Part 95 (2/2)

Bingo, following what he was p.r.o.ne to call his pasteboard, presented himself--a large, cool, well-bred, if rather stupid-looking, man, arrayed in excellently-fitting clothes, saying:

”You were goin' out? Don't let me keep you. Look in again!”--even as he deposited a tightly-rolled silk umbrella in the waste-paper basket, and tenderly balanced his gleaming hat upon the edge of the writing-table, and chose, by the ordeal of punch, a comfortable chair, as a man prepared to remain. Saxham, pus.h.i.+ng a cigar-box across the consulting-room table, asked after Lady Hannah.

”First-rate! Seems to agree with her, having a one-armed husband to fuss over!”

”She won't have a one-armed husband long,” returned Saxham, not unkindly, glancing at the bandaged and strapped-up limb that had been shattered by an expanding bullet, and was neatly suspended in its cut sleeve in the s.h.i.+ny black sling.

”By the Living Tinker! she's had him long enough for me!” exploded Bingo, who seemed larger and fussier than ever, if a thought less pink. ”So'd you say if they tucked a napkin under your chin at meals, and cut your meat up into dice for you, and you'd ever tried to fold up your newspaper with one hand, or had to stop a perfect stranger in the street, as I did just now outside your door, and ask him to fish a cab-fare out of your right-hand trouser-pocket if he'd be so good? because your idiot of a man ought to have put your money in the other one.”

”You're lookin' at my head,” pursued the Major, ”and I don't wonder. She's been and given me a fringe again. 'Stonis.h.i.+ng thing the Feminine Touch is.

Let your servant part your hair and knot your necktie, and you simply look a filthy bounder. Your wife does it--and you hardly know yourself in the gla.s.s, and wonder why they didn't christen you Anna-Maria. Not bad weeds these, by half! You remember those cigars of Kreil's and the thunderin'

price me and Beauvayse paid for 'em, biddin' against each other for fun?”

The big man blew a heavy sigh with the light blue smoke-wreath, and added: ”And before the last box was dust and ashes, poor old Toby was! And that chap Levestre--never fit to brown his shoes--is wearing 'em; and 'll be Marquess of Foltlebarre when the old man goes. Queer thing, Luck is--when you come to think of it?”

Saxham nodded and looked at the clock. A dull impatience of this large, bland, prosperous personage was growing in him. From the rim the top-hat had left upon his s.h.i.+ning forehead to the tightly-screwed eyegla.s.s that a.s.sisted his left eye; from the pink Malmaison carnation in the b.u.t.tonhole of his frock-coat to the buff spats that matched his expansive waistcoat in shade, the large Major was the personification of luxurious, pampered, West End swelldom, the type of a cla.s.s Saxham abhorred. He had seen the heavy dandy under other conditions, in circ.u.mstances strenuous, severe, even tragic. Then he had borne himself after a simple, manly fas.h.i.+on. Now he had backslidden, retrograded, relaxed. Saxham, always dest.i.tute of the saving sense of humour, frowned as he looked upon the pampered son of Clubland, and the sullen lowering of the Doctor's heavy smudge of black eyebrow suggested to the Major that his regrets for ”poor old Toby!” had been misplaced. The man who had married Miss Mildare could hardly be expected to join with heartiness in deploring the untimely decease of his predecessor.

”Not that it could have come to anything between poor Toby and her if the dear old chap had lived,” reflected Bingo, and wondered if the Doctor knew about--about Lessie? ”Bound to,” he mentally decided, ”if he keeps his ears only half as open as other men keep theirs. Didn't a brace of bounders of the worst discuss the story in all its bearin's, sittin'

behind my wife and Mrs. Saxham in the stalls at the theatre the other night! Everybody _is_ discussin' it now that the Foltlebarres have left off payin' Lessie not to talk, and provided for her and the youngster out of the estate, and Whittinger's given her a back seat in the family....

That family, too!... Lord! what a rum thing Luck is!”

The musing Major cleared his throat, and his large, rather stupid, blonde face was perfectly stolid as he smoked and stared at his host, reminding himself that Beauvayse had been jealous of Saxham, Attached Medical Staff, Gueldersdorp, and had feared that, if the fellow knew of the scratch against him, he might force the running; and recalling, with a tingling of the shamed blood in his expansive countenance, how he--Wrynche--had let Beauvayse into the sordid secret that Alderman Brooker had blabbed. He wondered, looking at the square, set face, whether Saxham had ever really earned the degrading nickname that he could not get quite right. The 'Peg Doctor,' was it?--or the 'Lush Doctor?' Something in that way.... Not that Saxham looked like a man given to lifting his elbow with undue frequency....

”--But you never know,” thought experienced Bingo sagely, even as, in his heavy fas.h.i.+on, he went pounding on: ”The Chief's continuin' the Work of Pacification, and acceptin' the surrender of arms--any date of manufacture you like between the _cha.s.sepot_ of 1870 and the leather-breeched firelock of Oliver Cromwell's time. The modern kind, you find by employin' the Divinin' Rod”--the large narrator bestowed a wink on Saxham and added--”on the backs of the fellows who buried the guns. Never fails--used in that way. And--as it chances--I have a communication to make to you.”

”A communication--a message--from the Chief to me?”

Saxham's face changed, and softened, and brightened curiously and pleasantly.

Major Bingo nodded and cleared his throat. He rebalanced his s.h.i.+ny hat upon the table corner, and said with his eyes engaged in this way:

”I was to remind you--from him--that--not long before the ending of the Siege, a lady who is now a near connection of yours sustained a terrible bereavement through the--infernally dastardly crime of a--person then unknown!”

Saxham's vivid eyes leaped at the speaker's as if to drag out the knowledge he withheld. But Bingo was balancing the glossy triumph of a Bond Street hatter, and looked at it and not at the Doctor, who said:

”You refer to the murder of the Mother-Superior at the Convent of the Holy Way on February the --th, 1900. And you say a person _then_ unknown....

Has the murderer been arrested?”

Major Bingo shook his head.

”He hasn't been arrested, but his name is known. You remember the runner who came in from Diamond Town with a letter for a man called Casey? Not long after--after my wife was exchanged for a spy of Brounckers'?”

”I did not see the man myself,” returned Saxham, ”but I perfectly recollect his getting through.”

Major Bingo said:

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