Mr. Marks looked up and down the room and towards the shop and up the stairs, thoughtfully. The shock of surprise was passing, like me; anyhow, it seems a bit ’ard this time, to be succeeded by a desperate perplexity. “All right,” he said at length. “I don’t vant to punish you. You can go.”
“No, no,” Snorkey replied cordially. “Don’t you let your feelin’s get worked on, Mr. Marks. You dunno what a ’orrid chap I’ve bin. O’ course, I’ve repented now, but that was only ’cos of the shavings. You can’t rightly count a repentance ’cos of shavings—not by the proper rules.”
“Go along,” answered Marks, with a furtive lowering of voice. “I tell you I von’t say noddin’ about it. Ve understand each other.”
Snorkey shook his head. “I doubt it, Mr. Marks,” he sighed. “It ain’t easy for a gent like you to understand a thorough wrong ’un like me; anyhow, it seems a bit ’ard this time. You don’t mean to say you forgive me—goin’ to take mercy on me?”
“Yes. Go on.”
“Mr. Marks, you’re a nobleman. I’m willin’ enough. I can be took mercy on, on very reasonable terms. My little—er—commission, as you might say, for bein’ forgiven, ought to be about fifty quid, I should say, this time.”
“Vat?”
“Fifty quid, I said. You see, it wants rather a lot o’ forgiveness for a burglary as wicked as this. The drawers in your safe’s all bent anyhow, an’ your first-floor back window’s quite shockin’.”
“You’ve got a fine cheek,” snarled Mr. Marks, by this time much recovered. “Vy you expect me to pay anyting? You’re lucky not to be took up!”
“What I said meself!” replied Snorkey. “Fetch the p’lice. Or I’ll go an’ fetch ’em if you like.”
“No, no! But fifty quid’s ridic’luth! Besides, I got no money here!”
“All right; I’ll wait here for it till the mornin’. It’s warmer ’ere than out in the cold unfeelin’ streets.”
“No, no! You must go! Now, come, be reathonable, Mr. Thnorkey. I’ll see you tomorrow an’ make it all right. Tholemn vord I vill!”
Snorkey winked, and shook his head inexorably. “You don’t understand the wicked feelin’s of a ’ardened criminal, Mr. Marks. D’ye know, I’m sunk that low I wouldn’t take your word for it! I wouldn’t! Shockin’, ain’t it?”
“But fifty’s out o’ reathon! It’th abthurd!”
“Well, beat me down, Mr. Marks. Offer me forty.”
“No, no—ridic’luth. I’ve got a quid vid me; p’r’aps thirty bob.”
“Ridic’lous, too, ain’t it? Why, I’ve broke the point of a tool as is worth as much as that. And if I ’adn’t turned up, the place might ’a’ bin afire! It might, the dangerous way things like paraffin is left about! It might ’a’ broke out any minute if it ’adn’t bin for me.”
“I’ll give ye five quid, come!”
“Can’t be done at the price. My conscience won’t allow it; it’s a special good conscience, is mine! It comes a lot dearer than that.”
“But yen I’ve got no more, vat can I do?”
“Just now you ’adn’t got no more than thirty bob; now it’s growed to five quid. If I stop ’ere you’ll be a millionaire by the mornin’, Mr. Marks, Exquire, an’ all through me. I’ll stop.”
“No, no; be a thport, Mr. Thnorkey, an’ give a man a chance. Vat’ll you take—reathonable?”
“Ah, you see it’s growed a bit more a’ready. I said it would. You’d better let me stop, for your own sake. But if you’d really rather not, why, I think I can make a better guess at what you’ve got on you than you can yourself. If you’ve got five quid, an’ a bit more, on ye it means you ’aven’t took your winnin’s home from the club yet. You always change the silver afore you come away, I know. I guess twenty quid. If there’s more—why, you can keep it for your honesty. But that’s my charge—ab-so!”
Time was going, and as a fact the sum in Mr. Mark’s pockets was well above his tormentor’s estimate. He thought for a moment, looked into Snorkey’s eyes with a gaze of agonized reproach, turned his back, and counted out the money in gold. Then he turned again with a sigh and paid it over.
“He seemed quite out o’ temper payin’ over that little bit,” Snorkey said, long afterward, relating the adventure. “Quite rusty ’e was. ’Adn’t got what you might call a sense of ’umor, I s’pose. Some people ain’t. But I told ’im very cheerful to be careful about strikin’ matches an’ such, with all them com—combustious things about, an’ I come away.
