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Based on a detail from an antique painting
The Elks Magazine, March 1926,
with first part of "The Man on the Milestone"
THE pearl-gray mists of a late-summer dawn were just beginning to dissolve before the sunrise over Derehurst, the fair domain of that said-to-be-eccentric Duke of Devizes (whose preference for the simple name of Prosper Fair we have long ago decided to respect) when an old wrinkled man emerged from a comfortable cottage near a block of buildings midway between the Derehurst Home Farm and the stables.
Carrying a big, steaming pail he crossed to one of the buildings, unbarred the door and entered.
The great, gray bulk of an elephant, stabled in that building, moved restlessly.
"All right, all right, Joe! It's only old Harry Mullet! Got something for you. Eh? How's that for tasty, Joe?"
It was, of course, Mr. Mullet, the old circus and menagerie proprietor whom Prosper, in need of a "bull," had transferred from the deserted ruins of his circus to comparative security in the life-job of chief keeper of elephants and so forth in his private animal collection at Derehurst Park.
The old man set down the big pail and, while the elephant attended to it, made a thorough toilet of the big ragged ears, talking very seriously throughout the examination.
"You're goin' out on the Road again, Joe—along with His Grace the Juke! You and him and the little ass and the terrier dog... Un'stand me? And you got to keep an eye on 'em all, mind—and the Juke in particular. If any harm comes to him, mind, through any fault of your'n, I shall be fit to very near knock your head off! Now, you mind that, Joe. 'Tain't one bull in a thousand haves the luck you've had—a Lord Juke's private bull!—fed on the fat of the land—no work to speak of—and you got to earn it, mind.... I trusts you. I know you got a good heart and good manners and I relies on you! Mind that! Be careful with the caravan—don't go pulling it into no ditches, mind, for it's a beautiful bit of work. Take your orders quiet and carry 'em out! Don't get sossy just because you're well off. And keep friends with the little ass—she's a lady—she's as gentle and kind as a little girl with her dolly. You treat her as a lady. And the terrier means well by you—don't get fidgety if he tries to hop all over you. It's his play—he's a merry-mannered little terrier but ho likes you. So, be'ave yourself. You're a Juke's bull! So be'ave as such."
And so forth, quite a good deal of it, slowly spoken.
Presently Mr. Mullet adjusted the harness, and the elephant, who had listened stolidly to his instructions, followed him out to another building close by. Inside this building was a big caravan. There was, at first glance, nothing noticeable about the caravan except that it was very plainly furnished. It was quiet—as quiet and unobtrusive as a shepherd's hut on wheels; it was not smeared with a loud delirium of yellow, red, green and purple paint. Its chief color was a sober, business-like battle-ship gray, unvarnished, sparsely picked out with white. Closer inspection, in a better light, would have revealed the fact that the wheels wore heavy india-rubber tires, instead of the more usual iron bands; that the body was beautifully sprung; that the doors were hung like those of a first class limousine; in brief, that it was a caravan which any elephant might be proud to haul or any person to use as a place of residence.
Mr. Mullet hitched the bull to it, and together they passed out of the barn, towards the Castle which, by now, was beginning to loom faintly through the mist....
Prosper Fair appeared at the main entrance in company with a cigarette, just as they arrived. He was arrayed in semi-riding kit, of warm, quiet-patterned tweed, with well cut and comfortably fitting riding-boots of the heavier kind that a man can walk in; a serviceable, soft tweed all-weather sporting hat; and round his neck a hunting scarf low and soft enough to be comfortable. He looked so fit as to appear years younger than he really was. So, for that matter, did Plutus, the game-legged black-and-white semi-terrier, and Patience, the little gray donkey, who had followed him out.
"Good morning, Mr. Mullet!" said Prosper buoyantly. "Hail, Stolid Joe! Princes could be no more punctual!"
He came down the broad steps to meet them, and patted the elephant's trunk.
"How is my lord this morning?" he continued.
The little eyes of the big beast twinkled, as he curled his trunk round Prosper's shoulder, and, incidentally, down into one of the pockets for the apple which was there. "Is all well, Mr. Mullet?"
"Fine, Your Grace, fine!" said Mr. Mullet enthusiastically. "The bull's looking better than he's looked for years—and still improving."
