong south-east was blowing when he reached the capital. The pavements were greasy and wet, and the sticky thickness of the atmosphere, laden with salt and a mist that swept in from the sea, clung to his garments, and wetted his face and hair as with fine rain. He took a cab and drove to his hotel. The management seemed relieved to see him back. There had been several inquiries, and one or two letters had arrived during his absence. These they could not forward, having no address.

He took the letters and went to his room with them. They were for the greater part unimportant, bills most of them. There were one or two personal communications, and one imperative epistle marked, “Private. Please Forward,” from Colonel Grey. The wording of it was brief:

“Dear Mr Lawless,—I stand in urgent need of your services and advice. Kindly report yourself at the earliest possible.—Yours faithfully, F.W. Grey.”

Lawless glanced at the date of the letter; it was more than a month old. He smiled drily. Doubtless Colonel Grey would consider it a tardy response were he to present himself at the bungalow that night, and yet there could be no more prompt compliance with a command.

He changed his dusty garments, dined, and having no inclination for walking on so damp and boisterous a night, hired a taxi and drove the mile and a half to the quiet road where Colonel Grey’s bungalow stood in its wild, luxuriant garden behind the undipped hedges of plumbago. He dismissed the taxi, and walking up the path to the stoep made for a window where a light was burning, and tapped upon the glass. There was an immediate response from within. Lawless heard someone move and walk heavily across the floor, then the French window was flung wide, and Colonel Grey himself stood in the aperture facing him with an expression of cold surprise and inquiry in his look.

“I got your letter,” Lawless explained, “to-night. I am here in accordance with the request contained in it.”

“Come inside.”

Colonel Grey moved aside for him to pass, and, closing the window, sat down. It was not the same room in which Lawless had been received before; that, on the other side of the hall, had been locked since the shooting affray. He dropped into an easy-chair opposite his host. He was tired with travelling and was glad to stretch his limbs, but the older man, with his ingrained ideas of discipline, taking note of the relaxed attitude, drew his own inference. He frowned as he sat straighter himself.

“After all this while I had given up every expectation of seeing you again,” he said in a curt manner that betrayed his disapprobation. “You have not, I imagine, brought me any special news?”

“I have not,” Lawless answered. “All the happenings have been going forward here during my absence. I have come to receive, not to give, explanations.”

The frown on the Colonel’s brow showed heavier and more fierce. He sat forward and stared at the speaker, who, still relaxing his inert muscles, lay indolently back in his chair.

“Damn your impudence!” he said. “What do you mean by that?”

“Why,” asked Lawless imperturbably, “were you so anxious a month ago for my services and advice?”

“It was before Van Bleit’s trial I wrote that letter... If you’d been on the spot we’d have hanged the brute.”

“And why was my presence necessary to the carrying out of justice?”

The Colonel pulled savagely at his moustache. He was thinking, not so much of his present annoyance, but of the chance he believed had been lost of getting hold of the letters. He had come to consider it a practical certainty that had Lawless remained at his post success would have been achieved. He looked at the thin, scarred face, at the indolent grace of the outstretched limbs, and his strong sense of indignation, of having been somehow defrauded, increased. He had paid well for this man’s services; he had a right to command them.

“Plainly, I couldn’t hang him before getting hold of the letters,” he said. “It might have been defeating my own ends. Had you been on the spot—as I had every right to expect you to be—we could have recovered them.”

“Do you happen to know where they are?” Lawless asked.

“Denzil had them then... And Denzil without Van Bleit would be easy to deal with.”

The man lounging in the chair suddenly sat up.

“You’ve been misinformed,” he said. “Denzil never had those letters at any time in his charge. Van Bleit doesn’t trust him... he’s wise not to. We’ve assumed too much because Hayhurst got hold of them once... That is the first and only time Van Bleit has risked having them in his possession. Those letters are safe—where you and I can’t get them. Van Bleit alone can touch them.” He laughed shortly. “The search has narrowed considerably since we met.”

“What the devil are you driving at? ... You talk as though you know where the letters are,” the Colonel said sharply.

