“It was you, Macgregor—you alone had come to my aid, and four of my attackers fell beneath your blows in that hand-to-hand struggle as you, with your own body placed before mine, fought on, keeping them back and yet without assistance. Shall I ever forget those moments, or how near both of us were to death? I was already half-fainting, but you shouted to me to keep courage, and in the end we were discovered by our men and saved. If ever a deed deserved the Victoria Cross, yours did. You, Macgregor—as you now call yourself—saved my life.”
“An’ I’m here, Mr Statham, to save it again, if ye’ll only let me,” was the Scot’s dry reply.
“Years have gone since that day,” the millionaire went on, with a distinct catch in his voice. “I lost sight of you soon afterwards, and heard once that you were in Caracas. Then there was no further news of you. We drifted apart—our lives lay in opposite directions. Yet to you—and to you alone—I owe my present life, for were it not for your aid at that moment I should have been put to the torture in that terrible castle where Hernandez did his prisoners to death, and my body given to the rats like others of our friends.”
“Eh, mon, ye really make me blush,” laughed Macgregor. “So please don’t talk of it. That’s all over the noo. Let the past take care of itsel’. We’ve got the present to face.”
“I have never ceased reflecting upon the past,” Sam declared in a rather low and husky voice. “I never dreamed that the man Macgregor, in the employ of the Clyde and Motherwell Works, was the same man to whom I am indebted for my life.”
“Ah! man’s a problem that puzzles the devil hissel’,” laughed Macgregor. “I’d nae ha kenned ye were the Statham I knew out there in the old days till I saw the picture of ye in the Glasgie News one nicht when I bought it at the corner of Polmadie Street on me way hame. An’ there was a biography of ye—which didn’t mention very much. But it was the real Sam Statham—and Sam Statham was my friend of long ago.”
“Most extraordinary!” remarked Levi, who had been smoking quietly and listening to the conversation. “I had so idea of all this!”
“There are many incidents in my career, Levi, of which you are unaware,” remarked his master drily.
“I have no doubt,” retorted the servant in a tone quite as dry as that of his master’s. This was Duncan Macgregor’s first visit to Park Lane, and Levi did not approve of him. He always looked askance at any friend of Mr Samuel’s of the old days. Everybody who had ever known him in the unknown and struggling period, now claimed his acquaintance as his intimate friend, and various and varied were the ruses adopted in order to endeavour to obtain an interview.
He suspected this hairy Scot—whose bravery in his youth had saved Sam’s life—of working for his own ends.