"All excellent!" declared Prosper gaily. "And now for it! Mr. Mullet, au revoir—good-bye. We go forth. In the course of time we shall return again—but when I know not. I thank you right heartily, Mr. Mullet, for the care, nay, the devotion you have lavished upon Stolid Joe, and I congratulate you upon its result. The bull, Mr. Mullet, is looking bonny. I shall trust to restore him to your ministrations in as perfect fettle. Good-bye, again!" He shook hands cordially with Mr. Mullet.
"Good-bye, Your Grace, and good luck to all of you!" Mr. Mullet crooked his left elbow and solemnly spat over it. This was to bring them luck. He then said "Good-bye" to the elephant, and at a word from Prosper, they were off—Stolid Joe yanking the big caravan along behind him as if it were an empty cigar box....
It was ever a weakness of the Duke to steal silently away when starting one of the byeway wanderings he loved and he achieved it this morning save for an interruption.
This was supplied by his head gamekeeper, one Mr. Wadds, anxious to get instructions concerning a gentleman named Peter Molloy, who on the previous evening had been captured in the very evil act of setting a snare for one of the ducal rabbits. Peter had been captured before and warned. He said that he was poaching because he had no money and was out of work. Prosper reflected.
"Mr. Molloy is Irish?" he inquired.
"Yes, Your Grace!"
Prosper laughed.
"I am a hard man, Wadds—a hard man—but God forbid that I should ever prosecute an Irishman for poaching! As well prosecute him for loving the smell of peat, potheen, and—possibly—pigs. It's in the blood, mark 'ee, Mr. Wadds; it's in the blood! Let Mr. Molloy be given an interview with Captain Dale,"—Prosper's resident agent—"who must forward him to Ireland consigned to Mr. Knox,"—agent on Prosper's Irish estate—"who will find him something to do suitable to the undeniable genius for the chase and matters of the chase which every Irishman possesses and which, I hope, he will never lose."
So Mr. Molloy was disposed of—and even as the sun lifted his honest old face clear of the horizon, Prosper and his companions started.
"NEVER at its most glorious was the summer more glorious than this, my littles," said Prosper presently, strolling along between Patience and Stolid Joe. (Plutus, naturally, was fully occupied inspecting the front doors of the various inhabitants of the bank at the side of the road.) "Never. And we have all England before us. Are you hungry yet? There is that in the air, methinks, which soon will send us with a zest to our luncheons. How say you, Stolid Joe? Are you ready for a bale or two of hay yet? Well, well, perhaps it is a little early. I will stave off my personal pangs with a cigarette."
He did so, and as he lit it they swung up to the eighth milestone they had reached that morning. But whereas the previous seven had been perfectly bare and unembellished milestones this one was ornamented by a gentleman who was sitting upon it—a pale-faced gentleman with black, scrambled side-whiskers, inky eyes picked out with streaks of red, and hands of a dark, sad-colored hue. He wore a greenish-black wide-brimmed felt hat, a blackish-green long-caped Inverness overcoat, with trousers of the same somber hue. His tie was flaming scarlet. He had removed one of his boots and socks and was scrutinizing his foot carefully. At first glance Prosper thought his whiskers were on fire, but immediately Mr. Fair perceived that to be an erroneous impression. The man was merely smoking a cigarette—smoking it as though he had made a wager to finish it against time devouring it, indeed.
"The gentleman is a very determined smoker," said Prosper softly as they approached.
The black-garbed one removed his gaze from his extraordinarily crumpled-up toes to watch them. As they arrived opposite, Prosper halted the stolid one and gazed at the gentleman smiling.
"I beg your pardon, my dear sir, if I disturb you or distract your attention, but your other foot is blotting out the mileage," said Prosper in a friendly voice.
The somber one did not answer immediately. Nursing his foot, he ran a pair of extremely glittering eyes over the entire outfit—commencing at Prosper's boots, absorbing Stolid Joe, Patience, the gray caravan, and concluding with a passing glance at Plutus's game leg as it swung free of the ground. Finally he spoke.
"Have you such a thing as a lancet or a sterilized hat-pin?" he inquired in a cold, rather grating voice.
"No, but I have a button hook," replied Prosper.
