The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

by Otto Penzler

  Don Q.’s angled face was yellow. His figure shook. It must be remembered that Gevil-Hay had an exhaustive vocabulary of Spanish terms and knew the exact value of every word he distilled from the indignation within him. Also he had delivered his attack well and each word told.

  The chief’s livid eyelids were quivering.

  “Señor, you have spoken as no man has ever spoken to me before,” said Don Q., at last. “There are many ways of conducting those little scenes which lie between this moment and your departure. By the time the moon has risen it will be hard to recognize El Palido!”

  There was a fierce significance in the last few words that at any other time might well have made Gevil-Hay’s heart turn cold. But now with his blood up and the hopelessness of his position apparent, he merely turned his back with a stinging gesture of repulsion.

  “You evil beast!” he repeated, “as long as I am not annoyed by the sight of you I can bear anything!”

  So Gevil-Hay turned his back and stared out into the night. The noises below were hushed. The encampment was waiting for him—waiting—and for a third time temptation leaped upon him. And that was the worst spasm of all. When it left him, it left him exhausted. His mouth felt dry, his brow clammy.

  He was still standing facing the opening of the cave, and after a pause a voice broke the silence.

  “As you have a loaded revolver in your pocket, why do you not use it? Why do you not shoot me down, señor?”

  “You know I could not,” replied Gevil-Hay comprehensively.

  “And are you not afraid of what is coming?”

  Gevil-Hay turned and held out the revolver. Don Q.’s face was a study. He took no notice of the other’s action, but asked—

  “Because of your parole?”

  He was answered by another question.

  “How did you know about the revolver?”

  “I instructed the man who gave it to you. I wished to see whether I had read you aright. Yet your inability to shoot me hurt you. Is not that so?”

  “I wish I could do it now! At least there is no necessity for more talk between us. Maim me and let me go, or kill me! Only take away this revolver from me before I——”

  Don Q. took the pistol and laid it with deliberation upon the table beside him, then he spoke.

  “Señor,” said he, “when I find one like you, I do not spoil the good God’s work in him. You are not the type of man who comes to harm at my hands. A man who can keep his honour as you have done is worthy of life. Had you shot me, or rather had you attempted to do so—for I bear the charmed life of him who cares not whether he lives or dies—then the story of your death would have been related in the posadas of Andalusia for generations. But now, take your life, yes, take it from my hands.

  “After tonight we shall see each other no more; but when you look back over your life, señor, you will always remember one man, who, like yourself, was afraid of nothing; a man worthy to stand beside you, Don Q., once of the noblest blood in Spain. A man——” The brigand checked himself in his flood of florid rhapsody and Spanish feeling. “Adios, señor.”

  Two hours later Gevil-Hay was alone upon the sierras. When he reached Gibraltar, which he did in due course, he was surprised to find himself almost sorry to hear that the Spanish Government, goaded on by ponderous British representations, had determined to cleanse the land of the presence of Don Q.

  Since then Gevil-Hay’s life has not been a failure. And sometimes in the midst of his work a thought comes back to him of the proud, unscrupulous, gallant brigand, whose respect he had once been lucky enough to win.

  Rogue: Teddy Watkins

  The Hammerpond Park Burglary

  H. G. WELLS

  ALTHOUGH HERBERT GEORGE WELLS (1866–1946) was one of the first and greatest of all writers of science fiction, for which he remains known today, he disliked being thought of as one, claiming that those works were merely a conduit for his social ideas. He had begun his adult life as a scientist and might, with a bit more encouragement, have made a successful career as a biologist, but instead was offered work as a journalist and quickly began to write fiction. His prolific writing career was loosely divided into three eras, but it is only the novels and short stories of the first, when he wrote fantastic and speculative fiction, that are much remembered today. Such early titles as The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898) are all milestones of the genre, though all feature Wells’s dim view of mankind and society, which led him to the socialistic Fabian Society. He turned to more realistic fiction after the turn of the century with such highly regarded (at the time) novels as Kipps (1905), Ann Veronica (1909), Tono-Bungay (1909), and Marriage (1912). The majority of his works over the last three decades of his life were both fiction and nonfiction books reflecting his political and social views, and are as dated, unreadable, and insignificant as they are misanthropic.

