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Page 16
"_O, the Midnight Son! the Midnight Son! (hic)
You needn't go trottin' to Norway--
You'll find him in ev'ry doorway--_"
A sudden cessation of the music, coupled with certain slightly
indistinct, weird contortions of the vocalist's figure, apprised the
watchers that a snow-bank had momentarily claimed him. Then, suddenly
and saucily, as if without a break, the throbbing, high-pitched tenor
piped up again--
"_You'll behold him in his glory
If you on'y take a run (hic)
Down the Strand--that's the Land
Of the Midnight Son_."
Dewy eve indeed!--a far cry to the Strand! . . . How freakish sounded
that old London variety stage ditty ridiculing the nightly silence of the
great snow-bound Nor' West. Redmond could not refrain an explosive,
snorting chuckle as he remarked the erratic gait of the slowly
approaching pedestrian. As Slavin had opined, he was "going large." His
vocal efforts had ceased temporarily, and now it was the junior
constable's merriment that broke the frosty stillness of the night.
But Slavin did not laugh. Watchfully he waited there--curiously still,
his head jutting forward loweringly from between his huge shoulders.
"Tchkk!" he clucked in gentle distaste--"In uniform . . . an' just afther
comin' off the thrain! . . . th' like av that now 'tis--'tis
scandh'lus! . . ."
Suddenly Redmond shivered, and his mirth died within him. The air seemed
to have become charged with a tense, ominous something that filled him
with a great dread--of what? he knew not. He felt an inexplicable
impulse to cry out a warning to that ludicrous figure, whose crunching
moccasins were now the only sounds that broke the uncanny stillness of
the night. To him, the whole scene, bathed in the cold brilliance of its
moonlit setting, seemed ghostly and unreal--a disturbing dream of comedy
and tragedy, intermingled.
Inwards, between the telephone poles, the man came stumbling along,
gradually drawing nigh to the motionless watchers. Halting momentarily,
during his progress he made a quick stooping action at the base of one of
the poles, as if with vague purpose, which action was remarked at least
by Redmond.
Then, for the first time, he seemed to become aware of their presence,
and making a pitiful attempt to dissemble his condition and assume a
smart, erect military carriage he waved his riding-crop at them by way of
salutation. Something in his action, its graceful, airy mockery, trivial
though it was, impressed the gestures firmly in Redmond's mind. He
became cognizant of a flushed, undeniably handsome face with reckless
eyes and mocking lips; a slimly-built figure of a man of medium height,
whose natural grace was barely concealed by the short regimental fur coat.
Halting unsteadily within the regulation three paces pending salute, he
struck an attitude commonly affected by Mr. Sothern, in "Lord Dundreary,"
and jauntily twirled his crop, the while he declaimed:--
"_Waltz me round again, Willie, Willie,
Round and round and--_"
"_Round_!" finished Slavin, with a horrible oath. There seemed something
shockingly aboriginal--simian--in the swift, gorilla-like clutch of his
huge dangling hands, as they fastened on the throat and shoulder of the
drunken man and whirled him on his back in the snow--something deadly and
menacing in his hard-breathing, soft-brogued invective:
"Yeh bloody nightingale! come off th' perch! . . . I'm fed up wid
yeh!--I'll waltz yeh!--I'll tache yeh tu make a mock av Burke Slavin,
time an' again! I'll--"
Redmond interposed, "Steady, Sergeant!" he implored shakily, his hand on
his superior's shoulder, "For God's sake--"
But Slavin, in absent fashion, shoved him off. He seemed to put no
effort in the movement, but the tense muscular impact of it sent Redmond
reeling yards away.
"Giddap, Yorkey! God d----n ye for a dhrunken waster!--giddap! or I'll
put th' boots tu yeh!" Terrible was the menace of the giant Irishman's
face, his back-flung boot and his snarling, curiously low-pitched voice.
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