“So I do, man... They’re in the Bank, of course.”

“In the Bank!” There was silence for a few seconds. Then in a voice that had lost its quick tone of authority Colonel Grey asked quietly: “How do you know?”

“Know! I don’t know... And yet I do know. Where would you keep important papers that you feared might be stolen? ... where would I? ... In the Bank, of course. I wonder we never thought of it before. It was Hayhurst misled us. Because he got hold of them, we took Van Bleit for a fool—which he isn’t... Scoundrel every inch of him, but no fool. I had it from himself that the letters were safe from us. He didn’t mean to give me a clue... I jumped to it. I’ve had him staying with me since his acquittal.”

He laughed mirthlessly at the expression of astonishment in his listener’s face, and, as though the recollection of his recent meeting with Van Bleit excited him, got up from his chair and took a turn the length of the room, and then came back.

“I thought I had a good game on... that I had only to get hold of Van Bleit and the letters were mine,” he said. “You nearly upset my plans by that unexpected move of yours which cost so dear in the end... As it chanced, it wouldn’t have mattered had you frustrated them altogether. What made you interfere, as you did, when you had entrusted me with the affair?”

He paused in front of the Colonel, and waited for his answer, regarding him fixedly with his keen, penetrating eyes. The Colonel appeared, not so much unequal, as disinclined to reply.

“I thought you had lost your head,” he said at last. “Your manner of leaving Cape Town was not calculated to inspire confidence.”

“And that’s the reason you failed to pay the amount agreed upon into my account last month?”

“That was my reason—yes.” He stared back into the dominating, inscrutable grey eyes, and his own were stern and unyielding. “You’ve come to me to-night with a request for more money, I suppose?”

“I have. I’m short—in debt, in fact. I must have something at once to go on with.” There was a perceptible pause. The Colonel ended it.

“I’m not paying for work that isn’t performed,” was his curt response to this appeal. “You’ll have to satisfy me that you are earning your pay before you get anything further. Suppose you give an account of what you have done up to the present,—of what you purpose doing in the near future that justifies a further outlay. There has been nothing but a verbal agreement between us, which is no more binding on one side than on the other—save for the final agreement you hold for a sum down when you deliver, or cause to be delivered, the packet of letters into my hands. When I undertook to make you a monthly allowance, it was on the understanding that you pursued your quest with conscientious persistence; there was no question of leisure for the following of your amusements. I have not been exacting in demanding hitherto a full account of service rendered in exchange for money received. It has occurred to me that you might have given a fuller account than you have done unasked.”

“Probably I should have,” Lawless replied, “had I not been perfectly aware of the distrust with which you regard me, which you have never succeeded in controlling or concealing since you first engaged my services. You have—whether intentionally or not, I can’t say—insulted me more than enough. You have openly questioned my honesty. And you expect me to swallow all that—for a consideration... And I do swallow it... Why? ... I hardly know... For the consideration, perhaps.”

He moved away to the window, halted there, and turned sharply upon his heel.

“You want to hear what I’ve done,” he said, coming back, and hovering uncertainly between a small table on which a lamp burnt and the chair from which he had risen. He was too excited to seat himself. Colonel Grey watched him curiously, the old struggle between liking for the man and distrust of him still battling for the supremacy. It was odd that, in spite of the distrust, in face of prejudice, the liking remained. “I’ve been in the Stellenbosch district ever since leaving Cape Town—”

“Alone?” interrupted the Colonel.

“Not alone—no! ... I went there solely on your business—”

“With a companion?”

Lawless swore at this further interruption.

“Damn it! ... yes,” he answered almost violently.—“On your business—with a companion. And, what’s more to the point, that same companion is following up Van Bleit now.”

The Colonel leant forward and stared at the speaker aghast.

“That—that woman!” he spluttered.

“Have a care!” Lawless said curtly. “The agent that I have employed is working for my sake, not for yours; and is likely to prove more successful than either you or I could hope to be at the present stage of affairs. Van Bleit recognises an enemy in me.”

