Chapter V: Belcher the Thorough

“It is singularly illustrative of the obscure psychology of the lower orders,” said Bernard O’Hagan, “this marrying habit of Continental music-hall artistes. The female of the species may drive, take supper, and accept diamonds from men of pedigree; but she always marries a prize-fighter or a bookmaker. It is a process of natural selection, Raymond. When out of the proceeds of a successful professional career she invests in a husband, she ‘backs her fancy.’ I have known Spanish dancers who were adored by reigning monarchs to have unsavoury husbands concealed in all sorts of filthy alleys; and one lady circus rider to whom I was presented in Budapest proved to be lawfully wedded to a retired Paris sewerman. Zoologically, the habit has interest.”

Our inquiries at the hospital discovered Mr. Brandon to be on the danger list.

“The most promising meeting since I encountered Baron Verneux,” murmured O’Hagan, “indefinitely postponed! The Chevalier Camille d’Oysans will be keenly disappointed. He had made all the necessary arrangements for flying the country!”

We learned that the police were in quest of Mr. Brandon’s assailant. A call at Mr. Alex. Dewson’s hotel provided a surprise.

“I shall not chastise him,” explained my friend. “The depths of his ignorance are pathetic. But I feel it to be my duty to tell him that he is a disgrace to the great nation which includes in its roll of honour the name of Edmond O’Hagan.”

Mr. Dewson could receive no visitors. Captain O’Hagan swept the servant aside and waved to me to follow. It needs something more than a verbal rebuff to exclude O’Hagan—something in the nature of a double-barred iron door or a squad with fixed bayonets.

My friend honoured Mr. Dewson’s apartment. And Mr. Dewson, a heavily bandaged figure hunched up in an armchair by the fire, observed our intrusion with his one visible eye.

“Raymond,” said O’Hagan, as he focussed this crippled apparition, “the ‘Trooper’ has forestalled us again!”

“You bet he has, Captain!” whispered a weak voice.

O’Hagan turned to me.

“In the thoroughness of Mr. Belcher’s method,” he said, “I find something almost admirable, Raymond! The ‘Trooper’ is a loss to the service.”

That he was a loss which speeding Time should rectify, we, being but human, could not foresee. But is it not history how Sergeant Belcher, at a spot not a hundred miles from Ypres, acquired the most coveted distinction in the gift of His Britannic Majesty for rescuing a badly wounded officer under heavy fire? And is it not written in deathless annals that the name of that gallant officer was Captain the Hon. Bernard O’Hagan, V.C., D.S.O.?

EXPLOIT THE FOURTH.

HE BURIES AN OLD LOVE.

EXPLOIT THE FOURTH.
HE BURIES AN OLD LOVE.