Ernest Bramah

“ A moment later Jim Tulloch, as genial as of old, but his exuberance temporarily damped by the cross-bickering in which he had just been involved, thrust his head and arm through the sash.
"Lord, lord, it really is you then, Wynn, old man?" he cried. "When your Parkinson came up I couldn't believe it for a minute, simply couldn't believe it. The world grows smaller, I declare."
"At all events this car does," responded Carrados, wringing the hearty, outstretched hand. "They've got us two inches less than the makers ever intended. Is it really your doing, Jim?" ”

“ I didn't expect it of you, Mr Carlyle, sir; indeed I did not. For a week I have done everything that it has been possible to do, everything that a long experience could suggest, and now, as I understand it, sir, you complain that I didn't blow down the gas-pipe, sir. It's hard, sir; it's very hard."
"Oh, well, for heaven's sake don't cry about it, Trigget," exclaimed Mr Carlyle. "You're always sobbing about the place over something or other. We know you did your best—God help you!" ”

“ For you, fortunately, it does not exist. Any more than pain does," he added thoughtfully.
"Do you mean," demanded Miss Julp with slow precision, "that through your carelessness, your criminal carelessness, I run any risk of blood-poisoning?"
"Cornelia!" exclaimed Mrs Severe in pale incredulity.
"Of course not," retorted the surgeon. "How can you if such a thing does not exist?"
"I don't care whether it exists or not——"
"Cornelia!" repeated her faithful disciple in horror.
"Be quiet, Ida. This is my business. It isn't like an ordinary illness. I've always had a horror of blood-poisoning. ”

“ Eh, Marrable?"
"I say!" exclaimed the virtuoso, with his ideas forcibly directed into a new channel. "Yes, there is that, you know, Mr Trenchard."
"Even in that very unlikely event the Virginiola remains a white elephant. It cannot be got off to-day nor yet to-morrow. Any bookseller would require time in which to collate the volume; it dare not be offered by auction. It is like a Gainsborough or a Leonardo illegally come by—so much unprofitable lumber after it is stolen." ”

“ A young gentleman who had been giving him some assistance in a case was thrown on his hands for the evening.
"You are the most amiable of men, Max," chirruped Mr Carlyle; "but, really, I don't like to ask——"
"Bring him by all means," assented the most amiable of men. "I expect two or three others to turn up to-night." So Mr Carlyle brought him.
"Mr Chatton, Max."
An unobtrusive young man, whose face wore a perpetual expression of docile willingness, shook hands with Carrados. ”

“ Indeed it had needed all Mr Carlyle's persuasive eloquence to move him.
"The Home Office, Max," urged the inquiry agent, "one of the premier departments of the State! Consider the distinction! Surely you will not refuse a commission of that nature direct from the Government?" Carrados, looking a little deeper than a Melton overcoat and a glossy silk hat, had once declared his friend to be the most incurably romantic of idealists. He now took a malicious pleasure in reducing the situation to its crudest terms.
"Why can't the local police arrest a solitary inoffensive German spy themselves?" ”

“ You don't merely take your life in your hands if you want to get about; you carry it on each foot."
"Look here," said Carrados. "You never let me know that you were up in town, Tulloch. What are you doing to-day?"
"I beg your pardon, sir," interrupted Parkinson's respectful voice, "but the policeman wishes to speak with you, sir."
"With me?" queried Tulloch restlessly. "Oh, good lord! have we to go into all that again?"
"It's only the bus-driver, sir," apologised the constable with the tactful deference that the circumstances seemed to demand. ”

“ Good God! how he can talk so little on anything really entertaining, like The Giddy Flappers or Trixie Fluff's divorce, and so much about strange, unearthly things that no other living creature has ever seen even in a dream, baffles my imagination. What's an 'integral calculus,' Copling? No, don't tell me, after all. Let me forget the benumbing episode as soon as possible."
"Do you wish for a game, Sir Fergus?" broke in Spinola's soft voice from across the room. "Doubtless Mr Carrados might like to follow someone else's play before he makes the experiment." ”

“ Only a philosopher or an habitual defaulter would live in such a state.
The venerable Mr Spinola received them in the salon set apart for the display of the automaton and for cards in general. It was a room of fair proportions—doubtless the largest in the house—and quite passably furnished, though in a rather odd and incongruous style. But probably any furniture on earth would have seemed incongruous to the strange, idol-like presence which the inventor had thought fit to adapt to the uses of his mechanism. ”

“ He waited with the door open to light the first flight of stairs for Mr Tupworthy's descent. Before the door was closed another figure stepped down quietly from the obscurity of the steps leading upwards.
"Mr Belting, I believe?" said the stranger. "My name is Carrados. I have been looking over the flat above. Can you spare me a few minutes?"
"What, Mr Max Carrados?"
"The same," smiled the owner of the name.
"Come in, Mr Carrados," exclaimed Belting, not only without embarrassment, but with positive affection in his voice. "Come in by all means. I've heard of you more than once. ”

“ There have been a great many undiscovered crimes in the history of mankind, Max, but it is by no means every ingenious plot that carries. After the inquest, at which our gentleman doubtless cut a very proper and impressive figure, the barbed whisper began to insinuate and to grow in freedom. It is sheerly impossible to judge how these things start, but we know that when once they have been begun they gather material like an avalanche. ”

