He sat on the front of the trap and the big man drove. Upon the back seat were Inspector Gregory and the policeman, Luke Bartley.
The horse was given its head, and soon Daniel had vanished. He was to be driven over the Moor to Plymouth.
For a moment Minnie seemed to be forgotten. Then she went quietly to her weeping aunt and kissed her.
“I be going now,” she said.
“Going—going where, you poor, deserted, tibby lamb? Where should you go?”
“To my home,” answered the girl. “I’m Mrs Daniel Sweetland now. I’ve got to keep up Dan’s name afore the world an’ be the mistress of his house. ’Tis waiting for me. I’ll have it vitty for him when he comes backalong.”
“Go up there all alone to that wisht hovel in the middle of them deadly bogs? You sha’n’t do it, Minnie—I won’t let you.”
“An’ the name of the place!” groaned Mr Beer. “I prayed un to alter it too. ’Twas bound to bring ill fortune. Now ’tis an omen.”
“I’m going, however. ’Tis my duty. An’ so soon as may be I’ll get down to Plymouth to see him,” declared the girl.
A cab, that was to have driven Daniel and Minnie, still waited. Now she walked to it and opened the door.
“Drive me up to Warren Inn ’pon Dartymoor, my boy,” she said. “From there I can walk.”
Then she turned and approached Mrs Sweetland.
“My place is in his home, mother. Don’t you fear nothing. I’ll be a good wife to your son, an’ a good daughter to you. Our Dan be in the hands of God. Good-bye, all—good-bye.”
She drove away, and the men who had hissed at her husband cheered her.
“Dammy—a good pucked un!” cried a thin, gnarled figure with a green shade over his eye. “Lucky’s the he that gets that she, whether it be yon chap or another after he swings!”
The man was called Rix Parkinson, and he held the proud dual position of leading drunkard and leading poacher in Moreton. He was drunk now, but people nearly always found themselves in agreement with him when he was sober and cared to talk.
A buzz and babel turned round Mrs Maine and the Sweetlands. Then the gamekeeper and Titus Sim talked apart.
“There’s a train to Newton Abbot half after six,” said Matthew. “I’ll go by it an’ have a tell with Lawyer Jacobs.”
“And what I can do with Mr Henry I will do,” said Sim.
His eyes were upon Minnie Sweetland’s carriage as it drove away with the little blue figure sitting bravely in it—alone.
Johnny Beer’s wife had been forgotten, and she wept in a small circle of children who had gathered about her.
“What a wedding night for a dinky maiden!” sobbed Jane Beer; “but me an’ my man willgo over to hearten her up, if ’tis in mortal power to do it.”
Anon the people scattered, and the day was done. A grey gloaming settled upon the Moor, and their eternal cloud-caps rolled over the tors and stifled the light of evening.
A dog-cart with a fine trotting horse in it swept along over the long, straight stretch to the Warren Inn, and some miles in the rear of it Daniel Sweetland’s wife followed behind. She sat in an open fly and was drawn by an old grey mare who had assisted at a hundred weddings. But her driver had taken the ribbons off his whip and flung away the flowers from his buttonhole. He numbered only twelve years; yet he had sense to see that the moment was not one for show of joy.
“They’ll never hang such a rare fine chap,” he said; “I’m sure they never would do such a terrible rash thing, miss.”
His first experience of life crushed down with all the weight of the world on Daniel Sweetland and kept him dumb. He stared straight before him and only answered with nod or shake of head the remarks addressed to him by Luke Bartley and the inspector.
“Better leave the lad in peace,” said the kindly giant, who drove. “He wants to think, an’ no doubt he’s got a deal to think about.”
The prisoner’s native genius now worked swiftly with him, and his sole thought was of escape as dusk gathered on Dartmoor. He puzzled his head in vain to see the drift of these doings. It seemed that his gun had been found beside the spot where Adam Thorpe was shot. What human hands could have put it there? He knew of no enemy on earth. Measuring the chances of establishing analibi, he saw that they were small. Search could prove the fact that he had killed pheasants on the previous night, and it wasquite possible for him to have killed a man also. He might have shot Thorpe at Middlecott and have spoken to the other keepers at Westcombe afterwards. Indeed, the hours agreed. Then he remembered the shadow that had leapt up out of the heath when he left Hangman’s Hut for the last time. That man it was who had destroyed him; and that man would never be found unless Daniel himself made the discovery. Revolving the matter in his young brains, the poacher believed that his only chance was present escape.
Once free and beyond the immediate and awful danger of the moment, Daniel Sweetland trusted that he might establish his innocence and prove the truth. But as a prisoner on trial, with his present scanty knowledge, there appeared no shadow of hope. He looked up at the man who drove and instinctively strained the steel that handcuffed his wrists. Escape seemed a possibility as remote as any miracle.
“What be your name, policeman?” asked Daniel, meekly. “You took me very quiet an’ gentle, an’ I thank you for it.”
“I’m called Corder—Alfred Corder. I’m the biggest man in the force.”
“An’ so strong as you’m big, by the looks of it.”
“Well, I’ve yet to meet my master,” said the officer. He had one little vanity, and that was his biceps.
“Be you any relation to Alf Corder, the champion of Devon wrestling, then?”
“I am the man,” said Mr Corder. “Never been throwed since I was twenty-two; an’ now I’m thirty-four.”
Daniel nodded.
“A very famous hero. I should have thought you’d make more money wrestling in London than ever you would doing cop’s work to Plymouth.”
The giant was interested at this intelligent remark.
“I’ve often been tempted to try; but I’m not a man that moves very quick in my mind; though I can shift my sixteen stone of carcase quick enough when it comes to wrestling or fighting. Once my hand gets over a limb, it sticks—like a bull-dog’s teeth. ’Tis the greatest grip known in the West Country—to say it without boasting.”
