Choppy was a hard parter in general, but prompt when it paid. “Here y’are,” he snapped out; “two quid take ’em and hook it, ’fore I change my mind.”
So the chap took the two quid and went off along the road. We listened to hear his footsteps dyin’ away, and then Choppy grabs a pick himself.
“W’e’ll get this over quick,” he says, “before any more ’Ome Chippers comes along. Them papers is a public noosance upsettin’ people’s minds like this. But keep a lookout in that there hole, in case that feller’s right.”
I don’t like thinkin’ about the job we had. Nobody ain’t got any right to ask me to work again for the rest o’ my life after what I did that night. That milestone was like them icebergs you read about—about ten times as much down below as up above. And the ground—well, you’d ha’ sworn we’d found a iron mine, all solid metal. Choppy dropped his pick soon and put in all his energy stimulatin’ Jerry and me, and gropin’ about in the dirt for any odd thing ’Ome Chips might ha’ put there.
Well, we did it at last. That is, we got the milestone a-lollin’ over sideways in a big hole, and we began sich a fight to get it on the wheelbarrer as we’d never gone through before not even at Alexander’s Park. Jerry and me was down the hole heavin’ most desprit at the bottom of the stone, and Choppy Byles was haulin’ at the top to pull the thing into the barrer, and the chorus was enough to roast the little birds a-sleepin’ on the trees overhead. Our tempers was none the better for all this, and before we got the stone fair on the barrer we nearly had a fight among ourselves. I’d ha’ sworn I ’eard Choppy laughin’ at us, but he said it was Jerry, an’ Jerry said it was us two, and we never properly settled it. But we did get the stone on the barrer at last, filled in the hole, and started off along the road.
It was a pretty straight bit o’ road, with trees along the side all very much the same so it looked as though we could stretch out that mile a good bit without makin’ the change look very noticeable. So we went along lookin’ for a place as looked as much as possible like the one we took it from when something else ’appened.
I never see sich a country road as that one was that night; it was like the Strand, pretty near, barrin’ the lights an’ the evenin’ papers. We was just steadyin’ up to look at what seemed a good place when we heard footsteps.
“What shall we do?” I says.
“Stand still,” whispers Choppy. “P’r’aps he won’t notice, Get in front o’ the barrer.” Then we heard the footsteps again, and they was all over the road at once; and the next minute the chap comes in among us like a Catherine-wheel, and bang over the wheel-barrer we was tryin’ to hide.
“Whash this?” says the new chap turnin’ over very unsteady on the milestone.
“What they leave wheelbarrers about in public road for people tummle over for, eh? Wheelbarrers an’—an’ tombstones! I say there’s a tombstone on thishyer barer D’y’ear? Tombstone. What you want tombstone on barrer middle o’ night for?” An’ with that he lifts up and sits in the barrer talkin’ to us by and large.
“I know what you think,” says he; “you think I’m drunk. That’s my legs; they’re shockin’, but I’m allri’—sober as judge. Now what about tombstone?”
“It’s all right, old chap,” says Choppy tryin’ to haul him up. “It’s for a dawg we’re buryin’.”
The chap sat and wagged his head and chuckled. “Dawg?” he said. “Dawg? You don’t seem believe I’m sober. I know what you’ve done. You’ve bin an’ boned thishyer tombstone out o’ the churchyard ’long there, to make—make—here, I say what you goin’ to make out o’ that tombstone?”
“You get up, old feller, and come along o’ me,” says Choppy, “and I’ll tell you all about it. I got a drink for you a little further up the road—in a flask. It’s a beautiful night for a walk; come along—the drink ain’t very far off.”
We never knew Choppy had got his flask with him, or it ’ud ’a’ been empty long before this, with what we’d gone through. But we got the chap up somehow between us, and him and Choppy went staggerin’ off along the road the way we’d come.
Choppy was gone a most rabunculous long time, and me and Jerry pretty well fell asleep on the milestone waitin’ for him. When he came at last he was spittin’ and snarlin’ with rage like an old tom-cat.