The black-whiskered man dropped his foot suddenly.
"What use is a button hook to a man with a blister as large as a walnut on his heel?" he demanded.
"I don't know," said Prosper candidly. "I have heard that a razor is not a bad thing to take for blisters!"
"Ha! I never thought of that," replied the man. "Of course! I have a razor!"
He reached down, picked up a big brown bag of the kind that piano tuners are especially prone to favor, and opened it.
"Razors! Excellent idea—quite excellent! This is an intelligent young person—yes, indeed—," he muttered, talking to himself. He rummaged in the bag and took out a huge axe-head which he placed on the ground beside him.
Then he took out another axe-head and laid it beside the first.
Then he took out a bundle of big knives, tied together—a bale of knives, perhaps, more nearly describes it, and added them to the axe-heads. Next he produced a large Spanish onion, a small flat cheese, and a loaf. These provisions he added to the pile of cutlery. Then he excavated a small saxophone, which he put down very carefully, flashing a glittering glance at the immensely interested Prosper—
"My saxophone—" he said. "Probably the finest in England."
"I congratulate you," said Prosper.
Finally the man on the milestone withdrew a safety razor from his bag.
"At last," he said, put the bag down and took up his foot again.
Prosper's teeth suddenly were "on edge."
"My dear man!" he ejaculated. "Forgive me but surely, surely, you do not propose to operate upon your blister with a safety razor?"
The man looked up at him.
"Why not?" he said, not defiantly, but in the tone of one who seeks information.
"It is not the correct weapon," explained Prosper. "If you are open to receive suggestions, permit me to advance the proposal that you use one of your generous supply of carving knives or, indeed, one of the very adequate battle-axe heads! I'm sure that either of them would cope quite successfully with the blister."
The man on the milestone stiffened.
"I shall certainly not use those," he grated. "They are my Means of Livelihood!"
Prosper was puzzled.
"Pardon my stupidity," he said. "But—Means of Livelihood? I don't understand."
"I am Manuel Robinson, the World's Champion Knife Thrower and Battle-axe King! Recreations: playing the saxophone. I sent it to Who's Who, but they were unable to find space for it. I never use any knives or axes except for the express purpose for which they are designed." The man on the milestone leaned forward and added in a confidential tone—"You see. I have been advised not to get into the habit of thinking of my professional implements as anything but professional implements."
Mr. Fair was deeply interested.
"Indeed! And is it permitted to ask why?"
The man on the milestone became still more confidential. He bestowed a cunning glance on Prosper.
"WELL—in strict confidence, you understand—my mind
is said to be a trifle unbalanced!"
"Ah, you are a pessimist, I perceive," said Prosper without hesitation. "Say, rather, that you have an artistic temperament." He had suspected from the beginning that he had to do with one who in the near future might easily develop into a candidate for a mental house. "But I hasten to agree that it would be unwise to misuse the professional implements. I think that the loan of my penknife would solve the difficulty and dissolve the blister."
Mr. Robinson agreed, and so Prosper took out, opened, and handed him the penknife—wherewith he proceeded, without further discussion, to carry out his gruesome operation.
"Are you in a circus?" he inquired presently when, having repacked his gear in his bag, and his foot in his boot, he stood ready to resume the road. "If so, have you an opening for a good knife-thrower? I am unemployed, but my references are good."
Prosper, with grave courtesy, explained that he was not a circus. He had already done so to half a dozen people that day.
But Mr. Manuel Robinson did not seem to care.
"Oh, I don't mind," he said absently. "I did not require an appointment immediately. But I had an odd fancy come into my head that you might be a circus. I don't know why. It does not matter. But perhaps you would like to give me a lift."
"With pleasure," said Prosper promptly. "Sit next to me—there is plenty of room."
Together they climbed up to the driver's seat, and Stolid Joe again swung into action, Patience walking alongside.
"Perhaps you would like me to play you a few melodies upon the saxophone?" said Mr. Robinson politely, a few yards farther on.
"I should be charmed," responded Prosper.
"I am sure you would!" agreed Mr. Robinson. And forthwith produced the implement from which he purposed extracting the promised melody.
"Do you play?" he inquired politely, polishing the thing lightly with his sleeves.