  More than a hundred films have been based on Wells’s novels, with countless others using them as uncredited sources. Among the most famous are the classic The Invisible Man (1933), Things to Come (1936), The First Men in the Moon (1919 and 1964), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996 and 1977, more capably filmed as The Island of Lost Souls, released in 1932), The War of the Worlds (1953 and 2005), and The Time Machine (1960 and 2002), among many others.

  “The Hammerpond Park Burglary” was originally published in the July 5, 1894, issue of Pall Mall Budget; it was first collected in The Short Stories of H. G. Wells (London, Benn, 1927).

  THE HAMMERPOND PARK BURGLARY

  H. G. Wells

  IT IS A MOOT POINT whether burglary is to be considered as a sport, a trade, or an art. For a trade, the technique is scarcely rigid enough, and its claims to be considered an art are vitiated by the mercenary element that qualifies its triumphs. On the whole it seems to be most justly ranked as sport, a sport for which no rules are at present formulated, and of which the prizes are distributed in an extremely informal manner. It was this informality of burglary that led to the regrettable extinction of two promising beginners at Hammerpond Park.

  The stakes offered in this affair consisted chiefly of diamonds and other personal bric-a-brac belonging to the newly married Lady Aveling. Lady Aveling, as the reader will remember, was the only daughter of Mrs. Montague Pangs, the well-known hostess. Her marriage to Lord Aveling was extensively advertised in the papers, the quantity and quality of her wedding presents, and the fact that the honeymoon was to be spent at Hammerpond. The announcement of these valuable prizes created a considerable sensation in the small circle in which Mr. Teddy Watkins was the undisputed leader, and it was decided that, accompanied by a duly qualified assistant, he should visit the village of Hammerpond in his professional capacity.

  Being a man of naturally retiring and modest disposition, Mr. Watkins determined to make this visit incognito, and after due consideration of the conditions of his enterprise, he selected the role of a landscape artist and the unassuming surname of Smith. He preceded his assistant, who, it was decided, should join him only on the last afternoon of his stay at Hammerpond. Now the village of Hammerpond is perhaps one of the prettiest little corners in Sussex; many thatched houses still survive, the flint-built church with its tall spire nestling under the down is one of the finest and least restored in the county, and the beech-woods and bracken jungles through which the road runs to the great house are singularly rich in what the vulgar artist and photographer call “bits.” So that Mr. Watkins, on his arrival with two virgin canvases, a brand-new easel, a paint-box, portmanteau, an ingenious little ladder made in sections (after the pattern of the late lamented master Charles Peace), crowbar, and wire coils, found himself welcomed with effusion and some curiosity by half-a-dozen other brethren of the brush. It rendered the disguise he had chosen unexpectedly plausible, but it inflicted upon him a considerable amount of aesthetic conversation for which he was very imperfectly prepared.

  “Have you exhibite
d very much?” said Young Person in the bar-parlour of the “Coach and Horses,” where Mr. Watkins was skilfully accumulating local information, on the night of his arrival.

  “Very little,” said Mr. Watkins, “just a snack here and there.”

  “Academy?”

  “In course. And the Crystal Palace.”

  “Did they hang you well?” said Porson.

  “Don’t rot,” said Mr. Watkins; “I don’t like it.”

  “I mean did they put you in a good place?”

  “Whadyer mean?” said Mr. Watkins suspiciously. “One ’ud think you were trying to make out I’d been put away.”

  Porson had been brought up by aunts, and was a gentlemanly young man even for an artist; he did not know what being “put away” meant, but he thought it best to explain that he intended nothing of the sort. As the question of hanging seemed a sore point with Mr. Watkins, he tried to divert the conversation a little.

  “Do you do figure-work at all?”

