CAPTAIN BRANSCOME'S CONFESSION—THE FLAG AND THE CASHBOX.
CAPTAIN BRANSCOME'S CONFESSION—THE FLAG AND THE CASHBOX.
"Well, ma'am," resumed Captain Branscome, "so strong was the likeness to old Coffin, and yet so incredible was it he should be in these parts, that, almost without stopping to consider, I turned down the lane on the chance of another glimpse of the man. This brought me, of course, to the stile leading into the plantation; but the path there, as you know, takes a turn among the trees almost as soon as it starts, and runs, moreover, through a pretty thick undergrowth. The fellow, whoever he was, had disappeared.
"I can't say but what I was still puzzled, though the likeliest explanation—indeed, the only likely one—seemed to be that my eyes had played me a trick. I had pretty well made up my mind to this when I turned away from the stile to have a look at the garden gate on the other side of the lane; and over it, across the little stretch of turf, I caught sight of the summer-house and of Major Brooks standing there in the doorway with a bundle between his hands-a bundle of something red, which he seemed to be wrapping round with a piece of cord.
"Here, then, was the very man I had come to see; and here was a chance of getting speech with him and without the awkwardness of asking it through a servant, perhaps of having to invent an excuse for my visit. Without more ado, therefore, I made bold to lift the latch of the gate and step into the garden.
"At the sound of the latch—I can see him now—Major Brooks lifted his head with a curious start, and tucked the bundle under his arm. The movement was like that of a man taken at unawares, and straightening himself up to meet an attack. I cannot describe it precisely, but that was just the impression it made on me, and it took me aback for a moment, so that I paused as the gate fell-to and latched itself behind me.
"'Halt there!' the Major commanded, facing me full across the turf. 'Halt, and tell me, please, why you have come back!'
"This puzzled me worse for a moment, for the light was good, though drawing towards sunset, and it seemed impossible that, looking straight at me, he could mistake me for the man who had just left the garden. Then I remembered what Harry had told me of his father's blindness.
"My silence naturally made him more suspicious.
"'Who is it there? Your name, please?' he demanded sharply.
"' Sir,' I answered, 'I beg your pardon for coming thus unannounced, but my name is Branscome, and I had once the honour to be shipmate with you on board theLondonderrytransport.'
"For a while he continued to stare at me in his blind way.
"'Yes,' he said slowly, at length; 'yes; I remember your voice, sir. But what in the name of wonder brings you to my garden just now?'
"'Your son Harry, sir,' said I, 'some time ago gave me a message from you. If ever (he said) I found myself in the neighbourhood of Minden Cottage you would be pleased to receive a visit from me.'
"'Yes,' said he, but still with a something in his voice between wonder and suspicion; 'that's true enough. I have always retained the highest respect for Captain Branscome, and by your voice you are he. But—but—' He hesitated, and fired another question point-blank at me: 'You come from Falmouth?'
"'I do, sir.'
"'Alone?'
"'Yes, sir. I have walked all the way from Falmouth, and without a companion.'
"'Look here, my friend,' he said, after seeming to ponder for a moment, 'if you mean ill, you must have altered strangely from the Captain Branscome I used to know, and if you mean well you have timed your visit almost as strangely.' He paused again. 'Either you know what I mean, or you do not; if you do not, you will have to forgive a great deal in this reception; and you will, to begin with, forgive my asking you, on your word of honour, if on your journey hither you have overtaken or met or recognized any one hailing from Falmouth. You do not answer,' he added, after yet another pause.
"'Why, as to that, sir,' said I, 'since leaving Falmouth I have neither met nor overtaken any one of my acquaintance. But, since you put it to me precisely, I will not swear that I have not recognized one. A few minutes ago, standing at the head of the lane here, I saw a man cross it, presumably from this garden, and take the path leading through the plantation yonder. It certainly strikes me that I knew the man, and I followed him down the lane here to make sure.'
"'Why?' the Major asked me.
"'Because, sir,' said I, 'it did not seem possible to me that the man I mean could have any business here; besides which, an hour or two before leaving Falmouth I had passed him in the street, and though he had, indeed, the use of his legs, he was too far gone in liquor to recognize me.'
"'His name?' the Major asked.
"'Coffin, sir,' said I; 'usually known as Captain Coffin, or Captain Danny.'
"'A drunkard?' he asked.
"'A man given to liquor,' said I, 'by fits and starts; but mild enough in an ordinary way. You might call him the least bit touched in the upper story; of a loose, rambling head, at all events, as I can testify, who have taught him navigation—or tried to.'
"The Major, though he could not see me, seemed to study me with his blind eyes. He stood erect, with the bundle clipped under his left arm; and the bundle I made out to be a flag, rolled up and strapped about with its own lanyard.
