There is no need for me to tell at any length the conversation that passed between the three of us that night. Cullen Mayle spoke frankly of his journey to the Sierra Leone River.
"Mr. Berkeley," he said, "already knows so much, that I doubt it would not be of any avail to practise mysteries with him. And besides there is no need, for, if I mistake not, Mr. Berkeley can keep a secret as well as any man."
He spoke very politely, but with a keen eye on me to notice whether I should show any confusion or change colour. But I made as though I attached no significance to his words beyond mere urbanity. He told us how he made his passage to the Guinea Coast as a sailor before the mast, and then fell in with George Glen. It seemed prudent to counterfeit a friendly opinion that the cross would be enough for all. But when they discovered the cross was gone from its hiding place, he took the first occasion to give them the slip.
"For I had no doubt that my father had been beforehand," said he. "Had I possessed more wisdom, I might have known as much when I heard him from my bed refuse his assistance to George Glen, and so saved myself an arduous and a perilous adventure. For my father, was he never so rich, was not the man to turn his back on the King of Portugal's cross."
Of his father, Cullen spoke with good nature and a certain hint of contempt; and he told us much which he had learned from George Glen. "He went by the name of Kennedy," said Cullen, "but they called him 'Crackers' for the most part. He was not on theRoyal Fortuneat the time when Roberts was killed, so that he was never taken prisoner with the rest, nor did he creep out of Cape Corse Castle like George Glen."
"Then he was never tried or condemned," said Helen, who plainly found some relief in that thought.
"No!" answered Cullen, with a chuckle. "But why? He played rob-thief--a good game, but it requires a skilled player. I would never have believed Adam had the skill. Roberts put him in command of a sloop called theRanger, which he had taken in the harbour of Bahia, and when he put out to sea on that course which brought him into conjunction with theSwallow, he left theRangerbehind in Whydah Bay. And what does Adam do but haul up his anchor as soon as Roberts was out of sight, and, being well content with his earnings, make sail for Maryland, where the company was disbanded. I would I had known that on the day we quarrelled. Body o' me, but I would have made the old man quiver. Well, Adam came home to England, settled at Bristol, where he married, and would no doubt have remained there till his death, had he not fallen in with one of his old comrades on the quay. That frightened him, so he come across to Tresco, thinking to be safe. And safe he was for twenty years, until George Glen nosed him out."
Thereupon, Cullen, from relating his adventures, turned to questions asking for word of this man and that whom he had known before he went away. These questions of course he put to Helen, and not once did he let slip a single allusion to the meeting he had had with her in the shed on Castle Down. For that silence on his part I was well prepared; the man was versed in secrecy. But Helen showed a readiness no whit inferior; she never hesitated, never caught a word back. They spoke together as though the last occasion when they had met was the night, now four years and a half ago, when Adam Mayle stood at the head of the stairs and drove his son from the house. One thing in particular I learned from her, the negro had died a month ago.
It was my turn when the gossip of the islands had been exhausted, and I had to tell over again of my capture by Glen and the manner of my escape. I omitted, however, all mention of an earlier visitant to the Abbey burial grounds, and it was to this omission that I owed a confirmation of my conviction that Cullen Mayle was the visitant. For when I came to relate how George Glen and his band sailed away towards France without the cross, he said:
"If I could find that cross, I might perhaps think I had some right to it. It is yours, Helen, to be sure, by law, and----"
She interrupted him, as she was sure to do, with a statement that the cross and everything else was for him to dispose of as he thought fit. But he was magnanimous to a degree.
"The cross, Helen, nothing but the cross, if I can find it. I have a thought which may help me to it. 'Three chains east of the east window in south aisle of St. Helen's Church.' Those were the words, I think."
"Yes," said I.
"And Glen measured the distance correctly?"
"To an inch."
"Well, what if--it is a mere guess, but a likely one, I presume to think,--what if the chains were Cornish chains? There would be a difference of a good many feet, a difference of which George Glen would be unaware. You see I trust you, Mr. Berkeley. I fancy that I can find that cross upon St. Helen's Island."
"I have no doubt you will," said I.
Cullen rose from his chair.
"It grows late, Helen," said he, "and I have kept you from your sleep with my gossiping." He turned to me. "But, Mr. Berkeley, you perhaps will join me in a pipe and a glass of rum? My father had a good store of rum, which in those days I despised, but I have learnt the taste for it."
