“Then you won’t refuse the Bully?”
“Refuse him! I’d go ten miles to meet him.”
“By George! it would be great!” cried the Baronet. “Well, the moon is at the full, and the place should be about here.”
“If he’s as good as you say,” Stevens remarked, “he should be known in the ring, unless he is just an amateur who amuses himself like that.”
“Some think he’s an ostler, or maybe a racing man from the training stables over yonder. Where there are horses there is boxing. If you can believe the accounts, there is something a bit queer and outlandish about the fellow. Hi! Look out, damn you, look out!”
The Baronet’s voice had risen to a sudden screech of surprise and of anger. At this point the road dips down into a hollow, heavily shaded by trees, so that at night it arches across like the mouth of a tunnel. At the foot of the slope there stand two great stone pillars, which, as viewed by daylight, are lichen-stained and weathered, with heraldic devices on each which are so mutilated by time that they are mere protuberances of stone. An iron gate of elegant design, hanging loosely upon rusted hinges, proclaims both the past glories and the present decay of Brocas Old Hall, which lies at the end of the weed-encumbered avenue. It was from the shadow of this ancient gateway that an active figure had sprung suddenly into the centre of the road and had, with great dexterity, held up the horses, who ramped and pawed as they forced back upon their haunches.
“Here, Rowe, you ’old the tits, will ye?” cried a high strident voice. “I’ve a little word to say to this ’ere slap-up Corinthian before ’e goes any farther.”
A second man had emerged from the shadows and without a word took hold of the horses’ heads. He was a short, thick fellow, dressed in a curious brown many-caped overcoat, which came to his knees, with gaiters and boots beneath it. He wore no hat, and those in the dog-cart had a view, as he came in front of the side-lamps, of a surly red face with an ill-fitting lower lip clean shaven, and a high black cravat swathed tightly under the chin. As he gripped the leathers his more active comrade sprang forward and rested a bony hand upon the side of the splashboard while he looked keenly up with a pair of fierce blue eyes at the faces of the two travellers, the light beating full upon his own features. He wore a hat low upon his brow, but in spite of its shadow both the Baronet and the pugilist could see enough to shrink from him, for it was an evil face, evil but very formidable, stern, craggy, high-nosed, and fierce, with an inexorable mouth which bespoke a nature which would neither ask for mercy nor grant it. As to his age, one could only say for certain that a man with such a face was young enough to have all his virility and old enough to have experienced all the wickedness of life. The cold, savage eyes took a deliberate survey, first of the Baronet and then of the young man beside him.
“Aye, Rowe, it’s a slap-up Corinthian, same as I said,” he remarked over his shoulder to his companion. “But this other is a likely chap. If ’e isn’t a millin’ cove ’e ought to be. Any’ow, we’ll try ’im out.”
“Look here,” said the Baronet, “I don’t know who you are, except that you are a damned impertinent fellow. I’d put the lash of my whip across your face for two pins!”
“Stow that gammon, gov’nor! It ain’t safe to speak to me like that.”
“I’ve heard of you and your ways!” cried the angry soldier. “I’ll teach you to stop my horses on the Queen’s high road! You’ve got the wrong men this time, my fine fellow, as you will soon learn.”
“That’s as it may be,” said the stranger. “May’ap, master, we may all learn something before we part. One or other of you ’as got to get down and put up your ’ands before you get any farther.”
Stevens had instantly sprung down into the road.
“If you want a fight you’ve come to the right shop,” said he; “it’s my trade, so don’t say I took you unawares.”
The stranger gave a cry of satisfaction.
“Blow my dickey!” he shouted. “It is a millin’ cove, Joe, same as I said. No more chaw-bacons for us, but the real thing. Well, young man, you’ve met your master to-night. Happen you never ’eard what Lord Longmore said o’ me? ‘A man must be made special to beat you,’ says ’e. That’s wot Lord Longmore said.”