“That there drunken tyke’s been and lost my flask,” he said. “Swigged it empty and then dropped it in the ditch or somewhere—he didn’t know. I’ve bin gropin’ all over the road and ditch and burnt all my matches, and had to give it up. But he’s fast asleep an’ safe enough, up against a stile. These here Nuthatch people owe me a bit more over this; but I’ll have it all out of ’em tomorrow. We’ll shove this milestone on a bit further still. But spread your coats over it, in case we meet somebody else in this here busy thoroughfare.”
So Jerry and me put our coats over it and started off once more. We didn’t go far this time—about fifty or sixty yards. We’d made it a pretty long mile by now, and there was a sort o’ place here that seemed a good deal like the one the milestone came from, so we stopped. And here we found the first bit o’ reasonable luck since we left the churchyard shed; the ground seemed pretty soft.
So we whanged in with the picks and shovels, and soon had a pretty tidy hole. The boss took a hand quite serious this time, for he was gettin’ nervous. Not that he was much good. If you get three men as ain’t used to it all a-diggin’ one hole together on a dark night, you’ll find they get a bit tangled up, one way and another. Jerry and me both resigned our appointments several times in that hole, and it was only business considerations as prevented a fight.
Now, we was diggin’ this hole just at the foot of the bank by the roadside, and there was a hedge atop of the bank. We’d got the hole, as we thought, pretty near deep enough, and was just a-stoppin’ to say so, when there came a most terrifyin’ voice from over the top o’ the hedge.
“Oo—oo—oo!” says the voice. “It’s murder! Nothing but murder!”
We looked up, and there was a monstrous sort of ragged head lookin’ down at us from the hedge.
“You’ve woke me up,” says the head, “with your horrid language. I may be obliged by circumstances to sleep agin a hedge, but I’ve got my feelin’s. You’ve got a corpse in that there barrer, covered over with coats, and you’re a-buryin’ of it. I ain’t goin’ to stand and see that done, not free of charge, I ain’t. I may be a tramp, but I’ve got my feelin’s!”
Here was another fine go. To think we should ha’ picked on the very spot where this tramp was dossin’! But Choppy spoke up again.
“S-sh!” he said. “We’re very sorry we disturbed you—didn’t know you was there. Do you read ’Ome Chips?”
“Read what?” says the head.
“‘Ome Chips. The best and most ’olesome family paper in the world. Full of excitin’ but moral stories, interestin’ puzzles, and instructive articles by Aunt Eliza. One penny weekly. We’re advertisin’ it.”
“Are you?” says the tramp. “Well, I’m a nervous chap and always carry a police whistle. I’ll blow it ’ard, and advertise ’Ome Chips a little more.”
“No,” says Choppy, very hasty, “don’t do that. We don’t advertise that way—anybody can blow a whistle.”
“I can,” says the tramp. “You hear me!” And he shoved the whistle in his mouth.
“Stow it!” says Choppy, scramblin’ up the bank. “Don’t do a silly thing like that. You see, we’re out buryin’ treasure.”
“All right, I don’t mind that,” says the chap in the hedge. “Bury it quick, so’s I can come an’ dig it up. Or give it me now, and save trouble.”
“That ain’t likely,” says Choppy. “You don’t seem to understand liter’y work. We cha’n’t bury no treasure here now, when you’ve spotted the place; not likely, is it? But we’ll give you five bob to go and sleep somewhere else.”
> “Why?” asks the tramp. “I ain’t doin’ no ’arm, and it’s a very nice hedge. No, I don’t believe this treasure yarn. My theory’s murder. It’s a habit I don’t ’old with, is murder. I never allow a murder under two quid; and this whistle’s a very loud ’un. Don’t you get no nearer—I’m nervous.”
Choppy Byles looked up at the tramp and down at us, helpless. Then he pulled out the money and handed it over. The tramp was off in a jiffy; and presently we could hear him whistlin’ a little tune a long way off. I believe he did that to give us another scare.
“Two more this peaceful village owes me,” says Choppy. “Just till tomorrow.”