“I come down the street, an’ turned into Houndsditch, an’ there what should I see but a fire-alarm post. You know where it is—just at the corner. Well, you know, I felt a bit nervous about Mr. Marks. It was a dangerous kind o’ place for anybody to be about in with a light, an’ somehow I ’ad a ’orrid sort o’ presentiment that the ’ouse might catch afire after all. You know the way one o’ them presentiments gets ’old of you, sometimes. Well, this ’ere one ’o mine was that strong that I took my chance with the alarm. I smashed the glass, an’ I tugged the ’andle till I very near tugged it out, an’ then I ran ’ome fast, ’cos it was late.
“An’ the most re-markable co-in-cidence about the ’ole thing was—when the fire-engines got round there, there was a fire! There was, on my solemn davy! Wasn’t it wonderful? An’ Mr. Marks got in sich a muddle explainin’ ’ow the accident ’appened that they gave him two years hard!”
THE COPPER CHARM
First published in The Strand Magazine, Sep 1908
Of the relics of Cunning Murrell, the wise man of Essex, I have seen many, and I own some—his books of conjuration and geomancy, scores of his written horoscopes; and of his actual implements of magic I have seen the famous glass by which he, or anybody else, was enabled to see through a brick wall. This amazing instrument gained him vast consideration and authority among the unlearned of Essex up to and beyond the middle of the nineteenth century, but matter-of-fact examination, at a time when Cunning Murrell was altogether too dead to prevent it, robbed the wonder of all its mystery. For indeed, it was nothing but a simple arrangement of the mirrors in a wooden case, such as a schoolboy might make for himself with a little patience and the ruins of a shaving-glass. But it served its turn well, and it was by this and other such aids that Murrell became, and remained to his life’s end, something like absolute sovereign of all Essex outside the great houses.
But there was another instrument, or talk of it at least, of far stranger purport. There was talk of it still, twenty years and more after its reputed possessor was gathered to his fathers and his twenty-one children in Hadleigh churchyard. This was said to be nothing less than a strange disc of dull copper, by aid whereof Cunning Murrell could distinguish the true man from the liar. For the liar might stare at it till his eyes were sore, yet never could he see in it anything but its mere material self—a round plate of common dull copper; while it was the peculiar virtue of an honest man’s eyes to perceive on the dim surface something—something of which only Cunning Murrell had the secret; something which the gazer must declare to him as proof and test of his truth. But of what that something was’ nobody could tell a word; for indeed it would seem that nobody had ever seen it. And yet belief in its existence was wide as Essex; though there has been a suspicion that the whole report was the invention of that squinting humorist, Dan Fisk. For he had a deal to do with the only tale of the charm I know.
In those days Hadleigh fair occurred once a year, on Midsummer Day. Rochford Market was held once a week, on Thursday. On Rochford Market night the neighboring roads carried many convivial home-goers by horse, dog-cart wagon, and foot; on Hadleigh fair night there was far greater conviviality and many more convivials. But when Hadleigh fair fell on the same day as Rochford Market (as needs it must in some years) then the resulting jollity was as the square of Hadleigh hilarity plus the cube of Rochford revelry, involved to the nth power, and
a great deal more involved than that, too, if you can believe it.
It was on one of these days of joyous coincidence that Abel Pennyfather gave Joe Barstow and Elijah Weeley a lift to Rochford Market in his cart, and so made occasion for this appeal to Murrell’s talisman.
Hadleigh fair grew active at seven in the morning; so that there had been seven hours of it ere Abel Pennyfather’s cart set out at two in the afternoon. Seven hours of Hadleigh fair and its overwhelming gooseberry pie! For it was the gooseberry pie, crown and symbol of Hadleigh fair, that made the anniversary formidable to the human constitution. It was the property of this potent confection to cause many with whom it disagreed to fall asleep in ditches, and others to penetrate into the wrong houses on all-fours. An extraordinary unsteadiness of the legs, widely prevalent on fair day, had been distinctly traced to gooseberry pie by many expert victims, and a certain waviness of outline in Hadleigh scenery could be attributed to nothing else.
