Part 6

“Stay where you are, Brian,” she said, with a sudden note of command. “You must see that I don’t want to be mixed up in your quarrels. And—Captain O’Hagan is right. We cannot expect the world to understand us. You shouldn’t have come here to-night. No, I’m not angry with you, silly boy—but it wasn’t fair to me. I can see that, now. You had nearly made a big mistake, Brian. Good-bye.”

She held out her hand, firmly. Dillon turned away.

“All right,” she said, and shrugged her shoulders. “You’ll know I was a real pal one day.”

She leant lightly upon O’Hagan’s arm; and the two left the room. She smiled bravely as they passed the stage door-keeper and bade him cheerily good-night.

(“Gad, Raymond!” says O’Hagan, “that girl was a brick; for she was every bit as much in love with Dillon as Dillon was in love with his wife!”)

—————

IV. THE SNOWS OF THE YUKON.

O’Hagan, with some research, recently established the fact, in the case of Betty Chatterton, that “there was good blood on the mother’s side.” I fancy he slept better after that. As a child of the people (I use my friend’s phraseology) Miss Chatterton was a disturbing element in the Captain’s philosophy.

He turned to the dressing-room. Let us accompany him.

On the landing stood the maid.

“Please, sir,” said she, timidly, “may I go in and finish packing the basket?”

“Presently, my good girl,” replied the Captain, “presently.”

Sir Brian Dillon was seated where O’Hagan first had found him. He was smoking a cigarette. His face was somewhat pale.

He rose, as the Captain entered, and very deliberately threw the cigarette into the tiny hearth. To any but a student of indications, he must have appeared quite composed. O’Hagan knew it to be otherwise. Yet he was unprepared for Dillon’s action. Dillon, silently, leapt at him across the room!

I say he was unprepared. In a certain sense he was. But, on the other hand, a pupil of Myuku is never unprepared. O’Hagan dropped his cane, instinctively (the Higher Jiu-jitsu is essentially instinctive). He grasped the fist which whizzed within half an inch of his right ear, performing one of those lightning movements unachievable by any other man of my acquaintance. He thrust it up. He twisted it to the right—down—and doubled the arm behind Dillon’s back. Daintily, he clasped the other wrist and held the left arm inert, outstretched at an angle of forty-five from his opponent’s side.

This, you may know, is a simple trick, which can be performed, with luck, by several members, individually, of the Metropolitan and City Police forces.

Dillon made one attempt to break away—and then stood still, looking back across his shoulder at O’Hagan.

“By God, I’ll kill you!”

There was something shocking in the murderous intent which beaconed from his eyes.

“Later, you shall be afforded every opportunity. But, first, you must hear me. Shall I release you?”

No humiliation can equal that which it is in the power of the expert Jiu-Jitsuist to inflict. An enraged man, though he be outclassed, overweighted, may fight to the last and keep his pride. But this supreme inertia, this being petrified, posed as for a ballroom scene in a “living-picture,” with frenzied anger boiling in the veins and no muscle responding to the mind’s urgent commands, is something that must be experienced fully to be appreciated.

Dillon panted.

“If I release you,” added O’Hagan icily, “it will be upon parole; upon the understanding that you conserve your resentment for a more fitting time.”

“Release me!”

“Upon that understanding?”

“Curse you! . . . _yes!_”

O’Hagan dropped his hands, stepped back to the little mantelpiece and leaned upon it, raising his monocle before his right eye.

“Sir Brian Dillon,” he said deliberately, “you may have heard my name; for I knew your father well.”

The other’s fingers twitched. He glared directly at O’Hagan, and thrust his hands deeply in his pockets.

“Your father would have known the gross nature of your insult to me. Strong man as you are, he would have forced you to apologise, or have knocked you down. Do your memories bear me out?”

Dillon swallowed, emotionally.

“You add insult to the most awful injury one man can inflict upon another——”

“Stop!” O’Hagan’s big eyes blazed. He took a step forward. “Stop! By God, sir, if you presume to cast such an innuendo in my face I will break your neck, though I hang for it!”

There was a species of subdued ferocity in his manner that had forced conviction upon anyone. No man born of woman could have doubted him.

“You slander me. It is no excuse that you do so, thinking I am he who died on the Yukon border last March.”

A puzzled expression mingled and conflicted with the others which flitted across Dillon’s face.