  “No, never had a head for figures,” said Mr. Watkins, “my miss—Mrs. Smith, I mean, does all that.”

  “She paints too!” said Porson. “That’s rather jolly.”

  “Very,” said Mr. Watkins, though he really did not think so, and feeling the conversation was drifting a little beyond his grasp added, “I came down here to paint Hammerpond House by moonlight.”

  “Really!” said Porson. “That’s rather a novel idea.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Watkins, “I thought it rather a good notion when it occurred to me. I expect to begin tomorrow night.”

  “What! You don’t mean to paint in the open, by night?”

  “I do, though.”

  “But how will you see your canvas?”

  “Have a bloomin’ cop’s—” began Mr. Watkins, rising too quickly to the question, and then realising this, bawled to Miss Durgan for another glass of cheer. “I’m goin’ to have a thing called a dark lantern,” he said to Porson.

  “But it’s about new moon now,” objected Porson. “There won’t be any moon.”

  “There’ll be the house,” said Watkins, “at any rate. I’m goin’, you see, to paint the house first and the moon afterwards.”

  “Oh!” said Porson, too staggered to continue the conversation.

  “They doo say,” said old Durgan, the landlord, who had maintained a respectful silence during the technical conversation, “as there’s no less than three p’licemen from ’Azelworth on dewty every night in the house—’count of this Lady Aveling ’n her jewellery. One’m won fower-and-six last night, off second footman–tossin’.”

  Towards sunset next day Mr. Watkins, virgin canvas, easel, and a very considerable case of other appliances in hand, strolled up the pleasant pathway through the beech-woods to Hammerpond Park, and pitched his apparatus in a strategic position commanding the house. Here he was observed by Mr. Raphael Sant, who was returning across the park from a study of the chalk-pits. His curiosity having been fired by Porson’s account of the new arrival, he turned aside with the idea of discussing nocturnal art.

  Mr. Watkins was apparently unaware of his approach. A friendly conversation with Lady Hammerpond’s butler had just terminated, and that individual, surrounded by the three pet dogs, which it was his duty to take for an airing after dinner had been served, was receding in the distance. Mr. Watkins was mixing colour with an air of great industry. Sant, approaching more nearly, was surprised to see the colour in question was as harsh and brilliant an emerald green as it is possible to imagine. Having cultivated an extreme sensibility to colour from his earliest years, he drew the air in sharply between his teeth at the very first glimpse of this brew. Mr. Watkins turned round. He looked annoyed.

  “What on earth are you going to do with that beastly green?” said Sant.

  Mr. Watkins realised that his zeal to appear busy in the eyes of the butler had evidently betrayed him into some technical error. He looked at Sant and hesitated.

  “Pardon my rudeness,” said Sant; “but really, that green is altogether too amazing. It came as a shock. What do you mean to do with it?”

  Mr. Watkins was collecting his resources. Nothing could save the situation but decision. “If you come here interrupting my work,” he said, “I’m a-goin’ to paint your face with it.”

  Sant retired, for he was a humorist and a peaceful man. Going down the hill he met Porson and Wainwright. “Either that man is a genius or he is a dangerous lunatic,” said he. “Just go up and look at his green.” And he continued his way, his countenance brightened by a pleasant anticipation of a cheerful affray round an easel in the gloaming, and the shedding of much green paint.

  But to Porson and Wainwright Mr. Watkins was less aggressive, and explained that the green was intended to be the first coating of his picture. It was, he admitted in response to a remark, an absolutely new method, invented by himself. But subsequently he became more reticent; he explained he was not going to tell every passer-by the secret of his own particular style, and added some scathing remarks upon the meanness of people “hanging about” to pick up such tricks of the masters as they could, which immediately relieved him of their company.

