"And eyes like a pair of his own lancets underneath 'em. But he's a frightfully clever beast," says Beauvayse. "And what he wants in looks he makes up in brains. And—and if he knew there was a scratch against me, he might force the running and win hands down. So hang on to my secret by your eyelids, old fellow, and don't give me reason to be sorry I told——"
"You have my word, haven't you? And, talking about scratch entries," says Bingo, inspired by a sudden rush of recollection, "I ain't so sure that the Doctor—though, mind you, this is between ourselves—is the sort of wooer a parent of strict notions would be likely to encourage. Do you happen to have come across a goggle-eyed, potty little Alderman Brooker?—a Town Guardsman who runs a general store in the Market Place—that's his place of business with the boarding up, and the end butted in by a Creusot shell that didn't burst, luckily for Brooker. Well, this beast buttonholed me months ago, and began to spin a cuffer about Saxham."
"What had the dirty little bounder got to say?" asked Beauvayse, stiffening in disgust, "about a man he isn't fit to black the boots of?"
"Nothing special nice. Said Saxham had lost his London connection through getting involved in a mess with a woman," says the big Dragoon.
"Don't we all get into messes of that kind? What more?" demands Beauvayse.
"Said the Doctor had kicked over the traces pretty badly here. Pitched me a tale of his—Brooker's—having often acted as the Mayor's Deputy on the Police Court Bench, Brooker being an Alderman, and swore that he'd had Saxham up before him a dozen times at least in the last three years, along with the Drunks and Disorderlies."
"It sounds like a hanged lie!"
"If I didn't say as much to Brooker," responds Captain Bingo, "I shut him up like a box by referrin' politely to glass houses, knowin' Brooker had been squiffy himself one night on guard, and by remindin' him that men who talk scandal of their superior officers under circumstances like the present are liable to be Court-Martialled and given beans. And as the Chief, and Saxham with him, dropped on Brooker in the act of smuggling lush into the trenches the other day, I fancy Brooker's teeth are fairly drawn. Though he swore to me that there isn't a saloon-keeper or a saloon-loafer in the town that doesn't know Saxham by the nickname of the Dop Doctor."
"The man don't exist who objects to hear of the disqualifications, mental and physical, of a fellow who he's thought likely to enter the lists with him in the—in the dispute for a woman's favour," says Beauvayse, with a pleasant air of candour. "And though the story sounds like a lie, as I've said, there's a possibility of its being the other thing. I'm sorry for Saxham—that goes without sayin'—though I don't like his overbearin' scientific side and his sledge-hammer manner. But that a man with a record of that kind should set his heart upon a girl like Lynette Mildare is horrible, intolerable, Wrynche; and while, for the man's own sake, I should respect his beastly secret, for her sake and in her interests, and if I consider that he's putting himself forward at the risk of my—my prospects and my hopes, I shall make use of what I know."
"You don't mean you'd split on the man!" splutters Bingo; "because, if you do——"