Daniel nodded and relapsed into silence. He was thinking hard now. All his ideas centred on the wild hope to escape. Scheme after scheme sped through his brains. Once a shadowy enterprise actually developed, but he dismissed it as vain.
Then Luke Bartley spoke to Mr Corder and suggested another line of action.
“This here was the man who had that cute thought that the burglars to Westcombe got away on a motor-car—didn’t he, Gregory?”
The inspector admitted it.
“Yes; I gave you all credit for that, Sweetland. ’Twas a clever opinion, and the right one. I’m sure of that. Hue an’ cry was so quick that they never could have got clear off with any slower vehicle.”
Daniel made no answer; but he jumped at the topic of the recent burglary and turned it swiftly in his mind. Here, perhaps, was the chance he wanted. For half an hour he kept silence; then he spoke to Bartley.
“’Twas you who first thought as I might have a hand in that business myself, Luke?”
“No, no; Mr Gregory here.”
“Of course, I hope you hadn’t; but you might have had. Anyhow, that will be a mystery for evermore, I reckon,” said the inspector.
“Five thousand pounds’ worth of plate they took,” explained Daniel to his driver; but Mr Corder knew all about it.
“Five thousand and more. ’Twas always a great regret to me that I wasn’t in that job.”
“You couldn’t have done no better than I done,” struck in Gregory. “That I’ll swear to. The London man gave me great credit for what I did do. He said he’d never known such a nose for a clue. That was his own words.”
“It was,” declared Bartley. “That was the very word of the London man, for I heard it.”
“They are not a bit smarter than us to Plymouth really,” said Corder. “I’ve known them make mistakes that I’d have blushed to make. But ’tis just London. If a thing comes from London it must be first chop. They only beat Plymouth in one matter as I knows about; an’ that’s their criminal classes.”
“Not but what we’ve got our flyers at a crime too,” said Mr Gregory, who was highly patriotic. “Take that there burglary job to Westcombe. ’Twasn’t a fool who planned and carried that out.”
“But they comed down from London for certain,” argued Corder.
“They might, or they might not,” answered the inspector.
“Then, for murders like this here murder of Adam Thorpe,” added Bartley. “I’m sure the county of Devon stands so high as anybody could wish. ’Tisn’t a deed to be proudof, certainly; but I won’t allow for one that London beats Devonsheer in anything. As many hangs to Exeter gaol as to any other county gaol in my knowledge.”
“Shall I hang over this job, do ’e reckon, Mr Corder?” asked Daniel, humbly.
“Ban’t for me to say, my son. A gun be a very damning piece of evidence. But if you can prove you wasn’t there, that’s all that need be done.”
“I was using my gun, but—”
“Don’t say nothing to me,” interrupted the giant. “I wish you well; but anything you say is liable to be used against you according to law. Therefore you’ll do wisest to keep your mouth shut till you can get your lawyer to listen to you.”
Silence fell; then the Warren Inn came into sight, and at the same moment Mr Corder pulled up and looked anxiously down his horse’s flank.
“Just jump out, will ’e, one of you men, an’ see if he’s picked up a stone. He has gone lame all of a sudden—in the near hind leg, I think.”
Bartley alighted and lifted the horse’s hoof. Then he examined the others. But there was no stone. Yet the horse went lame when they started again.
“He’s hurt his frog. He’ll be all right in an hour,” said Gregory, who was learned on the subject. “Here’s the Warren Inn just handy. You’ll do well to put up there for a bit. Us can go in the parlour an’ wait; then, if there’s any in the bar, they won’t see us.”
John Beer and his wife were, of course, not yet at home; but a potman kept house and waited in the public room.
The place was empty. Mr Corder and Gregory took Daniel Sweetland into a little parlour, while Bartley stabled the lame horse.
Presently he returned and brought a lamp with him, for it was now growing dark.
“An hour I’ll wait, and only an hour,” declared Corder. “Then, if the horse be still lame, we must get another.”
The officers sent for bread, cheese and beer. They asked Daniel to join them, and he agreed; then suddenly, while they were at their meal, he spoke.
“I’ve got a word to say to you chaps. ’Tis a terrible matter, but I’d rather have it off my mind than on it just at present. Will you do the fair thing if I tell you, an’ give me credit after?”
“You’d better far keep quiet,” said Corder.
“’Tis like this. The cleverness of you three men mazes me. To think as Gregory heresaw so clear about the burglary; an’ Bartley too! Well, now your horse goes lame an’ everything. ’Tis fate, an’ so I’ll speak if you’ll listen. Only I ax this as a prisoner; I ax this as the weak prays the strong for mercy; that you’ll remember to my credit how I made a clean breast of everything without any pressure from any of you.”
Mr Corder stared.
“Trouble’s turned your head, my son, by the looks of it. Whatever rummage be you talking about?”
“’Tis sense, I promise you. I nearly told just now when us was speaking about the burglary. Then, just here of all places, your horse falls lame. ’Tis like Providence calling me to speak.”
Daniel was playing his solitary card. The chances were still a thousand to one against him; but he saw a faint possibility, if things should fall out right. His swift mind had seized the accident of the horse’s lameness, and his plot was made.
“Be plain if you can,” said Corder. “Don’t think I’m against you. Only I say again, there’s no power in us to help you, even if we had the will.”
“I’m thinking of last August—that burglary. Well, now, how about it if I was able to helpyou chaps to clear that up? Wouldn’t I be doing you a good turn, Greg, if you was able to say at headquarters that by cross-questioning me you’d wormed the truth out of me?”
Mr Gregory stared. He licked his lips at the very idea.
“An’ if Mr Corder here was agreeable, an’ let me explain, you might find that when you drive into Plymouth in a few hours’ time, you would be taking five thousand pounds of silver plate along with you, besides me. Wouldn’t there be a bit of a stir about it—not to name the reward? Why, you’d all be promoted for certain.”
