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

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СКАЧАТЬ of the Great Ones will be very glad to see you. Are you doing anything in the immediate future?"

      "Nothing to write home about," said Jim. "I might take a tram and go out and see the Pyramids by moonlight."

      "Dry up," laughed the other.

      "My dear boy," answered Jim, "there's a fat woman in the lounge there, wearing five veils, who is going to do it tonight. Surely with such an example—"

      "Jim," interrupted the other seriously, "I'm not joking." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "It's a little Secret Service job south of Khartoum. It won't take long, but you're one of the few men in the world who can do it."

      Jim grunted non-committally.

      "Will you come up and see the Chief this afternoon?" continued the other, only to break off suddenly and stare at the door. "Good Heavens!" he muttered, "what have we here?"

      Coming into the bar was the most unpleasant-looking individual I have ever seen in my life. His height must have been at least six feet three, and he was broad in proportion. His face seemed set in a permanent scowl, which deepened to a look of positive fury as he saw us staring at him. He possessed a straggling black beard, which did not improve his appearance, and his great arms, abnormally long, terminated in two powerful hands which were so covered with black hair as to be positively repulsive. In short the man looked like a huge gorilla dressed in clothes.

      Now, as luck would have it, Jim was nearest to him as he came up to the bar. He had his back turned, and was on the point of resuming his conversation with Peddleton, when the newcomer—either by accident or design—shoved into him heavily, so heavily that Jim, who was quite unprepared, lurched forward and spilt his drink. But for our subsequent discoveries of the gentleman's character, I would have been inclined to think it was accidental. In view of what we afterwards found out, however, I have not the slightest doubt that the thing was done deliberately. It appeared that he wanted the high stool which was just behind Jim, though there were several others vacant. In fact the bar was empty save for the four of us.

      As I say, it was unfortunate, because I would sooner play tricks with a man-eating tiger than with Jim if he gets angry. His face went white and his eyes blazed ominously, then he turned round slowly. And the newcomer was about to sit down. He did, heavily—on the floor. It is an old trick for which I have distinct recollections of having been severely beaten at my preparatory school. Rumour has it that removing a chair just as a person is about to sit down on it is apt to damage that person's spine. And, judging by the way the floor shook, the damage in this case must have been considerable, though it certainly did not produce unconsciousness. In fact, I have witnessed many unpleasant scenes in my life, though the one that followed lives ever in my memory.

      The man's face was purple as he got up from the floor, and for a moment or two he stood there plucking at his beard and swallowing hard. His lips were working as if he were trying to speak and could not: his great hairy hands kept clenching and unclenching. And quite motionless, sitting on the stool that had caused the trouble, Jim stared at him through his eyeglass. To all appearances he was as cool as a cucumber, but I noticed the danger signals were out. A little pulse was hammering in his temple, and he was white round the nostrils—a sure sign of trouble with Jim. In fact, in a few seconds the atmosphere that breeds murder had arisen in the bar at Shepheard's Hotel.

      "Was it you who pulled my stool away?" asked the man at length in a guttural voice which shook so that we could scarcely hear what he said.

      "Was it you who deliberately barged into my back, upset my drink, and failed to apologise?" retorted Jim icily.

      And then the man broke loose. Every vestige of self-control left him. He cursed, he swore, he used the foulest language—and all the time Jim watched him unblinkingly. The barman with a terrified look on his face had beckoned to me when it started, and from him I found out the gorilla's name.

      "It's Baron Stockmar," he whispered to me, "and he goes mad if he's crossed. For God's sake, sir, get your friend out of it! He ain't a man—the Baron; he's a devil in human form."

      And assuredly there was a good deal of truth in what the barman said. This thick-voiced, foul-mouthed brute was not a man—he was a maniac. Many less dangerous cases have been locked up in madhouses for life; men whom no warder would dare to go and see alone. But as to removing Jim, I would as soon have tried to remove a leopard from its kill.

      He had put down his drink on the bar beside him and was standing up. His breath was coming a little faster than usual, but his eyes never left the other's face. Not a word had he spoken; not a word did he speak even when the Baron gave up generalities and became personal. And it wasn't until the Baron admitted that it had been no accident but an intentional insult when he entered the bar, and launched into his private opinions of Englishmen in general and Jim in particular, that Jim did anything. Then like everything Jim did, it was clean and decisive, and showed the perfect fighting man that he was.

      The Baron's great head was thrust forward, the last foul insult was not cold on his lips, and his two hands were coming up slowly towards Jim, when there came the sharp, crisp noise of two billiard balls meeting. With every atom of weight in his body behind the blow, Jim Maitland struck Baron Stockmar on the point of his jaw—and Jim, at one period of his life, had held the Amateur Heavyweight Championship of Great Britain. And the Baron crumpled up, like a horse that is shot through the brain, and toppled over backwards.

      For a moment we stood there watching the heavily breathing, unconscious figure, and then for the first time we realised that an excited and terrified crowd of spectators had thronged in at the door.

      "Get him out of here, Leyton," said Peddleton urgently in my ear. "There's going to be trouble over this, and we must get to the Chief at once."

      So one on each side of him we formed up, and Jim was grinning.

      "I think," he murmured happily, "though I wouldn't swear to it, that I heard his jaw break."

      "Come on, Jim, old man," said Peddleton insistently.

      "There are reasons, very important reasons, which I'll explain as I go along. Oh! yes—you can come back afterwards and finish him off...Rather."

      We dragged him through the crowd at the door, casting longing glances over his shoulder at the man who still lay prostrate on the floor— and we rushed him into the street.

      "Confound you!" he said, stopping at the entrance to the hotel. "Why are you taking me away? That swine hasn't apologised yet."

      "Doesn't matter, old man," laughed Peddleton. "For the next few hours he'll be too busy wondering whether a horse kicked him in the jaw or not to bother about apologising."

      Still arguing and protesting he suffered us to pull him along, and not till we turned into the mess at Kasr-el-Nil, did Peddleton breathe freely again.

      "Sit down, Jim," he said, "and get outside a whisky and soda. I want to talk to you for a moment, and then I'm going to take you straight up to the Chief. I didn't realise when that swine first came into the bar who he was. Then I heard what the barman told Leyton. He's a gentleman about whose coming we've been warned. We were told he had a peculiar temper; we were not told that he was a raving maniac. And there are diplomatic reasons, Jim, which render it a little unfortunate that you removed that seat just as he was going to sit down."

      "Well, what the deuce did he want to barge me in the back for?" demanded Jim angrily.

      "I know, old man—I know," said Peddleton soothingly. "Personally, I've never been so pleased in my life as when СКАЧАТЬ