So we tumbled that milestone into the hole holus-bolus, and shovelled in the earth quick and stamped it down. There was a rare lot there was no room for, but we kicked it about among the long grass and made it pretty tidy. And then we went home. We put the things back all right in the churchyard shed, and we crawled very quiet into the Fox and ’Ounds not very long afore the potman.
In the mornin’, after breakfast, Choppy Byles says to the landlord, in a casual sort o’ way, “I s’pose you’re goin’ to see the runnin’ match this afternoon?”
“Why, yes,” says the landlord. “I did hink o’ goin’ over after dinner.”
“Where is it?” asks Choppy, innocent as putty. “I don’t know my way about here.”
“Well,” the landlord says, takin’ him to the window, “you see the church right away there to the right?”
“Yes,” says Choppy.
“Well, the forty-fourth milestone’s a little way beyond that, along the road, and the forty-fifth’s further on still.”
“Further on still?” says Choppy, with a sort o’ fall in his voice. “Further on still?”
“Why, yes, o’ course,” says the landlord. “A mile further on. It would be wouldn’t it?”
Choppy Byles looked round at me and Jerry Stagg with a face like a paper kite.
“What’s this mean?” he gasped, as soon as the landlord was out o’ the room.
“I’ll go along the lane and see,” says Jerry. And we both went with him.
We came out at the end o’ the lane, and there was the first milestone we’d seen, straight in front of us. We took a look round and went across. It was the forty-third! The forty-third!
The figures was worn, and not particular clear, and the three was one o’ them with the flat top and a corner instead of a curl; very much like a five on a pitch-dark night with a match in a wind; but a three all the same.
The three of us stood a-blinkin’ at each other over that milestone, as it come to us that we’d gone and made the mile a lump shorter instead of longer! And such a lump!
“Look out!” says Jerry, very sudden. “There’s Gosling comin’ up the lane with another chap. Get behind the hedge!”
There was a gate close by, and we nipped in like winkin’ and stooped behind the hedge. It was Gosling, sure enough, with a pal, talkin’ and laughin’ like anything. He seemed to have a lot to say, but we only heard one bit, and that was enough.
“Five quid and a silver flask,” says Gosling “not to mention a night’s fun. But that’ll be nothing to the afternoon’s!”
We three just sat down behind that hedge and looked at each other like waxworks. We saw a whole new picture-show of that awful night in two seconds, us workin’ and them peepin’ and laughin’.
Then says Choppy Byles, “My bag’s in the bedroom at the Fox and ’Ounds. Cheaper to leave it there. Foller the railway line. We’ll hoof it.”
So we did.
THE FOUR-WANT WAY
First published as “The Bank of Shadows” in The Press Album, John Murray, London, 1909
There can be no more widely spread delusion than that a man can believe his own eyes. And yet it is difficult to understand how such a delusion can have survived a single year’s experience of a single human life; for every man’s eyes—except a blind man’s—must deceive him at least a score of times in the period.
I learned the lesson long ago by aid of my own eyes; and it was a fault of those same eyes that brought me the story I am here to tell again. It was in the best days of my Essex memories, when I was so very young a man that many people called me a boy. I was walking by night on a road I had traversed a hundred times before at all times of the day and night, so that I knew almost every bush in the hedges. There was a crowded sky of hurrying cloud, which never wholly blackened the country about me, and sometimes, for a space of seconds, let through a ray of clear moonlight that flung my shadow sharp on the road before me, and lit the meadows deadly pale as far as I could see. For all the hastening of the clouds above it was not a windy night in the lower air, and there was no more than a whisper among the trees as I passed the group of elms that stood in the hedge eighty yards before you reach the four-wont way. It is just beyond these elms that the country so falls away on the right that you can see the sea without interruption for a quarter of a mile along the road; and the widest view of the water is that from the four-wont way, where the cross-road drops steep toward the village by the shore.
I am reminded here that it may be necessary to explain that a four-wont way in Essex is nothing but the meeting-place of crossroads. To me the phrase is so familiar that I am disposed to apologise for the explanation, since it may be superfluous; though at the moment I cannot remember to have heard the words in any other county.