"Alas! I fear that I have not sufficient ability," replied Prosper.
"Much can be done by determination and hard practice," said Mr. Robinson cryptically. "I will now play you 'The March of the Men of Harlech.'"
He did so—excruciatingly, and to Stolid Joe's manifest uneasiness, as evidenced by the increased pace which he suddenly developed. Patience, tactfully and unobtrusively, fell behind.
"That was very nice," said Prosper delicately. "You are evidently a master of the saxophone."
The Knife-Thrower blushed sallowly.
"Thank you. I am pretty good," he replied. "I may say that I received a very musical education. Perhaps you would like me to play you a little thing of my own—a gavotte, or perhaps I ought to say, a little composition in the gavotte style!"
Prosper, much too polite to hurt the feelings of the champion Knife-Thrower of Great Britain, said that he would be delighted.
Mr. Robinson played it.
"A charming thing," sympathized Prosper.
"I thought you would say so. You are very intelligent. Evidently you have an ear for good music. If you were to take it up and seriously devote yourself to practicing, I think that, in the course of a few years, you might blow a fairly warm saxophone yourself. Would you like a little blow, now?"
He politely offered the instrument to Prosper, who gracefully declined.
"It would not be fitting for a novice to follow a master," he said.
"No doubt you are right!" Mr. Robinson gazed attentively at a white signpost which stood like a slender ghost waving shapeless arms toward the two roads into which the main road now forked.
"Which road do you take?"
"The right. Which do you, Mr. Robinson?"
The Knife-Thrower studied the signpost.
"To Bellingbery," he said. "I take the left. We part company here."
"A pity. But even the best of good things come to an end, do they not?" said Prosper. "Must you really go by that road? Here is your bag. Many thanks for your delightful music. Good-bye, good-bye!"
Mr. Robinson, holding his bag in one hand and his saxophone in the other, stood, in the road looking a little flurried.
"Good-bye, good-bye!" he repeated a shade mechanically. "We may meet again!"
"That would be very jolly indeed," said Prosper.
"Perhaps we may meet at Andover if you are passing through that place," continued Mr. Robinson, who clearly had taken a great fancy to Mr. Fair. "I shall not stay long at Bellingbery—just long enough to teach an editor who is living there a very sharp lesson, and then I will join you at Andover."
"Andover. I see," replied Prosper vaguely. "Au revoir!" and Stolid Joe moved stolidly on.
A few seconds later Prosper, glancing across to the other road, perceived Mr. Robinson striding briskly along. His hand was to his mouth, and the notes of the saxophone were borne upon the gentle breeze to the ears of Mr. Fair and his friends as they continued steadily toward a group of trees, a mile farther on, in the shelter of which he proposed to lunch.
AN HOUR later, Prosper, smoking a reflective and peaceful cigarette, turned to Patience who, her oats finished, was lying down close to Prosper, and invited her view of the problem which had kept him rather preoccupied during lunch.
"Patience, my wise one, what do you think about it? I did wrongly to leave Mr. Robinson at large, I think, don't you?" he said.
The little ass turned her head and gazed at him solemnly. As usual, Mr. Fair put his own interpretation upon her expression.
"I knew you thought so, my dear—and you are right. You are always right—isn't she, Plutus?"
The semi-terrier, busy with a large bone close by, looked up with the air of one who says "Beg pardon?"
"I say that Miss Prim is always right, is she not?" repeated Prosper.
"Wow!" said Plutus briefly, with a brief wag of his tail, and continued his performance upon the bone.
"Two to one," said Prosper. "It is evident that some one has blundered—and badly. What says Stolid Joe? Hey, Joe? Joe! Hyah, Joe!"
Stolid Joe, who, on the far side of the little clearing in which Prosper had halted, was neatly and economically picking up a few stray leaves of the armful of green stuff which had served as a temporary snack for him until dinner-time (for Joseph dined late), revolved at Prosper's call and lurched across to the consultation.
He looked like a great gray mountain staring down at the three of them.
"Joe, my young friend. I am at odds with my conscience. Patience and Plutus are upbraiding me because I allowed Mr. Robinson to go loose. And I fear that they are right. What do you think about it?"
