Grit Lawless

Chapter Twenty One.

Late that afternoon, with their scant belongings, Lawless and his companion drove into Stellenbosch in the broken-springed buggy which, after much persuasion, they had induced the owner of the farm to which the Zulu woman had led them to hire out to them.

The difficulty had arisen, not from disinclination to oblige a stranger, but on account of having no spare hand to act as driver. In the end the farmer drove them himself, not because he could best spare the time, but because he knew he was least likely to waste it. He and a small son of the house harnessed the horse, while Lawless looked on, and Tottie waited in the shade of the stoep where the farmer’s wife sewed, and eyed her askance, responding distantly to her tentatives towards conversation.

Afterwards she observed to her husband: “I was glad you gave in over the buggy. It was a relief when that woman was out of sight. One could have grown a crop of mealies in the dirt on her face, only nothing so wholesome could thrive in such rubbish. I didn’t see her left hand because she kept her gloves on; but if there was a wedding-ring on every finger, I’d know she wasn’t married to that man. It’s one of those cases one recognises by instinct.”

“The man’s no good either,” the farmer answered... “Been fighting—unless he drinks, and she mauled him like that when he couldn’t defend himself. She looks capable of it... She’s fond of him too. Did you notice how she helped him into the cart, seeing he was a bit sick?”

“Oh, that!” The wife looked unconvinced. “She’s probably afraid of him when he’s sober; he’s a savage-looking man.”

“Well, I’m glad we’re quit of them,” he returned. “One’s best without neighbours if one can’t have them respectable... But they paid me well.”

“Ah! he’s one of that sort,” she responded... “more money than morals. The want of money’s a curse, and the having it is a curse as often as not.”

“The latter,” her husband said, smiling, “is a curse that would be to my taste.”

She smiled too.

“That’s because you know you’ll never have it, you old stodger, you.”

Lawless learnt on inquiry after arriving in Stellenbosch that Denzil and Van Bleit had separated, the former having departed earlier for the coast, while Van Bleit had left only a quarter of an hour before they arrived. He had taken a ticket for Worcester.

“That, then, is my destination,” Tottie announced, when he told her the result of his investigations.

“Better take a ticket for a couple of stations beyond, and work your way back to Worcester,” he advised.

“Not a bad idea,” she returned readily. “But I’m going to stay a couple of days here with you before running after Karl.”

“What for?” he asked. “It’s losing time.”

“You’re a bit keen to get rid of me, Grit,” she said.

He wheeled round abruptly and took her by the arm.

“Don’t get any of those fool ideas into your head,” he said quickly. “When we’ve put this job successfully through, we’ll go on the spree together—to Jo’burg, or anywhere you’ve a fancy for. You’re a first-class chum.”

She flushed with pleasure even through the paint, and emitted a little awkward laugh.

“I’d enjoy that more than enough. Just ourselves, and no need for this fooling round. But I’d like to stay and do first aid for twenty-four hours, anyhow... You won’t go down to the coast with your face like that?”

“Then, stay,” he said, giving in with the spiritless manner of a man unequal to further contention. “I’ll be glad enough of your company. I’m stiff and sore and jolly well out of conceit with myself. If anyone can reinstate me in my own opinion it’s you.”

They put up at the hotel, and Tottie, whose ideas of first aid were practical if crude, was only deterred from putting them into effect by Lawless’ irritable refusal to be touched. He bathed his sore and swollen face himself with warm water, and swore at the stiffness and its unfamiliar contours. In the morning the face was even less comfortable than on the day of assault, and he could not see out of one eye. But he was firm in insisting that Tottie should start on her journey. He bought her ticket and saw her off by the train. She parted from him reluctantly, and leaning half-way out of her compartment as the train was moving out, called to him:

“Go and see a doctor, Grit. I don’t like that eye of yours.”

He nodded to her, and because he was in haste to be rid of the inconvenience of his injury, took her advice; and for the next few days was forced to go about wearing a shade, to his no small discomfort and disgust.

As soon as he was able to dispense with the shade he started for Cape Town.

