before the other could reach him, the ready mr. brander had extricated himself from his perilous position and, leaving the bruised post-boy to manage his own, strode back a pace or two, his hands groping rigidly in the skirt-pockets of his mangy surtout. mr. tuke, apt at an emergency, came up pistol in hand, which seeing, the long rogue halted with a stony face, of which only the lurid eyes belied the expressionlessness. for some seconds the two men faced one another without a word. at length said the pursued:
“no doubt, sir, you are come to explain yourself.”
“i have nothing to explain,” said the other, stiff as the trigger of his own weapon and as deadly.
“to what, then, am i to attribute this pursuit and maltreatment of a harmless traveller using without offence the king’s highway?”
“mr. brander, i am not convinced my legitimate answer should not be a bullet through your brain. i may give it yet, if you do not take your fingers from that pistol butt.”
the rogue flung his hands in front of him, and clasped them there.
“this, you will admit,” he said quietly, “is a gross outrage. i have done nothing to deserve it. i take post on my own concerns, and am wantonly driven to this pass with any possibility of consequences.”
“for which you have yourself to thank. there must be two to a hunt. had you not fled i had not driven.”
“surely, sir, it is excusable to fly a danger, and for an innocent traveller to read evil in one who spurs after him along a lonely road?”
mr. tuke permitted himself a spirt of merriment.
“ingeniously argued,” said he. “so i am the highwayman? well, i call upon you to stand and deliver.”
“indeed, sir, i have nothing worth your consideration.”
“pardon me. your sudden flight thitherwards, at the moment you imagined me established and occupied in london, is a matter very well worth my consideration.”
“you are mistaken. how could i know of your presence in london? you will observe i make no pretence of ignorance as to your identity.”
“that is modest of you.”
he gave no further answer; but he set to and whistled an air from the opera, “what a blunder.”
“now, mr. brander,” he said, “you have taken time by the forelock, but i have taken him by the nose; so you may e’en go back the way you came, and inform your graceful associates that the master of ‘delsrop’ is returned to his own.”
he spoke with a very engaging sang-froid; but he was prepared for contingencies. to his surprise the other, after eying him for some moments in a manner of puzzled speculation, shrugged up his shoulders and broke into a gobble of laughter.
“come,” said the thief, “i will be honest with you, for all the marchand forain i am.”
“a scholar?” said tuke. “then you have two weapons to my one. we must stand on even terms before i consent.”
“bah!” exclaimed the respectable merchant; and, turning his back, he fetched a pistol out of either side-pocket and fired each in turn at the dangling chains of the gallows. both bullets struck home with a clank; the horses, twenty yards away, started and reared, and the rogue, repouching the smoking barrels, slewed himself about once more.
“does that satisfy you?” he said. “now my only weapon is my tongue.”
“it shall carry further than a bullet with me, though i won’t swear it shall speed as true. you have a very pretty aim, mr. brander.”
“i learnt to hit a mark when i was a schoolmaster,” said the other dryly. “a settled fly is a fair test of skill. well, sir, may i crave a confident word with you?”
“the post-boy is out of ear-shot, i think.”
“i thank you, and i premise that this little expedition is of my sole conception and at my own cost, and that the associates of whom you spoke know nothing of it.”
“i see. you would have stolen a march on them?”
“precisely; and, if possible, secure for myself alone the booty that all desire to share.”
“you are candour itself.”
“i read in it my better policy. believe me, necessity is my foster-mother and her vile children are my comrades. once i was blameless, though a schoolmaster. the birch-rod was my business, the fishing-rod my recreation, a passion for elzivirs my ruin. i stole to allay it—a crime as white as the theft of bread to a starving man. the law took cognizance, grudging me all but my dry bones of syntax. i have suffered, but i am no more vicious now than then. i desire no gauds or vanities, but means only to the satisfying of this scholarly craving for books.”
“to gorge on which you would pilfer a stone worth £70,000? you see i play out my hand squarely, making no pretence of misreading your motives.”
the tall rascal smiled.
“as to that,” he said, “i must do honour to your profound penetration. yes, sir, the ‘lake of wine’ is what i am after; and, for the rest, a passion is none that halts on the hither side of satiety. you could understand spending a thousand, or fifty thousand pounds on horses; but horses die, sir, or breed-in and degenerate, whereas written words beget great thoughts that in their turn intermarry and beget greater.”
“well, mr. brander—and do you propose that i give you this stone to buy books with?”
“i propose to come to terms with you on the subject.”