“Twelve hundred and fifty pounds’ reward was offered by the parties,” said Mr Corder.
“And do you mean that you know anything?” asked the inspector, much excited.
“I mean this. You was right, Gregory, I didn’t do the burglary, but I knowed about it, and I can tell you all an’ more than you want to know. There’s twelve hundred and fifty pounds for the men who recover that Giffard silver; an’ it can be done. But what I ax you three men is this—If I put that money into your pockets, will you do something for me?”
“That’s impossible,” answered Corder, firmly. “I know what’s in your mind, my lad; and ’tisnatural enough that it should be; but you might so soon ask them handcuffs on your wrist to open without my key as ask me to help you now, if that’s your game.”
“It isn’t,” answered Daniel. “Afore God, no such thought as axing you to let me go comed in my mind. ’Twould be like offering you three men five thousand pound to let me off. I wouldn’t dream of such a thing. You’re honourable, upright chaps, an’ I respect you all a lot too much to do it. Five thousand pound divided into three be only a dirty little sixteen hundred or so apiece. Though, as a matter of fact, there was far more took than that. But I never meant no such thing. I’m booked for trial, an’ you can’t help me. No, you can’t help me—none of you. ’Tis my poor little wife I be breaking my heart for.”
A fly crawled up to the inn as Daniel spoke and stopped at the door. Looking out through the open window, he caught a passing glimpse of Minnie herself under the lamp at the door, and heard her voice. She paid the driver and he went into the bar; but Daniel knew that Minnie was now walking alone across the Moor to Hangman’s Hut.
“Go on,” said Gregory. “Let’s hear all you’ve got to say. No harm in that. My heart bleeds for your mother, not your wife,Sweetland. Little did she think that she was bringing such a bad lot into the world the day you was born.”
“I’m not so bad neither. Anyway, time’s too short to be sorry now. ’Tis like this. It’s not in my mind to ax anything for myself; but I pray for a bit of mercy for my wife. If I swing over this, what becomes of her? She’ve got but fifty-five pounds in the world.”
“’Tis enough to keep her till an honest man comes along an’ marries her,” said Bartley. “For that matter, Titus Sim will wed her if the worst overtakes you, Daniel.”
“You put it plain,” answered the prisoner, “an’ I thank you for it, Luke. All the same, they may not hang me; an’ if I get penal servitude, Minnie can’t marry any other man. Now the reward for finding out that burglary job be twelve hundred an’ fifty pounds, as Mr Corder says. That divided betwixt the three of you would be four hundred odd apiece. An’ I want to know just what you’ll do about it. In exchange for the money an’ fame an’ glory this job will bring you men, I want two hundred pounds—not for myself, but for my poor girl. Ban’t much to ax, an’ not a penny less will I take. That’s my offer, an you’d best to think upon it. If you refuse, I shall make it to somebody else.”
Silence followed. Then Dan spoke again.
“’Tis terrible awkward eating bread an’ cheese wi’ handcuffs on. Will e’ take ’em off for a bit, please? I can’t get out of the winder, for ’tis too small; so if you stands afore the door, you needn’t fear I’ll give you the slip.”
Mr Corder perceived the truth of this and freed the prisoner’s hands.
“You’ve put a pretty problem afore us, young man,” he said; “an’ us must weigh it in all its parts. Can’t say as ever I had a similar case in my experience.”
“Nor me neither,” declared Inspector Gregory.
Bartley remained silent. He was asking himself what it would feel like to be the richer by hundreds of pounds.
Daniel ate his bread and cheese, drank a pint of beer, and held out his wrists for the handcuffs.
Then Mr Corder himself went to see to his horse, and while he was away Daniel spoke to the others.
“You chaps know how hard a thing it is to get the public ear. Surely—surely ’tis worth your while to find out this great burglary job an’ put money in your pockets? You’m fools to hesitate. But if you be such greedy souls thatyou won’t spare a crumb to my poor wife, then you sha’n’t have a penny, so help me.”
“’Tis throwing away money to refuse,” declared Bartley to Corder, who now returned. “You see, that money have got to be earned, an’ why for shouldn’t we earn it? There’s no under-handed dealings, or playing with the law.”
“The hoss is all right again, an’ the sooner we go the better,” answered Mr Corder.
“You won’t fall in then?” asked Daniel, with a sinking heart.
“I don’t say that; but if you’m in earnest, you can tell us all about it as we go along.”
“An’ you’ll swear, all three of you, to give Minnie Sweetland two hundred pounds of the reward?”
“I will,” said Bartley. “’Tis flying in the face of Providence to do otherwise.”
“If it can be proved we’m not straining the law, I’ll do the same,” declared Inspector Gregory. “What do you say, Corder?”
“The law’s clear, for that matter,” answered the big man. “The law ban’t strained. The law have nothing to do with a private bargain. This here man comes to us an’ says, ‘I’ll put you chaps in the way to make twelve hundred an’ fifty pounds between you.’ An’ we says, ‘Do it.’ Then he says, ‘But I must have twohundred for my wife; because I, who be her natural support, be taken from her.’ Well—there it is. My conscience is clear. Since he’s brought to book an’ may go down on it, the burglary never will be any use to him; so he peaches. For my part I’ll promise what he wants this minute.”
“And so will I,” said Bartley. “’Tis a very honest, open offer for a condemned man.”
“Not condemned at all—merely an arrested man,” corrected Gregory. “An’ I’ll take his offer too,” he added; “so it only remains for him to tell us where the stuff be hidden.”
Daniel looked straight into Corder’s face.
“That was why I axed you not to be in a hurry,” he said. “The Giffard plate from Westcombe was brought up to the Moor, an’ such a fuss have been made that the burglars haven’t been able to get it clear for all these weeks. Nobody dared to go near it. But I’ve kept secret watch on it for ’em. As for the stuff, ’tis within a mile of this very house, though I daresay Johnny Beer would have a fit if he knowed about it.”