“That was before the Bull came along,” growled the man in front, speaking for the first time. “Stow your chaffing, Joe! A little more about the Bull and you and me will quarrel. ’E bested me once, but it’s all betters and no takers that I glut ’im if ever we meet again. Well, young man, what d’ye think of me?”
“I think you’ve got your share of cheek.”
“Cheek. Wot’s that?”
“Impudence, bluff—gas, if you like.”
The last word had a surprising effect upon the stranger. He smote his leg with his hand and broke out into a high neighing laugh, in which he was joined by his gruff companion.
“You’ve said the right word, my beauty,” cried the latter, “Gas is the word and no error. Well, there’s a good moon, but the clouds are comin’ up. We had best use the light while we can.”
Whilst this conversation had been going on the Baronet had been looking with an ever-growing amazement at the attire of the stranger. A good deal of it confirmed his belief that he was connected with some stables, though making every allowance for this his appearance was very eccentric and old-fashioned. Upon his head he wore a yellowish-white top-hat of long-haired beaver, such as is still affected by some drivers of four-in-hands, with a bell crown and a curling brim. His dress consisted of a shortwaisted swallow-tail coat, snuff-coloured, with steel buttons. It opened in front to show a vest of striped silk, while his legs were encased in buff knee breeches with blue stockings and low shoes. The figure was angular and hard, with a great suggestion of wiry activity. This Bully of Brocas was clearly a very great character, and the young dragoon officer chuckled as he thought what a glorious story he would carry back to the mess of this queer old-world figure and the thrashing which he was about to receive from the famous London boxer.
Billy, the little groom, had taken charge of the horses, who were shivering and sweating.
“This way!” said the stout man, turning towards the gate. It was a sinister place, black and weird, with the crumbling pillars and the heavy arching trees. Neither the Baronet nor the pugilist liked the look of it.
“Where are you going, then?”
“This is no place for a fight,” said the stout man. “We’ve got as pretty a place as ever you saw inside the gate here. You couldn’t beat it on Molesey Hurst.”
“The road is good enough for me,” said Stevens.
“The road is good enough for two Johnny Raws,” said the man with the beaver hat. “It ain’t good enough for two slap-up millin’ coves like you an’ me. You ain’t afeard, are you?”
“Not of you or ten like you,” said Stevens, stoutly.
“Well, then, come with me and do it as it ought to be done.”
Sir Frederick and Stevens exchanged glances.
“I’m game,” said the pugilist.
“Come on, then.”
The little party of four passed through the gateway. Behind them in the darkness the horses stamped and reared, while the voice of the boy could be heard as he vainly tried to soothe them. After walking fifty yards up the grass-grown drive the guide turned to the right through a thick belt of trees, and they came out upon a circular plot of grass, white and clear in the moonlight. It had a raised bank, and on the farther side was one of those little pillared stone summer-houses beloved by the early Georgians.
“What did I tell you?” cried the stout man, triumphantly. “Could you do better than this within twenty mile of town? It was made for it. Now, Tom, get to work upon him, and show us what you can do.”
It had all become like an extraordinary dream. The strange men, their odd
dress, their queer speech, the moonlit circle of grass, and the pillared summer-house all wove themselves into one fantastic whole. It was only the sight of Alf Stevens’s ill-fitting tweed suit, and his homely English face surmounting it, which brought the Baronet back to the workaday world. The thin stranger had taken off his beaver hat, his swallow-tailed coat, his silk waistcoat, and finally his shirt had been drawn over his head by his second. Stevens in a cool and leisurely fashion kept pace with the preparations of his antagonist. Then the two fighting men turned upon each other.
But as they did so Stevens gave an exclamation of surprise and horror. The removal of the beaver hat had disclosed a horrible mutilation of the head of his antagonist. The whole upper forehead had fallen in, and there seemed to be a broad red weal between his close-cropped hair and his heavy brows.
“Good Lord,” cried the young pugilist. “What’s amiss with the man?” The question seemed to rouse a cold fury in his antagonist.