Stolid Joe appeared to ponder, swinging his trunk, then, deep down in his cavernous throat, he uttered that strange, gurgling sound which elephants are prone to produce when they are pleased and the world looks good to them. Perhaps it was the sight of the remainder of the loaf of bread close to Prosper which called forth his gurgled comment, though Prosper pretended to think otherwise.
"So you side against me, too! Very well—we will go to Bellingbery.... Yes, you may have it," he interpolated, for Stolid Joe had salaamed most respectfully and interrogatively, twice curving his trunk back to his forehead.
The loaf disappeared abruptly, and the elephant seemed to shake with inaudible chuckles.
"I say we will go to Bellingbery, and find the editor to whom Mr. Manuel Robinson purposes teaching a sharp lesson. For I admit, my children, that Prosper is not at all easy in his mind about that battle-axe and knife expert—not at all easy!"
He rose abruptly, threw away his cigarette, and fell to work, clearing up with the deftness and speed which comes to the camper-out only after long practice, and in an amazingly short time they were again ready for the road.
"Have you room for an outside passenger this time, Joseph?" he asked, tapping the elephant lightly on the trunk. "Up, Huzoor," he added briskly, using the high-sounding name by which Stolid Joe had once figured on Mr. Mullet's circus bills, and which conveyed to the elephant that commands were to be taken seriously.
THE end of Joseph's trunk curled gently round Prosper, and,
with a peculiar twist, swung him up to the level of the great
shoulder, on to which Prosper scrambled neatly, seating himself,
cross-legged in the manner of the native mahout, just at
the back of the elephant's head.
"Come along, Plutus—there is nobody at home!" called Prosper to the semi-terrier who had his face up to the eyes in a hole close by. Plutus breathed into the hole what was probably a blood-curdling promise to return some day and shot after the caravan.
They proceeded in leisurely silence for a few moments while Prosper consulted a map.
"Yes," he said, presently, "I thought so. About a mile farther on is a by-road to Bellingbery. And if you will do me the favor, good Joseph, to get into a higher gear, we shall be enabled to accelerate ourselves to the rescue of the editor—if, indeed, he should need rescuing. Though it is difficult to imagine exactly what a really-truly editor can be doing in a place like Bellingbery. Natheless, my lieges, let us go there and with these eyes see what is to be seen. Forward!"
They went forward more briskly, like people with an object in view.
A little later they reached the by-road, down which Stolid Joe turned, and proceeded along it for a quarter of an hour, without meeting a soul or discovering any sign whatever of Bellingbery.
Prosper was on the point of looking again at his map when, rounding a slight curve of the road, they came upon a young lady grappling with a motor bicycle.
She looked up, a little startled. The caravan rolled so smoothly and Stolid Joe, in spite of his great bulk, stepped so softly, that she did not hear them until they were close to her.
Prosper, cross-legged on the elephant's brow, gazed down at her, like an idol in modern clothes sitting on the edge of a cliff.
He noted that, flushed pinkly from her contest with the motor bicycle, she was young and fair to see. He commanded Joseph to stop, and raised his hat very politely. Then he slid down to the ground and went round to her.
"I fear that we came upon you so quietly that we startled you, Mademoiselle," he said.
She laughed a little, eyeing Stolid Joe.
"Oh, no—not at all," she said. "It was silly to jump like that—I was so absorbed in the motor bicycle machinery that I quite forgot I was on the high road. Of course I did not expect to look up and suddenly find an elephant towering over me. But it is quite all right. Are you a circus?"
Prosper smiled.
"Oh, no," he said. "Not yet. We are only the rudiments of one. We are taking a little autumn tour—a little jaunt."
Her eyes sparkled.
"How jolly! I wish I had an apple for your elephant."
Stolid Joe's eves sparkled too.
"That," said Prosper, "is a difficulty quite easily negotiated."
He shot back a bolt, raised the lid of a box which formed part of the driver's seat, and produced two apples.
"The bolt is because of Patience," explained. "Patience is a terrible socialist in some respects. She considers that all apples should be divided equally among the population."
"Patience?" enquired the girl.
"My little donkey," said Prosper. "She is very shy except with me, and sometimes she is a trifle jealous too. She is on the other side of the caravan. Patience, my dear, come here!"
Patience trotted obediently round. She edged up close to Prosper and stared at the girl with deep, considering eyes.
