Denry the Audacious

Denry, clinging to the woodwork, was submerged for a moment, but by standing on the narrow platform from which sprouted the splintered ends of the shafts, he could get his waist clear of the water. He was not a swimmer.

All was still; and dark, save for the faint stream of starlight on the broad bosom of the canal basin. The pantechnicon had encountered nobody whatever en route. Of its strange escapade Denry had been the sole witness.

"Well, I 'm dashed!" he murmured aloud.

And a voice replied from the belly of the pantechnicon: "Who is there?"

All Denry's body shook.

"It's me!" said he.

"Not Mr. Machin?" said the voice.

"Yes," said he. "I jumped on as it came down the street – and here we are!"

"Oh!" cried the voice. "I do wish you could get round to me!"

Ruth Earp's voice!

He saw the truth in a moment of piercing insight. Ruth had been playing with him! She had performed a comedy for him in two acts. She had meant to do what is called in the Five Towns "a moonlight flit." The pantechnicon (doubtless from Birmingham, where her father was) had been brought to her door late in the evening, and was to have been filled and taken away during the night. The horses had been stabled, probably in Ruth's own yard, and while the carmen were reposing the pantechnicon had got off, Ruth in it. She had no money locked in her unlockable desk. Her reason for not having paid the precious Mr. Herbert Calvert was not the reason which she had advanced.

His first staggered thought was:

"She 's got a nerve! No mistake!"

Her duplicity, her wickedness, did not shock him. He admired her tremendous and audacious enterprise; it appealed strongly to every cell in his brain. He felt that she and he were kindred spirits.

He tried to clamber round the side of the van so as to get to the doors at the back, but a pantechnicon has a wheel-base which forbids leaping from wheel to wheel, especially when the wheels are under water. Hence he was obliged to climb on to the roof, and so slide down on to the top of one of the doors, which was swinging loose. The feat was not simple. At last he felt the floor of the van under half a yard of water.

"Where are you?"

"I 'm here," said Ruth, very plaintively. "I 'm on a table. It was the only thing they had put into the van before they went off to have their supper or something. Furniture removers are always like that. Haven't you got a match?"

"I 've got scores of matches," said Denry. "But what good do you suppose they 'll be now? All soaked through!"

A short silence. He noticed that she had offered no explanation of her conduct towards himself. She seemed to take it for granted that he would understand.

"I 'm frightfully bumped, and I believe my nose is bleeding," said Ruth, still more plaintively. "It's a good thing there was a lot of straw and sacks here."

Then, after much groping, his hand touched her wet dress.

"You know you 're a very naughty girl," he said.

He heard a sob, a wild sob. The proud, independent creature had broken down under the stress of events. He climbed out of the water on to the part of the table which she was not occupying. And the van was as black as Erebus.

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