The Camera Fiend - E. W. Hornung (books you need to read txt) 📗
- Author: E. W. Hornung
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It was neither very nice nor half enough for a famishing lad, that plate of cold mixed meats from the restaurant, with a hard stale roll to eke them out. But Pocket felt he had a fresh start in life when he had eaten every crumb and emptied his water-bottle. Nor was he without plan or purpose any longer; he was only doubtful whether to knock at Phillida's door and shout goodbye, or to leave her a note explaining all. Baumgartner would be out for hours; he always was, on these early jaunts of his; there would almost be time to wait and say goodbye properly when the girl came down. She would hardly hinder him a second time, and he longed to see her and speak to her again, especially if that was to be the end between them. He did not mean it to be the end, by any means; but any nonsense that might have been gathering in the schoolboy's head was, at this point, more than rudely dispelled by the discovery that Dr. Baumgartner had removed his clothes!
Pocket swore an oath that would have shocked him in a schoolfellow; it was a practice he indeed [pg 220] abhorred, but decent words would not meet such a case. It was to be met by action, however, just as that locked door had been met, and the policeman's prohibition in the Park. He knew where his clothes must be. He slipped his overcoat, which he was using as a dressing-gown, over his pyjamas, and ran right downstairs as Dr. Baumgartner had done not many minutes before him. His clothes were in the dark-room. But the dark-room door had a Yale lock; there was no forcing it by foot or shoulder, though Pocket in his passion tried both. So round he went without a moment's hesitation to the dark-room window by way of the little conservatory. The blind was drawn. That mattered nothing. He went back for a plant-pot, and smashed both it and a sheet of ruby glass with one vicious blow.
Entry was simple after that; he had only to be careful not to cut his hands or feet. Inside, he removed the broken glass, closed the window, and let the blind down as he had found it, without looking twice at his clothes. There they were for him to carry upstairs at his leisure. They were not his only property in that room either. His revolver was there somewhere under lock and key. He might want it, waking, if Dr. Baumgartner came back before his time.
It was easily located; of the lockers, built in [pg 221] with the shelves on the folding doors, only one was actually locked, and the revolver was not in the others. Pocket went to his waistcoat for one of those knives beloved of schoolboys, with the hook for extracting stones from hoofs, among other superfluous implements. Pocket had never used this one, had often felt inclined to wrench it off because it was hard to open and in the way of the other tools. But he used it now with as little hesitation as he had done the other damage, with almost a lust for breakage; and there was his revolver, safe and sound as his clothes.
It had been honoured with a place beside a rack of special negatives; at least, there were other racks, in the other lockers, not locked up like that; and there was no other treasure that Pocket could see. He had his hand on his own treasure, was in the act of taking it, trembling a little, but more elated, as he stood in a ruby flood only partially diluted by the broken window behind the blind.
At that moment there came such a thunder of knuckles on the door beside him that the revolver caught in the rack of negatives, and brought the whole lot crashing about his toes.
The unseen knuckles renewed their assault upon the dark-room door; and Pocket wavered between its Yale lock, which opened on this side with a mere twist of the handle, and the broken red window behind the drawn red blind. Escape that way was easy enough; and if ever one could take the streets in pyjamas and overcoat, with the rest of one's clothes in a bundle under one's arm, it was before six o'clock in the morning. But it was not a course that vanity encouraged in an excited schoolboy with romantic instincts and a revolver which he perceived at a glance to be still loaded in most of its chambers. Pocket was not one of nature's heroes, but he had an overwhelming desire to behave like one, and time to feel how he should despise himself all his life if he bolted by the window instead of opening the door. So he did open it, trembling but determined. And there stood Phillida in her dressing-gown, her dark hair tumbling over her shoulders.
“It's you!” she cried, taking the exclamation out of his mouth.
“Yes,” he said, with a gust of relief; “did you think it was thieves?”
[pg 223]“Isn't it?” she demanded, pointing to the broken window visible through the blind. Then she saw his revolver, and drew back an inch.
