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Based on a vintage English beer advertisement
The Idler, July 1908, with the first part of "Easy Money"
"Easy Money," Grant Richards & Co., London, 1908
"Easy Money," Grant Richards & Co., London, 1908
Headpiece from the serial in "The Idler"
MR. HENRY MITCH stopped on the wharf and gave one last, lingering look at the dirty little coaster that had been his home for the past three months. He had looked at her often enough before, from many points of view and in varying degrees of sobriety, but never before had he felt inclined to smile haughtily at her as he did now. He was leaving her for a permanency—discharged, and with no sort of testimonial. He despised her, the people on board her, the life they led, the sea she floated upon, and everything connected with her and with her element.
So he stood for a moment, a parrot cage dangling from his hand, and put his whole soul into his contemptuous smile. He was successful beyond his expectations, for the mate, a hard-looking, middle-aged man with a pale, cold eye, who was leaning over the side of the Gratitude smoking, suddenly stiffened and ceased to puff. He stared luridly at Mr. Mitch.
"You makin' that face at me?" he demanded so suddenly and harshly that Mr. Mitch jumped from sheer force of habit, jerking the bird cage.
"Chase yerself!" remarked the disturbed parrot surlily.
"Wot?" screamed the mate.
Mr. Mitch still stood and smiled, swinging the cage a trifle nervously.
"Lay aft the watch!" yelled the bird furiously, clinging to her perch for dear life, and straightway shot off such a volley of nautical insults, that a loafer who sat dozing on a bollard close by woke with a jump that nearly landed him over the edge. The mate crammed his pipe into his pocket and started for Mr. Mitch. And Mr. Mitch started for the town.
"Go and die and bury yourself!" shrieked the rocking parrot, as her owner vanished round a corner.
A few hundred yards up the street Mr. Mitch was stopped by a constable.
"Look 'ere, my lad, you must cover that bird up," he commanded.
"Oh, she's all right—only 'er fun. She's been disturbed and excited, that's all," said Mr. Mitch jauntily.
"She'll be disturbed and excited a good bit more in a minit if she don't use better language. Put a cloth over 'er."
"Talk sense," said Mr. Mitch. "'Ow can I cover 'er up if I ain't got no cloth?"
The official became offensive. "Look 'ere," he said, "I'm a-warnin' you for your own good. You cover 'er up and be quick about it, or else you'll come along with me."
A crowd began to gather, and the shabby-looking parrot seemed to get interested in them.
"'Ow can I cover 'er up when I ain't got nothin'?" expostulated Mr. Mitch, in a tense, angry whisper. The policeman took him by the arm professionally.
"Use your coat, mate," said a seedy-looking man with a fair, ragged moustache, and a remote suggestion of the army about him.
Mr. Mitch divested himself of that garment, baring to the public gaze a distinctly shady and thrice-patched shirt, and tied it round the cage by the sleeves.
"Eight bells, and a dam' dark night!" croaked the parrot dismally, and was silent.
"Now sling your 'ook," said the ruffled policeman, and Mr. Mitch obligingly slung it, muttering something about putting "an overcoat and a pair of britches on the bird!" The seedy man who had spoken kept him company.
"Nice bird," said the latter affably.
"Glad you think so," replied Mr. Mitch shortly.
"Good talker. Lucky I thought of the coat. But she overdo's it a bit, don't she? We shall 'ave to sell 'er, I s'pose." Mr. Mitch gasped.
"We shall 'ave to sell 'er, I s'pose."
"We! 'Oo're you?"
"Me? I'm Boler Mitey," said the stranger, with an explanatory air. Mr. Mitch grinned sourly.
"Well, Mr. Boler-bloomin'-Mitey, we ain't goin' to sell this 'ere parrot of mine."
Boler airily waved his hand.
"Oh, all right, I'm agreeable. Let's 'ave a drink." Mr. Mitch softened a little.
"'Oo with?" he said. "You?"
Boler smiled patiently.
"Do I look like a man who could ask another gentleman to 'ave a drink with me?" he demanded.
Mr. Mitch stared dully at him, noting, in a mechanical kind of way, his hopeless raiment, his sandal-like boots, his patches, but, above all, his extraordinary self-possession, and he wagged his head feebly.
"This beats all," he said. "This beats the lot. Come on."
They dived down an alley, seeking refreshment....
"It beats the lot—easy!" soliloquised the staggered Mitch as he entered a bar, Mr. Boler Mitey shambling after him.
"Mine's stout," said Boler, without any further invitation. "Very good stout you get 'ere—very good indeed. Let it be Guinness—I s'pose."
"Well, I don't s'pose—"
"S'pose beer," snapped Mr. Mitch, setting down the parrot cage with a thud. A muffled drowsy sort of snarl came from the bird, and Boler, avoiding any further discussion or supposition concerning his forthcoming refreshment, began to talk of the parrot.
"Fond of birds?" he inquired, with a jerk of his head at the cage.
"No!" said Mr. Mitch, "I ain't."
"For a friend, I s'pose?"
"No—it's for my missis."
Boler raised a brow over his tankard, a world of inquiry in his bland, blue eye. Mr. Mitch looked at his new acquaintance fixedly for some sixty seconds. He seemed like a man trying to make up his mind. From Boler he transferred his scrutiny to the barman, but that perspiring individual afforded him no inspiration. Presently he sighed, finished his beer, and grinned suddenly, all friendliness and cordiality.
"You'll do," he said, and patted Boler on the arm. "Come and set down in the sun in Queen's Park, and you and me'll 'ave a talk along with one another."
"All right," agreed Mr. Mitey, with the air of a man to whom time was no object. "But 'adn't we better make hay while the sun shines?" His thumb faintly indicated the tankards.
"Well, I don't mind."
They fortified themselves anew and strolled towards the park.
When they were comfortably seated in the sun, on a well-polished bench, Mr. Henry Mitch explained himself.
"I'll take it as I ain't far out when I ses that you're fair on your uppers," he began, and without waiting for Boler's languid assent, proceeded, with amazing freedom, to describe his own position.
"The fact is, I'm in a unforchnit dilemmer, Mitey, and that's the truth. Look 'ere—look at me. Don't anything strike you about me?"
Boler looked carefully, but could find nothing more striking about his companion than that he was the possessor of a cheerful eye.
"You got cheerful eyes," he said at last, "remarkable pleasant eyes. And you look poor but 'appy—more poorness than 'appiness. Why?"
Mr. Mitch leaned forward impressively.
"Well, appearances is agin me, then—that's all," he cried explosively. "W'y, I'm all twisted up in me inside with nervousness and doubt. You listen a minit. I don't mind tellin' you, because I've took a fancy to you, and I seen, back in the bar there, that you was the sort of man I was kind of hopin' would come along. You don't know what nervousness is—you ain't nervous of nobody, man or woman! You don't look like it—you don't seem like it—you—ain't! Are you?"
Boler shook his head. "I've 'ad very 'ard times," he said, "and I've kind of got out of being nervous. Why?"
"Well, it's like this 'ere. I'm a married man. It was a misonderstandin' more'n a marriadge—as I soon seen. I don't want to say nothin' agin my wife, but she was a bit too thick, Boler, old pal, and that's a fact. Talk was no word for it when she started. I could 'ave stood 'er talkin', but when it come to hittin' me about, well, I thought it over and give 'er best. I ain't the sort of man to hit a woman back, and, as a matter of fact, old man, I really believe that if I was that sort and I 'ad hit 'er back, she'd 'ave set about me and beat me, fair and square and no bloomin' favour. She's a great, strong woman with a onpleasant tongue. And I seen that, and five years ago I collected all the portable things of mine I could and slung me 'ook outer the villidge, and I ain't regretted it from that day to this. I've often been sorry I niver thought of it afore. There's always a job of some sort for a man on the road to turn his 'and to—and it's a easy life 'ceptin' for the rain and, mebbe, the dogs. Well, I've jest 'ad a few months workin' on a coastin' ship, and somehow, when we come into Southampton, I kind of felt as though I wouldn't mind callin' in at the old villidge once more for a day or two. She might 'ave calmed down in 'er ways a bit since I left, and if she 'ad, it seemed to me it would be sort of peaceful to settle down agin for a while.
"Then it struck me that she'd want some sort of compensation, and so I bought this bird with the intention of givin' it to 'er as a present. 'Might keep 'er quiet,' I ses to meself, and blued most of me money buyin' the bird off the cook. It was a dearish parrot. The cook 'as 'ad 'er for years. 'E said it reminded 'im of his wife, and 'e was very fond of the bird. 'E is a widower, the cook is. And 'ere I am, and I tell you, Boler, old man, I don't 'alf like it. I was oncertain from the moment I set foot on the wharf, and if I 'adn't seen you I expect I should 'ave sold the bird and not gone near the villidge agin. But back in the bar, it come to me like a flash that you was the man for me. 'He ain't afraid o' no nagger, he ain't!' thinks I. 'He's got a eye onto him that kinder makes a nagger feel small when she starts 'er jaw. Now, if I could get 'im to come along with me as my guest and friend she couldn't say much afore 'im, and she'd 'ave—well—he'd be sort of company like.'"...
There was a pause, during which Mr. Mitch eyed his companion with a flattering anxiety.
"Well, what d'ye say, old man? Why don't you come along? You ain't tied to no partickler spot any more'n me, I s'pose?"
Boler grinned. "Well, no, there ain't any more reason why I should be in this town any more than any other town. How far is it to this 'ere village?"
Mr. Mitch leaned forward with an oath expressive of delight.
"Only about twenty miles from 'ere—easy walkin'. We kin get there in two or three days, comf'rable. If we make it three days, that'll land us in Salisbury jest in time for the races. We might make a few shillin's there and stroll on quiet to Ringford." A doubtful look flitted over his face as he mentioned the village where his wife awaited him—where she had awaited him for the last five years.
"All right," said Boler, "I'll come. One way is as good as any other way as far as I'm concerned. But you won't need that parrot if I'm with you. Was she fond of parrots?"
Mr. Mitch thought for a moment or two.
"Well, not that I know of," he said finally. "She used to keep fowls."
Boler yawned and stood up.
"Oh, fowls is different. Fowls is business, parrots is pleasure. Two different things. Let's sell the parrot and 'ave a good blow-out. I know a place where they'd buy 'er, and a place where you can get the best blow-out in Southampton as well."
Mr. Mitch hesitated a moment. Then "All right," he said. "I could do with a steak and onions meself. Come on."
They solemnly shook hands, and stepped briskly out for the park exit.
The nearest bird-fancier offered them three shillings for the parrot. Mr. Mitch, distressed at the price, shook the cage violently and swore earnestly that he would wring the neck of, pluck the feathers from, clean, cook, and finally devour, the unfortunate bird before he insulted her, the cook from whom he purchased her, and himself, by accepting such a price.
Already wound up to a pitch of frantic hysteria by the events of the afternoon, the parrot waited until Mitch had replaced the cage on the counter, and then drew breath for the culminating protest. A hush fell upon that bird-shop, broken only by the lurid and sanguinary complaints of the parrot.
An elderly man of nautical appearance came softly from the back of the shop and hung upon the words of the bird. Now and again he nodded profoundly—as a man nods on hearing the name of an old acquaintance. A policeman, passing the door, halted on the pavement, and came in to arrest and generally restore the law and order. He remained to admire and to envy. Gradually the parrot slackened. She was panting a little about the breast. Once or twice she repeated herself. The elderly mariner whispered to himself a salt oath of the sea that she had forgotten. So she ran down and was silent, sliding two white shutters over her eyes. Then the elderly mariner turned to Mitch and, in an awestricken voice, said—
"Did you ever ship with Cap'n Bart Bennett on the Merrymaid?"
Mitch shook his head.
"Did you ever know the Cap'n?"
"Heard tell of 'im," said Mitch untruthfully.
"Well, his spirit is in that bird," said the elderly one, in a reverent whisper. "That was his own voice and his own words. I sailed with him as mate for ten years, and it's done my old heart good to kind of 'ear 'im once more. I'll give two pounds for that bird—I'd give two 'undred, only I ain't got it."
Mitch reached out a dingy hand, with the fingers bent upwards like fish-hooks.
"She's your'n!" he said, with repressed eagerness—"your'n!"
IT is necessary now to consider for a few moments the masterly but somewhat unfortunate burglar of whom an occasional glimpse will be caught during the progress of this story—Mr. Canary Wing. Some three days after the meeting of Messrs. Mitch and Mitey, Mr. Wing was sitting sullenly in the very best cell that the Salisbury police could accommodate him with. He considered himself an extremely ill-used man. And yet it was a thoroughly well-built cell. The walls were of good, expensive stone; the door was so constructed that it did not slam aimlessly to and fro; the apartment was not littered with an untidy collection of photographs, vases, and antimacassars, but was quite simply and healthily furnished, and contained nothing that could harbour dirt or dust; and there were practically no draughts. But, nevertheless, Canary Wing, who had slept in a hayloft the night before, considered that his luck was beyond any adequate condemnation.
"I'm 'ere," he said to himself thoughtfully; "I'm 'ere at last—and that's a fact. There's no gettin' out of it." He glanced dismally about him.
"They ain't played straight, these 'ere cops ain't.... Why, they niver do play straight!" he muttered, with a scornful stare at the cell door. "Shorely there wos enough sharps up on the race plain to satisfy 'em without comin' down on me. And yet they seemed absolutely glad to come in contact with me. Glad!" He snorted with disgust. "You'd have thought that that little job I done at 'Ampstead would 'ave been forgot by this time. Wot's the sense of bringin' up old things like that? Besides, 'alf the stuff wos jest common plated stuff.... 'Owever, I'm 'ere, and I'm a certain starter for the five year 'andicap, and that's another fact."
He thrust out his hands and looked them over, for lack of something better to do. His inspection afforded him no satisfaction nor comfort nor even interest. They were just ordinary large beef-coloured hands, in urgent need of very hot water. Canary sighed, and put them into his pockets out of sight.
"The world's agin me," he grumbled, watching a fly that was skating about the ceiling. "Even that blank little bluebottle's 'appier than wot I am. I ain't 'ad no chance—niver 'ave 'ad no chance. And I shall get five years certain. The world's agin me and, blimey, I'm agin the world. Why should I go to jail for a lot of lousy plated salt-cellars? Why should—Ello!"
That finely-constructed door swung open suddenly and a small, shabby man, without a collar and wearing a nautical nondescript of a hat a size too large for him, was slung into the cell, protesting violently. Then the door slammed to as suddenly as it was opened, and the shabby man knelt down and tried to look through the keyhole.
"For two pins—" he muttered. "For two pins, I'd—"
"Wot's the sense of lookin' through the keyhole?" growled Mr. Wing from his corner. "You ain't goin' to creep through it, I s'pose. And wot's the bloomin' good of arskin' for two pins. You can't do nothin'. You're 'ere—that's where you are—'ere, and that settles it."
The little man turned round and inspected Canary. The burglar saw that he looked hungry and like a man who had known hard times and yet kept his spirit through it. A man with a cheerful eye. He grinned, as he answered—
"No, I don't s'pose I can do anything much. Lumme! It's built, this 'ere cell is. Dunno as a man could want a better built cell than this one. It's the police I'm grumblin' about. Measly, time-servin', herrin'-gutted lot. Bleary-eyed, pimply lot these 'ere Salisbury police are."
"Wot they run you in for?" asked Mr. Wing.
"Oh, jest nothin'. Nothin' at all. They said I was a sharp. I 'appened to find two or three cards on the racecourse and was practisin' a kind of trick with a friend or two I'd made, and they come along and said I was a sharp. And run me in. 'Ow about you?"
"Burglary," said Mr. Wing, in an offhand way.
The little man looked thoughtful.
"What?" he asked respectfully.
"Little job up 'Ampstead way. Small job. Nothin' in it worth 'awn'," explained Canary loftily. "'Appened to crop up agin. Five year for me. Seven days for you. That's the difference. Eighteen hundred odd days for me—seven for you. Seems silly, don't it?"
"Funny 'ow things crops up," said the collar-less one, "when you least expects 'em." Mr. Wing looked sharply at the other, as though he suspected some hidden sarcasm.
"Yes," he said at last, "screamin' funny—I don't think. Wot's yer name?"
The little man straightened himself.
"Mitch—Henry Mitch," he said. "Pleased to meet you, Mister—Mister—Mister—" he paused.
"Mister Canary—bloomin'—Wing," said the burglar impressively. "Canary Wing of the 'Ammersmith jool case."
"Reely," said Mr. Mitch, looking with renewed interest at the burglar. "I thought the name wos familiar somehow. You 'ad five years for that. And now another five comin' on, you ses. W'y, it'll break up yer 'ealth. It's a long time, five year."
"Reely," said Mr. Mitch, looking with renewed interest at the burglar.
"Soon slips by," said Canary shortly. "Mebbe you done five year yerself a time or two."
The little man grinned.
"Well, no—niver more'n three months. I've only been in jail once, not countin' now. And that wos all a mistake. Fool of a policeman got all mixed up in 'is evidence, and said it all wrong, and the judge 'e give me three months and no chance of explainin'. You know."
Mr. Wing nodded cheerlessly.
"Soon shall," he said briefly, "if I didn't afore."
There was a dreary little silence, and Canary closed his eyes. A sparrow alighted on the window-sill outside, looked in, seemed to find the pair uninteresting, and flew away. Mitch shook his head.
"The bloomin' birds of the air," he said vaguely, with some idea that he was quoting something from somewhere. Mr. Wing opened his eyes.
"Wot birds?" he inquired.
"Oh, nothin', Only a sparrer."
"'Ow d'yer mean—only a sparrer?" asked the burglar, mystified.
"'E looked in 'ere and flew off, that's all."
"Well, so would you, wouldn't yer—if yer darn well could," said Canary sourly. He put his hand to his waistcoat reaching for his watch, and muttered to himself as he remembered that it was being taken care of for him. Mr. Mitch, who looked as though he was not in the habit of wearing a watch, or jewellery of any description, noted the involuntary movement. It seemed to give him an idea.
"You must 'ave earned a lot of money in yer time, Mr. Wing?" he suggested.
"Thousands," lied Canary.
"And, mebbe, you got a nice little lot put by for yer old age. Wish I 'ad," sighed Mitch. The burglar did not answer for a few minutes. But presently he said—
"I 'ad two shillings and a iron watch when I arrived, and that's all I got between me and the street. You'd 'ardly believe it. Quick come and quick go's the word with me. That's it— quick come and thunderin' quick go!"
Mr. Mitch grew thoughtful, and his face took a queer, wistful look. He was like a man pondering some secret pleasure.
"Wish I could save," he said at last. "I know how to save—but I niver gits anythin' to save. Money's saved by sendin' a bob now and then to a post-office savin's compartment and swearin' you won't touch it. Then when you gits old you lives on it—sets in the sun outside a public-'ouse and that."
"That's it," threw in the burglar sarcastically. "And 'aves a carridge and pair and a moto-car and servants—all through savin' odd bobs."
"Well, it's better than the 'Ouse, ain't it?"
Mr. Wing pondered.
"Oh, well, come to that, I got plenty saved up—in a sort of way. Can't get at it yet, but all the same it's there."
"Where?" demanded Mitch.
"There," returned Mr. Wing pointedly.
"What? Money?"
"As good as," said the burglar. "It's silver bars—dozens of 'em. A fortune. They wos hid very careful by a man wot dealt in silver orniments with me and some gentlemen friends of mine. He hid 'em jest in time, too, as you might say. For they copped 'im soon after, and I niver seen 'im but once afterwards. 'E wos exercisin' at Wormwood Scrubbs in my squad—'e wos very bad, coughin' and that, 'e said. Kep' 'im awake at nights. And 'e said 'e wos not likely to iver live to git out, and 'e told me that I could have 'alf the stuff wot 'e'd hid if I'd give 'alf to 'is mother w'en I found it. And 'e told me outer the corner of 'is mouth where it wos 'id. Next day I wos shifted to Portland, but within a week I 'eard from another convict that 'e wos dead. 'Is cough done for 'im. And only me knows where 'is silver is 'id, and—Gorlumme! 'ere I am with five years certain and mebbe more, waitin' all hot and ready." Canary brought his hand down on his thigh with an oath.
"S'welp me, that's gospel true—and I'm 'ere! And the silver's there!"
"Where?" asked Mr. Mitch excitedly.
"There! Same place. Where it wos a-fore!"
Mitch grinned lopsidedly. "Course. No offence—I forgot I asked afore," he muttered.
"Oh, all right," said Canary. "No 'arm done. I should 'ave arsked jest the same as wot you did."
Henry shuffled across to a bench.
"Remarkable nice to 'ave all that nice and 'andy and ready, so to say," he commented. Mr. Wing looked at him suspiciously.
"Wos yer a-tryin' to make fun o' me?" he demanded, lowering savagely. "Wos yer? If I thought yer wos a-makin' fun of me I'd wring yer neck out like a hen's," growled the burglar..
Mr. Mitch spread out his hands.
"Why you know I wasn't. S'posin' I wos your size and you wos my size, would you make fun of me? Be friendly, is what I ses. Honest and straight with your pals and friendly." Canary shut his eyes again, drowsily, and apparently soothed.
But after a while he stood up suddenly.
"Look 'ere, mate," he said. "I bin thinkin' about wot yer said about savin' and 'avin' somethin', so as to sit about outside a public-'ouse when yer past workin' and that, and it seems sensible. Now, s'posin' I puts it to yer—s'posin' I ses, 'Mate, I'm goin' to where the cows can't hook me for five years certain, and meantime I wants a partner to find out some silver bars wot is 'idden where nobody but me knows.' See? And s'posin' I ses, 'I'll tell yer pretty nigh where them silver bars is hid, and you go and git 'em and 'ave 'em ready when I comes out, and I'll give yer a quarter of 'em when you delivers 'em up,' wot'd yer say?"
"Halves," said Henry promptly.
"Ho! Would yer? Y' greedy little pig! Halves! W'y don't yer say the lot? W'y, it's fair givin' yer the money, and I'm surprised at meself for a-offerin' it to yer—and bloomin' well ashamed of meself, wot's more. A quarter, I said. Now?"
They argued and bargained in whispers for half-an-hour, and then Henry gracefully gave in.
"All right, then, Mr. Wing—quarter. Where shall I find the silver bars?"
"Don't yer 'urry on so fast. I want to warn yer a minit or two fust. And when I comes out, if I find you've slung yer 'ook with the lot, I shan't ever do nothin' else but hunt for yer. See? And I shall find yer—don't you make any error, Mitch. It's me, Canary Wing, a-givin' you the office; and old Canary he ain't no liar, neither. There's them as knows me wot'll tell yer that when I makes a plan, I'm a feller wot acts accordin'. And if you bunks, and if I finds yer—why, you say 'Good-bye, you pore fellow wot Canary caught!' to yerself. Mind that—and don't you fergit it. See wot I mean?"
"It's me, Canary Wing, a-givin' you the office."
Mr. Mitch was no fool, and he saw what the burglar meant, without the assistance of any diagram but his face.
"All right, Mr. Wing, I onderstand—course I onderstand."
Canary made him swear strenuously that he would "deal square," and then, sinking his voice even lower, began to explain.
"Them silver bars is hid somewhere in a vil-lidge up Andover way in Ham'shire. It's a little quiet, old-fashioned place with only about three pubs, and this gentleman—'is name wos William Buckroyd—'id the silver—'avin' melted it down o' course. It don't matter much wot 'e wos there for—but wot 'e done there and where 'e done it. See wot I mean? I think 'e meant to take a little 'ouse there, but I dunno, and I don't care. Now, I'm goin' to give you 'is very words that day w'en we wos exercisn' in the Scrubbs yard, and where you 'ave to whisper outer the corner of yer mouth, 'cos of the warders. 'E ses.... 'And I knowed the cops wos after me like ferrets, and so I 'id the stuff.'
"'E sinks 'is voice 'ere, and wot 'e said wos either the Westley Inn or else the Wesleyan—chapel, I s'pose—e' wos rather clever at doin' the religious dodge, so I 'eard. Any'ow, you must decide for yerself, mate. You wants to keep a eye on a biggish 'ouse there wots called Westlynn, owned by a millionaire, a toughish customer, so I've 'eard—self-made man, same as me. Mebbe Buckroyd knowed this millionaire and stopped at 'is 'ouse—'e wos toffish w'en 'e liked. I dunno. But there it is—it's as clear as bloomin' crystial. Them bars is 'id under the floor of the 'Westley Inn,' or the Wesleyan' chapel, or the millionaire's 'ouse, 'Westlynn,' in the villidge of Ringford, near Andover, Ham'shire. I've made inquiries, Mitch, and it's one of them three places. Your job is to find it and wait in Ringford ontil I comes along. Now, are yer game?" Mr. Mitch's eyes shone.
"'Ow much is it—about?" he whispered fervently.
"Mebbe ten thousan' pounds worth!" said Canary Wing impressively. Mr. Mitch shoved out his hand.
"I'm your man!" he said. "Leave it to me. I knows Ringford—I been there. I got a wi—a cousin—livin' there."
The burglar scowled.
"Mind!" he said. "On the square, mate."
"On the square it is, Mister."
Canary nodded gloomily, and they thoughtfully awaited their respective fates at the hands of the law.
EARLY on the following afternoon the unaesthetic figure of Mr. Henry Mitch was to be observed toiling at a steady two miles an hour, up the dusty hill which led to Salisbury Workhouse. It was a very hot day, and Henry was bitterly wondering how many more dust-raising motors were likely to pass him and increase the midsummer thirst that thrived in his throat, when he saw a thin wreath of pale-blue smoke float tranquilly out of the hedge some few yards ahead of him.
He quickened his pace.
"Somebody's got a nice quiet place in outer the sun," he said to himself, and halted with a shuffle before a small opening that appeared in the hedge. The inmate had evidently been at some pains to screen this hawthorn bower from the public gaze, for he had carefully rearranged the long grass and twigs which his entry had disturbed—so that the only means of ingress apparent was a hole about a foot square. Through this Mr. Mitch inquiringly thrust his head. And there, comfortably curled up in the cool green cavern that he had diligently hacked and hollowed out, reposed Mr. Boler Mitey, studying a three day old copy of the Morning Post over a quiet pipe.
"Come in, old man," he said hospitably, "and shut the door behind you. You got off with a caution, I s'pose?"
"Without a stain on me character," announced Mitch sarcastically, as he crawled into the verdant apartment. "But this ain't the workhouse, you know, Boler," he continued reproachfully. "The arrangement we made if we got parted was to meet as soon as we could at the nearest workhouse. I might 'ave passed this 'ere little bury forty times."
"Oh, that wouldn't matter—I should 'ave called in at the 'ouse again to-night," grinned Boler.
Mr. Mitch nodded, recognising the wisdom of his companion's explanation. He filled his pipe and smoked for a time in silence.
At last he yawned, stretched, scratched himself, and "Listen to me," he said. "We're goin' to make our forchins, Boler. I've 'ad somethin' 'appen to me. It sounds too good to be true—but you never knows. What do you think of this?"
He told, with elaborate detail, the story of his arrangement with Canary Wing, and Boler Mitey listened in silence from the beginning to the final "And that's 'ow it stands at this minit."
But as Mitch finished he became aware that
Boler was white-faced and tense-eyed, and as near excitement as he had yet known him.
The excitement was infectious, it seemed, for Henry suddenly felt a queer thrill at his own heart. He leaned forward a little, peering at his fellow-tramp.
"W'y—w'y—" he stammered, "w'y, Boler, you don't mean as 'ow you thinks there's any-thin' in it. W'y—lumme! what do you know about it?"
Boler spoke in a fierce whisper.
"I've 'eard of Buckroyd—read about 'im in some paper somew'ere. He wos what they call a 'receiver,' and a bloomin' good receiver too. But they copped 'im at last, and give 'im five years. They got 'im all right"—Boler's hand closed over Mitch's knee—"but, be Gawd! they niver got anything what 'e'd 'received.' See? Oh, I kin remember it as clear as crystial. I read it in a paper same as I might 'ave read it's afternoon. They niver found it! For why? Becos' 'e buried it! That's why! And Buckroyd's dead and gone, and nobody but a convict and you and me knows w'ere the things is buried! And we'll go, Mitchy—you an' me—we'll go an' get—
"Come out of that!" interrupted a harsh voice. "Come on—out of it. You ought to be sentenced to death, you scoundrels! What do you mean by destroying hedges in that fashion? Confounded loafers!"
The treasure-seekers crawled dejectedly out of their arbour into the white-hot presence of a grey-moustached furious old man on horseback, obviously a retired officer, and probably a magistrate. Mr. Mitch wilted like a withered flower as he looked at him.
The treasure-seekers crawled dejectedly out
"Why, you're the vagabond I turned out of the town this morning! It was a mistake—I knew it was a mistake, as I watched you shamble out of the court. I should have sent you to jail. I should have given you six months hard labour, at least. A shocking miscarriage of justice! Something told me that I—what! You'd run away while I'm speaking! 'Tenshun!"
Something hard and imperious and compelling in the old man's voice anchored them where they stood, and the rider smiled a complacent, pleased little smile as he saw how strongly the old power of command remained with him.
A policeman was coming slowly along the road with a blue envelope in his hand—probably he was on an errand to the workhouse—and Messrs. Mitch and Mitey furtively divided their attention between the constable and the old officer who was holding them up. The latter may have been in a good temper, or the owner of the hedge may have been other than a friend of his, for he suddenly touched his horse and moved on.
"All right, men. Clear out. And congratulate each other on a stroke of luck!"
The policeman stopped as he came up.
"Wot's all this?" he said to the pardoned pair.
"What's all this? What's all this?" snapped Mr. Mitch irritably. "Can't a man 'ave a little chat with a friend without you shovin' your nose in? 'E was simply tellin' us the way to Andover."
"Oh, was he?" said the constable aggressively. "Did he tell you?"
"Course 'e told us—only ordinary politeness, ain't it?"
"You knows your way, then?" pursued the policeman.
"W'y, yes; 'aven't I jest told you we do?"
"Then move along on your way, or else I'll move ye!"
They moved along, as requested....
Not till twilight was upon them and the moon was rising huge as a silver barn; not till the nocturnal cockchafers were droning past the wayfarers, and an owl was hooting huskily from an adjoining wood; not till old landmarks rose thick and fast at every yard informing them that Ringford was close at hand, did the spirit of Henry Mitch fail and die out. Boler had been aware of an increasing nervousness about his comrade for some time past, but he had absently attributed it to excitement at ihe prospect of wealth in the immediate future. So that when Mr. Mitch suddenly uttered a curious sound, which might have been a groan or an oath, or probably both, Boler was sympathetic.
"Got a flyin' beedle in yer eye?" he said. "They do 'it 'ard, and no mistake."
Mr. Mitch looked up.
"Tain't a beedle, mate," he said. "It's a decision I've come to. It ain't no selfishness on behalf of the bloomin' silver you and me's after. She can 'ave 'er share and welcome, but she cant 'ave me." He stood, gesticulating.
"Boler, she was a terror to me, and don't you imadgine nothin' otherwise. She treated me bad, Boler. She 'ad a temper I didn't know of when I married 'er, and she never showed 'er teeth nor laid 'er ears back, so to say, ontil she 'ad me safe and sound. She sort of suddenly despised me, and, in them days, I wasn't sich a bad sort."
His voice rose, half hysterical. "And I've bin thinkin', and I ain't goin' back to 'er. She used to hit me about—knowin' I wouldn't hit 'er back. D'y' 'ear, Boler? I ain't goin' back. I knows what it is to be free, and—I—ain't —goin—back."
Boler patted him on the shoulder.
"Lumme, what you gittin' excited for, Mitchy? 'Oo's askin' you to go back? There ain't no call to go back. All our job is, is to git this 'ere silver and sling out of Ringford. This ain't no theatre with no long-lost 'usbands in it, and it ain't no penny novel, neither. It's business." He paused and thought. Mitchy watched him, as the castaway of the raft may watch the main truck of a steamer, and her smoke, on the horizon.
"Was you clean-shaved when you slipped it from Ringford?" Boler asked. Henry nodded.
"And you was pretty prosperous-lookin', mebbe? And decently dressed? And looked like a farmer sort of man?"
Again Mr. Mitch nodded, and the first faint gleam of a dawn of comprehension lit up his somewhat plain face.
"Yes, that's about right," he said.
"Well, you certainly ain't nothin' like what you must 'ave been in them days," cried Boler, with unflattering decision. "Nobody'll know you agin if you don't get shaved and pretends you're a absolute stranger to the place. 'Oo'll be thinkin' of Henry Mitch—
"Arthur 'Opley was my name in them days," said Mitch. "Nobody in the village knows anybody name of Mitch."
Boler shrugged his shoulders, with the air of a man who has settled a great controversy.
"All right, then—there y'are. Go as Mitch —be Mitch. 'Oo'll know? Nobody. We can find this silver and clear out one night and nobody the wiser and nobody the worse off, exceptin' 'ooever it is owns the place where we digs up the treasure. And 'e'll be better off, you might say—'e'll 'ave a nice hole dug for 'im for nothin', all nice and ready in case 'e wants to put somethin' into it."
He boisterously slapped Mr. Mitch on the shoulder, and doubtless, with the idea of paying his friend the compliment of addressing him in his own jargon, cried, "So heave ahead, my hearty, and the silver's as good as ready money. Come on."
Mr. Mitch, relieved and light-hearted again, stepped out buoyantly.
"It's a go, Boler," he declared enthusiastically. "When we gits our 'ands on the silver I'll leave a little share of my share be'ind for 'er and call it square."
A few lights twinkled yellowly ahead, and Henry pointed.
"There you be, Boler—there's Ringford!" he said, almost dramatically; and they ambled steadily on.
NEITHER of the loot hunters being professional criminals, they entered Ringford with a slightly furtive air and undecided gait. Mr. Mitch's progress indeed might have been called, in per-feet truth, an undisguised slink.
They passed down the long, straggling main—and only—street of the village in silence until there shouldered out of the shadows before them the square bulk of the Wesleyan chapel. Instinctively they stopped, staring at it. Their eyes moved simultaneously as the same thought struck them.
"Funny sort of place to bury silver in," they whispered to each other, and grinned in the dark.
"'Owever—" added Boler with a meaning sigh as they moved along.
"There ain't much silver—nor copper neither—goes in there as iver comes out, leastways, to the people what puts it in the dish on Sundays. She used to make me go there twice a Sunday—lumme!" said Mr. Mitch wanly.
Boler deftly humped his shoulders without taking his hands from his pockets.
"I kin mention some silver what's comin' out of it thunderin' soon—if it was ever there," he said in a hard voice.
Down the street a fan of cheerful yellow light stretched across the road from an open doorway, and a sound of laughter came up to the wayfarers.
"That's the Westley Inn," drooled Mr. Mitch, swallowing. Boler rattled a few coppers in his pocket.
"Good," said he. "Come on. We'll 'ave a look at it. Seems a nicesh place from 'ere."
They entered the inn, Mr. Mitch with an unnecessarily defiant air, and ordered beer and bread and cheese. The landlord—he was new to Henry—served them, favoured them with a searching look, tested the shilling Mr. Mitch put down, and, apparently only half-satisfied, thanked them perfunctorily and went on with the conversation with the other customers where he had left off.
The comrades bore their food to a corner and ate in silence, listening. Evidently the company was discussing some one of the village. .
"Yes," said a wizened man in the corner (the reader will be spared the real Hampshire dialect), "she's a terror! You can say one thing or you can say t'other thing, but when all's said, she's a 'oly terror!"
Every man in that stolid company nodded solemnly.
"I don't care 'oo 'ears me say so!" said the wizened man aggressively.
Mr. Mitch had pricked up his ears when he heard the tense summing-up of some woman unknown to which the shrunken one had given utterance.
A burly man, in a corner that was much too small for him, spoke with a remote resemblance to an ox chewing the cud.
"But she's worth two thousand pound! And two thousand pound is a lot o' money!"
"A powerful lot!" the murmur ran round the circle, led by the landlord—a strong-faced man, with the appearance of a prize-fighter.
"Hee! hee!" went an old, a very old, man who sat in a high-backed chair holding his hands out to the fireless grate from sheer force of habit. "I dangled of 'er on me knee! Forty-five year ago I dangled of 'er on me knee! Well, well, to think of Sarah 'Opley bein' left two thousand pound of money!"
Boler Mitey turned instinctively to Mr. Mitch. But he was too late. Judging by the manner in which he was choking and strangling, that individual had swallowed a newly-bitten mouthful very much "the wrong way." His "remarkable cheerful" eyes were bulging out of his head, and his face was of a deep terra-cotta tint.
"'Ear that?" breathed Boler, like a drowning man clutching at wet sand.
Mitch nodded lamentably.
"Gorlumme!" he said faintly, and coughed, and coughed, and coughed.