“Since Sheila Cavanagh and I met at Dunnamore Castle—a childish meeting which your wife had forgotten—we never had set eyes upon each other until that day in St. James’s Park. Despite the passage of years, I knew her again. How dare you—I repeat, sir, how dare you presume to deny me the privilege of your wife’s friendship!”

Dillon’s expression changed again—to one of bewilderment.

“Then,” he gasped, “you are not——”

O’Hagan raised his head.

“Let him rest in peace,” he said sternly. “He was an honourable man, unfortunate in love. You wrong him villainously. If she had cared for him he would be alive to-day. It was something very like suicide—and therefore I charge you, Brian Dillon, never to breathe a word of his unhappy end, never to speak his name to your wife.”

“I don’t know his name. How do you——”

“I buried him in the snow!” said Captain O’Hagan with impressive finality.

Dillon dropped limply on to the big property-basket.

“Then Sheila never cared for him! And he is dead! And it was you, an old friend, and a friend of my father’s, whom——”

“You have been a villain to her!—a villain to Miss Chatterton—doubly a villain to me!——”

Sir Brian sprang up, his face boyish, bright with a glad contrition.

“Captain O’Hagan!” he cried, “will you take my hand? A hundred thousand times I apologise! _Can_ you forgive me! Do you think Sheila can?”

* * * * *

“At such times,” my mendacious friend has informed me, “to lie becomes a virtue. Dillon distrusted his wife’s old admirer—whose name he had quixotically, though fortunately, avoided learning. Therefore, preparatory to peace, the anonymous gentleman had to be whitewashed. His whitewashing accomplished, next, in order to insure Dillon’s silence respecting his history, he had to be buried for ever.

“I buried him in the eternal snows, Raymond. What more appropriate tomb for the rejected lover?”

EXPLOIT THE FIFTH.

HE DEALS WITH DON JUAN.

EXPLOIT THE FIFTH. HE DEALS WITH DON JUAN.

I. HAVERLEY OF THE GREYS.

My friend Captain O’Hagan is a man fatally easy to misjudge; a man monstrously difficult to appreciate. Arraign him before a bar of his peers, and no two findings would march in step, no two voices be in unison. If we except the critic of the _Tailor and Cutter_, I doubt, indeed, if there be a man in London who perceives the exquisite distinction of O’Hagan’s dress. His mode of going hatless is dubbed affectation; his purple-lined cloak an ostentatious extravagance.

But some there are who instinctively detect O’Hagan’s sterling qualities; some (as myself) achieve to this knowledge; and some have it thrust upon them.

I recall an illustrative incident:

O’Hagan and I were at one of those pleasant afternoon functions where the caller surreptitiously, but constantly, glances at his timepiece in order to learn if a sufficient interval has elapsed since his arrival to admit of his departure. You have been, no doubt? O’Hagan rarely goes; but a Miss Pamela Crichton was present on this occasion—and, somehow, O’Hagan and I are frequently meeting this charming girl at all sorts of odd places—quite by accident, oh, quite by accident.

“I am proud of the success which Pamela has achieved,” my friend whispered to me, “since I took her up.” (She composes). “But I do not approve of her accepting these social invitations. She is merely providing the hostess with a gratuitous entertainment.”

This view of the matter, from O’Hagan, surprised me. But later, the hostess said:

“_Dear_ Miss Crichton, you will play us that last charming piece of yours, _won’t_ you!”

Mrs. Pointzby-North’s request was sweetly proffered, but it was a sweetness akin to that with which, addressing a valued butler, she might have said:

“_Milton_, you will see that the bull-dogs are not permitted to fight in the drawing-room in future, _won’t_ you!”

O’Hagan did not object to the tone of patronage, however. (“Mrs. Pointzby-North,” said he, “is a member of a very old and distinguished family.” That, of course, was final.)

But when Pamela began to play, delightfully, and everyone continued to chatter, simianly, he stood up.

“Rank has its obligations,” he said—and strode across to the player.

He took both her hands, and the flow of melody ceased upon an unexpected discord. Then came silence—the thrilling silence of surprise. Lolling gracefully upon the baby grand, my friend toyed with the black ribbon upon which his monocle dangles and glanced toward Mrs. Pointzby-North.

“My dear Mrs. North, as a very old and quite absurdly privileged friend, might I address a few words to everybody, without annoyance to you?”

Mrs. Pointzby-North, fluttering somewhat:

“My _dear_ Captain O’Hagan! As if you _could_ offend me, however hard you tried!”