“He took this from me,” said Pocket. “I had a right to it. Take it if you will!”
And he offered it, in the best romantic manner, by the barrel. But Phillida was too angry to look at revolvers.
“You had no business to break in to get it,” she told him, with considerable severity.
“I didn't! I broke in for my clothes; he took them, too, this morning before he went out. They're what I broke in for, and I'd a perfect right; you know I had! And while I'm about it I thought I might as well have this thing too. I knew it was in here somewhere. It was in there. And I'm glad I got it, and so should you be, because you and I are in the house of one of the greatest villains alive!”
The words tumbled over each other with quite hereditary heat. They were all out in a few seconds, and the boy left panting with his indignation, the girl's eyes flashing hers.
“I begin to think my uncle was right,” said she. “This is the act of what he said you were, if anything could be.”
“He lied to you, and he's been lying to me!”
“He may have been justified.”
[pg 224]“You wait till you hear all he's done! I don't mean taking my revolver from me; he was justified in that, if you like, after what I'd done with it. He may even have been justified in taking away my clothes, if he couldn't trust me to keep my word and stay in this awful house. But that isn't the worst. He encouraged me to write a letter home, to my own poor people who may think me dead——”
“Well?”
There was more sympathy in her voice, more anxiety; but his was breaking with his great grief and grievance.
“He took it out himself, to send it to the General Post Office to catch the country post. So he said; and I was so grateful to him! On Saturday morning he said they must have got it; he kept on saying so, and you don't know how thankful I was every time! But yesterday afternoon I found scraps of my letter in the waste-paper basket in his room; he'd never posted it at all!”
Phillida looked shocked and distressed enough at this; her liquid eyes filled with sympathy as they gazed upon the wretched youth.
“I'm a fool to blub about it—but—but that was the Limit!” he croaked, and worked the poor word till it came distinctly.
“It was cruel,” she allowed. “It must seem so, [pg 225] at any rate; it does to me; but then I understand so little. I can't think why he's hiding you, or why you let yourself be hidden.”
“But you must know what I've done; you must guess?”
The revolver was still in his hand; he gave it a guilty glance, and she looked from it to him without recoiling.
“Of course I guessed on Saturday.” There was a studious absence of horror in her tone. “Yet I couldn't believe it, unless it was an accident. And if it was an accident——”
“It was one!” he choked. “It was the most absolute accident that ever happened; he saw it; he can tell you; but he never told me till hours afterwards. I was nearly dead with asthma; he brought me here, he was frightfully good to me, I'm grateful enough for all that. But he should have told me before the accident became a crime! When he did tell me I lost my head, and begged him to keep me here, and afterwards when I came to my senses he wouldn't let me go. I needn't remind you of that morning! After that I promised to stay on, and I'd have kept all my promises if only my letter had gone to my poor people!”
He told her what a guarded letter it had been, only written to let them know he was alive, and that with the doctor's expressed approval. But [pg 226] now he had learnt his lesson, and he was going to play the game. It was more than ever the game with that poor fellow lying in prison for what he had never done. And so the whole story would be in to-morrow's papers, with the single exception of Dr. Baumgartner's name.
“Nothing shall make me give that,” said Pocket valiantly; “on your account, if not on his!”
Phillida encouraged his new resolution without comment on this last assurance. She had stooped, and was picking up the unbroken negatives and putting them back in the rack; he followed her example, and collected the broken bits, while she put the rack back in its place, and certain splinters in theirs, until the locker shut without showing much damage. Pocket was left with the fragmentary negatives on his hands.
“I should throw those away,” said Phillida. “And now, by the time you're ready to go, I'll have a cup of tea ready for you.”
They faced each other in the rosy light, now doubly diluted by the open door, and Pocket did not move. He wanted to say something first, and he was too shy to say it. Shyness had come upon him all at once; hitherto they had both been like young castaways, finely regardless of appearances, he of his bare feet and throat, she of her dressing-gown and her bedroom slippers. She was [pg 227] unconscious or careless still, as with a brother; but he had become the very embodiment of mauvaise honte, an awful
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