“I won’t have it,” the Colonel shouted. “You were not justified in employing an agent on your own authority... A—woman like that is not to be trusted on such a delicate mission. The letters would be as dangerous in her possession as they are in Van Bleit’s... You are a fool if you believe she would hand them over to you... She mustn’t be allowed to get hold of them.”

“She won’t,” Lawless replied calmly. “You forget, I tell you he hasn’t them in his charge.”

“How can you possibly be sure of that? ... And if it’s true, where’s the use in following him?”

“At our first meeting,” Lawless reminded him, and took one of his short sharp turns between the table and chair and back again, “when I undertook this job, I told you that if I failed in getting the letters I would kill your man... That’s what I’m after now. I’m keener on it than on anything else.”

Colonel Grey sat back in his seat and crossed one knee over the other.

“You need reminding in your turn that you are not paid to follow your inclination... Will you please go on with the story? I am curious to learn how it came about that Van Bleit boasted to you that the letters were out of our reach. What grounds have you for assuming such a statement to be true?”

“Grounds!” Lawless laughed again, with a savage sound in the mirth. His mind had reverted to the scene on the veld in the early morning when Van Bleit had sat with a revolver covering him, and a murderous finger crooked round the trigger. “I have had what I believed to be those letters in my hands—a dummy packet got up in order to trick me. I fell into the trap with an ease that astounds me when I think of it. I’ve been flogged like a Kaffir—by Van Bleit... bound by the wrists and lashed.” He touched his inflamed and injured eye. “I haven’t recovered the proper use of that yet,” he said. “I doubt that I ever shall. What little self-respect I had he has deprived me of... Perhaps that’s why I don’t care a damn when you openly question my honesty. That’s a full report of my doings, up to the present. I am now waiting until my decoy has got Van Bleit in tow—then I am going to face him again.”

He fell to pacing the floor once more with his hands clasped behind him, and his eyes filled with an expression of uncontrollable hate.

“When a man holds life cheaply—as I do,—when he’s nothing to look forward to, and very little to look back upon, he makes an ugly enemy... You know something—not much, but still something—of my past. As I’ve gone along Life’s High Road there has been a hand occasionally to rest in mine for a brief while; but at the first stumble it has been withdrawn,—not one has ever clasped mine more firmly to help me over the difficulties in the way... I’m not whining to you in self-excuse. I’ve knocked up against hard facts all my life... I’m hard myself, which may account for much. If it were not for a military training, I should probably hit you in the face when you accuse me of applying to my own use the money I have received from you. As it is, I ask you to withdraw that charge. It’s possibly the only creditable thing I have achieved in life, but I have managed to steer clear of fraud.”

He put a hand in his breast pocket, and, withdrawing a notebook, took from between its leaves a paper which he tossed upon the table.

“There’s the agreement you referred to a while since... You can tear it across; it’s not worth the paper it’s written on. I’ll stick to my part of the bargain. I’ll get the letters for you, if they’re to be got. But I want no other reward than the squaring of my account with Van Bleit. For the rest—the funds to go on with—”

The Colonel stopped him with a gesture, and, rising, crossed to a desk near the window. He unlocked a drawer, took from it a cheque-book, and drawing up a cheque in Lawless’ favour, and signing it, passed it to him with a pen to fill in the amount. Lawless supplied the figures.

“The usual sum,” he said... “And a month in arrears.”

Colonel Grey nodded. Then he re-locked the desk and rose.

“I have doubted you,” he said. “I admit it. But—”

“Oh! what in hell does it matter?” Lawless interrupted roughly. “I don’t know why I have grown so suddenly sensitive on the point of my honour... And what’s the use of words? You would probably skirt the question as nicely as a politician, but the fact remains—you distrust me still.”

Later, when he was alone, the Colonel pondered the subject for an hour while he smoked before retiring to bed. Did he absolutely distrust the man? Were not his suspicions wearing down? He had no knowledge what was wearing them—certainly not that ill-considered act on Lawless’ part in throwing up the formal agreement between them. He picked up the agreement, but instead of tearing it across, he locked it away in the desk. Its repudiation had been the final struggle after the respect he had spoken of as lost to him on the part of one who had wanted above all else to stand well in this man’s regard, and who felt that he had failed in that as in most things.