"'One more question, Captain Branscome,' said he. 'This Captain Coffin, as you call him—is he, to the best of your knowledge, an honest man?'
"I answered that I had heard question of Coffin's sanity, but never of his honesty.
"'His sanity, eh?' said the Major; and I could see he was hung in stays, but he picked up his wind after a second or two, and paid off on another tack. 'Well, well,' he said, 'we'll drop talking of this Coffin, and turn to the business that brings you here. What is it? For I take it you've walked all the way from Falmouth for something more than the sake of a chat over old times.'
"I remember, ladies, the words he used, though not the tone of them. To tell the truth, though my ears received 'em, I was not listening. I stood there, wishing myself a hundred miles away; but his manner gave me no chance to fob him off with an excuse, or pretend I had dropped in for a passing call. There was nothing for it but to out with my story, and into it I plunged somehow, my tongue stammering with shame. He listened, to be sure, but without offering to help me over the hard places. Indeed, at the first mention of my poverty, I saw all his first suspicions—whatever they had been—return and show themselves in his blind eyes. His mouth was set like a closed trap. Yet he heard me out, and, when I had done, his suspicions seemed to have faded again, for he answered me considerately enough, though not cordially.
"'Captain Branscome,' he said, 'I may tell you at once that I never lend money; and my reason is partly that good seldom comes of it, and partly that I am a poor man—if you can call a man poor who is by a few pounds richer than his needs. But I have a great respect for you'—the ladies will forgive me for repeating his exact words—'and your voice seems to tell me that you still deserve it; that you have suffered more than you say before being driven to make this appeal. I can do something—though it be little—to help an old comrade. Will you oblige me by stepping into the summer-house here, and taking a seat while I go to the house? I will not keep you waiting more than a few minutes.'
"He picked up his walking-stick, which rested against a chair, just within the doorway, and stood for a moment while I stepped past him and entered the summer-house; and so, with a nod of the head, turned and walked towards the house, using his stick very skilfully to feel his path between the bushes, and still keeping the flag tucked under his left arm.
"So I sat and waited, ladies, on no good terms with myself. The way of the borrower was hard, I found, and the harder because the Major's manner had not been unkindly, but—if you'll understand my meaning— only just kindly enough. In short, I don't know but that I must have out and run rather than endure his charity, had not my thoughts been distracted by this mystery over Captain Coffin. For the Major had said too much, and yet not enough. The man I had seen crossing the lane was certainly Coffin, but to connect him with Minden Cottage I had no clue at all beyond the faint one, Harry, that you and he were acquaintances. Besides, I had seen him, the morning before, in the crowd around the prisoners, and could have sworn he was then—saving your presence, ladies—as drunk as a fiddler. If vehicle had brought him, it could not be any that had passed me on the road, or for certain I should have recognized him. Well, here was a riddle, and I had come no nearer to guessing it when the Major returned.
"He had left his bundle in the house, and in place of it he carried a cashbox, which he set on the table between us, but did not at once open. Instead, he turned to me with a complete change of manner, and held out his hand very frankly.
"'I owe you an apology, Captain,' said he. 'To be plain with you, at the moment you appeared, I was half expecting a different kind of visitor, and I fear you received some of the welcome prepared for him. Overlook it, please, and shake hands; and, to get our business over,'—he unlocked the cashbox—'here are ten guineas, which I will ask you to accept from me. We won't call it a gift; we will call it an acknowledgement for the extra pains you have put into teaching my son. Tut, man!' said he, as I protested. 'Harry has told us all about that. I assure you the youngster came near to wearying us, last holiday, with praise of you.'"
"And so he did," Plinny here interrupted. "That is to say, sir—I—I mean we were only too glad to listen to him."
"I thank you, ma'am." Captain Branscome bowed to her gravely. "I will not deny that the Major's words gave me pleasure for the moment. He, for his part, appeared to be quite another man. 'Twas as if between leaving me and returning to the summer-house a load had been lifted from his mind. He counted out the guineas, locked the cashbox again, lit his pipe, and then, seeming to recollect himself, reached down a clean one from a stack above the doorway, and insisted upon my filling and smoking with him. 'Twas a long while since I had tasted the luxury of tobacco. We talked of old days on theLondonderry, of Sir John Moore's last campaign, of Falmouth and the packets, of the peace and the overthrow of Bonaparte's ambitions; or, rather, 'twas he that talked and questioned, while for me 'twas pleasure enough, and a pleasure long denied me, to sit on terms with a well-read gentleman and listen to talk of a quality which—"
"Which differed from that of the Rev. Philip Stimcoe's," suggested Miss Belcher, as he hesitated. "Proceed, sir."
