Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (501 page)

“Not me,” said Pyecroft from his seat. “Out pinnace, Hinch, an’ creep for it. It won’t be more than five miles back.”

The two men, with bowed heads, moved up the road.

“Look like etymologists, don’t they? Does she decant her innards often, so to speak?” Pyecroft asked.

I told him the true tale of a race-full of ball bearings strewn four miles along a Hampshire road, and by me recovered in detail. He was profoundly touched.

“Poor Hinch! Poor — poor Hinch!” he said. “And that’s only one of her little games, is it? He’ll be homesick for the Navy by night.”

When the search-party doubled back with the missing screw, it was Hinchcliffe who replaced it in less than five minutes, while my engineer looked on admiringly.

“Your boiler’s only seated on four little paperclips,” he said, crawling from beneath her. “She’s a wicker-willow lunch-basket below. She’s a runnin’ miracle. Have you had this combustible spirit-lamp long?”

I told him.

“And yet you were afraid to come into the
Nightmare’s
engine-room when we were runnin’ trials!”

“It’s all a matter of taste,” Pyecroft volunteered. “But I will say for you, Hinch, you’ve certainly got the hang of her steamin’ gadgets in quick time.”

He was driving her very sweetly, but with a worried look in his eye and a tremor in his arm.

“She don’t seem so answer her helm somehow,” he said.

“There’s a lot of play to the steering-gear,” said my engineer. “We generally tighten it up every few miles.”

“‘Like me to stop now? We’ve run as much as one mile and a half without incident,” he replied tartly.

“Then you’re lucky,” said my engineer, bristling in turn.

“They’ll wreck the whole turret out o’ nasty professional spite in a minute,” said Pyecroft. “That’s the worst o’ machinery. Man dead ahead, Hinch — semaphorin’ like the flagship in a fit!”

“Amen!” said Hinchcliffe. “Shall I stop, or shall I cut him down?”

He stopped, for full in the centre of the Linghurst Road stood a person in pepper-and-salt raiment (ready-made), with a brown telegraph envelope in his hands.

“Twenty-three and a half miles an hour,” he began, weighing a small beam- engine of a Waterbury in one red paw. “From the top of the hill over our measured quarter-mile — twenty-three and a half.”

“You manurial gardener —  — ” Hinchcliffe began. I prodded him warningly from behind, and laid the other hand on Pyecroft’s stiffening knee.

“Also — on information received — drunk and disorderly in charge of a motor-car — to the common danger — two men like sailors in appearance,” the man went on.

“Like sailors! … That’s Agg’s little
roose
. No wonder he smiled at us,” said Pyecroft.

“I’ve been waiting for you some time,” the man concluded, folding up the telegram.

“Who’s the owner?”

I indicated myself.

“Then I want you as well as the two seafaring men. Drunk and disorderly can be treated summary. You come on.”

My relations with the Sussex constabulary have, so far, been of the best, but I could not love this person.

“Of course you have your authority to show?” I hinted.

“I’ll show it you at Linghurst,” he retorted hotly —  — ”all the authority you want.”

“I only want the badge, or warrant, or whatever it is a plain-clothes man has to show.”

He made as though to produce it, but checked himself, repeating less politely the invitation to Linghurst. The action and the tone confirmed my many-times tested theory that the bulk of English shoregoing institutions are based on conformable strata of absolutely impervious inaccuracy. I reflected and became aware of a drumming on the back of the front seat that Pyecroft, bowed forward and relaxed, was tapping with his knuckles. The hardly-checked fury on Hinchcliffe’s brow had given place to a greasy imbecility, and he nodded over the steering-bar. In longs and shorts, as laid down by the pious and immortal Mr. Morse, Pyecroft tapped out, “Sham drunk. Get him in the car.”

“I can’t stay here all day,” said the constable.

Pyecroft raised his head. Then was seen with what majesty the British sailor-man envisages a new situation.

