Copyright & Information

Jim Maitland

First published in 1923

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The right of H.C. McNeile (Sapper) to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

This edition published in 2010 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore St., Looe,

Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

Typeset by House of Stratus.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

EAN	ISBN	Edition
1842325523	9781842325520	Print
0755116801	9780755116805	Print (Alt)
0755122941	9780755122943	Pdf
0755123123	9780755123124	Mobi
0755123301	9780755123308	Epub

This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

www.houseofstratus.com

About the Author

Herman Cyril McNeile, who wrote under the pseudonym Sapper, was born in Bodmin, Cornwall, on 28 September 1888 to Captain Malcolm McNeile RN and his wife, Christiana Mary. He was educated at Cheltenham College, and then went on to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, before joining the Royal Engineers in 1907, from which he derived his pseudonym – ‘sappers’ being the nickname of the Engineers.

During World War One he served first as a Captain, seeing action at both the First and the Second Battle of Ypres, and won the Military Cross before retiring from the army as a Lieutenant-Colonel in 1919. Prior to this, in 1914 he met and married Violet Baird, daughter of a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Cameron Highlanders. They eventually had two sons.

Somewhat remarkably, he managed to publish a number of books during the war and whilst still serving, (serving officers were not permitted to publish under their own names – hence the need for a pseudonym), commencing with The Lieutenant and Others and Sergeant Michael Cassidy, R.E. in 1915. Lord Northcliff, the owner of the Daily Mail, was so impressed by this writing that he attempted, but failed, to have McNeile released from the army so he could work as a war correspondent.

McNeile’s first full length novel, Mufti, was published in 1919, but it was in 1920 that his greatest hit Bulldog Drummond, was published. This concerned the exploits of a demobilised officer, Captain Hugh ‘Bulldog’ Drummond, ‘who found peace dull’. This was an immediate and enduring success and has been filmed and performed on stage both in the UK and USA. Further Drummond adventures were to follow, along with other novels, notably those featuring the private detective Ronald Standish.

Much of his writing is based upon the atmosphere, rather than experiences, he absorbed from public school and London Gentleman’s Clubs. His heroes are most decidedly ‘English’ in character and ‘do the right thing’, whilst his villains are foreign and ‘do not play by the rules’. Ian Fleming once noted that his own hero James Bond was ‘Sapper’ from the waist up.

McNeile died in 1937 at his home in Sussex, having lived a relatively quiet and content life, in sharp contrast to the characters in his books. His friend Gerard Fairlie, thought to be the model for Drummond, went on to write seven more adventures. Many of his books are collections of short stories, with most having a twist in the tail, usually surprising the reader by totally flawing anticipations with regard to their ending within the last few sentences. They are as popular today as ever and eagerly adopted by succeeding generations as amongst the best of their genre.

House of Stratus was pleased to gain the right to publish from McNeile’s estate in 1999 and has since continually held his major works in print.

FOREWORD

The first time I heard Jim Maitland’s name mentioned was two days out of Colombo, going East; and when I confessed my complete ignorance of the man a sort of stupefied silence settled on the company.

“You don’t know Jim?” murmured an Assam tea-planter. “I thought everyone knew Jim.”

“Anyway, if you stay in these parts long you soon will,” put in someone else. “And once known – never forgotten.”

“Ever been in a brawl, Leyton, with ten men up against you? Well, that’s Jim’s idea of heaven, though he’d prefer it to be twenty. Have you ever seen a man shoot the pip out of the ace of diamonds at ten paces? Jim cuts it out by shooting round it at twenty. He’s long and thin, and he wears an eyeglass. Rumour has it that once some man laughed at that eyeglass.” The tea-planter grinned. “Take my advice and don’t. It’s not safe. He never forgives and he never forgets – but he’d sell the shirt off his back to help a pal. Who he is and what he is I can’t tell you. I’ve never asked; Jim doesn’t encourage curiosity.”

The door closed behind him and for a while I sat on thinking. Nine out of ten! Ninety-nine out of a hundred would have been nearer the mark.

Now, since the doings of the one may be of interest to the ninety and nine, I have ventured to put on record these random recollections. For Fate decreed that I was to meet Jim Maitland, and eat and drink and fight with him as my greatest friend.

