CHAPTER XLI

THE DECOY POND

After the battle between the two men, Ruth retired into the fortress from which Ernie had lured her before the Captain's arrival.

The old restraint was on her, and hostility was now added.

She barely noticed him when they met, and he, wary for once and wise, made no advances to her.

But hope was quickening in his heart, for September was on them now, and the leave-season was drawing to an end.

One afternoon Céleste flitted past him like a wagtail.

"Cheer, Ernie-boy," she mocked. "He's going away."

"Who is?"

"Captain, my Captain."

"When?"

"At once." She halted. "But--he's taking her away with him."

Ernie turned grey.

"Who told you?"

"One of the girls. They take it in turns to sit in the dressing-room of evenings to hear the latest. It's like an aviary, they say. _Coo-bird! coo! now me! now you! You was good to me when I was ill, Ruth,_ he says last night. _Now I am going to give you a treat. I'm going to take you to Paree for the week-end on my way back to India._"

Ernie came closer. He looked ugly.

"If I catch any of you girls in there----"

"Baa-a-a!" mocked the naughty one. "Who was caught in there himself?"

Ernie was now extraordinarily alert and vivid. The old sleepy benevolence had vanished: he was listening at last to that voice which none of us can afford to neglect, the voice which says at all times, to all men in all places--

_Beware!_

Salvation Joe took a professional and proprietory interest in the change, which for some obscure reason he attributed to his own direct intervention in heavenly places.

"What is it then?" he asked. "Has HE found you at last?"

Ernie, who as he gathered strength, gained also in flippancy, replied:

"There was ninety-and-nine, you mean. That lay. No, sir, He ain't found me. I've found IT though."

"Well, then, come round to the 'appy 'our on Sunday next and tell us all about it," growled the great man. "There's none so 'umble and lowly but we can learn from them, as I often says."

He tramped on his reverberating way....

That night, as Ernie was on lift-duty, the telephone bell rang in the passage. He went.

"Who's that?" he asked.

"Mr. Caspar from the Garage, Old Town," came the answer. "Could I speak to Captain Royal?"

The Captain had given orders that when he was in his room of evenings after dinner, he was not to be disturbed.

"He's engaged," answered Ernie. "Could I give him a message?"

For a moment there was a pause. Then the voice began again.

"Who'm I speaking to?"

"One of the porters, sir," Ernie answered.

There was no need for him to disguise his voice: for the telephone was out of repair, and speech muffled and uncertain accordingly.

"Well, will you take down this message and see it gets to him to-night. _The car will be at the Decoy Park, East Gate, to-morrow afternoon at 2.30._"

Ernie wrote the message down, and repeated it.

"Very good, sir," he said briskly.

"Thank ye," answered Alf, and rang off.

Later, when Captain Royal came down to the smoking-room for a last cigarette before bed, Ernie took him the message.

The Captain, who had brought the art of insolence to his inferiors to a height that only a certain type of officer, sheltered by Military Law, attains, took the note without a word, glanced at it, and tossed it into the fire.

Ernie retired with burning heart.

The conjunction of Captain Royal and Alf seemed to him sinister. But he had his armour on now, his lance in rest. His brain was working with a swiftness and precision that astonished him. He was ready for whatever might come....

The old Decoy was a survival of the remote days when Beachbourne was a fishing-village, famous only for the duck-shooting on the Levels hard by. When Ernie was a lad the Decoy Pond, in its rough ambush of trees and thick undergrowth, was still the haunt of duck and snipe, and his favourite hunting-ground in the bird-nesting season. During Ernie's absence in India the Corporation had acquired it, and made of the tangled wilderness, formerly the home of fox and snipe and the shy creatures of the jungle, a fair pleasure-ground for their conquerors. Green lawns now ran down amid forest-trees and clumps of flowering shrubs to a shining ornamental water on which floated stately swans, while moor-hen scudded here and there, and flotillas of foreign ducks paddled about islands gorgeous with crimson willow. A broad road ran from gate to gate; and in the woods of summer evenings young men now chased rarer game than ducks.

It was at the Eastern Gate of this resort that Alf was to meet the Captain with a car.

Ernie would meet them there too. On that he was determined.

It was not his afternoon off, but he arranged to change with a mate.

A light railway ran from the East-end of the Town along the edge of the Levels to join the main line at the wayside station known as the Decoy Park between Beachbourne and Polefax.

