All this he related without bravado, deprecating false modesty or extravagant gesture, and the simple, earnest manner in which he told his life’s story caused the great, generous heart of the listening girl to go out to him in a wave of love and sympathy—the outward expression of which she had difficulty in controlling.
Gradually, however, his mood changed, and the trend of his experiences veering from the hard-bitten facts of ordinary police duty to the more humorous occurrences that from time to time vary its red-tape-bound monotony, he recounted several laughable episodes in which he had been involved at different periods. The relation of these tickled the girl’s imagination greatly.
“Yes,” he said musingly. “We do get up against some funny propositions at times, that any one who’s blessed in the least degree with the saving sense of humor can’t help but appreciate. If it wasn’t for these occasional little happenings our life would be pretty dull. I remember one time”—he checked himself, with a laugh. “Bah! I’m yarning away like an old washerwoman full of gin and trouble.”
“Will you go on?” Mary said, leaning towards him with dancing eyes.
The thrill in her voice—strangely contagious it was—told how much she was interested. It was not to be wondered at. There was only one man on earth for whom she really cared—he lay stretched before her then, and probably what attracted her most in him was his manly simplicity and the sincerity of his tones and expression which, somehow, always had the knack of carrying absolute conviction with them in the narration of even the most trivial story.
“Well,” Ellis went on, “I was on Number Thirteen—south-bound—one day, about eighteen months back, I guess, returning to my line detachment at Elbow Vale. As we pulled away from Little Bend—the first stop—the Con’ came into the car I was in with a wire in his hand. ‘Benton,’ he said. ‘Anybody here by that name?’ I was in mufti—had been on a plain-clothes job. ‘Right here!’ I said, and opened it up. It was from the O.C., and as far as I can remember, ran something like this: ‘Definite information just to hand. Arthur Forbes escaped Badminton Penitentiary; is on No. 13; forty-five; weight, one hundred and ninety; five feet ten; thick black eyebrows; hook nose; triangular scar top bald head; dress unknown; search train thoroughly; arrest without fail, signed R. B. Bargrave.’
“It wasn’t much of a description to work on, but I realized it was a hurry call and was very likely all the O.C. had been able to get. It was up to me to make good somehow. So I started in to investigate that train with a fine-tooth comb, and I put the Con’ wise, too. It’s only a short train—the Southbound—and I thought I’d have an easy job locating my man if he was on it. I sauntered casually through, from end to end, and sized all the passengers up. There was only one who came anything near the description I’d had given me. Beggar was a parson at that, too. I passed him up for the time being, and when we stopped at Frampton, I and the Con’ made a pretty thorough search of the tender, baggage, and mail coaches—also the rods underneath the whole length of the train. Nothing doing, though, so we got aboard again. Then we ransacked every cubby hole we could think of. Nothing doing again there, either. I began to figure I was up against a hard proposition, or that p’r’aps he wasn’t on the train at all. But the wire read so positive, and our O.C. isn’t the man to send you on a wild goose chase. Besides, I hated to think this gink might slip it over on me after all, and make his get-away.
“Consequence was—I only had this parson to fall back on. I was only two seats back from him, so I could watch him good. He was a big, stout, broad-shouldered chap about the height and weight of the description, all right; clean-shaved and very pale, with a hook nose and thick black eyebrows, too. Didn’t fancy, somehow, that his expression and the cut of his jaw was exactly in keeping with his clerical dress—and his hair—what little I could see of it under his shovel hat—was pretty short. But there! you can’t always judge a man by his personal appearance. It isn’t wise or fair. Though honestly—I tell you, Miss O’Malley, I have seen parsons before now with faces tough enough to get them six months—without the option of a fine—just on sight. I casually moved up to the seat alongside his, on the other side of the aisle, where I could keep good tab on him. He’d got some magazines and two or three clerical papers—The Pulpit, The Clerical Review, etc., that he seemed very interested in, and I began to think what ridiculous nonsense it was for me ever for an instant to associate him in my mind with an escaped convict on the mere coincidence of his answering a vague description. While all this was running in my head something happened which caused me to change my mind a bit and feel kind of uneasy and suspicious of my Reverend ‘Nibs.’
“All the way from Frampton, the whole bunch of us in the car—with the exception, of course, of the divine—had been in turn amused and annoyed at the antics of a bleary-eyed-looking bohunk who’d come aboard there with a bottle of ‘Seagram’s’ rye sticking out of his pocket. He’d got a proper singin’ jag on, and every now and again he’d pull out his bottle and whet his whistle. Might have been anything from a camp cookee to a section hand out on a ‘toot.’ I don’t know what the beggar was. Anyhow, getting tired of sitting still and singing on his lonesome, he comes zig-zagging up the aisle, pitching cheerfully into some one’s lap at every lurch of the train. The last lap he hit happened to be this parson’s, who shoved him off disgustedly, and drew in the hem of his garments, so to speak, all same Pharisee and Publican. The way he did it got that drunk goin’ properly—made him pretty nasty. So he gets back at the parson by pulling out his bottle and offering him a drink right then and there. Of course that fetched a great big ignorant laugh out of the whole lot of us, watching this Punch and Judy show. Parson never let on, though—kept his face on one side, staring out of the window. Well, the drunk, seeing his offer of a nip was turned down, takes one himself and, swaying all over the place, puts his hand on the parson’s knee and looks up into his face.
“‘Sh-shay, Mister!’ he says, as solemn as an owl. ‘I don’t believe in Heaven!’