"I shall add, madam, that the Major very kindly invited me to sleep that night under his roof. I could pick up the coach in the morning (he said). But this I declined, professing that I preferred the night for travelling, and maybe, before tiring myself, would overtake one of Russell's waggons and obtain a lift; the fact being that, grateful though I found it to sit and converse with him, my conscience was accusing me all the while.
"Towards the end of our talk he had let slip by accident that he was by no means a rich man. The money from that moment began to burn in my pockets, and I had scarcely shaken hands with him and taken my leave—which I did just as the sun was sinking behind the plantation across the lane—before his guineas fairly scorched me. I held on my way for a mile or more. You may have observed, ladies, that I limp in my walk? It is the effect of an old wound. But, I declare to you, my limp was nothing to the thought I dragged with me—the recollection of the Major's face and the expression that had come over it when I had first confessed my errand. All his subsequent kindness, his sympathy, his hospitality, his frank and easy talk, could not wipe out that recollection. I had sold something which for years it had been my pride to keep. I had forced it on an unwilling buyer. I had taken the money of a poor man, and had given him in exchange—what? You remember, ladies, those words of Shakespeare— good words, although he puts them into the mouth of a villain—that:
"' . . . He who filches from me my good nameRobs me of that which not enriches himAnd makes me poor indeed.'
"No one had filched my honour—I had sold it to a good man, but yet without enriching him, while in the loss of it I knew myself poor indeed. At the second milestone I turned back, more eager now to find the Major and get rid of the money than ever I had been to obtain it.
"My face was no sooner turned again towards the cottage than I broke into a run, and so good pace I made between running and walking that it cannot have been more than an hour from my leaving the garden before I arrived back at the head of the lane. The evening was dusking in, but by no means dark as yet, even though a dark cloud had crept up from the west and overhung the plantation to the right. I looked down the lane as I entered it, and again—yes, ladies, as surely as before—I saw a man cross it from the garden gate and step into the plantation!
"Who the man was I could not tell, the light being so uncertain. Although he crossed the lane just where Coffin had crossed it and disappeared in just the same manner, I had an impression that he was not Coffin, and that his gait, for one thing, differed from Coffin's. But I tell you this for what it is worth: I was startled, you may be sure, and hurried down the lane after him even quicker than I had hurried after the first man; but when I came to the stile, he, like the first man, had vanished, and within the plantation it was impossible by this time to see more than twenty yards deep.
"Again I turned and crossed the lane to the garden gate. A sort of twilight lay over the turf between me and the summer-house, and beneath the apple-trees skirting my path to it on the left you might say that it was night; but the water at the foot of the garden threw up a sort of glimmer, and there was a glimmer, too, on the vane above the flagstaff. I noted this and that, though my eyes were searching for Major Brooks in the dark shadow under the pent of the summer-house.
"Towards this I stepped; but in the dark I must have walked a few feet wide of the straight line, for I remember brushing against a low-growing branch of one of the apple-trees, and this must have caught in my eyeglass-ribbon and torn it, for when I came to fumble for them a few seconds later to help my sight, the glasses were gone.
"By this time I had reached the summer-house and come to a halt, three paces, maybe, from the doorstep. 'Major Brooks!' I called softly, and then again, but a thought louder, 'Major Brooks!'
"There was no answer, ladies, and I turned myself half about, uncertain whether to go back up the lane and knock at the front door or to seek my way to the house through the garden. Just then my boot touched something soft, and I bent and saw the Major's body stretched across the step close beside my ankles. I stooped lower and put down a hand. It touched his shoulder, and then the ground beneath his shoulder, and the ground was moist. I drew my hand back with a shiver, and just at that moment, as I stared at my fingers, the heavy cloud beyond the plantation lifted itself clear of the trees and let the last of the daylight through—enough to show me a dark stain running from my finger-tips and trickling towards the palm.
"And then, ladies—at first I thought of no danger to myself, but ran for the gate, still groping as I went, for my eyeglasses; stumbled across the lane somehow, and over the stile in vain chase of the man I had glimpsed two minutes before. I say a vain chase, for I had not plunged twenty yards into the plantation before—short-sighted mole that I am—I had lost the track. I pulled up, on the point of shouting for help, and with that there flashed on me the thought of the Major's guineas in my pocket. If I called for help I called down suspicion on myself, and suspicion enough to damn me. How could I explain my presence in the garden? How could I account for the money—straight from the Major's cashbox?"
Captain Branscome paused and gazed around upon us as if caught once more in that terrible moment of choice. Miss Belcher met his gaze and nodded.