“Within reach of us?” gasped Bartley.
“That’s why I said you could take it along to Plymouth to-night, if you had a mind to. Drive across with me into King’s Oven under Hurston Ridge an’ borrow a spade or two, an’I’ll wager you’ll have every pennyweight of the silver in your trap in two hours or less from this minute. Take it or leave it. I’m in solemn earnest; that I swear to. Only this I’ll say: you’ll not find it without me—not if you dig for ever an’ a day. ’Tis safe enough.”
The policemen held a hurried colloquy aside. In Gregory’s mind was a growing suspicion that the prisoner did not speak the truth. But the others believed him.
“What motive should he have to lie about it?” asked Corder, under his breath. “It won’t advantage him if we find nothing. If we do find it, the credit is ours. An’ I sha’n’t grudge his wife her share of the reward, I’m sure. Ban’t even as if ’twas blood money; for that stealing job won’t make any difference to this hanging one. Better let him show us the stuff now. Who be the worse? If he’s fooling us, he’s not helping himself. For my part, I believe him. He’s just come from marrying his wife; an’ ’tis human nature that she should be the uppermost thought in his heart.”
“King’s Oven do lie no more than a mile from here,” said Gregory; “so there’s no reason why we shouldn’t get going. You put in the hoss, Luke. Sooner this job’s over an’ we’m on the Plymouth road again, the better I’ll be pleased.”
Corder spoke to Daniel.
“We’ll fall in with your offer, young man. Show us that stuff an’ your missis shall have her two hundred pounds so soon as the reward is paid.”
“Very well. If you slip a spade and a pick or two in the trap afore we start, ’twill be all the better. An’ a bit of rope, for that matter. Us have got our work cut out,” answered the prisoner. “What they Londoners will say to me for turning traitor, I don’t know; an’ I don’t care now neither,” he added.
“You won’t give ’em up?”
“Not the men. Only the stuff—for my wife’s sake.”
Bartley brought the trap to the door, and as Sweetland was helped in, Mr Beer and his wife drove up in their little market cart.
The police said nothing, and soon they were on their way again, but not before Johnny Beer had spoken to his friend.
“Keep a cheerful face in this terrible case. Us’ll do all we can for our old pal, Dan. To think of the tragedy on your wedding day! It have so got hold upon me that I’ve made tragical rhymes upon it all the way back from Moreton. Please God, I’ll get the chance to tell ’em to ’e some day.”
“I hope you will, Johnny, though it don’t look very likely.”
The trap drove off. Its lamps were lighted, and they cast a bright blaze forward into a dark night. Presently Daniel stopped them, and Bartley jumped down and took the horse’s head.
“Now keep over the grass track to the right an’ us will be in King’s Oven in ten minutes,” said Sweetland.
Swaying and jolting, their dog-cart proceeded into the great central silence and stillness of the Moor.
Furnum Regis, or the King’s Oven, is a wild and lonely spot lying beneath a cairn-crested hill of mid Dartmoor. Here in centuries past was practised the industry of tin-smelting, and to the present time a thousand decaying evidences of that vanished purpose still meet the eye. The foundations of ruins are yet apparent in a chaos of shattered stone; broken pounds extend their walls into the waste around about; hard by a mine once worked, and much stone from the King’s Oven was removed for the construction of buildings which are to-day themselves in ruins. Now the fox breeds in this fastness, and only roaming cattle or the little ponies have any business therein. A spot better adapted for the bestowal of stolen property could hardly be conceived.
Three hundred yards from the entrance of the Oven, Daniel stopped the trap and the men alighted.
“I must get two of the rocks in line withthe old stones ’pon top the hill,” said Daniel. “That done, I know where to set you fellows digging.”
They proceeded as he directed. Corder walked on one side of the prisoner and Gregory upon the other; while Luke Bartley, with two spades and a pickaxe on his shoulder, came behind them.
The moon now rose and the darkness lifted. Sweetland walked about for some time until a certain point arrested him. This rock, after some shifting of their position, he presently brought into line with another, and then it seemed that both were hidden by the towering top of the cairn that rose into the moonlight beyond them.
“Here we are,” he said. “An’ first you’ve got to shift this here gert boulder. It took three men to turn it over and then pull it back into its place; an’ it will ax for all you three can do to treat it likewise.”
The rope was brought, and with the help of the mighty Corder a large block of granite was dragged out of its bed. The naked earth spread beneath.
“You’ll find solid stone for two feet,” declared Daniel, “for we filled up with soil an’ granite, an’ trampled all so hard an’ firm as our feet could do it. The hole we dug goestwo feet down; then it runs under thicky rock to the left.”
Without words the men set to work and Daniel expressed increasing impatience.
“Lord! to see you chaps with spades! But, of course, you haven’t been educated to it. You’ll be all night. I wish I could help you; but I can’t.”
“We’ll shift it,” declared Corder. “Wait till the moon’s a thought higher; then we’ll see what we’re at easier.”
He toiled mightily and cast huge masses of earth out of a growing hole; but the ground was full of great stones; and sometimes all three officers had to work together to drag a mass of granite out of the earth.
“You chaps wouldn’t have made your fortunes at spade work—that’s a fact,” said Daniel. “I wish you’d let me help. If you freed my hands, there’d be no danger in it so long as you tied my legs.”
Bartley stopped a moment to rest his aching back.
“’Tis a fair offer,” he said. “If you make fast the man’s legs, he couldn’t give us the slip. I can’t do no more of this labour, anyway. I’ve earned my living with my brains all my life, an’ I ban’t built to do ploughboy’s work now I’m getting upin years. I be sweating my strength out as ’tis.”
Gregory agreed.
“Time’s everything,” he said. “If you take that there rope an’ tie him by the leg to this stone what we’ve moved, he’s just as safe as if he was handcuffed. Then he can dig for us, as he well knows how.”