O’Hagan inclined his head, and raised the monocle to survey the expectant ring of guests. Then:

“Good folks, Miss Pamela Crichton is so well worth listening to, that I beg you will preserve a perfect quiet whilst she is playing. Believe me, you will be well repaid, and will furthermore confer upon Mrs. North and upon myself a favour which we shall deeply appreciate!”

Pamela performed amid a throbbing silence which would have gratified Sarah Bernhardt. But I divined how in future the doors of Mrs. Pointzby-North would be closed to Miss Crichton.

(“It is better,” O’Hagan explained to me, when we had seen the girl to a cab. “I do not desire that Pamela be treated as a public exhibit.”)

Replace the famous cloak with a toga, and in O’Hagan you have a very complete patrician—an aristocrat of sensibilities so exquisite that the trifling errors of good society jar upon them more harshly than the eating of peas with a knife upon the atrophied perceptions of the merely respectable.

After dinner that evening Sir Roger Rundel called upon O’Hagan in his chambers.

My friend’s chambers overlook Whitehall, and, in his moments of ease, he is always to be found in the room which he calls his library, but whose appointments more nearly correspond with those of a harêm. To visitors but superficially acquainted with O’Hagan, this apartment proves a surprise. Its arabesques dimly perceptible in the blue rays of a hanging lamp, the plash of water in a tiny marble basin enhancing the illusion that one has lost one’s way, this _mandarah_ possesses all the charms of the unexpected.

For golden carp in the basin you are of course prepared? Prepare, further, for O’Hagan in a loose blue robe, O’Hagan extended upon a cushioned divan, sipping coffee from a tiny porcelain cup and enjoying the solace of tumbâk in a Persian narghli.

Donohue, a model man, immaculate, in immaculate black, proclaimed the arrival, and ushered in the person, of Sir Roger. You would like Sir Roger Rundel; bronzed, well groomed, reserved, forty-five; he is what we mean by a typical English gentleman.

He and O’Hagan are old friends. Donohue made fresh _kahweh_ (no one expects whisky in the _mandarah_), whilst Sir Roger selected from the rack an amber mouthpiece neatly labelled “R.R.” and appropriated the guest’s tube of the narghli.

O’Hagan: “Been hoping to see you every day since I heard of your return, Rundel.”

Sir Roger: “Yes, yes. Since my—marriage, fear I’ve neglected bachelor friends. I leave London to-night—on departmental business.”

Silence; broken by bubbling of narghli. Enter Donohue with coffee. Exit Donohue.

O’Hagan fumbled for the indispensable pebble, found it, and examined Sir Roger’s face critically.

“There’s a fly in the ointment, Rundel. Name the brute’s species.”

Sir Roger put down his cup with a rattle.

“Captain Haverley,” he snapped—“and now I’ve said it!”

“Ah,” mused O’Hagan; “Haverley, of the —th Greys. Only know him by repute.”

“What sort of repute?” growled Rundel.

“Yes,” O’Hagan nodded, and dropped his monocle. “_That_ sort!”

Sir Roger got upon his feet, and began to pace up and down a square of Persian carpet.

“We know one another, O’Hagan. There’s not another man in England I’d confide in. But—well—Beesley told me about this afternoon—at Mrs. Pointzby-North’s, and I said, ‘Same old O’Hagan!’ That’s what it is, O’Hagan: there’s only one of you—only one of you! This—friendship—between my wife and Haverley is nothing—from Val’s point of view. Understand? _She_ means no harm.”

“What attitude have you adopted?”

“No attitude. Overlooked it. But I’m going away; and I will _not_ have Val talked about, and I will _not_ be made to look ridiculous. In a word, O’Hagan, I’ll have no damned _cavalière servante_ with Haverley’s reputation dangling after my wife!”

“Well?” said O’Hagan, calmly sipping coffee.

“Val’s younger than me; and I don’t want her to think that I think—see what I mean? I can’t speak to _her_.”

“I follow you perfectly,” said O’Hagan. “You can speak to neither party without the risk of precipitating what you wish to avoid. Thanks for entrusting this matter to me, Rundel. I will call out Captain Haverley to-morrow morning!”

“My dear fellow! never do at all!”

“Why? I should see to it that he remained incapacitated in France throughout the term of your absence!”

“Too medieval, O’Hagan—too dam’ medieval. Bar you the country for twelve months at least! Besides, he might refuse—or, worse, you might kill him!”

“True,” agreed O’Hagan; “such mistakes have occurred. However—if Captain Haverley is not permitted the society of Lady Rundel during your absence, I take it that you will be satisfied?”