So that after several hours of Hadleigh fair, and a long monotony of gooseberry pie, it struck Joe Barstow and Elijah Weeley that a visit to Rochford Market would make a welcome change. Abel Pennyfather’s cart offered the opportunity, and that opportunity, embodied and made visible in the tailboard, Joe Barstow seized with both hands; after which, with no difficulty beyond the temporary delay caused by Elijah Weeley’s mistaken attempt to haul himself aboard by Joe’s leg, the journey began.
Of the events of that journey, the “faites and gestes” of Joe and Elijah at Rochford Market, who shall tell? Pass rather to the return of Abel Pennyfather, light laden and heedless, driving his white mare as of old drove the son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nimshi, pounding the road to Hadleigh in the cool of the evening, and destined to make near such a stir at the Castle Inn as did his fore-runner at Jezreel, for at that same Castle Inn he descended from his perch, dropped the tailboard, and proceeded in due order to tug at the two sleeping figures within. With the natural protest of grunts and gasps the sleepers presently emerged, and were presented erect to society—in the persons of Reuben Turner and young Sim Cloyse.
“What’s this?” cried Abel Pennyfather, staring aghast. “’Tis witchcraft, an’ nothin’ else! They was Joe Barstow an’ ’Lijah Weeley when they got in; an’ that I’ll swear ’pon oath!”
Friends gathered to inspect the phenomenon, and agreed that Reuben Turner and Sim Cloyse were certainly Reuben and Sim now, whoever they may have been earlier in the day. And, although Abel protested with increasing vehemence that they were indisputably Joe and Elijah when he put them in the cart at Rochford, Reuben and Sim declared, with equal confidence, that they had never been anybody but themselves all day. Wherein the neighbors were disposed to agree with them, arguing that a man who had been some one else would probably be the first to know it and the last to be mistaken about it. But the greater the majority against him the more positive Abel Pennyfather grew; and the discussion waxed prodigiously for a time, till there arrived Jobson of Wickford, very angry, and many miles out of his way home, driving his own horse in the shafts of Abel Pennyfather’s cart, with Joe Barstow and Elijah Weeley in it; neither of them, strictly speaking, awake, after the fatigues of the day.
“Couldn’t you see they’d putt the ’osses to the wrong carts?” shouted Jobson to the amazed Pennyfather. “I’ve a-been chasing yow arl the way from Rochford!”
“Glory be!” gasped Abel, “an’ so they hey! Now that comes o’ standin’ they two carts side by side on sich a troublesome confusin’ day. I putt them chaps in behind in my cart and I walked round they two carts twice, careful and absent-minded as I be, afore I stopped agin my oad white mare. ‘Come up, oad gal,’ says I, an’ I took the reins off her an’ got up an’ druv home without another thought.”
“No,” retorted Jobson of Wickford, still very angry. “I count a thought ain’t a treat you often hey. Can’t you help with the harness now I hey found ’ee?”
But the most of the intelligence present was in a state of suspension, not to say paralysis, in face of the novelty of the adventure; soaring, at any rate, in regions far from any matter of Jobson’s harness. The one or two most distinguished for presence of mind were turning their faculties toward the rousing and hauling forth of Joe Barstow and Elijah Weeley, when another object was perceived in the cart.
“Why,” said one, “here be a gallon jar. Is is yourn, Master Jobson?”
“No,” snapped Jobson, wrenching at a buckle, “’taren’t. More mistakes, I count—I’ve a-been cartin’ a wuthless load as don’t belong to me.”
“Is’t yours, Abel?” pursued the inquirer.
“No, that it ben’t,” replied Abel Pennyfather, not yet capable of sagacious reflection. It was an answer which he never ceased to regret for the rest of his life; for as Joe and Elijah rose, cramped and blinking, Dan Fisk, having removed the cork and temporarily substituted his nose, cried aloud: “Why, ’tis rum, surely!”
At the words Joe Barstow and Elijah Weeley were suddenly wide awake, ready, prudent, and unanimous. A hand of each fell simultaneously on the jar as Dan restored the cork, and the vessel was drawn to a loving embrace between them. It was a touching action, and signified to the dullest intelligence that the gallon jar was homeless no longer.
“Thank ’ee, Joe,” said Elijah, “I’ll take that jar now.”
“Never mind,” replied Joe; “I count I can carry it myself.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” protested Elijah, politely. “My house is only jist round the corner.”