  Twilight deepened, first one then another star appeared. The rooks amid the tall trees to the left of the house had long since lapsed into slumbrous silence, the house itself lost all the details of its architecture and became a dark grey outline, and then the windows of the salon shone out brilliantly, the conservatory was lighted up, and here and there a bedroom window burnt yellow. Had anyone approached the easel in the park it would have been found deserted. One brief uncivil word in brilliant green sullied the purity of its canvas. Mr. Watkins was busy in the shrubbery with his assistant, who had discreetly joined him from the carriage-drive.

  Mr. Watkins was inclined to be self-congratulatory upon the ingenious device by which he had carried all his apparatus boldly, and in the sight of all men, right up to the scene of operations. “That’s the dressing-room,” he said to his assistant, “and, as soon as the maid takes the candle away and goes down to supper, we’ll call in. My! How nice the house do look, to be sure, against the starlight, and with all its windows and lights! Swopme, Jim, I almost wish I was a painter-chap. Have you fixed that there wire across the path from the laundry?”

  He cautiously approached the house until he stood below the dressing-room window, and began to put together his folding ladder. He was much too experienced a practitioner to feel any unusual excitement. Jim was reconnoitring the smoking-room. Suddenly, close beside Mr. Watkins in the bushes, there was a violent crash and a stifled curse. Someone had tumbled over the wire which his assistant had just arranged. He heard feet running on the gravel pathway beyond. Mr. Watkins, like all true artists, was a singularly shy man, and he incontinently dropped his folding ladder and began running circumspectly through the shrubbery. He was indistinctly aware of two people hot upon his heels, and he fancied that he distinguished the outline of his assistant in front of him. In another moment he had vaulted the low stone wall bounding the shrubbery, and was in the open park. Two thuds on the turf followed his own leap.

  It was a close chase in the darkness through the trees. Mr. Watkins was a loosely-built man and in good training, and he gained hand-over-hand upon the hoarsely panting figure in front. Neither spoke, but as Mr. Watkins pulled up alongside, a qualm of awful doubt came over him. The other man turned his head at the same moment and gave an exclamation of surprise. “It’s not Jim,” thought Mr. Watkins, and simultaneously the stranger flung himself, as it were, at Watkins’s knees, and they were forthwith grappling on the ground together. “Lend a hand, Bill,” cried the stranger as the third man came up. And Bill did—two hands in fact, and some accentuated feet. The fourth man, presumably Jim, had apparently turned aside and made off in a different direction. At any rate, he did not join the trio.

  Mr. Watkins’s memory of the incidents of the next two minutes is extremely vague. He has a dim recollection of having his thumb in the
corner of the mouth of the first man, and feeling anxious about its safety, and for some seconds at least he held the head of the gentleman answering to the name of Bill to the ground by the hair. He was also kicked in a great number of different places, apparently by a vast multitude of people. Then the gentleman who was not Bill got his knee below Mr. Watkins’s diaphragm, and tried to curl him up upon it.

  When his sensations became less entangled he was sitting upon the turf, and eight or ten men—the night was dark, and he was rather too confused to count—standing round him, apparently waiting for him to recover. He mournfully assumed that he was captured, and would probably have made some philosophical reflections on the fickleness of fortune, had not his internal sensations disinclined him for speech.

  He noticed very quickly that his wrists were not handcuffed, and then a flask of brandy was put in his hands. This touched him a little—it was such unexpected kindness.

  “He’s a-comin’ round,” said a voice which he fancied he recognised as belonging to the Hammerpond second footman.

  “We’ve got ’em, sir, both of ’em,” said the Hammerpond butler, the man who had handed him the flask. “Thanks to you.”

  No one answered this remark. Yet he failed to see how it applied to him.

  “He’s fair dazed,” said a strange voice; “the villains half-murdered him.”

  Mr. Teddy Watkins decided to remain fair dazed until he had a better grasp of the situation. He perceived that two of the black figures round him stood side-by-side with a dejected air, and there was something in the carriage of their shoulders that suggested to his experienced eye hands that were bound together. Two! In a flash he rose to his position. He emptied the little flask and staggered—obsequious hands assisting him—to his feet. There was a sympathetic murmur.