Boler hastily ordered another pot of ale, to distract as much as lay in his power the attention that the breathless Mitch was drawing upon them. Gradually the coughing subsided, and the comrades went silently on with their feeding, their ears spread, as it were like mainsails, to catch the littlest remark concerning the amazing inheritance of Sarah Hopley. For Sarah was Arthur Hopley's, that is, Mr. Henry Mitch's, wife.
"W'y, she wos once a liddle bit of a thing "—this from the very old man, in accents of the utmost surprise—"a liddle bit of a slip of a thing. And now she's worth two thousan' poun'—a liddle bit of a thing like she wos."
"Wonder wot pore Arthur would say if 'e knowed about it," said the burly man.
"Arthur 'Opley wot deserted 'er? Oh,'e'd be 'ome agin as quick as the next train 'ud carry 'im from wherever 'e wos when 'e 'eard the news!" said the wizened one sourly—he who had spoken first after the silver-seekers' entry.
"No, 'e wouldn't, neither!"
"No, 'e wouldn't, neither!"
Even Boler found it difficult to recognise the angry voice that lashed out across the bar. Everybody turned and stared helplessly at Mr. Mitch, who had spoken.
"No, 'e wouldn't 'ave took no train back fer no lousy two thousand pound! 'E was not that sort of man, not Arthur 'Opley wasn't," said Henry savagely.
Nobody seemed inclined to answer. They only stared more helplessly than ever, until at last the hard-faced landlord said drily, "Why not?"
Henry hesitated for a second only.
"Why not! 'Cos 'e's dead! There ain't no Arthur 'Opley now—'e's dead! That's why not! 'E's drowned and under water, that's where 'e is. 'E was a mate of mine, and 'e went overboard in S'int George's Channel, and there 'e lies to this day. 'Im! 'E! 'E wouldn't come back spongin' on no woman, 'e wouldn't, not if 'e was alive—" Here the rocket-like flight of fancy failed him, and he ended haltingly, "'E was content with wot 'e earned, and 'e was all right!"
The burly man in the corner growled in a friendly fashion.
"Right—that's right. 'Opley wos all right if she 'ad let 'im alone. I can't seem to see 'im spongin' on no woman, some'ow. And so 'e's drowned is 'e, Mister? 'Ow wos 'e drowned?"
"Fell overboard," said Mr. Mitch, suddenly cautious. "We flung 'im a life-belt, but we was too late. 'E'd sunk for the last time. We was all very much surprised at 'im. It was rainin' at the time, I kin mind." Henry was growing warm and nervous, and something in his eye warned Boler that the little man was getting out of his depth. So the self-possessed and blasé Mitey rose, with a vague apology to the company.
"Sorry, gentlemen—me and my mate must be movin'. 'Ope to see you some other time." He slouched to the door, Mr. Mitch at his heels.
"Good-night, gentlemen!"
Before the company had time to protest or to offer bribes in the shape of further refreshment, another customer arrived. This was a keen-eyed, lean-faced youngish man, wearing breeches and gaiters. He looked intently at Mr. Mitch as he entered—or was it Mitch's imagination? He seemed to be popular, to judge by the chorus of "'D evenin's" which greeted him, and under cover of which the silver-seekers vanished unostentatiously round the door-post.
"That's one of the sharpest chaps in Ring-ford," whispered Mitch feebly, as they moved off down the street. He passed the end of his coat-sleeve across his perspiring brow. "Name o' Riley—Perry Riley—kind of a hoss-dealer. Lumme, Boler, I thought 'e knew me!"
"Well, as long as 'e don't know what we're after, it don't much matter," said Mr. Mitey. "You're dead! I don't s'pose 'e did, though. Where we goin' to sleep to-night? You ought to know a good barn somewhere."
Henry grinned, cheerful enough now that he was relieved of the necessity of swiftly inventing facts concerning his own recent unfortunate death.
"I know the very place," he replied gaily. "Come along with me."
They turned off into a dark lane, half-avenued with big, rocking elms, and stepped out briskly, neither noticing a figure that followed them on tiptoe some distance behind. They proceeded in silence for about five hundred yards, and then, as they turned slightly to the right, clearing the corner of a plantation of young firs, there swung into sight a huge house that was built upon a little hill a furlong away from the road. It blazed with lights, and might have been a hydropathic establishment or a big golfing hotel at the hour when people are dressing for dinner.
"That's Westlynn!" said Mr. Mitch, at Boler's elbow. "What an 'ouse!" with an awed chuckle. "If it is buried there—"
A hound began to bay deeply somewhere at the back of the big house, and he was joined by others. It came down to the ragged pair as they stood watching, and it sounded ominous and menacing, and hinted of peril and dangerous things.
"Thems 'is 'ounds. Great Dane—'arlequin Great Danes, they calls 'em. I'd almost forgot 'em. 'E keeps a lot of 'ounds.... 'Ark to 'em—Lorlumme, Boler, 'ark to 'em!" twittered Mitch. "If it is buried there—"
Boler looked over his shoulder, his hands in his pockets, as ever.
"If it was buried in blazes, I'd 'ave a cut at it," he said roughly, for the deep notes of the hounds had vibrated his heart-strings. And, indeed, the man must not be troubled with any sort of nerves who can stand with an ill conscience in eerie moonlight under ghostly whispering trees, and listen unthrilled to a chorus of great, powerful, deep-chested dogs. Particularly if those same dogs are guarding a place upon which he has designs.
Mitch thought of the man who had hinted that Arthur Hopley would have sponged upon his wife, and his hand closed upon Boler's arm.
"Me, too!" he said, in a starved whisper, his face showing white. "Me, too!"
They moved on again, and presently they came to a coach drive, shut in on both sides by thick, dark rhododendron hedges, and barred by a huge iron gate, expensively wrought in a curious pattern. Here they stopped again, staring up the gravelled moonlit drive, the clamour of the disturbed hounds in their ears.
"S'posin' we go up it a liddle way," suggested Boler, "and 'ave a look round!"
Mr. Mitch did not hesitate.
"If it'll do any good. Seems to me—"
He stopped swiftly, for a man came leisurely round a corner of the drive smoking a cigar. At his heels padded two huge, loose-limbed dogs. Mitch made as though to move on down the lane, but his comrade stopped him with a whisper.
A man came leisurely round a corner of the drive.
"Don't 'urry," he said, "or the dogs'll start for us, mebbe!"
They waited while the man approached.
He touched a button in one of the big gate pillars and the gates swung silently back, evidently electrically manipulated.
He looked keenly at the two white-faced, ill-fed watchers and stopped, rolling his cigar into a corner of his mouth, and his dappled attendants came softly up to the two, sniffing at them.
"What are you doing here, eh?" said the man sharply. His voice was harsh and brutal, and went badly with the superbly cut dress suit and the hot flame of a magnificent diamond in his shirt front.
Mr. Mitch spread out his hands in a nervous, deprecatory gesture.
"Nothin', sir," he said hastily.
Boler's eyes glittered a little.
"We was wonderin' whether it was any good our goin' up to the 'ouse and askin' for some-thin' worth 'avin'," he said deliberately. "Not tuppence—but five shillin's. Somethin' a man can feel it's worth while takin' out of 'is pocket and lookin' at."
The man—he was ruggedly handsome, in the bearded style, and looked tremendously powerful—laughed drily.
"You've got a devil of a cheek," he said. "You'd be afraid of the dogs."
Boler shook his head stubbornly.
"A 'ungry man is more afraid of 'is own 'unger than any other man's dogs," said he. The man laughed again, and spoke to one of the dogs.
"Look at him, Jane."
Jane, a wonderful harlequin Great Dane bitch, stiffened before Boler, and looked steadily up into his eyes. But Boler stared back not less steadily. The haggard beast growled in her throat—it vibrated queerly through the moonlight—and Boler whitened a little. But he stood his ground, and Mr. Mitch looked on nervously. Then the man—he was Burton Crail, the millionaire of whom Canary Wing had spoken—laughed for the third time.
"You've got nerve, tramp," he said, "or else you're crazy. Man, she would tear you if I whispered one word! Hungry, are you? Here, then. Give your pal what you reckon he's worth. And, say, don't let me catch you hanging round here again. Understand what I mean?"
He handed a half-sovereign, with no grace nor kindliness nor sympathy, and strolled away. The silver-seekers looked after him.
"That's the 'ardest man I've iver seen in me life," said Boler. "That's the sort of man that niver dies a natural death. Mitchy, he's dangerous—even 'is play is dangerous, and 'Eaven help any man 'e wants to 'arm. Mate, I'm afraid of 'im, and that's the truth, and I ain't ashamed of it. Any man might be afraid of 'im and not be ashamed. I done that becos I thought 'e might send us along to the servants' 'all and 'ave some grub. I thought we might 'ave a glimpse roun'. But 'e ain't that sort—'e don't think for people. 'E's the sort that ses, ''Ere's 'alf-a-quid; go and perish for all I care!'"
"But s'posin' the silver's buried in 'is 'ouse?" said Mitch joylessly. "What then?"
"Oh, then we've got to get it out," answered Boler, and they shambled on down the lane.
A quarter of an hour later they were sprawling comfortably in the straw which half-filled the barn of one George Collins, farmer, who probably would have fainted could he have seen the airy carelessness with which they puffed steadily at their pipes.
"And now," said Boler, yawning comfortably, "and now let's map things out."
Then a figure—slimly built, wearing riding-breeches—spoke drily from where he stood in the doorway, black against the moonlight in the empty cattle yard outside.
"Good evening, Arthur—Arthur Hopley! How are you? Glad to see you're back again—safe and sound. You haven't forgotten me, surely; you haven't forgotten Perry Riley!"
"What did I say?" groaned Mr. Mitch. "What did I tell you?"
PERRY advanced easily into the barn, extending his hand to Mr. Mitch with the utmost friendliness. The long-lost one glanced furtively at their visitor and suffered his own nerveless hand to be shaken at some length.
"Well, this is a very pleasant surprise, Arthur!" said Perry, in a pleased voice. "Why, they told me back at the Westley Inn that you were dead, been drowned or something or other. I'd hardly got inside before they began to tell me about it. But I thought to myself, 'Arthur Hopley drowned in St. George's Channel! Not he. If that wasn't Arthur himself that I saw going out with a friend of his, you can call me no judge of a horse I' And so I followed you, and here you are. Well, how are you, old man? Only the other day I was talking to your poor wife about you."
Mitch moved his hands feebly.
"'Ow is she?" he said, without interest.
"Oh, pretty well, pretty well. She pined a little bit when you went away, but she bore up all right otherwise. She seemed as much annoyed about you going as anything else. But she'll settle down now, all right. You'll come as a sort of surprise-packet to her, I expect."
There was a strained silence for a few moments. Then Mr. Mitch pulled himself together.
"Well, Perry," he said, "I don't know as I want to surprise 'er, to tell the truth. She wasn't never very fond of bein' surprised."
"Oh, I'll break it gently to her, old man," volunteered Mr. Riley, taking a seat on a bundle of straw. "You leave it to me; I'll see that it doesn't come to her as a shock."
Mitch grinned wryly.
"It's kind of you, Perry, to be so thoughtful for me, and I ain't the man to fergit it. But this is a delekit family sort of matter, and I'd sooner 'tend to it in me own fashion."
"You don't want me to tell her, then?" Mr. Riley seemed surprised.
"No, I don't, and that's a fact!"
"Oh, all right. As you like, Arthur." There was another silence.
Perry it was who broke it this time.
"She's just come into two thousand pound!" he said, casually. But Mr. Mitch was prepared for it, and exhibited no astonishment.
"Oh, 'as she?" he commented indifferently. "Lot o' money."
"What!" Perry was astonished now.
"Lot o' money." Mitchy actually yawned. The horse-dealer looked at Mitch and then at Boler—who was apparently too uninterested to make a comment—then at the moonlit yard outside, and finally turned his amazed stare back to Mitch.
"Well, this takes it!" he said, almost reverently. "I tell you she—your missis—has had two thousand pound left her—quids—jimmy o' goblins—thick 'uns! Two thousand!"
He waited for it to soak in.
"Oh," said Mr. Mitch, with superb carelessness; "got a match?" Perry Riley handed over his matches dully.
"Haven't you got anything better to say than 'Oh, got a match?' It's a fortune," he cried.
"She's welcome to it, for all I care. Made much difference to 'er? Swelled 'er 'ead up at all?"
"Swelled her head up!" said Mr. Riley, with sudden bitterness. "Well, if it goes on swelling much more, it'll want two parishes the size of Ringford to hold it And she was bad enough before."
Mr. Mitch looked curiously at Perry.
"Well, if she's got a position to keep up," he said vaguely. Then he grinned with heart-winning frankness.
"Lumme, Perry, she must be a terror. And you wants to tell 'er I'm come back. Well, look 'ere, I don't want 'er to know. She thinks I'm dead—or she soon will—and she's very well provided for. Let me be dead. On'y you knows I ain't, and I never done you no 'arm. I don't want 'er two thousand—none of it—not a ha'p'ny. I shall only be in the villidge a liddle while and then I shall sling off out of it, and nobody'll be any the wiser. There's no call to tell 'er; it wouldn't be no favour to 'er to go and say, 'Lorlumme, wot d'yer think's 'appened. Arthur's come back with a man name o' Mitey, and there they be, the pair of 'em, a-roostin' in the straw up in old Collins's barn!' It wouldn't do you no good, and it'd do me 'arm."
"I don't know, though," demurred Mr. Riley. "I don't know so much about that. I've got special reasons for doing Mrs. Hopley a good turn. Special and private." He glanced at Boler.
"Oh, he's my partner. Don't mind about 'im," said Mitch feverishly. "What's yer reasons? I thought you wos after somethin' when you come in 'ere. What you after, now?"
"Your niece—Katie," said Perry coolly. Mr. Mitch opened his eyes.
"What! a liddle, long-legged bit of a girl like 'er—'air down 'er back?"
The horse-dealer frowned.
"You've been away from home for a few years, old man, and it hasn't improved your way of speaking. Katie is a good bit older than when you saw her last, and, you take it from me, she's grown into the smartest and best-looking girl in Ringford! Yes, your niece.
"Arthur," went on Mr. Riley with slightly fatuous solemnity, "you mark my words—the man who gets her gets the best girl in the world bar none. As dainty and neat and haughty—where on earth she got her ways and manners I can't think."
"She got 'em from them as 'ad charge of 'er bringin' up, I s'pose," said Mitch stiffly.
"Well, wherever she got 'em, I want to marry her."
"Why don't you, then?" asked Mitch.
"Why? Your missus won't let her, that's why!" said Perry impatiently. "And it seems to me that if I could restore her husband to her she might come round." Mitchy jumped up and put his hand on Perry's arm.
"Don't you go and do nothin' of the sort, Perry. You'll ruin your chances if you do that!" he said earnestly.
"How?" queried the puzzled Perry.
"I dunno jest exactly how. It's a kind of instinct I've got," explained Mitch weakly. "I'm sure of it."
His love must have dulled his natural sharpness, for Mr. Riley allowed the explanation to pass. A man in love you may lead on a cobweb, if you make him nervous about his chances.
"Why do Sarah object to ye, Perry?" continued Mitch.
"Oh, I don't know. Because I was fool enough to stick up for you a year or two ago when she was running you down. I got in an answer or two that made her look small. She'd been coming it rather strong about you, and it didn't seem quite square to you somehow. It was at a party. And she hates the sight of me."
"'Ow about Katie?"
"Oh, well, she doesn't," said Mr. Riley, a shade self-consciously.
"Well, I dunno. What'd you do, Boler?"
Boler desisted from picking his teeth with a straw, and applied one word to the situation—one word only.
"Slope!" said Boler, and selected another straw.
"Yes, that's it. The very idea!" Mr. Mitch already saw his only danger of being reclaimed safely out of the way. "Slope with 'er!" But Mr. Riley had other views.
"Slope with 'er!"
"Not me," he declared. "If I'm going to marry her, I'll marry her in the face of all Ringford and forty Sarah Hopleys. However, it's late. I'm off. I'll keep quiet about you until I see you again, Arthur—
"'Enery, please—'Enery Mitch."
"Henry, then. Well, good-night!"
At the barn door he paused.
"What the dickens made you come back again if you didn't want to be recognised?" he asked, puzzled.
"Oh, I dunno; sort of cravin' to see the old place agin," said Mr. Mitch carelessly, from out of the shadows.
Ten minutes later there was no sound in the barn but the strenuous sound of the loot hunters' slumbers.
THE early dawn discovered Mr. Mitch laboriously cutting his corns.
"Lor, 'ow the road brings 'em out!" he said to Boler Mitey, who was rummaging through a bundle. "It's a beautiful mornin'. We'd better be eatin' whatever there is to eat and 'avin' a look round. I 'ope young Perry Riley's to be trusted."
Boler produced a greyish slab of bread, the butt end of a pound of cheese, and a brace of Spanish onions from the sack-like carry-all—their only baggage—and they breakfasted. Then they evacuated the barn, and sat on a bank close by airing themselves in the sun and seeking further nourishment from their pipes.
"Well," said Boler, after a dreamy pause, "'ere's w'ere we begins, I s'pose. Now, fust of all, what's the arrangement—'alves, I s'pose?"
"Thirds! A third for you, a third for me, and a third for Canary Wing. Darn me, it sounds like poetry!" said Mr. Mitch gaily. "It's safer. 'E's a terror, reely. 'E's next door to committin' murder. 'E's served so long in jail it don't much matter to 'im whether 'e's 'ung or not unless 'e can make sure of a good and easy time when 'e comes out."
Boler nodded. "All right, thirds. We'll have a agreement to it bimeby. We'll draw it up down at the inn later on. Now, this silver's buried in one out of three places, them bein' the Westley Inn, the Wesleyan chapel, and that 'ard man Crail's place, Westlynn. Wot's your idee, Mitchy? I got mine, but let's 'ear yours fust, as you knows the villidge."
Mitch screwed up his eyes.
"Well, I reckon we oughter work 'em one be one, keepin' a eye on t'others at the same time," he said lucidly. "And it seems to me the best place to start on is the pub."
"That sounds all right, but 'ow are we goin' to live while we're doin' it?" asked Boler. "Now, my idee's this. One of us ought to 'ang about the pub 'elpin' sort of casual in the stable-yard and that—lendin' a 'and with the 'arness-cleanin' and muckin' out the hoss boxes. You gits into their confidence be doin' that, and if you're 'andy, sooner or later you gets a job reglar. Y'see, nine times out of ten they wants 'elp when the brewer comes round for empties—gettin' 'em out of the cellar and that, and that'll give one of us a rare chance of 'avin' a good look round every now and then. If the silver's buried in that pub it's pretty sure to be buried down in the cellar. Well, one of us got to do that ontil somethin' better crops up. And it seems to me that about the best thing for t'other to do, is to try and get a job up at Westlynn, 'elpin' in the kennels or anywhere for a start. Then the dogs'll git used to 'im and 'e might be able to 'ave a look 'ow the land lays up there too. That leaves us the chapel to 'tend to and that's the job I don't much fancy. Why not, thinks you? Well, one of us got to be converted—be religious and temp'rance and all that. I ain't a narrer-minded man, but lumme, life's too short to be a Nonconformist very long. But onless you or me is one for a time, we ain't goin' to git much chance of 'angin' round the vestry and seein' wot things looks like. It didn't ought to take long to jest about sum up that chapel and then we shall see. Them's my plans, old man, and onless you got better ones we'd better see about it."
Mr. Mitch considered the scheme and saw that it was beautiful. He could already picture himself helping in the cellar work at the Westley Inn.
"A wonderful good plan, Boler—wonderful good. You got a 'eadpiece onto you. It couldn't be bettered. And now, 'ow do we divide it?" he asked delicately.
Boler coughed, looking worried.
"Well, I knows what we ought to do," he said. "I ought to git the job at Westlynn—because I can. Y'see, I ain't afraid of dogs—niver was—and I reckon I can convince Crail of it pretty easy too. 'E'd be likelier to take me on than 'e would you, meanin' no offence, Mitchy, of course. But the one '00 works at Westlynn 'as got to be the religious one likewise, for t'other can't make out Vs religious if 'e's 'angin' round a pub all the week."
Against his will Mr. Mitch's face brightened. "Yes, it's your job really, Boler. It's onlucky for yer, but you're a better actor than what I am! You could do the gospel grinder lovely —lovely, old man. And it'd be dangerous for me, as my missis goes to chapel reglar."
Boler looked gloomier than ever.
"Yes, but it might lead to bad feelin' between us, old man. One with a job all 'oliday and t'other with a job all work. I've thought of that, too. The fairest way's the best way, and it seems to me that we ought to play for it." He produced a bethumbed pack of cards from the carry-all and mournfully watched all the radiance die out of Mitch's face.
"It's only fair!" he said.
"Fair and square," agreed Mr. Mitch with an effort.
Boler shuffled the cards.
"What shall it be, old man?" he said genially, and a ray of hope illumined Mr. Mitch's eye.
"Nap. Three games. Best out of three games." Mitchy was good at Nap, and usually lucky.
"Nap it is. Cut for deal, Mitchy. Lowest deals."
Mr. Mitch cut the cards with exceeding care. He got the three of spades. Boler did better with the Jack of diamonds, and Henry dealt.
"Your call, Boler."
"Try three!"
"Go on, then," breathed Mitch, turning white.
Boler played the nine of clubs, Mitchy downed it with the king, and took the trick, leading an ace of hearts. Boler trumped with the deuce of clubs, and led a queen of spades. She stood by him, for his opponent played a ten of the same suit. Two to Boler, who led again with the nine of spades. Mitchy put the Jack on it with a thud. Two all! Henry whacked down the queen of trumps, with a yell, but Boler dropped the ace on it and threw a faint grin into the bargain.
"Brast!" went Mr. Mitch.
One game to Boler and his own deal. This was a tame game. Mitch called three and got every trick.
One game each. Mitchy was trembling as he dealt for the third and deciding game.
Boler got excited as he looked at his hand. He hesitated a second, then "Four!" he said.
"Nap! I'll go the bloomin' lot," cried Mr. Mitch.
He played the ace of hearts.
Boler softly put down the deuce. Mitch led the king of trumps. Boler played the nine.
Mitch looked nervous and quietly put down the queen of hearts.
Boler muttered and cast out the Jack.
Mitch dashed down the eight of trumps.
Boler replied with the king of diamonds.
Mitch shuddered and desperately put down the queen of diamonds, his eyes bulging.
Boler tried to smile and let the useless ace of spades fall upon the diamond queen.
Mitchy had won.
"'Ard luck, old man!" said Henry, totally unable to disguise his joy.
"Can't be 'elped," grunted Boler. Then after a forlorn pause—
"Bloomin' nice Nonconformist I shall look—I don't think!" he said hysterically, and gathered up the cards—"'owever—'ere's luck, partner."
"Luck it is, old man!" cried Henry, with enthusiasm.
They shook hands.
"A third for you, a third for me,
And a third for Can-aaa-ry Wing!"
hummed Mr. Mitch buoyantly, as they stepped out for the Westley Inn, where they looked to get hot coffee.
Halfway there they came upon a very pretty girl who was picking flowers. Her bicycle leaned against a gate. She was trim and dainty, and seemed pleased with the world in general, for she sang softly to herself as she fixed the flowers in her belt. She looked carelessly at the two adventurers as they passed, but almost instantly turned her gaze down the lane again from which direction came a sound of cantering hoofs.
She looked carelessly at the two adventurers.
Perry Riley, evidently exercising a young horse, turned the corner, passed them with a nod, and pulled up at the gate.
"What! is she my niece? Lumme, she's come on wonderful!' exclaimed Mr. Mitch, staring round. Even Boler seemed surprised.
"Well, if your missis is in line with 'er, old man, I'm blowed if I'd give much for your taste," said he ambiguously.
Mitch grinned.
"You 'aven't seen my missis yet," he replied meaningly. "And you 'aven't 'eard 'er talk yet. 'Elio, 'ere's another early bird."
It was that hard man, Crail, enjoying a stroll before breakfast. He was attended by the mighty Jane, and a big, slate-coloured, prick-eared beast that looked too large and truculent to be anywhere but behind bars. But Crail evidently had the pair of them well in hand, for they watched him always out of the corner of their eyes as they trotted alongside. The millionaire seemed to be in a good temper, for he stopped at sight of the silver-seekers.
"You two slinkums, again!" he said, in his loud, harsh American voice. "You're thunderin' near where I told you not to be. Seems to me you aren't slouching about here for your health only. Where you aiming for—the pub, eh? Going to melt your half sovereign mighty quick, eh?"
They stood, and the dogs walked round them.
"Goin' to git some coffee and work, sir, if there is any work in this show," said Boler, and Mr. Mitch nodded vigorously until the gaunt Jane looked up into his eyes, and he ceased as suddenly as though he had been electrically switched off.
Mr. Crail seemed amused.
"Don't much cotton to her?" he asked. He seemed inordinately proud of the animals. But he was prouder of his control over them, and he promptly proceeded to give them an exhibition of it.
"Don't move," he said to Mr. Mitch, and then, "Hold him, Jane—gently, girl."
The Great Dane quietly closed her jaws upon the pale Mr. Mitch's coat.
"Bring him here!" The dog pulled a little upon the coat and Mitch made haste to take the hint.
Then it was Boler's turn. The slate-coloured brute went to him at a word and took him by his rags.
"Bring him here!" said the millionaire. The dog gave the hintful tug, but Boler did not move, save only to brace himself up. The big beast rumbled in his throat and rolled his eyes back, looking up.
"Get wise and come along," said Crail. "Why do you look white?"
"Will 'e bite me if I don't?" asked Boler, very pale, his eyes glittering.
"I'll leave it to you," laughed the millionaire. "Better come."
Boler drew in his breath slowly, and looked steadily at his tormentor.
"I'm afraid of you, but by Gawd! I ain't afraid of your dog. I'll stay an' chance it."
"Don't you be a fool, Boler," cried Mitch, and his pied guard hushed him to silence with a snarl.
"You're a 'ard man, but you don't commit murder on the 'igh road! I'll stay!" said Boler, and resisted the dog.
The millionaire's mouth set and his eyes became hard.
"Bring him here, Slake," he said, quietly brutal.
"Slake" pulled, growling horribly, but Boler leaned back, his eyes on the dog. The threadbare coat ripped and his fangs came away. But he seized the coat again swiftly.
Boler noticed that the big hound avoided even pinching his flesh, and he was almost comfortable. "This is a trick," he said to himself, and stood his ground.
The hound, as he pulled, kept glancing at his master like a bravo awaiting the word.
But Crail gave in.
"Drop it," he said, and the beast went to his heels. A kind of contemptuous admiration showed for a second in his cold eyes.
"Your bluff goes!" he said. "But don't ever hope to do it again. I'll give you work—and your partner too, for your sake. You shall help in the kennels and Til fix him up chasing the snails out of the cabbage bed. Be around to-day."
He went away, apparently without noticing their thanks.
"Oh, 'ow I hate that man," whispered Boler, vengefully. "But I'll take 'is work, and I'll teach Mister Slake the feel of a whip if 'e ever catches 'old of me again."
Mr. Mitch stopped dead.
"You kin do as you like, old man, I wouldn't work fer 'im fer all the money I could add up in a month."
Boler grinned. "Nuther'd I if I 'appened to be afraid of dogs. But that's one of the things I ain't, and it's a chance—and a bloomin' good chance too. All you got to do is to tend to the Westley Inn part of the business. And 'ere 'tis too. And we'll 'ave eggs and bacon on the strength of the job."
They sat in the bar until their repast should be ready. Once the hard-faced landlord came into the bar, looked them over, and went away again.
"Looks a wrong 'un to me somehow," said Mr. Mitch, and Boler nodded.
"Seems to me it'd be a good idea to draw up our partnership agreement while we're waitin'," he said.
And so they borrowed paper and pen and ink and applied themselves to the task. It entertained them all through breakfast and the pipeful hour that followed the meal, but they finished it at last and signed it—thus, respelt.
Agreement between Boler Mitey and Henry Mitch, both of Ringford, Hants. Whereas there is silver hid in a spot in Ringford by some person or persons unknown to the parties of this agreement. And whereas Boler Mitey and Henry Mitch are undertaking to find such silver they agree to the following manner. One third to be took by Boler Mitey, one third to be took by Henry Mitch, and one third to be saved and reserved and put in a safe place for Canary Wing when he comes out of jail. Such Boler Mitey and Henry Mitch to leave no stone unturned in finding such silver and to help one another at all times hereto upon the request of the other and this we swear to and agree upon so help us God!
Boler Mitey. Henry Mitch.
"And that's done!" said Boler, putting the document in his pocket. "Now about where we kin live. I s'pose there's a room to be got somewhere."
But Mitch had a finer notion.
"We'd better 'ave a cottage to ourselves. 'Oo knows but what we sha'n't want to be out at curious times of night. If we lived in lodgin's, everybody in the villidge'd know all about our doin's and hours and 'abits next day. No, I knows this place, and what's more, I knows the very cottage, too. It's a quiet, liddle, damp place—jest at the corner of the plantation we passed jest now. If it ain't let we'll take it be the week. What d'you think?"
Boler nodded.
"Well, we'll go and 'ave a look and see if it's bein' lived in."
They went, lightheartedly.
ON the outskirts of Ringford village, in an angular red-bricked house, lived a Mrs. Gritty, an independent lady of no education, an indifferent presence, and very few manners. She was a middle-aged widow. Her husband, Ring-ford understood, had died abroad, and among other things she owned the cottage in Sandy Lane, of which Mr. Mitch had spoken.
Mrs. Gritty had just finished a substantial breakfast when she observed, coming up the path, those hitherto small-change adventurers, Messrs. Mitch and Mitey.
"More of them tramps," she said, wiping her mouth rather cleverly with the back of her hand, and leaned out of the window.
"What want?" she enquired, ungraciously.
The taller of the two—Boler Mitey—motioned to his companion to step forward, which Henry, nothing loth, did.
"We was wishin' to take your cottage, mum, in Sandy Lane, if it ain't already let to no party." He grinned amiably as he spoke, and the widow must have found something pleasing in his countenance, for she jerked her thumb in a ladylike way at the door.
"Come in," she said, and the partners entered, removing their hats.
"The rent's three shillings a week," announced Mrs. Gritty.
"Three shillin's a lot of money," said Boler, gravely, to the ceiling.
Mrs. Gritty surveyed him grimly.
"I don't care whether it's a lot o' money or a little o' money. It's the rent of that 'ouse—paid in advance too. Paid weekly, as well."
"S'posin' we says 'alf a crownd now," suggested Mr. Mitch softly. "We're goin' to live in the villidge and work 'ere, what's more! And as we don't s'pose our wages will be very 'igh at fust"—Boler regarded him with an air of surprise and pain—"we can't afford to pay more'n 'alf a crownd to start with. Later on, of course"—he waved his hand, vaguely suggesting rents running into three figures in the immediate future.
To the amazement of the pair the somewhat masculine looking Mrs. Gritty smiled upon Mitch.
"Oh, all right then," she said graciously, addressing herself wholly to Henry. "You'll find as 'ow it's a liddle damp, but that won't 'urt such a pleasant-faced, 'earty gentleman as you."
Mitch began to finger his cap nervously. Twice he glanced at Boler, who, however, was looking rather pointedly at a cut glass decanter.
"'Alf a crownd a week, then," said Mr. Mitch. "To you," replied Mrs. Gritty meaningly.
"To you," replied Mrs. Gritty meaningly.
"Thank 'ee," said Mitch. "When kin we move in?"
"That's as it soots you, Mr.—" The widow paused.
"Mitch, me—Mitey, 'im!"
"'Ave you got your furnicher 'ere, might I ast?" enquired the lady, and Henry stiffened.
"Well, no—on the way, on the way," he answered hastily. "Van—a pantantikon van—comin' along—very slow things—take a very long time comin' along, them vans!"
Mrs. Gritty became even more gracious.
"Well, any 'elp I can give to your disposal I shall be very glad, I'm sure," she said, in her best manner. "Any little temp'ry loan—I'm sure."
Mitch was on the point of declining and clearing out when Boler broke in—
"A sorsepan—a liddle sorsepan would be uncommon useful, madam," he said, "and a few plates and knives and forks. A old armchair or two—any odd things like that. A few bottles to keep our water in "—his eye sought the decanter again—"and a old kettle—they would all be a great 'elp to my friend Mr. Mitch an me."
Mitch nodded.
"All right, 'appy to 'elp, I'm sure. I'll 'ave 'em wheeled round this mornin'. You can let me 'ave 'em back w'en your own furnicher comes."
At this point Boler succeeded in leading Mitch's eye to the decanter, and, with it, that of Mrs. Gritty.
She took the hint this time.
"It's a hot, dusty mornin'," she said, and the silver-seekers made haste to agree.
"What'll you 'ave?" she continued, with startling and uncompromising directness. "Beer or cider?"
They did not get over the shock of it until they learned afterwards that she had once kept a small inn.
"W'y—thank'ee," said the surprised Mitch, "I'll 'ave a taste of cider—jest a taste."
"Beer fer me, please," said Boler, "jest 'alf a glass," modestly.
Mrs. Gritty was no fool—and instantly proceeded to prove it. She went to the door and shouted to an invisible servant girl.
"L'weeser, bring a quart of beer an' a jugful of cider."
"L'weeser," a small, miraculously unbuttoned-up village girl, bore in the refreshment, and Mrs. Gritty watched, with considerable interest and some admiration, what appeared to be a race between her new tenants to finish their liquor first. It was a dead-heat.
"Well," said Henry, briskly replacing his glass on the table by the vacant cider jug, "we must be seein' about it, I s'pose!"
"I'll send the things round bimeby," smiled Mrs. Gritty, and accompanied them to the door. She watched them go down the path, smiling thoughtfully.
"What a nice man that Mr. Mitch is," she said to herself. "I wonder where 'e comes from. They must 'ave 'ad a long journey—bein' so thirsty. Me an' Sarah'll call roun' at the cottage and 'elp settle 'em presently. That Mitey's jest th' sort o' man she'd take a fancy to, I do believe. W'y, 'ere she comes!"
A rather loudly dressed woman with a thin, bitter mouth and hard eyes was entering the gate as the adventurers were going out. And by the extraordinary, muffled sound that his partner made in his throat, Boler knew that they were face to face with Mitch's wife.
There was a queer, lopsided, apologetic grin on Henry's lips. But he need not have feared. The lady favoured each of them with a keen stare, so searching as to be hopelessly rude and—passed on!
The gate closed behind them with a little click.
"Lorlumme!" breathed Mitch as they went. Strictly speaking it was profanity. But it sounded more like prayer.
THE partners were busy moving in. That is to say they were comfortably leaning over the fence in front of the cottage smoking, and waiting until the furniture and domestic articles promised by Mrs. Gritty should materialise. Their coats were off and the gate was open.
"A very good start, Boler, old man," said Mr. Mitch, staring absently at a cat that walked slyly along the hedgerow on the other side of the lane.
"Done very well up to now." Boler spat lazily at a fly on the path. They both yawned.
Presently, down the lane, they observed a curious structure approaching them. It looked like nothing in the world.
"W'y, what's this?" Mr. Mitch roused himself sufficiently to shade his eyes with a hand singularly capable of the office, and gazed at the oncoming object.
"It's a wheelbarrer with our furnicher on it! And Bill Hull a-wheelin' it! I used to know Bill very well—wonder if 'e'll know me. If 'e don't nobody will!"
Bill Hull staggered up and dropped the handles of the wheelbarrow with unnecessary carelessness.
"Hot job," he said genially. "Wouldn't 'ave took it on fer a tanner, if I'd knowed it—must 'ave bin up the pole!" He passed a brown arm, strong and muscular as the hind leg of a cart horse, wearily over his brow. "Sixpence ain't enough for wheelin' this lot 'alf a mile. Is it?"
"No, it ain't," said Mitch, promptly.
Bill Hull's face brightened.
But Mitch continued, "You don't 'appen to 'ave a fill of baccy, I s'pose. Mine's comin' on in the van with our furnicher."
Bill Hull looked depressed. But he pulled out a moleskin bag and gave it to Mitch.
"'Elp yerself," he said resignedly. "And then lend us a hand wi' these. She'll be round in a minit. And a Mrs. 'Opley is comin' with 'er. You two'll wish you 'adn't got familiar with 'em if you don't look out. Wos you the man wot seen pore Arthur 'Opley drownded?"
"I was," answered Mitch. "The pore feller was standm' be the rail and the boat gave a sort of liddle 'eave and 'e wos gone."
"Did 'e holler much?" enquired the odd-job man, sitting on the handle of the piled wheelbarrow.
"I 'spect so!" said Mitch, with perfect serenity, "I niver 'eard 'im—I couldn't tell you what 'e said if you offered me a quid."
He grew bold. "'E was a very nice feller—we was sort o' mates, me and 'im—they said we was somethink like one another."
But Bill Hull laughed incredulously.
