Hagan

“ Hagan is a fighter, and he does not acknowledge defeat. When the plot of Porfias del Norte failed and Del Norte was buried by the landslide in the Adirondacks, it seemed to Hagan that he had been defeated, and the taste was bitter to him. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ A feeble, muffled call for help, emanating from the very centre of the wreckage, arrested his attention. He knew that bland, cool voice only too well. The available orderlies were already struggling to remove the wounded and unearth their officer.
Hagan dashed forward. He was a strong man, and in the best of condition. Without argument, he took command.
To remove the smaller masses of mortared brick was the work of but a few moments. The men worked at fever heat. The cries from beneath grew feebler, almost ceased. It was the weight of long rafters which formed the main obstruction. ”

“ He is too precious to be frightened. Did you ever come across such an ass’—Dawson contemptuously indicated the pile of sealed envelopes—‘he must have soaked himself in American dime novels and cinema crime films. He will be of more use to us than a dozen of our best officers. I feel that I love Hagan and won’t have him disturbed. When he comes here to-morrow night he shall be seen but not heard. He shall enter this room, lift your Notes, which shall be in their usual drawer, and shall take them safely away. ”

“ O’Hagan, his cloak cast back in purple splendour, rested one hand upon his hip with a gesture which had not been inconsistent with the act of depressing a rapier hilt.
“Are you quite sure”—he bent towards her with inimitable gallantry—“that a scene here will enhance your professional reputation?”
She glanced up rapidly—and down again, shyly. She could not recall having feared to meet any man’s eye prior to encountering Captain O’Hagan.
“Mr. Dewson—he says so; and Mr. Dewson is so clever. He never makes mistakes.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Those who have the honour of his acquaintance acquire a new popularity with the less fortunate. Several countesses and a charming duchess have repassed us no fewer than nine times. But O’Hagan, serenely insensible to the admiration which he excites in so many bosoms, lounges regally aloof, as one upon a lofty minaret who scarce glances down to the throngs beneath him. ”

“ Gladly was he welcomed by the Burgundians, who could not believe that he came to do battle with them. He explained how he was forced to fight them, and amid the tears of both sides, he exchanged shields with Hagan, whose buckler was broken. Then was the grim Hagan moved to tears, and he vowed not to touch Rüdeger in the fight. Fearful was the clatter of shield and blade as Rüdeger fought with Gernot, and fell at last by the blade he had himself given the prince. ”

“ 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! ”

“ I have yet to deal with you in regard to the offensive terms ‘lunatic,’ ‘ruffian,’ and ‘confounded policeman!’ ”
“Curse you! I’ll kill you!” panted Repton and crouched, looking up to O’Hagan with glaring, malignant eyes which, at that moment indeed, mirrored a murderous soul.
“I think not,” was the reply. “Others have attempted the feat; but I am here to-day, alive to resent insult.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Repton’s face, in the dimness, showed a greyish white. He swallowed noisily—and took a step towards Captain O’Hagan. Moira clutched at the Captain’s arm. She did not fully realise what had happened. Only she knew that this strange man, who half fascinated and half frightened her, had precipitated a climax in her life; had, from no personal motive that she could fathom—unless antipathy from Repton and friendliness to a descendant of Bruce—brought her love affairs violently to a head.
Resentment found place in her heart. Captain O’Hagan was a mere chance acquaintance. ”

“ His weapons all, Sir Hagan far from their lord convey'd,
Then back sprung to the linden to seize his ashen spear,
And to find out the token survey'd his vesture near;
Then, as to drink Sir Siegfried down kneeling there he found,
He pierc'd him through the croslet, that sudden from the wound
Forth the life-blood spouted e'en o'er his murderer's weed.
Never more will warrior dare so foul a deed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ ECHOES OF THE BOOM. O’Hagan called upon me. His entrances possess electric properties. One’s schemes melt; O’Hagan becomes the scheme of all things terrestrial. The future shrinks, bounded by O’Hagan. The universe is “a universe after Captain the Hon. Bernard O’Hagan.” An unexpected call by the Tsar of all the Russias could not be more exciting, and one would be less impressed if the Mikado dropped in for a pipe and a Scotch-and-soda.
“I have selected you, Raymond”—he toyed with his monocle—“to act for me in a little affair on the French coast. ”

“ Hagan, having killed Siegfried, then seizedseized the “Nibelung hoard,” and buried it in the Rhine, intending to appropriate it. Kriemhild, after her marriage with Etzel, king of the Huns, invited him to the court of her husband, and cut off his head. He is described as “well grown, strongly built, with long sinewy legs, deep broad chest, hair slightly gray, of terrible visage, and of lordly gait” (stanza 1789) .—The Nibelungen Lied (1210) .
135Ha ́garenes (3 syl.) , the descendants of Hagar. The Arabs and the Spanish Moors are so called. ”

“ For I defy any philosopher to reconcile the ideals of Petronius Arbiter, Omar, and Samuel Clemens!
“Alas, O’Hagan,” I say, “this world of ours is a grey place.”
But he turns to me in surprise, monocle raised, and studies my face with a certain apprehension.
“How can you say so, Raymond? Have I not repeatedly demonstrated that Romance lurks in hiding amid the most prosaic surroundings? Adventure, my boy, is for the adventurous! It is only the blind who deny the existence of fauns. ”