A strong south-east was blowing when he reached the capital. The pavements were greasy and wet, and the sticky thickness of the atmosphere, laden with salt and a mist that swept in from the sea, clung to his garments, and wetted his face and hair as with fine rain. He took a cab and drove to his hotel. The management seemed relieved to see him back. There had been several inquiries, and one or two letters had arrived during his absence. These they could not forward, having no address.

He took the letters and went to his room with them. They were for the greater part unimportant, bills most of them. There were one or two personal communications, and one imperative epistle marked, “Private. Please Forward,” from Colonel Grey. The wording of it was brief:

“Dear Mr Lawless,—I stand in urgent need of your services and advice. Kindly report yourself at the earliest possible.—Yours faithfully, F.W. Grey.”

Lawless glanced at the date of the letter; it was more than a month old. He smiled drily. Doubtless Colonel Grey would consider it a tardy response were he to present himself at the bungalow that night, and yet there could be no more prompt compliance with a command.

He changed his dusty garments, dined, and having no inclination for walking on so damp and boisterous a night, hired a taxi and drove the mile and a half to the quiet road where Colonel Grey’s bungalow stood in its wild, luxuriant garden behind the undipped hedges of plumbago. He dismissed the taxi, and walking up the path to the stoep made for a window where a light was burning, and tapped upon the glass. There was an immediate response from within. Lawless heard someone move and walk heavily across the floor, then the French window was flung wide, and Colonel Grey himself stood in the aperture facing him with an expression of cold surprise and inquiry in his look.

“I got your letter,” Lawless explained, “to-night. I am here in accordance with the request contained in it.”

“Come inside.”

Colonel Grey moved aside for him to pass, and, closing the window, sat down. It was not the same room in which Lawless had been received before; that, on the other side of the hall, had been locked since the shooting affray. He dropped into an easy-chair opposite his host. He was tired with travelling and was glad to stretch his limbs, but the older man, with his ingrained ideas of discipline, taking note of the relaxed attitude, drew his own inference. He frowned as he sat straighter himself.

“After all this while I had given up every expectation of seeing you again,” he said in a curt manner that betrayed his disapprobation. “You have not, I imagine, brought me any special news?”

“I have not,” Lawless answered. “All the happenings have been going forward here during my absence. I have come to receive, not to give, explanations.”

The frown on the Colonel’s brow showed heavier and more fierce. He sat forward and stared at the speaker, who, still relaxing his inert muscles, lay indolently back in his chair.

“Damn your impudence!” he said. “What do you mean by that?”

“Why,” asked Lawless imperturbably, “were you so anxious a month ago for my services and advice?”

“It was before Van Bleit’s trial I wrote that letter... If you’d been on the spot we’d have hanged the brute.”

“And why was my presence necessary to the carrying out of justice?”

The Colonel pulled savagely at his moustache. He was thinking, not so much of his present annoyance, but of the chance he believed had been lost of getting hold of the letters. He had come to consider it a practical certainty that had Lawless remained at his post success would have been achieved. He looked at the thin, scarred face, at the indolent grace of the outstretched limbs, and his strong sense of indignation, of having been somehow defrauded, increased. He had paid well for this man’s services; he had a right to command them.

“Plainly, I couldn’t hang him before getting hold of the letters,” he said. “It might have been defeating my own ends. Had you been on the spot—as I had every right to expect you to be—we could have recovered them.”

“Do you happen to know where they are?” Lawless asked.

“Denzil had them then... And Denzil without Van Bleit would be easy to deal with.”

The man lounging in the chair suddenly sat up.

“You’ve been misinformed,” he said. “Denzil never had those letters at any time in his charge. Van Bleit doesn’t trust him... he’s wise not to. We’ve assumed too much because Hayhurst got hold of them once... That is the first and only time Van Bleit has risked having them in his possession. Those letters are safe—where you and I can’t get them. Van Bleit alone can touch them.” He laughed shortly. “The search has narrowed considerably since we met.”

“What the devil are you driving at? ... You talk as though you know where the letters are,” the Colonel said sharply.

“So I do, man... They’re in the Bank, of course.”