“terms (you must really forgive my outspokenness) from a cut-purse and a cut-throat?—terms from one who has no shadow of a title to the gem, or, even if he had, has attempted to enforce it by means ridiculously illegal? upon my word, sir, for a school-master——!”
brander waved a tolerant but extremely dirty hand.
“i will question you, mr. tuke,” he said. “why am i a cut-throat?”
“ah! had i been a scholar of yours, i might answer, maybe.”
“a mere veil of satire to conceal a paucity of proof. why, sir, why, i ask?”
“you are insistent. shall we suggest—apart from reasonable surmise as to your general career—that you had a hand, say twenty years ago, in the murder of a colleague under these very gallows?”
“twenty years ago i was acting usher at a school.”
“oh! we won’t be particular to a day or two.”
mr. brander straddled his legs, knuckled one fist upon his hip under his coat-skirt, and with his other hand rasped his chin meditatively.
“well,” said he, “give a dog a bad name. ’tis all of second importance. only, being so, ’tis scarce worth an untruth. sir, i regard lies as strong waters—the more regularly indulged in, the weaker is their effect when needed. this is no particular occasion for one. i had no hand in the man cutwater’s death. i had not then any shadowy knowledge, even, of the great stone or the concealment of it that brought about his fate.”
“nor of the admirable mr. fern?”
“nor of jack fern, who alone, i believe, of the original gang survives.”
“you interest me vastly. then, i protest it is a fatuous policy of that gentleman to make him new confidants in the secret, when, had he worked alone, he might have aimed at securing all for himself—as you are doing. but you really flatter my credulity.”
“let it pass, then.”
“and pray why did mr. fern never return to the assault?”
“i had the story in rough from him in newgate (where we were confined together in ’86), that he was put in for an old affair before the other scandal had blown by, and that there he had remained ever since, his band dispersed or tied up;—and the year after, he went to botany bay along with governor phillip and his fleet of off-scourings, and——”
“here he is back again—at the end of twenty years—an escaped convict, i presume, with an ex-pedagogue for lieutenant and a tradition to trade upon. surely he is forfeit to the law at the outset; and, upon my word, mr. brander, your confidences are embarrassing.”
“make him over to the hangman, sir. i give you my honour i’ll help you. maybe i could prove his title to a fast place in execution dock.”
“i see. you are really a very admirable rascal. but, you’ll want your price?”
“oh! without doubt.”
“and that is—no, no, mr. brander; not half the value of the stone?”
“it’s a damned risky business, mr. tuke. i play my life against a competence.”
“but, listen, my friend. what claim has any one of you to a share in the ruby?”
“if it comes to that, what claim have you?”
“none whatever.”
“see here, sir. the man was one of us. the stone was fair spoil for division—not the perquisite of a single master-rogue. it was no appendage, conditional on your acquisition of the property—now, was it?”
“you know all about it, i see. well, mr. brander, your boy there’s getting impatient.”
the long man’s jaw hung slack while he rubbed it, and a very evil look came into his eyes.
“is that tantamount to saying you decline to treat?” he said.
“your boy, mr. brander. i yield you precedence of the road, sir.”
“i’ve given you my confidence, by god! you’ll know what that means.”
“i never asked for it, you’ll observe.”
the devil looked out of mr. tuke’s eyes, and he set his teeth.
“you dog!” he cried low. “what makes you dare presume thus upon my tolerance?”
his fingers were nervous with his pistol-stock. he took a quick step forward. at that brander’s fury came with a clap.
“presume!” he hissed, and cried it again with a scream. “a cursed broken gamester that daren’t show his face in public! a posted defaulter! a despicable and despised spendthrift, with a wilderness for his reversion! oh! i understand you, sir—i understand you. you’re a woundy character, by god! and you’ll make disposition of the stone and think to patch your reputation with bank-notes. but, beware, sir! there’s no law of heaven or earth that gives you a title to the gem. to withhold it from the just processes of barter is to put yourself without the pale of consideration. why, who are you—who are you, i——”
he choked with his very rage, and stood impotently quivering his clenched fists.
“mr. brander,” said the other, absolutely suave and unheated, “i give you two minutes to mount and be off.”
the click of his flint-lock cut in like the snap of teeth.
for a moment it looked as if a tragedy were near enacting. the gallows chains, swung by the wind, creaked with rusty laughter. high overhead a crow, lazily drifting down the valley, checked its course a speculative instant and resumed it with a peevish and contemptuous “caw!”
brander had turned abruptly and was stalking towards his chaise. once only he looked back over his shoulder, and then there was no expression on his face but a smile; but that mr. tuke would have given a dozen rubies to obliterate with a bullet.