CHAPTER 1

You probably do not know the Island of Tampico. In many ways you are to be pitied, for if ever there was a flawless jewel set in a sapphire sea Tampico is that jewel; and because flawless jewels are few and far between the loss is yours.

But on balance you win. For if ever there was a place where soul and body rotted more rapidly and more completely I have yet to find it. That beautiful island, a queen even amongst the glories of the South Seas, contained more vice to the square mile than the slums of a great city. For in any city there is always work to be done; but in Tampico there was no work to be done. Since fruit and enough food could be had for the asking, there was no struggle to survive. Only one thing had to be paid for – drink.

It was many hundred miles out of the beaten track of the big liners. Only small boats called, principally engaged in the fruit trade, with passenger accommodation for six in the first class. For fruit was the particular trade of Tampico; fruit and various tropical products which grew so richly to hand that it was almost unnecessary to pick them. If you waited long enough they fell into your hands. Nobody ever did anything but wait in Tampico; that is why it is so utterly rotten.

Even when a lump of ambergris comes ashore the fortunate finder does not hurry. There is a dealer in the town, and ambergris means drink for weeks.

The first time I saw Raymond Blair he had just found a lump, and was utterly happy. I had heard about him from MacAndrew the trader, and I watched him with the pitiful interest a sound man always feels for the down and out.

“The most hopeless case of all,” MacAndrew had said to me in the club the night before. “A brilliantly educated man – he’ll spout classics at you by the yard, and if he’s in good form he’ll keep a dinner-table in roars of laughter.”

“He’s got money – quite a bit of money. It comes out every month. And he’s educated – a gentleman – and a drunkard. Hopeless, helpless, unredeemable.” He filled his pipe thoughtfully. “It’s a strange thing to say, but it’s better to keep him drunk. It’s all that keeps what little manhood is left in him alive. When he’s sober he’s dreadful.

“Towards the end of the month always, before the money comes – he isn’t a man. He will do anything to get drink. There’s a Dago here who torments him. He loathes him because one night Blair put it across him in a battle of words, so that the whole club roared with laughter. And the Dago gets his revenge that way. Why, I’ve seen him, when Blair has been crawling on the floor for the price of a drink, make him stand up on a table and recite ‘Humpty Dumpty,’ and then give him a few coppers as a reward.”

I was sitting in the window of the club as Raymond Blair came in, and we had the room to ourselves. He had been pointed out to me a few days before, but he had then been far too drunk to recognise anybody, and from the look he gave me as he crossed the room it was evident that he regarded me as a stranger. I took no notice of him, and after a while he came over and drew up a chair.

“I arrived about a week ago,” I answered a little abruptly. Somehow or other the thought of this English gentleman standing on a table reciting nursery rhymes stuck in my throat.

“A charming island,” he remarked, and his hand went out to the bell-push. “We must really have a drink to celebrate your first visit.”

“As you like,” he remarked, with a wave of his hand. “Most new arrivals refuse to drink with me. They hope to save me from myself. But I’m glad to say it’s quite useless.”

He took a long gulp of what the native waiter had placed beside him without even asking for orders.

It was then, I think, that I realised what an utterly hopeless case he was; but I said nothing and let him ramble on.

“I get my money monthly as a rule.” He was gazing dreamily out of the window, across the water to the white line of surf where the lazy Pacific swell lifted and beat on a great coral reef. “This month it has not arrived. Most strange; most peculiar. The boat came in as usual, but nothing for me. And so you can imagine my feelings when I found yesterday afternoon a quite considerable lump of ambergris on the shore. The trouble is that the dealer is such a robber. A scandalous price, sir, he gave me – scandalous, though better than nothing. Still, I am afraid my less fortunate friends outside will have to suffer for his miserliness. Charity and liquor both begin at home. It is the one comfort of having the club: one can escape from them.”

I glanced into the street, and there I saw his “friends” – five haggard unshaven human derelicts clustered under the shade of a palm tree, eyeing the door of the club hungrily, wolfishly, waiting for him to share with them some of the proceeds of his find.

“As you see,” he continued affably, “they are not quite qualified for election even to the Tampico club.” He dismissed the thought of them with a wave of his hand. “Tell me, sir, does the Thames still glint like a silver-grey streak by Chelsea Bridge as the sun goes down? Do the barges still go chugging past Westminster? Do children still sail boats on the Round Pond back London way?”