Stolid Joe's trunk came reaching out in an insinuating, enquiring way, towards one of the apples. The girl laughed and gave him his apple, then offered Patience hers. But Patience did not attempt to take it....
"Yes, you may have it," said Prosper. She reached for it then—more than willingly.
Prosper looked at the motor bicycle.
"You were in difficulties with your machine." he said. "Has it—mutinied?"
The girl showed him her oil-stained hands.
"Yes, badly," she said. "I don't understand the iron parts of it very well."
"May I look at it? Perhaps I can alleviate its ailment. I don't really understand motor bicycles, of course. I can never believe that anyone in the world really understands them. It seems quite impossible.... I believe they screw thousands of them together at the works and sell those that are willing to go. But I think they hide the ones that won't go at all."
He was bending over the reeking "Hurrah's nest" of machinery, as he spoke, fingering it delicately. "Ah," he said suddenly. "I fear some one has been scotching on this machine. The engine has seized. I mean that it has become red-hot and, owing to lack of oil, the piston has become jammed inside the cylinder. It will require a lot of work to put it free again."
The girl pondered.
"Are you going to Bellingbery?" she asked. "If you are, perhaps you would send the man from the cycle shop out to me. Would you mind?"
"Indeed, I should mind," said Prosper. "To leave a lady alone with an infuriated motor bicycle! Rather let us put the machine in the caravan, and give Stolid Joe the pleasure of taking it and its owner to Bellingbery. He will be delighted, and, for myself, I shall feel that I am making amends for the momentary shock my silent approach gave you."
Without hesitation the girl agreed. She felt as if she had known him and his elephant and Patience all her life—Plutus she had not met yet, as the semi-terrier was engaged in urgent private business in connection with the ulterior of a molehill farther on....
"Are you staying in Bellingbery or just passing through, Mr. Fair?" inquired the girl when, a little later, she and Prosper sat side by side on the driver's seat.
"Why, my dear young lady," responded Prosper, in the indulgent, fatherly style which he usually adopted to pretty girls, met en route, "I can hardly say. Grotesque though it may sound to you, I am going to Bellingbery in search of an editor."
"An editor?" said the girl, quickly.
"I believe so. I can understand your astonishment It seems so painfully unintelligent to hunt for an editor in Bellingbery. If it were Fleet Street now.... But why do you smile?"
"My father is the only editor in Bellingbery," she said quickly. "He has some shooting in the neighborhood, and usually comes here for a fortnight in the autumn and for week-ends during the winter!"
Prosper's smile diminished slightly.
"Pardon me for one moment," he said, and raising his voice, requested Stolid Joe to increase his speed.
"You are anxious to see my father?" asked the girl. She had introduced herself as Miss Magda Mellor.
"Indeed, I am. It may sound quite meaningless to you, dear Miss Magda, but I think it is very important that I should see him as quickly as possible."
Magda's pretty face shadowed a little.
"I hope it is nothing serious," she said, a tinge of anxiety in her voice. He glanced at her and, with a shock, discovered that her face had hardened.
"Tell me," she said, rather abruptly, a sudden coldness in her voice. "Are you a professional knife-thrower?"
"I must plead 'not guilty'!" replied Prosper lightly.
"May I ask why you wish to see my father?" she continued, relief in her voice.
"Merely to warn him (as an act of humanity) against a person who wishes to play the saxophone at him," said Prosper, airily, but seeing to it that Stolid Joe did not slacken his pace.
He felt the hand of the girl close agitatedly upon his arm. He looked at her quickly and was startled at her sudden pallor, and the terror which had leaped to her eyes.
"It is the man Manuel Robinson," she gasped. "Hurry, oh, please hurry."
"We are going now almost as fast as a man could run. We shall soon be there... Tell me why you are alarmed!"
"This man Robinson has written many threatening letters to my father during the last few months. He is a professional knife-thrower and used to give a fearful exhibition at the music halls. My father told me he used to place an assistant—a woman—against a stand at one side of the stage, and then from the other he would throw knives in such a way that they would plunge into the wooden stand all round her... within a fraction of an inch of her head and body. My father was so shocked at the horrible danger to the woman—the brutality of such a performance—that he wrote and published in his paper several articles demanding that such performances should be forbidden by law. He succeeded and shortly afterwards they were made illegal. He received a number of threats from knife-throwers, but none of them were persistent except this Robinson, who accuses him of having ruined his profession, and swears to have his revenge. Father says that the man is not sane. He signs himself, 'Manuel Robinson, Knife, Axe and Saxophone Expert'!"
