A Veldt Official Part 28

"No, no. I don't mean to lay down quite such a hard and fast rule," was the more yielding reply, for this deft plurality imported into the p.r.o.noun was disconcerting. "What I would dwell upon, however, is the strong desirability of returning to the town to sleep, unless detained by unforeseen circ.u.mstances, such as stress of weather, or anything else which is absolutely unavoidable."

"I shall remember your wishes in the matter, sir," said Roden, in his habitual tone of studied and ceremonious politeness, which was the best commentary on the state of relations existing between himself and his new superior.

But although there was a show of reason in the other's objection, the real ugly motive was manifest--viz., petty annoyance, and the thought of how, at his time of life, his means of existence, or at any rate of that which made existence tolerable, should be dependent on his capacity for eating dirt at the hands of such a mean-minded sn.o.b as this Shaston, was bitter and galling to the last degree. The thing was getting past a joke, past all bearing, in fact. Should he endeavour to arrange a transfer? Mr Van Stolz might be able to help him in this. But then he hated to ask anything of anybody: besides, he did not choose to allow himself to be driven out of the place; to yield the ground; to own himself beaten. And then there was Mona.

Mona, the bright beacon star that had arisen upon the grey blankness of his latter-day life. Mona, whose sweet, entrancing spells had woven around the hard granite of his cynical and desolate heart a glittering network of golden sun-rays. Mona, whose secret lore had welled forth warm in its dazzling wares what time he hung helpless over the yawning jaws of death, and the power of whose marvellous love triumphing over the material forces of Nature itself, had again availed to save him.

How could he, of his own act, think of leaving her, of going where day after day, week after week, even month after month, nothing would remain of her but a memory? Better endure a little discomfort; better exercise a further stretch of self-control. And then as he thought how sudden had been the change from the former happy circ.u.mstances of life, to this wherein his hand was against every man and every man's hand against him, and life was pa.s.sed in a state of on the defensive, a cold, grey presentiment shot across his heart. What if it were but the precursor of another change? Nothing lasts; least of all, love.

Thus musing, and not looking where he was going, he ran right into somebody. A hearty laugh drowned his apologies. Looking up he found he had collided with Father O'Driscoll.

"You're the very man I wanted to meet," said the old priest, the first greetings over. "See now, Mr Musgrave. D'ye mind stepping round to my place for a moment. I'm in want of a stable-boy, and a fellow has just come to be taken on, but he seems rather lame in one leg. He says you know him, and will recommend him."

"I?" echoed Roden in some astonishment. "Does he know me?"

"He does. And--well, here we are."

A st.u.r.dy, thick-set Kaffir was squatting against the gate-post of the priest's house. He rose rather stiffly as they entered, uttering a half-shy and wholly humorous greeting as his eyes met Roden's, his dark face and s.h.i.+ning white teeth all ablaze with mirth, which indeed the other fully shared, remembering how and where they had seen each other last. For in the aspirant for stable duty in the ecclesiastical establishment, he recognised no less a personage than Tom, _alias_ Geunkwe.

"Hallo, Tom! Where have you dropped from? Damaged leg, eh?"

"Been away to see my father, _Baas_," answered the Kaffir, grinning all over his face. "An ox kicked me on the leg, but it will soon be well."

"An ox kicked you, did it?" said Roden, with a half laugh; for he shrewdly suspected the hoof of that ox to have been of very small size, and made of lead. And the Kaffir laughed again, for he knew that Roden was not deceived.

"You know him? Is he honest now?" said Father O'Driscoll.

"Thoroughly, I believe. What's more, he's a man of his word. I am telling Father O'Driscoll you are a man of your word, Tom," said Roden, translating into Dutch, and speaking with a meaning not lost upon the Kaffir.

"I am your child, chief," replied the native. "_Au_, I would like to serve the old _Baas_. He looks kind."

"Well, Tom, I'll take you on so," said the priest. "Go round now, and see after the horse at once; for faith, it's a long ride the poor beast has just come off. By the way," he added, turning to Roden as the Kaffir departed, "I seem to have seen him somewhere before. Has he been with any one here?"

"He was with that arch-sweep, Sonnenberg, who employed him to do a particularly dirty trick, and got 'had' sweetly in return, as you would be the first to allow if I were to disclose it. There is another thing I might reveal which would convince you that in defining Tom as a man of his word I was speaking no more than the literal truth, only I promised him never to mention it. You have got a right good boy in him, Father O'Driscoll, and if I had any use for a boy I'd employ him myself."

"Oh, I'm quite satisfied, I a.s.sure ye, Mr Musgrave. Many thanks for your trouble."

