'After that, we four went out to look at those golf-links I was hirin'.
We each took a club. Mine'--he glanced at a great tan bag by the
fire-place--'was the beginner's friend--the cleek. Well, sir, this golf
proposition took a holt of me as quick as--quick as death. They had to
prise me off the greens when it got too dark to see, and then we went
back to the house. I was walkin' ahead with my Lord Marshalton talkin'
beginners' golf. (_I_ was the man who ought to have been killed by
rights.) We cut 'cross lots through the woods to Flora's Temple--that
place I showed you this afternoon. Lundie and Walen were, maybe, twenty
or thirty rod behind us in the dark. Marshalton and I stopped at the
theatre to admire at the ancestral yew-trees. He took me right under the
biggest--King Somebody's Yew--and while I was spannin' it with my
handkerchief, he says, "Look heah!" just as if it was a rabbit--and down
comes a bi-plane into the theatre with no more noise than the dead. My
Rush Silencer is the only one on the market that allows that sort of
gumshoe work.... What? A bi-plane--with two men in it. Both men jump out
and start fussin' with the engines. I was starting to tell Mankeltow--I
can't remember to call him Marshalton any more--that it looked as if the
Royal British Flying Corps had got on to my Rush Silencer at last; but
he steps out from under the yew to these two Stealthy Steves and says,
"What's the trouble? Can I be of any service?" He thought--so did
I--'twas some of the boys from Aldershot or Salisbury. Well, sir, from
there on, the situation developed like a motion-picture in Hell. The man
on the nigh side of the machine whirls round, pulls his gun and fires
into Mankeltow's face. I laid him out with my cleek automatically. Any
one who shoots a friend of mine gets what's comin' to him if I'm within
reach. He drops. Mankeltow rubs his neck with his handkerchief. The man
the far side of the machine starts to run. Lundie down the ride, or it
might have been Walen, shouts, "What's happened?" Mankeltow says,
"Collar that chap."
'The second man runs ring-a-ring-o'-roses round the machine, one hand
reachin' behind him. Mankeltow heads him off to me. He breaks blind for
Walen and Lundie, who are runnin' up the ride. There's some sort of
mix-up among 'em, which it's too dark to see, and a thud. Walen says,
"Oh, well collared!" Lundie says, "That's the only thing I never learned
at Harrow!"... Mankeltow runs up to 'em, still rubbin' his neck, and
says, "_He_ didn't fire at me. It was the other chap. Where is he?"
'"I've stretched him alongside his machine," I says.
'"Are they poachers?" says Lundie.
'"No. Airmen. I can't make it out," says Mankeltow.
'"Look at here," says Walen, kind of brusque. "This man ain't breathin'
at all. Didn't you hear somethin' crack when he lit, Lundie?"
'"My God!" says Lundie. "Did I? I thought it was my suspenders"--no, he
said "braces."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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