The Exploits of Captain O'Hagan

Sax Rohmer

• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
• Year: 2022
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781504075657
• Subtopic: Crime & Mystery Literature
• Index: Literature

The author of the Fu-Manchu novels offers tales of chivalry, adventure, and derring-do in this 1916 story collection.
 
Honored with a Victoria Cross and a Distinguished Service Order, Capt. Bernard O'Hagan prizes valor above all. A man of quick wit and short temper—he wastes no time challenging any offense—and backing up those challenges with his legendary skills as a fighter. Luckily for the good people of London, O'Hagan is on the side of justice.
 
This volume follows the eccentric nobleman through his various adventures, from foiling a plot for blackmail to ridding a young lady of an unwanted suitor. The Exploits of Captain O'Hagan includes the stories "He Patronises Pamela," "He Clears the Course for True Love," "He Meets the Leopard Lady," "He Buries an Old Love," "He Deals with Don Juan," and "He Honours the Grand Duke."

Exploit the First

He Patronises Pamela

I

The Hat of Mr. Parkins

A very wilderness is Bernard O’Hagan, which no man could hope thoroughly to explore; a most picturesque figure in the satin-lined cloak which he loves to wear in defiance of fashion and indeed of civilised custom, singularly resembling the Merry Monarch whom a lady of his race once entertained right regally at the ancestral home of the O’Hagans. The unexpectedness of the man is one of the most marked features of his character—the one that makes his society at once delightful and alarming.

“My boy,” he will burst out, as we sit in a crowded café, “that gentleman yonder is unduly interested in my appearance.” And, stepping over to the offensive one, “Sir, you are staring at me. I suspect you of being a bum-bailiff!”

“What!” says the other, in all probability—whilst, my friend and I the observed of many observers, I tremble for the outcome of the affair—“how dear you! Damn it! how dare you!”

“Because,” replies O’Hagan, with a sort of calm ferocity, “I desire to pull your nose, and only await a fitting opportunity! You are a puppy, sir! There is my card!”

The man leaps in anger to his feet. Others arise, too, and waiters approach.

“You will regret this outrage!” says the man, pale or inflamed. “You will hear from my solicitor!”

Then O’Hagan throws back his picturesque head and laughs.

“The solicitor again!” he cries, snapping his fingers. “Always the solicitor—or the police! Is there no man alive today who can fight his own battles?”

He quietly returns to his table. The other speaks to the manager, and, if he be a good customer, the manager comes across to O’Hagan. O’Hagan rises slowly, fixing his eyes upon him. And, somehow, O’Hagan is never ejected. A devil of a fellow.

To the charge that he is a polished kind of bully, he will reply calmly, arguing that he is merely of a sensitive and aristocratic temperament, and suffers affront where one more callous would be conscious of none. He will submit to rudeness from no man, be he premier or potman; yet he is never vulgarly embroiled.

O’Hagan rarely wears a hat during the day. There is a simple explanation. At one time in his chequered career, the only presentable hat he possessed was a crush-hat. It was then that he cultivated the hatless fashion. This habit of going hatless directly led to his meeting with Pamela.

Captain O’Hagan was walking along crowded, shop-lined thoroughfare, with that swinging stride which he will tell you runs in the family; and which enabled his ancestor Patrick to secure enrolment in the ranks of the Musketeers of Louis XIII. Before the door of a newsagent’s establishment—quite an unpretentious little shop—two men stood. One of them, elderly, waved a tweed cap to a girl more than ordinarily pretty who was making her way up the steps to the roof of a moving motor bus. The girl carried a neat brown leather case, and, having gained a seat, turned and waved her handkerchief. The younger man smiled sourly, but did not join the elder in his waving.

O’Hagan, delighted with the girl’s animation and beauty, halted by the two, smiling at the retreating figure. Quite mechanically he raised the hard felt hat from the head of the younger and less enthusiastic man, and waved it with a vigour even more marked than that of the elder waver.

He was recalled to the scene from which the girl now had disappeared amid the motley traffic, by a violent push in the ribs.

“Blighter!” said a coarse voice. “My ’at!”

Another than Captain O’Hagan had turned quickly, with arm raised to ward off another possible blow. But with O’Hagan the cult of the unusual is a creed to which he sacrifices daily. Some difficulty he experienced in suppressing a gasp but he turned unhastily, calmly, and looked into the bright little eyes of the hat’s owner. These were set upon him wickedly, and a truculent, blue-shaded jaw was thrust forward in menace.

“You’ve properly asked for it,” continued the man, tensely, “and you’re goin’ to get it!”

“Jem!” protested the older man, fearfully. “Not here—”

Straight from the shoulder a piston stroke was launched at O’Hagan. It was a blow with brawn to drive it, with science to direct it. It was aimed—and well—in accordance with ring traditions of the “knock-out.” But one who takes unwarrantable liberties with unknowns’ hats must be prepared for reprisals.