Thus Tom obtained the best place in Doppersdorp, and Roden was able in some slight measure to requite the loyalty and good faith of the _ci-devant_ savage warrior, who might, by breaking his word, have delivered him over on that memorable morning to a violent and barbarous death.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

LAMBERT MAKES A DISCOVERY.

Lambert's predecessor in the district-surgeoncy of Doppersdorp had an odd hobby--viz., a mania for taking in newspapers representing, not only all parts of the British Empire, but other sections, wild or tame, of the known world. Now, nothing is so c.u.mbersome and s.p.a.ce-devouring as files of old newspapers, wherefore those acc.u.mulated by Dr Simpson had, by the time of that estimable pract.i.tioner's departure, come to take up the whole available s.p.a.ce afforded, by two fair-sized rooms.

At this time, however, it occurred to Lambert that he had custodied this bulky collection of bygone journalism about long enough, wherefore, he wrote to his predecessor suggesting its removal. But the answer he received was to the effect that the cost and trouble of such removal would be too great, and that he might consider these musty old files henceforward his own property, the merit of which endowment being somewhat negative, in that it empowered the recipient to destroy the c.u.mbersome gift; and to such destruction Lambert forthwith resolved to proceed, yet by degrees; for it could not be that among all these records he should fail to find other than a great deal of highly interesting and, from time to time, strange and startling matter. So Lambert would frequently lug in some dusty old file, which, having duly shaken and in a measure cleansed, he const.i.tuted a companion to his evening pipe. For reading matter was deplorably lacking in Doppersdorp--the contents of the "public library," so called, consisting mainly of ancient and heavy novels, soporific and incomplete, or the biographies of divines, sour of habit and of mind narrow as the "way"

they were supposed to indicate.

Lambert had his reward, for these old records reaching back a decade-- two decades--judiciously scanned, were interesting, undeniably so.

There were representative papers issued in the Australian colonies, in New Zealand, in India and America, and in no end of lands beside.

Lambert resolved, before accomplis.h.i.+ng his projected wholesale destruction, to scissor out such incidents as were worth preserving, and to set up a sc.r.a.p book; the main difficulty about this resolve lying in the formidable ma.s.s of matter from which he felt called upon to select.

But while solving this problem, Lambert was destined to receive a shock, and one of considerable power and magnitude.

He was seated alone one evening, looking through such an old file. The paper was an American one, published in some hardly known Western towns.h.i.+p. Its contents were racy, outspoken, very; and seemed of the nature to have been written by the left hand of the editor, while the right grasped the b.u.t.t of the ever-ready "gun." But in turning a sheet of this Lambert suddenly came upon that which made him leap in his chair, and stare as though his eyes were about to drop from his head to the floor. This is what he read:--

"The Crime of Stillwell's Flat.

Portrait of the Accused.

Sordid Affair.

He Tomahawks his Partner for the sake of Four Hundred Dollars.

The Man with the Double Scar.

Clever Arrest."

Such were some of the headings in bold capitals, which, distributed down the column, about summed up the facts of the case, but only cursory attention did Lambert at first pay to these. Not by them had his eye been originally attracted, but by the portrait which headed the column.

For this portrait, mere pen-and-ink sketch as it originally had been, was a most vivid and unmistakable likeness of Roden Musgrave.

Yes, there it was, the same clear-cut features, the same carriage of the head--the artist seemed not merely to have caught his expression, but even the characteristics of his very att.i.tude. And--surer, more convincing than all--the same double scar beneath the lower lip. Two men might wear the same marvellous resemblance to each other, but no two men could possibly do so to the extent of both being marked with that peculiar double scar. That, at any rate, rendered the ident.i.ty complete, and beyond all room for doubt.

"The man with the double scar!" repeated Lambert to himself. "Holy Moses! Am I drunk, or dreaming? No. It's him all right," pa.s.sing his hand over his eyes in a semi-dazed manner. "No two people could be so extraordinarily alike, and Musgrave's is the sort of face that can't have many 'doubles' in the world. Now to see what they say about it."

Breathlessly he ran his eye down the column. The facts, as reported, fully justified the opening definition of the crime as a sordid one, if proved against the accused; and that there might be no mistake whatever as to the ident.i.ty of that critically situated personage with the present a.s.sistant magistrate of Doppersdorp, he figured in the trial, simply and without disguise, under the name of Roden Musgrave.