“In the Bank!” There was silence for a few seconds. Then in a voice that had lost its quick tone of authority Colonel Grey asked quietly: “How do you know?”

“Know! I don’t know... And yet I do know. Where would you keep important papers that you feared might be stolen? ... where would I? ... In the Bank, of course. I wonder we never thought of it before. It was Hayhurst misled us. Because he got hold of them, we took Van Bleit for a fool—which he isn’t... Scoundrel every inch of him, but no fool. I had it from himself that the letters were safe from us. He didn’t mean to give me a clue... I jumped to it. I’ve had him staying with me since his acquittal.”

He laughed mirthlessly at the expression of astonishment in his listener’s face, and, as though the recollection of his recent meeting with Van Bleit excited him, got up from his chair and took a turn the length of the room, and then came back.

“I thought I had a good game on... that I had only to get hold of Van Bleit and the letters were mine,” he said. “You nearly upset my plans by that unexpected move of yours which cost so dear in the end... As it chanced, it wouldn’t have mattered had you frustrated them altogether. What made you interfere, as you did, when you had entrusted me with the affair?”

He paused in front of the Colonel, and waited for his answer, regarding him fixedly with his keen, penetrating eyes. The Colonel appeared, not so much unequal, as disinclined to reply.

“I thought you had lost your head,” he said at last. “Your manner of leaving Cape Town was not calculated to inspire confidence.”

“And that’s the reason you failed to pay the amount agreed upon into my account last month?”

“That was my reason—yes.” He stared back into the dominating, inscrutable grey eyes, and his own were stern and unyielding. “You’ve come to me to-night with a request for more money, I suppose?”

“I have. I’m short—in debt, in fact. I must have something at once to go on with.” There was a perceptible pause. The Colonel ended it.

“I’m not paying for work that isn’t performed,” was his curt response to this appeal. “You’ll have to satisfy me that you are earning your pay before you get anything further. Suppose you give an account of what you have done up to the present,—of what you purpose doing in the near future that justifies a further outlay. There has been nothing but a verbal agreement between us, which is no more binding on one side than on the other—save for the final agreement you hold for a sum down when you deliver, or cause to be delivered, the packet of letters into my hands. When I undertook to make you a monthly allowance, it was on the understanding that you pursued your quest with conscientious persistence; there was no question of leisure for the following of your amusements. I have not been exacting in demanding hitherto a full account of service rendered in exchange for money received. It has occurred to me that you might have given a fuller account than you have done unasked.”

“Probably I should have,” Lawless replied, “had I not been perfectly aware of the distrust with which you regard me, which you have never succeeded in controlling or concealing since you first engaged my services. You have—whether intentionally or not, I can’t say—insulted me more than enough. You have openly questioned my honesty. And you expect me to swallow all that—for a consideration... And I do swallow it... Why? ... I hardly know... For the consideration, perhaps.”

He moved away to the window, halted there, and turned sharply upon his heel.

“You want to hear what I’ve done,” he said, coming back, and hovering uncertainly between a small table on which a lamp burnt and the chair from which he had risen. He was too excited to seat himself. Colonel Grey watched him curiously, the old struggle between liking for the man and distrust of him still battling for the supremacy. It was odd that, in spite of the distrust, in face of prejudice, the liking remained. “I’ve been in the Stellenbosch district ever since leaving Cape Town—”

“Alone?” interrupted the Colonel.

“Not alone—no! ... I went there solely on your business—”

“With a companion?”

Lawless swore at this further interruption.

“Damn it! ... yes,” he answered almost violently.—“On your business—with a companion. And, what’s more to the point, that same companion is following up Van Bleit now.”

The Colonel leant forward and stared at the speaker aghast.

“That—that woman!” he spluttered.

“Have a care!” Lawless said curtly. “The agent that I have employed is working for my sake, not for yours; and is likely to prove more successful than either you or I could hope to be at the present stage of affairs. Van Bleit recognises an enemy in me.”

“I won’t have it,” the Colonel shouted. “You were not justified in employing an agent on your own authority... A—woman like that is not to be trusted on such a delicate mission. The letters would be as dangerous in her possession as they are in Van Bleit’s... You are a fool if you believe she would hand them over to you... She mustn’t be allowed to get hold of them.”