O’Hagan is fond of showing his friends the tricks learned of Shashu Myuku of Nagasaki; he is equally prompt to demonstrate them to others. Without employing his right hand, Which is engaged in holding the felt hat, he struck down the impending blow (any but a pupil of Myuku must have endeavoured to strike it up), thrust his left foot rapidly against his opponent’s advanced right shin, and, by a simple process of natural law the pugilist pitched forward on to the pavement, propelled by all the force of his own attacking impetus.

Much shaken, and with a rivulet of blood trickling down his nose from a damaged forehead, he got upon his feet again. Captain O’Hagan deliberately hurled the bowler far out into the stream of traffic, and fixed his large eyes upon its white-faced owner.

“One word,” he said in that tone of suppressed ferocity wholly inimitable, “and I will throw you after it! You ape!”

The dazed and much-insulted man glanced from a shapeless dark mass which, prior to the passage of a brewer’s traction-engine, had been a felt hat, to the face of O’Hagan; and began with his handkerchief to wipe blood from his wounds. O’Hagan cast his eyes upward to the legend: “J. Crichton, Newsagent,” and took the elder man by the arm.

“A word with you, Mr. Crichton!” he said, sweeping that astonished old tradesman into the shop, and ignoring the knot of interested spectators gathered at the door.

II

The Art of Gentle Thought

A chair stood by the journal-strewn counter.

“Sit down,” said O’Hagan kindly, “and answer a few questions! Who is that person whose hat I honoured?”

The newsagent, who momentarily was expecting to awaken from this bad dream shook his head ominously.

“It’s Jem Parkins, sir,” he replied, with that respect bordering upon awe which O’Hagan inspires in the plebeian soul. “He’s got the Blue Dragon now, but he’s ex-middle-weight champion. There’ll be the devil to pay when he’s pulled hisself together, sir!”

“Reserve your speculations, Mr. Crichton,” said O’Hagan, “and confine yourself to facts. The young lady on the bus—your daughter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“She takes after her mother.”

Mr. Crichton stared.

“Did you know Polly—Mrs. Crichton, sir?”

“No. I was referring to your daughter’s good looks. She dresses neatly.”

Mr. Crichton had something of the British tradesman’s independent spirit, and even the awe inspired by O’Hagan’s tremendous presence could not wholly smother his paternal resentment.

“I’d have you know that Pamela’s a lady, sir! And I’d have—”

“Pamela is quite an unusual name for a girl of the lower classes. In what way is Parkins interested?”

The mild eye of Mr. J. Crichton smouldered into faint flame.

“The lower classes! The—”

“I asked you a question.”

Mr. Crichton hesitated, glanced around his shop—his own shop—noted that his pugilistic friend was entering the door with an air of business-like truculence, and took his elusive courage in both hands.

“I decline to be cross-examined—by you—or—by—”

Mr. Parkins closed the shop-door, bolted it, and pulled down the blue blind. He began deliberately to remove his coat.

“Half a mo, Mr. C.,” he interrupted in a quivering voice. “Sorry to put you out, but it’s got to be done. I’ll smash ’im; then you can call for the police and give ’im in charge!”

O’Hagan raised the monocle swung upon the broad black ribbon, and holding it at some distance from his right eye, surveyed the speaker.

“I thought I forbade you to address me?” he remarked icily.

Parkins, removing a collar and shirt-front combined, began to whistle.

“I’ll show you—comin’ buttn’ in and runnin’ after respectable girls!” he announced hoarsely. “Blighter!”

O’Hagan dropped the monocle and laid his cane upon the counter. At the moment that Parkins stood upright and squared his chest, the Captain snatched up Mr. Crichton’s day-book—a heavy, leather-bound volume—and hurled it full at the pugilist’s head. One of the precepts of the Higher Jiu-Jitsu, or “Art of Gentle Thought,” he will tell you, is to avail yourself of any missile within reach. His aim, then, is deadly. The daybook struck Parkins edgewise across the face, felling him like a stricken bullock— felling him utterly, brutally.

He crashed into the corner by the door —and lay still. (“A dreadful blow was struck at every gentleman when the sword was taken from him,” O’Hagan will say. “One cannot soil one’s gloves with the blood of churls.”)

“If you compel me to deal with you,” said the Captain, as Parkins returned to groaning consciousness of his injuries, “I shall cut your ears off!”

Do not judge my friend harshly. He was born three centuries too late, that is all. The claim of Democracy to an equality with Aristrocacy is as unintelligible to him as it must have been to Denis O’Hagan, who upheld the Stuart cause whilst he had breath, and died at last like a gentleman at Worcester, havi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• A Necessary Foreword
• Exploit the First He Patronises Pamela
• Exploit the Second He Clears the Course for True Love
• Exploit the Third He Meets the Leopard Lady
• Exploit the Fourth He buries an Old Love
• Exploit the Fifth He Deal with Don Juan
• Exploit the Sixth He Honours the Grand Duke
• Copyright