His proposal suited very well with my determination to keep a watch that night over Helen's safety, and I readily agreed.
"You will sleep in your old room, Cullen," she said, "and you, Mr. Berkeley, in the room next to it;" and that arrangement suited me very well. Helen wished us both good-night, and left us together.
We went up into Mayle's cabin and Cullen mixed the rum, which I only sipped. So it was not the rum. I cannot, in fact, remember at all feeling any drowsiness or desire to sleep. I think if I had felt that desire coming over me I should have shaken it off; it would have warned me to keep wide awake. But I was not sensible of it at all; and I remember very vividly the last thing of which I was conscious. That was Cullen Mayle's great silver watch which he held by a ribbon and twirled this way and that as he chatted to me. He spun it with great quickness, so that it flashed in the light of the candle like a mirror, and at once held and tired the eyes. I was conscious of this, I say, and of nothing more until gradually I understood that some one was shaking me by the shoulders and rousing me from sleep. I opened my eyes and saw that it was Helen Mayle who had disturbed me.
It took me a little time to collect my wits. I should have fallen asleep again had she not hindered me; but at last I was sufficiently roused to realise that I was still in the cabin, but that Cullen Mayle had gone. A throb of anger at my weakness in so letting him steal a march quickened me and left me wide awake. Helen Mayle was however in the room, plainly then she had suffered no harm by my negligence. She was at this moment listening with her ear close to the door, so that I could not see her face.
"What has happened?" I asked, and she flung up her hand with an imperative gesture to be silent.
After listening for a minute or so longer she turned towards me, and the aspect of her face filled me with terror.
"In God's name what has happened, Helen?" I whispered. For never have I seen such a face, so horror-stricken--no, and I pray that I never may again, though the face be a stranger's and not one of which I carried an impression in my heart.
Yet she spoke with a natural voice.
"You took so long to wake!" said she.
"What o'clock is it?" I asked.
"Three. Three of the morning; but speak low, or rather listen! Listen, and while you listen look at me, so that I may know." She seated herself on a chair close to mine, and leant forward, speaking in a whisper. "On the night of the sixth of October I went to the shed on Castle Down and had word with Cullen Mayle. Returning I passed you, brushed against you. So much you have maintained before. But listen, listen! That night you climbed into Cullen's bedroom and fell asleep, and you woke up in the dark middle of the night."
"Stop! stop!" I whispered, and seized her hands in mine. Horror was upon me now, and a hand of ice crushing down my heart. I did not reason or argue at that moment. I knew--her face told me--she had been after all ignorant of what she had done that night. "Stop; not a word more--there is no truth in it."
"Then there is truth in it," she answered, "for you know what I have not yet told you. It is true, then--your waking up--the silk noose! My God! my God!" and all the while she spoke in a hushed whisper, which made her words ten times more horrible, and sat motionless as stone. There was not even a tremor in the hands I held; they lay like ice in mine.
"How do you know?" I said. "But I would have spared you this! You did not know, and I doubted you. Of course--of course you did not know. Good God! Why could not this secret have lain hid in me? I would have spared you the knowledge of it. I would have carried it down safe with me into my grave."
Her face hardened as I spoke. She looked down and saw that I held her hands; she plucked them free.
"You would have kept the secret safe," she said, steadily. "You liar! You told it this night to Cullen Mayle."
Her words struck me like a blow in the face. I leaned back in my chair. She kept her eyes upon my face.
"I--told it--to Cullen Mayle?" I repeated.
She nodded her head.
"To-night?"
"Here in this room. My door was open. I overheard."
"I did not know I told him," I exclaimed; and she laughed horribly and leaned back in the chair.
All at once I understood, and the comprehension wrapped me in horror. The horror passed from me to her, though as yet she did not understand. She looked as though the world yawned wide beneath her feet. "Oh!" she moaned, and, "Hush!" said I, and I leaned forward towards her. "I did not know, just as you did not know that you went to the shed on Castle Down, that you brushed against me as you returned,--just as you did not know of what happened thereafter."
She put her hands to her head and shivered.
