"Laddie, what are ye going to do to me?" he said, when opposite the barracks. "Kill you," I said briefly, "or hand you over to your wife. Be quiet." He would not obey. He talked incessantly sliding in one sentence from clear-cut dialect to wild and drunken jumble. At the Albert Hall he said that I was the "Hattle Gardle buggle," which I apprehend is the Hatton Garden burglar. At Kensington High Street he loved me as a son, but when my weary legs came to the Addison Road Bridge he implored me with tears to unloose the straps and to fight against the sin of vanity. No man molested us. It was as though a bar had been set between myself and all humanity till I had cleared my account with Bruggiesmith. The glimmering of light grew in the sky; the cloudy brown of the wood pavement turned to heatherpurple; I made no doubt that I should be allowed vengeance on Brugglesmith ere the evening. At Hammersmith the heavens were steel-grey, and the day came weeping. All the tides of the sadness of an unprofitable dawning poured into the soul of Brugglesmith. He wept bitterly, because the puddles looked cold and houseless. I entered a half-waked public-house-in evening dress and an ulster, I marched to the bar-and got him whisky on condition that he should cease kicking at the canvas of the ambulance. Then he wept more bitterly, for that he had ever been associated with me, and so seduced into stealing the Breslau's dinghy. The day was white and wan when I reached my long journey's end, and, putting back the hood, bade Brugglesmith declare where he lived. His eyes wandered disconsolately round the redand-grey houses till they fell on a villa in whose garden stood a staggering board with the legend "To Let." It needed only this to break him down utterly, and with that breakage fled his fine fluency in his guttural northern tongue; for liquor levels all. 66 "Olely lil while," he sobbed. "Olely lil while. Home falmy-besht of falmies wife, too— you dole know my wife! Left them all a lil while ago. Now everything's sold-all sold. Wifefalmy - all sold. Lemmegellup!" I unbuckled the straps cautiously. Brugglesmith rolled off his resting-place and staggered to the house. "Wattle I do?" he said. Then I understood the baser depths in the mind of Mephistopheles. "Ring," I said; "perhaps they are in the attic or the cellar." "You do' know my wife. She shleeps on soful in the dorlin'-room waitin' meculhome. You do' He took off his boots, covered them with his tall hat, and craftily as a Red Indian picked his way up the garden path and smote the bell marked " Visitors" clinched fist. "Bell sole too. bell this? I can't a severe blow with his Sole electick bell! Wassor riggle bell," he moaned de pull it hard," I repeated, keeping a wary eye down the road. Vengeance was coming, and I desired no witnesses. "Yes, I'll pull it hard." He slapped his forehead with inspiration. "I'll pull it out." Leaning back, he grasped the knob with both hands and pulled. A wild ringing in the kitchen was his answer. Spitting on his hands, he pulled with renewed strength, and shouted for his wife. Then he bent his ear to the knob, shook his head, drew out an enormous yellow-and-red handkerchief, tied it round the knob, turned his back to the door, and pulled over his shoulder. Either the handkerchief or the wire, it seemed to me, was bound to give way. But I had forgotten the bell. Something cracked in the kitchen, and Brugglesmith moved slowly down the doorsteps, pulling valiantly. Three feet of wire followed him. 66 'Pull, oh, pull!" I cried. "It's coming now!" "Qui' ri'," he said. "I'll riggle bell." He bowed forward, the wire creaking and straining behind him, the bell-knob clasped to his bosom, and from the noises within I fancied the bell was taking away with it half the woodwork of the kitchen and all the basement banisters as it came up. "Get a purchase on her," I shouted, and he spun round, lapping that good copper wire about him. I opened the garden gate politely, and he passed out, spinning his own cocoon. Still the bell came up, hand over hand, and still the wire held fast. He was in the middle of the road now, whirling like an impaled cockchafer, and shouting madly for his wife and family. There he met with the ambulance, the bell within the house gave one last peal, and bounded from the far end of the hall to the inner side of the hall door, when it stayed fast. So did not my friend Brugglesmith. He fell upon his face, embracing the ambulance as he did so, and the two turned over together in the toils of the never-sufficiently-to-be-advertised copper wire. "Laddie," he gasped, his speech returning, "have I a legal remedy?" "I will go and look for one," I said, and, departing, found two policemen, whom I told that daylight had surprised a burglar in Brook Green while he was stealing lead from an empty house. Perhaps they had better take care of that bootless thief. He seemed to be in difficulties. I led the way to the spot, and behold! in the splendour of the dawning, the ambulance, wheels uppermost, was walking down the muddy road on two stockinged feet- was shuffling to and fro in a quarter of a circle whose radius was copper wire, and whose centre was the bell-plate of the empty house. Next to the amazing ingenuity with which Brugglesmith had contrived to lash himself under the ambulance, the thing that appeared to impress the constables most was the fact of the St. Clement Danes ambulance being at Brook Green, Hammersmith. They even asked me, of all the people in the world, whether I knew anything about it. * ** * * * ** * They extricated him; not without pain and dirt. He explained that he was repelling boarding-attacks by a "Hattle Gardle buggle" who had sold his house, wife, and family. As to the bellwire, he offered no explanation, and was borne off shoulder-high between the two policemen. Though his feet were not within six inches of the ground, they paddled swiftly, and I saw that in his magnificent mind he was running — furiously running. Sometimes I have wondered whether he wished to find me. |