For the life of me I could not speak. The pathos of it all had me by the throat. Back London way –

With wistful eyes he was staring once more over the wonderful blue of the sea, and he seemed to me as a man who saw visions and dreamed dreams – dreams of the might-have-been; dreams of a dead past. Then he pulled himself together and was himself once more – Raymond Blair, drunkard and derelict.

As for me, the moment of pity had passed; but it left its mark. The memory of the tragedy in his face stuck to me. Maybe it made me more tolerant than others were: more tolerant certainly than Jim Maitland. For it was in Tampico that I first met Jim, and Blair was the unwitting cause of it.

It must have been a month or five weeks later. The fortnightly boat had just come in, and I intended to leave Tampico in her next day. It was tea-time, and as I turned into the club I saw a stranger lounging on the veranda. In the outposts of Empire one does not wait for an introduction, and I went up to him and spoke. He rose, and I noticed that he was very tall.

“I’d better introduce myself,” he said with a faint and rather pleasant drawl. “My name is Maitland – Jim Maitland.”

I looked at him with suddenly awakened interest. So this was the man of whom the Assam tea-planter had spoken – the celebrated Jim Maitland who lived and didn’t vegetate. I can see him now – tall, lean and sinewy, the bronzed clean-cut face tanned with years of outdoor life – and the quite unnecessary eyeglass. Of the real Jim Maitland – of his charm, his incredible lack of fear, his great heart, I knew nothing at the time. That afternoon in Tampico I saw only the outside man, and, in spite of the eyeglass, I pronounced him good.

“Yes, I know most of the odd corners out here,” he said. “Though funnily enough I’ve never been to Tampico before. I’ve just arrived in the boat, and I want to get off in her again tomorrow, rather particularly.”

A peculiar half-amused look came into his eyes for a moment, and then changed, I thought, to sadness. But maybe it was only my imagination.

“I’ve been here six weeks,” I answered. “I’m going tomorrow myself.”

“Six weeks should be enough for you to tell me what I want to know. I joined the Moldavia at Port Said, and struck up an acquaintance with a little woman on board. She was all by herself – and she was coming here. In fact, she’s come this afternoon by the boat to join her husband. I gather he’s a fruit merchant in Tampico on rather a big scale. Well, when we berthed there was no sign of him on the landing. So I took her up to that shack of a hotel, and started to make inquiries. I couldn’t find out anything, so I came along here.”

I glanced up and saw a sweet-looking girl coming towards us along the dusty street. It seemed to me as if Tampico had vanished, and I was standing in an old English garden with the lilac in full bloom.

“I couldn’t wait in the hotel, Jim,” she said. “It’s a horrible place.”

“The Tampico hotel,” I laughed, “is not a hotel, but a sports club for the insect world.”

She sat down, and I glanced at Jim Maitland. His eyes were fixed on the girl with that same strange expression in them that I had noticed before – the expression that in years to come I was to see so often.

“He can’t have got your letter, Sheila. Or perhaps he may be away on business.”

“Well, I asked everyone at the hotel, after you went out, but they didn’t seem to understand.”

“Mrs Blair has lost or mislaid her husband,” he remarked whimsically. “A large reward is offered for information.”

“Blair?” I said, puzzled. “A fruit merchant? I don’t seem to know the name.”

“How stupid of me,” I remarked steadily. “Raymond Blair! Why – of course. The last time I saw him he was going into the interior, and he did say, if I remember right, that he might be catching the boat which left a fortnight ago.”

I felt the eye behind that eyeglass boring into me, and I wouldn’t meet it. Instead I watched the smile fade from her face, to be replaced by a little pitiful questioning look which she turned on Jim Maitland.

“Perhaps I could go to his house,” she said doubtfully. “If you could tell me where it is.”

“He was going to have it done up,” I remarked. “I think, Mrs Blair, that the best thing to do would be for you to go back to the hotel while I make inquiries.”

It was at that moment that MacAndrew passed by to go into the club and nodded to me.

There was nothing for it, and I rose and caught MacAndrew by the arm. My grip was not gentle, and my eyes blazed a message at him.

“Mrs Blair has come out to join her husband, Mac,” I said. “You know – Raymond Blair.”

