Ambrotox and Limping Dick | Page 2

said, turning quickly. "Your daughter knows it's a secret, but she does not know it's a deadly one."
"Well?" said Caldegard.
"My brother," continued Bellamy, "doesn't know there is a secret, and is coming to live in the middle of it. I think that your daughter should know the whole story; and, when you've met him, I hope you'll think it good business to trust my young 'un as completely as I trust yours."
CHAPTER II.
THE HEN WITH ONE CHICK.
Under the cedar tree on the south lawn of Bellamy's garden sat Amaryllis Caldegard. On the wicker table at her side lay a piece of needlework half-covering three fresh novels. But when the stable-clock on the other side of the house struck noon, it reminded her that she had sat in that pleasant shadow for more than an hour without threading her needle or reading a line.
Her reflections were coloured with a tinge of disappointment. Although her life, passed in almost daily contact with an affectionate father, who was a man of both character and intellect, had been anything but unhappy, it had lacked, at one time or another, variety and beauty. But the time spent in the exquisite Hertfordshire country surrounding the old Manor House had been, she thought, the pleasantest five weeks in her memory.
The worldly distinction of Sir Randal Bellamy gave point to the pleasure she felt in his courtesy to her father and his something more than courtesy to herself. She did not tell herself in definite thought that she counted with Randal Bellamy for something more than the mere daughter of the man whom he considered the first and most advanced synthetic chemist of the day; but there are matters perceived so instinctively by a woman that she makes no record of their discovery. If not without curiosity as to the future, she was in no haste for developments; and Bellamy's announcement of an addition to their party cast an ominous shadow across the pleasant field of the indefinite future.
On the twelfth stroke of the clock Amaryllis laughed in her effort to brush aside the clouds of her depression. Expecting her father to join her about this time, she was determined to show him the smiling face to which he was accustomed.
When he came,
"What d'you think of the news?" he said.
"What news, dad?" she asked.
"Somebody coming for you to flirt with, while the old men are busy," he replied.
"Flirt!"
"Well, I don't think it's likely that this Jack-of-all-trades has left that accomplishment out of his list," said the father.
"Rolling stones get on my nerves," objected his daughter, having known none.
"From what his brother says, this one's more like an avalanche."
Amaryllis laughed scornfully.
"Positively overwhelming!" she said. "But I'm sure I shall never----"
"Hush!" said Caldegard, looking towards the house. "Here's his brother."
Sir Randal was turning the corner of the house, with an envelope in his hand.
"Telegram," said Amaryllis softly. "P'r'aps it's the avalanche deferred."
"D'you mind having lunch half an hour earlier, Miss Caldegard?" asked Sir Randal, as he came up. "Dick--my brother--is coming by an earlier train. Just like him, always changing his mind." And he smiled, as if this were merit.
Caldegard laughed good-humouredly. "You're like a hen with one chick, Bellamy," he said.
"No doubt," said the brother. "Do you see, Miss Caldegard," he went on, sitting beside her, "how the pursuit of science can harden a generous heart? Both Dick and I were born, I believe, with the adventurous spirit. I was pushed into the most matter-of-fact profession in the world, which has kept me tied by the leg ever since. But Dick was no sooner out of school than he showed the force of character to discover the world and pursue its adventures for himself."
"But, Sir Randal, hasn't your brother ever followed any regular occupation or business?"
"As far as I know," chuckled the man, "he's followed most of 'em, and there are precious few he hasn't caught up with. Two years before the war certain matters took me to South Africa. One evening, in the smoking-room of the Grand Hotel at Capetown, a queer-looking man asked if my name was Bellamy, and, when I told him it was, inquired if Limping Dick was my brother."
"Limping Dick?" exclaimed Amaryllis.
"Yes," said Sir Randal. "That was the first time I ever heard the name he is known by from S?ul to Zanzibar, from Alaska to Honolulu."
"Why do they call him that?" asked the girl.
The man smiled. "Because he has a limp," he said. "But how he came by it is more than I can tell you. I told the fellow that I had indeed a young brother Richard, and that my young brother Richard certainly had a limp. We were saved the trouble of further description by the interruption of a high-pitched voice:
"'Not a shade shy of six foot tall; shoulders like Georgees