"You be as much like Arthur 'Opley as I be like the Prince o' Wales. W'y, 'e wos a fattish, neat-dressed feller wi'out a 'air onto 'is face. You ain't much like 'e wos, mate. Yer voice might sort o' resemble 'is, an' yer eyes ain't onlike 'is wos—but that's all. No, mate, you don't take after Arthur much, leastways not partickler much, yer don't. I kin mind a thing 'e said about gettin' drownded once—'e wos goin'—" Bill Hull glanced down the lane and was suddenly galvanised into a kind of activity—"'owever, let's git these things into the 'ouse, fust."
He threw himself at a big, ragged armchair with a feigned appearance of vigour. "Lend us a hand, mates!" he said.
They went out to him and then saw that Mrs. Gritty and her friend Sarah Hopley was bearing down upon them. With them, a little to the rear, was the pretty girl whom the partners had seen waiting for Perry Riley some hours before.
"Bloomin' 'ousewarmin'!" groaned Mr. Mitch, peering through the basket-work of another semi-foundered chair. He bolted into the cottage with it.
"Stand by, Boler!" he breathed. "Stand by to 'elp me when she 'ears me voice—and if she arsks anythink about 'ow pore 'Opley was drowned, lend a 'and when you sees me needin' it. You ain't nervous."
"More ain't you—I don't think," commented Boler sarcastically, for Mitch was trembling from the crown of his hat to his heels.
They went out together—Mitch behind, and nervously aware that Mrs. Gritty was smiling pleasantly upon him.
Their landlady advanced and shook hands warmly with the hesitant Mitch, who stood holding a kettle which he had absent-mindedly brought from the house, whither the sweated Hull had just borne it.
Their landlady advanced and shook hands with the Mitch.
"'Ow're you getting on?" asked Mrs. Gritty. "We was walkin' out for a bit of a blow and we thought as 'ow we would look in 'ere at you two to see if we was wanted in the way of 'elp. This is Mrs. 'Opley, a friend of mine, and this is 'er niece, Kate."
Mrs. Hopley nodded briefly at the partners, conveying a curious impression that she would have preferred biting them, and looked them over with what Mr. Mitch considered an ominous and sinister regard. The girl smiled. She looked so fresh and trim and well-dressed that the pair of them felt somehow that they were getting on to a social plane other than that to which they had been accustomed. But the good-natured Mrs. Gritty was at hand to dispel all illusions.
"Ain't you the one 'oo said last night in the Westley Inn as 'er 'usband"—Mrs. Gritty indicated her friend with her elbow—"was drownded?"
"Yes," said Mitch, huskily. "Fell overboard in a bit of a storm and was gone afore any 'elp could be give. 'E was a mate of mine."
Mrs. Hopley displayed no emotion and practically no interest.
"That's what your uncle come to," she said acidly to Kate. "Left a good 'ome for that! Take warnin' by it." Suddenly she addressed Boler. "Did you know 'im?"
Boler started.
"No, I can't say I did do—very nice man by all accounts," he answered.
"Misbeguided," said the wife of Hopley. "A misbeguided man.... 'Owever, can't be 'elped."
She asked no details—not even the name of his ship. It was obvious that she had no kindliness in her soul for him, and it was further evident that she considered the silver-seekers a "cut or two" below her. That two thousand pound inheritance was inflating her. But Mrs. Gritty was considerably the better off of the two, and like many other middle-aged people in the world wanted no better company than the class of folk she had been reared among before she had acquired a small income. And her sweet friend Sarah did as Mrs. Gritty did.
"He was always good to me," said Kate quietly, flushing a little. "Was he happy—I mean, he wasn't in trouble or—or—hungry or without any money, when it happened? I wouldn't like to think he ever went hungry!"
Mitchy's eyes brightened a little and his mouth quivered for a second. He was touched and pleased to know that there was one woman, at least, who cherished the thought of his welfare, and he was eager to reassure her. But Mrs. Hopley was before him.
"He never went 'ungry at 'ome—if 'e done so anywhere else it was no more than what 'e deserved—" her voice rose to the shrill, tense note of the shrew. "No more—it was less than 'e deserved—e ought to 'ave gone 'ungry."
"The man's dead, darn it!" said Boler Mitey, suddenly. "You don't want to talk like that about a pore dead man." Something in his voice quenched Mrs. Hopley, and all the others looked gratefully at him. But then he remembered how things really were, and so, for once in his life, looked not a little foolish. Mitch lapsed into a fearsome, twittering state of mingled dread of discovery, anger against Mrs. Hopley, tenderness for Kate, and apprehension as to the amiable Mrs. Gritty. Boler was as near self-consciousness as it was possible for him to be, and the veil of awkwardness which had descended upon them all was only riven by the approach of Bill Hull as he descended afresh upon the barrow—muttering something about "a tanner," and "a hot day," and "dry work."
Mrs. Gritty, glad to create a diversion, turned to him.
"Oh, shut up," said she politely. "Anybody'd think a little bit of work would break your 'art to 'ear you quirkin' an' gruntin' about it. What you want to offer to do it for if you didn't want to do it cheerful?"
He shut up, and the comfortable lady beamed once more upon Mitch & Co.
"Look 'ere," she said, "when you're more settled down, you come an' 'ave a bit o' supper one night at my 'ouse, an' we'll talk things over then."
The partners lost no time in accepting, and their visitors moved on. They were out of sight before another caller came along—Mr. Hinxman, the Ringford policeman, this time—a long, lumpy, melancholy man with a discouraged-looking red beard.
He stood in the road and stared fixedly at Mr. Mitch. But that gentleman was not abashed.
"Mornin'," he said, with a friendly nod.
Mr. Hinxman returned the nod without cordiality.
"Movin' in?" he asked.
"Only temp'ry—Mrs. Gritty, a friend of our'n, lent us these 'ere sticks ontil our own arrove," volunteered Boler.
But Mr. Hinxman seemed to be of a suspicious and unfriendly nature.
"'Aven't I seen you afore?" he asked. "At Salisbury—up on the race plain."
"Me?" said Mitch readily. "Oh yes, you 'ave. I drove me coach and four-in-'and up there. You seen me puttin' a thousand pound on the winner. I look like a man 'oo's got the money to go about to races, I do. No—you ain't iver saw me at no race-meetin', nor no Sal'sbury, neither. Niver bin there and dunno as I partikler wants to. Don't 'appen to know of a job in this place as 'ud suit me, I s'pose." This last purely from a desire to keep up appearances.
The policeman—he was new to Mr. Mitch-=-pondered what time the aggrieved Bill Hull bid them "so long" and departed with his barrow. Bill once out of hearing, Mr. Hinxman came to the point.
"No," he said. "I don't know of a job of work. But I do know of another job for you, and that is not to go a-shovin' of yerself at Mrs. Gritty while you're 'ere. She ain't fer you—see? And if ye do, well, I shall 'ave to see about you. Mebbe you didn't see me in court at Salisbury; but I seen you when you come up afore the bench and was shot off out of the town the way you was. I dunno what you're a-doin' 'ere—for all I knows you might be a couple of burglars—but you keep outer my way and outer Mrs. G.'s, and don't break no law and keep sober, and I sha'n't interfere with you much, and wot's more, I sha'n't make the noos public of 'ow you was shot out of Salisbury. Good mornin' to ye!"
The astonished partners stared at his shabby back as he strolled off in the wake of Bill Hull, and Boler shook his head.
"A bad start!" he said. "A bloomin' bad start—sort of got the law agin us fust go off. 'Owever—" he shrugged his shoulders.
"Well," commented Mr. Mitch, "'tain't much good thiukin' about it. Let's go in and see if she 'ad the foresight to put a liddle bit of somethin' cold and a bottle of beer in with the furnicher."
They went in and were pained to discover that she had not. So they sauntered down to the village, purchased provisions and lunched, preparatory to beginning in deadly earnest.
A SERENE and drowsy peace was upon the stableyard of the Westley Inn when, early in the afternoon, Mr. Henry Mitch came slowly questing round the corner to embark upon his part in the unearthing of the silver. He lounged across to the stable and, leaning against the doorpost, looked into the dark, pungent interior. A terrier, chained in an empty stall, opened one eye at him, and presumably recognising a kindred spirit, lazily wagged all the tail he possessed. Mr. Mitch yawned and went across to the harness-room. Here he found company. Stretched full length upon a battered corn-bin, his head pillowed upon an old nose-bag stuffed with chaff, he saw an ostlerish man, smoking, and reading The Jockey.
A terrier... presumably recognising a kindred
spirit, lazily wagged all the tail he possessed.
"'Ullo, mate!" said Mitch. "'Ow goes it?" He entered and took a seat upon an upturned stable bucket.
"Dry—bloomin' dry," hinted the ostler, desisting for a moment from his efforts to get by heart the form of some fifteen racehorses which had at one period or another accounted for odd shillings of his.
"Well, 'ave a drink. I could do with one meself."
Mitch rose. "I'll toss you for a pot o' beer!" he said. He spun a penny and the ostler cried "Tails."
"Tails it is!" said Mitch, and went off to the bar, purchased the refreshment, and carefully bore it back to the harness-room.
"'Ere's luck!" said the ostler, and deleted half the "pot" without taking breath.
"Same to you!" responded Mitch and emptied the vessel. Then he reseated himself.
"'Ow's things? Got any winners lately?" he asked.
"Not a measly winner. Wot d'you think of 'Edgehog th' Second' for the big race to-day?"
Mitch looked surprised and sorry.
"'Im? You don't mean to say you've backed 'im!" said the adventurer.
"Two bob each way!" said the ostler—one Jim Porter—with the air of a man expecting bad news. Nor was he disappointed.
Mitch shook his head. It may be said here that Henry was fairly well up in newspaper horseracing.
"Wot! Is 'e a stiff 'un?" demanded Porter. "Don't tell me 'e's a stiff 'un!"
But Mitch was inexorable. He had a reputation to create and he intended to create it at once. He knew that no man is more respected and worshipped by the inhabitants of a stableyard than the man who is an authority on racing, or can persuade people that he is. Therefore—
"Good enough 'orse," he said, "but the wrong stable—'e ain't meant to win yet!"
Jim dashed down his pipe.
"Done in, again. There y'are! Jest what I expected. Niver again will I back an 'orse trained by Blatkins's crowd," he said, with the pathetic unquestioning belief in Mitch that most small bettors have in the first man that comes along and says on no authority whatever that such and such a horse will win or will lose. "'Ave you backed anything?"
"Two bob each way 'Ciderseller,'" said Mitch unhesitatingly, naming the horse which he thought most likely to win. Jim looked at him enviously.
"Good 'orse," he said shortly. "Did yer know anything about 'im?"
Here was Henry's opportunity to consolidate himself with Mr. Porter for good and all.
"'E's meant to win. Got a nephew of mine in a racin' stable—sends me a tip now an' then."
"Wot stable?" asked Porter respectfully.
Mr. Mitch shook his head cunningly.
"Never you mind," said he. "If they knowed the boy sent out information 'e'd get sacked. You know 'ow things git round. Don't you say nothin' about it. I'll let you know when I gits somethin' good from 'im."
"Thank'ee, mate," said Mr. Porter, childishly pleased, and very grateful. "'Ave another drink."
Mitch did.
Presently he found himself lending Porter a hand with a set of flashy brown harness which was sacred to the landlord's "stepper." He was delicately leading up to an enquiry as to whether the ostler had ever heard of a man named Buckroyd when the door of the harness-room was darkened by Perry Riley, seeking a riding-whip he had left in the care of Jim.
He seemed surprised to see Mitch, but that individual's warning wink reminded him to forget that such a person as Hopley had ever existed.
"Got a job, then?" he said friendlily.
"Oh, jest lendin' a hand," replied Mitch.
Perry took his whip and went away.
"Smartish chap," said the ostler. "Name o' Perry Riley. Keeps a couple of 'osses 'ere. Very 'ard to please. After Sarah 'Opley's niece. He'll git 'er too, I'll lay. He don't care about Sarah's temper."
Here the hard-faced landlord, Mr. Walter Jackson, looked in, demanding that his horse should be "shut in." He took no notice of Mitch beyond a blunt enjoinder to Porter to see that nobody stole any harness.
"Run the trap out, mate. 'E's in a 'urry—always is!" said Porter aggrievedly.
Henry pulled a smart, racy looking trap out of the coach-house, put the horse in, and ushered the turn-out through the big gate of the stableyard. No sooner was Jackson out of sight than they were sprawling comfortably in the harness-room.
And Mitch was pleased with himself, for he had got a footing on the premises. Thereafter he would be one of those unpaid odd job hangers-on whose presence about an inn is tolerated and made practical use of, and who seem to live on nothing; but somehow always have enough to eat and almost enough to drink, with an occasional shilling to risk upon a horse.
But there was no cellar-work that day, and Mitch found no opportunity of conducting his investigations any further than the bar of the Westley Inn. However, these were early days, and at six o'clock he pulled out for the cottage in the lane, quite satisfied with his progress.
He found Boler gloomily frying bacon.
"That smells good—oncommon good. Got any eggs to go with it?" demanded Henry, as he stepped in.
"Eggs! No. How should I 'ave any eggs?" Boler put it to his partner with the air of a reasonable man asking reasonable things.
"Oh! I dunno. I thought—'ere, 'old back the bacon a minit and I'll see about 'em," said Mr. Mitch, and vanished in the direction of the barn which had sheltered them the night before.
Anon he returned with half-a-dozen new-laid eggs.
"Old George Collins wouldn't mind if 'e knowed I needed 'em. I used to be oncommon friendly with 'im in the old days. Besides, a egg or two goes very well with a bit o' bacon."
They mealed comfortably, and went outside to sit on the fence and smoke.
"'Ow did you get on to-day up at Westlynn? Get a job all right?" inquired Mitch, as he blew a more or less fragrant cloud.
Boler extracted his pipe from his mouth with deliberation. "I done well," he said weightily. "Very well indeed, I done. Listen. I went up there and asked for the kennelman. 'E's a pretty tough member too, judgin' by the look of 'im. Well, I told him 'ow the boss 'ad said I'd better be handy, and 'e said 'e'd 'ad instructions about me, and put me on a-groomin' some of them thunderin' dogs. 'E took me on without a question at a pound a week. Well, Crail come out presently and watched me fer a minit, and then Mister Slake—I 'appened to be cleanin' 'im at the time—sort of seemed to remember me, and seemed inclined to come fer me. And so 'e did. But there was a whip there—not half a whip neither, a great 'eavy thing, and I jest about laid into Mister bloomin' Slake ontil 'e decided to give it a rest. Not afore me arm ached, though, and I was be-ginnin' to git nervous. Well, Crail, 'e stood there and watched. I ruther fancied 'e was goin' to be a bit awkward about my hittin' 'is dog, but 'e's a sensible man if 'e is hard, and 'e seen the dog meant business. 'Owever,' 'e ses, 'When you've had a square meal or two you'll be handy in a kennel. You can go and ask the cook for some grub,' 'e ses, 'when you've finished the dogs.'
"And so I did, Mitchy, and a very tidy sort o' a woman she was. Steak puddin' hot, and beer, old man—a very good dinner. I got 'old of a job lot of information one way and t'other in talkin' in the servants' 'all, but the funniest thing of the lot is nobody up there iver seems to 'ave 'eard of this William Buckroyd who buried the silver bars. I asked the cook sort of casual, but 'Buckroyd! Buckroyd,' ses she; 'niver 'eard of the man.' No more 'ad any of 'em.
"'There ain't no sich name livin' in the villidge,' ses a old bloke I found weedin' the coach road. 'Leastwise not fer the last sixty-five year, which is as fur back as I kin mind. Onless, now I comes to think of it, that man—I s'pose this Buckroyd you means didn't 'ave no wart on 'is chin?'
"'Not as I know of,' I ses. 'W'y? Did you know a man with a decoration like that who was named Buckroyd?'
"'No,' ses the old fool; ''is name was Smith, I mind.'
"'Is name was Smith, I mind."
"So I left him to git on with his weedin'. 'Ave you tracked this Buckroyd at all, Mitchy?"
Mr. Mitch shook his head.
"Not a word of 'im—yet. But there's plenty of time. I kin see meself lookin' round the Westley Inn cellar afore long. I got the run of the stables already."
Boler knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and thoughtfully reloaded it.
"We'll wait till it's dark, and then we'll find out where the copper is; and if 'e ain't anywhere handy the chapel, we'll have a quiet look round there," he said.
Mr. Mitch agreed, and they sat on the fence in the twilight resting from their day's labours.
LATE that night, when only one lone cat walked among the shadows of the Ringford High Street, the moon, sliding about behind the gauzy gray clouds, observed two figures approaching the Wesleyan chapel, via the back way. The silver-seekers were what they termed "on the job."
"Easy," breathed Boler, as he insinuated himself through a gap in the thorn hedge. "There's nothin' to be got by hurryin'."
"Easy it is, my—'ow!" Mitch, following his partner, squealed lowly as he drew his hand along a thorn.
They stood under the back wall of the building—it looked like a big brick barn—and began to wonder what good they could do now they were there.
"Let's walk round it!" suggested Henry hopefully. They did so. Now this chapel, like most other chapels, had no grounds at all. It was bounded, on each side by a sort of ditch, on the front by the entrance gate, and on the back by a thorn hedge, as has been shown. All they got from their tour round the building was the certain knowledge that it was of an oblong shape.
On the way round Boler tried the door, but it was locked.
"Well, what do we do now?" asked Mitch, licking his hand, which he imagined was bleeding.
"Better see if we can't look in the vestry window, I s'pose," said Boler. "Come on, I'll give you a bunk up."
Mitch permitted himself to be bunked up, and peered into the black interior of a room at the back of the chapel. Naturally enough he saw nothing.
"Let me down," he said, "for it's as black as the back of my hand. What's the good of this?"
Boler let him down, and they cautiously moved off to the gate.
As they came to the dark porch Mitch, to his utter amazement, heard Boler say, "Yes, my friend, I'm glad to be able to say truthful to meself, 'at last you 'ave found a chapel after yer own 'art. A place where you, a pore miserable sinner, can find 'appiness and liberty and peacefulness.' Oh, 'Enry, how I shall go there on Sunday nights reg'lar—and oh, how 'appy I shall feel!"
Mitch did not hesitate, but returned Boler's lead as though they were playing nap. He spoke from the shadows without a quaver.
"Ah, you are a good man at 'art—you ain't like me—'opeless and 'omeless and ferlorned. When I seen you fust I said to meself, likewise, ''E's a man with a good 'art—a 'ighly honourable man—and strict chapel.'"
A man stepped out of the porch facing them.
"What ye doin' here, my friends, at this time of night?" he inquired.
Mitch was very silent, for the voice was the voice of one Winchester Chalk, a man whom he had known well in the old days, one who had been boon companion to Mitch five years before, but who, latterly, had found religion.
But Boler was capable of answering for the two.
"Brother," he said, "we was regardin' with feelings of love and admiration this here lovely chapel. Me name is Mitey, and I 'ope to become a subscriber to yer chapel—in the fulness of time. I 'ave but jest arrived in this pleasint town of your'n to take up me duties in kinnection with Mr. Crail the millionaire's dogs, and I was proud to take an early chance of 'avin' a look round this 'ere nice chapel."
Mr. Chalk seemed but ill-satisfied. He peered at them both, but it was too dark to see anything particularly attractive, or for that matter repellent, about them, and so he contented himself with saying sepulchrally:—
"The shades of night draw on, brother—it's gettin' very late. Still, you'll be very welcome at a short meetin' 'ere to-morrow night at eight."
"Lumme!" whispered Mitch to himself. "'E talks like a hymn-book. Winch Chalk of all folk! S'pose 'e's been converted since I been away."
"True! true!" said Boler thoughtfully. "Depend on me, brother—I shall be there—and per'aps we can 'ave a little talk in the vestry after the meetin'. Good-night!"
"Good-night, brother!" Mr. Chalk resumed the homeward way from which the sound of the silver-seekers' prowling had deflected him, and the partners struck out for their cottage.
Boler was depressed, and inclined to be quiet.
"To-morrer night at eight," he muttered as they went indoors.
"Cheer up, old man. It's only till we gits our hooks on the silver." Mitch slapped his comrade on the shoulder and proceeded to fill his pipe, whistling gaily.
Mrs. Gritty had neglected to include beds in her loan of furniture, and so they slept on the floor, pending the arrival of their own visionary couches.
* * * * *
THE early dawn brought sorrow and despair upon Mr. Mitch. He had cooked the breakfast, and gaily seen his gloomy partner off to his day's work, and he was sitting on the fence peacefully enjoying a quiet pipe, when Mr. Chalk strolled up.
"Good-mornin!" said Winchester.
"Good-mornin', mate." Mr. Mitch felt cordial to all the world that morning.
"You never paid me that half-sovereign I lent you in Andover market when you bought the goat," said Mr. Chalk in a conversational tone.
"Yes, I did," said Mitch, stiffening. "I paid you the same day in 'The Hog in the Pound' at Stokebourn on the way home."
Winchester grinned.
"Ah, then you are Arthur 'Opley!" he said in a different tone. "I had my doubts last night when you spoke."
Then Mitch saw what he had done; and balancing on the fence he stared sourly at his old friend.
"What sort of trick d'you call that?" he demanded with angry contempt. "Comin' up 'ere findin' out about people. Damme, I'm surprised at you, Winchester—you've altered for the wuss, you 'ave. Bein' religious is all very well, but shorely—shorely—sich spyin' and inquisitive ways ain't religious."
But Winchester grew grave—he had been a boon companion of Mitch's in the old days—and advanced to his erstwhile comrade with extended hands.
"'Ow is it with your soul, Arthur?" he inquired.
Mitch gasped feebly at him, and allowed his hand to be shaken.
"Oh, all right, I s'pose. I haves pains in the head in the mornin' sometimes "—with studied flippancy.
"Hush, hush!" implored Winchester. "How comes it, my poor friend, that I find you livin' here instead of at home with your wife? Come with me—let me be peace-maker. I will lead you to her by the 'and, sayin' unto her, 'I will restore 'im what has strayed afar—'"
"Ho! then I'll plug you in the eye fust!" exclaimed the goaded Mitch, clambering down from the fence and advancing threateningly.
"Ho! then I'll plug you in the eye fust!"
They faced each other. But Winchester raised his hand—he knew that Henry was no match for him physically.
"Let there be no voilence," he said; "let me plead with you fust. Why is all this, Arthur?"
Mitch spat in the road.
"As if you didn't know," he said disgustedly. He suddenly became earnest.
"My wife give me a bad time—you know better than anybody in the world how bad a time, seeing we was mates in them days. So I ups and outs. Bimeby I comes back unbeknown to anybody but me best friend as was! What does he do? 'E tries to 'and me over to 'er with a short prayer. Call that friendly?"
"I ain't such a bad friend as you might think, Arthur," said Winchester, an expression that belonged wholly to the unregenerate period flitting over his face. "She's had two thousand pound left her." He smiled benevolently. "Oh, tell us news!" said Mitch politely.
For a moment Mr. Chalk seemed at a loss, and in that moment an inspiration came to the silver-seeker.
"Religious!" he said, with what he fancied was a bitter sneer. "Religious! Ho, yes—I don't think. Call it religious to drive a man to drink and despair and slinkin', desertin' evil-livin'? For that's what it'll come to, Winchester, if you betrays me back to her. I shall drink meself to death outer that two thousand pound. And if it's gone afore I'm dead I'll sling me hook again—see? All through religion—your religion. If you was a real religious man—like my part—my friend—Boler Mitey—you'd say, 'Arthur, mate, you're in the wrong, your feet is set in the wrong path. But you 'ave a friend in me as was your friend. I will not betray you back into the 'ands of your missis, but I will give you wise counsils and—and—advice and that—until you, seein' the error of ybur present 'abits of life, repents and goes unto 'er, sayin', "Forgimme, I'm back," and begs 'er pardon and that.' That is what you would do, and then you'd 'ave more right to talk about religion as though it was as valuable as money."
Mr. Mitch grew eloquent as his theme carried him away. "That's it!" he cried, waving his arms. "That's the way to prove your religion. Convert me and let me go to 'er of me own free will, 'aving repented. Why, anybody, a thief or a drunkard or a policeman or a fool or a baby could sneak round to my wife and tell her. There wouldn't be nothin' fine or religious or noble in that, would there? But—keep it dark and convert me into seein' the error of me ways—that would be a victory over the world—" he quoted shamelessly from windy sermons he had heard shouted at village crossroads—" over the world, the flesh, and the devil!"
He ended with something of a shout himself, and waited, eyeing the friend of his youth with considerable trepidation.
But he had saved himself. Into the eye of Winchester Chalk flickered suddenly the light of the lust of saving other people's souls, and he gazed burningly at the panting Mitch. He was a working man—as a matter of fact, the Ringford professional rat-catcher—and he was already overdue at a farm. He placed his horny hand on Mitch's shoulder, that fanatic light glowing in his eye.
"My poor friend, you 'ave showed me my dooty. I won't say anything to a soul. But I will save you!"
"Do so!" grinned Mr. Mitch, and moved off to his investigations at the Westley Inn.
"So long, Winchester!" he called over his shoulder; "and mind me name is Henry Mitch!"
"I shall start to-night," answered the rat-catcher; and, replacing in his pocket an escaping ferret that was crawling down his leg, he resumed his way.
Once Mitch stopped and turned as though to call his intended saviour back. He opened his mouth, but, for some reason, thought better of it.
"'E might 'ave lent me a quid if I'd 'ave asked 'im for it," he murmured. "'Owever, it don't matter," He moved on again, and his face brightened—"I'll ask 'im to-night."
MR. MITCH, on prowling round the corner of the stable-yard that morning, found himself in greater demand than on the previous afternoon. There were several vehicles standing there, and Jim Porter, the ostler, hissing violently, was feverishly harnessing the landlord's stepper.
"That you, mate?" he said from underneath the abdomen of the animal, where he was arranging buckles.
Mitch briefly intimated that he had indeed arrived.
"Then 'op acrost the yard and git Mr. Riley's mare out and shut 'er in," was the ostler's request. Mitch did as he was bid, collected a tip from Perry as he came out and drove away, and then, at leisure for a moment, asked the reason of the unaccustomed pressure of business in the stable-yard.
"Hoss show at Andover," explained Mr. Porter. "And, of course, the boss must go. Can't never be 'ere when 'e might be wanted. The brewer'll be 'ere to-day and there'll be plenty to do. 'Owever, it don't much matter now you're turned up again. You can lend a 'and instead. Got any winners to-day?"
Mr. Mitch, with a certain amount of dignity, proceeded to say that he had not yet seen the paper, but that if Jim Porter would permit him to have a glimpse of it he had no doubt that he could spot a couple of winners. He delicately hinted also that he was thirsty.
"All right, mate. Let's see the boss off the premises fust, and then we'll 'ave a bit of lunch and look over the racin'. 'Ere they be."
Mr. Jackson, the landlord, accompanied by a friend who, Mitch learned later, had run down on a visit from town, appeared, wiping their mouths with the backs of their hands. They were riotously dressed in savage checks, and though their features were very dissimilar, yet they conveyed a very curious impression that they resembled each other in an extraordinary degree. Hard-eyed, tight-lipped, and heavily jowled they were—Mitch thought somehow of Canary Wing as he ran a calculating eye over them—and they looked like prizefighters or unsafe bookmakers or prosperous criminals of the middle grade.
They stood by the horse, lighting cigars. The landlord's friend, Mitch noticed, seemed not particularly anxious to go to the horse at all.
"Say what you like, Jackson, I call it wastin' time," he said.
"Ho, do you? Well, you leave it to me. You don't think I'm goin' to spend every minute of the day crawlin' round filthy cellars, do you?" The listening Mitch, passing an oiled brush round the horse's hoofs for the last time, pricked up his ears.
"Because you think blank, asterisked wrong, old pal," continued Mr. Jackson. "Come on—hop up and you can have two quids to one that we overtakes young Riley before Salisbury if you want to bet."
They climbed in, rewarded Mitch's and the ostler's efforts to turn them out well by almost driving over them, and spun off in style.
Mitch stared after them, his heart fluttering in a manner foreign to that organ as a general thing.
"Crawlin' round filthy cellars,' is it?" said Mitch to himself. "What for? Playin' marbles, no doubt, or else a-settin' mousetraps—p'raps! Lumme! It's 'ere—it's buried 'ere! But 'ow did 'e know about it?"
Henry shook his head gravely, and suffered Mr. Porter to take him into the tap-room for refreshment and the "spotting" of winners. Mr. Porter was grieved to find that Mitch's interest in horse-racing seemed to have waned during the night, for the uncle of the racing apprentice was curiously absent-minded until the ostler told him point blank that he hadn't stood him a pint of beer, so that he, Jim Porter, could sit by his side and listen to him, "'Enery Mitch, or whatever 'is name was," muttering to himself. So Henry pulled himself together, and strongly recommended the ostler to put a bit on "Thin-Skinned" in the first race.
"Why, the 'orse'll win at about ten to one on!" grumbled Mr. Porter, with an air of having been swindled.
"Well, darn it, that's better than bein' on a sixty-six to one loser, ain't it?" shouted Mitch, annoyed. "Strike me, I never seen such a lot as these country joskins," he said, apparently to the beer engine. "They thinks you keeps forty to one winners in yer holler teeth and hooks 'em out with a hairpin whenever you wants 'em. I'll tell you when there's something worth backin', but"—he ran his eye down the races for the day in professional style—"but there's nothin' any good on to-day. But don't you be down-'arted, my lad," he went on kindly. "I'll put you on to a 'orse or two later on what'll surprise you." (It may be mentioned here that during the summer he did so, and the majority of the horses "surprised" Mr. Porter to the extent to an appalling amount of shillings out of pocket.)
"Oh, well, mate, that's all I asks," said Jim, satisfied; "I'll let it alone for to-day."
Then they went out to the stables and exercised themselves with a little work. In a suspiciously short time it occurred to Mitch that it would not be a bad idea to stroll up to "Westlynn" on the chance of seeing Boler and hearing what that perspicacious individual had to say as regards the possible clue dropped by Jackson.
"What time do you reckon the brewer's van'll be 'ere, Jim?" he inquired.
"Oh, 's'afternoon, sometime."
Mitch promptly put down the stable fork with which he had been engaged, and remarking that he had some business to see to, but would be back before long, started for the yard gates.
Mr. Porter looked after him and sighed.
"'E ain't a bad sort of feller, but it wouldn't 'ave 'urt 'im to 'ave finished muckin' out the stables," he said to himself.
But Mitch was whistling his way briskly up the High Street. And it was not till he turned the corner and ran into Mrs. Gritty that he repented his haste.
The lady was unfeignedly glad to see him.
"'Ello!" she said;"'owever are you? You're a-lookin' busy"—she glanced at his hopeless clothes.
"Pretty well—pretty well," said Mitch nervously.
Now Mrs. Gritty had taken a substantial fancy to the little man, and she had every intention of asking him—and Boler for her friend, Sarah Hopley—to supper one night. But she was quite shrewd enough to see that if she waited until they purchased even averagely decent clothes she would wait some little time, and this was not her intention.
"Furnicher come?" she asked.
"Well, no—not exactly come," admitted Mitch haltingly; "comin' along—comin' along."
"You must find it awkward not 'avin' your best clothes and that 'ere," she said delicately.
Mitch coughed. "Yes," he said, "we do rather." He had not been aware of the fact until then, but it seemed wise to agree.
"You'll prob'ly 'ave to buy new clothes," she went on, leading up to her intention of proffering a loan. It has been said that she had a comfortable income for a woman of her tastes.
Then, for the second time that day, Mitchy was inspired.
"Look 'ere, Mrs. Gritty, I'll tell you the truth," he said hurriedly. "The fact is, me and my friend Mr. Mitey 'ad a bit of a loss afore we come 'ere. That was why we come—'ad to live somewhere—somehow. I won't tell you no more about this loss of our'n ijest now, but—well—we ain't got a quid in the wide world between us. And if our furnicher don't ever turn up, why it'll be becos somebody's took it in the place where we 'ad our loss. A private business loss it was—and now you know as much about it as I do."
Mrs. Gritty tried to look sorry, but the pleased expression that covered her large face gave Mitch a very complete knowledge of how things stood. He waited with some trepidation for her answer. Speedily enough he knew the worst.
"Look 'ere," said Mrs. Gritty cordially, "I was beginnin' to think somethin' of the sort meself. You'll 'ave to borrow a pound or two off me. It's all right, I can afford it. I've took a fancy to you. There's somethin' neat about you—I don't mean your clo'es—your figure and that. You 'ave five pounds off of me, and lend your mate some, and buy yourselves new rig-outs and that, and you'll be a smartish pair if you gets shaved and walk uprighter, and gets into the way of cleanin' your nails and shinin' your boots and brushin' your teeth, and a few little minor 'abits like them. Then you'll want a quiet sort of job—we'll see about that bimeby—and then if you goes on steady and everything's all right and that, you and me'll get—" Mrs. Gritty noted Mitch's jaw drop suddenly, and pulled up just in time. She hesitated a second, and "you and me'll get to know one another better," she went on. "But, lor! 'ow I do run on. 'Alf a minit."
Evidently she had foreseen matters with some shrewdness, for she was carrying the five pounds about with her. For all that Mitch knew to the contrary, she had just been up to the hut on the chance of seeing him. She opened a shabby purse, and counted out five beautiful yellow coins.
"There I That's a start," she said meaningly, and tendered them.
For the first time in his life Henry hesitated to take money. He looked at them yearningly, his eyes protruding a little.
"'Ere!" said the lady, jerking her hand, and with a faint note of surprise in her jolly voice.
Mr. Mitch gave a sudden gulp and took them. He felt glad the instant he touched the coins. (As he said afterwards to Boler, "There's a feel about gold—a kind of warm, pleasant, heavy feel"—and explained his hesitation by suggesting that he was not feeling very well that morning.)
"That's the style," said Mrs. Gritty. "Come and 'ave supper at my 'ouse some night—you and your mate. I'll see if I can't find a odd stick or two more of furnicher to send roun'."
She beamed fatly on Mitch and left him.
Henry watched her till she turned the corner. Then he furtively bit one of the sovereigns, spat slightly on the others for luck, and went uneasily on towards Boler.
"She'll marry me if I don't look out pretty sharp," he whispered nervously to himself; "I must look out."
By a devious, tortuous pathway of his own he reached the back of the Westlynn kennels, and sitting down on the outside of the hedge bounding the millionaire's grounds, began to whistle softly that once popular air, "The man who broke the bank at Monte Carla"—an agreed call between the partners, not because it sounded like an omen of ultimate success but because it was the only tune that Mr. Mitch, who had no ear for music, could whistle well enough for a listener to distinguish it from any other tune.
Presently Boler's face appeared over the hedge. Mitch however affected not to see him, but stared steadily at five sovereigns in his outstretched palm. Boler's face disappeared. But in less than a minute he came through a little gate some way along the hedge and bore down upon his partner at rapid shuffle.
"What's up, old man?" he asked, sitting down beside Mitch.
"Good news!" said Mitch.
"Now you're talking, old—"
"And bad news," interpolated Henry.
"Oh!" Boler looked blank.
Suddenly Mitch became excited.
"Boler," he whispered hoarsely, "it's buried in the pub cellar! But we shan't get it."
"How d'ye know?"
Henry told of the conversation between the landlord and his burglar-faced friend. Boler pondered.
"I don't know so much," he said presently. "He might 'ave meant anything, servin' beer, bein' a publican—anything. 'Owever we'll talk it over to-night. What's the bad news?"
Mr. Mitch looked worried, and spoke at considerable length on the subject of Mrs. Gritty.
"I wish it was you, Boler—from the bottom of my 'art I wish it was you," he concluded.
Boler looked fixedly at him for a moment. Then, seeing what Mitch meant, he grinned.
"It would 'ave been safer, cert'nly," he admitted readily. Then he grew serious.
"Look 'ere, old mate," he said, "if we're goin' to do any good with this silver, we must keep clear of love-makin' and that"—Mr. Mitch emitted an impatient snarl and stared offensively at his partner. "What I mean is, women upsets things wonderful. Gets secrets out of you, and all that. I mind once I was 'alf starvin', and I managed to hook a lib'ry book out of a free lib'ry, and afore I sold it I read a tale in there about two men who wanted to be kings. And so they was kings too afore they finished, them two. They was jest ordinary men like you and me, but they went and found a place and a tribe of Injians, and one of 'em ses to the Injians—''Ere, I'm a god, and my friend 'ere 'e's a god too. We're strong, powerful, clever gods, and we've come to be kings, and you'd better see about a palace and that for us.' And the Injians did so, too. And they was kings. Now these men, they had previously made an agreement same as we 'ave—and in their agreement they had a clause not for either of 'em to go in for any love-makin' or 'ave anything to do at all with women. Well, after they 'ad been kings for a goodish bit, one of 'em took a wife unto 'isself from among the Injians. What 'appened? She bit 'im to see if he bled. And he did bleed too, rather bad; and thereby she seen 'e was a man and not a god, and she told all 'er Injian pals, and they come along with guns and knives and they laid them two men out pretty. And that was the result of women for them chaps."