"So the upshot was that you ran for it? Well, I can't say that I blame you. But, as it happens, if you had stood still the cashbox might have helped to clear you; for it was found next morning, half a mile away in the brook, below my lodge-gate."
"And there's one thing," said Plinny, "we may thank God for, if it is possible to be thankful for anything in this dreadful business. The murderer, whoever he was, got little profit from his crime, for I know pretty well the state of your poor father's finances, Harry; and if, as Captain Branscome tells us, he had taken ten guineas from the box, there must have been very few left in it."
"My good soul," said Miss Belcher, "the man wasn't after money! He wanted the map this Captain Coffin had left in the Major's keeping. That's as plain as the nose on your good, dear face. If the map happened to be in the cashbox, and I'll bet ten to one it wasn't—"
"You may bet ten thousand to one!" I cried. "It was never in the cashbox at all. It was wrapped up in the flag my father carried into the house."
"Bless the boy," said Miss Belcher; "he's not half a fool, after all! Yes, yes—where is the flag?"
"On the flagstaff," said I. "I hoisted it there this morning."
"Eh?"
"And here," I panted, jumping up in my excitement, "here is Captain Coffin's map!"
I heard Miss Belcher breathing hard as I lugged out the oilskin packet, tore open the knotted string which bound it, and, drawing forth the parchment, spread it, with shaking fingers, on the table.
THE CHART OF MORTALLONE.
THE CHART OF MORTALLONE.
While the others drew their chairs closer, and while I spread flat the parchment—which was crinkled (by the action of salt water, maybe)—I had time to assure myself that this was the selfsame chart of which Captain Coffin had once vouchsafed me a glimpse. I remembered the shape of the island, the point marked "Cape Alderman," the strange, whiskered heraldical monster depicted in the act of rising from the waves off the north-western coast, the equally impossible ship, decorated with a sprit-top-mast and a flag upon it, and charging up under full sail for the southern entry, the name of which ("Gow's Gulf") I must have missed to read in the short perusal Captain Coffin had allowed me. At any rate, I could not recall it. But I recalled the three crosses which showed (so he had told me) where the treasure lay. They were marked in red ink, and I explained their meaning to Miss Belcher, who had pounced upon them at once.
"Fiddlestick-end!" said that lady, falling back on her favourite ejaculation. "Great clumsy crosses of that size! How in the world could any one find a treasure by such marks, unless it happened to be two miles long?"
She pointed to the scale at the head of the chart, which, to be sure, gave six miles to the inch. By the same measurement the crosses covered, each way, from half a mile to three-quarters. Moreover, each had patently been dashed in with two hurried strokes of the pen and without any pretence of accuracy. The first cross covered a "key" or sand-bank off the northern shore of the island; the second sprawled athwart what appeared to be the second height in a range of hills running southward from Cape Alderman, and down along the entire eastern coast at a mean distance of a mile, or a little over, from the sea; while the third was planted full across a grove of trees at the head of the great inlet—Gow's Gulf—to the south, and, moreover, spanned the chief river of the island, which, running almost due south from the back of the hills or mountains (their size was not indicated) below Cape Alderman, discharged itself into the apex of the gulf.
"Without bearings of some sort," said Miss Belcher, "these marks are merely ridiculous."
"You may well say so, ma'am," Captain Branscome answered, but inattentively. "Mortallone—Mortallone," he went on, muttering the word over as if to himself. "It is curious, all the same."
"What is curious?" demanded Miss Belcher.
"Why, ma'am, I have never myself visited the Gulf of Honduras, but among seamen there are always a hundred stories floating about. In a manner of speaking, there is no such shop for gossip as the sea. In every port you meet 'em, in taverns where sailors drink and brag— the liquor being in them—and one man talks and the rest listen, not troubling themselves to believe. It is good to find one's self ashore, you understand? And a good, strong-flavoured yarn makes the landlord and all the shore-keeping folk open their eyes—"
"Bless the man!" Miss Belcher rapped her knuckles on the table. "This is not a 'longshore tavern."
"No, ma'am."
"Then why not come to the point?"
"The point, ma'am—well, the point is that every one—that is to say, every seaman—has heard tell of treasure knocking about, as you might put it, somewhere in the Gulf of Honduras."
"What sort of treasure?"
"Why, as to that, ma'am, it varies with the story. Sometimes 'tis bar silver from the isthmus, and sometimes 'tis gold plate and bullion that belonged to the old Kings of Mexico; but by the tale I've heard offtenest, 'tis church treasure that was run away with by a shipful of logwoodmen in Campeachy Bay. But there again you no sooner fix it as church treasure, and ask where it came from, than you have to choose between half a dozen different accounts. Some say from the Spanish islands—Havana for choice; others from the Main, and I've heard places mentioned as far apart us Vera Cruz and Caracas. The dates, too—if you can call them dates at all—vary just as surprisingly."