"Just as you did not know that four years ago when Cullen Mayle was turned from the door, he bade you follow him, and you obeyed," I continued. "This is Cullen Mayle's work--devil's work. He spun his watch to dazzle you four years ago; he did the same to-night, and made me tell him why his plan miscarried. Plan!" and at last I understood. I rose to my feet; she did the same. "Yes, plan! You told him you had bequeathed everything to him. He knew that tonight when I met him at St. Mary's. How did he know it unless you told him on Castle Down? He bade you go home, enter his room, where no one would hear you, and--don't you see? Helen! Helen!"
I took her in my arms, and she put her hands upon my shoulders and clung to them.
"I have heard of such things in London," said I. "Some men have this power to send you to sleep and make you speak or forget at their pleasure; and some have more power than this, for they can make you do when you have waked up what they have bidden you to do while you slept, and afterwards forget the act;" and suddenly Helen started away from me, and raised her finger.
We both stood and listened.
"I can hear nothing," I whispered.
She looked over her shoulder to the door. I motioned her not to move. I walked noiselessly to the door, and noiselessly turned the handle. I opened the door for the space of an inch; all was quiet in the house.
"Yet I heard a voice," she said, and the next moment I heard it too.
The candles were alight. I crossed the room and squashed them with the palm of my hand. I was not a moment too soon, for even as I did so I heard the click of a door handle, and then a creak of the hinges, and a little afterwards--footsteps.
A hand crept into mine; we waited in the darkness, holding our breath. The footsteps came down the passage to the door behind which we stood and passed on. I expected that they would be going towards the room in which Helen slept. I waited for them to cease that I might follow and catch Cullen Mayle, damned by some bright proof in his hand of a murderous intention. But they did not cease; they kept on and on. Surely he must have reached the room. At last the footsteps ceased. I opened the door cautiously and heard beneath me in the hall a key turn in a lock.
A great hope sprang up in me. Suppose that since his plan had failed, and since Tortue waited for him on Tresco, he had given up! Suppose that he was leaving secretly, and for good and all! If that supposition could be true! I prayed that it might be true, and as if in answer to my prayer I saw below me where the hall door should be a thin slip of twilight. This slip broadened and broadened. The murmur of the waves became a roar. The door was opening--no, now it was shutting again; the twilight narrowed to a slip and disappeared altogether.
"Listen," said I, and we heard footsteps on the stone tiles of the porch.
"Oh, he is gone!" said Helen, in an indescribable accent of relief.
"Yes, gone," said I. "See, the door of his room is open."
I ran down the passage and entered the room. Helen followed close behind me.
"He is gone," I repeated. The words sounded too pleasant to be true. I approached the bed and flung aside the curtains. I stooped forward over the bed.
"Helen," I cried, and aloud, "out of the room! Quick! Quick!"
For the wordsweretoo pleasant to be true. I flung up my arm to keep her back. But I was too late. She had already seen. She had approached the bed, and in the dim twilight she had seen. She uttered a piercing scream, and fell against me in a dead swoon.
For the man who had descended the stairs and unlocked the door was not Cullen Mayle.
Mesmer at this date was a youth of twenty-four, but the writings of Van Helmont and Wirdig and G. Maxwell had already thrown more than a glimmering of light upon the reciprocal action of bodies upon each other, and had already demonstrated the existence of a universal magnetic force by which the human will was rendered capable of influencing the minds of others. It was not, however, till seventeen years later--in the year 1775, to be precise--that Mesmer published his famous letter to the Academies of Europe. And by a strange chance it was in the same year that I secured a further confirmation of his doctrines and at the same time an explanation of the one matter concerned with this history of which I was still in ignorance. In a word, I learned at last how young Peter Tortue came by his death.
I did not learn it from his father. That implacable man I never saw after the night when we listened to his footsteps descending the stairs in the darkness. He was gone the next morning from the islands, nor was any trace of him, for all the hue and cry, discovered for a long while--not, indeed, for ten years, when my son, who was then a lad of eight, while playing one day among the rocks of Peninnis Head on St. Mary's, dropped clean out of my sight, or rather out of Helen's sight, for I was deep in a book, and did not raise my head until a cry from my wife startled me.