“I ain’t goin’ there,” retorted Joe, not so politely.
“No need, me bein’ goin’ to take it myself.”
“Take what yourself?”
“My rum.”
“Your rum? Oh well, you can take it where you like, any as you’ve got. This here’s mine.”
“Yours? Why, Joe Barstow, you ben’t awake yet; you’re dreaming.”
“I count I’m awake enough to know my own property. You let go.”
“’Taren’t likely I’d make a mistake about my own freehold jar o’ rum, is it, neighbors?” protested Elijah, maintaining his grip. “Joe, you’re dreaming, I tell ’ee.”
“If I’m a-dreamin’,” retorted Joe, doggedly, “then I’m a-dreamin’ this ’ere’s my jar, an’ the dream’s comin’ true. An’ if a man haven’t a right to the furnitude of his own dreams, who hey, eh? That’s law and logic too, I count.”
“If you come to speak of the law,” interposed Abel Pennyfather, hoping to repair his early error, “the jar bein’ found in my cart, an’ me that absent-minded, I’m none so sure—”
“No, you ain’t,” interrupted Joe, promptly; “but I am. Elijah an’ me both know better than that. His mistake’s sayin’ it’s his, an’ not knowin’ where he bought it!”
“Bought it?” repeated Elijah, plainly a little startled. “Who says I dunno where I bought it? I bought it—I bought it—”—he glanced widly about him for a moment—“bought it at the Red Cow.”
“You may have bought a gallon o’ rum at the Red Cow. I ain’t denyin’ it—you look as though you had, I count; but you den’t bring it home in this here jar. I got this—got this here—got it from a friend—off the price of a pig he owed me for.”
And now Dan Fisk interposed, as sportsman and humorist, watchful to allow no fun to evaporate unprofitably, and eager to tend, stimulate, and inflame it and to improve its flavor. So, with his beaming red face and his coruscating squint, he faced each disputant in turn, representing the scandal of a public row, and the advantages of a private investigation by friends of both parties in the Castle Inn parlor.
Whereupon Joe and Elijah, with the jar of rum between them and dividing them, physically and morally, Abel Pennyfather and Jobson of Wickford, Dan Fisk, and several more, turned into the Castle parlor, where Dan Fisk opened proceedings by snatching the jar and standing it in the middle of the table.
“There be the article in dispute,” he proclaimed, “and here be we all a-gathered round it to see fair. Joe Barstow an’ ‘Lijah Weeley be the disputatious claimants, an’ to one o’ they two ’tis alleged that jar belongs.”
“Hem!” coughed Pennyfather, tentatively. “’Twould seem so, at fust sight, as you might say; though bein’ found in my cart, an’ me—”
“Joe Barstow and ‘Lijah Weeley be the candidates,” proceeded Dan, ignoring Abel, “both on ’em havin’ bought this here jar o’ rum, as they distinctly tell us ’emselves, or as distinctly as sarcumstances allow. ‘Lijah Weeley, he bought it off a red cow, and Joe Barstow, he took it off a friendly pig.”
“Took it off a friend,” grunted Joe, doggedly suspicious.
“The pig were a friend o’ Joe’s,” pursued Dan, “an’ as to the red cow, no doubt—”
“I said at the Red Cow,” interrupted Elijah, sulkily—“Red Cow Inn.”
“O-ho!” exclaimed Dan, turning on him suddenly, “that be’t, eh? Red Cow Inn? An’ where be the Red Cow Inn at Rochford, eh?”
“Eh? Rochford?”
“Ah, I don’t call to mind any Red Cow at Rochford. What Red Cow?”
Elijah Weeley stared blankly. “Maybe I’m thinkin’ o’ somewhere else,” he said, rubbing his ear with his palm. “There’s a Red Cow at Burnham, surely.”
“Ah, but you haven’t been near Burnham, today, you know. I’m beginning to doubt your remembrance o’ that rum.”
“’Taren’t his, I tell ’ee,” growled Joe Barstow. “I took it off a friend for a pig.”
“Tell us the friend’s name!” cried Dan, pouncing on Joe with a raised forefinger. “Out with his name—quick!”
Joe stared as blankly as Elijah. “Him?” he said slowly. “Oh—that there chap—you know; the one as—well, maybe not him, exactly, so to say, but a relation of his. That’s the chap.”
The Arthur Morrison Mystery Page 155