Part 5

“This,” replied O’Hagan with suppressed ferocity, “that if you are present in another minute I shall send you back again! _Madame!_”—he bowed to La Belle—“kindly remove your property from my friend’s apartment—I would suggest that you deposit it in cold storage—and permit me to say that I had credited you with nicer taste!”

He placed a cigarette between his lips, igniting it with the now white-hot poker.

—————

V. BELCHER THE THOROUGH.

“It is singularly illustrative of the obscure psychology of the lower orders,” said Bernard O’Hagan, “this marrying habit of Continental music-hall artistes. The female of the species may drive, take supper, and accept diamonds from men of pedigree; but she always marries a prize-fighter or a bookmaker. It is a process of natural selection, Raymond. When out of the proceeds of a successful professional career she invests in a husband, she ‘backs her fancy.’ I have known Spanish dancers who were adored by reigning monarchs to have unsavoury husbands concealed in all sorts of filthy alleys; and one lady circus rider to whom I was presented in Budapest proved to be lawfully wedded to a retired Paris sewerman. Zoologically, the habit has interest.”

Our inquiries at the hospital discovered Mr. Brandon to be on the danger list.

“The most promising meeting since I encountered Baron Verneux,” murmured O’Hagan, “indefinitely postponed! The Chevalier Camille d’Oysans will be keenly disappointed. He had made all the necessary arrangements for flying the country!”

We learned that the police were in quest of Mr. Brandon’s assailant. A call at Mr. Alex. Dewson’s hotel provided a surprise.

“I shall not chastise him,” explained my friend. “The depths of his ignorance are pathetic. But I feel it to be my duty to tell him that he is a disgrace to the great nation which includes in its roll of honour the name of Edmond O’Hagan.”

Mr. Dewson could receive no visitors. Captain O’Hagan swept the servant aside and waved to me to follow. It needs something more than a verbal rebuff to exclude O’Hagan—something in the nature of a double-barred iron door or a squad with fixed bayonets.

My friend honoured Mr. Dewson’s apartment. And Mr. Dewson, a heavily bandaged figure hunched up in an armchair by the fire, observed our intrusion with his one visible eye.

“Raymond,” said O’Hagan, as he focussed this crippled apparition, “the ‘Trooper’ has forestalled us again!”

“You bet he has, Captain!” whispered a weak voice.

O’Hagan turned to me.

“In the thoroughness of Mr. Belcher’s method,” he said, “I find something almost admirable, Raymond! The ‘Trooper’ is a loss to the service.”

That he was a loss which speeding Time should rectify, we, being but human, could not foresee. But is it not history how Sergeant Belcher, at a spot not a hundred miles from Ypres, acquired the most coveted distinction in the gift of His Britannic Majesty for rescuing a badly wounded officer under heavy fire? And is it not written in deathless annals that the name of that gallant officer was Captain the Hon. Bernard O’Hagan, V.C., D.S.O.?

EXPLOIT THE FOURTH.

HE BURIES AN OLD LOVE.

EXPLOIT THE FOURTH. HE BURIES AN OLD LOVE.

I. THE LONELY LADY.

That class distinctions are invidious, that one man is as good as another, are theorems which find no place in O’Hagan’s philosophy. His whole life is a protest against such propositions. He complains that there is no badge peculiar to the gentleman; that the latest morning-coat from Savile Row is colourably imitated, and within a week, by Rye Lane, Peckham. Hence, I take it, his broad, black ribbon with the dependent monocle, his purple-lined cloak.

These things are not imitated, and for a simple reason. O’Hagan’s cloak makes no appeal to Peckham, and leaves even Hampstead cold.

O’Hagan holds that to tolerate scurrility from the lower classes is to encourage rebellion, and maintains that the French Revolution was brought about, not by the vices of the nobility, but by its weakness.

“Spare the axe and spoil the people,” he says.

Upon the necessity for a sort of patrician purple, distinctive of the gentleman, he is insistent, and the episode illustrative of this which he is fond of citing is that of the lonely lady of the Strand.

Captain O’Hagan, then, one evening, was swinging westward along that thoroughfare, hatless, as usual, in evening dress, with his purple-lined cloak flying. Idle curiosity induced him to stroll down that narrow, sloping way which terminates in dungeonesque darkness and arches, but which leads one to the stage-door of the Novelty Theatre. At the end of the passage upon which the stage-door opens there may sometimes be found sundry loafers. The inexperienced might assume these to be connected with the Novelty establishment, but would err in so doing. They are connected with a much older establishment; the ancient order of Mouchers.