Boler ceased with something of an air.
But Mitch only frowned.
"Well, I ain't a god, and never claimed to be. I shan't take Mrs. Gritty unto me, and I shall take thunderin' good care that she don't take me unto 'er. And she cert'nly won't be allowed to bite me to see whether I bleed—so, meanin' no offence, Boler, I calls your yarn a darn silly yarn, and no two ways about it.... 'Owever, you and me can't afford to throw away any suppers, and so we'll buy a suit of clo'es apiece tomorrow, and split up what's left over."
"All right—I'm agreeable," Boler nodded; "meantime, old man, the best thing you can do is to hike off back to the Westley Inn, and wait for a chance to 'ave a look at the cellar. I'm on a clue of me own, and 'ope to 'ave some-thin' definite to-night."
They parted, fairly well satisfied.
HERE, pending the arrival of the brewer's dray, we may leave Mr. Mitch for a while and turn our attention to Boler Mitey. It was a warm, drowsy afternoon, and Boler, with the head kennelman, had taken half-a-dozen of Crail's Great Danes for a walk on the downs. They had arrived at an inviting bank where, by a judicious distribution of their limbs, they could lie with their faces in the shade and their bodies in the sun; and after impressing upon the dogs, with their whips, the advisability of lying quietly down and refraining from the hopeless pursuit of rabbits, the pair were reclining on the bank smoking and lazily talking about their employer.
"As hard a man as ever you'd wish to meet," said the head kennelman, one Alfred Slinger, languidly. "And none too just neither. As a rule these 'ere 'ard men are as just and fair as they be 'ard, but the boss ain't. I can mind a valet he had here a few years ago. Man be the name of Corrie—quiet man, but something 'ard about him too. The boss engaged him as a valet in London, and brought him down here. After a couple of months, or mebbe a bit more, the boss let him take a little 'ouse in the village to bring his mother to. Well, just as this Corrie had got his little 'ouse all furnished and that, afore he brought his mother down something 'appened about a cheque for £500 what ought to 'ave been five pounds. The boss put the blame on Corrie. I 'appened fto be just goin' in to see him about one of the dogs, when I overheard him shoutin' at Corrie.
"'For all I know, you've had a hand in alterin' the cheque yourself,' shouts the boss. 'There's something in this that ain't to my likin'. 'Owever, I ain't going to waste powder and shot on you. You clear out, and be thankful I don't put the 'tecs on you.'
"Well, this Corrie, he begged to be kept on—said all about furnishin' his 'ouse and that—but the boss wouldn't 'ear a word. So Corrie comes on out. I. met him in the passage, and he had murder on his face, Mitey. He half scared me—'00 had always considered him so quiet. Well, I never seen him since. I 'eard he went straight off to his little 'ouse and waited there till the last up train come in and then went away by that. Shows you what a 'ard man the boss is. He must 'ave frightened Corrie out of his life, for he never come back to his 'ouse. Left it all standin'—furniture and all. Nobody 'ere ever seen another sign of him. Broke his 'art, I reckon." Mr. Slinger yawned and relit his pipe.
"I mind, 'owever, that some queer-lookin' men come down from town an 'ad a look over his place. They must 'ave come the same night as Corrie vanished. They was in and out all the next day—seemed to be 'untin' for something, I was told. Afore they went they come up and seen the boss. The butler told me afterwards they was detectives, and wanted to know about Corrie—'oo he was and where the boss picked him up. But the boss was not taking any. He was goin' next day in his yacht for six months, and he said he knowed nothing about Corrie except that he had just sacked him for gettin' drunk. He didn't want to waste time bein' a witness and that, I reckon. He swore to it, and as good as ordered the detectives out of the 'ouse. The butler told me that in the hall one of them turned round and said—
"'It's my belief, sir, that you know more about this than you're telling us, and that you're placing your private pleasure before your public duty.'
"But the boss only laughed, and told him not to be a darn fool.
"Next day they was all gone—boss and all—and none of us 'eard no more about it. The 'ouse stood as it was, with the furniture and that, until at last old Nicholas, the landlord, 'ad it sold up for rent. Nobody ever seen Corrie's mother. Funny thing, weren't it? He's a 'ard man, is the boss."
"Very funny yarn altogether, I reckon," said Boler, trying desperately to keep excitement out of his voice. "Very funny yarn. 'Oo was this Corrie?"
"Now, 'aven't I just told I didn't know—that nobody knowed—not even the police?" demanded Mr. Slinger aggrievedly.
"I mean what was his name?"
"Oh, Bill—William Corrie."
"Seems 'ard luck, don't it?" pursued Boler. "Nice chap, was he? 'Ave a drink and that—good company?"
"Not much of a company chap. Used to be a bit religious—go to chapel and that. Used to preach now and then at the Wesleyan chapel. I never 'eard him myself—I never was much of a Wesleyaner."
Boler was choking with excitement. His soul was staring him in the face, shouting, "Here's your Buckroyd—here he is. Why, Buckroyd was Corrie!"
He had a hundred questions, but only risked one.
"What happened to his luggage. Did 'e leave that?"
Mr. Slinger chuckled.
"He did so—mostly empty. He had two flat sort of trunks, and they was both empty. And a portmantle; and the butler told me he only 'ad enough clothes to fill the portmantle. What he wanted with them trunks, I don't know. I'm takin' care of one of 'em now for 'im, and the butler's got t'other."
Boler chuckled in sympathy, and changed the subject. He had heard enough to go on with. He thought it over quietly in the privacy of the cooking-room of the kennels, when, a little later on, he was boiling tripe for the Great Danes' supper. He sat amidst the odorous steam and pondered; and it should be borne in mind that he, in common with Henry Mitch and most small-change adventurers, was a good deal more intelligent than his slothful and slurring fashion of speech would suggest to the average man.
"Now, let me work it out quiet," he muttered, lighting his pipe. "All the tips Slinger slung me fits in wonderful with the yarn old 'Enry got from that burglar. Exceptin' the Westley Inn part of it. Now, we'll suppose that this 'ere Buckroyd, livin' in London, 'ad a lot of silver and mebbe gold on 'is 'ands, and knew it was gettin' a little bit too hot for him in town. He fust of all calls hisself Corrie, and forges hisself some testimonials, and by means of 'em gets a job as valet to my boss Crail. He comes down 'ere bringin' the silver along with him, and 'ides it 'ere somewhere. Meantime the police is a-follerin' him up, until at last they spots him down 'ere. Down comes two detectives just one day too late. Buckroyd, bein' sacked, goes to town and just shakes 'em off. When he's back in town he hears they're on his track, and so he never comes near the place again. That fits in. But they catches him, after all, and he gets five years. A few years later, dyin' in jail, he tells this Canary Wing a few words about the silver bein' 'idden 'ere. Well, it looks like a cert that 'e buried it under the floor of 'is room in Westlynn. That would be easiest. Bein' religious, 'owever, he would 'ave the run of the vestry of the chapel—same as me, huh!"—Boler sneered—"and he might easy 'ave 'idden it there, where, mind you, he could get at it again a lot easier than he could at 'Westlynn,' which is cert'n'y burglar-proof, what with the electric wires and dogs and that. But I don't see where the pub comes in at all—not for Buckroyd. And that, some'ow, is what makes me think the pub is the place. All t'other works out too bloomin' fluent and simple. And what Mitchy 'ad to say just now cert'n'y sounded like a clue, and a good strong clue too."
He stirred the tripe absently, smoking hard as he did so.
"Well, it's a thunderin' tangled-up affair," he mused, "and we'll talk it over 'ard to-night. We seems to be makin' a move all right, any'ow. I shall 'ave to find means to 'ave a look at Mr. Valet Corrie's room as was. Pity 'e died, for some things. Good job for others, though. I s'pose my best plan'd be to sort of fall in love with one of the 'ousemaids 'ere and get 'er to show me over the 'ouse one day when nobody's about. Wonder what Mitchy will 'ave to tell to-night?"...
Mitchy, meantime, was doing pretty well—as well as could be expected. To be precise, he was, at the moment his partner thought of him, ably assisting the driver of the duly arrived brewer's dray to empty a quart pot of beer. This done, he accompanied Mr. Porter, the ostler, and one of the brewer's men, to the cellar in order to bring up a number of empty barrels.
Even for a country inn—and these are not, as a rule, cramped—the Westley Inn had a large cellar, and one more likely to contain buried silver, Mr. Mitch, peering about in the gloom, had never seen. He whispered as much to himself. The cellar was oblong in shape, and for the most part the dingy walls were hidden behind barrels. There were several black recesses showing here and there, but unquestionably the most striking thing about the big, cavernous den was its extraordinary neatness.
The brewer's man commented on it as he yanked a barrel off its stand as though it might have been a feather pillow.
"Tidiest cellar I iver seen!" he said amazedly. "Some of the cellars I goes into looks like rag-in-bone shops. That's it. That's what they looks like. Bloomin' rag-in-bone shops. This used to be the wust of 'em all—until Jackson come 'ere. Why, 'e must 'ave sweated yer 'art out, Jim, a-puttin' it straight." The ostler grinned.
"I 'aven't done a stroke of work in the bloomin' cellar since 'e took the 'ouse over," he said.
"'Ow's that?" asked Mitch, with undisguised interest.
"Oh, it's a sort of 'obby of the boss's to 'tend to the cellar 'isself. 'E's fair crazy about cellars. From the very fust, 'e's took a deep interest in the cellar, same as you and me, on'y a different kind of interest. I mind when 'e come and looked over the place afore 'e took it 'e was on-common interested in the cellar.
"'You got a good cellar 'ere,' he ses to the agent. 'And I'm glad of it; if there's one thing I like more'n any other thing it's a good cellar. It's blamed untidy now, but I'll soon put it to rights when I'm 'ere.'
"And so 'e 'as done it, too. Why, 'e's often down 'ere now, potterin' about an' potterin' about. Why, see that"—Mr. Porter indicated a board of mortar in a corner—"'e's actually filled in mortar in the cracks between the bricks where it'd worked loose. Oh, 'e's fond of 'is cellar, that what'e is—fond of it. Always down 'ere tidyin' up. Still, it cert'n'y looks the better for it. 'Owever, lets get these barl's up."
Now, as he laboured, tingling with excitement, Mitch was inspired. Why not remain in the cellar and examine it thoroughly when they had finished working there? It was quite possible, he thought, to dodge unnoticed into one of those dark recesses, and then the others would leave him there thinking he had gone out before them. Nobody belonging to the inn (he argued) would miss him, as he was not a regular employe, but a bird of passage, coming and going as his own sweet will moved him.
And as he planned it so it befell. As the others battled with the last barrel but one, Mitch slipped into a recess and dropped on his hands and knees among a lot of old seed potatoes. He turned his face to the wall so that it should not show white against the dark background. There was no need to worry about his hands—they would not have shown very plainly against a tarred fence. Then he waited.
Even had the others suspected anything, a slight mishap with the last barrel would have driven suspicion from their minds. By some clumsiness on the part of Mr. Porter, the barrel was allowed to fall sideways on to the drayman's foot in general, and, in particular, a soft corn that flourished on that individual's little toe. He explained this with a wealth of florid detail, as he hopped round the cellar like an intoxicated bear.
"Wotcher doin' of?" he desired to know. "Wotcher doin' of? Droppin' barrels on people's corns!" and lapsed into a cyclone of abuse. Mitch, kneeling silently in his dark hole, grinned as he listened. Presently, wrangling and arguing, they departed with the barrel, and save for one full cask remaining and a heap of mineral water cases the cellar was empty until the following morning, when a fresh stock of beer would arrive. Things could not have fallen more propitiously for the silver-seeker.
"Wotcher doin' of? Droppin' barrels on people's corns!"
"Now they'll go and argue about corns—hard corns and soft corns, and corns," chuckled Henry, as he cautiously emerged from hiding, "and all the while I shall be down 'ere 'makin' money. Yes."
He produced from his pocket two candle-ends, which with rare foresight he had "lifted" from a pair of carriage lamps in the harness-room, and proceeded to investigate.
For two long hours he was busy, with no thought of the outside world. Crawling, like the serpent, upon his belly, he first of all made the acquaintance of every individual brick in the floor. But he gained no hint from any of these, save that the floor was quite solid and hard to the knuckles; and further, that quite recently the whole of the flooring-bricks had been removed and replaced.
It was clear to the seeker that Mr. Jackson had examined the floor before him, and with a laudable thoroughness. He reluctantly came to the conclusion that, in so far as the floor was concerned, he had wasted his time and, still buoyed up by the unmistakable fact that he was on the right track, he turned his attention to the walls. At the end of another hour he had made the lamentable discovery that Mr. Jackson had been before him here also—save only for one recess, in which the bricks had obviously not been moved for many years, and about four feet of the wall on each side of the recess. And here he tapped like the diligent woodpecker. But there came no answering "hollow sound." Apparently the wall was solid as rock. Perspiring freely and swearing under his breath, he gave it up at last and began to lick his sore knuckles.
"It's funny," he soliloquised softly, glaring thoughtfully at the blank walls. "It's funny where on earth that silver's got to. I'm near it—I'm sure of it. I'm next door to it—got me 'ands right on it—but where is it...? Pah!" he snarled disgustedly. "We shall lose it even now if I don't look out. It's 'ere somewhere, and the boss knows it. And what's more, I shouldn't be surprised if 'e didn't git 'is information where Canary Wing got his—and that's in jail. He looks like it, and so do 'is pal. A couple of bloomin', burglin' silver-'untin' wrong 'uns—judgin' by their faces. 'Owever," he sighed, "I'd better be gittin' out of it afore they comes back." He turned dejectedly to the door. "If they found me 'ere they'd murder me as soon as look at me—yes, and bury me under the brick floor, and nobody be a ha'porth the wiser or sadder. They would—I knows the kind of men they be!"
He glanced nervously over his shoulder, half scared at his morbid imaginings, half amused at his fanciful exaggeration.
"Bloomin' nice tomb this cellar'd make for me, I don't 'alf think! 'Owever, it won't do nothin' of the sort. No tombs for me. Not for Mr. Mitch. Your little 'Enry is off 'ome to a quiet supper—as 'e needs and as 'e 'as earned." He chuckled, and softly turned the handle.
But the door was locked!
"Lumme!" breathed Henry, feverishly straining at the heavy knob. But for all his straining nothing happened. He put his back to the door and, hunching his shoulders, pushed hard, with about as much effect as if he had been pushing at a cliff. He put more effort into it—this time to such purpose that his feet slipped away from under him, and he slid sharply down to a sitting position with a "sickening thud" that did much to unnerve him.
"Ouch," he muttered, spitting. "Been and bit me tongue." He stood up and relit his candle.
"That fool, Jim, must 'ave locked the door and me not 'ave 'eard it. Jest like the country joskin 'e is," growled the prisoner, hideously illogical and unjust.
"Tombs, I said—" he began, and a rat bolted across the floor, and he jumped in spite of himself.
"'Ere, this is a bit thick—it's gettin' late, too," he said nervously. "And afore long it'll be too thunderin' dark to be 'appy." He shivered a little, gazing anxiously at the only remaining candle end. It occurred to him that his wisest course would be to bang the door until he attracted some one's attention, but after five seconds' thought he abandoned the idea. The landlord and his villainous-looking friend might have returned, and he had no desire to be discovered by them. For that would mean farewell to the chance of ever getting the silver, which he was quite certain was hidden somewhere in the cellar. He decided to wait a while anyhow. Some one would be coming down before long, and if he watched from the recess he could see who it was. To any one but the landlord he would disclose himself, explaining that the quart of beer he had shared with the drayman had caused him to "come over queer," and he had if sort of fainted just as the others left the cellar, thinking, no doubt, that he had already gone. He made his decision, and groping across to his recess, settled down to wait—and, waiting, to scare himself with vain imaginings.
Slowly the miserable hours dragged past, and it was not till he had pictured himself lying redly dead on the floor, with two burly ruffians smilingly bending over him, so many times that he had almost got used to the idea that he heard, across the dark, the scraping of the key in the lock as some one turned it, and an appalling oath as the lamp of the newcomer was almost blown out by the displacement of the air as he swung back the door.
Mr. Mitch retreated to the farthest corner of his all too shallow recess, as he recognised the voices of Jackson the landlord and his friend.
GENUINE fear settled like a wreath of ice round Mitch's heart as the two men stumbled into the cellar. Mr. Jackson was first, shading a smoky paraffin lamp with his hand. On his heels followed his friend from London.
Mr. Jackson was first, shading a
smoky paraffin lamp with his hand.
Mr. Mitch, peering fearfully out from his recess, saw instantly that they had been drinking. They breathed heavily, and punctuated their breathings with occasional hiccoughs. And they both appeared to be in an evil temper.
Mr. Jackson placed the lamp on the one remaining barrel, and turned upon his ill-favoured, scowling friend.
"'Ere's the cellar!" he said. "'Ere—what you're in. It's all very fine for you and Basement Stevens to grouse and grumble and write insultin' letters about the time I've took to find the silver Buckroyd said 'e buried 'ere; but all I know is that I've been over the cellar—walls and floor—brick by bloomin' brick, and, what's more, I've dug a twelve-inch spike into the earth under and be'ind each brick and there ain't nothin' there. I've got another two or three yards of space to cover, and then we shall know. And if it ain't there, why, it ain't in this pub, that's all. I'll tell you what it is, Pincho Matthews, it's a do, that's what it is. We've bin done. Either the stuff wasn't buried 'ere at all, or else some one been 'ere fust. Somebody's done old Mother Hubbard on us."
Pincho Matthews emitted a ferocious growl.
"'Oo 'as? 'Oo's bin 'ere? Lumme, if I catch him I'll—" here followed details which froze the very marrow of Mr. Mitch, flattened against the wall of his recess.
"Fat lot that 'elps, don't it?" commented Jackson bitterly. "It's a do, that's what it is—a do. 'E always was a slippery card, Buckroyd was. Why, we only got Basement Stevens' word that 'e's died in jail. S'posin' 'e ain't dead?"
"Then 'e ought to be!" Evidently Pincho felt murderous.
"Well, all I can say is, s'posin' the silver ain't in this cellar it ain't in this pub. And directly I've searched the cellar, I'm goin' to chuck up the pub and draw me valuation money and git back to London. I ain't got no use for the country. I was a fool to ever take it on—thanks to you and Basement. 'Owever, no more bloomin' partnership specs for me. I've always been on my own before, and after this I'll stop on my own. What's the good of talkin'—I'm sick of it."
"'Ow about that hole in the wall there?" asked Pincho, indicating Mitch's retreat.
"I've got that left to search," grumbled Jackson.
"Come on, then—let's search it!" Mitch heard shuffling footsteps, and he felt (he said afterwards) as though some one had caught his stomach on a rod and line and swung it clean over their shoulders, as young anglers sometimes swing fish.
But Mr. Jackson's energy was not equal to it.
"Ho, yes! At twelve o'clock at night with a feather-bed waitin' upstairs! I can see myself doin' brick-work now—I do not think! Come on upstairs and go to bed, you fool, and we'll finish off the cellar to-morrow."
Mitch breathed a short but very earnest prayer of thanksgiving as he heard Pincho agree and shuffle, with a final imprecation, to the door. Peering out, he saw the door close with a bang.
He waited, chuckling nervously, for a half-hour—just long enough, he judged, for the pair to get really interested in their feather-beds, and then he turned the handle. As he hoped and expected, Mr. Jackson had been too drunk to trouble about locking the door, and so, silently as the midnight beetle of the kitchen, he stole up the dark stairs. Stealthily he made his way to the back door, soundlessly he unbolted it, his soul singing an anthem of congratulation, and scornfully he threw a contemptuous look back at the dark interior of the inn.
"Not so bad. You'll 'ave to 'urry, 'Enery, my boy, or Boler'll be nervous," he whispered, and so stepped out—straight into the yearning arms of Police Constable Hinxman.
"Aah!" said the policeman. "Jest right! Caught very nice!"
Mitch gulped, and with a mighty effort pulled himself together.
"Ho!" he whispered bitterly. "Wotcher mean? Wotcher think you're doin'?"
"Never you mind—you're caught this time. Never ask questions, then you won't 'ear no lies. You're a-comin' along with me—that's what you're going to do!"
Then Mitch's presence of mind reasserted itself.
"All right, you slabheaded joskin," he whispered hoarsely. "P'raps I can lock the bloomin' door fust. With only you to protect the place there'll be some thieves in 'ere afore long."
He coolly took the key from the inside, locked the door, pocketed the key, and moved across the stable-yard with the suddenly doubtful policeman.
"Now, old Beedlecrusher, wotcher want?" he began briskly, easily, and with the air of a perfectly innocent man.
P.C. Hinxman grinned doubtfully.
"Ah, you 'aven't got no silver spoons hid in your pockets, I s'pose—you 'aven't got—"
But Mitch broke in, sour, brief, and contemptuous.
"Search me, you lump!" he said. Hinxman looked even more doubtful, and took him at his word. They went across the low brick wall of the stable-yard refuse pit, and searched one by one his prisoner's pockets. He found a pruning-knife, a clay pipe, a screw of shag, a three-day-old Sporting Life, sevenpence in coppers and two florins (Mitch's gold was in a secret leather pocket just under the armhole of his waistcoat), some string, a picture post-card of Mornington Cannon, a double-headed farthing and, finally, the key of the back door of the Westley Inn.
"Search me, you lump!"
Mr. Hinxman stared at the homely collection as it lay in the moonlight, and he looked remarkably foolish—even for a country policeman. Obviously he had slipped up, and that badly.
Then Mitch, speaking in a low, intense whisper, summed up.
"You Hampshire looney!" he began, cleared his throat, and began again. "You unforchnit bluebottle! 'Aven't you got the sense to know that I've been took on unofficial by Mr. Jackson to keep an eye on the stable work 'ere and to 'elp see after the cellar work when necessary, and to tidy up indoors after closin' time sometimes! Why, everybody knows it—'ceptin' the one man who ought to know it." He drew breath and proceeded. "Ah, well, this'll lose you your job, that's all." He began to replace the articles. "I shall lodge a complaint at An-dover p'lice station and 'ave you sacked. Then I'll sue you for damadges, that's all! Unless you like to pay now—say ten shillin's."
Mr. Hinxman was at all times a man of few, words. He pulled out a leather bag and counted therefrom nine shillings.
"Ten!" said Mitch, licking his lips.
The constable added a shilling.
Mitch took them, spat on them for luck, and "Let this be a lesson to you," he said gaily. "Good-night."
Mr. Hinxman paused emotionally before he spoke. But he answered at last.
"You agrees not to tell a livin' soul?" he said. "So help you?"
"So help me Susan!" replied Mitch cheerfully. "Good-night."
He swung off, rattling the money in his pocket. At the entrance to the yard he paused, listening to something the policeman appeared to be saying to himself.
"Oh!" said Mitch playfully, pretending to be shocked. "And you a policeman, too!"
Then he struck out for the hut.
TO Mr. Mitch's astonishment, he heard voices as he drew near to the half-open door of the cottage. So, with the caution that his lean years had taught him, he quietly stepped up to the window and peered through.
He looked upon a memorable scene. Boler Mitey, with an expression of ineffable weariness upon his face, sat dejectedly on a stool by the rough table, holding a hymn-book in his hand. Facing him was Mr. Winchester Chalk, also with a hymn-book. Mitch grinned and listened.
"And there we 'ave it, my friend," came the earnest voice of Winchester. "We 'ave it summed up in them few words—a glass too much! Oh, pause and think afore it is too late—dash down that pizenous broth of Satan—dash it down on the floor and buy a loaf of 'olesome bread instead. That's it—that's the way to talk to 'em, Mr. Mitey; and now we'll jest 'ave 'ymn number 119, and if our pore misbeguided friend don't stagger 'ome before then, I'll go."
But Boler had come to the extreme end of his patience. He snatched at the last word.
"Oh, go! Go now!" he roared disgustedly.
"I don't want no hymns sung at me, and I don't want to sing no hymns at my pals. You get on my nerves, you do—you'd get on a bloomin' mummy's nerves, you would. Of all the—"
But at this moment Henry, fearing lest his partner should betray himself as being no true child of what he termed the Wesleyan sex, made an impressive entrance.
"Evenin', mates both," said he, puffing a rank cloud of smoke into Winchester Chalk's face. "When you've both done 'oldin' this 'ere little service I'd like to point out that it's past twelve o'clock—a good bit past."
Boler put his hymn-book on the table with a sigh of relief—as though he had just recovered from a bout of indigestion—and the partners both looked so pointedly at the door that Mr. Chalk, with Boler's explosion fresh in his mind, had no other course open to him but to clear out.
"Well, dear friends, I must bid you 'G'night' now. But"—he fixed Mitch with a cold eye—"I shall call round to-morrer accordin' to our arrangement—brother!" Mitch sneered offensively at him, and Winchester, with affected meekness, departed. There was silence between the silver-seekers until the sound of the religious rat-catcher's footsteps died away, and then they leaned to each other, speaking simultaneously.
"Boler, it's as good as ours!"
"Mitchy, we've got it in our 'ands!"
Their voices cracked with excitement.
They were silent again from sheer surprise. Then Mitch lapsed suddenly, and with the air of a somewhat injured man, into the story of his cellar adventure.
Boler listened without comment to the end.
Then he told the amazing story of Buckroyd alias Corrie, as he had heard it from Walter Slinger.
"I don't see where the pub comes in at all in your yarn," said Mitch, at the end, cutting a liberal slice of cold bacon and pouring himself beer from a stone jar.
"Neither do I—yet," agreed Boler. "But one thing's clear enough to me, and that's this—Canary Wing wasn't the only man in the jail that Buckroyd told about this 'ere silver when 'e was alive. Them two at the pub 'ave 'eard about it as well. But it looks to me that they 'aven't 'eard anything about Westlynn or the Wesleyan chapel. After this I'm beginnin' to believe that the pub's out of it, Mitchy. That landlord 'as been there six months now, and if the silver was there he'd 'ave found it before now. No, matey, I'm keepin' me eye on Westlynn—that's the clue I'm a-follerin' up. But you 'ang on to the pub for a bit—something might turn up. And we'll 'ave another look at the chapel too, fust chance. Any'ow, we 'aven't done bad for the few days we been 'ere. And we shall do better—you mark my words—a bloomin', darn sight better. But we must keep that Chalk out of 'ere, some'ow, or I shall find myself committin' murder on 'im one of these days!"
* * * * *
FEW people have been so keenly watched in this wicked world as were Messrs. Jackson and Matthews at the Westley Inn during the next few days. Like the carrion-eaters that sail in wide circles in the sky noting every movement on the plain below, Henry Mitch hung about the inn watching the landlord and his friend. Sometimes Jackson would stroll out behind a cigar looking good-tempered, and on these occasions Mitch would tremble, breathe an hysterical 'He's found it,' and contemplate going into the stable and hanging himself with one of the horse's halters; then Pincho Matthews would break into a cyclone of abuse at the ostler or Mitch for the most trivial reason, and Mitch's hopes would rise like a thermometer in a hot oven. He turned from hot to cold with every half-hour of the day. Unable to see how the search of the recess in the cellar was turning out, Mitch hung like a haunted thing round the stable-yard waiting and watching. Nothing escaped him that was in any way connected with the pair who were searching the cellar.
It was on the third day that his mind was eased. He was crossing from the stables to the harness-room, when Jackson and Pincho, wrangling furiously, appeared at the back door.
"Say what you like! Do what you like! See? I've done with it!" snarled the landlord, and flung a trowel which he was carrying across the yard with all his force. The handle of the thing took Mitch just over the ear—but nothing could have been more welcome. In his delight—for he knew now that they had failed to locate the silver—in his delight he forgot to be stunned. In the ordinary way he would have dropped like a ripe apple and remained unconscious until he judged the person who had knocked him down sufficiently frightened to be glad, even grateful, to pay damages—anything from a sovereign up, according to what Mitch thought he could get.
But now he rubbed his ear, and meekly picked up the trowel and took it with him into the harness-room. He heard Jackson repeating bitterly—
"I'm off back to the Smoke! I'm off back to the Smoke! No more of yer darn ivy-covered country pubs and bloomin' treasures for me! I'm off back to the Smoke as soon as I can get the pub off me 'ands! And dam' all of yer, I say. You and Buckroyd and Basement Stevens and all of yer. I'm on me own for ever—after this."
Mitchy grinned and rubbed his hands.
He had expected, had prayed for this. Boler—diligently working back on Corrie's Westlynn trail—had seen a way that made it all clear and all beautiful.
"If Jackson goes," Boler had said; "if Jackson don't find the silver and chucks up the pub, persuade Mrs. Gritty to take it on. She'll jump at it—she used to keep a pub, and I don't believe she's ever been really 'appy out of it. Get 'er to take it and make you potman. Then you'll be able to search every inch of the place."
And now Jackson was eager to throw it up and return to London and his particular branch of crime (Mitch, pondering, paid him the poor compliment of taking it for granted that he was a criminal); and Boler and Mitch were going to supper that night at Mrs. Gritty's house....
Ten minutes later, Jim Porter, lying on a heap of straw in the stable poring over a volume sanguinely entitled—
How to Find Winners!
An Easy and Absolutely Cast-Iron
Accumulator System
by "£10,000 a-Year",
was amazed to hear Mitch announce solemnly rom his seat on the corn-bin that if there happened to be any gentleman present who was sufficiently a sportsman to go to the bar and fetch a quart of "sixpenny" and two tuppenny cigars, he, Henry Mitch, was the gentleman prepared to pay for these luxuries.
DESPITE the curious predatory expression which all men who have lived by their wits for any length of time acquire, and which was by no means absent from the faces of either of the partners, the pair did not look so "dusty" (Mitch's succint phrase) when they entered Mrs. Gritty's dining-room that night. They had new clothes—not brand new, but only just second-hand, as the Andover dealer from whom they had purchased them expressed it. Boler looked the army reserve man beyond any mistaking, and Mitch conveyed an excellent impression of a ship's cook in funds. A sudden fear that his wife might recognise him, which had seized him at the last moment, had been banished by Boler's brilliant idea of a black patch over one eye. Mitch's objection that Mrs. Gritty might insist on seeing the injured eye and bathing it, had been readily overcome by Boler's callous suggestion that if it would make Mitch feel any more comfortable he would be pleased to give him, in which eye he desired, a punch that would put it beyond any sort of doubt that the injury was genuine. Mitch declined this well-meant offer with such stiffness that the walk down to Mrs. Gritty's had been taken in silence.
The lady was pleased to see them—particularly Mitch. She looked him up and down, beaming approval. She was so interested in his appearance that it seemed quite natural for her to pull his tie down at the back and straighten it in front.
"Supper'll soon be ready. Sarah 'Opley'll be 'ere in a minute or two." She proceeded to commiserate with Mitch as to his wounded eye—he explained the accident with detail—and then, more because it seemed the right and polite thing to do than because she had any idea of hurting her visitors' feelings, she hospitably invited them to wash their hands. It was a pity that Mitch nervously mumbled something about "that ain't dirt—it's sunburn! Washed 'em jest afore tea!" as it caused a momentary awkwardness. Mrs. Gritty speedily dispelled this with an offer of gin and bitters. They took two each and brightened up considerably. Mitch even plucked up courage to compliment his hostess on the colour of her dress.
"I always did like that kind of yallery brown!" he volunteered. "Didn't you, Boler?"
Boler did, of course—although he fancied a touch of green would brighten it. Mrs. Gritty pointed out that she was wearing a green bow, poured them another gin and bitters, and asked them what they thought of her blouse.
"I've got a leg o' pork for supper," she presently informed them. "Nice bit of pork it is. I always did say you can't do better than to go to Bill Hawkins for a nice leg of pork. He kills well and clean—bleeds well, too, and that's 'ow 'tis 'is pork comes out so nice and white and firm."
Mitch, gallantly determined to make an indelible impression upon the lady for his own (and Boler's) mercenary ends, here dragged out from his experience a gruesome yarn.
"Speakin' of a nice cut o' pork," he began, "puts me in mind of a trick a butcher once played on a mate of mine in a place jest outside Southampton—place called Totton. One Saturday afternoon this mate of mine—man name of George Lovejoy—called into the butcher's, a friend of his, for a chat. Well, presently, George is jest goin', when Salter (that's the butcher, you understand) says, 'say, George, old man, I killed some pork today that's jest your handwritin'! Beautiful pork—all dairy-fed. I bought some of the best pigs I've ever seen yesterday. All best dairy-fed—they come off Lord Radley's estate—lovely pork it is. You reely must 'ave a leg for tomorrer's dinner.' Well, George Lovejoy always was a taffety man, a very dainty eater, and a little bit suspicious of butcher's pork—you both knows how a butcher who keeps pigs feeds 'em on slaughter-'ouse stuff and blood and that—but the mention of Lord Radley made him feel pretty certain that anything off his estate would be very near prize pigs. And so he takes a leg of the pork, and invites Salter to come round to his place to dinner on Sunday. Well, next day Salter comes round, and they sits down to as nice a leg of pork as what any one could wish.
"'Uncommon bit o' pork, this is,' says George, cuttin' 'imself his third lot, 'don't know as I've ever tasted anything like it afore. Pass the mustard, Harry.'
"'Uncommon is the word,' says Salter forgetfully. 'This is good pork. And so it ought to be, considerin' the pig it come off of was born, bred, and fatted up by me in my own sties under my own eyes!'
"Well—Salter being a general butcher too! George Lovejoy put down his knife and fork very slow, and stared at Salter very 'ard.
"'What?' he said, kind of muffled, 'did you rear that pork?'
"'I did so,' said Salter, very proud of it, wondering what was up.
"George Lovejoy got up, with his mouth sort of quiverin'.
"Why, damme, you told me yesterday it was best dairy-fed!' he shouts, and goes off out in a hurry. He never spoke to Salter for seven years after that—exceptin' once when 'e told 'im that the next chap he sent round with the bill for that bit 'o pork he'd kill with an axe. He was very clever with axes—cut tin' down trees and that. But he was always a very taffety man, a dainty eatin' man."
As Mitch finished his story, Mrs. Hopley's knock was heard at the door, and he paled behind his patch.
"'Ere's Sarah!" said Mrs. Gritty, pointedly beaming at the unenthusiastic Boler, and went to admit her. Almost at the same moment L'weezer, Mrs. Gritty's domestic, appeared from the kitchen in a state of profuse perspiration, and briefly intimated to her mistress that she'd better come and help "dish up" the vegetables.
The hostess did so, and within five minutes Mr. Mitch, by request, was carving the leg of pork out of all recognition. So generous was he, that even Boler was fain to suggest his taking a little back. But Mitch's astonishment at this was so palpable and unfeigned that Boler withdrew his proposition and passed his plate for greens.
Mr. Mitch was carving the leg of pork out of all recognition.
It is a curious thing that long before the meal was finished Mrs. Hopley had made it very apparent to them all that she had not taken a fancy to Mitch—doubtless because he (she said) reminded her in many ways of her husband. To the latter and his vices she referred at some length. His virtues—if indeed he possessed any—she ignored.
The comparison she began in fairly style, but her naturally indifferent temper carried her away.
"I won't say I'm sorry 'e's dead, because that would be a lie," she said, as one who states a bald fact. "I wish, p'raps, 'e 'adn't been drowned, but that can't be helped. Although, mind, he deserved it—runnin' away and desertin' people. Not that I cared. Glad to be rid of him. He wasn't unlike you, Mr. Mitch—about your build—but didn't 'ave such nice eyes." Behind his patch Mitch winked one of his nice eyes. "He was an unpleasant man to live with—discontented, grizzlin' man. Yet I'd wait on that man hand and foot. An hour extra in bed every Sunday, and a glass of home-made beer before he took me to the chapel in the mornin'—brewed with my own hands. 'Alf-an-hour's nap after a nice cold dinner, and plenty of room to smoke in the woodshed, although I hate smokin'. Nice stroll to chapel with me in the evenin', and p'raps a glass of beer with his supper. But he didn't appreciate it—the things he'd say about the chapel you'd never believe. The language! Chapel twice a Sunday's not too much for a man, is it?" She appealed to Boler, who avoided her gaze, and shook his head dismally.
"No, nothin' pleased him—he was a loafin', misbeguided, lazy little 'ound, and he's got what he deserved. And I expect he's re-pentin' bitterly of it in a place of torment." Mitch finished his beer thoughtfully, poured himself another glass, emptied his mouth, and "reckoned" that whatever such a man got he deserved.
With the departure of the now completely ruined leg of pork and the appearance of a huge greengage pie, the conversation switched on to money.
"Money," said Boler solemnly, "is a boon and a blessin'." Despite the amount of alcoholic refreshment he had consumed he audaciously lapsed for a while into the fluent Mitey that had regarded the Ringford chapel with "feelin's of love and admiration." Somehow Boler had the knack of being able to make a deeply religious remark, and end by swallowing a glass of beer as easily as he drew breath, and yet without seeming incongruous or inconsistent.