Chapter Twenty Two.

It is not only in the heroic moments of life that the depth of human feeling is sounded; occasionally in the simple and seemingly commonplace incident the stress of emotion is greater than at times of a higher mental tension. Tragedy passes often unsuspected, and the eye of the casual observer rests without recognition on many intimate crises in the destiny of the race. It is well that this is so. The heart that is wounded prefers to cover its scars, and the breast that holds a sorrow carries usually a jealous dread of discovery. For the eye of the world is unsympathetic towards what it fails to understand. As the searching light of the sun reveals not only the beauties of life but all its sordid inequalities, so the judgment of humanity rests upon the obvious and appraises and condemns with relentless indiscrimination. When Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, she did not eat largely enough. We recognise Good and Evil, but we miss the liner shades.

It was but a commonplace incident that happened in the square close to Parliament buildings on the morning following Lawless’ return to Cape Town, but for the two people concerned it marked a moment of intense significance,—a moment during which for them their world stood still. Quite a number of eyes witnessed the meeting, but in the slight encounter there was nothing to excite the faintest interest or comment—merely the swift advance of a motor-car, to allow which to pass the tall man with the scarred face, who was crossing the square at the moment, was obliged to fall back a few paces, or risk being run down. The occupant of the car looked straight into his eyes for the fraction of time occupied in passing, and unsmiling, with white set face, slightly inclined her head. He raised his hat, his own face quite as gravely set, and standing where he was, with the dust of the road which the car had raised upon his clothes, looked after it till it whirled out of sight.

“Beastly things!” a stranger remarked to him sympathetically... “Jolly nice when you’re in ’em, but spoil the roads for pedestrians.”

Lawless nodded, and stepping on the pavement pursued his way. The spring sunshine poured warmly on the glaring white surface in the square, and bathed in a yellow radiance the fine façades of the block of buildings where the administrative affairs of the Colony are directed. It was still blowing from the south-east, and little whirlpools of dust rose in unexpected places, catching in their vortex any straying scrap of paper, whirling it giddily and then ejecting it, or subsiding with it in untidy heaps that the next gust disturbed and roused into fresh activity.

Lawless walked in aimless fashion along the street. Time, since he had nothing to do but wait, hung heavy on his hands. The men he had known before fought shy of him, less, he felt, for what he had done than the public manner of the doing. If one sin, sin secretly, was their gospel. And what he had done had been done in the light of day before the eyes of all men. It is easy when one lives in the world to become a cynic.

He left the busier thoroughfares and turned into the road that led past the Weebers’ house. There was one person in Cape Town, he knew, who viewed his failures leniently, and just then he was curiously eager to meet her. He had not sufficient effrontery to call at the house, but he passed it slowly, and even retraced his steps and passed it a second time, without, however, the result he had hoped for. Disappointed, he returned to his hotel.

It was a surprise encounter when eventually he met her. He was walking along the road one afternoon towards Rondebosch when she overtook him on her cycle as she had done once before, only on this occasion she was not alone. Young Bolitho was riding with her, and they both carried tennis rackets slung on the handlebars of their machines.

She did not recognise him until her machine came abreast of him. She had been unprepared for the encounter, not knowing that he was in Cape Town, and when she met his glance she flushed hotly, and losing control of her machine, swerved violently to one side. Bolitho swerved after her, but she righted herself dexterously, and smiled into his anxious face.

“I’m getting off, Teddy,” she said. “Don’t wait for me. I’ll probably overtake you,—at any rate, I shan’t be far behind... Ride on, please.”

He nodded, and only dimly understanding, and greatly troubled in mind, kept on his course, while Julie slowed down her machine and alighted, and waited for Lawless to come up.

“You!” she cried, and held out her hand to him in glad surprise.

He took the hand, pressed it warmly, and relieved her of the charge of the cycle—the same old well-worn cycle he had wheeled for her before.