“You look out for your own head, master,” said he. “You’ll find enough to do, I’m thinkin’, without talkin’ about mine.”
This retort drew a shout of hoarse laughter from his second. “Well said, my Tommy!” he cried. “It’s Lombard Street to a China orange on the one and only.”
The man whom he called Tom was standing with his hands up in the centre of the natural ring. He looked a big man in his clothes, but he seemed bigger in the buff, and his barrel chest, sloping shoulders, and loosely-slung muscular arms were all ideal for the game. His grim eyes gleamed fiercely beneath his misshapen brows, and his lips were set in a fixed hard smile, more menacing than a scowl. The pugilist confessed, as he approached him, that he had never seen a more formidable figure. But his bold heart rose to the fact that he had never yet found the man who could master him, and that it was hardly credible that he would appear as an old-fashioned stranger on a country road. Therefore, with an answering smile, he took up his position and raised his hands.
But what followed was entirely beyond his experience. The stranger feinted quickly with his left, and sent in a swinging hit with his right, so quick and hard that Stevens had barely time to avoid it and to counter with a short jab as his opponent rushed in upon him. Next instant the man’s bony arms were round him, and the pugilist was hurled into the air in a whirling cross buttock, coming down with a heavy thud upon the grass. The stranger stood back and folded his arms while Stevens scrambled to his feet with a red flush of anger upon his cheeks.
“Look here,” he cried. “What sort of game is this?”
“We claim foul!” the Baronet shouted.
“Foul be damned! As clean a throw as ever I saw!” said the stout man. “What rules do you fight under?”
“Queensberry, of course.”
“I never heard of it. It’s London prize-ring with us.”
“Come on, then!” cried Stevens, furiously. “I can wrestle as well as another. You won’t get me napping again.”
* * * *
Nor did he. The next time that the stranger rushed in Stevens caught him in as strong a grip, and after swinging and swaying they came down together in a dog-fall. Three times this occurred, and each time the stranger walked across to his friend and seated himself upon the grassy bank before he recommenced.
“What d’ye make of him?” the Baronet asked, in one of these pauses.
Stevens was bleeding from the ear, but otherwise showed no sign of damage.
“He knows a lot,” said the pugilist. “I don’t know where he learned it, but he’s had a deal of practice somewhere. He’s as strong as a lion and as hard as a board, for all his queer face.”
“Keep him at out-fighting. I think you are his master there.”
“I’m not so sure that I’m his master anywhere, but I’ll try my best.”
It was a desperate fight, and as round followed round it became clear, even to the amazed Baronet, that the middle-weight champion had met his match. The stranger had a clever draw and a rush which, with his springing hits, made him a most dangerous foe. His head and body seemed insensible to blows, and the horribly malignant smile never for one instant flickered from his lips. He hit very hard with fists like flints, and his blows whizzed up from every angle. He had one particularly deadly lead, an uppercut at the jaw, which again and again nearly came home, until at last it did actually fly past the guard and brought Stevens to the ground. The stout man gave a whoop of triumph.
“The whisker hit, by George! It’s a horse to a hen on my Tommy! Another like that, lad, and you have him beat.”
“I say, Stevens, this is going too far,” said the Baronet, as he supported his weary man. “What will the regiment say if I bring you up all knocked to pieces in a bye-battle! Shake hands with this fellow and give him best, or you’ll not be fit for your job.”
“Give him best? Not I!” cried Stevens, angrily. “I’ll knock that damned smile off his ugly mug before I’ve done.”
“What about the Sergeant?”
“I’d rather go back to London and never see the Sergeant than have my number taken down by this chap.”
“Well, ’ad enough?” his opponent asked, in a sneering voice, as he moved from his seat on the bank.