“She won’t,” Lawless replied calmly. “You forget, I tell you he hasn’t them in his charge.”

“How can you possibly be sure of that? ... And if it’s true, where’s the use in following him?”

“At our first meeting,” Lawless reminded him, and took one of his short sharp turns between the table and chair and back again, “when I undertook this job, I told you that if I failed in getting the letters I would kill your man... That’s what I’m after now. I’m keener on it than on anything else.”

Colonel Grey sat back in his seat and crossed one knee over the other.

“You need reminding in your turn that you are not paid to follow your inclination... Will you please go on with the story? I am curious to learn how it came about that Van Bleit boasted to you that the letters were out of our reach. What grounds have you for assuming such a statement to be true?”

“Grounds!” Lawless laughed again, with a savage sound in the mirth. His mind had reverted to the scene on the veld in the early morning when Van Bleit had sat with a revolver covering him, and a murderous finger crooked round the trigger. “I have had what I believed to be those letters in my hands—a dummy packet got up in order to trick me. I fell into the trap with an ease that astounds me when I think of it. I’ve been flogged like a Kaffir—by Van Bleit... bound by the wrists and lashed.” He touched his inflamed and injured eye. “I haven’t recovered the proper use of that yet,” he said. “I doubt that I ever shall. What little self-respect I had he has deprived me of... Perhaps that’s why I don’t care a damn when you openly question my honesty. That’s a full report of my doings, up to the present. I am now waiting until my decoy has got Van Bleit in tow—then I am going to face him again.”

He fell to pacing the floor once more with his hands clasped behind him, and his eyes filled with an expression of uncontrollable hate.

“When a man holds life cheaply—as I do,—when he’s nothing to look forward to, and very little to look back upon, he makes an ugly enemy... You know something—not much, but still something—of my past. As I’ve gone along Life’s High Road there has been a hand occasionally to rest in mine for a brief while; but at the first stumble it has been withdrawn,—not one has ever clasped mine more firmly to help me over the difficulties in the way... I’m not whining to you in self-excuse. I’ve knocked up against hard facts all my life... I’m hard myself, which may account for much. If it were not for a military training, I should probably hit you in the face when you accuse me of applying to my own use the money I have received from you. As it is, I ask you to withdraw that charge. It’s possibly the only creditable thing I have achieved in life, but I have managed to steer clear of fraud.”

He put a hand in his breast pocket, and, withdrawing a notebook, took from between its leaves a paper which he tossed upon the table.

“There’s the agreement you referred to a while since... You can tear it across; it’s not worth the paper it’s written on. I’ll stick to my part of the bargain. I’ll get the letters for you, if they’re to be got. But I want no other reward than the squaring of my account with Van Bleit. For the rest—the funds to go on with—”

The Colonel stopped him with a gesture, and, rising, crossed to a desk near the window. He unlocked a drawer, took from it a cheque-book, and drawing up a cheque in Lawless’ favour, and signing it, passed it to him with a pen to fill in the amount. Lawless supplied the figures.

“The usual sum,” he said... “And a month in arrears.”

Colonel Grey nodded. Then he re-locked the desk and rose.

“I have doubted you,” he said. “I admit it. But—”

“Oh! what in hell does it matter?” Lawless interrupted roughly. “I don’t know why I have grown so suddenly sensitive on the point of my honour... And what’s the use of words? You would probably skirt the question as nicely as a politician, but the fact remains—you distrust me still.”

Later, when he was alone, the Colonel pondered the subject for an hour while he smoked before retiring to bed. Did he absolutely distrust the man? Were not his suspicions wearing down? He had no knowledge what was wearing them—certainly not that ill-considered act on Lawless’ part in throwing up the formal agreement between them. He picked up the agreement, but instead of tearing it across, he locked it away in the desk. Its repudiation had been the final struggle after the respect he had spoken of as lost to him on the part of one who had wanted above all else to stand well in this man’s regard, and who felt that he had failed in that as in most things.