“I didn’t know you were back in town,” she said, walking along beside him with flushed, glad young face and smiling eyes. “You’ve come—to stay?”

“For a few days only,” he replied... “I’ve spent three of them already. I began to fear I should miss seeing you.”

“Oh!” she said, and gasped with consternation at the mere thought. “I wish I’d known...”

“I’ve been past the house a few times,” he said.

“And I never saw you! ... It was nice of you to take the trouble,” she added, blushing.

“When a man counts his friends on the fingers of one hand—and then has fingers to spare,” he returned, looking into her eyes with a grave smile, “he can’t afford to overlook the truest of them.”

“Not the truest,” she contradicted quickly, her thoughts unconsciously reverting to a scene she was little likely to forget, when a woman with beautiful tear-filled eyes held in her hands a portrait of this man, and spoke of her wasted youth.

Julie turned her face away from his and looked along the sunlit road. She was wondering whether she could find the courage to tell him what she knew. It was so difficult to talk to one towards whom, perhaps on account of his reserve, she had always felt a certain shyness, of such private and intimate things.

“No!” he said quietly.—“A very true friend, then... And one I value highly,—perhaps because I know that I have her regard quite independently of any merit. A man doesn’t prize his fair-weather friends; it’s the friends of his adversity he holds dear.”

“There is someone,” Julie began, and hesitated, and then gathered fresh courage and essayed again... “There is someone who—if you would let her—would be the best friend you ever had... I don’t understand why you won’t see it,—there are many things about you I fail to understand. And I’m horribly afraid I’m going to annoy you. It’s so impertinent to interfere in other people’s lives.”

“It’s an impertinence a great many people are guilty of,” he returned... “I don’t fancy, myself, it ever does much good.”

“You aren’t going to be very severe with me, are you?” she pleaded.

“I’m not in the least likely to be severe with you,” he answered. “But since you feel like that about it, why not leave it alone?”

“Because,” Julie replied bravely, “it’s the saddest thing in all the world that you shouldn’t know what I do. I’m convinced you can’t know... You’d act differently if you knew.”

“You are a little mystifying,” he said, and looked at her uncertainly. “It sounds rather like a grammatical conundrum to which the key may be found in the tense. I’m not good at riddles. If you want me to understand, you’ll have to take the plunge, and not stand shivering on the brink.”

So Julie took the plunge, but took it after a feminine method, going in by degrees with the instinctive aversion for putting her head under water.

“I’m speaking of someone,” she said, “I’ve grown to know and to love... I think she also loves me.”

“That wouldn’t be very difficult,” he interposed.

“Because,” Julie went on, as though there had been no interruption, “she talks to me sometimes of intimate things.”

He stared at her.

“You are not going to repeat her confidence to me, surely?”

“Why, no,” she answered. “But—I’m trying to explain.”

“You’re doing it very badly,” he said; and it occurred to Julie that he was anxious to prevent her explaining more fully. But because this thing mattered to her, mattered tremendously, she persevered.

“I’m sorry for that,” she said... “I so want you to understand. Please try... And be a little patient with me. Once she spoke to me about you. She didn’t say much. But she had your photograph in her room, and when she looked at it the tears were in her eyes. And then—”

Julie broke off abruptly and searched about after words. He waited in silence. She had at least succeeded in gaining his attention. But his interest was not of an entirely agreeable order. A heavy frown contracted his brows, and the grey eyes sought the dust of the road in preference to her earnest face. There was that in the quality of the dust that was seemingly absorbing.

“She spoke of her wasted youth,” the girl went on in a voice scarcely above a whisper. “I wish—oh! how I wish I could give you some idea of the sorrow in her voice,—the longing. She’s proud. She tried to hide her emotion. But I know.”

He turned towards her suddenly, making no pretence of misunderstanding, though she had mentioned no name, to whom she referred.

“You’ve allowed your love of romance to lead you astray,” he said curtly. “I am a better judge than you are in this matter.”