We ran to the loose pile of boulders where the boy had vanished, and searched and called for a few minutes without any answer. But in the end a voice answered us, and from beneath our feet. It was the boy's voice sure enough, but it sounded hollow, as though it came from the bowels of the earth. By following the sound we discovered at last between the great boulders an interstice, which would just allow a man to slip below ground. This slit went down perpendicularly for perhaps fifteen or twenty feet, but there were sure footholds and one could disappear in a second. At the bottom of this hole was a little cave, very close and dark, in which one could sit or crouch.
On the floor of this cave I picked up a knife, and, bringing it to the light, I recognised the carved blade, which I had seen Tortue once polish upon his thigh in the red light of a candle. The cave, upon inquiry, was discovered to be well known amongst the smugglers, though it was kept a secret by them, and they called it by the curious name of Issachum-Pucchar.
This discovery was made in the year of 1768, and seven years later I chanced to be standing upon the quay at Leghorn when a vessel from Oporto, laden with wine and oil, dropped anchor in the harbour, and her master came ashore. I recognised him at once, although the years had changed him. It was Nathaniel Roper. I followed him up into the town, where he did his business with the shipping agent and thence repaired to a tavern. I entered the tavern, and sitting down over against him at the same table, begged him to oblige me by drinking a glass at my expense, which he declared himself ready to do. "But I cannot tell why you should want to drink with me rather than another," said he.
"Oh! as to that," said I, "we are old acquaintances."
He answered, with an oath or two, that he could not lay his tongue to the occasion of our meeting.
"You swear very fluently and well," said I. "But you swore yet more fluently, I have no doubt, that morning you sailed away from St. Helen's Island without the Portuguese King's cross."
His face turned the colour of paper, he half rose from his chair and sat down again.
"I was never on Tresco," he stammered.
"Who spoke of Tresco, my friend?" said I, with a laugh. "I made mention of St. Helen's. Yet you were upon Tresco. Have you forgotten? The shed on Castle Down? The Abbey burial ground?" and then he knew me, though for awhile he protested that he did not.
But I persuaded him in the end that I meant no harm to him.
"You were at Sierra Leone with Cullen, maybe," said I. "Tell me how young Peter Tortue came by his death?" and he told me the story which he had before told to old Peter in an alehouse at Wapping.
Peter, it appeared, had not been able to hold his tongue at Sierra Leone. It became known through his chattering that Glen's company and Cullen Mayle were going up the river in search of treasure, and it was decided for the common good to silence him lest he should grow more particular, and relate what the treasure was and how it came to be buried on the bank of that river. George Glen was for settling the matter with the stab of a knife, but Cullen Mayle would have none of such rough measures.
"I know a better and more delicate way," said he, "a way very amusing too. You shall all laugh to-morrow;" and calling Peter Tortue to him, he betook himself with the whole party to the house of an old buccaneering fellow, John Leadstone, who kept the best house in the settlement, and lived a jovial life in safety, being on very good terms with any pirate who put in. He had, indeed, two or three brass guns before his door, which he was wont to salute the appearance of a black flag with. To his house then the whole gang repaired, and while they were making merry, Cullen Mayle addressed himself with an arduous friendliness to Peter Tortue, taking his watch from his fob and bidding the Frenchman admire it. For a quarter of an hour he busied himself in this way, and then of a sudden in a stern commanding voice he said:
"Stand up in the centre of the room," which Peter Tortue obediently did.
"Now," continued Cullen, with a chuckle to his companions, "I'll show you a trick that will tickle you. Peter," and he turned toward him. "Peter," and he spoke in the softest, friendliest voice, "you talk too much. I'll clap a gag on your mouth, you stinking offal! To-morrow night, my friend, at ten o'clock by my watch, when we are lying in our boat upon the river, you will fall asleep. Do you hear that?"
"Yes," said Peter Tortue, gazing at Mayle.
"At half-past ten, as you sleep, you will feel cramped for room, and you will dangle a leg over the side of the boat in the river. Do you hear that?"
"Yes!"
"Very well," said Cullen. "That will learn you to hold your tongue. Now come back to your chair."
Peter obeyed him again.
"When you wake up," added Cullen, "you will continue to talk of my watch which you so much admire. You will not be aware that any time has passed since you spoke of it before. You can wake up now."
He made some sort of motion with his hands and Peter, whose eyes had all this time been open, said:
"I'll buy a watch as like that as a pea to a pea. First thing I will, as soon as I handle my share."