For answer young Stevens sprang forward and rushed at his man with all the strength that was left to him. By the fury of his onset he drove him back, and for a long minute had all the better of the exchanges. But this iron fighter seemed never to tire. His step was as quick and his blow as hard as ever when this long rally had ended. Stevens had eased up from pure exhaustion. But his opponent did not ease up. He came back on him with a shower of furious blows which beat down the weary guard of the pugilist. Alf Stevens was at the end of his strength and would in another instant have sunk to the ground but for a singular intervention.
It has been said that in their approach to the ring the party had passed through a grove of trees. Out of these there came a peculiar shrill cry, a cry of agony, which might be from a child or from some small woodland creature in distress. It was inarticulate, high-pitched, and inexpressibly melancholy. At the sound the stranger, who had knocked Stevens on to his knees, staggered back and looked round him with an expression of helpless horror upon his face. The smile had left his lips and there only remained the loose-lipped weakness of a man in the last extremity of terror.
“It’s after me again, mate!” he cried.
“Stick it out, Tom! You have him nearly beat! It can’t hurt you.”
“It can ’urt me! It will ’urt me!” screamed the fighting man. “My God! I can’t face it! Ah, I see it! I see it!”
With a scream of fear he turned and bounded off into the brushwood. His companion, swearing loudly, picked up the pile of clothes and darted after him, the dark shadows swallowing up their flying figures.
Stevens, half-senselessly, had staggered back and lay upon the grassy bank, his head pillowed upon the chest of the young Baronet, who was holding his flask of brandy to his lips. As they sat there they were both aware that the cries had become louder and shriller. Then from among the bushes there ran a small white terrier, nosing about as if following a trail and yelping most piteously. It squattered across the grassy sward, taking no notice of the two young men. Then it also vanished into the shadows. As it did so the two spectators sprang to their feet and ran as hard as they could tear for the gateway and the trap. Terror had seized them—a panic terror far above reason or control. Shivering and shaking, they threw themselves into the dog-cart, and it was not until the willing horses had put two good miles between that ill-omened hollow and themselves that they at last ventured to speak.
“Did you ever see such a dog?” asked the Baronet.
“No,” cried Stevens. “And, please God, I never may again.”
Late that night the two travellers broke their journey at the Swan Inn, near Harpenden Common. The landlo
rd was an old acquaintance of the Baronet’s, and gladly joined him in a glass of port after supper. A famous old sport was Mr. Joe Homer, of the Swan, and he would talk by the hour of the legends of the ring, whether new or old. The name of Alf Stevens was well known to him, and he looked at him with the deepest interest.
“Why, sir, you have surely been fighting,” said he. “I hadn’t read of any engagement in the papers.”
“Enough said of that,” Stevens answered, in a surly voice.
“Well, no offence! I suppose”—his smiling face became suddenly very serious—“I suppose you didn’t, by chance, see anything of him they call the Bully of Brocas as you came north?”
“Well, what if we did?”
The landlord was tense with excitement.
“It was him that nearly killed Bob Meadows. It was at the very gate of Brocas Old Hall that he stopped him. Another man was with him. Bob was game to the marrow, but he was found hit to pieces on the lawn inside the gate where the summer-house stands.”
The Baronet nodded.
“Ah, you’ve been there!” cried the landlord.
“Well, we may as well make a clean breast of it,” said the Baronet, looking at Stevens. “We have been there, and we met the man you speak of—an ugly customer he is, too!”
“Tell me!” said the landlord, in a voice that sank to a whisper. “Is it true what Bob Meadows says, that the men are dressed like our grandfathers, and that the fighting man has his head all caved in?”
“Well, he was old-fashioned, certainly, and his head was the queerest ever I saw.”
“God in Heaven!” cried the landlord. “Do you know, sir, that Tom Hickman, the famous prize fighter, together with his pal, Joe Rowe, a silversmith of the City, met his death at that very point in the year 1822, when he was drunk, and tried to drive on the wrong side of a wagon? Both were killed and the wheel of the wagon crushed in Hickman’s forehead.”
The Fourth Ghost Story MEGAPACK: 25 Classic Haunts! Page 33