As O’Hagan came abreast of this place, the sole representative of the ancient order on duty that evening, with a headshake, an upward and a downward glance, and an evil smile, dismissed the inquiry of a young lady who, timidly, had addressed him, and hastened to meet a party of three American comedians as they descended from their car.

The lady, who was quite young, and simply dressed in a dark walking habit, flushed with mortification, and then became very pale as she turned away.

O’Hagan’s blood boiled within his veins. It is such a simple, everyday incident as this which renders him really terrible. He hastened after the lady, who was walking slowly in the direction of Charing Cross, and touched her gently upon the arm.

“Madame—your pardon!”

She turned, startled.

“That fellow at the stage-door was rude to you. I beg, as a favour, that you will grant me permission to reprimand him.”

The lady, unmistakably, was displeased. She was dark, and, as O’Hagan observed with aesthetic appreciation, of a delicately aristocratic beauty.

“You are mistaken. Pray do not trouble.”

(“How,” O’Hagan will ask, “could she be expected to know that a stranger addressing her in the Strand was one in whose discretion she might safely confide? To permit any boor to endue a dress suit is to kill chivalry.”)

“Madame, I beg that you will not misjudge me. I am not mistaken, neither in my surmise nor as to my plain duty. I do not know your name, nor seek to learn it. Mine is Captain O’Hagan. And had you been a flower-seller I should as staunchly have disputed my right to protect you from insult as I do knowing you to be of my own rank.”

She was bewildered. My friend is essentially bewildering. He is not a person whom any man or any woman can hope to snub—to overlook. He comes into one’s life, a tangible proposition, which cannot be ignored; which, unavoidably, must be _dealt with_.

“I do not know you, sir. I really cannot stand here conversing with a perfect stranger.” Then, with a little, half-doubting glance up to the fine eyes: “Are you one of the O’Hagans of Dunnamore?”

O’Hagan bowed as no other man, though you search the courts of Europe, can bow.

“Then, Captain O’Hagan, since you are a gentleman, please forget about the door-porter. Believe me, I have troubles enough without seeking new ones.”

There was pathos in the words, in her low, quivering voice.

“I cannot doubt it. And, since you know my family, you may know that its name stands stainless for seven generations. You should not be here, at this hour, alone. In the absence of a father, of a brother, accept my escort. It is in no way encumbent upon you to accept my friendship, though it would be devoted and disinterested.”

She was biting her lip now, in pathetic perplexity; but there was a new confidence in the glance which she gave him. It was the glance of a woman who sorely lacked a friend, and into whose heart the conviction was stealing that heaven had sent her one.

“You are more than kind, Captain O’Hagan.” Now she met his eyes frankly. Her decision was made. “I am—Lady Brian Dillon.”

(“You see, Raymond,” he has since explained to me, “there was more than mere chance in my unaccountable decision to explore that passage. Fate, my boy—fate!”)

He took the gloved hand which she offered with a pretty embarrassment, and bent over it in his unique, courtier fashion.

“I have never met your husband, Lady Dillon. But his late father, Sir John, was one of my dearest friends. I regard you, now, as that dear friend’s daughter, and since Fate has brought us both here to-night, I regard your interests as a sacred charge. You are in trouble. How can I serve you?”

—————

II. AT THE STAGE DOOR.

I doubt if London could furnish another man—a father confessor excepted—who, in so brief a time, could have learnt from the young Lady Dillon so much of her history as did O’Hagan. Side by side, they paced up and down a comparatively quiet street dipping riverward, and the girl (for she was no more) confided in this man, whom, twenty minutes earlier, she had not known.

Does not that argue eloquently for my friend? Does it not make amends for much that seems harsh in his nature? For although, alas! women often are deceived in men, a woman’s instincts can never err in such case as this; a true woman, as this one, never pours out the trouble with which her heart is bursting, to a knave—to a blackguard. I defy you to confute me. Be it remembered that, by a trick of Fate—or shall we say Providence?—these two had friends in common. Nor be it forgot that, for fifty miles north, south, east and west of Dunnamore, “the honour of an O’Hagan” is a form of oath. But, nevertheless, I maintain that there is something grandly and expansively human—something splendid and true—in the nature of a man whom at such brief acquaintance a good woman _knows_ to be worthy of her confidence. Don’t you agree with me?

