Part 26 (1/2)
The huge manacled prisoner emerged, and shuffled awkwardly towards the inner room, closely attended by his armed escort.
Slavin and Yorke, seated together at one end of the table, arose as Gully entered. Standing curiously still, as if carved in stone, their bitter eyes alone betraying their emotions, silently they gazed at the huge, gaunt, unkempt figure that came shambling towards them.
Gully halted and stared long and fixedly at the relentless faces of the two men whose grim, dogged vigilance had led to his undoing. Over his blood-streaked, haggard face there swept the peculiar ruthless smile which they knew so well; and he raised his manacled hands in a semblance of a salute.
”_Morituri te salufant_!” he muttered in his harsh, growling ba.s.s--the speech nevertheless of an educated man.
”Eh, fwhat?” queried Slavin vaguely. The cla.s.sical allusion was lost on him, but Kilbride and Yorke exchanged a grim, meaning smile as they recalled the ancient formula of the Roman arena. McSporran pushed forward a chair, into which Gully dropped heavily. Chin cupped in hands, and elbows resting on knees he remained for a s.p.a.ce in an att.i.tude of profound thought. The inspector, resuming his chair at the table, motioned his subordinates to be seated, and reached forward for some writing materials.
”All right, now, Gully!” he began, in a hard, metallic tone. ”What is it you wish to say?” All waited expectantly.
Apparently with an effort Gully roused himself out of the deep reverie into which be had sunk, and for a s.p.a.ce he gazed with blood-shot eyes into the calm, stern face of his questioner. Then, with a sort of dreamy sighing e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, he roused himself and, leaning back in his chair, began the following remarkable story. He spoke in a recklessly earnest manner and with a sort of deadly composure that startled and impressed his hearers in no little degree.
”Listen, Inspector,” he said. ”A good deal of the story I'm going to tell you has no bearing on the--the--the--case in hand. There's no use in you taking all this down. I understand procedure”--he smiled wanly--”therefore, with your permission I'll go ahead, and you can construct a brief statement on your own lines afterwards, which I will sign.”
Kilbride bowed his head in a.s.sent to the other's request.
”The name I bear now,” began the prisoner,--”'Ruthven Gully'--is my real name, though knocking around the world like I've been since I was a kid of sixteen, and the many queer propositions I've been up against in my time, why--I've found it expedient to use various aliases.
”For instance”--he eyed the inspector keenly--”I wasn't known as 'Gully'
that time Cronje nailed us all at Doornkop, Kilbride, in 'ninety-six. . . .”
Kilbride uttered a startled oath. Shaken out of his habitual stern composure he stared at the man before him in sheer amazement. ”Good G.o.d!” he cried, ”The 'Jameson Raid!' . . . Now I know you, man!--you're--you're--wait a bit! I've got it on the tip of my tongue--Mor--Mor--Mordaunt, by gad! . . . that's what you called yourself then. Ever since I sat with you on that case I've been turning it over in my head where in ever I'd fore-gathered with you before. It was your moustache which fooled me--you were clean-shaven then. . . Well, Well! . . .”
He was silent awhile, overcome by the discovery. ”Aye!” he resumed in an altered voice, ”I've got good cause to remember you, Mor--Gully, I mean.
You certainly saved my life that day . . . when we were lying in that _donga_ together. I was. .h.i.t pretty bad, and you stood 'em off. You were a wonderful shot, I recollect. I saw you flop out six Doppers--one after the other.”
He turned to Slavin. ”Sergeant!” he said quietly, ”You'd better leave the leg-irons on, but remove his handcuffs--for the time-being, anyway. . . .” He addressed himself to the prisoner with a sort of sad sternness. ”It's little I can do for you now, Gully . . . but I can do that, at least. . . .”
Slavin complied with his officer's request. Gully's huge chest heaved once, and he bowed his head in silent acknowledgment of Kilbride's act of leniency.
”All right! go ahead, Gully!” said the latter.
