"All right! go ahead, Gully!" said the latter.
The prisoner took up his tale anew. "As I was saying—I left the Old Country when I was sixteen. No need to drag in family troubles, but . . . that's why. . . . Well! I hit for the States. Montana for a start off, and it sure was a tough state in 'seventy-four, I can tell you. That's where I first learned to handle a gun. I knocked around between there and Wyoming and Arizona for about nine years, and during that time I guess I tackled nearly every kind of job under the sun, but I punched and rode for range outfits mostly.
"Then I was struck with a fancy to see the South, and I drifted to Virginia. I'd been there about two years, working as an overseer on a tobacco plantation, when I got a letter from our family's solicitor recalling me home. My eldest brother had died, and the estate had passed on to me. Where, Inspector?—why, it was at Castle Brompton, a quiet little country town in Worcestershire.
"Well! I'd had a pretty rough training—living the life of a roustabout for so many years, and I guess I kind of ran amuck when I struck home. I played ducks and drakes with the estate, and the end of it was . . . I got heavily involved in debt. There seemed nothing for it but to up-anchor, and to sea again in my shirt. So, my fancy next took me to Shanghai, where I obtained a poorly-paid Civil Service job—in the Customs. I stuck that for about a year, and then I pulled out—disgusted. The next place I landed up in was, if anything, worse—the Gold Coast. From there I drifted to the Belgian Congo. I was there for nearly two years doing—well! perhaps it's best for me not to enter into details—we'll call it 'rubber.' It's a cruel country that—one that a man doesn't exactly stay in for his health, anyway; for a bad dose of fever nearly fixed me. It made me fed up with the climate and—the life. So I pulled out of it and went down country to the Transvaal. That's how I came to get mixed up in 'The Raid,' Inspector. I was in Jo'burg at the time it was framed up, so I threw in my lot with the rest of you.
"Suddenly I had an overwhelming desire to go back to the States and the range life again. I was properly fed up with Africa. So—back I went there—to Montana again. I punched for one or two cow-outfits awhile, and then came a time when a deputation of citizens came and put it up to me if I'd take on the office of Deputy-Sheriff for —— County, where I happened to be working. I suppose the fact of my being a little more handy with a gun than most had impressed some of them. Things were running wild there just then, and for awhile I tell you, I was up against a rather dirty proposition. I and my guns certainly worked overtime for a stretch, till I got matters more or less ship-shape. I had the backing of the best people in the community luckily, and eventually I won out.
"Then—when the inevitable reaction set in with the peaceable times that followed, somehow I managed to get in bad with some of them. They had no more use for me or my guns. I was like a fish out of water. I decided to pull out, for a strange hankering to see England and my old home again came over me. So I resigned my office and headed back to the Old Country. . . ."
At this point in his narrative, Gully dropped his head in his hands and rocked wearily awhile ere continuing haltingly: "It was the mistake of my life—ever going back—to a civilized country. For a time I strove to conduct myself as a law-abiding British citizen—to conform to the new order of things, but—I had been amongst the rough stuff too long. I was out of my sphere entirely.
"One day, in a hotel at Leeds, I got into a violent quarrel with a man—fellow of the name of Hammond. It was over a woman. He insulted me—in front of a crowd of men at that—and finally he struck me. Hitherto I'd taken no back-down from any man living, and I guess I forgot myself then and kind of ran amuck—fancied I was back in Montana again. Consequence was—I threw down on him in front of this crowd and shot him dead.
"Of course I was arrested and charged with murder in the first degree; but as it was adduced at my trial that I'd received a certain amount of provocation, I was sent down for fifteen years. I'd done little over six months of my time in Barmsworth Prison when I and two of my fellow convicts framed up a scheme to escape. It takes too long to go into details how we worked it. I made my get-away, though I had to abolish a poor devil of a warder in doing so. The other two lost out. One got shot and the other was caught some days later—as I read in the papers.
"Well! I managed to reach the States again, and eventually came over this side of the line. As I had been convicted and sentenced under the alias which I had adopted while in England—my real name never coming out—I resumed my name of Gully again when I settled down here. My relatives, what few I possess, have never known of my conviction and imprisonment. All the time I was in England on my second trip I was clean-shaven, but on returning to the States I let my moustache grow once more. As you said, Kilbride—it is a very effectual disguise. Will one of you give me a drink, please? My mouth's pretty dry with all this talking."