“Met gennelman heavy sheeway,” said he. “Do tell me British gelman can’t give ‘ole Brish Navy lif’ own blighted ste’ cart. Have another drink!”

“I didn’t know they were as drunk as all that when they stopped me,” I explained.

“You can say all that at Linghurst,” was the answer. “Come on.”

“Quite right,” I said. “But the question is, if you take these two out on the road, they’ll fall down or start killing you.”

“Then I’d call on you to assist me in the execution o’ my duty.”

“But I’d see you further first. You’d better come with us in the car. I’ll turn this passenger out.” (This was my engineer, sitting quite silent.) “You don’t want him, and, anyhow, he’d only be a witness for the defence.”

“That’s true,” said the constable. “But it wouldn’t make any odds — at
Linghurst.”

My engineer skipped into the bracken like a rabbit. I bade him cut across Sir Michael Gregory’s park, and if he caught my friend, to tell him I should probably be rather late for lunch.

“I ain’t going to be driven by
him
.” Our destined prey pointed at
Hinchcliffe with apprehension.

“Of course not. You sake my seat and keep the big sailor in order. He’s too drunk to do much. I’ll change places with the other one. Only be quick; I want to pay my fine and get it over.”

“That’s the way to look at it,” he said, dropping into the left rear seat. “We’re making quite a lot out o’ you motor gentry.” He folded his arms judicially as the car gathered way under Hinchcliffe’s stealthy hand.

“But
you
aren’t driving?” he cried, half rising.

“You’ve noticed it?” said Pyecroft, and embraced him with one anaconda- like left arm.

“Don’t kill him,” said Hinchcliffe briefly. “I want to show him what twenty-three and a quarter is.” We were going a fair twelve, which was about the car’s limit.

Our passenger swore something and then groaned.

“Hush, darling!” said Pyecroft, “or I’ll have to hug you.”

The main road, white under the noon sun, lay broad before us, running north to Linghurst. We slowed and looked anxiously for a side track.

“And now,” said I, “I want to see your authority.”

“The badge of your ratin’?” Pyecroft added.

“I’m a constable,” he said, and kicked. Indeed, his boots would have bewrayed him across half a county’s plough; but boots are not legal evidence.

“I want your authority,” I repeated coldly; “some evidence that you are not a common drunken tramp.”

It was as I had expected. He had forgotten or mislaid his badge. He had neglected to learn the outlines of the work for which he received money and consideration; and he expected me, the tax-payer, to go to infinite trouble to supplement his deficiencies.

“If you don’t believe me, come to Linghurst,” was the burden of his almost national anthem.

“But I can’t run all over Sussex every time a blackmailer jumps up and says he is a policeman.”

“Why, it’s quite close,” he persisted.

“‘Twon’t be — soon,” said Hinchcliffe.

“None of the other people ever made any trouble. To be sure,
they
was gentlemen,” he cried. “All I can say is, it may be very funny, but it ain’t fair.”

I laboured with him in this dense fog, but to no end. He had forgotten his badge, and we were villains for that we did not cart him to the pub or barracks where he had left it.

Pyecroft listened critically as we spun along the hard road.

“If he was a concentrated Boer, he couldn’t expect much more,” he observed. “Now, suppose I’d been a lady in a delicate state o’ health — you’d ha’ made me very ill with your doings.”

“I wish I ‘ad. ‘Ere! ‘Elp! ‘Elp! Hi!”

The man had seen a constable in uniform fifty yards ahead, where a lane ran into the road, and would have said more but that Hinchcliffe jerked her up that lane with a wrench that nearly capsized us as the constable came running heavily.

It seemed to me that both our guest and his fellow-villain in uniform smiled as we fled down the road easterly betwixt the narrowing hedges.

“You’ll know all about it in a little time,” said our guest. “You’ve only yourselves to thank for runnin’ your ‘ead into a trap.” And he whistled ostentatiously.