"The date on this chart is 1776," said Miss Belcher, who had been peering at it while the Captain spoke.
"Then, supposing there's something in poor Coffin's secret, that gives you the year to start from. We'll suppose this is the very chart used by the man who hid the treasure. Then it follows the treasure wasn't hidden before 1776, and that rules out all the yarns about Hornigold, Teach, Bat Roberts, and suchlike pirates, the last of whom must have been hanged a good fifty years before: though here's evidence"—Captain Branscome laid a forefinger on the chart— "that these gentry had dealings with the island in their day. 'Gow's Gulf,' 'Cape Fea'—Gow was a pirate and a hard nut at that; and Fea, if I remember, his lieutenant or something of the sort; but they had gone their ways before ever this was printed, and consequently before ever these crosses came to be written on it. You follow me, ma'am?"
Miss Belcher gave a contemptuous sniff which, I doubt not, would have prefaced the remark that an unweaned child would arrive unaided at the same conclusions; but here I interposed.
"Captain Coffin," said I, "told me that a part of the treasure was church plate, and that he had seen it. He showed me a coin, too, and said it came from the island."
"Hey, lad? What sort of coin?"
But to this I could give no answer, except that it was a piece of gold, and in size perhaps a trifle smaller than a guinea.
"That's a pity, lad. The coin might have helped us. You're sure now that you can't remember? It hadn't a couple of pillars engraved on it, for instance?"
I shook my head. I had taken no particular heed of the stamp on the coin.
Captain Branscome sighed his disappointment.
"The church plate don't help us at all," he said, "or very little. Why, I've heard this Honduras treasure dated so far back as Morgan's time, when he sacked Panama. The tale went that the priests at Panama or Chagres, or one of those places, on fright of Morgan's coming, clapped all their treasure aboard ship under a guard of militia—soldiers of some sort, anyway—and that the seamen cut the soldiers' throats, slipped cable, and away-to-go. But Morgan! He must have died before Queen Anne was born—well, not so far back as that maybe, but then or thenabouts. I tell you, ma'am, this story hangs around every port and every room where seamen gather and drink and take their ways again. 'Tis for all the world like the smell of tobacco-smoke, that tells you some one has come and gone, but leaves you nothing to get hold of. Hallo!—"
As the exclamation escaped him, Captain Branscome, who had casually picked up a corner of the parchment between finger and thumb, with a nervous jerk drew the whole chart from under my outspread palms and turned it over face-downwards.
"Eh? But see here!"
He fumbled with his glasses, while Miss Belcher and I, snatching at the chart, almost knocked our heads together as we bent over a corner of it—the left-hand upper corner—and a dozen lines of writing scrawled there in faded ink. They ran thus—
1. Landed by cuttar when wee saw a sail. Lesser Kay N. ofGable. Get open water between two kays S.W. and W. by S.,and N. inner point of Gable (where is green patch, goodwatering) in line with white rock (birds), neer as posble.S. a point E. 3 feet bare, being hurried.2. Bayse of cliff second hill S.S.W. from Cape Alderman.Here is bank over 2 waterfals. Neer lower fall, 12 pacesback from egge, getting island open N.E. beyond rock W. ofinlet, and first tree Misery Swamp over Crabtree, W.S.W Bushabove rock to rt of fall. Shaddow 1/4 to 4, June 21st, whenwe left digging.3. R. bank river, 1 and 1/2 mile up from Gow crikke. Centretree in clump 5 branch bearing N. and by E. 1/2 point, twoforks. R. fork 4ft. red cave under hill 457yds. foot of treeN.N.W. N.B.—The stones here, under rock 4 spans L side.
That was all, except two short entries. The first scribbled aslant under No. 1, and in Captain Coffin's own handwriting—so Captain Branscome, who knew it, assured us.
N.B.—Took out 5 cases Ap. 5, 1806, besides the boddies.Avging 3/4 cwt. 1 case jewels. We left the clothes, wh.were many.
The second entry appeared to have been penned by the same hand as the original, but more neatly and some while later. The ink, at any rate, was blacker and fresher. It ran:
S.W. ann. aetat. 37. R.I.P.
The handwriting, though rugged—and the indifferent ink may have been to blame for this—was well formed, and, but for the spelling, might have belonged to an educated man.
The reader, if he choose, may follow our example and discuss the above directions for half an hour—I will warrant with as little result. Miss Belcher ended by harking back to the summer-house and to the latest crime—if we might guess, the latest of many—for which this document had been responsible.