“Of course I remember your wedding!” said O’Hagan. “Bless my soul! you were a Miss Sheila Cavanagh! As a child you must have been at Dunnamore many a time! Why! we are quite old friends! You are not married three months, yet?”

“Ten weeks,” replied Lady Dillon, pathetically.

“And simply because your husband, Sir Brian, saw you walking in St. James’s Park with a gentleman——”

“He has not spoken to me—for four days!”—brokenly.

“And now he is waiting on the stage of the Novelty for a Miss Betty Chatterton, late of the Folly Theatre, whom formerly he admired——”

“—He used to go about with her a lot, I know!”

“And this gentleman with whom you were walking?”

Lady Dillon looked away.

“Ah,” said O’Hagan sadly, “you have been indiscreet. He was an old admirer?” (nod). “Persistent, unscrupulous?” (nod)—“and you were sending this fellow about his business?”

She looked up to him as, of old, looked Menippus Lycius to Apollonius of Tyana; as to one omniscient—yet, crowning wonder, as to a favourite brother. Such is the timbre of my friend’s exquisite sympathy. Is it not a divine gift?

“How can you possibly know that?”

“My dear Lady Dillon—you have told me! Does your husband know this person?”

“He knows _of_ him. But he has never even asked me his name. I thought he understood that I did not care and never had cared for the man. Oh! why did I see him? Why did I see him? But I feared that, unless I definitely dismissed him, he would compromise me!”

“My poor child!” He patted her arm, soothingly. There are phases of his patronage which are healing. One absorbs his condescension gratefully, as a penitent receiving absolution from a holy cardinal. “You see, your marriage was a family arrangement, and your husband is uncertain of your affections. This regrettable incident has convinced him—wrongly—that from your point of view it is merely a _mariage de convenance_. His flirtation is a harmless one. He is, I dare swear, eating his heart out! But the pride of the Dillons has him by the throat. My dear little lady—leave him to me!”

She looked up to him wonderingly again; but, with something of the touching confidence of a child, permitted him to conduct her Strandward.

“Captain O’Hagan! I could never, never explain to him! That is why I dare not speak! He would _never_ forgive me for seeing him again—would never understand——”

“Leave it entirely in my hands! _I_ will do the explaining! Simply accept my explanation, and decline in any way to enlarge upon it. You shall not be compromised, because I know you do not deserve it. Neither shall that hare-brained husband of yours compromise another girl out of mere _pique_.”

She said nothing to that. In the Strand, opposite the Novelty:

“That is your car yonder?” asked O’Hagan.

“Oh! don’t let Priestman see me!” cried Lady Dillon. “I was afraid he would see me when I spoke to that wretch at the door!”

“You are perfectly certain that your husband is in the theatre?”

“Yes! yes! I don’t know why I asked that man! But, indeed, I don’t know what possessed me at all! Oh! Captain O’Hagan, I am so miserable!”

“Boy!” said O’Hagan to a passing urchin—“tell the chauffeur of the Rolls Royce yonder, to pull around here!”

Off ran the boy.

“But——” began Lady Dillon.

O’Hagan patted her arm. The chauffeur, having received the boy’s message, could be seen looking in their direction. Presently he walked across to where they stood. Recognising Lady Dillon, he stared; then touched his cap.

“I ordered you to bring the car over,” said O’Hagan, icily.

“Sir Brian”——began the man.

“Did you understand my words?”

The chauffeur ran back, and in a few moments the big car was drawn up to the kerb. O’Hagan placed Lady Dillon comfortably in a cushioned corner.

“Good-night, dear Lady Dillon,” he said. “I will bring Brian home to you very shortly!”

Her wondering, tearful eyes never left his face. To the now deferential though badly embarrassed man:

“Home!” said O’Hagan.

Off moved the smoothly-running car. Whilst she could see him where he stood, Lady Dillon never took her eyes from the tall, cloaked figure of this old friend of old friends and one so newly found, of this astonishing Samaritan who had promised to restore to her the gladness of life. With picturesque head bowed he waited until the Rolls Royce was lost from view, one gloved hand resting upon the heavy ebony cane, the other, ungloved, dangling from two long fingers the monocle dependent on its black silk ribbon.

It is a never-ending source of regret to me that we have no Velasquez to-day. Captain the Hon. Bernard O’Hagan would inspire such an one to a great masterpiece.