We made no answer.

“If that man ‘ad chose, ‘e could have identified me,” he said.

Still we were silent.

“But ‘e’ll do it later, when you’re caught.”

“Not if you go on talking. ‘E won’t be able to,” said Pyecroft. “I don’t know what traverse you think you’re workin’, but your duty till you’re put in cells for a highway robber is to love, honour, an’ cherish
me
most special — performin’ all evolutions signalled in rapid time. I tell you this, in case o’ anything turnin’ up.”

“Don’t you fret about things turnin’ up,” was the reply.

Hinchcliffe had given the car a generous throttle, and she was well set to work, when, without warning, the road — there are two or three in Sussex like it — turned down and ceased.

“Holy Muckins!” he cried, and stood on both brakes as our helpless tyres slithered over wet grass and bracken — down and down into forest — early British woodland. It was the change of a nightmare, and that all should fit, fifty yards ahead of us a babbling brook barred our way. On the far side a velvet green ride, sprinkled with rabbits and fern, gently sloped upwards and away, but behind us was no hope. Forty horse-power would never have rolled wet pneumatic tyres up that verdurous cliff we had descended.

“H’m!” Our guest coughed significantly. “A great many cars thinks they can take this road; but they all come back. We walks after ‘em at our convenience.”

“Meanin’ that the other jaunty is now pursuin’ us on his lily feet?” said
Pyecroft.

“
Pre
cisely.”

“An’ you think,” said Pyecroft (I have no hope to render the scorn of the words), “
that’ll
make any odds? Get out!”

The man obeyed with alacrity.

“See those spars up-ended over there? I mean that wickyup-thing. Hop-poles, then, you rural blighter. Keep on fetching me hop-poles at the double.”

And he doubled, Pyecroft at his heels; for they had arrived at a perfect understanding.

There was a stack of hurdles a few yards down

stream, laid aside after sheep-washing; and there were stepping-stones in the brook. Hinchcliffe rearranged these last to make some sort of causeway; I brought up the hurdles; and when Pyecroft and his subaltern had dropped a dozen hop-poles across the stream, laid them down over all.

“Talk o’ the Agricultur’l Hall!” he said, mopping his brow — ”‘tisn’t in it with us. The approach to the bridge must now be paved with hurdles, owin’ to the squashy nature o’ the country. Yes, an’ we’d better have one or two on the far side to lead her on to
terror fermior
. Now, Hinch! Give her full steam and ‘op along. If she slips off, we’re done. Shall I take the wheel?”

“No. This is my job,” said the first-class engine-room artificer. “Get over the far side, and be ready to catch her if she jibs on the uphill.”

We crossed that elastic structure and stood ready amid the bracken. Hinchcliffe gave her a full steam and she came like a destroyer on her trial. There was a crack, a flicker of white water, and she was in our arms fifty yards up the slope; or rather, we were behind her, pushing her madly towards a patch of raw gravel whereon her wheels could bite. Of the bridge remained only a few wildly vibrating hop-poles, and those hurdles which had been sunk in the mud of the approaches.

“She — she kicked out all the loose ones behind her as she finished with ‘em,” Hinchcliffe panted.

“At the Agricultural Hall they would ‘ave been fastened down with ribbons,” said Pyecroft. “But this ain’t Olympia.”

“She nearly wrenched the tiller out of my hand. Don’t you think I conned her like a cock-angel, Pye?”

“
I
never saw anything like it,” said our guest propitiatingly. “And now, gentlemen, if you’ll let me go back to Linghurst, I promise you you won’t hear another word from me.”

“Get in,” said Pyecroft, as we puffed out on to a metalled road once more.
“We ‘aven’t begun on
you
yet.”

“A joke’s a joke,” he replied. “I don’t mind a little bit of a joke myself, but this is going beyond it.”

“Miles an’ miles beyond it, if this machine stands up. We’ll want water pretty soon.”