"What puzzles me is this: Since the Major had pockets in his coat, why should he have hidden the parcel as he did? So small a parcel, too!"
"Captain Coffin," I suggested, "may have known that he was being followed."
"Well?"
"And in handing it over he may have warned my father that there was danger."
"I believe the boy is right," said Captain Branscome. "Now I recall the Major's face at the moment when I rattled the latch, I feel sure he was on his guard. Yes—yes, he had been warned against carrying this on his person—he was wrapping it away for the time—"
"Why, what ails the man?" demanded Miss Belcher, as Captain Branscome stopped short with a groan.
"I was thinking, ma'am, that but for my visit he might never have relaxed his guard—that it was I who helped the murderer to take him at unawares. Nay—worse, ma'am, worse—his last thought may have been that I was the traitor—that the blow he took was from the hand he had filled with gold—that I had returned to kill him in his blindness!"
Captain Branscome bowed his head upon his hands. I saw Plinny—who all this while had sat silent, content to listen—rise, her face twitching, and put out a hand to touch the captain's shoulder. I saw her hand hesitate as her sense of decorum overtook her pity and seemed to reason with it. And with that I heard the noise of wheels on the road.
"Hallo!"—Miss Belcher pricked up her ears. "Here's that nuisance Jack Rogers turning up again!"
THE CONTENTS OF THE CORNER CUPBOARD.
THE CONTENTS OF THE CORNER CUPBOARD.
Mr. Jack Rogers, as he pulled up by the porch and directed me to stand by the young mare's head, wore a look of extreme self-satisfaction. Beside him, also beaming, sat Mr. Goodfellow, with the corner cupboard nursed between his knees.
"Capital news, lad!" announced Mr. Rogers, climbing down from the tilbury. "The filly's pretty near dead-beat, though—must see to her and cool her down before telling it. Now, then, Mr. Goodfellow, if you'll hand out the cupboard. By the way, sonny, I hope Miss Plinlimmon can give us breakfast. I'm as hungry as a hunter, for my part, and deserve it, too, after a good night's work. With my fol-de-rol, diddledy—" He started to hum, but checked himself shamefacedly. "There I go again, and I beg your pardon! 'Tis the most difficult thing in the world to me to behave myself in a house of mourning."
Mr. Goodfellow by this time had clambered down, and was embracing the corner cupboard as though he had parted from it for an age, instead of for fifty seconds at the farthest.
"Carry it indoors, but don't open it till I'm ready," commanded Mr. Rogers, stooping under the filly to loosen her belly-band. "I'm a magistrate, remember, and these things must be done in order. You come along with me, Harry; that is, if you have the key in your pocket."
"I have, sir."
"Right! Then come along with me, and you'll be out of harm's way."
So, while Mr. Goodfellow carried the cupboard into the house, Mr. Rogers and I attended to the filly.
This took, maybe, twenty minutes; but Mr. Rogers was a sportsman, and thought of his horse before himself. Not till all was done, and well done, did he announce again that he was devilish peckish; nor did I take the measure of his meaning until, returning to the breakfast-room where Mr. Goodfellow sat before a plate of bread and cream, he helped himself to a mass of veal pie fit for a giant, and before attacking it drained a tankard of cider at a single pull, while he nodded over the rim to Captain Branscome, to whom Plinny introduced him.
"Jack," said Miss Belcher, with a jerk of her thumb towards the Captain, "I'll lay you two to one in guineas, that our news is more important than yours!"
"I take you," said Mr. Rogers.
"It will save time if we tell it while you're eating, and will save you the trouble of talking with your mouth full."
Once or twice, while she abridged Captain Branscome's narrative, Mr. Rogers set down knife and fork, and stared at her with round eyes, his jaws slowly chewing.
"And I reckon," concluded Miss Belcher, "that you won't dispute your owing me a guinea."
"Wait a bit!" Mr. Rogers pushed his empty plate away, selected a clean one, and helped himself to six slices of ham. "To begin with, I've found scent and laid on the hounds."
"Where?"
"At St. Mawes. Captain Coffin, the murdered man, landed there from the ferry on the night of the 11th, at a few minutes before nine, and walked straight to the Lugger Inn, above the quay. There he borrowed fifteen shillings off the landlord, who knew him well; ordered two glasses of hot gin-and-water, drank them, paid down sixpence, and took the road that leads east through Gerrans village. His tale was that he had a relative to visit at Plymouth Dock, and meant to push on that night so far as Probus, and there sleep and wait for Russell's waggon."
"But his road," I objected, "wouldn't lie through Gerrans village, unless he went by the short cut through the field beyond St. Mawes, and took the ferry at Percuil."