“Ah! now,” she cried quickly, “I have angered you, and done harm.”

“Not so,” he returned. “I shall cease to think of what you have told me. You’ve jumped to a wrong conclusion, that’s all. The friend you speak of took away her friendship from me long ago. It was her own doing. She would not thank you for your intercession.”

“You are hard,” she said unexpectedly. The accusation hit him; it was what he had recently called himself. “And you’re wrong. I understand better than you do—perhaps because I’m a woman, and have suffered myself.”

“You are not a woman,” he said, with sudden gentleness of manner. “You are a child almost, and to children their sorrows appear disproportionately great. As for suffering! ... Who among us can expect to escape his share? And a little suffering is not harmful. The human heart that hasn’t been through the fire is inclined to be shallow. All the pleasant pools in life are shallow; the great thoughts and the great deeds come from the deep seas.”

They walked for a while in silence after his last speech. When they had covered a few yards in this manner Julie stopped and offered to take the cycle.

“Teddy will be wondering what has become of me,” she said. “We are playing tennis this afternoon at Mrs Lawless’.”

He stopped also and held the machine for her.

“I should like to see you again before you go,” she added.

“Every evening at about five o’clock I will pass your house,” he replied.

She mounted and rode off, and Lawless, wheeling about, returned to the city, his mind, for all his assertion that he would think no more of what she had said, busy with the picture she had conjured up, a picture which in his larger knowledge of the circumstances struck him as exaggerated and unreal.

Julie overtook Bolitho round the first bend. He had dismounted and was waiting for her at the roadside.

“I told you to go on,” she said, when she came up with him.

“I know,” he answered. “But I preferred to wait.”

She slipped from her saddle to the ground, and, seating herself beside him in the hedge, to the young man’s intense embarrassment, dissolved into tears.

“Oh, don’t, Julie!” he pleaded... “Don’t! I will go on and leave you, if you wish it, dear.”

“Silly!” she sobbed. “I don’t wish it. You’re the best fellow I ever knew. Oh, Teddy! I’m so miserable. I’ve made a hash of things with the best intentions in the world. There’s nobody understands me, but you. And you don’t understand altogether.”

“If you’ll give me the cue, I’ll try,” he declared earnestly, leaning towards her and encircling her with his arm. “You know that I’d do anything on earth to please you. Julie, my darling! I love you so, I can’t bear to see you cry.”

She suddenly sat up straighter, and laughed, and dabbed at her eyes.

“I know,” she said. “I know... Oh, goodness! what a scarecrow I must look! And anyone might come along.”

She put up her hands and rearranged her hat.

“Is it straight, Teddy!” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered, and looked her steadily in the eyes.

“My dear, don’t try to deceive me,” he said... “Better hurt my feelings now than later... If it’s the other fellow who wins I’ll go my way.”

“Stupid!” she cried, leaning her wet cheek against his shoulder. “There’s someone else for the other fellow—only he won’t see it.”

“I can’t blame him,” Teddy answered, “when there’s you.”

She laughed again.

“There has never been me for anyone besides yourself,” she said. “If I lower the prize in your eyes by that admission I can’t help it. And there’s still left to you the choice of grabbing your machine out of the hedge and riding away.”

Teddy Bolitho sat gravely stiff and expectant. Beneath the light banter of her manner he caught at a deeper note.

“Julie,” he said nervously, “will you—If you don’t mean anything, for God’s sake I don’t lead me to hope falsely... You know that I’ve loved you for years with the whole force of my nature. There’s no one else for me though I live to be a hundred. I’ve met you... That’s enough. It’s you or no one. I’m not much of a catch, but if you’ll have me, such as I am, I’ll spend my life in trying to make you happy.”

“You make me happy as it is, Teddy,” she answered quietly. “It is I who will need to spend my life in trying to satisfy you.”

Chapter Twenty Three.

Lawless’ stay in Cape Town was so much longer than he had expected that he began to fear Tottie had not been so successful as her vanity had led her to suppose. He looked daily for news of her; but she was no hand at corresponding; until she had something definite to tell him he knew she would not write.

