“We could hold out for ever, for we should always have Emerson’s Chamber of Horrors to fall back upon,” laughed a storekeeper opposite; “that is, if it is not already dead of fright from the schrek it got last week.”
While others guffawed the bank-manager grinned sourly at this allusion. It happened that the premises provided by his Corporation for the housing of its employé’s contained a spacious backyard, with an open shed and some stabling. This yard Emerson had seen fit to populate with the most miscellaneous of zoological collections, comprising a young aasvogel, two or three blue cranes, an owl and a peacock, besides a few moulting and demoralised-looking fowls, a tame meerkat, a shocking reprobate of a baboon—whose liberty and influences for evil were only restricted by a post and chain—several monkeys; item, Kaffir curs of slinking and sinister aspect; and, in fact, innumerable specimens which it was impossible to include within the inventory with any degree of assurance, for the inhabitants of the menagerie were continually being added to, or disappearing, the latter according to the degree of watchfulness maintained on their own part, or that of aggression on the part of their neighbours. This collection was known in Doppersdorp as Emerson’s Chamber of Horrors.
“You weren’t here that night, Musgrave. Away at Suffield’s place, I think,” went on the last speaker, with a wink at the others. “Well, some fellow got hold of a cur dog in the middle of the night, and thinking it had escaped from Emerson’s Zoo, reckoned it a Christian duty to restore the wanderer. So he took it to the street leading to the bank-yard, tied one of those detonating squibs to its tail, and headed it for the gate. Heavens! you never heard such an awful row in your life. Phiz! bang! went the cracker, and there was the mongrel scooting round and round the yard, dragging a shower of fiery sparks, and every now and then bang would go the cracker like pistol-shots. You can just imagine the result. Everything kicked up the most fearful clamour—the dogs, and the cats, and the peacock, and the aasvogel, and the monkeys, all yelling at once; and the more they yelled, the more the thing seemed to bang off. It didn’t hurt the cur though, for it was a long way behind him. But the best of the joke is that the banging of the crackers started the notion that the town was being attacked, and Lambert and some other fellows—myself among them—came slinking up gingerly with rifles. The squib had long burnt out by the time we got there; but the sight that met our astonished gaze was magnificent. Emerson was standing on the top step, clad in a short nightshirt, emptying all the furniture into the backyard, and, oh, his language! Well, I can only give you some idea of it by saying that it was so thick, that the chairs and tables he was hurling out stuck in it. They could not even reach the ground.”
“It looks as if you had a finger in the pie yourself, Smith. You seem to know all the details,” said Roden. But Emerson merely grinned sardonically. He did not think the recital worthy of comment. Besides, he had heard it so often.
“I? Not I. It only came in at the end, as I tell you,” protested Smith.
At this juncture a note was handed to Roden. It was from Mr Van Stolz.
“Here’s a little more excitement for Doppersdorp to-night,” he said when he had read it. This was its burden. “One hundred and thirty-three mounted men from Barabastadt, en route for the front, are passing through. They will camp here to-night. Volunteers and band going out to meet them. Tell everybody.”
This was news indeed. In a trice the table was deserted. All who heard it were in first-rate spirits—those who belonged to the newly formed Volunteer Corps, because it would afford an opportunity for a lively game of soldiers; those who did not, because it meant more excitement; while Jones, perhaps, was in the greatest feather of all, for would there not be a prodigious consumption of drinks in the bar of the Barkly Hotel that night? Roden and Emerson were left alone at the table.
“Come along, Musgrave; let’s go and have a look at these Barabastadt heroes,” said the latter. “The Light Brigade is nothing to them. We are sure to see some first-class fun.”
“Not a doubt of it,” was the reply. And these two cynics rose to follow the crowd, but with a different motive.