Mr Corder considered this course, and then agreed to it. The rope was knotted round Daniel’s leg, and he found himself tied fast to the great rock that had been recently moved; then Mr Corder took off the handcuffs.
“No tricks mind,” he said. “I’m a merciful man an’ wish you no harm; but if you try to run for it, I’ll knock you down as if you was a rabbit.”
“You’re right not to trust me,” answered the poacher, calmly; “but give me that spade an’ you’ll see I’m in earnest. I want two hundred pound for my wife, don’t I? If we take turn an’ turn about, we’ll soon shift this muck. ’Twill be better for two to dig. Ban’t room for three.”
The critical moment of Daniel’s plot now approached; but he kept a grip on his nerves and succeeded in concealing his great excitement. All depended on the next half hour.
He and Corder now began to work steadily, while the others rested and watched them. The moon shone brightly, and a mound of earth and stone increased beside the hole they dug. Presently Gregory and Bartley took a turn; but the latter had not dug five minutes when Daniel snatched his spade from him and continued the work himself.
“I can’t stand watching you,” he said. “Such weak hands I never seed in my life. A man would be rotten long afore his grave was dug, if you had the digging.”
“I works with the intellects,” answered Mr Bartley. “My calling in life is higher than a sexton’s, I hope.”
After another period of labour, Corder took the inspector’s place, and soon the aperture gaped two feet deep.
“That’s it; now we’ve got to sink to the left,” explained Sweetland. “We run another two feet under this here ledge and then we come to the stuff.”
Now he was working with Gregory again and the moment for action had arrived. Opportunity had to be made, however, and Daniel’s escape depended entirely upon Mr Corder’s answer to his next question. He knew that with the giant present his plans must fail; but if Corder could be inducedto go aside, Daniel felt that the rest was not difficult.
“Can’t see no more,” he said. “If you’ll fetch one of the gig lamps, Mr Corder, us will know where we are. You’ll want the lamp in a minute anyway, when we come to the plate, for ’twas all thrown loose into the earth.”
Without answering, the big policeman fell into the trap. He had to go nearly three hundred yards for the lamp, and, allowing him above a minute for that journey, Daniel Sweetland made his plunge for liberty. Suddenly, without a moment’s warning, he turned upon Gregory as the inspector bent beside him, and struck the man an awful blow with his spade full upon the top of the head.
“Sorry, Greg!” he cried, as the officer fell in a heap, “but if I’ve got to swing, it shall be for something, not nothing.”
Even as he spoke Daniel had reached to the length of his rope and collared Bartley. The strong man he had struck senseless according to his intention; the weak one he now prepared to deal with. Bartley screamed like a hunted hare, for he supposed that his hour was come. Then Daniel saw the distant light leap forward. Only seconds remained, and only seconds were necessary.
“Be quiet and hand me your knife, or I’llsmash your skull in too!” he shouted to the shaking policeman; then he stretched for the handcuffs, which Corder had put on a stone beside him, and in a second Luke Bartley found himself on the ground beside his colleague. A moment later and he was chained to the recumbent and senseless person of the inspector, while Daniel knelt beside him and extracted from his pocket the knife he now required. With this he cut the rope that held him prisoner and, during the ten seconds that remained, before Mr Corder rushed upon the scene, Daniel had put forty yards of darkness between himself and his guards.
The Plymouth man now found his work cut out for him. Gregory was still unconscious and Bartley had become hysterical and was rolling with his face on the earth howling for mercy. Mr Corder liberated him and kicked him into reason. Then Luke told his tale while the other tended the unfortunate inspector.
“He falled upon the man with his spade, like a devil from hell, an’ afore I could start my frozen limbs an’ strike him down, he’d got me in his clutches an’ handcuffed my wrist to this poor corpse here.”
But Gregory was not a corpse. In two minutes he had recovered his senses and sat up with his feet in the pit.
“What’s happened?” he asked. “Where’s Daniel Sweetland to? Who hit me? Was it lightning?”
“’Twas him,” answered Corder; “an’ there’s no time to lose. If you can walk, take my arm an’ we’ll go back this minute. I’m going to drive to Princetown at once an’ give the alarm there. ’Tis only a matter of ten mile, an’ the civil guard at the prison know the Moor an’ will lend a hand to catch the man as soon as daylight comes. He can’t be off much sooner.”
“An’ this here silver treasure?” asked Mr Bartley.
“This here silver grandmother!” answered the other bitterly. “He’s done us—done me—me as have had some credit in my time, I believe. There—don’t talk—I could spit blood for this!—but words be vain. I sha’n’t have another peaceful moment till I’ve got that anointed rascal in irons again. ’Tis a lesson that may cost me a pension.”
Corder gave his arm to Gregory and Bartley walked in front with the lantern.
“A gashly company we make, sure enough,” said the pioneer. “The wickedness of that limb! An’ I thought for certain as my death had come. Talk about London—I’d like to see a worse unhung ruffian there, or anywhere.The man don’t live that’s worse than Sweetland. I never knowed there was such a liar in the universe.”
A last surprise awaited them and made the long journey to Princetown impossible until dawn.
When they reached the dog-cart they found it supported by the shafts alone, for the horse was gone.
“He’ll get to Plymouth after all, I reckon,” said Corder, blankly; “but we sha’n’t—not this side of morning. Us have got to walk ten mile on end to reach Princetown, let alone Plymouth. That’s what us have got to do.”
“While we talked, he took the hoss. The devil’s cunning of that man!” groaned Bartley.
Meantime Daniel Sweetland was riding bare-backed over Dartmoor to his new home.
He knew the way very well and threaded many a bog and leapt a stream or two; then breasted a hill and looked down where, like a glow-worm, one little warm light glimmered in the silver and ebony of the nocturnal desert.
For the first time that day his heart grew soft.