I heard him mutter under his breath, but MacAndrew could keep as steady a face as I.

“I have a sort of idea that he sailed on business by the last boat, didn’t he?” I continued.

Then Jim Maitland began to take a hand. “I think you had better do what this gentleman suggested, Sheila. I’ll take you back to the hotel, and I’ll see you get a good room. Then you can lie down and rest for a bit, while we find out for certain.”

He turned to us, and we knew he’d guessed something. “Shall I find you here when I’ve seen Mrs Blair back to the hotel?”

“In Dutch Joe’s,” he answered. “And they’re baiting him. He’s got no money. Who is the fellow with the pane of glass in his eye?”

“So that’s Jim Maitland, is it?” he said slowly. “Well, if one-tenth of the yarns about him are true, there will be murder done tonight.”

Five minutes later Jim Maitland strode up to us. “Mrs Blair is a friend of mine. I don’t know her husband from Adam, but I know her. You take me?”

“Well, gentlemen, I’m waiting. I don’t know what the game is, but your lies wouldn’t have deceived an unweaned child who knew these parts.”

“I lied right enough,” I said heavily. “I lied for her benefit, not yours.”

In silence he led the way along the dusty street towards the native part of the little town. Once or twice I stole a glance at Jim Maitland’s face as he strode along between us, and it was hard and set, almost as if he realised what was in front of him. But he spoke no word during the ten minutes it took us to reach Dutch Joe’s; only a single long-drawn “Ah!” came from his lips when he realised our destination.

I can see the place now – Dutch Joe leaning over the bar, and a dozen or so Greeks, English, Germans, Chinamen, grinning as they watched Blair cringing before a swarthy-looking Dago sitting at a table by himself.

It was the Dago who noticed us first, and an ugly sneer appeared on his face. Baiting his enemy would prove more interesting in front of three of his own countrymen.

“Thank you, Mr Blair,” he remarked affably. “A most excellent imitation. You will now please stand on the table and recite ‘Mary had a Little Lamb.’ You will then get this nice shining dollar.”

I had one brief vision of a man in an unnecessary eyeglass going in on that Dago, and then the fighting began. Blair had subsided foolishly in a corner and was forgotten. In a fight of that sort you scrap with the nearest man whose nationality is not your own. Out of the tail of my eye I saw no less than four fights going on, while Dutch Joe cursed everyone impartially.

It was hot while it lasted, so hot that I had no chance to see what an artist Jim Maitland was till quite the end. Then I saw him do a thing I have never seen before or since. His Dago had gone down twice and was snarling like a mad dog. There was murder in his heart, and there would have been murder in that room if he had been fighting anyone else.

Like a flash of light he flung a knife at Maitland, and I heard afterwards that he could skewer a card to the wall at ten paces five times out of six. It was then that Jim did this thing – so quick that my eye scarce followed it. He side-stepped, and caught the knife in his right hand by the hilt, and flung it back. And the next moment it was quivering in the fleshy part of the right arm of that Dago.

Next minute we were out into the sunny street. I was sweating and MacAndrew was breathing hard, but Jim hadn’t turned a hair. His face wore a faint satisfied smile.

“Not bad,” he remarked quietly. “But it was time to leave. They’ll be drawing guns soon.”

Even as he spoke, there came the sudden sharp crack of a revolver from Dutch Joe’s.

With Jim on one side and me on the other, and MacAndrew pushing behind, we got Raymond Blair along. We took him to MacAndrew’s house, and held a council of war.

“What are we going to do?” Jim said. “She thinks he’s a prosperous fruit trader. And there he is. Why on earth didn’t you say he was dead?” Jim swung round on me, and I shrugged my shoulders.

“It might have been better, I admit,” I answered. “But think of the complications.”

There was silence in the room while Jim Maitland paced up and down smoking furiously. Suddenly he stopped, and I saw he had come to a decision.

“There’s only one thing for it,” he said. “His wife must know: it’s impossible to keep it from her. If we say he’s gone on a voyage, she’ll wait here till he comes back. She’s got to see him. At his best, you understand? At his best.”

“Aye, lad,” said the gruff Scotchman gently, “it’s the only straight game.”