In the end it was not a letter but a telegram that reached him. It had been handed in at Ceres Road. Beyond this clue as to her whereabouts, the contents told him little.

“go to junction hotel kraaifontein find instructions there tottie.”

He hunted up the trains. There was nothing before the morning. He packed a portmanteau in readiness, and sat down and wrote to Colonel Grey.

“Dear Sir,—I have received my summons. Am off up the line to-morrow. Junction Hotel, Kraaifontein, will find me. I will keep you informed as to my movements.—Yours faithfully, H. Lawless.”

“That will keep the old boy quiet for a time,” he mused, and went out and posted it himself.

On turning away from the pillar-box he came face to face with Denzil. It was the first time they had met since the memorable occasion on the veld, and it was evident from the expression on their faces that that last occasion was in the minds of both. The present encounter sprang upon them unawares. Denzil had known that Lawless was in Cape Town, he had written to Van Bleit to inform him of the fact; but he had not happened across him before. He would have felt infinitely happier had he not happened across him then. Doubtless he remembered Lawless’ words, when, having him at a disadvantage, he had struck him with the packet of letters across the face. He fervently wished he had refrained from allowing his feelings to get the better of discretion in the hour of triumph. Plainly, that hour no longer endured. It was not inspiriting to meet fully the man whom, when his hands were bound, he had struck in the face, and recall his words that one day when his hands were free he would repay the insult.

He eyed the tall figure nervously, and quickened his steps. Lawless glanced him over with a speculative eye. One blow from his fist would have knocked him down. And he was sorely tempted to strike out, to punish this miserable little cur who had dared to insult a better man than himself. But it was against his policy to endanger his liberty at that juncture; and to punish Denzil in the open street, with people passing continually, and a policeman standing at the corner, was courting arrest. And so he allowed his man to slip past him; but there was in the keen grey eyes as they rested upon the foe such a look of quiet prospective vengeance that, though he passed unmolested, Denzil was not greatly reassured. It was a temporary let-off, he felt.

He hurried on, and Lawless pursued his way in an opposite direction. The evening was all before him. He decided that with the uncertain promise of rest the following night held, he would turn in early and take all the sleep he could procure. He might be glad during the next few days of a reserve to fall back upon. He returned to his hotel to dine. Against the kerb before the entrance a motor-car was stationed. It occurred to Lawless that he had seen the car before; but it was not until he entered the hotel that he realised its being there concerned him in any way. A messenger was waiting for him in the vestibule with a note. He had been waiting some time, and seemed immeasurably relieved when Lawless came in.

“It requires an answer, sir,” he said, as he presented the note.

Lawless ripped open the envelope, and withdrawing the contents, glanced his eye down the page.

“Very good,” he said. “Tell Mrs Lawless I will be with her in about an hour’s time.”

The messenger looked at him calculatingly.

“There’s the car outside, sir. If you’d like it to wait—”

“I shouldn’t,” Lawless interrupted curtly.

He tipped the man and went to his room to dress. He wondered why she should wish to see him, and recalled with an unaccountable irritation what Julie Weeber had confided to him as the result of her unaided observation. He had a natural antipathy towards scenes, and he disliked above all things listening to a dissertation on his moral delinquencies.

When he had dined he hired a taxi and drove to Rondebosch. He told the driver to wait for him, and went inside the garden and up the path to the door. His visit was expected. The servant who admitted him helped him out of the light overcoat he wore to cover his dress suit, and conducted him to the drawing-room, where Mrs Lawless waited to receive him, pacing restlessly up and down, up and down, her face white even in the warm glow of the lights, and her eyes darkly luminous in their pale setting.

She came to a halt when she heard his step in the hall, and took up a book as though she would appear to occupy herself, but put it down again with instinctive dislike towards posing. His step came nearer, she put out a hand and grasped the back of a chair, gripping it tightly, her nervousness painfully apparent in the trembling of her lips.

And then the door opened...

