Ernest William Hornung

“ I came at the request of a friend of yours, in that friend's car, to see if there's nothing we can do to make up to you for all you've been through."
"A friend of mine!" ejaculated Croucher, with engaging incredulity.
The doctor smiled, but dryly, as he had spoken. "It's one of the many unknown friends you have gained lately, Mr. Croucher. And I should like to make one more, if only to the extent of a little spin and some breakfast at my house. There is more sympathy for you than you seem to realize, and one or two of us are ready to show it in any way you will permit. ”

“ The famous train was not uncomfortably crowded; it is not everybody who will pay two pounds, eight shilling, seven pence for a berth in a sleeper which in Switzerland, say, would cost some twenty francs. Most of those who had committed the extravagance seemed by way of getting their money's worth; even the lady traveling alone in the foremost wagon-lit, though she refrained from dining in the restaurant-car, would have struck an acquaintance as in better spirits than for some months past. And so she was. But she was still far from being the Lady Vera Moyle of last year's fogs. ”

“ Alfred Croucher was a free man: that was the great thing. There were moments when it was an even greater thing than Lady Armagh's convalescence. But there was later and greater news yet for Lady Vera to gloat over in the train. Not only was poor Croucher a free man, but that dear Doctor Dollar had hopes of him at last! He had said so the day she left for Paris; he had never said anything of the kind before. Nothing could have been more pessimistic than the crime doctor's first report on his latest patient ”

“ I run a kind of nursing home, here in my house, and there's a bed ready for you if you care to occupy it."
"A nursing 'ome!" said Croucher, shrinking from a vision of lint and ligatures. "There's nuffunk so much the matter with me that I want to go into an 'ome."
"Nothing that rest could not cure—rest and diet—I agree," said the doctor, with an eye on the empty dishes.
"But won't it cost a lot?" inquired Croucher, thinking of the kidneys especially. "I'm stony-broke, you see," he explained with increased bitterness.
"Our friend insists on paying the bill," said the doctor, grimly. ”

“ You would not be a prisoner in any sense; but if you went out, Croucher, I'm afraid you would have to stay out. Otherwise my treatment would not have a fair chance; what you require, in the first instance, is absolute rest and no more truck with the outside world than you had where you have been."
"An' good 'olesome grub?" suggested Croucher with another slant of his goggle eyes.
"And plenty of square meals. Perhaps not so square as this morning's, because you won't have any exercise; but that sort of thing."
"A little drop of anythin' to drink, doctor?" ”

“ The faithful creature (a would-be militant of the blood-thirstiest, in her day) had been with her dear ladyship over the Sunday in Paris (hobnobbing with certain exiles for the Cause) ; but just as they were leaving their hotel a telegram had come to summon her to a bucolic death-bed. Esther would have let her old father die without her, but her beloved ladyship, still quick with her own filial awakenings, had sent her about her dismal business with a kiss.
The compartment was overheated; they always are unless you complain in time. ”

“ Out of the doctor's little typewritten list, the patient in the top-floor-back began by choosing For the Term of His Natural Life. It held him—with a tortured brow that sometimes glistened. When the book was finished, he was advised that It Is Never Too Late to Mend was a better thing of the same kind; "In spite of its name," added Dollar, in studied disparagement. Croucher took the hint, and was soon breathing as hard as he had done before he knew that Shoddy was Shoddy ”

“ And the train ran on and on, and the whole coach creaked and trembled, as coaches will even in a train de luxe, only in that particular compartment it had not been noticeable for some time.
Presently, as her nerve came back, one or two further observations of a negative order were gradually made by Vera Moyle. She may be said to have noticed that she did not notice one or two things she might have expected to notice by now. The chief thing was that there was no sound whatever from the compartment beyond the looking-glass door, no fuss or undue traffic in the corridor. ”