“Certainly! certainly! If I knew that——”

“Rely upon it, Rundel,” said O’Hagan, rising. “I will put an end to this undesirable intimacy. I shall regard it as my sacred duty to do so!”

In that moment he was superb; a man worthy of the confidence of kings; a man to hold stainless the honour of a queen.

“My dear fellow!” said Sir Roger, and shook his hand furiously. “My dear, dear fellow!”

Ah! what a privilege it is to call Bernard O’Hagan your friend!

—————

II. ACCORDING TO MYUKU.

Captain Haverley placed upon a table beside him the card of Captain The Hon. Bernard O’Hagan, V.C., D.S.O., as that distinguished officer was shown in.

“Of course I have heard of you, Captain O’Hagan,” he said; “but this is our first meeting, I think?” He glanced at his watch. “Better late than never!”

O’Hagan bowed coldly.

“I was about to refer to my calling upon you at this late hour,” he explained; “but since you have so rudely anticipated me, an apology becomes unnecessary. I will merely state my business.”

Haverley, a blonde and arrogantly handsome man at whose breast Eros aimed his darts every time that he went into a drawing-room, and at whose back fifty per cent, of his company were sworn to aim their rifles the first time that he went into action, believed that he had misunderstood O’Hagan. But:

“In short,” continued the latter, swinging his monocle, “your friendship with Lady Rundel must cease. It will be evident to you that in her husband’s absence its continuance would be compromising.”

Haverley knew, then, that he had heard aright, and his face paled with an anger which was intense; his hazel eyes seemed to emit sparks; and he slowly moved nearer to this adept in polished insult.

“Captain O’Hagan,” he said, distinctly—“the door is immediately behind you.”

“A matter of more pressing import,” replied O’Hagan icily, “is immediately in front of me.”

With three swinging strides he crossed to the mantelpiece. It was decorated with several women’s photographs—among them, one of Lady Rundel. Snatching it, framed as it was, from its place, he broke it across his knee and hurled the fragments into the hearth!

At that, Haverley leapt. Calculating with a boxer’s cunning the exact instant when his man would turn, he launched a blow for the angle of his jaw. The primitive, strong within him, ruled now supreme. But O’Hagan did _not_ turn.

He stepped back upon Haverley, and stooped.

It is needless to quote the apposite precept of Shashu Myuku of Nagasaki (Dean of the College of Higher Jiu-jitsu) in order to make clear what happened. Haverley performed a complete somersault over O’Hagan’s arched back and fell, heaped up, crashing in the hearth.

Captain O’Hagan stepped to the door, and gained it as Haverley’s man hurriedly entered.

“You understand?” said O’Hagan. “I forbid you this lady’s company. If you dispute my right to do so, I shall expect your friends in the morning.”

Haverley, choking, shaken, got upon his feet. His white-faced man barred the door.

“Excuse me, sir . . .”

O’Hagan brushed him aside. He has a sweeping motion of the left arm which would remove a lifeguardsman from his path as effectively as the flick of a handkerchief brushes a fly from a bald head.

The man clutched at a buhl cabinet to save himself. Upon a discordant finale of smashing porcelain, intermingled with human cursing, Captain O’Hagan made his exit to the plaudit of the gods.

He is a master of effective curtains.

—————

III. INTRODUCING DONOHUE.

I have hinted, I think, that my friend disapproves of many usages of modern society. He maintains that it is in no sense representative of the true aristocracy. (“I have known a knight, Raymond,” he says “who avoided eating water-melon because it made his ears wet.”) This anecdote I take to be more properly a parable; but it serves to illustrate a phase of O’Hagan’s character.

He would have the feminine section of society composed wholly of Cæsar’ wives. How he reconciles this view with the career of the fair O’Hagan who embellished a Stuart Court held at Hampton, I am too diffident to inquire though curious to know.

His espousal of the righteous cause of Sir Roger Rundel was in every sense a love-match. What advice should _you_ have offered to Sir Roger? At best your aid had ceased with words, I dare to predict. But from the first traceable O’Hagan (some kind of pirate, I believe) to Bernard, the O’Hagans essentially figure as men of action, often as not of sanguinary action. We are agreed, then, that you and I are not of the kidney properly to conduct this affair? Your attention for Captain Bernard O’Hagan!

