THE COMPLETE JIM MAITLAND SERIES. H. C. McNeile / Sapper

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СКАЧАТЬ that he was looking over her head—upstairs. For just a second I caught a glimpse of Raymond Blair, staring at him beseechingly—his hands locked together in agonised entreaty; then the vision vanished, and once more Jim was looking gravely at the girl with a strangely tender expression in his eyes.

      For two or three minutes she continued—speaking with cold, biting scorn—and Jim never answered a word. As I said, she seemed to have forgotten our existence; her world consisted at the moment of the poor derelict upstairs and Jim Maitland—the man who had made him drunk. Once MacAndrew did stick in his oar to affirm that it was his gin, and she brushed the remark aside contemptuously. MacAndrew and I were nothing to her; only Jim Maitland counted.

      "Have you anything to say—any excuse to make?" she asked at length, and he shook his head.

      "You cur," she whispered very low. "Oh, you cur!" Then without a backward glance she went up to her room like a young queen and we heard the door close. And after a while he turned to us with a little twisted smile on his face.

      "It's better so," he said gravely, "much better so."

      But MacAndrew was not so easily appeased.. His sense of fair play was outraged, and he said as much to Maitland.

      "He's lied—yonder swine," he growled. "He's lied to her after his promise to you. She should be told."

      The smile vanished from Jim Maitland's lips, and he stared very straight at the Scotchman.

      "The man who tells her," he said quietly, "answers for it to me."

      And with that he swung out of the hotel.

      * * * * *

      Thus ended my first meeting with Jim Maitland. We left in the boat next day, and I saw him leaning over the stern staring at the island till it was but a faint smudge on the horizon. Then he went to his cabin and I saw him no more till the following morning. He sat down at ten o'clock and played poker for six hours without a break: won a hundred and fifty pounds, and rose from the table with the concentrated weariness of all hell in his eyes. And two days later he left the boat.

      It was six months before I saw him again. I was up in Nagasaki and he lounged into the bar just before dinner. He greeted me as if we had parted the day before—that was one of his peculiarities—and we took our cocktails outside. And after a while he looked at me with a faint smile.

      "Been back to Tampico, Leyton?"

      "No," I answered. "Have you?"

      "Just come from there." He took out his pocket-book. "There's an additional ornament in the island."

      He handed me a photograph, and I stared at it in silence. It was the cemetery with its rows of little wooden crosses. But in the centre rose a big white stone cross, and on the cross was written:

      IN LOVING MEMORY OF RAYMOND BLAIR

      "How long ago did it happen?" I asked.

      "He lasted three months—and he nearly broke her heart. But she stuck it—and she never complained. MacAndrew told me. And when it was over she went home to England."

      "Why don't you go after her?" I said quietly, and Jim Maitland stared at the cherry tree opposite.

      "You cur," he said below his breath. "Oh, you cur! Man, I can hear her now. And I'd have given my hopes of heaven for that girl."

      "Then you're a fool," I answered. "Go back to her." But he shook his head.

      "She wouldn't understand, old man; she wouldn't understand. No— I'm a wanderer born and bred: and I shall wander to the end. But it's a funny life sometimes—isn't it?—a damned funny life."

      He glanced at his watch. "What about some dinner?"

      And it was over the coffee that the conversation took a personal turn. The death of an uncle in England had made me independent, and I was at a loose end. I had half made up my mind to go back home by the States and buy a small property, and Maitland shrugged his shoulders as I said so.

      "You'll be able to do all that when you're fifty," he remarked. "Why do it now?"

      "What else is there?" I asked.

      He looked at me thoughtfully.

      "Care to join forces with me?" he said at length. "As I said before, I'm a wanderer, and I go whenever and wherever the spirit moves me. But I enjoy life."

      It took me one second to decide.

      "I'd like it immensely," I said, and he nodded as if pleased.

      "Good," he remarked, holding out his hand. "We'll have some fun. There's a tramp going tomorrow for Colombo and the Mediterranean, and the skipper is a pal of mine. We might go in her."

      "Where to?" I asked.

      "Heaven knows," laughed Jim. "We'll get off when we feel inclined."

      "Right you are," I said. "I'll get my kit sent down."

      "How much have you got?" he demanded.

      "A couple of trunks and a hand grip."

      "I'd leave the two trunks and take the grip," he remarked. "A man can go round the world with a spare set of underclothes and a gun, you know."

      I suppose I stared at him a little blankly, for he laughed suddenly.

      "There's plenty of time for you still to take that property in England, old man."

      That night the trunks were dispensed with.

      II. — THE KILLING OF BARON STOCKMAR

       Table of Content

      WE left that tramp at Alexandria—though Heaven knows why. Going up the Red Sea we fully made up our minds to go on in her as far as Gib., and pop over from there to Africa, where Jim assured me that trouble was brewing.

      But going through the Canal we changed our minds—or rather Jim did.

      "I want to go to Shepheard's," he announced, "and see all the tourists buying genuine Egyptian scarabs. I own shares in the factory that makes. them."

      So we went to Shepheard's, and when the soul of the capitalist was satisfied with what he saw, we adjourned to the bar to find a chubby-faced youth eating salted almonds and consuming something that tinkled pleasantly in a glass. "Hullo, Pumpkin," cried Jim cheerfully from the door. "Order two more of the same."

      "Jim!" shouted the drinker. "Jim! This is a direct answer from Providence. I would sooner see you at this moment than the shores of England."

      "A fiver is the utmost I can manage," remarked Jim gravely. "And in the meantime let me introduce—Dick Leyton—Captain Peddleton—otherwise known as Pumpkin, owing to his extreme slenderness—a Bimbashi of repute."

      Peddleton nodded to me, and we all three drew up to the bar.

      "Jim," СКАЧАТЬ