Cullen Mayle laughed, but he was the only one of that company that did. The rest rather shrank from him as from something devilish, at which, however, he only laughed the louder, being as it seemed flattered by their fear.
The next day the six men started up the river in a long-boat which they borrowed of Leadstone, and sailed all that day until evening when the tide began to fall.
Thereupon Cullen, who held the tiller, steered the boat out of the channel of the river and over the mudbanks, which at high tide were covered to the depth of some feet.
Here all was forest: the great tree-trunks, entwined with all manner of creeping plants, stood up from the smooth oily water, and the roof of branches over head made it already night.
"I have lost my way," said Cullen. "It will not be safe to try to regain the channel until the tide rises. It falls very quickly here, Leadstone tells me, and we should get stuck upon some mudbank. Let us look for a pool where we may lie until the tide rises in the morning."
Accordingly they took their oars and pulled in and out amongst the trees, while Cullen Mayle sounded with the boathook for a greater depth of water. The tide fell rapidly; bushes of undergrowth scraped the boat's side, and then Mayle's boathook went down and touched no bottom.
"This will do," said he.
It was nine o'clock by his watch at this time, and the crew without any fire or light made their supper in the boat as best they could. Meanwhile the tide still sank; banks of mud rose out of the black water; the forest stirred, and was filled with a horrible rustling sound, of fish flapping and crabs crawling and scuttering in the slime; and on the pool on which the boat lay every now and then a ripple would cross the water as though a faint wind blew, and a broad black snout would show, and a queer lugubrious cough echo out amongst the tree-trunks.
"Crocodiles, Peter," said Cullen gaily, and he clapped Tortue on the shoulder. "It would not be prudent to take a bath in the pool. Hand the lantern over, Glen!" and when he had the lantern in his hand he looked at his watch.
"Five minutes to ten," said he. "Well, it is not so long to wait."
"Four hours," grumbled Tortue, who was thinking of the tide.
"No, only five minutes, my friend," Cullen corrected him, softly; and sure enough in five minutes Peter stretched himself and complained that he was sleepy.
Cullen laughed with a gentle enjoyment and whistled a tune between his teeth. But the others waited in a sort of paralysis of horror and amazement. Even these hardened men were struck with a cold fear. The suggestions of the place, too, had their effect. Above them was a black roof of leaves, the close air was foul with the odour of things decaying and things decayed, and everywhere about them was perpetually heard the crawling and pattering of the obscene things which lived in the mud.
Peter Tortue stirred in his sleep, and Cullen held up the face of his watch in the light of the lantern so that all in the boat might see. It was half-past ten. Peter lifted his leg over the side and let it fall with a splash in the water. It dangled there for about five minutes, and then the man uttered a loud scream and clutched at the thwart, but the next instant he was dragged over the boat's side.
Roper told me this story, and the horror of it lived again upon his face as he spoke.
"Well," said I, "the father took his revenge. He stabbed Cullen Mayle to the heart as he lay in bed. There is one thing more I would like to know. Can you remember the paper with the directions of the spot where the cross was buried?"
"Yes," said he; "am I likely to forget it?"
"Could you write them out again, word for word and line for line, as they were written?"
"Yes," said he.
I called for a sheet of paper and a pen and ink, and set them before Roper, and he wrote the directions laboriously, and handed the paper back to me. There were only two lines with which I was concerned, and they ran in this order:
"The S aisle of St. Helen's Church. Three chains east by the compass of the east window."
"Are you sure you have made no mistake?" I asked. "This is a facsimile of the paper which you took from the hollow of the stick. Look again!"
I gave it back to him and he scratched his head over it for a little. Then he wrote the directions again upon a second sheet of paper, and when he had written, tore off a corner of the paper.
"Ah!" said I, "that is what I thought." He handed it to me again, and it ran now:--
"The S aisle of S. Helen's Church. Threechains east by the compass of the east window."
On that corner which had been torn a word had been written. I knew the word. It would be "Cornish." I knew, too, who had torn off the corner.
The cross still lies then three Cornish chains east of that window, or should do so. We at all events have not disturbed it, for we do not wish to have continually before our eyes a reminder of those days when the sailors watched the house at Merchant's Point. Even as it is, I start up too often from my sleep in the dark night and peer forward almost dreading again to see the flutter of white at the foot of the bed, and to hear again the sound of some one choking.