“ The dazed and much-insulted man glanced from a shapeless dark mass which, prior to the passage of a brewer’s traction-engine, had been a felt hat, to the face of O’Hagan; and began with his handkerchief to wipe blood from his wounds. O’Hagan cast his eyes upward to the legend: “J. Crichton, Newsagent,” and took the elder man by the arm.
“A word with you, Mr. Crichton!” he said, sweeping that astonished old tradesman into the shop, and ignoring the knot of interested spectators gathered at the door. ”

“ The orderly gave the water, but, none the less, called his officer. Meanwhile Hagan, with shut eyes, summoned to his aid all medical knowledge, real and spurious, that had ever crossed his path of life. The rôle he had assigned to himself was extremely difficult. Whatever else might be imaginary, the beads of perspiration bedewing his forehead were certainly genuine enough. In order to fool a man successfully one requires to know something of his mental attitude towards the subject in hand. ”

“ The footman leapt down and came to the step. As in a dream, I heard rapid, guttural instructions. The footman saluted and leapt to his place. The car moved smoothly onward.
O’Hagan raised his monocle, gazing at the bearded nobleman; then waved it gracefully in my direction.
“You may not have met my friend, Mr. Lawrence Raymond,” he said, with the lordly condescension which he, alone, knows how to assume. “Raymond—His Highness the Grand Duke John of Siresia!”
—————
II.
WE IMPROVE THE ACQUAINTANCE. O’Hagan’s friendship is a passport from the commonplace to the amazing. ”

“ Bernard O’Hagan, could have escaped enmeshment within his catholic patronage. O’Hagan would patronize the shade of Julius Cæsar.
“What,” inquired the Grand Duke awkwardly, “do you propose?”
“First,” said my friend, holding his monocle between second and third fingers, and waving it roofward, “extinguish these interior lights. It was most indiscreet to travel so publicly.”
Association with Bernard O’Hagan renders one more or less accustomed to the outre. The amazing ceases to amaze, the appalling to appal; wonders lose their potency, and one’s pulse remains normal amid singular adventures. ”

“ THE MAID AND THE RING. I call her a woman, but she can have been no more than seventeen or eighteen, I think. She was one of those dark, supple Siresian girls who approach so infinitely nearer to one’s ideal houri of the East than any really Oriental beauty ever can do. Her great black eyes wandered nervously from O’Hagan’s face to mine.
“Tell me!” she cried, in pretty, broken English—“I saw you whispering together—tell me! You are from Leo?”
Nipping my arm, O’Hagan bowed again. ”

“ Cary, I am not in the Kaiser’s pay, nor are you, though the case against you might be painted pretty black. This man Hagan is on our string in London and we want him very badly indeed. Not to arrest—at least not just yet—but to keep running round showing us his pals and all their little games. He is an Irish American, a very unbenevolent neutral, to whom we want to give a nice, easy, happy time, so that he can mix himself up thoroughly with the spy business and wrap a rope many times round his neck. We will pull on to the end when we have finished with him, but not a minute too soon. ”

“ THE LONELY LADY. That class distinctions are invidious, that one man is as good as another, are theorems which find no place in O’Hagan’s philosophy. His whole life is a protest against such propositions. He complains that there is no badge peculiar to the gentleman; that the latest morning-coat from Savile Row is colourably imitated, and within a week, by Rye Lane, Peckham. Hence, I take it, his broad, black ribbon with the dependent monocle, his purple-lined cloak. ”

“ Hagan, seated behind 326 Calvert, could protect him from any treacherous attack with the handcuffs. The detective was too wise to invite an assault of that nature.
When a turn in the course brought the long Wiscasset bridge in sight with the pretty town on the left, Kit Woodford turned his head and looked back at the young man who was guiding the other launch.
“What are you going to do with him?” he asked, with a black scowl.
“Nothing,” replied Hagan.
“Why haven’t you got the bracelets on him?”
“He has done us too valuable service. That isn’t the way we reward our friends.” ”

“ It is recorded, O’Hagan will tell you, that his ancestor Patrick, sometime of the Musketeers of Louis XIII., on one occasion waited for eight hours in the snow outside the hotel of the Duchesse de C——, in order to reprimand an unknown nobleman who had trodden on his corn. But within eight minutes from the time of the gentleman’s coming out, Patrick O’Hagan had aroused the concierge of the Hotel de C—— to take him in again, summoned a surgeon, summoned a priest, summoned an undertaker, and reported for duty at the Louvre. A bloody ancestor for any man. ”

“ HE PATRONISES PAMELA. I.
THE HAT OF MR. PARKINS. A very wilderness is Bernard O’Hagan, which no man could hope thoroughly to explore; a most picturesque figure in the satin-lined cloak which he loves to wear in defiance of fashion and indeed of civilised custom, singularly resembling the Merry Monarch whom a lady of his race once entertained right regally at the ancestral home of the O’Hagans. The unexpectedness of the man is one of the most marked features of his character—the one that makes his society at once delightful and alarming. ”

“ But if ever Fate should lead you to Poland, the home of Count Leo Riersiwicz is your home.”
“Quite a charming little adventure,” said O’Hagan, as we passed westward; “save that one cannot sympathise with any man who elects to associate with such a crew of undesirable pole-cats.”
Two peers, a newspaper proprietor, and an actor-manager waited upon the kerb of Oxford Circus, whilst ’bus drivers, draymen, vanmen on vans and other impossibles, drove by. O’Hagan’s procedure on occasions of this kind is a joy unique and a memory ineffaceable. ”