"Money," he repeated gravely, "is a boon and a blessin', providin' it is put to a proper purpose—and the best use it can be put to is to be circulated... for the good of the community."
Mitch nodded vigorously.
"Yes, so 'tis," he said, and almost blushed as Mrs. Gritty beamed upon him in perfect agreement.
"Next best to circulatin' it is investin' it. Investin' it in a business which circulates it fairish, and 'aving circulated it brings it back once more to its owner—with a liddle bit extry hangin' on to it! That's business—good business—and anybody 'oo's got money and 'ealth and strength ought to use all three in business, and not live lazy on it. What's your views, Mitch?"
It was noticeable that Mrs. Gritty awaited Mitch's valuable views with considerable interest. She watched him, her spoon, generously freighted with greengage pie, suspended midway between her plate and her mouth.
"Quite right, Boler—more than right," responded Henry with obvious sincerity. "You puts it in a nutshell—not the money, I don't mean, but the sense of your meanin'."
Mrs. Gritty swallowed her greengage pie hurriedly.
"There, Sarah," she said quickly, "did you 'ear that? Anybody with money ought to go into business. My very words, over and over again! I've always said so. I've always intended to."
"Intended what?" queried Mitch.
"Why, to go into business!" announced the innocent lady triumphantly. The hopes of the silver-seekers rose with a leap.
"Whatever sort of business do you understand?" Mitch leaned across to her, smiling, trying to keep the great expectancy out of his solitary eye.
"Why, the public business, of course. I kept a nice little 'ouse just outside of London before I lost my 'usband. 'The Quoiters' Arms' near 'Ampstead. I gave it up a few months before poor Bill died, and I've been wishin' ever since I 'adn't done so. I like a bit of bustle, and I'm a pretty good business woman too. I only wish I knew of a good liddle 'ouse I could take. I'd go into it as soon as I could. You 'appen to know of a 'ouse?" she ended with a sort of ponderous playfulness.
Mitch's face suddenly went solemn.
"I do—the very place," he said seriously.
"Where? Does it do a good beer trade?" excitedly demanded the hostess.
"The Westley Inn—jest up the road!"
Both the ladies were amazed.
"Huh!" said Mrs. Hopley, with a sniff, "that man Jackson ain't such a fool as some," meaningly. "The Westley Inn pays him too well for 'im to think of givin' it up!"
"All the same, 'e's goin' to. I 'eard 'im say so to 'is friend this mornin'. 'E's sick of the country, and wants to git back to London. I 'eard 'im say so; and it's my belief that you'd get the 'ouse dirt cheap if you was to take it off 'is 'ands, Mrs. G. You can but try, anyhow!"
In spite of her peculiarities, Mrs. Gritty was a very fair business woman in her own way, and she certainly knew that the Westley Inn did a good business.
"Yes!" she said; "and try I will, too—first thing in the mornin'."
The partners were fain to bury their faces in their tumblers to hide the triumph in their eyes.
The evening passed off uncommonly well after that. Neither Mitch nor Boler suffered a dry moment. And Mrs. Gritty, with a vague idea that they were all celebrating some momentous event, was a more than sufficiently generous hostess.
At eleven o'clock they left arm-in-arm, very friendly, each leaning slightly on the other.
Mrs. Gritty came to the gate and, ignoring Sarah Hopley's contemptuous and bitter sniff, fondly watched them go up the road. There was a little breeze blowing, and borne back to her on the wings of this little breeze she heard a snatch of song—
"A thir' f'r you—hic!
'N' a thir f'r me!
'N' a—hic!—f'r Car'rary Wing."
"Drunk as pigs," said Sarah Hopley sourly.
The smile left Mrs. Gritty's face, and she looked angry.
"They've enjoyed their evenin', though," she said quietly. "Once now and again don't matter if a man is a man and not a fool. Some of us would drive any man to drink. You're too 'ard, Sarah—everybody says so!"
Then they parted, with a certain stiffness on both sides.
WITHIN a fortnight Mrs. Gritty was landlady of the Westley Inn, and, as she said, "Proud of it, too!" The first thing she did was to appoint Mitch, what she termed "the man on the premises," at a wage of one sovereign per week. The duties of the man on the premises were various and many. To the poorly disguised surprise and disgust of Mr. Jim Porter, for instance, Mitch promptly assumed the management of the stable-yard. On the first day of his elevation to authority he discovered Mr. Porter resting on his favourite corn-bin drowsily watching one of his eternal newspaper races. It seemed that a speedy mare—an outsider—had jumped off cleverly as the flag fell at the corner of a Dewar's Whisky advertisement, maintained her lead up to an announcement of Beecham's Pills, where she was joined by the favourite; the pair then entered the straight right opposite a group of Apollinaris testimonials and fought out a ding-dong finish the whole length of a Bile Beans advertisement, the mare flashing past a "Why Be Bald?" lie a gallant winner by a head. Mr. Porter had become so interested that he did not observe Mitch appear at the doorway. But the latter soon remedied the omission.
"'Ere, 'ere!" he said; "this won't do, Jim. All very well for Jackson, but it won't do for me, me lad! You ought to know that! There's two traps covered with mud. Wants washin'! Come on—see about it!"
Mr. Porter slowly put down the paper and stared in a stupefied manner at his late friend.
"Wot?" he managed to gasp at last.
"You 'eard what I said—two filthy traps out in the yard cryin' for a wash! Disgraceful, I call it—won't soot me, my lad. You'll 'ave to clean 'em, so you'd better see about it."
"You 'eard what I said—two filthy traps cryin' for a wash!.
Mr. Porter suddenly grasped the situation, and rose to it.
"'Ave you become the landlord of this 'ere pub?" he demanded with some heat.
Mitch shook his head.
"Not landlord—manager!" he said in a dignified manner.
"Then—! What—d'you mean—by—or-derin' me about?" roared Mr. Porter, all his restraint suddenly giving way.
Mitch drew breath—a long, deep breath—for a withering retort, when suddenly Mrs. Gritty, who had come up silently, pushed him aside, and Mr. Porter wilted and died out and was not comfortable any more.
"Wasn't I jest goin' to wash the traps and that?" he said aggrievedly. "I ain't 'ad no instructions from you, m'm, to take instructions from 'im!"
"Ho! 'Aven't you. Well, you take 'em now, then," snapped the lady. She wheeled ponderously to the silent Mitch. "Give 'im 'is orders," she said briefly. "We'll see 'oo's boss 'ere!"
Mitch smiled nervously; somehow all the spirit had gone out of him also.
"Go on, Jim," he said. "Them carts is filthy dirty. Better clean 'em up a bit, I s'pose."
"Well, wasn't I jest a-goin' to?" Mr. Porter mumbled, and moved out into the yard. Mrs. Gritty chuckled, and invited Mitch to have a glass of beer. As they went across the yard a tramp drifted through the big gate.
"What want?" This seemed to be Mrs. Gritty's formula with tramps.
"Work," answered the ready liar, with a virtuous air.
"No, you don't want anything of the sort. You want beer. You clear out or Til set the dogs on to you," answered Mrs. Gritty kindly, and the tramp turned towards the gate. Before he reached it another of his kind came in. But the first shook his head, and they slouched out together.
Mitch and the landlady entered the bar parlour.
"So you'll do all right, you reckon?" asked Mrs. Gritty, as Mitch wiped his mouth. Henry nodded.
"Yes, I'm pretty 'andy," he said modestly. "It wouldn't be a bad idea for me to paper them spare attics upstairs. I noticed they was remarkable shabby when the valuation was bein' made. There's a lot of rolls of old paper up in the loft that'd jest about do for it, I thought."
He had observed also that one of the attics referred to possessed what looked like a trap door to the roof—papered over. It was not noticeable save to one who was looking for something of the sort, and Mr. Mitch had theories as to what lay behind it. But he did not mention this.
Mrs. Gritty agreed, and went into the bar to serve a new customer—a shabby-looking stranger.
"Lot of tramps about," she said casually, as two in the corner got up and shuffled out.
"Noticed it meself," said the man; "I'm one of 'em."
Mrs. Gritty looked annoyed, and at a loss for answer. Fate provided it, however, for just then in came yet another of the species.
"Oh!" she said; "then 'ere's company for you."
But beyond exchanging a quick furtive look the two ignored each other, and the landlady called the barmaid from her lunch, gave her brief instructions to mind the till, and went into the garden to get a vegetable marrow for dinner.
A little later, descending the steps of the loft, bowed down and burdened with roll upon roll of faded wall-paper, and endeavouring without success to appear unconscious of the ferocious stare with which Jim Porter, who was languidly washing down the traps, regarded him, Mr. Mitch saw Perry Riley enter the yard.
"Mornin', Mr. Riley. Anythin' fresh?" said Henry gaily.
"Only tramps, Mitch! And they don't look particularly fresh—at least the ones I saw don't. There seems to have been a lot of 'em come here in the night. If I saw one I saw twenty on my way up here."
"How's things in the courtin' line?"
Perry flicked his leggings with a riding-switch.
"Oh, about as usual. I think Katie's coming round. I expect she'll manage without her aunt's consent before very long. The sooner the better." Perry looked thoughtful for a second. Then, dropping his voice, he asked a curious question.
"I say, Mitch, doesn't your pal Mitey work at Crail's place?"
Mitch nodded.
"Supposed to work there," he said frankly.
"Well, what sort of a reputation has Crail got among his servants—his maid-servants, I mean. Is he—er—does he treat them properly—like a gentleman. You know—no foolery or anything of that sort."
"'Im! Lumme, no. Boler says 'e's a 'ard man—as 'ard with women as what 'e is with men. The 'ousekeeper told Boler 'e was that fond of his wife"—Mitch spoke amazedly—"before she died that the 'ousekeeper reckons 'e's got a grudge against every other woman becos she didn't die instead of his wife."
"Oh—!" Mr. Riley suddenly looked uneasy. He hesitated a moment. Then he sighed like a man who has come to a decision against his judgment, and invited Mitch to take refreshment.
"I want a little private talk with you, Mitch."
They went into the vacant bar parlour, and, having ordered drinks, Mr. Riley began.
"Crail's after Katie! He's got into the way of meeting her by-chance-on-purpose on the down. He's always polite, and Katie says he's serious," he said, and waited for it to soak in.
"Crail!" gasped Henry.
"Yes. You look like having a millionaire for a nephew," he said. There was a pause.
"Sounds well!" said Henry at length.
Perry glared at him.
"You never did have much of an ear for music or any other sound," commented the horse-dealer.
"But he's a millionaire; darn it, Perry, it do sound well." Mr. Riley shifted uneasily.
"D'you like him?" he asked. "Think you and he'd get on well together. Friendly and cordial to one another—think you'd make a good uncle to him?"
Mitch suddenly grinned.
"No, I bloomin' well don't. I 'ate the sight of the man. No, 'im and me ain't meant for mates, not exac'ly."
Perry allowed himself to look relieved.
"I'm glad of that," he said; "I shan't have to tell your wife about you." Mitch stiffened. "But," Perry continued, "I'm going to tell Katie who you are. You see, she's just as fond of me as ever she was, and I'll bet sixty-six to one she'll always be the same. But, at the same time, she's only about eighteen, and girls are changeable, especially when they've got a nagging, obstinate aunt behind 'em and a good-looking—I give Crail the credit of that—millionaire in front of 'em. I'm not so poor, but there's a good many things she'd like that she'll have to go without if she marries me—diamonds and so on. I suppose she'd like 'em—never heard of a girl who didn't, except one. And she's blind. Well, I don't want to be cut out, Mitch, and the only way to make certain with a girl is to marry her at once—you needn't tell her I said so, y'know. She don't want to marry without her aunt's consent. That's reasonable enough, I suppose, as she's lived with her aunt all her life. I believe she's afraid Sarah'll forbid the banns or make a fuss in the church. So I'm going to tell her who you are and let you have a chat with her, and tell her that you approve of it and all that." He ceased, looking at Mitch with some anxiety.
But Henry shook his head firmly.
"Can't be done, Perry. Gals talk. Can't be done. I'd like to oblige you—but not that way."
Mr. Riley thrust out his jaw.
"All right," he said. "Here's for Sarah. You'd better pack your things, old man, for once I've told her she'll whip you out of your hut and homg with her like a winkle. However, it can't be helped. She'll let me have Katie too—and, though I shall be sorry for you, I shan't be able to complain. It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. So long, old man." Humming a cheerful little air Mr. Riley made his way to the door, leaving his unfortunate friend speechless.
The door had almost closed when he pulled himself together and spoke.
"Perry!" he breathed in an agitated whisper, "Perry! 'Ere—come 'ere! Can't you take a joke? I was only 'avin' a bit of fun with ye!"
Mr. Riley reappeared.
"As you like, old man, of course," he said, reseating himself.
"Course I'll do it. You make Katie swear she won't breathe a word to a soul, and then make arrangements for 'er and me to 'ave a talk."
Perry rose again, and shook Mitch's limp hand friendlily.
"That's the way to talk," he said enthusiastically. "That's you speaking, Henry—my old friend Henry Hopley. All right. I'll see you again before long."
He departed, and Mitch eyed the door sullenly.
"Your old friend 'Enry 'Opley, is it," he fluttered; "you ought to be plugged in the eye—friendly is as friendly does, I say."
He procured himself a beer, and dejectedly went back for the paper he had left on the loft steps.
MR. MITCH having conveyed to the attics all the implements of the paperhanger's trade he could find, including a garden rake, with the handle of which he proposed to push open the trap door, decided to postpone operations until after dinner. If he had been upset at Perry Riley's scheme for the cutting out of Crail, he was deeply interested, nevertheless, in the matter of Crail falling in love with his niece. He wanted to talk about it, and accordingly he set out for Westlynn in search of Boler Mitey. He had not far to go, for a hundred yards from the inn he met Boler strolling down the street with two big dogs at his heels.
It was one of those quiet sunny mornings when a country village seems to be almost uninhabited save by sleepy dogs and a man in shirt-sleeves at some one or other of the doors. But this morning Ringford High Street presented an almost crowded appearance. There were at least thirty people in sight, dotted about. With the exception of Boler, Mitch, and old Ben Durdle, the centenarian, who was taking the sun on his doorstep, they were all tramps. They were all dusty as to the boots, and each of them presented a colour study in varying shades of bottle-green, sage-green, and olive-green. The dingy exception was a slow moving scarecrow wearing old sand shoes, a straw hat through which his red hair protruded like a species of stiff, copper- coloured grass, and a huge and ancient grey military greatcoat which reached to his heels.
"Hello, Bole," grinned Mitch cheerfully, "how's things? Anything fresh?"
"Place seems to be growin'. Lot of visitors about. Holiday season, I s'pose. Good for business—I don't think!" said Boler, indicating the tramps. Even as he spoke another emerged from the Westley Inn wiping his mouth with the ball of his thumb, and two more appeared round the corner.
"Well, this takes the cake! 'Ow many more of 'em are comin'. Must be a fair at Andover, I s'pose." Mitch turned on a magnificent specimen who was lounging by. "What's on?" he asked; "what you all comin' this way for?"
"Nuthin'," answered the tramp, yawning, and moved on, scratching himself at the back.
Boler called the dogs back from the man and gave Mitch a letter.
"Postman left this at the cottage jest now," he said. "Wonder you ever got it at all, he told me. Wanted to know if your friends was 'ard up for a bottle of ink! I said I didn't know, but I could tell 'im somebody who was 'ard up for a bottle of beer, and that shut 'im up."
Mitch looked at the letter. The address was printed in ill-formed capitals on a cheap envelope, and read:—
Mitch,
Ringford.
The post-mark was Princetown.
"I don't know as I was expectin' any correspondence—bein' incognotoe, so to speak," he said. "'Owever—" he opened the envelope and pulled out a dirty piece of note-book paper.
"Why, it's from Canary Wing," he said. "You know. See 'is address—Dartmoor. That's where 'e lives—I mean where 'is jail is. Dartmoor Prison." He read the letter, Boler craning over his shoulder, as follows:—
It ran something like:
Dartmoor.
Five stretch soon slips by wot with good conduc an well behaved an dont you Forget it, mitch, its old canare tellin you mind wot I told you dont you do it in on me for wots mine or youl never stop bein sorre for it dead men tel no tals Ime growin older an work comes ard an I looks to you to get wots mine I dont want to be ard on you Mitch, halves instead of quarter for you I surprised at self so god nachered but I took a fance to you, matey, God elp you if you dont play fare old canare keeps is word if e swings for you an dont Forget it theres men knos can tel you for Gods sake send postl orders for two quidd wen you get this letter or I shall goe through it send it to—here followed an address at Princetown in the same clumsy printing as was on the envelope.
Under the address was printed, "Enclose with the postl orders a peace of writin paper with 'A present for my little grandson, Jim, from his loving grandfather on his third birthday.'"
It was a curious document, but one with a significance that made the partners feel cold. It was like a feeble wail out of hell—a weak, tenuous, far-off cry that only by the most wonderful fortune had been heard at all. The partners were not given to subtle imaginings, but they could see the whole thing as though a plain statement of it blazed, posterwise, on a near hoarding. They saw Canary weighted with his sentence, moving sluggishly about with his pallid, shaven companions inside that stone ant-hill on Dartmoor; they saw him clumsily fawning on some accommodating warder who was willing to sell him whatever comfort he might gain from the knowledge that his half-whining, half-truculent letter had been sent; they fancied him waiting anxiously in his cell for the news that the warder had received—under cover of his son "Jim"—the two pounds that would save him, Canary, from the petty spite of his gaoler—and so they went off and spent a pound apiece at the post-office for the sake of Canary, who had told them of the silver. They laboured under no delusion that Canary was anything but a complete blackguard, but they paid up silently—doubtless in the hope that if they were ever in peril of "going through it," some one would do the same for them.
"All the same, it don't 'elp us forrad at all," said Mitch, as they came out of the post-office. "'Ave you got any more clues, Boler?"
"Not yet—not yet," said Mr. Mitey cautiously, "but I'm buildin' up and buildin' up. Don't you worry, old man—we ain't so far off it now. You stick to it at the pub. It's 'ere somewhere—I got a instinct it's 'ere somewhere. And it's ours—I'm as sure of that as I am that I eats. I 'ad a dream—" Suddenly some one spoke behind them.
"Where's the Wesleen Chapel 'ere, mate. Y'know?" They turned suddenly and beheld yet another tramp.
"Why?" asked Boler. "You ain't a chapel man." The tramp looked virtuous.
"Yes, I am—strict chapel!"
"Well, then, your 'art ought to tell you where the chapel is. Foller the promptin's of your 'art and they'll lead you where you want to go," said Mitch sarcastically, indicating "The Goat," another of the Ringford inns, opposite which they chanced to be standing.
The tramp looked suspiciously at them, and then, muttering something about a civil answer to a civil question, moved on.
The partners stared after him.
"That's funny—that's darn funny," said Boler uneasily. "What does 'e want with the Wesleyan chapel? I've been to two or three of their last meetin's there, and I 'aven't 'eard of anything there that's likely to attract any bloomin' tramps."
"You don't reckon they got any idee of the silver?" Mitch's voice possessed a lining of anxiety.
"Don't see 'ow they can," said Boler shortly.
"Well, let's stroll up as far as the chapel and see what's 'appenin'. They're all goin' in the same direction," suggested Mitch. They started off as three more seedy vagabonds hove in sight down the street.
The sudden influx of tramps was becoming noticeable. People were standing at their doors here and there audibly numbering them off as they passed with a most ingenuous disregard for the tramps' feelings.
The partners stopped to comment upon it to old Ben Durdle, and Ben volunteered the information that he had seen at least sixty go past that morning. "All sorts and sizes they was—all sorts and shapes and sizes. Like a lot of bad growed taties!" piped the old man, and wondered what things were coming to.
By the doctor's house Mitch and Boler came across one of the local J.P.'s on horseback, earnestly warning a brace of the dejected visitors to clear out of the place if they were desirous of retaining their liberty.
A little farther on the partners encountered P.C. Hinxman wearing a worried look that did not suit him very well.
"'Ello, 'Inxman—what's the matter?" asked Mitch.
Time had softened the soreness of the defeat which Mitch had inflicted on the constable, and the two were in a fair way to becoming passably friendly. Moreover, the policeman cherished hopes that by friendliness and diplomacy he might one day succeed in persuading Mitch to disgorge the ten shillings the silver-seeker had fined him on the night of his too precipitate arrest. But P.C. Hinxman was ever an indifferent judge of character:
"Matter!" he said; "why every dam' tramp in the country seems, to 'ave 'ad a notion to visit Ringford. Three times I've been warned by people to keep a sharp eye on 'em—twice by the sergeant, and once by Mr. Lauder the magistrate. 'Keep your eye on 'em!' they says, and look where I darn well will I can't 'elp seein' 'em." He mopped his forehead. "They'll make a clean sweep of this place tonight," he said. "Hens and all. I can't do nothin'! What can I do? They're only passin' through, I s'pose. Must be a fair somewhere. What can I do? Mr. Crail'll 'ave to bring out a pack of 'is dogs if things goes on like this—and 'unt 'em out. I can't do nothin'! I don't mind a few, but when it comes to 'undreds—thousands—what can I do?"
They advised him to take it coolly, and went on to the chapel.
They were relieved to find only a half-dozen near that place of religious worship. These were sitting, apparently resting, on a grass-grown bank on the opposite side of the road. They drooped dingily among the greenery, smoking or sleeping.
"Not so bad," breathed Boler; "they're only passing through the village."
Now at the top of the bank—it was a fairly steep slope—was a tall hedge, the boundary of a big twenty-acre field belonging to a farm whose limits ended on the edge of Ringford High Street. And it never occurred to Boler or Mitch that there might be a few tramps who had passed through the village and come back behind this hedge. It was as well for the peace of mind of the partners that they had no suspicion of this—for there were at least fifty of the ragged loafers sprawling comfortably behind the hedge on the brow of the sloping bank. They seemed to be waiting for something or somebody.
Mitch and his friend parted here, Boler heading for Crail's to fetch and exercise another pair of the Great Danes, Mitch to compose a letter for Canary Wing, and to continue his paper-hanging.
A letter to Canary Wing.
BUT Mitch was destined to run up against yet another acquaintance before he could eat his dinner or start his paperhanging in earnest—in deadly earnest, to judge by the patterns of the papers he had chosen.
This was Mr. Winchester Chalk, whom Mitch met passing the door of the inn on the other side, with a bag of ferrets under one arm and a box of very good rats under the other.
Mitch crossed over and stopped him.
"'Ello, Winchester—'ow goes it?" he said.
Winchester looked sorrowfully at his one time companion.
"Their feet is set in 'aughty places an' their eyes bulge out with fatness!" said Mr. Chalk hollowly. Then having rendered this tribute to his conscience he unbent a trifle.
"So you've gone into the licker traffic, 'Enery?" he asked. "Become manager of a flarin' gin palace, 'ave you? 'Ow 'orrible!"
He licked his lips with horror at the thought.
"And I s'pose you 'aves as much of the cursed drink as you can 'old—beer and gin and stout-and-mild and all that. Wallerin' in it."
He rolled his eyes up."'Ow long? 'Ow long?" he groaned, looking very much as he would like to "waller" himself. However, he cast the thought away for a moment, and turned, indicating a pair of tramps crawling up the street.
"Whence," he said impressively, fondling a snaky-looking ferret that had crept out of his coat pocket, "whence is all that 'orrible starvation and ragged despair but through drink? 'Ow many 'omes have been ruined therefore. It 'ems us in on every side—drink, drink, drink;" he hesitated—"drink—
"Drink, puppy, drink," interpolated Mitch humorously.
But Winchester ignored him—he was getting wound up.
"Augh! 'Enery, my old friend," he exhorted, "be warned in time. Augh, turn them 'altin' steps aside! Augh—"
"Hee-augh!" mocked Mitch savagely. "Shut up, you darn fool; you're up the pole. Folks is lookin'. Why don't you go and save some of them sweet-lookin' tramps roostin' up by the chapel. There's enough of 'em waitin' for the place to open."
"What?" said Winchester, amazed. "Tramps waitin' for the chapel to open?"
Mitch grinned.
"Well, they're waitin' for something. Lord knows what for, but on the 'ole, I should say they wasn't waitin' for chapel. Looks to me as though they're waitin' to get rested enough to move on."
But Winchester thought otherwise,
"Why—why," he stuttered excitedly, "they must 'ave 'eard. They 'ave 'eard."
"'Eard what?" asked Mitch.
"Why, about me. To-day's the annuversity—the yearly annuversity—of the day I was saved." He dropped his voice impressively. "Yes, 'Enery, one year ago to-day I seen the error of me ways and joined the chapel. I'm goin' to give a sermon about it to-night—me thoughts and 'abits of life and 'ow it felt. And these tramps you speak of must 'ave 'eard about it or seen some of the 'andbills pasted up. I know there's a lot of 'em about—'andbills I mean—because I pasted 'em up meself. Waitin' for the chapel to open! Well, what do you think of that, 'Enery? Ain't it worth it? Some of them pore souls 'ave come miles and miles to 'ear me. I must 'urry 'ome and get me black does on and go out an' say a few words of welcome to 'em!"
Mitch stared. Then he grasped Mr. Chalk by the coat lapel.
"D'you mean to tell me you reckon that lovely lot 'ave come to 'ear you spout?" he demanded incredulously; and Winchester said that he did.
"What—them tramps! Tramps, Winchester—a real frowsty, dusty, thirsty, ragged, lousy lot of loafers walked miles to go to chapel?" Mitch proceeded insistently.
"I do—I know it in me 'art. All is not so set in evil ways as you be, Mitch."
The new manager of the Westley Inn gasped and stood aside.
"All right," he said sadly. "If you've got to be such a blame fool as to think that, I can't save you. I was goin' to try to make you the broad-minded man you was in my time I was goin' to take you in and let you sample some old ale we've laid in. Like wine—sherry wine—it is, Winchester, and sich a delekit, foamy 'ead to it—it'd do your 'art good to see it. And sich a taste, sich a flavour—soft as milk and warmin' as beautiful fire. Sich beer!" he ended sadly. He became aware that the rat-catcher was listening intently and evidently appreciating the description. He even fancied he heard a gentle sigh. Winchester allowed his eye to rest on the entrance of the Westley Inn.
"And then there's a couple of special casks of stout. Soft, meller, creamy stout—invaleed stout it is—but we're the sort of invaleed it suits. A pint of it's a meal—a 'earty meal. 'Owever—" Mitch placed his hand kindly on the tempted rat-catcher's shoulder, "it's not for you—you're above sich failin's. That's it—failin's. We got another failin' in this mornin', too—some curious old gin it is. Drinks like silk, so soft and tender—" He broke off suddenly as Winchester gave a sort of groan, and hurried away as fast as he could put his feet to the ground.
Mitch looked after him, grinning.
"And I never told 'im about the port wine at all," he said to himself. "Ah, well, it won't be very long afore I shall see old Winch a-settin' in the corner enjoyin' 'imself like 'e used to." He turned thoughtfully into the inn. "I don't believe in a man makin' a hog-tub of 'imself and drinkin' for drinkin's sake, but I do like to see a man appreciate the gifts of 'Eaven which was sent to earth for 'is special benefit," he murmured; and straightway drew himself a pint of the "invaleed" stout to prove it.
All the afternoon he was busy at his paper-hanging. His methods were orthodox only to a small extent. First of all he saturated with hot water the paper which he fancied was pasted over a trap-door. Then he applied himself to scraping it off with a horse-scraper which he had appropriated from the stable. After half-an-hour's diligent scraping he was pained to discover that no trap-door existed there at all, nor anything at all resembling a trap-door. He threw the scraper across the room in his disappointment and, having got the idea firmly fixed in his head that the silver was hidden somewhere in the roof, proceeded to tap the ceiling all over. But nowhere could he induce the plaster to give back the hollow sound which is indicative of space behind an apparently solid wall or barrier.
Muttering very poor language, he went into the next room, and in five minutes he had discovered a trap-door—papered over precisely as he had expected. He wasted no time in scraping now, but promptly applied the handle of the rake with which he had provided himself to the spot. It yielded perceptibly.
Thirty seconds later the trap-door was open and thrust backhand Mitch was hungrily climbing up a step-ladder to the black square cavity which the opening of the trap had disclosed.
He balanced on the top step for a moment, flushed with triumph, and then with a muttered "Here's luck!" pulled himself through into the dark, cavernous space between the roof and the ceiling of the top rooms.
His first action was to shut down the trapdoor.
He stood in darkness. A number of rats went scuttling away over the rafters and joists, one of them running right across his boots.
"Wu-r-r," went Mitch and stamped at it....
"I do hate and despise rats!" he said apologetically to himself, struck a match and applied it to a candle end.
"Wu-r-r! I do hate and despise rats!"
A white Something at the end of the long, cave-like roof-space gave a crazy yell, and Mitch supplemented the cry with a howl as a great ghostly shape drove past him, hissing, and vanished through a hole at the far end of the roof.
"Only a bloomin' howl!" snarled Henry softly, cold with the shock of it. "Gawd! 'Ow I always did hate and despise howls, too!"
He swore a little to reassure himself, and cautiously groped for the candle end which he had dropped.
"Hope nobody 'eard that darned howl holler!" he muttered and listened. Apparently nobody had, for he could hear no sound from the room below. He waited a minute or so and then turned to examine the place. At first glance it seemed to be full of wooden beams, iron tie rods and the various forms of support that are from time to time added by builders to keep an old-fashioned roof together. At the end, where apparently the owl was accustomed to sit with his back to the chimney shaft, the explorer saw a heap of tiny skeletons and bones—of birds, rats, mice and all the various small deer upon which an owl preys.
Mitch was interested for an instant in spite of himself.
He looked at the brick ledge where the owl roosted and stirred the skeletons with his foot.
"Wish I was a howl, very near," he said. "There 'e humps up all wrapped up in 'is bloomin' feathers with his back to the chimley all nice and warm—belly full of good food—everything 'e can wish for." He chuckled and resumed his survey. Suddenly his heart kicked and his throat went dry. For, tucked away in a dim dark corner, he saw the outline of a box—a deep oblong box.
"There 'tis!"
He went to it, and kneeling gingerly on the joists tried to open it. But the box was locked. He feverishly produced a steel spike from his pocket—the identical spike which had been used by the recent Mr. Jackson in his researches—and managed to lever the box open, making a considerable noise in the process.
The chest was full of—books. Musty old volumes with clasps and mildewed covers. They looked like cash-books, ledgers, and notebooks of fifty years ago.
"Books!" breathed Mitch, hardly realising it. "Only—bloomin'—books!... Gorlumme, I could cry—I could rest me 'ead on this 'ere bloomin' box and cry like a baby." He changed his mind, however, and lapsed into a stream of muttered profanity.
Presently he began to take them out—one by one—slowly, sadly, looking inside each of them. They were all of one kind and related entirely to the business of one George Nicholas, who had evidently been landlord of the Westley Inn many years before. One thing was abundantly clear to Mitch as he took out the last of them—they had not the remotest connection with the silver which the man Buckroyd had hidden. They were just a collection of hopelessly out-of-date business books such as may be found in the lofts and lumber rooms of hundreds of old-fashioned houses. The lingering, attenuated hope that the last of them might contain a chart or something of that kind vanished from Mitch's heart as he opened it. The first thing he saw was the elaborately written recipe of a good cure for biliousness. He turned the leaves and saw that it was filled with similar recipes.
"Oh, darn sich a book as you be!" he said bitterly, and turned to throw it across the roof-cavern.
To his utter amazement he was just in time to see a head disappear through the trap-door which was now wide open.
"Well, I'm darned," he began, and scrambled violently across to the trap, half believing he had been the victim of an optical illusion.
But he was speedily reassured. In the room below, sitting on a chair quietly smoking a cigar, sat a man who looked up as Mitch looked down.
"How do?" said the stranger coolly. "Hope I don't intrude."
Mitch twisted his mouth into a fearful sneer.
"Ho, no! Of course not. Pleased to meet you—I don't think. Wait a minute. I'm comin' down."
He flung his candle-end at the empty chest and, with a final malediction upon all books, squeezed through into the room below, closing the trap-door behind him.
"Now then," he said briskly,"'oo're you, and what you after?"
The stranger smiled upon Mitch in a friendly way.
"I'm Captain Dan M'Cann of Kempton, Newmarket, Epsom, Alexandra Park, or any other racecourse where there seems to be a chance of picking up a 'parcel.' And I'm after—" he hesitated a second—"I'm after the stiver that Buckroyd hid here—the same as you are."
"I'm Captain Dan M'Cann of Kempton, Newmarket,
Epsom, Alexandra Park, or any other racecourse.
MITCH breathed hard as he stared at the smiling stranger.
"Ho!" he said at length. "Ho! Har you."
There was another pause.
Then Mitch proceeded. "Might I arsk," he began, with laboured politeness, "might I arsk you what silver you are referrin' to?"
Captain M'Cann grinned.
"I mean the silver you're hunting for in this pub," he said comfortably. "The silver that was hidden here years ago by a man named Buckroyd just before the police invited him to stay with them. The silver that Jackson and one or two of his friends have been hunting down here for the last few months. That's the silver your Daniel wants to complete the circuit with."
"'Ow did you get 'ere? 'Oo let you into this room? This is private property, and you look like gettin' yourself into trouble; folk can't go trespassing about 'ere jest as they like," said Mitch ferociously. But the Captain smiled easily.
"Oh, that's all right. Don't you worry about that. I'm a visitor here. Healthy place Ringford—nice pub the Westley Inn—good fishing about the neighbourhood. I came by the three-thirty train, and the landlady gave me a bedroom just down the passage. I heard a devil of a noise up overhead, and I wondered what was up. So I slipped on these"—he indicated a pair of very light dress boots—"and had a look round, just in time to spot you making your little plans to sock my silver. It won't do, Mr. Man, you know—you'll have to fork it out like the sport you don't seem to be. You can trust your Danny to cut it up generously, you know."
Mitch noted that although the newcomer spoke playfully, there was a cold, hard expression in his eyes. In themselves the captain's eyes were of a discouraging type. They were extraordinarily clear—that was the first thing one noticed about them—the amazing bluish clearness of the whites; and the pupils were perfectly blue and very large; but just now there was something of the cold, fixed, remote stare of the eagle or any bird of prey in them.
Mitch did not particularly pride himself on being a judge of men, but he suddenly found himself keenly alive to the fact that lie was dealing with a man who was a hard case—a man with nerve and determination and complete pluck.
There was silence while Mitch ran his eye over the newcomer. A good-looking man, in a hard style, there was a vague air of the wolf about him—a predatory, hawkish, dangerous, gold-hungry air. He looked like a man who had been a gentleman five years before, but during that period had fallen off in principle, refinement, and good fortune. He seemed to be nearly forty years old, and his clothes—well-made and neat tweeds—were beginning to show signs of wear. One of his cuffs was frayed more than a little.
His inspection finished, Mitch turned to the door.
"Your silver...?" he said satirically.
"Every single Roberto, Mister Man," answered the captain airily.
Mitch waved his band gracefully at the step-ladder and the trap-door.
"Then 'adn't you better take it?" he said, with a grin, and moved to the door.
The pupils of the captain's eyes contracted suddenly, and he jumped up.
"Half a mo," he said urgently. "What's your hurry? We might talk this over. There's more in this than you think.... You don't imagine I'm juggins enough to believe my silver's up there, do you? Sit down a minute and we'll talk it over."
Mitch turned again.
"Look here," said the stranger; "let's play fair. Tell me just how much you know about this silver, and I'll tell you what I know. Confidence for confidence—we'll swop yarns."
Mitch thought for a minute or two. Then he said doggedly—
"I don't know what you're talkin' about, and I don't much care. You comes 'ere, a perfect stranger, with some yarn about some silver and a man name of Buckroyd, and seems to think people know what you're talkin' about. 'Ow can they know. I've never 'eard of no silver, and don't know as I wants to. Gold's my mark. I'm manager of this pub, and if there was any silver hid 'ere I got an idee I should 'ave come across it long ago. I don't know what you're drivin' at"—he opened the door—"and I don't care, neither. You get to your right room and mind your own business." He closed the door from the outside.
Left alone, the captain smiled wryly.
"Slipped up that time, you jackhead!" he said bitterly to himself. "But all the same, that provincial sharp knows something about this silver. He'll do with a bit of watching." He glanced at the trap-door as though he contemplated exploring the roof himself, but thought better of it.
"Looks bad. And it's not there, or I shouldn't be left alone with it," he muttered.
And he went off to his own room. There he washed and preened himself a little. The hard look had died out of his eyes now and, giving his neat moustache a jaunty twist, he chuckled as he turned to the door.
"Now, Danny, careful does it this time. You're on the rocks for good unless you can pull something out of this within the next two months," he said to himself, and went downstairs for the meal which awaited him.
* * * * *
IT may be well, for the prevention of confusion, to explain now and here the appearance of Captain M'Cann.