"Right, lad; and that is precisely what he did; for—to push ahead a bit—we overran his track on the main road, and, learning of that same short cut, drove back along the other side of the creek to Percuil, and had a talk with the ferryman. The ferryman told us that at ten o'clock, or thereabouts, he was going to bed having closed the ferry, when a voice on the other shore began bawling 'Over!' He slipped on his boots again, rowed across, and took over a man who was certainly Captain Coffin."
"He was alone?" I asked.
"He came across the ferry alone," said Mr. Rogers, "and I dare say he had no idea of being followed. But back at St. Mawes, while he was drinking gin-and-water in the taproom, another man came to the door of the Lugger. This man sent for the landlord—Bogue by name—and asked to be shown into a private room. He was dressed in odds-and-ends of garments, including a soiled regimental coat and dirty linen trousers."
"The French prisoner!" said I.
"That's the man. He told Bogue, fair and straight, he was an ex-prisoner, and off theWellinboro'transport, arrived that day in harbour. He had money in his pocket—in Bogue's presence he pulled out a fistful of gold—and he pitched a tale that he was bound for his home, a little this side of Saltash, but couldn't face the road in the clothes he wore. You'll admit that this was reasonable when you've seen 'em, for I brought the suit along in the tail of the tilbury. For a pound, Bogue fitted him up with an old suit of his own—coat and waistcoat of blue sea-cloth, not much the worse for wear, duck trousers, a tarpaulin hat, and a flannel shirt marked J. B. (Bogue's Christian name is Jeremiah). The fellow had no shirt when he presented himself—nothing between the bare buff and the uniform coat that he wore buttoned across his chest. And here our luck comes in. He was shy of stripping in Bogue's presence, and, on pretence of feeling chilly, sent him out of the room for a glass of hot grog. As it happened, Bogue met the waiting-maid in the passage, coming out of the bar with a tray and half a dozen hot grogs that had been ordered by customers in the tap-room. He picked up one, and, sending the maid back to fetch another to fill up her order, returned at once to the private room. My gentleman there was standing with his back to the door, stripped to the waist, with the shirt in his hand, ready to slip it on. He wasn't expecting Bogue so soon, and he turned about with a jump, but not before Bogue had sight of his back and a great picture tattooed across it—Adam and Eve, with the tree between 'em, and the serpent coiled around it complete."
"The man Bogue must have quick sight," commented Miss Belcher.
"So I told him, but his answer was that it didn't need more than a glance, because this picture is a favourite with seamen. Bogue has been a seaman himself."
"That is so," Captain Branscome corroborated. "The man must have been a seaman, and at one time or another in the Navy. There's a superstition about that particular picture: tattooed across the back and loins it's supposed to protect them, in a moderate degree, against flogging."
"Well," said Miss Belcher, "his belonging to the Navy seems likely enough. It accounts, in one way, for his finding himself in a French war-prison. Go on, Jack."
"The man (said Bogue) faced about with a start, catching his hands— with the shirt in 'em—towards his chest, and half covering it, but not so as to hide from Bogue that his chest, too, was marked. Bogue hadn't time to make out the design, but his recollection is there were several small ones—ships, foul-anchors, and the like— besides a large one that seemed to be some sort of a map."
"You haven't done so badly, Jack," Miss Belcher allowed. "If the man hasn't given us the slip at Plymouth you have struck a first-class scent. Only I doubt 'tis a cold one. You sent word at once?"
"By express rider, and with orders to leave a description of the man at all the ferries. But there's more to come. The man, that had seemed at first in a desperate hurry, was no sooner in Bogue's clothes than he took a seat, made Bogue fetch another glass of grog and drink it with him, and asked him a score of questions about the best road eastward. It struck Bogue that, for a man whose home was Saltash, he knew very little about his native county. All this while he appeared to have forgotten his hurry, and Bogue was thinking to make him an excuse to go off and attend to other customers, when of a sudden he ups and shakes hands, says good night, and marches out of the house. Bogue told me all this in the very room where it happened. It opens out on the passage leading from the taproom to the front door. I asked Bogue if he could remember at what time Coffin left the house, and by what door; also, if the prisoner-fellow heard him leave; but at first he couldn't tell me anything for certain except that Coffin went out by the front door—he remembered hearing him go tapping down the passage. The old man, it seems, had a curious way of tapping with his stick."
Here Mr. Rogers looked at me, and I nodded.
"Where was the landlord when he heard this?" asked Miss Belcher.