My friend returned to the narrow alley-way, descended it, and stood before the unofficial deputy for the baggage-man, whose treatment of Lady Dillon had occasioned his just resentment. In his dealings with such as this, O’Hagan can be terrible. To him he addressed no word.

Dropping his monocle, he seized the fellow by the ear (with his gloved hand) and dragged the agonised face closely to his own haughty countenance. The feat was seemingly performed effortless—such is the outstanding wonder of that Judo, or Higher Jiu-jitsu, whereof Shashu Myuku of Nagasaki is the Grand Master. There are not six Europeans, O’Hagan will tell you, who have been initiated into the occultry of the Japanese super-force.

“You recently insulted a lady who inquired if Sir Brian Dillon had entered the stage-door. Down on your knees, you sot—and beg for pardon!”

Obedient to a power which, seemingly entering at the ear, proceeded thence through every tortured nerve of his person, rendering him helpless, inert, down dropped the big, hulking figure. It chanced that none was there to see. Yet the exhibition was an odd one.

“Repeat, after me, ‘I humbly beg, sir——’”

“Police!” gasped the man, and strove to get at O’Hagan with his hands.

Abruptly he dropped them; his big face grew livid. The Captain, holding the ear in that vice-grip, had merely turned it slightly backward. The man groaned; beads of perspiration started on his brow.

“Repeat, after me, ‘I humbly beg, sir, for the lady’s pardon.’”

Faintly:

“I humbly . . . beg, sir . . . for . . . my Gawd! . . . the lidy’s pardon!”

“And abjectly entreat you to forgive me!”

“And . . . abjec . . . abjec’y entreat . . . you to forgive . . . me!”

“Get up!”

The victim struggled erect. He met the quelling gaze.

“Any repetition of the offence means that my man will wait upon you—and bring a horse-whip!”

The fellow scrambled aside, and raised a quivering hand to his forehead. Captain O’Hagan, swinging his monocle, strode to the stage-door.

—————

III. IN THE DRESSING-ROOM.

To the stage door-keeper said O’Hagan:

“Has Miss Chatterton appeared yet?”

“She has, sir.”

“Is she in her dressing-room?”

“I believe so, sir.”

“Has she a private dressing-room?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is she dressed, yet?”

“She must be, sir. She finished over half-an-hour ago, and a gentleman went up some time since.”

“What number is her room?”

“It’s Number Six, sir, but——”

Captain O’Hagan placed half-a-crown upon the window-ledge and stepped along the passage.

“Excuse me, sir!” The man came running from his box.

O’Hagan turned, glass raised.

“You wished to speak to me?”

“Thank you very much, sir, but I must take your card through first, or——”

“My name is Captain O’Hagan. I have business with Miss Chatterton.” He proceeded, unruffled.

“You’ll get me into trouble, sir——”

O’Hagan, over his shoulder:

“I esteem your regard for duty, my man. Rely upon me.”

He was gone. The door-keeper scratched his head.

Ascending a flight of stone steps, the Captain came to a landing, a door opening upon it. The door was ajar and bore no number, but voices might be heard proceeding from the room beyond. O’Hagan rapped, and opened the door.

Several gentlemen, in several stages of undress, all looked up from their several toilettes.

“I fear I intrude,” said O’Hagan, holding his monocle before his right eye and examining the occupants of the apartment with a kind of genial curiosity. “I wish to find room number six.”

“Next floor, second door,” volunteered a young man in underwear.

“I am indebted.”

O’Hagan withdrew and proceeded upstairs. Room six showed a closed door. O’Hagan knocked.

“Who’s there?” inquired a masculine voice.

O’Hagan entered.

A golden-headed lady, who was arranging a rare exotic in hats upon her elaborate coiffure, fixed wondering eyes upon the intruder. A maid glanced up from where she knelt beside a large basket; and a dark-haired, perfectly groomed young man, of military bearing, rose hurriedly from his seat upon a second and even larger basket.

Captain O’Hagan bowed.

“Miss Chatterton, your pardon. Sir Brian Dillon, I presume? Might I ask you, my good girl”—to the staring maid—“to withdraw.”

He held the door open.

“Here, I say!” burst out Miss Chatterton. “Who are you? What’s it all about——”

“I am Captain O’Hagan. I have a family matter to discuss with Sir Brian; and I wish you, Miss Chatterton, to be present.”