With dazed eyes, Lambert read on. Briefly summed up, the heads of the affair were these. Two prospectors established themselves on a claim together at Stillwell's Flat, a lonely spot beneath a northern spur of the Black Hills. Their names were respectively, John Denton and Roden Musgrave, and both were supposed to be Englishmen. One morning Denton was found in the slab hut occupied by the pair, with his head cleft nearly in twain, and beside him a bloodstained axe, and worse still, his throat was cut from ear to ear. The wandering cattlemen, by whom the discovery was made, described the place as like a slaughter-yard. A ferocious and brutal crime, indeed! The motive? Robbery, of course.

The dead man, who was something of a gambler, was known to have taken back from the nearest towns.h.i.+p upwards of four hundred dollars he had won, and of this sum no trace could be found. The perpetrator?

Denton's partner, of course, who had disappeared.

Had disappeared to some purpose, too; for a long and vigorous search failed to elicit the slightest clue to his whereabouts, and as the searchers were mostly experienced plainsmen, it was concluded that he was no longer above ground, had probably been killed or captured by the Sioux, who were "bad" about there just at that time.

Then, a couple of months later, when the affair was beginning to fade out of mind, possibly eclipsed by some other and similar tragedy such as from time to time occurs to relieve the monotony of life in the "wild and woolly West," the missing man was unexpectedly arrested on board a Mississippi steamboat--arrested simply and solely on the identification of that double scar, for his description had been so far circulated-- arrested and sent back for trial. And lucky indeed for him that a long enough period had elapsed to enable the excitement to die down; for, had he been found during the first days of it, he would probably have had no trial at all. He would almost certainly have been lynched. Not that it could matter in the long ran. The crime was not only a sordid and brutal one, it was also a clumsy one; in fact, about the clumsiest on record. The murderer had knotted the noose round his own neck. No loophole of escape had he, and, this being so, public opinion was, for once, in favour of the law being allowed to vindicate itself. Such vindication there was no need to antic.i.p.ate in short and summary fas.h.i.+on.

Lambert, his pulses beating, his hands trembling with excitement, rapidly turned over the sheets of the file. What if the report of the trial should be missing? That would be too vexatious. Yet that it had ended favourably to the accused was clear, since here he was. Stay!

Had he escaped prior to it being held? Lambert felt that if that were so, why then, he held in his hand not only the prospects and social position of his enemy but the latter's very life. Yet it could not be, since Musgrave had made no attempt at changing his name. And then, for the first time, it occurred to Lambert to glance at the date of the file. The affair had taken place just ten years previously.

Ten years? Why, the portrait might have been taken that day. Ten years? Ah, the accused might have been found guilty on a lesser count, and sentenced to imprisonment only. That indeed would be the best of all, and Lambert fairly thrilled with delight over the prospect of breaking the news to Mona Ridsdale that the man she had preferred to himself was only an ex-gaol bird who had "done time," and who would, of course, now that he was unmasked, be promptly kicked out of the Government Service. Would he never find what he wanted? Ah! There it was.

"The Stillwell's Flat Murder.

Trial of the Accused.

Lawyer Schofield's Eloquent Defence.

Judge McClellar sums up.

Verdict of Acquittal.

The boys talk about Lynching."

Acquittal? Down went poor Lambert's house of cards, crumpled in the dust. His discovery could not damage his enemy now. Still, as he read the final report of the trial and its result, he thought he saw light.

For the acquittal, under the circ.u.mstances, and obtained as it had been, amounted to a verdict of "not proven" far more than to one of "not guilty."

And the way in which it had been arrived at was ingenious. The evidence against the accused was merely presumptive; indeed, it was no evidence at all. He admitted having quarrelled with the deceased and left him, but totally denied the murder. Moreover, he had satisfactorily explained his movements since. Why had he not returned when wanted?

Ah, well now. It was not completely outside knowledge that innocent men had before then been sacrificed at times of popular clamour. But there were two cards which the lawyer for the defence held in his hands, and upon which he mainly relied. The axe-blow which had slain the murdered man had split his head nearly in two, yet his throat had been cut. Now the latter act was quite superfluous, was, in fact, an act of deliberate and cold-blooded barbarity, to which his client, even if he did the killing, would hardly be likely to bring himself. The fact of the dead man's throat being cut pointed to murderers of a very different type.

Everybody knew that the tribal mark of the Sioux was cutting the throat, which never failed to distinguish the victims of their barbarity. Well, the Sioux were "bad" around there just then, and Stillwell's Flat was a lonely place; in fact, it was in following the trail of several Indians who had run off some of their steers, that those very cattlemen had happened upon the spot. True, the man was not scalped, but possibly the Indian murderers had been alarmed, and decamped before completing that revolting essential to their barbarous work.