THE SMITHY & NOBBY COLLECTION: 6 Novels & 90+ Stories in One Edition. Edgar Wallace

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      “H. Jones came back with an escort of Boers, an’ was placed under arrest, until the C.O. read the letter that the Boer Commandant sent, then he was released.

      “‘What I can’t understand,’ sez Smithy to me afterwards, is, how is it that these two chaps, who never took any notice of one another—’

      “But I stopped old Smithy because I knew what he was going to say.

      “Friends are friends,’ I sez, ‘an’ brothers are brothers — ,’ then I stopped too, for what more can you say than that?”

22. The Ghost of Heilbron Kopje

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      Nobby Clark, by all showing, is a man of great humanity. I have known him to do things that would make him very angry did be know I knew.

      I have seen him, on a certain march — which lasted some six weeks, and was the most fatuous, futile, and wicked operation of the whole war — share his scanty rations with a man he hated. I have seen him by sickbeds as tender as a woman. It is said that in a certain fight on the Vaal River, where the grass caught fire, and the wounded lay helplessly sizzling in the flames, he and Private Smith went again and again into this perfect hell of torment to carry their wounded fellows to safety.

      It is said, too, and, I do not doubt, with truth, that they lied their way out of a Victoria Cross, stoutly affirming that they took no part in the rescue, and persisting in the statement that those who thought they saw them were suffering from hallucinations, or, as Nobby put it coarsely, were drunk.

      Knowing that deep down in the bottom of his heart Nobby Clark is a sentimentalist, and that away back in the base of his brain he is a shrewd, commonsense individual, the story of the ghost of the Hussar officer leaves me in an unsatisfactory condition of doubt. Is it Nobby’s heart or Nobby’s head that directs the recital? The facts, such as he gives me, I offer to the world in general, and the Psychical Research Society in particular.

      “Me father,” said Private Clark, by way of introduction, “was a feller who believed in ghosts. We used to have a family ghost when we lived at Clark’s Hall, Bermondsey, but it was seized for rent, along with our other valuables.

      “It used to walk the picture-gallery in the east wing,” said Nobby, with a faraway look in his eye, an’ father was very proud of it. Some said it was the ghost of Sir Guy de Clark, who was executed at Tower Hill; some said it was the ghost of Bill Clark, who was executed at Newgate; some said it was rats, an’ I expect one of the three ideas was right.

      “Nobody ever saw it but father, because it was one of them snobbish ghosts that never appeared to common people.

      “Father used to see it on Christmas night, an’ that was always a sign for mother to send for the doctor.

      “Hullo, Clark,’ sez the doctor, ‘ been seein’ that ghost of yours?’

      “‘Yes, sir,’ sez father.

      “‘Hum!’ sez the doctor, feelin’ his pulse, ‘did u see anythin’ else?’

      “‘Yes, sir,’ sez father. ‘I saw a lot of pink beetles an’ a mouse with an elephant’s head.’

      “Then the doctor would write his prescription, an’ father would be a teetotaller for months an’ months.

      “If I said our family ghost was pinched for rent, I’m bein’ what you might call exaggeracious. What happened was that father got an execution in for rent, an’ him an’ the broker’s man got into a friendly argument as to how much whisky a man can drink without dyin’. Father went down to the grocer’s an’ swapped two coal tickets for two bottles, an’ the broker’s man obligingly sat down to prove his words…. It seems that he saw our ghost, an’ the ghost must have took a likin’ to him, for the broker’s man wouldn’t talk about anything but that ghost an’ the other animals he saw for days an’ days after. It was bad business for the broker’s man, because whilst he was in his trance father an’ mother got all the furniture out of the house an’ disappeared.

      “I never took much stock of ghosts meself, an’ didn’t believe in ’em till the South African War.” Nobby was silent for a little while, and his face grew suddenly serious and old looking.

      “If you think what I’m goin’ to tell you is a lie, you needn’t be frightened to tell me,” he said. “I don’t understand the rights of it meself, an’ don’t expect I ever shall.

      “When we was in South Africa, durin’ the second half of the war, we went down to a place called Heilbron in the O.R.C.*

      [* Orange River Colony.]

      “There had been fightin’ there, but the only fight we saw was between Darkie Williams an’ Tom Sparrer of ‘G’ for the championship of the Anchesters, Darkie winnin’ in two rounds owin’ to his havin’ filled his boxin’ glove with sand.

      “But De Wet was in the neighbourhood, browsin’ round, an’ though we never got a shot at him, there was enough excitement in the possibility of his getting’ a shot at us that we were kept fairly busy. There was another regiment at Heilbron at the time — the Warwicks I think it was, or the ‘8th of Kings’ — an’ they’d been there long before we were.

      “In a station like Heilbron all sorts an’ kinds of duty had to be done; there were guards, pickets an’ outlyin’ pickets, flyin’ sentries an’ patrols, an’ if a chap wasn’t on one, he was on another, but I did every one of ’em before it came to me duty to do flyin’ sentry. Me beat was two miles long, from the base guard to ‘Hussars Kopje.’

      “It was called ‘Hussars Kopje’ because in one of the early fights of the war the Hussars took this little hill after a fight in which they lost an officer.

      “Flyin’ sentry isn’t such a bad job, partly because a feller was on his own. He could have a smoke, an’ so long as he covered the ground, an’ kept his eyes open, he was doin’ all that was expected of him.

      “It was a lonely walk over a deserted bit of country, but the night I went on flyin’ sentry duty there was a full moon.

      “Three men an’ a corporal, that was the flyin’ guard, an’ we took over duty from the other regiment.

      “Just before the old guard marched off, one of the fellows sez: —

      “‘Don’t any of you fellers go up “Hussars Kop.”’

      “‘For why?’ I sez.

      “‘Because of the ghost,’ sez the feller, it’ll probably scare you chaps, bein’ new to the game.’

      “‘If it don’t scare a woolly-headed Warwickshire cow-chaser,’ I sez politely, it won’t scare a feller of the Dashin’ Anchesters.’

      “‘You’ll dash all right,’ sez the Warwick, when that ghost comes after you.’

      “Soon after this the Warwicks marched off.

      “‘Don’t СКАЧАТЬ