The prisoner took up his tale anew. ”As I was saying--I left the Old Country when I was sixteen. No need to drag in family troubles, but . . . that's why. . . . Well! I hit for the States. Montana for a start off, and it sure was a tough state in 'seventy-four, I can tell you. That's where I first learned to handle a gun. I knocked around between there and Wyoming and Arizona for about nine years, and during that time I guess I tackled nearly every kind of job under the sun, but I punched and rode for range outfits mostly.
”Then I was struck with a fancy to see the South, and I drifted to Virginia. I'd been there about two years, working as an overseer on a tobacco plantation, when I got a letter from our family's solicitor recalling me home. My eldest brother had died, and the estate had pa.s.sed on to me. Where, Inspector?--why, it was at Castle Brompton, a quiet little country town in Worcesters.h.i.+re.
”Well! I'd had a pretty rough training--living the life of a roustabout for so many years, and I guess I kind of ran amuck when I struck home. I played ducks and drakes with the estate, and the end of it was . . . I got heavily involved in debt. There seemed nothing for it but to up-anchor, and to sea again in my s.h.i.+rt. So, my fancy next took me to Shanghai, where I obtained a poorly-paid Civil Service job--in the Customs. I stuck that for about a year, and then I pulled out--disgusted. The next place I landed up in was, if anything, worse--the Gold Coast. From there I drifted to the Belgian Congo. I was there for nearly two years doing--well! perhaps it's best for me not to enter into details--we'll call it 'rubber.' It's a cruel country that--one that a man doesn't exactly stay in for his health, anyway; for a bad dose of fever nearly fixed me. It made me fed up with the climate and--the life. So I pulled out of it and went down country to the Transvaal. That's how I came to get mixed up in 'The Raid,' Inspector.
I was in Jo'burg at the time it was framed up, so I threw in my lot with the rest of you.
”Suddenly I had an overwhelming desire to go back to the States and the range life again. I was properly fed up with Africa. So--back I went there--to Montana again. I punched for one or two cow-outfits awhile, and then came a time when a deputation of citizens came and put it up to me if I'd take on the office of Deputy-Sheriff for ---- County, where I happened to be working. I suppose the fact of my being a little more handy with a gun than most had impressed some of them. Things were running wild there just then, and for awhile I tell you, I was up against a rather dirty proposition. I and my guns certainly worked overtime for a stretch, till I got matters more or less s.h.i.+p-shape. I had the backing of the best people in the community luckily, and eventually I won out.
”Then--when the inevitable reaction set in with the peaceable times that followed, somehow I managed to get in bad with some of them. They had no more use for me or my guns. I was like a fish out of water. I decided to pull out, for a strange hankering to see England and my old home again came over me. So I resigned my office and headed back to the Old Country. . . .”
At this point in his narrative, Gully dropped his head in his hands and rocked wearily awhile ere continuing haltingly: ”It was the mistake of my life--ever going back--to a civilized country. For a time I strove to conduct myself as a law-abiding British citizen--to conform to the new order of things, but--I had been amongst the rough stuff too long. I was out of my sphere entirely.
”One day, in a hotel at Leeds, I got into a violent quarrel with a man--fellow of the name of Hammond. It was over a woman. He insulted me--in front of a crowd of men at that--and finally he struck me.
Hitherto I'd taken no back-down from any man living, and I guess I forgot myself then and kind of ran amuck--fancied I was back in Montana again.
Consequence was--I threw down on him in front of this crowd and shot him dead.
”Of course I was arrested and charged with murder in the first degree; but as it was adduced at my trial that I'd received a certain amount of provocation, I was sent down for fifteen years. I'd done little over six months of my time in Barmsworth Prison when I and two of my fellow convicts framed up a scheme to escape. It takes too long to go into details how we worked it. I made my get-away, though I had to abolish a poor devil of a warder in doing so. The other two lost out. One got shot and the other was caught some days later--as I read in the papers.