“ Doctor Dollar took the opportunity of being no less explicit in his turn.
"There's no reason why it should come to that, Croucher, I assure you. I can not too strongly impress on you that anything I do for you is by business arrangement with the friend who takes this extraordinary interest in your career." ”

“ Croucher at this agreeable crisis of his career. The bulging eyes were glazed with a wonder which quite eclipsed the light of triumph; and they were fixed, in unwilling fascination, upon the tall figure to which the borrowed plumes belonged, whom he had never beheld before that hour, but at whose heels he trotted from the bowels of the prison to the motor-car flashing in the sun beyond the precincts.
"'Alf a mo'!" cried Croucher, making a belated stand instead of jumping in as he was bid. "I didn't rightly catch your name inside, let alone wot you got to do with me an' my affairs. ”

“ Why, the girl's fair struck on you, cully!"
"I'll strike 'er!" said Alfie, through teeth that chattered with emotion. "I very near 'anged for the little biter, and don't you forget it!"
"Not me," said Shoddy, steering for the bed with his headlights of white-hot filament and red-hot cigar. "That's wot brought me 'ere through thick and thin."
"So she's the great unknown!" said Croucher more than once, but not twice in the same tone. "So it was 'er, was it?" he inquired as often, until Shoddy insisted on a hearing. ”

“ I'll see you damned first!" said Croucher, with sudden ferocity—"like you very near seen me! If we're over'eard, you'll be thought no better'n you ought to be; but by Gawd they won't think you as bad as wot you are!"
Lady Vera took no advantage of a studious pause. The ruffian was making his points with more than merely ruffianly effect; the whole thing might have been carefully rehearsed. But to the girl in the upper berth it was now no more than she deserved. ”

“ A substantial tea, when he did wake up, was the least they could provide after neglecting to rouse a man for his midday meal; but a distinct grievance on that score was forgot in the appetite that accrued for dinner, and the infinitely tactful choice of the eventful viands. ”

“ I call that 'andsome," declared Alfred Croucher, for once without reserve. "I won't arst 'oo it is no more, but I shall live in 'opes o' findin' out an' sayin' thanky like a man. Not but wot it's right," he added after all, "for them as is rich to 'old out an 'elpin' 'and to them as is pore and 'ave been tret like I've been, through no fault o' their own. But it ain't everybody as sees it like that, an' it makes you think better o' the world when you strike them as does."
"I agree," said the doctor, in a tone entirely lost on his expansive patient. ”

“ Shoddy nodded in adroit sympathy; he had kept his electric lamp burning all the time; and an extra prominence of eye and cheek-bone, a looseness of lip and a flickering glance, were not inarticulate in the chastened countenance of his friend. "It must've been 'ell, Alfie, real, old red-'ot 'ell!"
"And all for wot I never done," he was reminded with some stiffness.
"That's it," the other agreed, with perfunctory promptitude. "But that's exactly why I'm 'ere, Alfie. You didn't think I done a job like this for the sake o' tikin' 'old o' yer 'and, didger? ”

“ Can't you listen for a change? There's a big thing on if you've guts enough for the job."
It was a simple thing, however, like most big things; the projector had it at his finger-ends; and in a very few minutes Mr. Croucher was considering a complete, crude, and yet eminently practical proposition.
"There's money in it," he was forced to admit, "if there ain't the big money you flatter yerself. But I believe she thinks o' givin' me a start in life any'ow."
"This'd be a start an' a finish, Alfie! ”

“ Besides, it'd be your revenge; don't you forget wot you've been through," urged the other.
"Catch me!" said Croucher, eagerly. "But—don'cher see? I been through so much that I was lookin' forward to dossin' down 'ere a bit. I ain't the man I was. It's wot I need. Where's the fire, as I said afore? The gal won't run away."
"That's just wot she will, Alfie; goin' abroad any day—an' might get married any day, a piece like 'er. Then you might find it more of a job. There's another 'old we've got, an' might lose any old day." ”