He was one of those knights of fortune who, assured of a modest roof and an occasional meal, thanks to a microscopic income, cannot sit still and work hard for their tobacco, their clothes, their little luxuries, but must procure them by their wits in any part of the world to which their fancy takes them. The captain—where he got the prefix no man knows—had but one aim in life, and that was to make, in a lump sum, just enough to enable him to wander very modestly about the face of the earth without the need of earning every dinner he ate. Time and again he had come within an ace of it, but just at the eleventh hour the luck turned and the captain once again bit the dust. As he put it himself, he always went down on the last race.
London, of course, was his headquarters, and he knew many curious people in that vast warren—each needier than the others.
On the night previous to his appearance in Ringford he chanced to be walking down Shaftesbury Avenue when an abject nondescript, who seemed to be waiting at a corner for the purpose, stopped him and requested the boon of a few seconds of the captain's time.
"You know me, Captain Dan—Jumbo Hawkins, used to be waiter at the Blue Carnation Club. You know—the waiter that got the double—'Prickly Pear' for the Cambri'shire and 'Pen and Ink' for the Sar'witch—last year. The waiter that won nine hundred pounds. 'Member, Captain Dan?"
Apparently the captain did, for he demanded to know what "Jumbo" wanted him for.
"Come down 'ere," whispered the ruin, feverishly. "I've got something that's just your mark. It's a fortune. Gimme five pounds when I've told you, and fifty when you've got what I'm going to tell you about."
His curiosity stirred, the captain accompanied the ex-waiter down a side-street and there listened to the tale of a fearful quarrel which "Jumbo" had overheard that morning in a low billiard-room between three men, to whom he referred as Walter Jackson, Pincho Matthews, and Basement Stevens. He confessed frankly that he, personally, had been present at the quarrel in the role of listener only—had, in fact, only just made his way into the billiard-room with the object of "pinching" the balls, when he heard footsteps, and only saved himself from discovery by hiding under the table.
It seems that Jackson, late of the Westley Inn, Ringford, Pincho Matthews, and Basement Stevens had met at the billiard-room in question to settle expenses incurred in the search for some silver. They had quarrelled so violently and at such length that when, at last, they departed, each snarling at the other, the trembling, shirtless wretch under the table had the whole story by heart.
And this he told in detail to the seedy wideawake captain.
"I dunno whether there's anything in it or not, but they very nearly came to fighting over it—and I know that a lot of money changed 'ands—I 'eard it clink, and I 'eard 'em mention figures. They was serious enough, strike me! Look 'ere, gimme enough to buy a black suit and to keep me a week—long enough to get a job—and call it square, captain. Darn your 'orseracin'—that nine hundred pounds ruined me!" he concluded.
The captain himself was near enough to the rocks of penury—he had not caught a pigeon for months—to clutch at straws, and he "went it blind," to use his own expression. He gave the man two pounds, extracted a cast-iron oath that he would keep the thing quiet, and, with a promise that if he did get anything out of it he would add another ten pounds to the price, he promptly went off, like a questing tiger, to the nearest newspaper office and looked up the case of Buckroyd the receiver, in the files of a few years back. Evidently he, too, found something promising in the affair, for on the following day he arrived at Ringford and, encountering Mitch, made the fruitless bluff to get the confidence of the guileless Henry which has already been described.
ALL the afternoon tramps had been drifting aimlessly into the village—in ones and twos and threes. At six o'clock Captain Dan, strolling up the street with one of the Westley Inn cigars, was astonished to find at least fifty hanging about in front of the Wesleyan Chapel—tough-looking men they were, and there was a curious air of expectancy and determination pervading them. They looked at each other like wolves. For the most part they were sitting on the bank, some with their boots off. A few stood talking together in low voices. Four or five of the latest arrivals were staring at the handbill concerning that evening's address by Mr. Winchester Chalk which was pasted on the chapel door.
"Hello!" said Captain Dan, amazed, to the nearest lounger. "What's it all about? What are they giving away?"
The tramp looked sullenly at him.
"Can't a man go to chapel, then—blank yer!" he said, and spat in the roadway.
"If you're the man, he can go to the devil for all I care," answered the captain easily, and strolled on. They all stared after him in their hungry way.
At the corner he met Henry Mitch, who was returning with a worried face from a brief consultation with Boler. Henry had become gravely uneasy about the gathering of tramps before the chapel.
"They've got wind of the silver somehow, Boler," he had said, "and they mean 'avin' it if it's in the chapel." But, obviously, the partners could do nothing but be profoundly thankful none of the tramps seemed to take an abiding interest in the Westley Inn or Westlynn.
"Well, if they reckon it's in the chapel they're on the wrong bloomin' track," Boler had answered confidently. Then they had discussed the sudden appearance of Captain Dan M'Cann, and Boler had arranged to run into the Westley Inn that evening and have a look at the amiable captain.
Mitch frowned when he recognised the newcomer.
"Ho!" he said, passing. "You president of this here mothers' meetin'?" Captain Dan smiled.
"Oh yes—I'm president fast enough. What the dickens are they all doing here? What are they after?—these fairies don't hang about a chapel for nothing as a rule." He had turned and fallen into step with Mitch, and they were nearing the chapel. "If it had been the Westley Inn instead of the Wesleyan—" he stopped suddenly, his trained hawk wits instantly seizing upon the likeness of the names, and glanced at Mitch. One glance was enough.
"Hul-lo!" he said, and whistled a long, soft whistle. "No wonder you aren't comfy, Mr. Man. Wes'ley Inn, Wesleyan, Wesleyinn, Wesleyan," he half whispered, slurring the words deliberately. His hand suddenly closed on the shoulder of Mr. Mitch.
"I say, old chap, we've got to get this damn scum out of it somehow, or they'll pull the chapel down to-night."
"Oh, talk sense," said Mitch bitterly. "'Ow're you goin' to do it; blow 'em away with a fan? You're bloomin' smart at collectin' ideas and things—now let's see you uncollect 'em and drive 'em away—these 'ere tramps, if you're so anxious."
Before the captain could reply a horse came cantering up behind them. They turned and saw Crail, the millionaire, on a grand bay beast. The square face of the American hardened as he pulled up before the little crowd of tramps. He said nothing, but he ran his eye leisurely over the group. Some of them shifted uneasily under his scrutiny. For a moment it seemed as though he were going to order them out of the village, or set his dogs at them—there were four of his enormous Great Danes padding round the horse—but he thought better of it and went on past them. The tramps all turned to stare after him, as they had stared at M'Cann.
He ran his eye over the group.
"I don't half like this," said the captain in Mitch's ear. "These birds are roosting here for something, and when tramps gather together in flocks like a lot of carrion crows it has a meaning. And take my word—hello! the Squire's coming back."
Crail had turned again and rode back, with puzzled eyes.
"What in blazes are you hoboes anchored here for?" he said in his brutal way.
"What in blazes has that got to do with you?" a voice mimicked him harshly, hardly before he had finished. Crail glared. Some of the tramps stood up—the biggest, most truculent-looking of them—and the big dogs began to growl and bristle. The millionaire singled out his man—a burly ruffian at the end of the sitting row—and rode up to him. They all made way for the horse—and the dogs. The man stood up just as Crail's whip sang in the air. The lash cracked round the tramp's shoulders and he grunted. But before he could do more the millionaire spoke to his dogs and they were snarling up at the tramp in a way that speedily discouraged any idea of retaliation.
Crail looked at them as a woman may look at her diamonds. A child could have seen from the manner in which they glanced back at him that the wonderfully trained and controlled brutes only waited one word more from their master to fix the tramp who had mimicked him. The others looked on apathetically. Then the American pulled his horse round so that he faced the crowd.
"You've got two hours to get out," he said. "We can't have such a holy crowd of toughs round here. Now—understand. If every slinkum of you hasn't pulled out of here in two hours I'll have you jailed, sure as I'm Burton Crail."
Then he rode off.
But none of the tramps moved, save to reseat themselves.
Mitch grinned.
"'E's bit off mor'n 'e can chew this time—'im and his dogs," he informed the captain, who shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't know. He looks like a man who will go through with anything he begins," answered M'Cann. "There's trouble brewing for Ringford to-night."
They moved on towards the Westley Inn.
"I hope it isn't there," said the captain, casually glancing back.
"Lumme! So do I!" responded Mitch thoughtlessly, and almost bit his tongue in the effort to shut his mouth before the words got out.
Captain Dan laughed, and slapped Mitch on the back.
"Good old Mr. Man!" he said jovially. "Nothing like giving yourself away, is there?" Mitch turned on him.
"Not bein' a brasted outsider," he began, labouredly offensive, "not bein' a brasted outsider what 'as to keep a guard on 'is bloomin' tongue, I says what's in me mind."
But the captain had no intention of quarrelling. He knew that Mitch had furnished a clue which might easily be developed, and so he hastened to temporise.
"Oh, no harm meant," he said. "Come in and have a drink. We'll work separately, if you'd sooner. Just as you like. Only—be a sportsman. There's no need to murder one another. Every one for himself, and good luck to the winner. Can't you see it in that light? What'll you have?"
The captain possessed considerable charm when he chose, and, for a while at any rate, Mitch did see it in that light. He had a gin and soda....
While they were absorbing their refreshment, P.C. Hinxman entered, breathing high and importantly.
"Lor!" he said gravely, "there's goin' to be a smash up in Ringford to-night. These 'ere tramps.... I've just met Mr. Crail, and he's wired to Andover for the fire ingin, and he's going to send two moto-cars from Westlynn (the captain stirred at the last word) for the police. There's a flock of tramps squattin' be'ind the 'edge facin' the chapel—jest like a flock of rooks. And there's tramps comin' into the place in all directions. Some of 'em over the downs, some by the road.... What's on—what's on? There'll be 'undreds 'ere in anpther ten minutes if this keeps on. What they want?..." He drank a half pint of beer at a gulp. "There'll be the devil's delight 'ere afore long. Mr. Crail's tally-graphed for the fire ingin from Andover. Ain't none of you got no sticks?" He deftly deleted the balance of his beer and "dragged off"—as Mitch put it. The men in the bar began to look serious. It was getting near to dusk now. Suddenly they heard the sound of a man running down the street, and a shout of "Stop him!"
"Stop him! He's stole me cheese," wailed a voice above the shuffling patter of feet.
Before any of the men in the bar of the Westley Inn could get to the door, there was a wild clatter of hoofs and a sudden snarl outside.
A man flashed by the inn sprinting like a track racer, and clutching in his hand about four pounds of "best red American" cheese. On his very heels leaped Crail's Great Danes, and a few yards behind him came Crail galloping, an unholy excitement in his eyes. Down the street stood an anguished old woman wringing her hands over a basket of groceries that had been spilt all across the road, and calling upon God and man and beast to rescue her cheese which the tramp had grabbed.
A man flashed by sprinting like a track racer
They heard Crail snarl at his dogs—very much like one of them—and saw them fall back at the word as though shot. In three seconds the millionaire was alongside the tramp, and the butt of his riding-whip went up. He hit, and the tramp squealed like a rabbit, and rolled in the dust as the men from the inn came up in a hurry.
The American wrenched his horse round.
"If I hadn't given that guy his dope they'd loot the blazing village!" he said shrilly.
"Is—is 'e dead?" asked a villager nervously.
"Dead be damned!" replied Crail politely from the back of his dancing horse. "I hit his shoulder."
Mitch carefully rescued the cheese.
"'Ere's your cheese, missis," he said consolingly to the old woman, and, with the best intentions in the world, handed her a dusty mass of pulp stuff that looked as much like a lump of stale putty as anything else. She snatched it from him and, chattering with anger, gave him what is popularly known as "a backhander" with it right across the face. Henry resigned....
Crail leaned down from his horse like a cowboy—it was grossly theatrical—and yanked the tramp to his feet. He felt the man's shoulder with a brutally heavy hand.
"Collar-bone broken?" he asked, as he would have spoken to a dog.
The tramp shook his head.
"No—no—no!" he yelled, nearly weeping. "You 'ulkin', bullyin' swine!" His voice rose like a hysterical woman's, and it was well for Crail that the man was unarmed. But Crail twisted him round by sheer strength of wrist, so that the thief faced the road leading out of the village.
"Git!" he said, and gave him a start that nearly toppled him on to his face. The man recovered himself, pulled himself up, straightened his shoulders so that the bystanders were faintly reminded of the army, wheeled round and looked at the rider. He hesitated for a second, and then drooped despairingly and shuffled away, threadbare, beaten, abject, even pathetic.
Crail called his dogs, and rode off towards Westlynn.
They all went back to the Westley Inn, leaving the old woman wiping her cheese, and audibly regretting she had not "fetched" Henry Mitch another smack with it....
Mitch and the captain were just settling down in the bar parlour when Boler Mitey came in, cool as ever. It was his first open visit to the Westley Inn, and Henry welcomed him as though he, Mitch, were the landlord, even owner, of the place.
"Come in, come in, Boler, old mate. Come in—what'll you 'ave. What'll you 'ave, old man."
Boler affably accepted a stout and sat down.
"There's a nice lot of tramps up at the chapel—nice lot they are," he said conversationally to Captain Dan.
The captain made a long shot.
"After the silver, I suppose," he said very casually. "Bad luck to 'em."
Boler stiffened and stared.
"What?" he asked, rigid.
"After Buckroyd's silver, I suppose," repeated the captain blandly. "What else?" He puffed quietly at his cigar.
Boler opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again and shut it finally. But when Mitch reappeared with the stout he opened it with some purpose. Ignoring his refreshment, he put his hand on his partner's arm and said earnestly—
"'Enry, what in the name of goodness 'ave you been tellin' this gentleman about some silver somewhere?"
Mitch flinched.
"Me? Tellin' 'im? Gorlumme, Boler, I 'aven't said a word. 'E don't want no tellin'. Lumme, things is as easy as a book to 'im. I don't know 'im—I don't know what 'e's after. 'E seems to know something about some silver somewhere, and 'e's been harpin' about it all the afternoon. 'E seems to know as much as any of us." He scowled at the placid Captain Dan, and ceased.
"Maybe I know a bit more," said the military man. "Look here, I'll take two ponies I do know more." This was sheer bluff, but the captain had no time to waste in dainty diplomacy. The rugged headland of Cape Stone Broke was too near for that.
It puzzled the silver-seekers. They consulted each other with their eyes, but without profit. Mitch leaned across the table to the captain.
"Without bettin' no ponies nor no monkeys, nor any other bloomin' animal, jest what do you know?" he asked point-blank.
The captain paused before he answered. Then he finished his drink, and watching Mitch's face—Boler's countenance was of the sort that tells nothing—he said—
"I know a good bit. For instance, when I see a man crawling about an unused loft all among the bats and rats and owls and spiders, I know he's hunting for something worth having. When I see him breaking open a chest and swearing bitterly because there's nothing but books in that chest, I know that he doesn't know exactly where the thing he's hunting for is to be found—or he wouldn't be wasting time over the books—" Mitch opened his mouth to speak, but the captain raised his hand.
"Wait a minute," he said, and continued. "When that man swears he's not hunting for something, but yet gets startled, and gives himself away when another man shows him that some tramp stands a chance of getting 'it,' I know that—er—he wants help, or else he'll lose it. When two strangers come and settle in a village like you two did—" (the captain had made a few inquiries about Mitch since his afternoon meal)—"bosom friends, although one's a strict chapel-goer and a hard worker, and the other's a—a—sort of queen-bee, as it were, and doesn't over-toil or over-spin, and when the strict chapel-goer comes in here for his drink like an old hand in the way you did, I know that something's wrong with his Nonconformist conscience; when I learn that his particular chapel is the Wesleyan, and I see that the Wesleyan Chapel is surrounded by a lot of hungry tramps, and I learn that the Nonconformist's mate half believes 'it' is hidden in that chapel, I begin to see the idea—" the captain leaned forward and spoke impressively —"oh, I could tell you things like this all night. What's the good? I know what you're after"—his voice dropped. "You're after Buckroyd's silver, and you, Mr. Man, think it's either in the Westley Inn or the Wesleyan Chapel; and you" (he fixed Boler) "are working on it elsewhere at—" (he paused) "at—say Westlynn!" His eyes hung on Mitch's face, and he half sighed with relief as the silver-seeker's jaw fell.
It was cleverly done. To Mitch and Boler the thing savoured of witchcraft, for they did not know of the initial start which the story of one "Jumbo" Hawkins, ex-waiter, had given the captain. Even so, the man who lived by his wits had pieced things together—particularly the similarity of the names—with a swiftness and precision that many a skilled detective would envy. Adding to the flimsy theoretical structure he had thus raised a judicious amount of guesswork and an air of complete knowledge, he had deceived the partners wholly and perfectly. It was a case of the professional chevalier d'industrie against the amateur.
But even so he had not finished with them. He wanted a rout, not a retreat. He changed his tone—becoming hard and keen and in deadly earnest. With his eyes alone he drew their heads together over the table.
"Listen to me," he whispered incisively. "You're hunting for stolen property, aren't you?" They nodded—it seemed foolish to deny it now.
"Well, do you reckon you'll find silver? Not much of it, take it from me. Do you think a receiver like Buckroyd deals in silver to any extent. Nit! Nothing! No fear! We shall find gold—gold, do you understand?—yes, and diamonds—jewels. Small stuff, stuff you can pack small. See? What's the good of clumsy great lumps of silver to one of the biggest receivers ever sent to jail? Now, what can you do with diamonds. Where would you sell 'em? Who would buy them from you? I don't say this offensively, but you haven't got the air, the style, the appearance, to %ell them for their market price. You'd go to the pawnbrokers and either get one-tenth of their value or perhaps have the police set on you. I'm the man to sell 'em. Drive down to Hatton Garden in an electric brougham, fur coat, 'family jewels out of their settings,' and all that. Better still, run over to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp. I know plenty of places. See? Come in with me and we'll split it up in threes—and retire. What? Is it a go?" He looked into their excited eyes, his own blazing, and saw what he wanted.
"Yes!" hissed Boler, "it's a go!"
"Lumme, it is a go!" said Mitch, and they all shook hands. The captain wasted no time.
"Well, we'll fix everything up later on. Now, we'd better get up to the chapel and see what's happening!" They took a whisky each and went.
SOBERLY clad in decent black—slightly shiny, badly fitting, obviously aged but still decent—Mr. Winchester Chalk came smartly towards the Wesleyan Chapel as the clock was striking eight. His eyes lit up with a profound pleasure when he observed the crowd of tramps loafing outside the building. It never occurred to him that they were there for any other reason than that of hearing the interesting experience of total abstinence which he, Winchester Chalk, had endured throughout the previous year.
Mr. Winchester Chalk came smartly towards the Wesleyan Chapel.
It struck him that a few words before entering the chapel might be effective, but on second thoughts he abandoned the idea, and, with a wide smile, he shambled through them to the front door of the place of worship.
As a dog will prick his ears when his instinct, rather than his eyes or nose or ears, tells him that game is in his vicinity, so the shabby brigade lounging before the chapel pricked up and became alert as Winchester moved among them. They watched him expectantly—even wolfishly. There was a queer sharp air of keen attention about the whole gang. One man Stood up with a jerk. Two others followed his example, and the remainder of those who were roosting on the bank rose en masse. Winchester turned at the chapel gate and bowed clumsy acknowledgment.
Even as he bowed a tatterdemalion squeezed hastily through the hedge on the top of the bank and slid rapidly down into the road—to the sore detriment of his trousers but, obviously, to his own satisfaction. He grinned, and said something with an Irish brogue that was almost solid enough to frame.
Mr. Chalk looked a little astonished, and his astonishment increased when he saw tramp after tramp slide in quick succession down the track the Irishman had opened. They all surged forward to the chapel gate.
Winchester observed the look in the eyes of some of them, and an uneasy thrill fluttered down his spine. He hesitated—then, catching sight of three or four fellow-Wesleyans approaching, he smiled once more, unlocked the chapel door and entered.
And the mob came in behind him like a wedge of gallery boys at a London music-hall.
Inside, the leaders seemed to hang fire a trifle. They paused. Winchester observed that the van was mainly composed of big, burly, hard-looking men—they paused, looked round, and apparently were at a loss. So Mr. Chalk spoke kindly to them.
"There's plenty of room, brothers—welkim all. Pass up to front pews—there's plenty of room and 'arty welkim for all." It occurred vaguely to the ratcatcher that his voice was smaller than he ordinarily imagined it to be.
The brothers filed doubtfully into the pews, most of them still wearing their hats, looking as though they would prefer to remain standing in the aisle. There were keen whisperings as they sat.
"Halves!... Strike me, yes!... Cut it up fair!... Shut yer jore!... Not yet, blimey!... Halves, cully!... On me own!..."
Winchester, on the raised platform at the end, heard and wondered uneasily.
The chapel was almost full when some of the village chapel-goers came in, apparently feeble with amazement. Two of them walked up to Mr. Chalk with envy on their faces. Winchester greeted them with a touch of condescension. Hitherto they had not encouraged the somewhat ranting methods of the ratcatcher. They held—and very rightly—that Winchester's style was more suited to the Primitive Methodists' galvanised iron meeting-house farther down the street than to their own quieter and more sanely conducted little chapel. Mr. Chalk, however, had an enemy in the ranks of the Methodists—a loud-mouthed blacksmith—and he had attached himself to the Wesleyans.
And now he seemed to have made good his frequent boast that he would "draw converts into the fold."
"I told ye I'd bring 'em in when I got started," he whispered to his fellows. "And 'ere they be, too."
"It's wonderful, Winchester, wonderful. You 'ave the power and no mistake."
The hurried whispering in the seats went on as the villagers came in—the majority obviously there out of mere curiosity. In ten minutes the seats were full, and people were encroaching up the aisle.
Then a little procession of three filed up to the only remaining seats on the platform—Messrs. Dan M'Cann, Boler Mitey, and Henry Mitch, the only men who really knew why the tramps were there. It was to be noticed that they looked a trifle white, and that they bore the same determined, predatory air as the majority of the tramps. They sat down with their jaws stuck out....
Some one said "Cops" very clearly, and practically the whole of the congregation turned their heads at that. Most of them grinned as they saw the local police enter nervously. There were only two of them, P.C. Hinxman and the sergeant from the next parish.
Then Winchester cleared his throat and began. He told them that he was going to open his heart to them, and proceeded to do so. It was the usual blatant, windy talk of the illiterate convert who is so perfectly certain that he is "saved" that he cannot keep decently quiet about it, but must yell it at the top of his voice in public places.
After the first five minutes the whispering 01 the tramps began to rise. Winchester raised his voice accordingly. But the tramps gave up whispering, and each spoke loud enough for the man he happened to be addressing to hear. There were scufflings and scrapings of the seats, and the noise rose like the rising of a storm....
Suddenly Henry Mitch indicated the second pew to Captain Dan.
"One of the men in that pew 's 'id himself under the seat," he whispered.
The captain nodded.
"They're doing it all over the chapel. They want to be left alone here when it's all over," he said.
Even above the rising clamour of talk and Winchester's voice—he was shouting now—could be heard strained gruntings. Twice a heavy boot slithered over the floor and fetched up against the wooden back of a pew with a crash. Some of the tramps were hiding under the seats now with no possible chance of being able to do so unnoticed. They were losing their heads already—each futilely imitating his neighbour, as men do in a gold rush.
The word "silver" was being tossed about the chapel like a ball; now and again a bitter oath would be flung up out of the mob; the villagers began to look to the door, half-scared; and the noise grew. The two policemen stared round the hall, helpless and staggered.
Suddenly a tramp in a pew half-way down the chapel stood up with a cry.
"Wooh!" he howled, and a wild Irish voice yelled from under the seat of that pew.
"Take me teeth in yer leg, thin! Kick me, would ye, ye scut!" There was a sudden upheaval, and a man rose from the floor, squealing with rage, and straightway fell upon the tramp who had yelled first.
So the storm burst. In two seconds the place was a pandemonium. Those of the villagers who were near the door promptly left the hall. But none of the tramps were anxious to do so. They poured out into the aisle and, after a second's irresolution, they headed for the vestry, apparently with the idea that they were going to find the silver waiting there for them—in large sacks. They all surged across the low platform together, swearing and struggling.
"We can't do anything," said Captain Dan, flattened against the wall, in Boler's ear. "They're in the mood to kill any one who interferes with them. Come outside and check 'em off as they clear out. They won't hang about here long. If they get any silver we shall spot those who are carrying it away all right!"
The three worked their way through the crush to the door and joined the group of villagers outside. They all stood in the roadway listening to the clamour inside. There were occasional crashings as though the ragged searchers were upsetting the pews in the hunt.
After many minutes two tramps came to the chapel door and looked out. Under the light of the porch lamp the onlookers saw that each of them possessed a black eye. They stared at the crowd outside—at the two policemen, at Mitch and Co., at some of the burlier of the village youths and men, and disappeared, moving back from the door as rabbits move back from the mouths of their burrows.
Then, far down the street, sounded the husky braying of a motor horn.
"Here's the police!" Everybody seemed to know that Crail's motor had run into Andover for extra police. The crowd gaped expectantly down the street, and one or two of the younger men took off their coats and, handing them to friends, rolled up their sleeves, spat on their hands and prepared generally for battle. The noise in the chapel was dying out rapidly now—evidently the tramps had begun to think.
Two big blazing lamps swung round a corner down the street, and a huge car sailed up—blue with policemen. Hardly had this one arrived before a similar consignment came up. Crail had sent a strong message, and Crail was rich and powerful enough to secure instant attention. And there were more coming.
Three tramps showed themselves at the door, but vanished like phantoms as they set eyes on the reinforcements.
There was a clatter of hoofs, and Crail dashed up. He was in his element to-night, for he was a fighting man by instinct.
Somebody—Winchester Chalk—hastily explained, and Craft's eyes lit up.
"Got 'em! Send some men round to the back door, Inspector, in case they bolt that way. It's locked, hey?" Winchester nodded excitedly. "But they'll burst it, sure." He swung a loaded riding-whip in his hand as he spoke.
Half-a-dozen policemen went off to the back of the chapel with a handful of villagers in support, and, even as yet another motor raced up, the upholders of the law advanced on the front door.
But the ardour of the tramps had cooled. The majority of them were in no mood to fight. They wanted to run, and not be in Ringford any longer. They had been at some pains to earn six months' hard labour each, and they were keenly alive to the fact. They wanted to go away. And so they rushed in a body, jamming themselves through the door and poured out, seeking to escape. For ten minutes there was a savage little struggle in the roadway. The majority of the raiders squeezed through the crowd and bolted down the road for dear life, but nevertheless when it was all over and the police counted up their gains, they found they had made a haul of about twenty-six, five of whom were stunned by Crail, who had received a blow in the mouth at the beginning of the rush that loosened half-a-dozen teeth and all his wrath.
It was noticeable, however, when the prisoners were handcuffed and formed up for their march to the farm waggons which were being requisitioned for their conveyance to Andover, that Messrs. M'Cann, Mitch, and Mitey had disappeared. No one was sufficiently interested, however, to look for them; they were not particularly popular in Ringford.
But if, at the moment when the captives were being hustled towards the waggons, any of the villagers had chanced to turn up a lane some hundred yards beyond the chapel, he would have seen an interesting little spectacle. Mr. Henry Mitch sitting comfortably upon the chest of one tramp who lay on the turf at the side of the lane, Mr. Boler Mitey reposing in similar fashion upon a similar tramp, and Captain M'Cann standing close by sharply interrogating both the prisoners.
"What the blazes have all you loafers come down on the chapel like this for?" was the captain's first question.
"The silver," grunted the tramp who supported Mr. Mitch.
"What silver?"
"'Ow do I know what silver. Let me git up." But the captain was seeking information of value.
"Sit a little heavier, Mr. Mitch, please; the gentleman has a bad memory. Oblige me by putting a little more stress on the gentleman, Mr. Mitch," he said politely.
"Sit a little heavier, Mr. Mitch, please."
Mitch put on a little more "stress," and the tramp grunted.
"The silver the bloke in the ditch was talkin' about," he said presently—under the stress.
"Oh, let me tell you. He's got an impediment in 'is bloomin' speech," snarled the tramp upon whom Boler was sitting.
"Come on then; let's have the story quick," snapped the captain, who was growing impatient. "Tell the truth and you'll get off scot free—as far as we're concerned."
"Well, it's like this. Every bloomin' tramp on the London road jest lately seems to 'ave come across this bloke. 'E sits in the ditch mostly, this bloke old Tongue-tied over there was tryin' to tell you about. Sits in the ditch and mutters about a chap named Corrie, and detectives, and that. Well—
"Wait a minute," broke in Boler, suddenly alert at the mention of the name of Corrie. "Look 'ere, Captain, it seems to me it would be a good bit better if we all slung our hooks off to our cottage and 'ad this story about this bloke that sits in the ditch told properly. It sounds very promisin' to me. Old Tongue-tied can clear off quick. But this lot—" he sat heavily but friendlily upon the tramp who had spoken last—"can come with us, and if he tells the truth about the ditch bloke 'e will be given 'alf a quid—p'raps—if his yarn is worth it. If not, we'll hand 'im over to the police."
No human being on the face of the earth can detect a hidden meaning quicker than the man who lives on his wits, and the captain agreed swiftly.
"All right," he said. "Let Tongue-tied get up, Mitch, and give him the toe of your boot for 'Good-bye.'"
Mitch rose reluctantly, and the tramp scrambled to his feet in violent haste, and vanished into the darkness down the lane.
"Well, I'm blowed. 'E don't tell you a word, and gits let off—I tells you all you arsks me and gits kept," said Boler's tramp bitterly.
"You'll be all right if you tell the truth. You jest tell the truth and shame the devil, and very likely you'll be let off from goin' to jail," said Mitch kindly.
Boler and Mitch linked arms tightly with the tramp, and, the captain following close behind to trip him if he tried to bolt, the quartette moved rapidly off towards the cottage of the senior partners.
HAVING got their prisoner safely inside the hut, Mitch locked the door, and briefly recommended Boler to set the beer upon the table.
"If there was another bottle you should 'ave one as well," said Henry generously to the tramp. "Only there don't 'appen to be one. So it ain't our fault you ain't sitting there perfectly happy."
The tramp looked fixedly at him as he "took the top off" his glass.
"Now about this bloke in the ditch," said the captain keenly; and the tramp began his tale.
"It was like this," he said. "About two days ago me and another man was on the road from Basin'stoke, and we had turned down a side lane to call at a farmhouse we seen what looked uncommon likely, when we come across a bloke sittin' on a bank with 'is feet in the ditch eatin' a onion and some bread and cheese and talkin' to 'isself very interestin'. He didn't take the slightest notice of me and my mate, not though we went and sit down next to 'im. We spoke to 'im, but 'e wouldn't answer for a long time. He kept on talkin' and mutterin' about a Wesleyan place—chapel, I s'pose—at a place called Ringford.
"'Well, what about it?' we asks 'im bimeby, and after we'd asked 'im about fourteen times, this bloke he turns round as though he'd just seen us and looks very puzzled at us. But presently he laughs, a sort of underdone kind of laugh, and 'Why, that's where the stuff is hid!' he ses, impatient. 'All done up in a parcel very tidy and 'andy. Many's the bloke as would like to put 'is 'ands on to poor old Corrie's (I don't think) parcel of stuff. But Corrie (What ho, Corrie!), he wants 'is own little bundle what he earned 'isself and hid 'isself and went to jail and all for. It's all for Corrie (not half, Corrie!).' He 'ad a very peculiar way of saying something like 'not half,' or some sich remark every time he mentioned the name of Corrie.
"'Why, that's only right and fair,' I ses, humourin' 'im. 'That's as it should be, Mister,' and he looks at me very simple.
"'There's them as likes to think as poor old Corrie (over the left, Corrie!) he was done for when the detectives come down all the way from London. And so he was very nigh done for, too. But he slipped out of it just in time. They was comin' by one door and Corrie (not half, Corrie!) was goin' out by the other door. And all the stuff was tight and safe in his Wesleyan place. All the stones—the rare stones.... But they copped old Corrie (Hundred to one, Corrie!) up in town and put 'im away so nice and quiet. And all the rare stuff and the stones they was waitin' all the time so snug and safe for 'im when he could go to fetch 'em. And now he's goin'—very comfrabil and slow!'
"Well, that was all we could get out of that loony, try 'ow we would. He repeated 'isself so. That was 'is cry all the time—jest repeat-in' 'isself like a parrot—like a bloomin' old poll parrot." The tramp paused for a second and stared sourly at his inquisitors.
"Well?" said Boler, his face perfectly impassive.
"Well! Well, that's all," grumbled the tramp. "We didn't care which way we went, and so we went Ringford way. Wouldn't you? And we started early next morning. Mr. Not-alf-Hundred-to-one-Corrie-I-don't-think was sprawlin' under the 'edge asleep, and tellin' 'isself all about dreamland, when we started off to 'ave a look round the Wesleyan chapel at Ringford. All the tramps we overtook was goin' the same way, and before long a goodish few overtook us—and it seems as they was goin' the same way too. That old loony must 'ave said the same to everybody as what he said to us. Stuff in the bloomin' chapel! Gam!" said the tramp bitterly. "Rats to your stuff and rare shiny stones! All the shiny stuff I seen in the bloomin' place, or anybody else either, was the silver on the cops coats!" He stood up, anxious and disgusted.
"'Ere, gimme that half quid and let me go! That's all I know. Stuff in the chapel—yah!"
Boler pushed over two florins.
"Your yarn ain't worth it," he said. "But if I was you I'd clear out."
He unlocked the door and the tramp lurched across. On the threshold he paused for a moment.
"Den of bloomin' thieves," he commented briefly. "But you won't git nothing out of the chapel; you could 'ide all the value there is there under a threppny bit. Stuff! Garn!"
He carefully spat on the floor and departed....
There was a thoughtful silence for some minutes after his departure. Then Mitch and Boler looked at each other, and nodded contentedly.
The captain watched them, and hastened to put a question. He was not fond of being left out in the cold, the captain.
"What d'you make of it, partners?" he said, pushing over a worn cigar case.
"I could go straight to it now and put my 'and right on it!" said Boler impressively.
"Easy!" threw in Mitch.
"The exact spot?" queried Captain Dan.
"Good as. I know the room it's hid in."
He ran his eye over the captain in a calculating fashion. Then he turned to Mitch.
"He's the very man we wanted to come in contact with, Henry—the very man."
The captain waited.
Presently. "The silver, or whatever it is, is hid somewhere in the room what was occupied a few years ago by a man name of Corrie, who worked up at Westlynn as valet to Crail," announced Boler, with an air of certainty that was very impressive. "And Corrie was Buck-royd! He never died in jail at all. Canary Wing was wrong! And what you've got to do, Captain, is to get friendly with Crail, and get invited up there to stay with him. Then, sooner or later, you'll get a chance of hunting out that room one night, and 'aving found the stuff lower it out to me on a rope. The dogs know me, so they won't matter."
"That's all right!" The eyes of the captain began to burn. "But how d'you know it's there?"
Boler told the story of Corrie the valet as it had been told to him by Mr. Walter Slinger, the kennelman.
The captain listened to the end, missing nothing. Then he rose and gravely shook the hands of the partners.
"It's ours!" he said. "Leave Crail to me." He thought for a second, smiled a little under his moustache, and spoke again.
"Has he any hobbies, this Crail, do you know?" The others surprisedly turned half round to face him, for he spoke newly, in a tone they had not heard him use before. But they knew the tone for all that—the cultured, easy, half lazy clean pronunciation of a "gentleman." The genuine thing—with the hall-mark of breeding on it. The pose of the man seemed to have changed somehow also: the manner of holding his cigar, the lounging, careless attitude in which he sat, even the shape and quality of his hands. As they stared he deftly fixed a monocle—they had noticed it before—in one of his eyes and sat regarding them with a smile; unquestionably a man of birth. They stared half in astonishment, half in admiration.
"Yes!" said Boler at last, "you're the man we wanted. You can do it down to the ground."
The captain smiled again—it was a shade forced this time—and reverted to his usual style.
"Oh, I can 'do' it all right," he said half bitterly. "If this man Crail's an ordinary reasonable man when he's not tramp-hunting, I can strike up some sort of acquaintance with him. Has he got any particular hobby?"
Boler pondered.
"His dogs, of course—and he plays billiards a lot. I've heard the butler say he plays uncommon good billiards, and he's bloomin' fond of the game. The doctor looks in most nights for a game with 'im. Can you play?"
The captain grinned, and indicated a tiny scar just above his temple.
"You can call that a certificate," he said; "I got it for making a hundred and eighty break in the wrong place a few years ago. Oh yes, I can play billiards—I think."
"Oh, well, then it's as good as money in our pockets. 'Ere's luck!" said Mitch, and emptied his glass.
They discussed details for a few minutes, and then—Boler discovering that it was a good half-hour before closing time—they drew out for a visit to the Westley Inn.