Ernie took the two o'clock train, and, ensconced in a third-class smoker, watched. Very soon the Captain came swinging along the platform, a light burberry over his arm, athletic, resolute, and quite the English gentleman, his coloured tie striking a charming note of gaiety in his otherwise fresh but sober costume.

Ernie watched him critically. In externals the Captain was the typical representative of a Service in which men move, like Wordsworth's cloud, all together or not at all.

For the skilled observer, indeed, the history of the British Army during the last seventy years is to be read in the evolution of the moustaches of its officers. At the moment now recorded the flowing _beau-sabreur_ moustache which dominated the Service from Balaclava to Paardeberg had long gone out; while the tuft moustache which commemorated for the British Army the advent of the Great War had not yet come in. The tooth-brush or touch-me-not or crawling-caterpillar moustache, brief, severe, and bristling, which had held its own against all comers since South Africa, was still the rage; and gave the wearer that suggestion of something between a hog-maned horse-in-training and a rough-haired terrier on the look-out for a row with a rat which was the fashionable pose for the British officer in the years between the two Wars.

To be quite _comme-il-faut_ Royal should have had trailing at his heels a little bustling terrier, rather like himself, harsh in manner, but virile, aggressive and keen.

But Captain Royal did not like dogs.

Ernie, chewing a fag in a corner, as he watched his enemy march by, remembered that; remembered too and suddenly that it had been common talk in the lines that Royal was not popular among his brother-officers--"not class enough" the whisper went. Ernie, who had wondered then, understood that now.

At the Decoy Park the Captain got out.

Ernie saw him off the platform, and well started down the road to the Decoy Woods before he followed.

A chilly wind blew from across the Levels.

The Captain marched along towards the Park, the tail of his burberry floating out, his green hat with the feather in it cocked to meet the breeze, the shapely curves of his legs exposed by the wind.

Just outside the Park he looked sharply behind him, but saw only a shabby figure slouching casually along some two hundred yards away.

Once inside the Park Ernie left the road and, walking swiftly among the trees at the wayside, drew closer.

Here in the woods peacocks strutted, and close by was an aviary in which parrots chuckled, golden pheasants preened themselves, and birds with gay plumage fluttered.

On the rustic bridge across the ornamental water the Captain paused and looked about him. Nominally he was observing the swans; really he was looking to see if he was being watched.

Ernie, alert in every inch of him, recognized the ruse; and drew the correct deduction that his enemy had been at this game before.

He waited in the shadow of the trees.

The Captain, satisfied, made now for the East Gate. Outside it a car was waiting. Ern recognized that chocolate body; and he recognized too that little figure in the shining black gaiters who stood beside it, and touched his hat with a furtive grin.

The two men exchanged a brief word. Alf opened the door of the car, produced something, and held it out. Ernie saw that it was a lady's fur coat.

Then Captain Royal climbed into the car, and Alf put the hood up.

Ernie approached.

Just inside the East Gate was a little wooden chalet, where teas were served.

In this Ernie took cover.

A crowded motor-bus from Beachbourne drove up.

On the front seat was a girl in a terra-cotta-coloured felt hat.

She got down and walked towards the car.

Ernie watched, quivering.

There was only one woman in the world who walked with that direct and compelling grace.

It was clear to him that the girl was happy--lyrically so--and shy. The flow and rhythm of her every motion betrayed it abundantly.

Alf touched his hat as she approached, and opened the door.

The Captain did not descend. He was waiting inside--the spider in the background lurking to pounce upon the fly, a spider who shot forth sudden grey tentacles to enfold his prey. Ruth, clasped by the tentacles, was sucked out of sight.

Ernie was overwhelmed with a sudden desire to leap out into the road and cry:

"_Don't!_"

He sweated and trembled.

Then the door of the car slammed. Ruth was fast inside; and Alf, wonderfully brisk, had hopped into his seat, and was fingering the levers.

Then the car stole forward swiftly, secretly, like a cat upon the stalk.

It passed through the gate, would cross the Park, strike the Lewes road at Ratton on the way to--Lewes--Brighton--where?...

Ern was standing up now, forgetful of concealment. As the car swept by, Alf saw him and made a mocking downward motion with his hand, as of one pressing to earth an enemy struggling to his feet.

Ern was aware of it, of the look on Alf's face, of the two in the car.

They did not see him. The Captain was bending over Ruth, buttoning the fur coat round her throat.

Just then there rang through the silence a dreadful cry as of evil triumphant.

A peacock in the wood had screamed.