She gave a sudden laugh.
"My father laughs and calls me foolish—but I take it seriously, you know. I-I am afraid...." She broke off, pointing to a small, cozy-looking farmhouse, that had just come into view away to the right. "That is our cottage."
Prosper, who, during the girl's story, had reached back through the door of the caravan for something which he had slipped into his pocket, suddenly ordered Stolid Joe to slow up. He jumped down and guided the elephant on to a patch of grass at the roadside, and halted him there.
"Patience and Plutus, stay with Stolid Joe. Wait for me here," he said swiftly, and turned to the girl.
"Forgive me if I leave you—but it is rather urgent. Try not to worry! I am going to deal with Manuel!"
There was no time for politeness, and Mr. Fair knew it. He took the hedge like a stag and was gone, running hard in a bee-line for that farmhouse....
IT became clear to Prosper, as he neared the farmhouse, that he would not arrive a moment too soon. At a distance the place looked tranquil and quiet enough, dreaming in the warm afternoon sunlight. But as he cleared the low hedge round the orchard through which he had to pass, he knew that it was otherwise.
A dog was barking frantically somewhere round at the back, and from a room inside the house a woman was calling spasmodically for help.
Prosper ran in at the front door of the house, intending to go first to the woman who was calling. But a sudden cackle of mirthless laughter from the back of the house which he thought he recognized altered his plan.
He went straight through and out at the back door, crossed a patch of garden, a drive, and found himself at the entrance to a small stableyard. As he turned in through the wide doorway he heard a sudden thud, followed by another burst of crazy laughter and the voice of Mr. Manuel Robinson.
"Six! Keep that head still and open your eyes!"
Gliding round the half opened door Prosper saw, with a queer thrilling shock, precisely what he had expected and feared.
Mr. Manuel Robinson, his back to Prosper, was standing some eight or ten yards away. Facing him, at about thirty feet distant was an elderly, gray-haired man pinned to a stable door by a big knife through each coat sleeve. Round the head of this man, driven deep into the door, was a ring of similar knives—six of them, each within a half inch of the gray head.
Prosper saw it swiftly like a picture suddenly unveiled, and even as he saw it Manuel's right hand jerked up and back and darted forward with an odd twist. A flash of light flickered from Mr. Robinson to the gray-haired man and another knife appeared, quivering within a half inch of the victim's temple.
"Seven," hissed Manuel—and turned sharply as a wisp of straw rustled under Prosper's foot. The knife-thrower's hand swirled, uncannily swift, and a knife whizzed through the sleeve of Prosper's upper left arm, and bit deep into the doorpost behind him, pinning him.
Prosper, amazingly enough, was conscious of a sudden, darting twinge of wonder and admiration at the startling, almost unhuman skill of it.
"Marvelous!" he muttered, his right hand shooting down to his pocket. "Manuel is an incomparable marksman."
"Stay there, you!" snarled Manuel, and turned again to the editor.
"A dangerous performance, hey?" howled the knife-thrower. "Take that!"
One of the battle-axes, now fitted with a short handle, crashed and bit into the stable door six inches above the gray head.
"Now for it!" screamed Manuel, and poised the remaining axe. Deliberately he poised it—drawing out the suspense. He meant business with this axe—his last. And Prosper knew it. Mr. Fair was not much given to praying for success—but as he carefully sighted the little automatic pistol which he had taken from its nest in the caravan, and pressed the trigger, a frantic little prayer piloted the bullet. It pierced Mr. Manuel Robinson's trusty right hand and the axe blade fell to the ground.
The knife-thrower wheeled with a crazy shriek as Prosper tore free.
He leapt at Mr. Fair like a maddened windmill and once more Prosper's spirit sang a swift paean of praise to that tough, deep-jawed, besweatered gentleman of the gymnasium who had taught him the art of steering a straight punch home. He dropped the pistol. He had to hit Mr. Robinson, but he did not want to hurt him more than was necessary....