"That, my dear Lydia, was naturally the next question I put to him. 'Why, in this very room,' said he, 'now I come to think of it.' 'Well, then,' said I, 'how long did you stay in this room after the prisoner (as we'll call him) had taken his leave?' 'Not a minute,' said he; 'no, nor half a minute. Indeed, I believe we walked out into the passage together, and then parted, he going out to the door, and I up the passage to the taproom.' 'Was Coffin in the taproom when you reached it?' I asked. 'No,' says Bogue; 'to be sure he wasn't.' 'Why, then, you thickhead,' says I, 'he must have left while you were talking with the prisoner; and since you heard him go, the odds are the prisoner heard him, too.' That's the way to get at evidence, Lydia."
"My dear Jack," said Miss Belcher, "you're an Argus!"
"Well, I flatter myself it was pretty neat," resumed Mr. Rogers, speaking with his mouth full; "but, as it happens, we don't need it. For when, as I've told you, we drove around to the ferry at Percuil, and the ferryman described Coffin and how he'd put him across, the first question I asked was 'Did you put any one else across that night?' He said, 'Yes; and not twenty minutes later.' 'Man or woman?' I asked. 'Man,' said he, 'and a d—d drunk one'—saving your presence, ladies. I pricked up my ears. 'Drunk?' I asked. How drunk?' 'Drunk enough to near-upon drown himself,' said the ferryman. 'It was this way, sir: I'd scarcely finished mooring the boat again, and was turning to go indoors, when I heard a splash, t'other side of the creek, where; the path comes down under the loom of the trees, and, next moment, a voice as if some person was drowning and guggling for help. So I fit and unmoored again, and pushed across for dear life, just in time to see a man scrambling ashore. He was as drunk as a fly, sir, even after his wetting. Said he was a retired seaman living at Penzance, had come round to Falmouth on a lime-barge bound for the Truro river, and must get along to St. Austell in time to attend his sister's wedding there next morning. Told me his sister's name, but I forget it. Said he'd fallen in with some brave fellows at Falmouth just returned from the French war-prisons, and had taken a glass or two. Gave me half a crown when I brought him over and landed him,' said the ferryman, 'and too far gone in liquor to understand the mistake if I'd explained it to him, which I didn't.' He was dressed in what appeared to be a dark cloth jacket, duck trousers of sea-going cut, and a tarpaulin hat. 'There was just moon enough,' said the ferry-man, 'to let a man take notice of his trousers, they being white; and maybe I took particular notice of his legs, because they were dripping wet. As for his face, by the glimpse I had of it he was a middle-aged man that had seen trouble.' I asked if he would know the man again. He said, 'Yes,' he was pretty sure he would. So there, Lydia, you have the villain dogging Coffin, tracking him to Percuil, and shamming drunk to get carried over the ferry in pursuit. On Bogue's testimony he was as sober as a judge at St. Mawes, and drank but one glass of grog there, and from St. Mawes to Percuil is but a step, mainly by footpath over the fields, with no public-house on the way."
"H'm," said Miss Belcher; "and yet he couldn't have been following the man to murder him, or he must have taken more care to cover up his traces. All his concern seems to have been to follow Coffin without being seen by him. Is that all?"
"My dear Lydia, consider the amount of time I've had! Almost before I'd finished with Bogue, and certainly before the filly was well rested, Mr. Goodfellow here had crossed to Falmouth and was back again, bringing the cupboard—"
"Yes, Jack; you have done very well—surprisingly well. But I'll not hand over my guinea until we've examined the cupboard. Here, Mr. Goodfellow"—she cleared a space amid the breakfast things—"be so good as to lift it on to the table. Harry, where's the key?"
I produced it.
"A nice bit of work—and Dutch, by the look of it," she commented, pausing to admire the inlaid pattern as she inserted the key. She turned it, and the door fell back, askew on its broken hinges.
Mr. Goodfellow had carried the cupboard with infinite care, but the contents, I need not say, had mixed themselves up in wild disorder, though nothing was broken—not even the pot of guava-jelly. They included a superannuated watch in a loose silver case, a medal (in bronze) struck to commemorate Lord Howe's famous victory of the First of June, two pieces-of-eight and a spade guinea (much clipped); a small china mug painted with libellous portraits of King George III. and his consort; a printed pamphlet on Admiral Byng; two strings of shells; a mourning-ring with a lock of hair set between two pearls under glass; another ring with a tiny picture of a fountain and urn, and a weeping willow; a paper containing a baby's caul and a sampler worked with the A.B.C. and the Lord's Prayer and signed "A.C., 1785;" a gourd, a few glass beads, and a Chinese opium-pipe; and lastly, a thick paper roll bound in yellow-stained parchment. The roll was tied about with string, and the string was sealed, in coarse wax without imprint.
Miss Belcher dived a hand into a fold of her skirt, and drew forth a most unladylike clasp-knife.
"Now for it!" said Miss Belcher.