“Her—all alone!” he thought. “I might have knowed she’d come. That’s her place now; an’ mine be alongside her!”
He formed the resolution to see Minnie at any cost.
“Us’ll eat supper alone together for once, though the devil gets the reckoning,” he said. “I lay my pretty have had no stomach for victuals this night.”
Five minutes later a horse stopped at Hangman’s Hut, and Minnie, unlocking the door, found herself in her husband’s arms.
“Ban’t much of a wedding night,” he said; “but such as ’tis us’ll make the most of it. I’ve foxed ’em very nice with a yarn about that burglary, of which I know no more than the dead really. But you’ll hear tell about that presently. An’ to-night they’ll have a pretty walk to Princetown, for the only horse except this one within five miles belongs to Johnny Beer; an’ ’tis tired out after the journey to Moreton.”
Minnie was far less calm than when she left him in the morning. Even her steady nerve failed her now, and for the only time in his life Daniel saw her weep.
“Don’t you do that,” he said. “Ban’t no hour for tears. Fetch in all the food in the house, an’ that bottle of wine I got for ’e. Can’t stop long, worse luck.”
“I know right well you’m an innocent man, Daniel; an’ I’ll never be happy againuntil I’ve done my share to prove it,” she said.
“’Tis just that will be so awful hard. Anyway I felt that the risk of a trial was too great to stand, if there was a chance to escape. And the chance offered. The lies I’ve told! But I needn’t waste time with that. Keep quiet about my visit to-night. Ban’t nobody’s business but ours. A purty honeymoon, by God! All the same, ’tis better than none.”
Minnie hastened to get the food; then, when she had brought it, he put out the light and flung the window open.
“Us must heed what may hap. They might come this way by chance, though there’s little likelihood of it.”
He listened, but there was no sound save the sigh of a distant stream and the stamp of the horse’s hoofs at the door.
“To leave you here in this forsaken place!” he cried. “You mustn’t stop. You shall not.”
“But I shall, for ’tis so good as any other,” she answered. “I’ve got to work for you while you are far off, Daniel. I’ve got to clear you; an’ I will, God helping. What a woman can do, I’ll do for ’e.”
“An’ more than any woman but you could do! I know right well that if truth is to cometo light ’twill be your brave heart finds it. You an’ Sim. Trust him. He’ll do what a friend may. He’ll work for me with all his might.”
“An’ what will you do?” she asked.
“Make myself scarce,” he answered. “’Tis all I can do for the present. No good arguing while the rope’s round your neck. I can’t prove I’m innocent, so ’tis vain stopping to do it. I’ll get out of harm’s way, if I can. I mean to get to Plymouth afore morning an’ go down among the ships. Then I’ll take the first job any man offers me, an’ if my luck holds, I did ought to be in blue water to-morrow.”
“They’ll trace you by the horse if you ride.”
“So they would, of course. ’Tis the horse I trust to help me again as he’ve helped to-night. Like enough, when you hear next about me, they’ll tell you as I’ve been killed by the horse. But don’t you feel no fear. I shall be to Plymouth very comfortable.”
She ministered to him, and he ate and drank heartily.
“One hour I’ll bide along wi’ my own true love, then off I must go,” said Daniel. “I’ve hit poor Gregory rather hard; but I hope he’ll get over it. Anyway, it had to be done. Only you go on being yourself, Min, an’ keep up your courage, an’ fill your time working for me. The case is clear. Some man have shot AdamThorpe; but he didn’t shoot him with my gun, because my gun was in my own hand when Thorpe fell, an’ I was a good few mile away. To be exact, I was getting pheasants for ’e in Westcombe woods at the time—you’ll find ’em in the well; an’ I heard the shots fired at Middlecott quite clear, though I was five mile off. But the thing be to show that I was five mile off.”
“And your gun, Daniel?”
“I put my gun back in the case in the next room to this long afore midnight yesterday,” he said.
“Then ’twas fetched away after midnight?”
“Yes, it was; an’ if you can find the man as took my gun, then you’ll find the man who killed the keeper.”
“’Twill be the first thought an’ prayer of my life to do it, Daniel.”
“An’ you will do it—if Sim don’t,” he prophesied.
Within an hour Daniel reluctantly prepared to leave his home.
“’Tis a damned shame I must go,” he said; “but I’ve no choice now. Only mind this, Minnie Sweetland. Don’t you think you’m a widow to-morrow when they comes an’ tells you so. If they bring my carpse to ’e, then believe it; but they won’t.”
“Take care of yourself, Daniel,” she answered, “for your life’s my life. I’ll only live an’ think an’ work an’ pray for you, till you come homealong again.”
“Trust me,” he said. “You’m my star wheresoever I do go. Up or down, so long as I be alive, I’ll have you first in thought, my own li’l wife. Nought shall ever come atween me an’ you but my coffin-lid. An’ well God knows it.”
“Go,” she said. “An’ let me hear how you be faring so soon as you can.”
“Be sure of that. If I daren’t write to you, I’ll write to Sim. But remember! it may be an awful long time, if I have to go across seas.”
“Write to me—to me direct,” she begged earnestly. “Send my letter through no other man or woman. ’Twill be my life’s blood renewed to get it. An’ I can wait; I can wait as patient as any stone. Time’s nothing so long as we come together again some day. We’ve got our dear memories, an’ they’ll never grow dim, though we grow grey.”
“Not the memory of this day an’ night, that’s brought the greatest ill an’ the greatest joy into my life to once,” he answered her. “Green for evermore ’twill be.”
Then again and again they kissed, and Daniel Sweetland rode away.
At the top of the next dark hill he turned and looked back, but he saw nothing. Minnie had not lighted her lamp again. She stood and watched him vanish. Then she went to her bed in the dark and prayed brave prayers until the dawn broke.