The captain went on ahead, alone, for if he was to successfully "pal up" (as Mitch put it) with Crail, the less he was seen with his two humble partners the better....
The Westley Inn had never done better business than it was doing this night.
Mrs. Gritty was audibly expressing a fervent wish that "them tramps" visited the place every night, when Mr. Henry Mitch and Boler entered the bar parlour.
"Why, where 'ave you been, 'Enery?" she asked, as, liberally using his privilege of outside manager, Mr. Mitch desired the barmaid to give him two sixpennyworths of whisky.
He seated himself wearily.
"Chasin' them dam' tramps!" he said
"Fallin' down in the dark. Niver 'ad sich a time in me life. Me and my friend Mr. Mitey 'ere is jest about done up. We chased one of 'em about five mile. And as for bein' 'ungry—why, talk about pigs—"
He was suddenly silent—frozen to silence—for his eye, wandering round the crowded little room, had fallen upon a gentleman in black who, sitting on the opposite side of the table clutching a large glass in both hands, was apparently asleep with one eye and wide-awake with the other. And his wide-awake eye was fastened upon Mitch in a curious glassy stare. It was Mr. Winchester Chalk, the advocate of temperance, the lecturer upon teetotal delights. He was staring at Mitch like a man who looks upon a face he remembers but cannot identify.
"'Oo's tha'?" he said, in a half-puzzled, wholly intoxicated voice. "I know 'im—wha'? I know 'im vey well. 'Oo's tha' man? Old frien' o' mine, tha' man. Woss name? 'Ave a drink 'long me." He paused, emptied his glass, and then, apparently losing all interest in Mitch (vastly to that sportsman's relief), he began to weep bitterly.
"Never earrer sish thing 'n all m' life—'n all m' born days. Woss good lesherin'—lesherin' to sich con'gration's tha'. Lorra dirry tram's—can't keep qui'—makin' sish noise—man can' earrer shelf speak. No more temprince— noffer me—noffer Winsh'er Chalk. Git drunk 'n stead. Gi' drunk lorra times—every day—speshly Sarraday 'n' Sunday. Woss good lesherin'?"
Mitch grinned. Evidently, when it was borne in on him that the tramps had not assembled at the chapel to hear his views about temperance, Winchester's wounded pride had caused him to shed his teetotal convictions with a speed that left nothing to be desired by closing time, as far as the fallen rat-catcher was concerned. But Mitch made a note that unless he wanted what he termed "a lot of old dead and gone things" dragged up again he must make a point of having a talk with the ex-lecturer very early in the morning. Then Winchester's remaining good eye closed suddenly, and perfectly reassured, Mr. Mitch allowed himself to be persuaded by Mrs. Gritty to take his friend Mr. Mitey upstairs to the sitting-room where, she explained, there was a freshly cut ham waiting that would do their hearts good to see.
They went, for the sake of their hearts.
MR. MITCH arose more or less with the lark on the following morning. He was in excellent spirits, and hummed a snatch of song as he dressed himself. The definite locating of the receiver's hoard at Westlynn and the arrangements made for the securing of it left him practically free to attend to his personal affairs. Everything now rested with the captain and Boler. He would be on hand if he was wanted to assist at any time, but, at the moment, he was to be no longer active in the search. So he hummed gaily as he clothed himself—until Boler rolled over in their only bed and drowsily requested his partner to go and play bees somewhere else, as he, Boler, had a day's work in front of him and needed all the rest he could get.
Mitch grinned, and faded away downstairs and out. He was going to call on Winchester Chalk and, now that Winchester had fallen from grace, fix up another plan for securing the rat-catcher's silence in the question of the late Mr. Arthur Hopley.
Early as he was, however, Winchester had already started to his work on a farm some two or three miles across the downs at the back of the village, and at the moment that Mitch banged on his cottage door, the rat-catcher, with the feeling that his head contained a circular saw, was half-way to his destination.
A little perturbed, Mitch hurried after him.
But by the time he struck the path that ran along the foot of the wide downs, Winchester was so far on his journey that he looked no more than a little black speck crawling very slowly across the breast of the big hill.
Henry hesitated.
"'E's a mile off, and—I ain't 'ad no breakfast," he grumbled. "I shall 'ave to tell 'im to-night."
As he stared after his man he heard a stifled little squeal in a belt of stunted scrub and gorse just to the left of him. It was a sound he knew—a rabbit just caught in a wire. He dived into the thicket, like the born poacher he was at heart, and wormed his way towards the place where he could hear the rabbit scuffling. It took some minutes to secure his quarry, and five more to pull out of his hands the thorns he had collected on his way. Then he reset the wire—a friendly little stri vice to the poacher to whom it belonged—placed the rabbit in his clothes, and started on his hands and knees to worm out into the open.
"Got something for me trouble, anyhow," he grinned, thrusting his head out of the gorse patch. He drew it in again, however, considerably quicker than he thrust it out, for about fifty yards away he saw Crail, the millionaire, on horseback, cantering towards the gorse. Two of his giant dogs lolloped along behind him.
"Out for a blow," muttered Mitch. "Lumme, if them dogs takes a fancy to do a bit of rabbitin' in 'ere!" He squirmed back into the cover. "Nice rabbit they'll catch—I don't think." He flattened himself and lay still, in the hope that Crail would not allow his animals to spoil their coats in the dusty prickly gorse.
The horse drummed swiftly past Mitch's lair, and he was congratulating himself very heartily indeed on his escape—for Crail owned the shooting over the downs, and was hard on poachers—when suddenly the regular thudding broke into a sort of stamping dance on the soft turf.
Crail had pulled up, and Mitch listened, quaking.
"Good-morning, Miss Kate." Crail's voice came heavily down to Mitch's pricked ears through the tangle, and it seemed to the skulker that it was somehow less harsh than usual.
"Good-morning." It was Mitch's niece who answered.
"'Ullo!" said Henry, very softly, craning his neck to listen. "She must 'ave come round the other side of this 'ere fuzz while I was inside." He could hear the millionaire speaking rapidly; but he had dropped his voice so that it came to Mitch as no more than a deep droning sort of murmur. Presently it ceased altogether, and there was a period of silence.
Then the listener heard his niece speak quietly, but quite clearly.
"Oh, I'm sorry!" she said. "Oh, I am so sorry. I can't. It's 'No.' Please—"
"Oh, I am so sorry. I can't. It's 'No.' Please—"
The voice of the millionaire came down to the dusty hollow once more.
"See here, little girl, you know what you're giving up?... Oh, I'm not shouting about all the easy things my money makes for me—for you, if you like. Only... as long as you know... It's a lot. The other man—I guess it's Riley—can't give them to you. It's not his fault. Money—a million—is just luck. I'm luckier than he is about money, that's all. He's a man; he's as much a man as I am except for the money.... But don't you care for the money either?" Crail's voice shook a little, and there was no harshness in it at all now.
"Why, you little girl, I could pick you up with one hand and ride away with you...." Another pause. Then "Say, it's 'Yes,' Katie. It's 'Yes' you mean?"
But it was "No," and Kate said it again with a little sob. There was another pause, and Mitch, peering desperately through the scrub, aught the white flicker of a handkerchief. Then "It's all right," said Crail suddenly. "Don't cry. It's all in the game; and I guess men have got to take women the way they're made. I've been lucky the wrong way." Mitch heard the horse dance round as the millionaire mounted.
"This lets me out for always, Katie." Crail was speaking from the saddle. "You're right, I guess. But a man's luck flies up in his face sometimes, and if you and Riley ever want a lift, don't forget to send to me. I shall be proud—proud...."
Then Mitch heard a snort as Crail drove in his spurs, and the wild hoofs pounded away across the down.
He began to crawl out, and it occurred to him that there was good in Crail which, hitherto, he had overlooked....
Kate was wiping her eyes furtively as her uncle emerged.
With a certain clumsy tact he pretended that he had heard nothing. Indeed, he half apologised for being there at all. She smiled a little at that, and so emboldened him to go further.
"Has Perry told you yet," he asked, "About 'oo I am?"
She nodded and laughed frankly, and Mitch, looking upon her, hastened to inform himself that she was too good for "any bloomin' Crail."
"Well," he said, after a slight pause, "I 'ope you don't think I'm sich a blaggard as she makes out!" He jerked his head towards the village to indicate that 'she' might be taken as meaning Mrs. Hopley.
"Why, no, uncle," said the girl, as she reached up and kissed him. "You were always too kind to me for me to think badly of you."
Mitch swore with pleasure.
"Why, God bless ye, damme!" he said, with tears in his eyes. "That's the way I knew you'd talk! Why, that's the fust kind word I've 'ad from a woman ever since I been back in Ringford."
"Excepting Mrs. Gritty," suggested Kate. Mitch half blushed, and looked uneasy.
"Well, yes—I s'pose so—maybe," he agreed vaguely.
"'Ow 'ave things been since I went away?" he asked, after a pause. The girl gave him a brief record of the things that had happened during his absence. It was a sufficiently uneventful recital. Here and there—not infrequently, despite the girl's obvious desire to be loyal to her shrewish aunt—were instances of Mrs. Hopley's spite, and in these places Mitch, sitting on the turf, would press his hands together and say, "Ah! just like her. Just what she would do!" Finally Kate, shyly enough, told of her romance with Mr. Perry Riley. She told it with a queer little air of appeal—appeal to Mitch which he recognised and which stirred him. It occurred to him that, unimportant and half a pariah as he was, Kate was asking his approval and encouragement. And he gave it without hesitation—even eagerly.
"Take my advice, my dear," he said earnestly; "marry Perry. Marriage is a funny sort of thing, and I 'ave never got much good by doin' it myself, but you and Perry is different. He's a man, and you ain't no nagger. If you was a nagger, Katie, and 'ave been 'iding it, then I should say, ''Ands off Perry or any other man!' But you ain't!" He patted her hand very gently. "I can only mind you as a long-legged little girl, but even then you was a tender-'arted girl, as you be now and as you 'ave showed yourself to be. You marry old Perry, Kate, my girl, and make 'is 'ome comfortable, and there ain't no two folk in the world what'll be 'appier than you two. Money ain't everything—" he chuckled as the pink deepened in the girl's cheeks; "why, come to think of it, money ain't nothin'—at least not much—but care and studyin' one another is everything. If Perry ever 'appens to go into Andover and sells a hunter, worth p'raps fifty pound, for one hundred pounds, it stands to reason that he'll drink three more whiskies than 'e allowed for. Mebbe 'e'll trip over the rug when 'e comes 'ome. But don't you give no 'eed to that. Give 'im 'is supper, and do jest a half as much talkin' as you meant to afore 'e come. Go easy with him, and take no notice of 'ow 'e talks a little bit more uneven than usual. Next mornin' 'e'll look sort of silly and give you about 'alf-a-dozen extra kisses, and look as though he 'ad something 'e wants to tell you and don't know 'ow to. And then you give 'im a kiss for 'imself, and you say to 'im, 'It's all right about them extra whiskies, Perry, old man. Don't you think no more about them. I should 'ave done the same in your place—and so'd anybody. I'll walk down to the bank along with you when you goes to bank that bit of profit. Why, you can beat 'em all in a deal, whether it's hunters or hogs, Perry.' Or something after that style, Katie. And old Perry 'e'll feel jest about fit to fall down on his knees and worship you. And it'll be months afore he gets drunk again. That's 'ow a man wants to be treated, but there's precious few women knows it, Katie...."
Mitch pulled up suddenly, looking a little bit surprised at himself, but Kate's eyes were shining and rapt. She was looking through the future to the cosy interior of the home that Mitch, the battered, had indicated to her. She was getting the supper that Mitch had spoken of, and she could see it all: the white cloth, the bright silver, the firelight; and it was all beautiful. She was certain, of course, that Perry would never trip over that rug; but if he did—well, Mitch, the wise, had told her what to do, and her heart told her that Mitch was right.
So when she came out of her day-dream she kissed her uncle again, and thought well of him.
She kissed her uncle again, and thought well of him.
Mitch began to ask about old things: about his gun; about the pigs he was fattening at the time he left the village; about men whose faces he missed; about a dog he had sold just before his exit; about his pony; about many things which the girl had forgotten. But she told him all she knew, and he was satisfied.
Presently, "It must be gettin' on for breakfast time," said Mitch. "Don't say anything to her, my dear. She's 'appy enough without me and with 'er money, and I'm 'appy enough without 'er and with my—prospects. She don't want me and I don't want 'er. And so I'll be makin' a move. It won't do for you and me to be seen together. And so—so long, Katie. We shall run acrost one another now and again, I s'pose."
As he turned he gave a little start.
"Why, 'ere is Perry!" he said. Another rider was coming across the slope of the down towards them, mounted on a sanguine youngster that fought gaily against the indignity of a saddle and bridle.
"I won't wait, my dear," said Mitch. "But you tell Perry that I said 'the next news I want to 'ear of is that Perry Riley and Katie Hopley 'ave been joined in the bands of 'oly matrimony.'"
As he passed Mr. Riley he said something to the same effect, concluding with a hilarious "'Ere's luck, old man."
Then he vanished down a gully of the down, and left the couple to the solitude they desired.
"And so that's all right," he chuckled, groping at the rabbit in his pocket to feel if it was fat. He lit his pipe and headed for home with the intention of getting through his morning meal as speedily as possible, and tracking Mr. Winchester Chalk to the farm upon which he was working without unnecessary and dangerous delay.
BOLER MITEY was assisting himself to his second thick slice of cold pork when Henry gaily entered the cottage after his early outing, and put the deceased rabbit on the table, next to a loaf of bread.
"If you'd only waited a few minutes you could 'ave 'ad boiled rabbit and pork for your breakfast," said Mr. Mitch severely. "You can see the mistake of 'urrying to get your food now, matey."
But Boler only grinned, and poured himself another mug of tea. Mitch joined him, and for some minutes they savaged the pork in silence.
"Well, we're gettin' pretty near to it now, old man," said Mitch at last. Boler wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, reached for his pipe, and nodded.
"Believe me or believe me bloomin' not," he answered, "but I got a presentiment that we shall 'ave it in our pockets within a week—mebbe even to-day. 'Oo knows?"
"'Oo knows—that's it," said Mitch. "Well, I'm all right and ready to drag off out of 'ere directly it's ours. Kate's give Crail the shove; 'e wanted to marry 'er, Boler. I was scrouchin' down in the fuzz with that rabbit, and I over'eard 'im propose the question to 'er. Lumme! 'Little gal,' he says, 'Perry Riley's a good man, and I'm a better man, with money by the truckload. Say you'll marry me, or I'll pick you up and sit you on this horse and ride away with you.' But she stuck 'im out, that small gal did, and she ses, 'Oh, I'm sorry!' she ses, 'but no fear—not for me!' And so old Crail ses something about he never 'ad no luck, but 'e'd fly up in Perry Riley's face and hit 'im if 'e ever wanted a lift, and with that he turned 'is 'orse round and rode off full split. So I crawled out, very satisfied, and told 'er to marry Perry; and she's goin' to, God bless 'er.... And now I'm ready to clear out at a minit's notice. I'll jest walk up to Westlynn with you for company, if you like. After that I got to go across the downs and see Winchester Chalk. Wonder if the captain'll make friends with Crail to-day?"
They strolled comfortably off in the direction of Boler's work, telling each other precisely what they intended to do with their money. They were both anxious to take a small farm, it appeared, and were profoundly discussing all they had ever heard about the value of bone manure as compared with the stable variety, when from the ditch at the side of the road there issued a sound that made them turn like a brace of acrobats.
"What's that?" asked the startled Mitch.
"Let's look; sounded to me like a groan."
They crossed the road and, half hidden by a bush, they saw, sprawling, the motionless figure of a tramp.
Even as they stared the man groaned again, and suddenly began a rapid and delirious muttering.
"There's them as likes to think as poor old Corrie (hundred to one on Corrie!), he was done for... and so he was very nigh done for too. ... All the stuff and the stones,—the rare stones... his little parcel what he... went to jail and all for.... But now he's goin' to fetch 'em so comfrabil and slow...."
The muttering trailed off into a rattly sort of whisper, and the man of the ditches turned sightless eyes upon the adventurers.
"It's him! 'E's come, Mitchy—'e's got here at last. Poor old Corrie—'e'll never get no nearer," said Boler, staring at the wreck before them.
Mitch moved up. "Lend a 'and, Boler," he said. "We'll get 'im out of that, anyhow."
Very gently they lifted Corrie out of the dusty, weedy ditch, and laid him on the turf. They were shocked to find how light he was.
"Why, 'e's starved. 'E's got nothin' on 'im. Some of them dam' tramps must 'ave robbed 'im—if 'e 'ad any money!" said Mitchy.
A cough suddenly shattered the husky whispering—a long, bitter, tearing cough that shook the man on the grass as though his bones were no more than a fragile framework of bamboo.
"I say, old man, 'e must be took in somewhere if 'e's goin' to live much longer!" said Mitch. "We'd better carry 'im."
Then they heard footsteps down the lane, and looked up to see Hinxman the policeman leisurely strolling towards them.
Mitch's call quickened his pace somewhat, and, leaving Boler to explain, Henry started off to find a hurdle. He had risked the chance of lonely sickness by the roadside too often himself to lack sympathy for the starved unfortunate who was coughing his life away at the gates of the millionaire.
"The man's dyin'," he said pitifully, running across a field. "Dyin'—and it's his stuff we're all 'unting for. We must look after 'im—that's only fair. Poor feller. Pray God I never get penal servitude." A vague remorse lent him strength and speed, but it was a quarter of an hour before he got back with the hurdle. Another early riser had joined Boler and the policeman—Captain Dan M'Cann—and he was trying to force something from a flask between the tramp's teeth. But the man made no effort to swallow; he seemed to have sunk into a profound and deathly stupor. At last the captain gave it up.
"The man's dying," he said. "What's the good? I've seen a man like this once before. He's past any help at all. We'll get him along to the doctor's."
So they carried him—whose great secret three of them knew—down to the house of the doctor. But all that the doctor could do was to wipe away that which was on the man's lips and tell them he had died on the way.
The ex-receiver of stolen goods, Buckroyd alias Corrie, had paid the price of the law for his treasure. And the price had been too high. Half-insane, and with infinite labour and pain, he had slowly crawled back to the place where he had hidden the hoard—but only to point the way to those who, more fortunate, would benefit by his failure and flourish where he had fallen.
And that is all there is of Buckroyd—alias Corrie.
BY the time he had helped the relieving officer to complete the necessary arrangements for the decent burial of Buckroyd—who, it seemed, had not died in prison after all—Mr. Mitch discovered that the greater part of the morning was used up. And so he decided to postpone his walk across the downs in quest of Winchester Chalk until the afternoon, and proceeded to do a little light work in and about the Westley Inn, and, later, to make a very large dinner in the company of Mrs. Gritty.
Whether it is because he was unduly elated at the prospect of wealth in the very near future, or whether the events of the morning had thrown him somewhat out of balance, is not clear, but he certainly took quite unusual pains to make himself pleasant to the landlady who had proved such an excellent friend to him. It may have been unconscious on his part, or it may have been a lurking jealousy which suddenly reared its crest when Mrs. Gritty dropped a chance remark concerning Captain M'Cann's striking personal charm, but, whatever it was, he was suddenly awakened to a keen sense of his imminent peril by hearing himself absent-mindedly addressing his companion as "my dear."
"You never know, my dear," he said, answering a question as to whether he thought the tramps would ever return. Mrs. Gritty required no further encouragement.
"You called me 'my dear'," she said, with the business-like bluntness that characterised her.
Mitch's heart sank, and he stiffened.
"Did I reely?" he asked, with a forced laugh. "Forgot meself—I mean—in a manner of speakin'." Mrs. Gritty ignored his embarrassed efforts to laugh it off.
"I s'pose you want to marry me," continued the landlady, direct as a rifle-barrel, scorning diplomacy.
"Well—well—I won't say I do—" Mitch clumsily feigned a delicacy he was far from feeling—"and I won't say I don't. Ain't it rather sharp work—sudden I mean—you know?"
Mrs. Gritty stood up, and came round the table to him.
"It's no sense beatin' about the bush. You and me just suits one another—oh, you needn't be shy—" as Mitch shrank a little—"and I don't mind tellin' you right out that the sooner we gets married the better I shall be pleased, my dear. You're just the little man I've been wanting to come along and marry me for years." She leaned over his shoulder and affectionately poured out for him the remainder of the beer in the jug.
"A little drop of brandy," he muttered, in a strained voice. "I've 'ad a rather excitin' day—and I got a long walk in front of me. A long walk."
The good-natured, if unattractive landlady hurried away to get the brandy. But she gave him one thoroughly sound kiss before she went.
Mr. Mitch stared at the door as it closed behind her with a fixed and fascinated stare.
Mr. Mitch stared at the door as it closed behind her.
"Yes," he said, "a long walk. The longest walk I 'ave ever took! So long—so bloomin' long—that I shall never get back to Ringford again."
But he abandoned the idea of flight almost as soon as he had conceived it. There was the silver, and he, Henry Mitch, was not the man to be frightened away from that by the peril of matrimony.
"I'll stave 'er off—and stave 'er off," he whispered feebly to himself. "And we'll see what 'appens. What a fool I was not to work at Westlynn the same as Boler. The dogs wouldn't 'ave wanted to marry me; they might 'ave bit me—but bitin' ain't marryin'."
He hastily swallowed the brandy which Mrs. Gritty brought, and muttering something about "seein' Winchester very important," avoided the kiss which the lady was obviously anxious to bestow upon him, and shuffled rapidly out of the room. Mrs. Gritty smiled fondly as she listened to his departing footsteps. "The little man—oh, the little man!" she said. "Tender 'earted as a baby, and as shy and modest as a young girl. The little man."
Then she set about clearing away the dinner things, talking to herself....
This time Mitch succeeded in crossing the downs without interruption. He went feverishly, heeding neither the sun nor the fiercer thirst that the exercise produced in him. He wanted to get to Winchester Chalk, and at once. Now that Mrs. Gritty had practically engaged herself to him, he dared not let it become known that he had won her affections under false colours—the colours of bachelorhood.
"Why, she and Sarah would rr-r-ip me eyes out very near—if they knew!" he said nervously to himself.
He stood for a moment on the big ridge. Then he broke into a sharp trot down the side of the down towards a farm that lay in a hollow a mile farther on.
One of the farm hands who, comfortably aware that his master was taking an after dinner nap indoors, was busy ferreting his next Sunday meal out of a rabbit burrow, noticed him and ran to meet him.
"What is it—a fire or an accident?" shouted this agricultural ghoul with a look of pleasure-able anticipation on his otherwise wooden face.
"Neither, you lump," growled Mr. Mitch. "Where's Winchester Chalk?" The labourer grinned.
"Find un, you fess little man," he answered. Henry ground his teeth, but controlled himself.
"Up at the pig-styes rattin', I s'pose?" he said, with a brief nod towards the outbuildings.
"'E was, Mister—about a nour ago. But 'e said 'e 'ad a very bad 'eadache jest now, and packed up his bagful of ferrets, 'ceptin' this one I got 'ere what laid up in a rathole, and went off 'ome. Leastways, 'e said 'e was goin' 'ome, but judgin' by what I 'eard about 'im last night, I should say 'e's gone off to one of the public 'ouses somewhere—and I don't know as I bla—"
"Which way?" demanded Mitch suddenly. "Which way did he go?"
"Across the big field along the railway! And, as I was a-sayin' of, I don't—"
But Mitch had departed—on the run.
The labourer stared at his diminishing back with his mouth open, holding the ferret by the neck.
"Well—I be dummed!" he said.
He transferred his bovine gaze to the ferret for a second. "What's up?" he asked the animal. But the ferret only wriggled, and so the farm hand turned to watch Mitch. In about five minutes that worried individual vanished through a gap in a hedge, and the rabbiter gave vent to his astonishment once more.
"Well—I—be—dummed!" he repeated.
He ponderously turned the affair over in his mind, looked up at the sun to get an idea of the time, put the ferret into his other hand, scratched his head with the hand which had fallen vacant, and looked across the field, his mouth wide open. He took the lower part of his left ear between his thumb and fingers and twiddled it thoughtfully. Presently the hurrying figure of Mr. Mitch came in sight again, a little, dwarfed miniature of a man hastening across an undulating field a mile away from the sportsman with the ferret.
"There 'e goes a-hurryin' and a-hurryin'. Well—if—this ain't the dummdest consarn!"
He chuckled slowly to himself, and absently began to rub with his right boot heel the calf of his left leg in order to discourage a harvest-fly or an ant which was enjoying itself somewhere in that locality. At last the toiling Mitch vanished over a ridge, heading across to the railway cutting, and the labourer slapped his thigh and once more broke into speech.
"I be dummed if that ain't all a consarn—dumm me if it ain't!"
Then he turned, knelt at the rabbit hole, and lifting a net, permitted the ferret to creep into the burrow.
"'E come up to me that fess and swift," he muttered to himself, "anybody would 'ave thought as there was a fire some—" He paused doubtfully, and after a thoughtful interval stood up once more and stared hard along the line of Mr. Mitch's flight. His gaze caught, and hung up at a gap in the hedge. "'E went through that gap like a dummed old rabbit. Goin' t'ord the railway line—dum me if e' warn't. After Winch Chalk, the ratter," he soliloquised. He appeared likely to continue in this strain for some hours—but at that moment he heard the drumming of scared rabbits under his feet, and turned just in time to fall bodily upon one of them with a thud that put any chance of escape out of the question. Twenty minutes later he might have been observed walking towards the farm (with a couple of rabbits in his pocket) and all the way staring steadily at the place where he finally lost sight of Mitch. It had been an exciting afternoon for him, and he had thoroughly enjoyed it.
Meanwhile Mr. Mitch, in a haze of profanity, had followed the railway line towards Ringford without seeing a sign of Winchester. But just as he was beginning to despair he came to a squat, little platelayer's hut, built of heavy tarred sleepers, on the side of the line, and there, sitting in the shade, carefully holding a galvanized bucket to his forehead, with an expression of great unhappiness, was Mr. Winchester Chalk! Apparently he had not noticed Mitch's approach.
"Coolin' your 'eadache, Winch?" asked the perspiring Henry loudly.
Mr. Chalk put down the bucket with guilty haste, looked up, and grinned feebly.
"Yes, she's fit to split, Arthur!" he said. "I woke up with it. Jest as though somebody was sawin' of it with a saw. All through a little drop of beer—as though I was a boy or a bloomin' beginner." His voice took an injured tone. "Me, mate! It never used to give me a 'eadache. It's all this teetotalisin'. I've got weak and all out of order through this tem'prance business. Good job I wasn't a teetotaller more'n a year, or it would 'ave killed me."
Mitch sat down beside his old friend and filled his pipe.
"Well, you're all right now, that's one thing," he said cheerfully.
Mr. Chalk stared at him, one hand to his forehead.
"What d'yer mean? All right now! What d'yer mean?" he demanded.
Mitch apologised. "What I mean to say is you'll be all right when you 'ave beer again. It's only once—after a spell of teetotallin'—that you 'ave the 'eadache. You'll be all right next time."
"'Ope so," said Winchester, "for I'm goin' to 'ave a quart directly I gets to a pub." He seemed to remember suddenly that Mitch was otherwise than what he called himself.
"But what, for pity's sake, be you doin' down 'ere in Ringford goin' be the name of Mitch? I knowed fust time I seen you and 'eard your voice that you was Arthur 'Opley as was, and it's a marvel to me that nobody else didn't. What you call yourself Mitch for?"
Henry laid his hand upon his friend's knee, and looked sadly into his eyes.
"Can't you see, Winchester?" he said earnestly. "Can't you see why?"
Winchester nodded.
"'Cos of 'er—the missus."
"That's it, Winchester, 'cos of 'er. I meant rejoinin' of 'er and lettin' bygones be bygones when I first come along—but I 'eard she'd 'ad two thousand pound left to 'er, and I wouldn't be beholden to 'er for anything. And then I found out that she 'ated me, and so I let 'er go. I'm leavin' the village shortly, and now you've shook off them chapel 'abits, I don't mind tellin' you all about it. And why am I tellin' you, you'll say—and rightly said, old man! It's because you're a friend of mine. You and Perry Riley was the only two chaps who guessed who I was when you seen me, and you're the only two I can trust not to run round the village tellin' folk my right name. Because you're real friends. You don't want to go and tell nobody—you ain't that sort of man. Are you?"
Mitch put the momentous question with a certain trepidation. But Winchester did not notice it. He thought for a minute, and then he suddenly grinned. He had fallen from grace, but he had not been quite comfortable in his old role until the friend of his youth came along. Now he grinned and shook hands.
"No bloomin' fear, old mate! I'd do a good bit wuss things than that to get even with—with—that darn tem'prance business. I'll call you Mitch as long as you likes. You and me was mates years ago, and mates we'll be now. And Arthur—'Enery, I mean—I beg your pardon for the way I called you a sinful man. I was kind of crazy, I should think. And I begs your pal Boler Mitey's pardon for givin' 'im that hymn-book and singin' hymns at 'im after 'e 'ad done a 'ard day's work."
Mr. Chalk was brightening up visibly. It seemed to do him good to talk with his old friend in the old manner. He stood up and shook hands with Mitch.
"Can you mind tellin' me about all that beautiful stock you 'ad in down at the Westley Inn t'other day?" he said.
Mitch smiled very warmly at him.
"I do so!" he replied.
"Then let's go and sample it," suggested Winchester eagerly. "Jest to show them tem'prance folk."
Mitch welcomed the idea with enthusiasm, and so they strolled amiably away down the lane, quarrelling in the friendliest fashion as to who should have the pleasure of paying for the first drink.
When, presently, they sighted the Westley Inn, Winchester had so far fitted himself again in the groove to which—save for the year of abstinence—he had been always accustomed, that he confided a secret to Mitch.
"That Mrs. Gritty's a niceish sort of woman, ain't she?" he said, with a sly glance at his companion.
"Why—ye-es—I s'pose so. Very kind-'earted woman —well-meanin' woman," replied Mr. Mitch.
"Well, I dunno whether you've noticed it—I don't somehow think anybody 'as—but it's my idee, 'Enery, that she's took a bit of a fancy to me. I kind of think she's 'ad a meanin' sort of look in 'er eye more than once when I've met 'er out of doors. Of course, me bein' tem'prance and 'er bein' t'other way, we didn't seem to come acrost one another much—but last night I noticed it special. What would you think, old man?"
Mitch looked away from his friend lest his face should betray him, and snatched at the chance with feverish energy.
"Winchester," he whispered, "she is. I 'ave noticed it meself." He gripped Mr. Chalk by the arm as they wheeled at the door of the inn.
"Come in!" he said. "Come in and win! I'll 'elp you!"
IT was with a certain feeling of satisfaction and hope that Mr. Mitch, having partaken of two large glasses of beer in the company of Winchester Chalk, excused himself from duty for a half-hour or so, and, leaving Winchester in the Westley Inn steadily making up for time lost during his temperance year, walked briskly up to the cottage which he shared with Boler Mitey. Chiefly he desired to learn precisely how Captain Dan had got on that day, after the arrangements concerning the burial of Buckroyd had been made. Mitch knew that the captain would push ahead with all the celerity that was possible, and, walking up the village street, he was pleasantly conscious that his labours in connection with the recovery of the silver were rapidly approaching an end.
"Lumme!" he said softly to himself as the cottage came in sight. "A farm—a bloomin' little farm with a lot of pigs fattenin'. That's what we'll 'ave, me and Boler, and we'll make it pay, too. There's money in pigs—properly fatted."
He chuckled and entered the cottage. Sitting in a rickety arm-chair—recently borrowed from the Westley Inn—was Captain Dan, thoughtfully smoking and watching Boler make the tea.
"Well, partners—got it?" asked Henry gaily, advancing to the table to see if there was anything special to eat.
Boler grinned at him, and even the impassive M'Cann looked cheerfully round.
"Yes," said Boler, "as good as."
Mr. Mitch's face fell.
"As good as!" he commented. "I've said that 'undreds of times myself, but it never seemed to land me any nearer to the silver! 'Owever, what's the latest?"
"Crail's goin' away for a cruise in 'is yacht," said Boler happily. "Something's been and upset that fine, large millionaire, and 'e don't want to 'ave nothing at all to do with Ringford for six months. 'E's goin' to 'ave a beautiful long trip in 'is yacht, and 'e's goin' to go to America, and all sorts of things 'e's goin' to do. And some of the servants are goin' to be sent 'ome for a 'oliday without any wages, and some of 'em are goin' to stop on to look after West-lynn. And I'm one of 'em which are stoppin' on. To look after the dogs and 'elp keep things clean. And I've got to sleep in the 'ouse, 'Enery —I've got to sleep in the 'ouse—in case any of them sneakin', 'orrible burglars breaks in and steals."
Mitch opened his mouth and stared.
"What?" he said; "say it again slow!" And he took a seat in order to listen.
Boler repeated his statement, adding: "And so I shall sleep in the 'ouse, somewhere in the servants' wing—and perhaps in the very bloomin' room that poor old Corrie slept in."
He poured the tea solemnly, allowing the news to soak in, and changing the pot from his right hand to his left as Mitch rose and, in a pregnant silence, shook the former member heartily.
"Well done!" he said vaguely, but with unquestionable sincerity. There was a comfortable silence as he sipped his tea from the thick, blue pint mug he had borrowed from the Westley Inn some time before. But presently he felt himself smiling contentedly. He knew it, and at once admitted it with the frankness that sometimes distinguished him.
"I can't 'elp smilin' to meself," he said to his similarly amused partners. "It's so bloomin' pleasant to think 'ow easy it is for a chap to creep down to the door about two o'clock in the mornin'—" he cocked a wise eye at Boler, who was nodding and smiling—"and quietly let into the 'ouse two of 'is pals—" he transferred his gaze to Captain Dan—"and 'aving 'anded them whatever there is to 'and, let them out again so nice and peaceful and quiet."
"I can't 'elp smilin' to meself."
They all nodded together. There was another comfortable silence—broken at last by the knocking of the captain's pipe against the wall. Then that gentleman stood up briskly.
"Well," he said, "Crail goes to-morrow, it seems. And the sooner we get to work on the job the better. Probably most of the servants will go immediately after. Now, there will probably be a good bit of drinking going on that day, and it's your job, Boler, to see that the servants who are remaining to look after the place get absolutely cannoned before you help 'em to bed. That'll be easy enough—-to judge by the look of the butler, who popped into the Westley Inn to-day. You get 'em like a lot of absolute boiled owls. It'll be rough on Crail's cellar before the butler gets speechless, but that can't be helped. Start him early in the morning, and by twelve o'clock at night he ought to be comfortable. Give the dogs a double feed and they'll be lazy, and not likely to make much noise as long as you're with us. We shall come along at one o'clock to the tick, and you must be ready for us to the minute. We don't want to have to hang about waiting for you to come and open the door—in case old Hinxman takes it into his head to stroll up as far as Westlynn before turning in. It always happens at the awkward moment, remember. Once we're in we'll get along to the room that Corrie occupied and search it. And, if I know anything, we shall have our hooks on that silver or whatever it is in about two ticks. See?" They agreed.
"But there's Canary Wing's share, don't forget," said Mitch.
"Oh, hang Canary Wing!" commented the captain airily.
But Boler allied himself with Mitch in the matter of Canary's share, and Captain Dan gave way.
"Oh, all right. But let's get it first. That's the idea—get it—and divide afterwards.... By the way—" the captain suddenly looked thoughtful—"By the way, I believe that burglar of yours—Canary Wing—has escaped! I saw something in the paper this morning about a convict who had made a dash in the fog yesterday on Dartmoor and got clear away. They shot at him, but they must have missed. Hanged if I don't think his name was Wing—'Wing the burglar who, it will be remembered, stole the Countess of Clarbury's jewels some years ago,' it went. I'm pretty certain the name was Wing."
Mitch's face fell a little. It will be remembered that his arrangement with the unfortunate burglar was "halves," whereas all there would be for him now, in the event of his coming to claim it, was a quarter share. And Henry was inclined to the opinion that Canary would take it hard—very hard. He expressed a hope that Mr. Wing had not escaped, and dwelt uneasily on the things that might happen if he chanced to turn up at Westlynn just as they were locating Buckroyd's hoard.
"'E's a violent man—and I don't reckon 'e'd worry much if 'e committed murder on me."
"He wouldn't worry long, anyhow," commented Captain Dan significantly.
"No—but that wouldn't 'elp me much," suggested Mitch. He rose. "I don't like this," he said uncomfortably. "The evenin' paper'll be in very soon now, and I'm off down to the Westley to get it and make sure. You'd better come on too. There ain't anything we can do until to-morrow night, and we can't settle up definite until to-morrow afternoon."
And so, the captain following well behind, the friends started for the inn to await the arrival of the evening paper and the facts in the case of Canary Wing's escape.
"There'll be trouble, Boler, if 'e 'as escaped and if 'e comes this way. As 'e will do. I got an instinct that 'e will."