A sudden calm overspread her features at sight of him, her stiffened attitude relaxed. The hand that had gripped the chair-back rested upon it easily; the other, that hung clenched at her side, fell loosely open. It seemed as though the appearance of this man for whom she had waited in a state of great nervous excitement quieted her agitation, as though his ready response to the summons that conflicting emotions had dictated and held her back from sending before, brought relief. It was a very composed and dignified woman that confronted Lawless’ gaze, a woman gowned simply in black, which suited her brilliant beauty, with a single deep red rose at her breast where the slight opening revealed the slender throat.

He advanced into the room and stood quite close to her, looking steadily into the dark glowing eyes.

“I don’t know whether this prompt response to your note is inconvenient,” he said. “But it was now or not at all. Had you left it until to-morrow you would have missed me.”

“You are leaving Cape Town again?” she asked... “When?”

“To-morrow morning.”

“And where do you go?”

“Up the line,” he answered... “Not very far.”

She flushed quickly. Some instinct told her that he was going to rejoin the companion in whose society he had left Cape Town before. A chilled look came into her eyes. It seemed that whenever she held out a hand across the distances that separated them a great wall of his making rose between them to divide them more certainly than before. And he invariably made her aware of this wall at the very outset, so that her every effort during the difficult interviews between them was but an ineffectual hurling of herself against this impassable barrier. She moved from behind the chair and seated herself.

“I’m sorry,” she said simply. “Won’t you sit down?” He accepted the invitation, and leaning back surveyed her with a thoughtful interest that was critical rather than admiring, and intensely curious. She had some purpose in sending for him, he supposed. He wondered, with a slight impatience, why she distressed herself so unnecessarily. They had come long ago to the parting of the ways,—it was a mistake to go out of one’s road in order that the paths should recross merely to separate again.

“I had no idea you would be leaving—so soon,” she said. “I wasn’t aware you were in Cape Town until I passed you that morning in the car.”

“I had only just got back,” he explained.

“Afterwards I was sorry—that I didn’t stop,” she went on slowly, labouring somewhat over the sentences. “But—I was surprised. And I felt a little diffident about asking you to come out... I knew you would come, of course... That’s why, perhaps.”

“My only wonder is that you take the trouble,” he returned. “Plainly, you don’t get any joy of it... And hasn’t it ever occurred to you that it’s painful for me as well? My life hasn’t been wholly without regrets. You remind me of the old Inquisitorial system—continually stretching a man on the rack for some imaginary good purpose. And you rack yourself in the process... Where’s the sense in it, anyway?”

“I have thought,” she said,—“I have tried—”

She got up abruptly from her seat and turned her back on him and walked slowly down the long room, and stood by the fireplace with her elbow on the mantel and her face dropped on her hand. He remained seated where he was, and leaning forward, his hands between his knees, watched her with interest. She made a curiously striking and graceful picture, standing there with her half-averted face, the warm lamp-light falling on her black-robed figure. There was a restrained yet dramatic appeal in her attitude that touched him, and in the long drooping line of neck and shoulder as it was turned towards him was a suggestion of weakness that commended itself to his masculine mind. She looked lonely, and sad, he considered.

“I know what you thought,” he said. “I know what you tried to do. It was praiseworthy in many respects... But it was too late. If you would fashion the clay into a goodly shape you should hasten to do so while it is pliable. When once it is set you can only break it.”

“You always make me feel,” she said, without changing her position, “that I am directly responsible for the waste of your life.”

“I don’t admit that my life stands for waste,” he replied coldly.

She lifted her face, and turning it slightly looked steadily in his direction.

“Perhaps,” she said, “I am not qualified to judge. I only judge from what I see—from what I know you might have done if only you had willed it. And now—”

She looked away from him, and once more dropped her face upon her hand.

“Hugh,” she said, and her voice was so low as to be scarcely louder than a whisper, “I asked you to come here to-night, because I felt that there was much in the past on my side that needed your forgiveness. I was hard... I see that now... When you wanted sympathy I failed you. And things happened to separate us. Perhaps it was less your fault than I imagined. But—there are certain things a woman finds it difficult to pardon.”