Daniel Sweetland had decided on his course of action before he bade his wife farewell. Now he rode back to Furnum Regis, found the King’s Oven empty as he expected, and turned his horse’s head to the south. He crossed the main road, struck down a saddle path, and presently approached Vitifer Mine. Here the land was cut and broken into wild chaos of old-time excavations and deep natural gulleys and fissures. The place was dangerous, for terrific disused shafts opened here, and a network of rails and posts marked the more perilous tracts and kept the cattle out. Sweetland knew this region well, and now, dismounting, he led his horse to a wide pit known as Wall Shaft Gully, and tethered it firmly where miners, going to their work, must see it on the following morning. An ancient adit lined with granite yawned below, and local report said that it was unfathomable. Two years before a man had accidentally destroyed himself by falling into it, and though the fact was known, the natureof the place made it impossible to recover his corpse.
Now Daniel took a pencil and paper from his pocket. Then, under the waning moon, he wrote the words “Good-bye, all. Let Sim break it to my wife—D. Sweetland.” Next he took a stick, stuck it up, and set his message in a cleft of it; and lastly he kicked and broke the soil at the edge of the shaft, so that it should seem he had cast himself in with reluctance. That done, he set out for Plymouth at his best pace, consulted his watch, and saw that if all went well he might reach the shelter of the streets by four o’clock in the morning.
That information respecting his escape must be there before him, he knew. As soon as the police reached Princetown, telegrams would fly to Exeter and Plymouth and elsewhere. But Daniel trusted that early news would come from the Moor. Then, if once it was supposed that he had committed suicide, the severity of the search was certain to relax.
His estimate of the distance to be travelled proved incorrect, and the runaway found himself surprised by the first grey of morning long before he had reached the skirts of the town. He turned, therefore, into the deep woods that lie among those outlying fortresses which surround the great seaport, and near the neighbourhoodof Marsh Mills, where the river Plym runs by long, shining reaches to the sea, Daniel hid close under an overhanging bank beside the water. Here he was safe enough, and saw no sign of life but the trout that rose beneath him. The food that Minnie made him carry was soon gone, and another nightfall found Sweetland ravenous. At dusk he lowered himself to the river and drank his fill, but not until midnight was past did he leave his snug holt and set forth again.
By three o’clock on the following morning he was in Plymouth, and turned his steps straightway to the Barbican. For Daniel sought a ship. He had debated of all possibilities, and even thought of hiding upon the Moor and letting Minnie feed him by night, until the truth of Thorpe’s murder came to be known; but the futility of such a course was manifest. To intervene actively must be impossible for him without discovery; he felt it wiser, therefore, to escape beyond reach of danger for the present. Then, once safe, he hoped to communicate with his friends and hear from them concerning their efforts to prove his innocence.
The Barbican grew out of dawn gradually, and its picturesqueness and venerable details stood clear cut in the light of morning. Itwoke early, and Daniel hastened where a coffee-stall on wheels crept down to the quay from an alley-way that opened there. He was the first customer, and he made a mighty breakfast, to the satisfaction of the merchant. Daniel was cooling his third cup when other wayfarers joined him. Some were fishermen about to sail on the tide; some were Spanish boys, just setting out on their rounds with ropes of onions; some were sailors from the ships.
A thin, hatchet-faced man in jack-boots and a blue jersey attracted Daniel. He wore his hair quite long in oily ringlets; gold gleamed in his ears; his jaws were clean-shaven, and his teeth were yellow.
“Have any of you chaps seen a Judas-coloured man this morning?” he asked of the company. “His name’s Jordan, and he carries a great red beard afore him, and the Lord knows where he’s got to. Went off his ship last night and never came back.”
A fisherman was able to give information.
“I seed the very man last night. He was drinking along with some pals and females at the ‘Master Mariner’—that publichouse at the corner. He’s got into trouble, mister.”
“Of course, of course; I might have knowed it. He’s a man so fiery as his colour. Have they locked him up?”
“That I couldn’t tell you. There was a regular upstore an’ pewter mugs flying like birds. First a woman scratched the man’s face; then three chaps went for him all at once. The police took him away, but whether he’s to the lock-up or the hospital I couldn’t tell ’e. One or t’other for sartain.”
The sailor with the earrings showed no great regret.
“Let him stop there, the cranky, spit-firing varmint. But we sail after midday on the tide, and the question is where am I going to pick up a carpenter’s mate between now and then?”
“What’s your ship?” asked Daniel Sweetland.
“ThePeabody, bound for the West Indies, and maybe South America after.”
“How long will you be away from England?”
“Can’t say to a month. Might be twelve weeks, might be twenty; but most like we shall be home by end of February.”
“I’ll come,” said Daniel. “I want a ship, an’ I want it quick.”
“D’you know your job?”
“Ess, fay; an’ what I don’t know I’ll larn afore we’m off the Eddystone light-house.”
“Come on then,” answered the other. “I’m in luck seemingly. You’re all right—eh? Ban’t running away from anybody?”
“I’m running away from my wife,” answered Daniel, frankly.
The other shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, well, that’s a home affair—your business, not mine. Sometimes there’s nought better than a bit of widowhood for females. You’ll make friends when you go back, no doubt.”
“Very likely we shall.”
“There was one man shipped with me who told that story, and I thought no more of it at the time. But afterwards I found that the chap had murdered his missis afore he ran away from her. You haven’t done that, I hope?”
“No, no—just left her for her good for the present,” explained Daniel. “And who be you, if I may ax?”
“My name is James Bradley, and I’m mate of thePeabody,” answered his companion. “I’ll not deceive you. I’m offering you nothing very well worth having. ThePeabody’san old tank steamer, and rotten as an over-ripe pear. Sometimes I think the rats will put their paws through her bottom afore long. A bad, under-engined, under-manned ship.”
“Why do you sail in her then?”
