SIR EDWARD LEITHEN'S MYSTERIES - Complete Series. Buchan John

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СКАЧАТЬ he asked, and the answer came back, garnished with much profanity, that it was his——leg.

      “I’m dashed sorry. Look here, this fight is off. Let me get you out and see what I can do for you.”

      The man, sullen but quiescent, allowed himself to be pulled out and laid on a couch of heather. Lamancha had feared for the thigh or the pelvis and was relieved to find that it was a clean break below the knee, caused by the owner’s descent, weighted by his antagonist, on an ugly, sharp-edged stone. But, as he looked at the limp figure, haggard with toil and poor living, and realised that he had damaged it in the pitiful capital which was all it possessed, its bodily strength, he suffered from a pang of sharp compunction. He loathed John Macnab and all his works for bringing disaster upon a poor devil who had to earn his bread.

      “I’m most awfully sorry,” he stammered. “I wouldn’t have had this happen for a thousand pounds…” Then he broke off, for in the face now solemnly staring at him he recognised something familiar. Where had he seen that long crooked nose before and that cock of the eyebrows?

      “Stokes,” he cried, “You’re Stokes, aren’t you?” He recalled now the man who had once been his orderly, and whom he had last known as a smart troop sergeant.

      The navvy tried to rise and failed. “You’ve got my name right, guv’nor,” he said, but it was obvious that in his eyes there was no recognition.

      “You remember me—Lord Lamancha?” He had it all now—the fellow who had been a son of one of Tommy Deloraine’s keepers—a decent fellow and a humorous, and a good soldier. It was like the cussedness of things that he should go breaking the leg of a friend.

      “Gawd!” gasped the navvy, peering at the shameful figure of Lamancha, whose nether garments were now well advanced in raggedness and whose peat-begrimed face had taken on an added dirtiness from the heat of the contest. “I can’t ‘ardly believe it’s you, sir.” Then, with many tropes of speech, he explained what, had he known, would have happened to Lord Claybody, before he interfered with the game of a gentleman as he had served under.

      “What brought you to this?” Lamancha asked.

      “I’ve ‘ad a lot of bad luck, sir. Nothing seemed to go right with me after the war. I found the missus ‘ad done a bunk, and I ‘ad two kids on my ‘ands, and there weren’t no cushy jobs goin’ for the likes of me. Gentlemen everywhere was puttin’ down their ‘osses, and I ‘ad to take what I could get. So it come to the navvyin’ with me, like lots of other chaps. The Gov’ment don’t seem to care what ‘appens to us poor Gawd-forgotten devils, sir.”

      The navvy stopped to cough, and Lamancha did not like the sound of it.

      “How’s your health?” he asked.

      “Not so bad, barrin’ a bit of ‘oarseness.”

      “That explains a lot. You’ll have consumption if you don’t look out. If you had been the man you were five years ago you’d have had me on my back in two seconds…I needn’t tell you, Stokes, that I’m dashed sorry about this, and I’ll do all I can to make it up to you. First, we must get that leg right.”

      Lamancha began by retrieving the rifle. It was a light, double-barrelled express which fortunately could be taken to pieces. He had some slight surgical knowledge, and was able to set the limb, and then with strips of his handkerchief and the rifle-barrel to put it roughly into a splint. Stokes appeared to have gone without breakfast, so he was given the few sandwiches which remained in Lamancha’s pocket and a stiff dram from his flask. Soon the patient was reclining in comparative comfort on the heather, smoking Lamancha’s tobacco in an ancient stump of a pipe, while the latter, with heavy brows, considered the situation.

      “You ought to get to bed at once, for you’ve a devil of a bad cough, you know. And you ought to have a doctor to look after that leg properly, for this contraption of mine is a bit rough. The question is, how am I going to get you down? You can’t walk, and you’re too much of a heavy-weight for me to carry very far. Also I needn’t tell you that this hill-side is not too healthy for me at present. I mean to go down it by crawling in the open and keeping to the gullies, but I can’t very well do that with you…It looks as if there is nothing for it but to wait till dark. Then I’ll nip over to Crask and send some men here with a stretcher.”

      Mr Stokes declared that he was perfectly happy where he was, and deprecated the trouble he was giving.

      “Trouble,” cried Lamancha, “I caused the trouble, and I’m going to see you through it.”

      “But you’ll get nabbed, sir, and there ain’t no bloomin’ good in my ‘aving my leg broke if Claybody’s going to nab you along of it. You cut off, sir, and never ‘eed me.”

      “I don’t want to be nabbed, but I can’t leave you…Wait a minute! If I followed Wattie—that is my stalker—down to the Doran I could send a message to Crask about a stretcher and men to carry it. I might get some food too. And then I’ll come back here, and we’ll bukk about Palestine till it’s time to go…It might be the best way…”

      But, even as he spoke, further plans were put out of the question by the advent of six men who had come quietly through the Beallach from the Sanctuary, and had unostentatiously taken up positions in a circle around the two ex-antagonists. Lamancha had been so engaged in Stoke’s affairs that he had ceased to remember that he was in enemy territory.

      His military service had taught him the value of the offensive. The new-comers were, he observed, three navvies, two men who were clearly gillies, and a warm and breathless young man in a suit of a dapperness startling on a wild mountain. This young man was advancing towards him with a determined eye when Lamancha arose from his couch and confronted him.

      “Hullo!” he cried cheerfully, “you come just in time. This poor chap here has had a smash—broken his leg—and I was wondering how I was to get him down the hill.”

      Johnson Claybody stopped short. He had rarely seen a more disreputable figure than that which had risen from the heather—dissolute in garment, wild of hair, muddy beyond belief in countenance. Yet these dilapidated clothes had once, very long ago, been made by a good tailor, and the fellow was apparently some kind of a gentleman. He was John Macnab beyond doubt, for in his hand was the butt-end of a rifle. Now Johnson was the type of man who is miserable if he feels himself ill-clad or dirty, and discovers in a sense of tidiness a moral superiority. He rejoiced to have found his enemy, and an enemy over whom he felt at a notable advantage. But, unfortunately for him, no Merkland had ever been conscious of the appearance he represented or cared a straw about it. Lamancha in rags would have cheerfully disputed with an emperor in scarlet, and suffered no loss of confidence because of his garb, since he would not have given it a thought. What he was considering at the moment was the future of the damaged Stokes.

      “Who’s that?” Johnson asked peremptorily, pointing to the navvy.

      His colleagues hastened to inform him. “It’s Jim Stokes,” one of the three navvies volunteered. “What ‘ave you been doing to yourself, Jim?” And Macnicol added: “That’s the man that was to keep movin’ along this side o’ the hill, sir. I picked him, for he looked the sooplest.”

      Then the faithful Stokes uplifted his voice. “I done as I was told, sir, and kep’ movin’ all right, but I ain’t seen nothing, and then I ‘ad a nawsty fall among them blasted rocks and ‘urt my leg. This gentleman comes along and finds me and ‘as a try at patchin’ me up. But for ‘im, sir, I’d be lyin’ jammed between two stones СКАЧАТЬ