Boler humped his shoulders, his hands in his pockets.
"Oh, I don't know," he said cheerfully. "'Tain't so easy to escape out of jail, Mitchy. They'll 'ave 'im before 'e gets very far...."
But, as a matter of fact, Mitch was right, and Boler, for once, was in error. Mr. Canary Wing was an old hand and, as many of his London friends were able to testify, "an artful cove." Some years before—soon after his second release from Dartmoor, to be accurate—he had made a point of spending a fortnight in the neighbourhood of the moor. By dint of much walking he had acquired a very fair knowledge of the line of flight he should adopt if it ever became necessary. Then he had proceeded to hide a box in a place which he could easily find again. In this box, very carefully packed in a waterproof sheet, was a suit of clothes, wig, beard, mirror, four pounds in gold and ten shillings in silver. He had carefully thought out the idea, and when, finally, he had returned to London for a fresh campaign against the British householder, Canary had the satisfaction of knowing that he had done all that was possible to help himself to freedom should the need ever arise.
The need had arisen; and so well had his foresight served him, that at the moment Boler and Mitch entered the inn, Mr. Wing, looking like a retired butcher, was sitting comfortably in his room at a hotel opposite the Devonshire station, from which on the following morning he intended starting for Ringford.
THE bar parlour was empty when they arrived, and an evening paper was lying on the table. It took Mitch just one minute to find the item dealing with the escape of Canary Wing. He read it carefully, brightening up at the inevitable concluding statement, that "large parties of armed warders are scouring the district, and as the convict has neither clothes, food, or money, his recapture may be momentarily expected."
"Well, I've done my best for 'im," said Henry, putting down the paper, after a glance at the racing results. "What'll you 'ave, Boler?"
"Oh, beer, thank'ee."
Boler sat down, and Mr. Mitch procured what he termed "two ales."
They sat peacefully by the window, smoking silently, and indulging in silver-gilt dreams.
"Funny 'ow luck turns, ain't it, Boler?" observed Mr. Mitch from behind a cloud of smoke. "One minit things is jest about as bad as they bloomin' can be, and next minit you're doin' well and perfectly 'appy. It's a sort of bloomin' seesaw, luck is—one minit up, t'other minit down. You never know your luck, it says in the Bible, and it's true too."
Boler nodded thoughtfully and agreed.
Then the door opened and Mr. Winchester Chalk entered carefully—very carefully. He seemed not to see Mitch and his partner at first. Indeed, he seemed to see nothing but a rush seat chair, with wooden arms, in the corner. The whole of his attention appeared to be taken up in his effort to reach this chair quietly and without ostentation. Half-way there, however, while he was holding on to the corner of the table, he startled himself with an obviously unexpected hiccup. He turned and looked fiercely at the two sitting by the window.
"Wha' say?" he asked, and hiccuped once more.
"Awri'!" he said, evidently satisfied with the answer. He reached the chair and sat down. He breathed heavily for a few minutes, looking straight before him, endeavouring to pull himself together.
Then, apparently successful, he stared hard at Mitch and Boler, and recognised them.
"'Ello, Arthur, I 'eard you was dead. 'Ow are you?"
"Mitch, you fool!" whispered Henry angrily, getting up.
"No, 'Opley—Harthur 'Opley what deserted his wife!" came an angrier voice from the doorway.
The unfortunate Henry turned and encountered the glare of Mrs. Gritty, who had appeared noiselessly on the threshold.
"'Oo did?" he demanded feebly.
"You did! Deserted of 'er!" Mrs. Gritty advanced into the room like an Amazon out of training.
"Well, I didn't do 'er any 'arm," claimed Mitch with nervous glibness. "She 'ad two thousand pound left 'er, and I 'aven't spent a ha'penny of it. Don't go, Boler; there ain't any reason for you to go, old man." He looked imploringly back at his partner, who had risen and showed signs of departing. A few of the villagers, hearing Mrs. Gritty's raised voice, had come from the public bar and were staring into the bar parlour, evidently deeply interested in the matter.
Mrs. Gritty stared for two seconds at the wilting Mitch, and then, turning to the gentlemen at the door, invited them to have a look at him.
Invited them to have a look at him.
"A man what packed up one night and slipped it while 'is wife was fast asleep!" she said. "And not content with that, 'e come back! Five year afterward the little toad comes back under another name as bold and rakish as a rooster—along with a friend what looks jest sich another fly-by-night as what 'e is." She indicated Mr. Mitey, who stood with his hands in his pockets, whistling softly. "'Enry Mitch! That's what 'e calls 'isself. But 'Opley is 'is name—Harthur 'Opley the pig dealer. Most of you knows 'im!" She flung out a brawny arm at the delighted audience in the doorway, who, mistaking the gesture, stepped hastily back.
"Yes, and wants me to marry 'im—the bigameous little toad! Yes, and if it 'adn't 'ave been for Mr. Chalk there—" Winchester smiled foolishly—"if it 'adn't 'ave been for Mr. Chalk there gettin' the worse for drink and lettin' out the secret to me just now, 'e would 'ave married me too. I wish 'e'd 'ave tried it on! 'E come 'ere and 'e's 'ad money off me for wages for doin' nothin' 'ardly. And the beer 'e's drunk you'd never believe a man could make away with in the time. I've known 'im to 'ave beer for breakfast—" Mitch made a feeble movement, and muttered something about "only when I 'ad a touch of influenza."
Mrs. Gritty seemed to be getting into her stride, as it were, and the contingent at the door were congratulating themselves on being there to enjoy what promised to be an interesting half-hour, when Perry Riley pushed through them, followed by Captain Dan.
"Hello, Mrs. G. What's the trouble? Want Winchester here chucked out?" asked Perry jovially, taking in the situation at a glance.
"No, Mr. Riley—that little toad there—callin' 'isself Mitch!"
But Henry was accommodating enough, "All right," he said hastily, "I'll go. Don't you trouble any more about me, Mrs. G. I ain't worth it. I'll go—now—jest as quiet as ever you like. No need for any fuss. I'll go now."
"Some mistake somewhere, Mrs. G. Henry there's all right," suggested Perry surprisedly. "He wouldn't hurt a fly."
"No, not a fly, not a fly," agreed Mr. Mitch anxiously."'Owever, I s'pose I must be gettin' along."
He looked at Mrs. Gritty, and to his surprise she made way for him.
"I'll pay for the beer bimeby," said Henry furtively as he passed her, en route for the door. The crowd of villagers made way for him, and he vanished.
Now Mrs. Gritty was a good-natured woman, and it may be that something in the look on Mitch's face as he went appealed to her generous instincts. Or she may have remembered the sweet-tempered Mrs. Hopley. But, whatever it was, she suddenly turned her vocabulary loose on the loafers at the door, and cleared them off to their own bar with a rapidity that was highly commendable.
Then she applied herself to Winchester Chalk. Him she assisted from his chair—not too gently—and escorted him to the door.
"You've 'ad too much beer," she said, "and you can't stand it as well as better men than you are can. Go home to bed, and don't come 'ere makin' trouble."
She stared up the street at a small dim form that was moving dejectedly away, and sighed gustily.
"What a pity! I did fancy 'im so!" she said regretfully. "And now it'll be all over the village. 'E's worth forty of that great fool Winchester Chalk. And Sarah's enough to drive any man away."
She stayed long enough to see Winchester, very weary and very intoxicated, seat himself carefully on the steps of the doctor's house, and then returned to the bar parlour, where she frostily inquired of every one who had any question to ask concerning Mitch, "What business is it of yours?"...
Boler joined his partner at the cottage some twenty minutes later.
"All through that lump Winchester Chalk, old man," he said; "he told her by accident to-night—bein' cannoned. All through drinkin' beer on an empty stomach. 'Owever, 'e's gettin' paid out for it. 'E's been on well on the doctor's steps, and the doctor 'appened to come along with 'is ridin'-crop and laid into 'im pretty."
"Good job too," replied Mitch.
Boler slapped his comrade on the shoulder.
"There ain't no call for you to get low-spirited, y'know," he said, adding casually, "I've just 'eard from Mr. Riley that your missus went away to-night to stop with a friend at Salisbury for a couple of days."
Mitch got up as though he had been sitting on a wasp's nest.
"Now you're talkin' sense!" he said, and allowed himself to be persuaded into eating a supper which would have sickened the most optimistic vegetarian that ever lived.
IT is possible that Crail the millionaire was even more earnest in his desire to marry Kate than he expected before she had refused him. At any rate, his rejection had lighted in him a savage contempt for Ringford and a burning intention to get out of it for a while in as short a space of time as was possible.
To a millionaire, delay is—in most matters—an obsolete word. As Mitch put it when Crail had departed, "Money'll move mole'ills as easy as mountings—if it's got repetition be'ind it"—meaning "reputation" doubtless.
Consequently the big man left Ringford early in the morning of the day following the exposure of. Mr. Mitch by Winchester Chalk.
They were all in the station to see him go—Mr. Mitch conversing amiably with one of the porters, Boler Mitey, who had come to the station to see if certain dog-collars ordered from town had arrived, and Captain M'Cann looking over the wares on the bookstall.
Crail left no tips—unless oaths upon the clumsiness of porters in general and Ringford porters in particular may be considered as tips, in that they tend to brighten one and make him smarter; and others beside the three silver-seekers were glad to see him go.
The train steamed out, and the few spectators that usually gather in a country station when a train is due to arrive or depart drifted off the platform. Boler paused at the bookstall for a second or two as he went.
"Come to the cottage at twelve, Captain," he said quietly. The captain nodded, and purchased a Sportsman, and Boler joined Mitch.
"It's jest likely we can do it to-night," he said, as they strolled down the road from the station. "'Is going so early makes a difference. There'll be a sort of spread in the servants' 'all, and I expect them that aren't stoppin' on will go to their 'omes to-night. 'Owever, if you'll manage to be at the cottage at twelve I'll let you know. The captain's comin'."
At the corner Mitch hesitated. He looked down the road towards the Westley Inn, shrugged his shoulders, and then looked up the road in the direction of Westlynn. Boler noted his indecision, and grinned unfeelingly.
"Which way you goin'?" he inquired.
"I was jest wonderin'," sighed Henry. Then making up his mind, "I think on the 'ole I'll come along with you up as far as Westlynn. It'll be company for you—and—and I got a idea I ain't over popular down at Mrs. Gritty's along now. Besides, a bit of a walk'll do me a world of good!"
He lit his pipe, and strolled on with Boler.
"Well, old man, we shall soon know our luck now," he said, by way of changing the subject. "About 'ow much do you reckon we shall 'ave each?"
"Oh, I don't know. Thousand pounds each p'raps. You never know. Might be more—might be less. What d'you reckon, 'Enry?"
"More! I reckon it'll be more like two thousand each, meself, Boler. But I admit, mind, I never was much good at figures. Why, lumme! it might be three thousand apiece for all I know. There's no telling. 'Ello, 'ere's one of 'em off already."
They stopped as a thin, pale youth, carrying a heavy bag, came up to them.
"What! Off already?" asked Boler.
"I am so! Goin' to catch the ten-forty-five down," said the youth. There was a slight thickness in his speech, and his eyes looked a little dull. He was a sort of under footman at Westlynn, and a nephew of Mr. Wilkins the butler.
"You've managed it early, old man," suggested Mitch, and the thin youth grinned.
"Oh, old Wilkins give me leaf. 'E stood me a drink or two of port, and told me I could go—me not bein' very well." He winked, and picked up his bag. "Well, so long," he said, and moved on.
The pair watched him with calculating eyes.
"There you are, Mitchy," said Boler. "That's the start. Old Wilkins give 'im two or three glasses of port, and finished the bottle very likely. That'll be goin' on all day. See? One by one them that are goin' will go, and one by one them that are stoppin' will get cannoned. Why, it all works out like clockwork. You might as well come in with me. Nobody will object, and it'll be a chance for you to get the 'ang of the place a bit. Come to the kennels fust, and I'll give you a bit of boiled liver to give to the dogs. Best thing in the world for makin' a friend of dogs —a bit of boiled liver is."
They passed round the back of the big house towards the kennels, pausing for a second as Boler pointed out a side door.
"That's the door you'll come in by," said he. "Jest turn the 'andle quiet; but we'll arrange all that presently."
After a quarter of an hour in the kennels they headed towards the servants' hall. At the window sat a rubicund, clean-shaven, fattish old gentleman with a small bottle of champagne on the ledge by his side, talking to Crail's head chauffeur. This was Mr. Wilkins the butler.
He saw Boler and Mitch, and cordially invited them in.
"Come in," he said, "and partake of Mr. Crail's generous 'ospitality."
They entered, and listened politely to a jocose statement by Wilkins explaining how Crail at the moment of departure had said, "Wilkins, I'll leave things to you. Pack off the servants that are going as soon as you like; give 'em a glass of wine apiece, and see that they don't steal anything. Mind, I hold you responsible."
Wilkins then proceeded to press a bottle of Burgundy on them and some Stilton—"a snack before lunch," he termed it; and they sat and gleaned information so readily and unsuspectingly bestowed by the butler and others, that when, an hour later, they went out again they were comfortably aware that not more than five servants, including Boler, were likely to sleep in Westlynn that night.
The captain's eyes burned as he sat in the hut a few minutes later and heard the news from Boler.
Mr. Mitey, it seemed, had suddenly developed a mind for strategy with a mastery of detail that, hitherto, neither of his fellow loot-hunters had suspected.
"To-night's the time!" he said decisively.
"And punctuality is the bloomin' motto. You two 'ave got to leave all the indoor plannin' to me. We'd better fix the time for one o'clock. They'll all be in bed by that time, at the rate they're goin' on now. All right, then. At one o'clock to the tick—when the clock over the stables strikes—not before and not after, you be ready jest outside the little door I showed you, Mitch, and it'll suddenly open. One of you 'ad better 'ave a bag to fetch away anything we might find. And a cold chisel or two—something to prise up boards or open a panel. We must get 'old of one somewhere—
"That's all right," said the captain. "I've got one or two little tools that will do that. Bought them before I left town—on purpose."
"I know the room that Corrie or Buckroyd, or whatever 'is name was, used to 'ave, and I'll try and arrange with old Wilkins to let me have it to-night." He fingered his lips, looking thoughtful. "In case 'e turns rusty—as 'e is apt to do when quenchin' 'is thirst—and puts somebody else there—I ain't the only outdoor servant sleepin' in—we ought to be prepared."
It seemed that the captain was prepared, for he took a little case out of his pocket and extracted therefrom a tiny phial.
"If you find out who is going to sleep there, have a final drink with him, and put two drops of this in his glass," he said quietly.
The eyes of the others contracted a little.
"What is it?" asked Mitch quickly. The captain grinned.
"Only a sleeping draught," he explained. "You don't think I want to poison anybody, do you?"
Boler took the phial.
"I'll use me judgment," he said. "I don't reckon it'll be wanted, but we'll see.... Now, about the silver, if we get it. 'Ow're we goin' to get the money for it?" He turned to the captain.
"Mitch and me 'ave talked it all over," he went on, "and we've got a plan. First of all, Mitch and me should not be offended if you said you didn't trust us, and consequently we don't expect you to get offended if our plans looks as though we don't particular trust you. That's fair, ain't it—bearin' in mind that we was 'ere after the silver fust?"
In the course of a somewhat spotted career Captain Dan had become accustomed to a certain lack of faith in his integrity on the part of his friends and associates, and so he took occasion to say that at present he was by no means offended, but was merely desirous of hearing details of the plan.
Boler proceeded.
"Whatever we get 'as to be divided into four square parts—one for you, one for Mitch, one for me, and one for Canary Wing. That's agreed—and understood, ain't it?"
"Yes, yes," said the captain impatiently.
"But before we divide we want to know what it's worth—so that we can each get 'is proper share. Very well, what Mitch and me proposes is this. When we've got whatever there is, Mitch and me takes charge of it." The captain suddenly began to look even more interested.
"Go on," he said shortly.
"Us 'avin' taken charge of it, your job is to sell it—as agreed back at the Westley Inn the night we became partners."
The captain nodded.
"Well," continued Boler, "you take it bit by bit—about a eighth part at a time—and sell it wherever you reckon is best at the price you can get. You then bring back whatever you get for the eighth or the tenth or whatever it is, and we bank that money in our three names. Then you take another eighth and sell that, and bank that money just the same. And so on till we 'ave sold it all and banked all the money. Then we draws the money out of the bank and cuts it up into four equal lots. 'Ow's that? Fair, ain't it? Your expenses in sellin' to be allowed to you before we divides it. See the idea? You'll never 'ave more than an eighth or tenth of the silver in your 'and at a time, and it wouldn't pay for you to be tempted to bunk off with a eighth when you was entitled to a quarter. See?"
The captain's face cleared a little.
"Certainly," he said relievedly. "Dash it, I thought you were going to try and sharp me out of my share! I'll agree to that." He laughed. "I don't want to do you, anyhow—but business is business, and we haven't exchanged any references. The arrangement suits your Daniel all right. But don't you worry, partners—a couple that can knock out a little plan like that are not in any immediate danger of being sharped—not in any immediate danger. When do we leave the village with the plunder—and where do we go?"
"To-morrow morning by the ten-fifteen up—and we make Basingstoke our 'eadquarters until the silver's sold—not London."
"Righto! That suits me." Captain Dan rose.
"We'd better drink < Luck' to it," said Mr. Mitch solemnly, and produced from a huge pocket inside his coat a bottle of Burgundy that was own brother to the one the two had enjoyed in the company of Mr. Wilkins at Westlynn.
Boler chuckled.
"Why, where did you get 'im, 'Enry?" he asked.
Mr. Mitch gave a modest laugh.
"'Appened to spot it standin' on a corner of the dresser in the servants' 'all, when we was comin' out!" he explained, and gaily drew the cork.
And gaily drew the cork.
THAT night was a night of revelry at Westlynn, in the servants' hall. Mr. Wilkins was a butler who had grown old in the service of wealthy men who were judges of wine. He did not waste the contents of Crail's cellar on his fellow-servants, though—he gave them two large bottles of champagne between them, and when this was gone he put them on whisky and soda. He and the cook, however, confined themselves to port. At nine o'clock the cook made the discovery that port was cloying, and so took to bottled beer, in order, she said, to get the taste of alcohol out of her mouth. At nine-thirty she was weeping copiously because the taste of alcohol would not go. Ten minutes later she went deviously to bed. Of the four that were left, two were sound asleep by ten on account of a lamentable oversight they had made when preparing their whiskies and sodas. The syphon was empty, but they had not noticed it.
Then, to the ten solemn chimes from the clock over the stable, Mr. Boler Mitey, painfully sober, drew his chair closer to that of Mr. Wilkins, opened a fresh bottle of port, and set out to drink the elderly butler under the table in three hours, or die in the attempt.
Mr. Wilkins did well. He put up a long and stubborn fight, but he was handicapped by what he had taken during the day—heavily handicapped—and his habit of filling his glass thrice to Boler's once helped to give Boler the victory. He talked interminably, and told the same tale seven times, but at last broke off in the middle, and leaning gently back dropped into a solid slumber that would last him till long past dawn. It was by this time half-past eleven.
Mr. Wilkins did well.
Then Mr. Mitey arose with a grim smile, loosened the collars of the three sleepers, and went and held his head under the tap until it felt like a block of ice. Next he made himself a cup of very strong tea, and having finished it, started softly up the stairs to the room that once had been occupied by the valet Corrie. Arrived there he carefully barred the shutters and switched on the electric light.
"Now for it!" he muttered, and commenced his search.
It was not a large room, but when the stable clock struck the half-hour between twelve and one, Mr. Mitey had discovered nothing but the knowledge that hunting for hidden treasure at midnight is a form of exercise that causes one largely to perspire, and is a direct incentive to whispered profanity.
A little later he stole down to the side-door he had indicated to Mr. Mitch, and as the clock struck one he quietly shot back the bolts and opened the door. Even as the door swung inwards two figures stepped out of the moonlight and across the threshold. The door shut silently behind them. It was like an automatic contrivance.
"'Ooray!" went one of the figures in an emotional whisper—Mr. Henry Mitch.
Boler said nothing, but pressing the button of a little electric torch which he took from his pocket—having previously looted the same from Crail's study—turned and went cautiously down a long corridor, up the stairs, and so, with the others silent at his heels, back to the bedroom. They stole in, and Boler bolted the door.
"Now then," he said, "it's 'idden in this room somewhere. We got to find it. I've 'unted over an hour and ain't no nearer."
The captain's eye brightened, and he threw up his head.
"I'll find it if it's here," he said, and took a curious collection of steel implements from his pocket. Two tiny saws, beautifully made, some strange pincer-like instruments, a bunch of skeleton keys, a big magnifying glass, a sombre-looking revolver that gave back no reflection of light, a slender steel bar with a flattened fork at the end, and one or two other things. These he laid out on the bed, surveying them appreciatingly.
"Ten pounds deposit I paid on those the day before I left town," he muttered, "and another twenty to pay before they're my own. I shan't require 'em after to-night, and so I'll make you a present of 'em, Mitch—by-and-by."
Mitchy declined with thanks. He had no ambitions in the burglary line.
The captain ran his eye over the apartment. For a servant's room it was unusually well fitted and furnished. But Crail was notoriously a man who went the whole hog, as he termed it himself, and he had built and decorated Westlynn well—even to the extent of light oak panelling in his valet's bedroom.
Captain Dan's interest was centred on this panelling from the start. He went round it tapping softly, his ear within an inch of his hand. He came to the bed, signed, and Boler and Mitch lifted the bed clear of the wall as though they had rehearsed the movements for days. There was no mistaking their seriousness now. Even Mitch was pale-faced, keen-eyed, and rigid about the jaws.
At a corner the captain suddenly stopped, and tapped long. Then he went to the opposite side of the room, and tapped a panel there. He repeated the process on several other panels—but always he returned to the one at which he had stopped first.
The others stared as his white fingers ran rapidly along the borders of the panel, groping, pressing, feeling. But nothing happened, and presently he stepped lightly to the bed and took up one of the saws—a thing curving slightly in the shape of a scimitar. There was a bottle of oil, and he was about to anoint the saw when he shook his head.
"We don't want to do any damage if we can help it," he said, put the saw down, and resumed his groping. Still nothing happened. He went over to the panel with his magnifying glass and compared it with others—all under the lens.
Then he smiled, took an exceedingly thin-bladed knife from his pocket, opened it, and thrust the long narrow blade under the frame, as it were, of the panel. Something gave, and the frame came away bodily. Boler was just in time to catch the panel as, unsupported by the frame, it fell out.
A few bricks had been removed from the wall, and in the cavity lay a parcel about the size of a large cigar case. "Got it!" they said all together.
"Darn small, anyhow?" added Mitch doubtfully. "I don't see no silver."
"We'll soon see what it is, anyhow," said the captain, and took the parcel out.
Boler peered over his shoulder.
"Dimuns, for a quid," he croaked, shaking with excitement.
The captain was fumbling with the string that was tied very tightly round the parcel, and Boler picked up the knife.
"Cut it!" he said hungrily. "It's dimuns for a hundred quid! Cut!"
The captain cut. Diamonds it was!
"Lumme!" said Mitch, craning over them where they burned under the electric light, in the hand of Captain Dan. "A handful of 'em. Like a 'andful of—hazel nuts. Dimuns!"
Presently they put them back in their case, shook hands all round, replaced the panel as well as they were able, collected the instruments and crept through the big silent house out into the moonlight.
Boler took a long look round.
"All right!" he said softly, and they went victoriously to the hut.
A PROFOUND and solemn silence reigned as, having arrived at the hut and bolted the door, the three sat down round the rickety table to overhaul their loot.
The captain had carried the case of diamonds from Westlynn—Mitch and Boler walking one on each side of him, humming unconcernedly to show how implicitly they trusted him—and he now produced and emptied it on the table.
They all swore softly with pleasure as the flashing things rolled out.
"What they worth, Captain?" asked Mitch presently.
The captain ran over them one by one, jotting a note of his estimation of each on a scrap of paper. He did not hurry—he dwelt upon his task lovingly as though he liked and desired nothing better than to keep on doing it. Mitch and Boler hovered over the table in an exquisite anguish of suspense. Presently the captain totted up the figures.
Then he looked at his partners.
"How much?"
The captain cleared his throat.
"The things are worth twenty thousand quid if they're worth a ha'penny. We ought to get fifteen thousand for 'em within three months!" He drew in his breath and whispered excitedly, "Good lord! That man Buckroyd must have had a hand in every big robbery for years before he went to jail." Mitch nodded his head.
"'E must 'ave been a marvel! That's about three thousand quid apiece. Wonder why there wasn't no silver, though? Canary Wing said it was silver—'e said Buckroyd said so. I always onderstood there was some silver. Look at them bags too, what was empty, and what Slinger and the butler pinched!"
"Darn me if I ain't surprised at you, 'Enry! Ain't dimuns good enough for you?" hissed Boler in a tense whisper. "I don't care if there's a cart-load of silver up there. It can bloomin' well stop there for all I care. I've chanced me luck up at Westlynn once, and that's enough for me. It ain't lucky to overdo things. Canary Wing must 'ave fancied 'e said silver, or else 'e was crazy when 'e said it. Any'ow I ain't going—"
Boler suddenly stopped, staring at the window.
"There's somebody outside—'e was starin' in!" he said. Even as his companions turned to the window somebody tapped softly on the door. Captain Dan swept the stones into his pocket.
"Better let 'em in!" he said quietly, grabbed a greasy pack of cards from a shelf on the wall behind him, assisted each of the others to five cards, laid the pack neatly on the table, and sat back in his chair studying with an air of considerable dejection the two and six of clubs, the three of hearts and the jack of spades, which he had taken for himself.
"I'll try misere!" he said very loudly indeed as Mitch opened the door. There entered a short, burly man, decently dressed, with the general appearance of a prize-fighter turned butcher. It was Mr. Wing, recently of Dartmoor. He carefully shut the door behind him and faced the group. Mitch returned to his chair in silence.
"'Avin' a little 'and of cards, I see?" said Canary with an effort at politeness that was so obviously forced as to be more offensive than anything else. Without waiting for an answer he continued. "Why—ain't that Mr. Mitch—my old friend Mr. Mitch wot went into a partnership along with me to recover a lot of 'idden treasure—sparklers—dimuns and sich—settin' over there?"
He reached out a huge fist and offered it to Mitch. Henry shook it without enthusiasm.
"'Ow are you?" he said.
"'Ow am I? 'Ow am I? Ain't you got nothin' better to say to a bloke than 'Ow am I?" The veneer of politeness was peeling off Mr. Wing rapidly. He had seen the diamonds, and he feared for his share. "I'm 'ere for my 'alf of Buckroyd's treasure, that's 'Ow am I!" he said truculently. "And you and yer mates 'ad better give it up, tool That's it!"—his voice rose—"Give it up and—quick about it, or I'll swing fer the lot of yer! Come on—get move—"
"Drop it!" It was Captain Dan who spoke—spoke very quietly over a revolver, the black muzzle of which was peering with a sinister air of inquiry straight at Canary's stomach. Mr. Wing removed his eyes from those of the fascinated Mitch and gave a little gasp. He opened and shut his mouth twice like a fish out of water, but said nothing.
"Nobody," said the captain comfortably, from behind his instrument of persuasion, "nobody would mind if you were shot, you know. On the other hand I might get a medal for doing it. You are more of a nuisance than anything else, and it is a pity you were ever committed. We've got those diamonds, and you are going to receive a quarter share of them. We shall give them to you now, and having received them you can clear out. Is that satisfactory?"
"Ain't it wot I been askin' for?" growled Mr. Wing.
"Very well," continued the captain. "Stay where you are; don't move in case you make my finger slip. If my finger slips you will get a bullet slap in your bowels, which will be very sad for you, and will be sure to make you sorry you moved. Boler, take this revolver while I count our friend's quarter share out. Keep it levelled just as it is now—pointing at his stomach. Mind your finger doesn't slip—unless he moves. He looks very restless."
The captain put out the heap of diamonds once more and selected a number of them, Boler keeping Mr. Wing covered.
Presently the captain had made a selection to his taste, and screwing them up in a piece of paper handed them to Canary.
"Your share," he said. "If you aren't out of the village by morning I'll have you arrested as an escaped convict."
Canary took it, hesitated over a choice of words, glanced at the revolver, and feebly said, "Thank you."
"Good-night," remarked the captain, as Mitch opened the door.
"Good-night!" said Canary politely, the tail of his eye still on the revolver, and went out in a hurry. Something drifted over his shoulder as he went. It sounded like "Den o' sharps!" But the partners ignored it. So they disposed of Canary Wing.
Then they turned in and slept, each within reaching distance of the other, in case either succumbed in the night to a sudden temptation to bolt with the loot.
"THERE'S reasons why I shall be bloomin' glad to git off out of Ringford," said Mitch next morning as the three sat over the ragged remains of a rough breakfast. "And then again there's reasons why I shall be sort of sorry." He shook his head sagely. "Dunno as I treated Mrs. G. partickler well. For two pins I'd go and say 'Good-bye' to 'er and make friends. And I got me doubts but what some kind of an explanation ain't due to my missus—jest ex-plainin' things! What's your opinion, Boler?"
Now Mr. Mitey sat facing the window.
"Well, if that's your idea, 'Enry, my friend," he said earnestly, "'ere's your chance of ex-plainin'. For your missus is a-comin' up the path now like a fire-engine, and it looks to me as though she's expectin' a bit of a explanation." He rose hurriedly, with a meaning look at Captain Dan. "Come out the back way, Captain," he said.
Mitch changed colour and shot to the window. A sharp knock sounded on the door, and even as Boler and the captain faded quietly out of the back door, Mrs. Sarah Hopley came in by the front door like the Day of Judgment.
Mr. Mitch stood perfectly still by the window—precisely as the fascinated jackrabbit is said to stand before the rattlesnake that is about to take nourishment. His wife looked him carefully over with the utmost deliberation.
She began at his tie and finished at his boots. Then she spoke.
"Huh!" she remarked.
"What say, m'dear," mumbled Henry with the politeness of despair. He had dreamed of this meeting—it had been the most special of all his nightmares.
"Oh, you 'orrible little 'ound!" said Mrs. Hopley. "I suppose you thought I shouldn't 'ear about you—me bein' away for a few days with a lady friend?"
It was evident that she had meant to deal with Mitch in style. Henry saw that for himself. She was in no hurry; she had thought of what she was going to say, and rather than leave anything out she was perfectly prepared to say it all over again. There was no question of time as far as she was concerned—she had all the time there was. She, too, had dreamed of this situation, and she had saved and hoarded expletives and phrases and malice for it. Naturally cross-grained she had never had such an opportunity as this, and now it had come she meant making the most of it. Any regard she may have entertained for her husband had vanished years before. She did not want him to rejoin her. She had fed her dislike and contempt for him too long, too thoroughly, and too malignantly for that. All she wished to do was to scarify him and leave him, soul and body, in rags. Mitch stood and watched her furtively. He was under the old spell—the bitter enchantment of the days when he was accustomed to drink her homemade hop beer and smoke in the woodshed. But that had been a long time ago, and Mitch also had altered. Then, by reason of his goodnature he had been accustomed to give way and to defer to her always, and she had made a rabbit of him. But he had struck the Road in deadly earnest since then, and the experiences of the past five years had toned his good-nature—the Road where every man is for himself and the women do not count much, had added, as it were, a particularly tough alloy to the silver of his original good-nature and easy-going disposition. He had seen hard times, and "hard times" have their compensations. They provide an armour for the sensitive.
But the old spell was on Mitch, and none of this occurred to him until the bitter woman before him brought one of her hands from behind her and placed a thin ground ash stick on the table. She looked at him with sheer cruelty in her eyes.
"You'll taste that presently," she said vindictively and very deliberate.
Even that Mitch had endured in the old days—but now!
It broke the spell. Mitch had never been a coward. He usually shunned and avoided trouble, not because he was physically afraid, but because it was unpleasant, and Mitch was one of the easy-going type.
It broke the spell. He looked at the stick with a certain curiosity and a kind of detached interest. It was like watching an ant struggling with a grain of wheat.
Then he glanced at his wife. It occurred to him that she was smaller, more insignificant, than he had been accustomed to imagine. He felt a little sorry for her.
The spell was quite gone now....
Henry laughed good-humouredly.
"Don't make a fool of yerself, Sarah!" he said quietly, made a sudden movement, took up the stick, and tied it into a knot. Ground ash does not readily break.
He pitched it out of the window.
"Now," he said, "if you got anything sensible to say, say it. If not, you'd better git out."
Her mouth twisted with rage; but it was she who was the coward at heart, and she had suddenly—so suddenly that it had half numbed her—become aware that she was afraid of him.
"You little 'ound!" she began. Mitch lifted his finger.
"All you got from me you asked for," he said. "You was glad that I was dead. You said you was. I deserted you—leavin' you with enough money to carry you on—and I'm glad of it. You don't want me back—and I'm glad of it. You got enough money—and I'm glad of that! You treated me bad in them days "—he jerked his head backwards, indicating the past—"what you got you deserved. I 'ave slept under 'edges with men what would 'ave murdered you for 'alf the humiliatin' things you put on me in them days. See? You're well off now, and there's nothin' on me conscience. I'm goin' now for good. Kate's all right with Perry, and I don't care about anything else. Onderstand! You try and be like Mrs. Gritty, and the more you get like 'er the 'appier you'll be. You needn't lose your temper, for you won't never frighten me any more—and you got yourself to thank for it. I got the Road to thank. You made a—a—louse of me five years ago—but the Road and the roughin' it 'ave made me more like a man."
He finished with a grin. She leaned forward with venomous eyes and spat full at him.
But Henry ducked.
"Good shot!" he said satirically, and moved swiftly behind her.
Then she felt herself taken firmly by the elbows and carefully but irresistibly impelled to the open door, across the threshold and into the sunlight. So they stood for a second.
"Try and learn 'ow to be'ave," said Mitch in her ear. "Try and get more like Mrs. Gritty. There's too much cat about you. I don't hold with beatin' women, but there's some—and you're one of 'em, Sarah—what ought to be laid across their 'usband's knees and spanked with a slipper. Then their views wouldn't be so narrer. You was glad I was dead. I ain't dead, but don't you fret. I'm leavin'. So long, Sarah!"
Mrs. Hopley felt his grip go from her elbows and heard the click of the latch behind her as he closed the door.
She stood in the sunlight, shaking with rage, hesitating as to her next move. Then she remembered the resolute grip on her elbows and the hard voice of Mitch as he explained what the Road had done for him. She turned and encountered Mitch's cheerful gaze from the window.
"You little pig!" she gibbered.
Henry smiled.
"So long, Sarah!" he said comfortably.
"We'll see what the Law 'as to say! You'll 'ear more about this!" she snapped, and stalked down the path—and out of Henry's life.
Mitch went to the back door.
"She's gone—it's all right!" he said to the two in the overgrown garden, and they joined him in the living room.
"Well," said the captain, "come down to the Westley and have a final drink while I get my bag. Our train goes in an hour. If you want a bit of ready to carry on with, here's five quid to cut up!"
They had already given the captain a quarter of the remaining diamonds, and had divided the others between themselves. Everything was ready and each of the three was satisfied.
Mitch took a last look round the hut.
"So long, house!" he said, shut and locked the door and joined the others.
"Now for Mrs. G.," he grinned, and they all shaped for the Westley Inn.
Mrs. Gritty never bore malice. She said so loudly, directly Mitch entered the bar parlour; and further, she insisted on shaking hands.
"Me and Mr. Riley 'ave 'ad a chat about you, 'Enry, and all bein' said and done, you ain't to blame, and I ain't to blame. It's jest bad luck—and there's a end to it. I forgive you ten minutes after I'd hollered at you, 'Enry," she said handsomely. "And so you and Mr. Mitey 'ere is off again. Well, what'll you 'ave? We begun with a drink, I mind, and we'll end with one. What's it goin' to be?"
They made it a bottle of port.
"Well," said Mitch, holding his glass to the light, "'Ere's luck to the best friend any two men 'ave ever met."
"'Ear, 'ear!" said Boler. Mrs. Gritty leaned forward as the captain was heard in the passage hurrying up Jim Porter, the ostler, who was taking his bag to the station.
"Good-bye, my dear," she said.
"Good-bye—and good luck!" answered Mr. Mitch, and kissed her with the report of a pistol shot.
She came to the door and watched them until they turned the corner.
"'E was too good for Sarah!" she said thoughtfully, and turned regretfully to the bar. "Wonder if 'e'll ever come back?"
And that was precisely what Mitch and Boler were asking themselves while Captain Dan was procuring the tickets.
"Think we shall, 'Enry?"
"Shall what, mate?"
"Ever come back 'ere."
"Sure we shall. In a few months' time we shall be rich, powerful farmers, Boler; able to do what we like, and 'ave what we like. Course we shall come back—now and then."
And Mr. Mitch, as usual, spoke the truth.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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