“That’s not here or there. I’m mate, and men will risk a lot for power. Besides, I’m a philosopher, if you know what that is, and I’vegot a notion, picked up in the East, that what will happen will happen. If I’m going to be drowned, I shall be drowned. Therefore, by law an’ logic, I’m as safe in thePeabodyas I should be in a battleship. But perhaps your mind is not used to logic?”
“Never heard of it,” said Daniel.
“I’ll larn you,” answered Mr Bradley. “There’s the ship alongside that quay. I’ll lay you never saw a uglier.”
ThePeabodywas not an attractive craft, but Daniel had no eye for a ship and merely regarded the steamer as an ark of refuge until better days might dawn. She lay low in the water, had three naked, raking masts, and bluff bows. Her engines were placed right aft. The well of the ship was not five feet above the water-line.
Mr Bradley, ignorant of the fact that the new carpenter’s mate had seldom seen a ship in his life, and never been upon one, supposed that Daniel was taking in the steamer with a sailor’s eye.
“A better weather boat than you’d think, for all she’s so low. Ten knots with a fair wind. We’re taking out a mixed cargo and we shall bring back all sorts and probably cruise around on the South American coast till we can fill up somehow.”
“What sort of a captain have you got?”
“A very good old man. Too good for most of us. A psalm-smiter, in fact.”
“I’ll come an’ see the captain, an’ have a bit more breakfast, if you’ve no objection,” said Daniel.
“He won’t be there. He’s along with his wife and family at Devonport. He’ll only come aboard an hour afore we sail. But I’m in command now. We’ll sign you on right away. What sort of a sailor are you?”
“Never knowed what it was to be sea-sick in my life,” said Daniel, laughing to himself at the joke.
“Lucky for you. ThePeabodyfinds the weak spots in a man’s system when she’s in a beam sea—that I promise you. I’m always ill for a week after I’ve been ashore a fortnight. Here’s Chips.”
The man addressed as “Chips” was standing at the entrance of the forecastle as Bradley and Daniel crossed a gangway and arrived on the deck of the ship.
He came forward to the mate.
“Have ’e heard or seen aught of Jordan?” he asked.
“Seen nought; heard all I want to hear. He’s either in hospital or police-station. There won’t be time for him to come back now, evenif he wants to. Tell the boy to pack his kit-bag and send it ashore to the ‘Master Mariner.’ They’ll know where he’s been taken. And this man has come in his place. What’s your name, my son?”
“Bob Bates.”
“Come and eat your breakfast, Bob Bates,” said the carpenter. “Then I’ll find you plenty to do afore we sail.”
“I’m a thought out of practice, but I’ll soon get handy,” answered Daniel.
“Where’s your papers?” asked the mate.
“Haven’t got none,” answered the other.
“Old man will never take you without papers.”
The carpenter, who liked the look of his new mate, intervened. “Leave that, Bradley. Cap’n will listen to me, if not to you. Seeing this man ships in such a hell of a hurry, ’twill be all right. Then, if he’s the proper sort, old man will soon forget.”
“You can pretend I’m a stowaway an’ not find me till we’re out to sea,” suggested Daniel.
“No need, no need; ’twill be all right,” answered the other.
Time proved that the carpenter of thePeabodywas correct. His injured mate did not reappear, and in the hurry of sailing no questions were asked. That night, in a weak ship rollinggunwales under, Sweetland made acquaintance with the ailment he had never known, and Mr Bradley, who found him under the light of an oil lamp in an alley-way, regarded the prostrate wreck of Daniel with gloomy triumph.
“I told you as this ship would twist your innards about a bit. I’m awful bad myself. Drink a pint of sea-water; ’tis the only thing to do. If it don’t kill you, it cures you.”
The landsman grunted inarticulately. He was thinking that to perish ashore, even with infamy, would be better than the dreadful death that now prepared to overtake him.
But after twenty-four hours thePeabodywas ship-shape and panting solidly along on an even keel. Daniel quickly recovered, and what he lacked in knowledge he made up in power to learn and power to please. Chips, of course, discovered that his new mate was no carpenter, and Bradley also perceived that Daniel had never been to sea before. But your land-lubber, if he be made of the right stuff, will often get on with a ship’s company better than a seasoned salt. Sweetland was unselfish, hard-working, and civil. The men liked him, and the captain liked him. He prospered and kept his own dark cares hidden.
To detail at length the life on shipboard is not necessary, since no events of importanceoccurred to be chronicled, and within a few weeks of sailing, accident withdrew Sweetland from thePeabodyfor ever. The usual experience befell him; the wonders of the deep revealed themselves to him for the first time; but only one thing that the sea gave up interested Sweetland, and that chanced to be an English newspaper. It happened thus. When off the Azores on the Sunday after sailing, a big steamer overhauled thePeabody, went past her as if she was standing still, and in two hours was hull down again on the horizon.
“’Tis theDon,” said Bradley. “One of the Royal Mail boats from Southampton for Barbados and Jamaica.”
Sweetland frowned to himself and wondered how it came about that the vessel’s name should be familiar to him. Then he remembered that it had entered his ear before the tragedy. Henry Vivian intended to sail by this ship. Doubtless he was on her now.
The liner passed within two hundred yards of the tramp. Then, just as she drew ahead, somebody pitched a newspaper over her taffrail into the water. It was crumpled up, and the sea being smooth, the journal floated, and a current drifted it across the bows of thePeabody. A man forward saw it, guessed that it contained later news than any on the ship, andprepared to fish it up. Three sailors with lines were ready for the floating paper as it passed the side of the steamer, and the second angler secured it. It proved to beThe Timesof a date one day later than the sailing of thePeabody.
The journal was carefully dried and then, in turn, each man who cared to do so studied it at leisure.
For Daniel Sweetland it contained one highly interesting paragraph, and he smiled to see how successful his crude deception had proved.
The item of news may be reproduced, for it defines the supposed situation left behind by Sweetland, and fittingly closes this chapter of his life’s story.