“ My choice of a theatre is not unconnected with a case I have on hand. I may be able to tell you something about the lady."
"Possibly we shall not be alone?" suggested Carrados.
"Well, no; not absolutely," admitted Cariyle. "Charming young fellow, though. I'm sure you'll like him, Max. Trevor Enniscorthy, a younger son of old Lord Sleys."
"Conventional rotter, between ourselves?" inquired Max.
"Not a bit of it," declared Mr Cariyle loyally. "A young fellow of five and twenty is none the worse for being enamoured of a fascinating creature who happens to be on the stage. ”

“ Good-bye," said Carrados. He hung up the receiver with the only satisfaction that he had experienced since he had fixed on Ellerslie—satisfaction to have done with it. The thing was unpalatable enough in itself, and to add another element of distaste, through one or two circumstances that had come his way in the past, he had an actual regard for the surgeon whom some called brutal, but who was universally admitted to be splendidly efficient. It would have been a much more congenial business to the blind man to clear him than to implicate. ”

“ I hadn't much chance of buying a practice or dropping into a partnership worth having and I jibbed at setting up in some God-forsaken backwater and slipping into middle age 'building up a connection.' Lord, lord, Carrados, the tragic monotony of your elderly professional nonentity! I've known men who've whispered to me between the pulls at confidential pipes that they've come to hate the streets and the houses and the same old everlasting silly faces that they met day after day until they began to think very queer thoughts of how they might get away from it all. ”

“ For a few seconds Carrados handled the piece with the delicate manipulation of his finger-tips, while Carlyle looked on with a self-appreciative grin. Then with equal gravity the blind man weighed the coin in the balance of his hand. ”

“ To career and reputation, you would say; but, believe me, Mr Carrados, life is quite as important as livelihood, and every doctor does that sort of thing every day. Well, like many very ordinary men whom you may meet, I am something of a maniac and something of a mystic. ”

“ Sir Fergus and Mr Carrados are entitled to an explanation and they shall have it. The moment is opportune; the work of a lifetime is complete. You have seen, Sir Fergus, the sums that Aurelius—assisted, as we will now admit, by a little external manipulation—has gathered into our domestic exchequer. Where have they gone, these hundreds and thousands that you may estimate? In lavish living and a costly establishment? ”

“ This coat is warm; I got very fond of it. You can't understand one getting fond of a mere suit, you with your fifty changes of fine raiment."
"Of course I can. I have a favourite jacket that I would not part from for rubies, and it's considerably more of an antique than yours. That's still a serviceable suit, Jim. Come and let me have a look at it."
"What d'ye mean?" said Tulloch, complying half reluctantly. "You're making fun of me little suit and it's the only thing in the world that stands between me and the entire."
"Come here," repeated Carrados. "I am not in the least guying. ”

“ And so, in the obscurity of your tent, beneath your unsuspecting eyes, this conjurer did, as he was satisfied, requite you. You thought you saw him wrap the relic in its covering. You did not. You thought he put it back among his dress. He did not. Instead, he slipped it dexterously between the lining and the cloth of your own coat at the thick part of a band. You had seen him do much cleverer things even in the open sunlight."
"You don't say," exclaimed Tulloch, springing to his feet, "that even now——"
"Wait!" cried the blind man warningly. "Don't seek it yet. ”

“ Across the room the play had begun again and with a little care they could converse without the possibility of a word being overheard.
"What is it?" asked Sir Fergus.
"The golden one will win. It is only when the cards are not exposed that you play on equal terms."
"But I won?"
"Because it is well to lose sometimes and, by choice, when the stake is low. That witless youth will have to pay for both of us."
"But how—how on earth do you suggest that it is done?"
"Look round cautiously. What eyes overlook Crediton's hand as he sits there?" ”

“ What is he after, Carrados?"
"I am very much afraid that he is after you, my friend," replied Carrados, with some concern lurking behind the half-amused level of his voice.
"After me!" exclaimed Tulloch with righteous indignation. "Why, confound his nerve, Wynn, it ought to be the other way about. What's he after me for?"
"India is a conservative land. The gods do not change. A relic that was apprised at seven hundred thousand ducats in the days of Queen Elizabeth is worth following up to-day—apart, of course, from the merit thereby acquired by a devotee." ”

“ The scoring ruled low and in the end Copling won by 129 to 87. Spinola purred congratulation.
"I am always delighted to see Aurelius lose," he declared, paying out his guinea with a princely air.
"Why?" demanded Crediton.
"Because it shows that I have succeeded beyond expectation, my dear young sir: I have made him almost human. Now, Mr Carrados——"
"With pleasure," assented the blind man. "Though I am afraid that I shall not afford you the delight of losing, Mr Spinola."
"One never knows, one never knows," beamed the old man. ”

“ Mrs Bellmark supplied the expected note of admiration.
"Just fancy!" was the form it took.
"Under the Act the purchaser must be known to the chemist?" suggested Carrados.
"Yes," agreed Mr Carlyle; "and there our friend Lightcraft may have let himself in for a little trouble. But, as he says—and we must admit that there is something in it—who is to define what 'known to' actually means? A hundred people are known to him as regular or occasional customers and he has never heard their names; a score of names and addresses represent to him regular or occasional customers whom he has never seen. ”

“ Miss Roscastle is the piece."
"But if you explained that Miss Linknorth was really the creator of the part——" suggested Mr Carlyle.
Stokesey rattled a provocative laugh at the back of his throat.
"You run a theatre for a few seasons, my dear fellow, and then talk," he retorted. "You can't explain; you can't do anything; you can only just sit there. People cease to be rational beings when they set out for a theatre. If you breathe on a howling success it goes out. If you move a gold mine of a piece from one theatre to another, next door, everyone promptly decides to stay away. ”