He rose and crossed to a cupboard in the corner, took out a bottle and handed it to Blair. Then, signing to us to follow him, he left the room…

Five minutes passed; ten – and then we heard the sounds of footsteps coming along the passage. They were comparatively steady, and Jim, who had been standing motionless staring out of the window, swung slowly round as the door opened and Raymond Blair came in. He was still shaky; his face was still grey and lined, but he was sane. He was a man again.

“I have recently arrived from England, Mr Blair,” continued Jim, “and your wife was with me on the boat.”

“She is at the hotel waiting to see her husband, whom she believes to be a prosperous fruit trader.”

I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. His distress was too pitiful. Even Jim Maitland’s eyes softened a little as we heard how he’d lied to her in his letters, writing glowing accounts of the success of his fictitious business; how on one excuse and another he had prevented her coming out to join him before. We heard, too, that the money each month had not come from any business at home, but from her, out of her small private means. He had pretended he was investing it for her in the island.

Gradually a new note crept into his voice – the note of hope. The reason for the non-arrival of the usual remittance was clear now: she had come – his little Sheila. With her at his side he could make a new start; she would help him to fight against his craving.

“You had better come and see her at the hotel now, Mr Blair. But on one thing I insist. You must tell her what you have told us here tonight, otherwise I shall tell her myself.”

That was almost the last I ever saw of Raymond Blair. I saw him go to his wife in the hotel; I saw her welcome him with a glad little cry, though even then it seemed to me that her eyes went over his shoulder to Jim…

An hour later she came down the stairs, and her face made me catch my breath with the pity of it.

From then on her eyes never left his face; as far as she was concerned MacAndrew and I were non-existent.

“Why did you give him that bottle of gin?” she asked, still in the same quiet voice. “Why did you send my husband to me drunk just after he had recovered from a dose of fever?”

I saw MacAndrew’s jaw drop, but it was Jim Maitland I was staring at. After one sudden start of pure amazement, he gave no sign; he just stood there quietly, looking at her with thoughtful eyes.

“I trusted you utterly,” she went on. “You were good to me on the boat and I thought you were my friend. Oh, how dared you do such a wicked, wicked thing?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but Jim Maitland’s hand gripped my arm like a steel vice. I saw that he was looking over her head – upstairs. For just a second I caught a glimpse of Raymond Blair staring at him beseechingly – his hands locked together in agonised entreaty. Then the vision vanished, and once more Jim was looking gravely at the girl.

For two or three minutes she continued, speaking with biting scorn – and Jim never answered a word.

“Have you anything to say – any excuse to make?” she asked at length, and he shook his head.

Then without a backward glance she went up to her room like a young queen and we heard the door close. After a while he turned to us with a little twisted smile on his face.

But MacAndrew was not so easily appeased. His sense of fair play was outraged, and he said as much to Maitland.

“He lied – the cad!” he growled. “He lied to her after his promise to you. She should be told.”

The smile vanished from Jim Maitland’s lips, and he stared very straight at the Scotchman.

Thus ended my first meeting with Jim Maitland. We left in the boat next day, and I saw him leaning over the stern, staring at the island till it was but a faint smudge on the horizon. Then he went to his cabin and I saw him no more till the following morning. Two days later he left the boat.

It was six months before I saw him again up in Nagasaki. He greeted me as if we had parted the day before – that was one of his peculiarities. After a while he looked at me with a faint smile.

“Just come from there.” He took out his pocketbook. “There’s an additional ornament in the island.”

He handed me a photograph, and I stared at it in silence. It was the cemetery with its rows of little wooden crosses. But in the centre rose a big white stone cross, and on it was written:

“He lasted three months – and he nearly broke her heart. But she stuck it – and she never complained. MacAndrew told me. When it was over she went home to England.”

“Why don’t you go after her?” I said quietly, and Jim Maitland stared at the cherry tree opposite.

“‘You cur!’” he said below his breath. “‘Oh, you cur!’ Man, I can hear her now.”

“She wouldn’t understand, old man; she wouldn’t understand. No – I’m a wanderer born and bred: and I shall wander to the end.”

Over the coffee the conversation took a personal turn. The death of an uncle in England had made me independent, and I was at a loose end. I had half made up my mind to go back home and buy a small property. Maitland shrugged his shoulders as I said so.