By involuntary habit I turned my head as I came to the spot where by day the sea is first visible, though now I rather remembered than saw it. But a distant light or two in the far dark and a wisp of mist over the marsh below mapped the familiar view clearly enough. So I reached the four-wont way at a moment of moderate brightness, and saw, as I thought, a man lying on the bank by the roadside.
By reason of the fall of the hill there were banks by the two corners to my left, but none by those on the right, and it was on the bank before me, on the side that bordered the crossroad, that the form appeared to lie. Drunk and asleep, was my first fancy; but I looked again, and the dark figure seemed to lie with a limpness that was more than that of sleep. Was the man ill—or dead? I checked my walk, and went across; but as I bent over the grass and weeds that grew on the bank the figure lost shape, and was nothing but a darkness, and the darkness fell into the natural forms of shadows on the broken ground among the grass and weeds.
Clearly there was nothing there. I had been deceived by the chance form of shadows on the bank. And yet the impression had been so real and so certain that even now I could not refrain from feeling about the bank with my hands. They came on the rough, dry ground, the grass and the weeds, and nothing else.
Yet one is by nature slow to discredit one’s own eyes, even when the illusion is proved. So now I had the curiosity to walk backward till I reached again the spot where first I had paused in my walk. The shadows still lay along the bank, but whether from the changed light through the clouds that scurried overhead, or because actual examination had enabled me to correct my sight, I could see no human form now. Once more I went toward the bank, this time very slowly, watching for any change in the shadows that might suggest, however remotely, the shape that had deceived me. But still I saw nothing; nothing but the broken shade among the grass and weeds. I even put out my hand again, and felt the rough earth.
I turned back now more carelessly into the road, fully convinced of my error, but still with a sidelong step and a parting glance at the bank as I went. And as I did it I saw the dark form again, but in another place.
This time it was on the other face of the same bank—round the corner, as it were, and at the side of the road I was to pass along, though no more than a few feet from where I had already seen it. I stood still and rubbed my eyes. There was no mistaking it now, at any rate. Exactly the same dark form, apparently as solid as anything about me, lying in precisely the same attitude, at full length, with the
head, which seemed as black as the rest, drooping slackly.
I took a good, deliberate look, and walked slowly toward it, watching for the moment when it should resolve itself into ordinary shadow, as I had seen it do before. It held its shape and its apparent substance till I stood over it, and then for the second time as I put out my hand I perceived that there was nothing before me but the shadows one would expect to see on the bank.
I had an odd feeling of chilliness, and from that moment to this I have never been able to decide whether the chilliness preceded or followed the sudden remembrance that a gibbet had stood at this corner in old times. At any rate I lingered no longer, but, after a quick look about me, went on my way; constraining myself, in the vain pride of youth, to walk with a regular step at a slower pace than I had been making, and resisting an almost overpowering impulse to glance over my shoulder.
In a hundred yards I began to be angry with myself for taking so much thought of an absurd error of vision, and especially for so illogical a recollection of the gibbet, which could have no possible connection with the faults of my eyes. But no logic will check a train of thought; and I went on remembering all I knew about the gibbet for the remaining two miles of my walk.
It was not a vast deal that I remembered after all. I had seen and handled a treasured little bag of chips cut from the post fifty years before I was born, and vastly esteemed for wear as a remedy for ague. I had heard old men tell of the men hanged there in chains, visible to passing ships at sea, about the year of Waterloo and before it; and I once had the curiosity to fasten a sheet of white paper in a neighbouring tree, so that I might readily pick out the spot when I rowed out in a boat. I found it a clearly noticeable spot on the skyline, where the figure of a dangling man must have caught the eye at once.
At this moment I cannot recall why I mentioned my little optical illusion to Roboshobery Dove next morning, unless I made it one of my arguments against some of the old fellow’s ancient beliefs. But mention it I did, sitting at his cottage door under the shade of his best plum-tree; told him the whole transaction, in fact.
The Arthur Morrison Mystery Page 176