He waved his monocle towards the maid, and then in the direction of the open door. The girl stood up, looked at her mistress, but saw her to be as helpless as herself; looked at the forceful new arrival, and slowly went out. O’Hagan closed the door. Two pairs of wondering eyes followed his every movement. My friend has a singular quality of personality. I believe he could so enter the House of Lords as to visit consternation upon every peer present, and to set the bishops reviewing their pasts with grave misgivings. Bernard O’Hagan is a mannerist of genius.

Sir Brian Dillon cleared his throat.

“If I might venture on a remark,” he said, with an angry gleam in his grey eyes, “what do you want, and who the devil _are_ you?”

O’Hagan wound the black ribbon about his right forefinger.

“I am the gentleman,” he replied, with frigid distinctness, “whom you saw walking with Lady Dillon in St. James’s Park some days ago, and I am here to _demand_ an explanation!”

Have you sometimes, at a proper and sombre social function, dreamed of what would happen if some bold spirit rose up and sang one of Mr. George Robey’s sprightliest songs? Have you even contemplated, in what I may term horrified delight, the effect of a loudly uttered swear-word upon a gathering of elders? This remark of O’Hagan’s produced that sort of effect.

Betty Chatterton slowly sank down into an armchair, never removing her gaze from the last speaker. Sir Brian’s eyes opened wider and yet wider. He bit his lower lip—and took a step forward. He halted.

“_You_,” he began—and his tone was different from that of his normal speech—“_you_ are here, to demand an explanation of _me_! You admit that you are——”

“I beg,” O’Hagan interrupted him, “that you will not refer to my statement as an admission. I am proud of my name, and proud of my friendship with your wife. You have wronged her, and you wrong Miss Chatterton. Particularly, you have wronged _me_. It is for this—for your gross insult to myself—that I am here to call you to account!”

Dillon nearly choked; and his fingers twitched convulsively. He believed, and with a large and generous trust had sought no word from his wife in aye or nay, that it had been another than himself who first had won her love. Later, he believed that his trust had been misplaced, had been betrayed; that the unknown who had played some part, great or small, in her life before he, Brian, came into it, was indeed lord of the kingdom that he madly had thought his own.

Now the usurper stood before him, his attitude neither apologetic nor explanatory—not that of the offender but of the offended! “—To call me to account!” echoed Dillon, in a voice sunken almost to a whisper.

That form of words was the crowning affront of all. It summoned into being the primeval savage which dwells somewhere within every man of Celtic stock. It was this primitive being, whose tribal pride had stifled relenting—denied the woman fair speech and trial—and not the cultured modern man, with whom O’Hagan was come to deal.

“Betty”—Dillon’s speech was thick as that of a drunkard—“would you mind postponing the supper?” He swallowed, dryly. “I will see you—to the car. Forgive me, but to-night——”

“_I_ will see Miss Chatterton to a cab,” interrupted O’Hagan’s icy voice. “I have sent Lady Dillon home in the car. _You_ will await me here——”

Dillon clenched his fists: his nostrils dilated. In that instant my friend came more nearly to an unseemly embroilment than ever in his surprising career.

“Brian!”

Betty Chatterton sprang to Dillon, clutching his arm.

“Miss Chatterton,” continued O’Hagan, “I beg you to accept my escort. It will be better if we go at once.”

She looked from man to man, and grew pale to the lips. Sir Brian glassily stared directly at O’Hagan and ignored the hand that clung to his rigid arm. The girl released her clasp and turned imploring blue eyes upon the Captain.

“Oh, Captain O’Hagan,” she said, “there is some dreadful mistake! If you think—ah! how can I say what I mean? _Will_ you believe me”—she frankly met his gaze—“if I tell you that Sir Brian and I are just chums?” Her eyes were flooded with tears. “He is awfully—dreadfully unhappy about . . .” She laid her hand hesitatingly upon O’Hagan’s arm. “I know you have done him no wrong. Won’t you believe _me_, too? Can’t we be friends?”

(“I had anticipated something altogether more vulgar, Raymond,” O’Hagan recently informed me. “I will confess that I was surprised and delighted. Miss Chatterton had the instincts of a lady and the generosity of a gentleman! A really lovable nature, my boy. That infernal ass deserved nothing so fine as her friendship!”)

The Captain raised her hand to his lips, bending over it with stately courtesy. Again their eyes met—and these two understood one another.

“Betty,” began Dillon, advancing.

She turned to him.