Manuel leapt for it hungrily, and Prosper, for an instant, thought all his knuckles went to pieces as they connected with the distorted visage of the knife-thrower. Manuel was lifted clean off the ground, whither he returned instantly, spread himself out upon the bricks, and stayed there.
Prosper ran over to the gray-headed man, who was half fainting.
"All right, Mr. Mellor—it is all right!" he said, and snatched out the knives, to release him.
The editor drew a deep, deep breath.
"A-ah! the wicked flicker of these knives...." he gasped, shuddered, and then with an effort seemed to pull himself together. He said nothing for a moment. But when he spoke again, he said a thing that made Prosper proud to have saved him.
"You know—I was scared—scared—but I knew then what the poor woman at the music-hall had to face night after night! I was glad—all the time I was standing there so scared—I was glad to have written those articles. I am—proud I killed that infamous business...."
Then his daughter came, running, and very white. He turned to her, with a wan smile.
"It's all right, Magda—"
"Oh, daddy—I was so scared for you—" she said, and was in his arms, weeping.
Prosper turned to Mr. Robinson, who had struggled into a sitting position. Manuel's eyes were no longer wild.
His fit of madness had evaporated. He held his right hand up, helplessly, like a dog with a hurt paw, while he groped in his deep pocket with his left hand.
"My saxophone is broken," he whimpered, and began to cry feebly.
Prosper bent down and slipped a friendly arm round him.
"Poor old Manuel," he said, gently. "Don't worry. I will buy you a Grand, old chap, later on—if they make Grand Saxophones!"
For it was not in Mr. Fair's nature to "rub it in." Mr. Robinson's mind was affected—he was under the protection of the gods. Disarmed, he was nothing to fear—only to pity.
SO PROSPER soothed him, and sent for the doctor, who came,
and, in his turn, duly sent for those who would care for Mr.
Robinson—even to the extent of letting him play all day
long on the saxophone, which Prosper, some weeks later, sent to
the establishment to which Manuel was ultimately relegated.
That night Prosper camped in the orchard of the farmhouse, while Patience and Stolid Joe reposed—one in a comfortable stable and one in a comfortable barn. Dining with Mr. Mellor and the passionately-grateful Magda, Prosper learned how Manuel had surprised first the cook and roped her with bell cords to the piano, and then, proceeding to the stable yard, had caught the editor, who had returned early from shooting, just as he stepped out of the stable where he had been to look at an ailing pony.
With the glitter of the knives still dazzling his eyes, as it were, and their hiss and thud still vibrating in his ears, Mr. Mellor, naturally enough, was not anxious to dwell upon his experience—nor was Magda.
So Prosper told them all about his meeting with the unfortunate Mr. Robinson and made them laugh. Mellor was a man of generous disposition and broad mind, and by the time dinner was finished his bitterness towards the unbalanced knife-thrower had vanished.
"After all," he said, thoughtfully, "the man was mentally quite irresponsible.... Yes, I see that. Poor devil....
"And he was an amazing marksman," added Prosper.
"Very," agreed Mr. Mellor dryly, and took another glass of port. But he knew what Prosper meant. A worse marksman than Manuel, with the best intentions in the world, might not have been able to have placed his knives in quite such dangerously safe positions....
So they practically forgave Manuel and presently accompanied Prosper out to say good-night to Patience and Stolid Joe.
Patience was very tired. She was lying down. But she wagged one ear drowsily at Prosper for "good-night."
Stolid Joe, on the other hand, in spite of a light supper, including about half a hundredweight of hay, a stone of oats and bran, and very large bale of green stuff, was wide awake. He had discovered a fine heap of turnips in that barn and was dealing with them as we might deal with cherries. His eyes twinkled as he salaamed respectfully to his visitors....
Then Prosper said good-night to his host and Magda, and, calling Plutus, who was exchanging menaces with the stable-yard dog, returned to his caravan.
"All's well, little friend," he said to the semi-terrier as he climbed into the comfortable caravan bunk. "We will now rest. There has been a pleasing fullness about to-day, which promises well for this, our autumn trip. Good-night, Plutus my son."
And so they rested from their labors.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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