No communication from Haverley reached him during the following morning. (“I have since taken occasion to look up the fellow’s pedigree,” O’Hagan informed me; “and the fortunes of the family apparently date from a certain pork butcher by letters patent to George III. One can understand a lack of finesse in a scion of sausage-mongers. God help the Army!”)

Noon, and after, saw my friend engaged upon affairs of his own. But in the evening Donohue reported in the _mandarah_.

This remarkable man is worthy of a brief inspection.

In figure he is sturdy, of no more than medium height. He has well-brushed hair of the colour of stale mustard, and a ruddy complexion. Clean-shaven, his upper lip usurps an undue share of his countenance, and his jaw would spell truculence were its significance not modified by the humorous twinkle in the sky-blue eyes.

Behold Donohue, a man of attainments; a valet unsurpassable, of eye more true for the fold of a cloak than any modiste of the Rue de la Paix; a colourist in whom discord between a scarf and a soft shirt produces a blanching of the cheek; who, of a hundred waistcoats, having a hundred shades, will unerringly select _the_ waistcoat for _the_ occasion. He has other qualities, to be displayed later.

Donohue: “Sir.”

“Well, Donohue?”—O’Hagan.

“Captain Haverley, with Lady Rundel at Folly Theatre; stalls; Row B; numbers 6 and 7.”

“Very good.”

Exit Donohue.

This paragon must have delighted the gloomy soul of Athos.

Bernard O’Hagan, having finished his coffee, discarded the loose robe for the purple-lined cloak, pulled on his gloves, and sallied forth into Whitehall, cloak flying, holding his cane like an Italian rapier, and generally comporting himself as some Buckingham bound for St. James’s.

He turned his steps in the direction of the Folly, however. To the box-office clerk:

“I require a stall.”

“We have only three vacant, sir.”

“One will be sufficient.”

No traffic of the stage that evening had created anything approximating to the impression occasioned by O’Hagan’s entrance. My friend has been called a _poseur_. It is unjust. He cannot help it. Bernard O’Hagan belongs to the age of plumes and velvet. His is the soul of a true courtier.

Just within the big glass door he paused for a moment, and, the monocle glittering as he held it before his right eye, studied the occupants of Row B. Perceiving Lady Rundel (a conspicuously pretty woman) staring at him fascinatedly, he bowed. A hundred sighs arose; a hundred hearts lay unheeded at the feet of this incomparable cavalier.

Haverley devoted his attention exclusively to the stage. He was gnawing his moustache.

Throughout the performance, O’Hagan lolled back in his stall, one leg negligently thrown across the other, and studied the ladies, who constitute the principal attraction of this house, with a kind of bored curiosity.

At the close of the play Lady Rundel and Captain Haverley stood in the lobby. O’Hagan bowed low before madame. Then, to her squire:

“I believe I forbade you this lady’s society, sir?” said he.

There are simple remarks which, at certain times, you or I might make, but which you and I lack the stark audacity to make. Made, they strike the listener with a species of paralysis. This was one of them.

Lady Rundel flushed, and started back.

“Captain O’Hagan!” she began——

“Don’t speak to him, Lady Rundel!” came hissing, forced speech from Haverley. “Allow me to see you to your car. I have something very particular to say to Captain O’Hagan!”

O’Hagan bowed again inimitably.

“Good-night, Lady Rundel. I have something very particular to say to _you_ in the morning.”

Captain O’Hagan sank reposefully into a lounge, and, the observed of everyone who passed out of the theatre, awaited Haverley’s return. At least a score of ladies inquired _sotto voce_ of their escorts: “Who is that distinguished-looking man?”

Haverley presently returned, forcing his way roughly against the thinning stream of supper-seekers. Over the heads of the outgoing, O’Hagan perceived the drawn face and angry, blazing eyes. He turned his glass casually in that direction.

Quivering before him, Haverley said, with hardly repressed violence:

“You are a blackguard! I have little doubt that a public brawl would be to your low taste. But I prefer to call upon you to-morrow. I shall bring a horse-whip!” Unable further to trust himself to face the icy stare which met him, he turned, and almost ran from the now empty lobby.

Captain O’Hagan swung streetward, in turn. A taxi-cab had at that moment pulled up to the kerb; and Haverley was fumbling with shaking fingers for a coin for the theatre attendant, ere entering it.

O’Hagan calmly opened the door, stepped in, and reclosed it. Leaning from the window:

“Junior Guards Club!” he said. “Half a sovereign if you do it in four minutes!”

Gold is a talisman, my masters. The taxi-driver risked consequences—and started.