“He got news for me about him we’ve called Saddler Atkins. He wasn’t a saddler at all; he was a furrier or somethin’ of that sort; an’ he sailed with the cap’n. (I always said he never did know a piece of good leather!) His name wasn’t Atkins, but Frames. As for the councillor, he was a shipowner in a small way; an’ he fitted the cap’n out for his last trip, an’ went with him; an’ from some accounts, it seems they was suspected of doin’ a bit more than sea-poachin’; an’ that there’s more ’n one good ship they robbed, an’ murdered all aboard, an’ then sunk. At least, my friend says there’s a lot of funny tales went round the docks, but nothin’ that no one could prove. Only they all three came off that last voyage with a heap of cash, an’ never went back to sea again. They’d a fresh crew when they come back; so that no one could trace anythin’ proper against ’em.
“An’ after that they come inland a bit, to our town; and just settled down away from the sea, as if they was glad to be quit of it. My friend said in his letter, maybe they wasn’t anxious to be in a seaport, where folks as knew too much about ’em might come on them any time.
“Now, don’t get impatient, nevvy. I’m comin’ to the cloo of them matches. You see, what my friend said about them not bein’ anxious, maybe, to live in a seaport, where they might be recognised, got me thinkin’ they might have some mighty bitter enemies; an’ maybe one of them had found them out, and meant getting even for some dirty thing they’d been concerned in away back in the years.
“Anyway, I guessed, if it was someone as they’d harmed, the saddler would be put away next; an’ I warned him. He took it serious, too; an’ I’m mighty surprised he went out after dark, seein’ he must have known somethin’ of what might be after ’em. I’d have warned Councillor Tompkins same time as the saddler, but I guessed that Atkins would pass the word on to him, an’ you see, I wasn’t so sure about the councillor; for my friend couldn’t trace out his part at first. I only knew for certain from a second letter he sent me, that I got the evening the saddler was killed. That’s what made me middlin’ sure he’d be the next; an’ so I sets you to keep an eye on him.”
Cobbler Juk, broke off his talk, and reached his palm out to his nephew.
“Take another look, nevvy, at them matches,” he said. “Do you see there ain’t one of them but’s broke in half with a little twist to the wood, an’ without one of ’em bein’ broke clean in two. Well, now, I used the bit of brains I was born with. I says to myself: Mister Juk, what’s five matches, all broke the same way an’ lyin’ in the same spot, close to the body of a murdered man, mean? Well, says I to myself, it’s mighty likely as the one that broke one match broke all; an’ it’s like that he stood there a goodish bit, waitin’; for if he’d struck all them matches in a hurry he’d never have stopped to fumble them afterwards an’ twist ’em in his fingers, fiddlin’ like. And, I says to myself, I got to find who waited there, an’ what he was waiting there for.
The next thing I had to help me was when the saddler was done out. You’ll mind how I went there straight away. Well, lad, I found seven more of them matches spread up and down the pavement, all twisted the same way; here they are.”
And he pulled his snuffbox out of his vest pocket, and poured seven matches, broken and twisted in the same way as the first five.
“I knew then, in my mind, for certain, that what killed the cap’n had sure killed the saddler, or leastways, the same man had been near about the same time. And I wanted to know what that man knew. Only, this occasion he’d walked up an’ down, waitin’; an’ longer than he’d waited for the cap’n; for he’d lit his pipe more often. Mind you, this ain’t sure; for maybe the wind had blown out some of the matches, an’ he’d had to strike extra; only in that case he’d not have stopped to fidget with the matches, waitin’, I’m thinkin’—see, nevvy?
“Now I got a fresh notion. The man that stood near where the cap’n had been murdered would sure have been noticed standin’ while he was waitin’. And I got to wondering why he’d walked up and down, same as when he held ready for the saddler. Then I minded that he’d sure never stood in the street at all; for he’d have been seen by P.c. Dobell as he was running away. And then it was that I got good and strong on to the job. The man that had been near when the cap’n was killed was never in the street at all. He’d been leanin’ over the high, blank wall, waitin’, an’ smokin’ while he kept a watch for the cap’n coming out of the Spread Eagle.
“And the blank wall on that side is the wall of the Spread Eagle bowling-green; so that the man had been in the Spread Eagle, and slipped out on to the bowling-green; an’ had stood on an old barrel—as I found after—and looked over the wall, smokin’ while he waited for the cap’n to leave, which he always did, nevvy, about half-past nine, as we know.
“I put in a good many hours after that, going round to the different bars and gettin’ chummy with the barmen and sweepers. I got them to keep all the sweepings for me, and I went through them each day; for it was pretty like as the man that went into the Spread Eagle would go into other pubs.
“Yesterday but one I located a number of them twisted matches in the floor sweepings of the Slade Arms; an’ all that evenin’ I sat there, watchin’ the different men that came in an’ had a drink an’ a smoke; but I couldn’t get onto no one. I did the same last evenin’; but he must have been in before me, and left; for there was some of them same twisted matches on the floor near the bar.
“Both evenings, after I’d left, I come along quietly to see how you was gettin’ on, nevvy; for I was pretty sure they’d not let the councillor rest long. And now I got the whole business in my fist, as you might say—”
He stopped, and stooped for the pillowcase, which he began to untie.
“You saw that great, unnatcheral creature last night, nevvy,” he continued— “well, here, I brought along the devvil’s head.”
And he teemed out of the pillow-case a huge, stuffed seal’s head.
“It was yon nigger, without a doubt, lad,” he continued. “He was stripped last night, an’ he’d fixed this thing up on his top knot. An, I guess it meant a deal to yon wicked old Tompkins as we’ve no idee of. Them three rogues had sure been concerned in some dirty job as harmed the nigger. Did you notice the sound he made with his mouth, an’ never a word he said to-night? Well, I’m wondering what they must have done on him way back in the years. If he’s caught, maybe we’ll learn, an’ maybe we won’t. But I hopes as you policemen, you’ll never lay a hand on him. I’d be very well pleased. I believe he gave them three divvils no more than was comin’ to them; an’ he let me off gentle to-night. I don’t forget that.
“I should think, nevvy, as he’d been concerned in their sealin’ business, an’ maybe worse; an’ when I thinks of it, I gets wonderin’ if they’d cut the poor heathen’s tongue out, so as he couldn’t give ’em away; yet so as they could use him. What so be it is they done to him and others, I’m mighty sure it was as bad as could be. I always said yon saddler man never did know a piece of good leather when he saw it!
“Good-night, nevvy. You go along to the station an’ make the proper report. I’ll come up an’ see the chief in the morning, an, I’ll be askin’ for that ten pounds of mine. An’ if you wasn’t so mighty big in the body an’ small in the head, it could have been yours, if you’d use your eyes and the bit of brains you was born with! Good-night, lad.”
The Home-Coming of Captain Dan
For a story of exact fact, I think that this is just about as extraordinary as a professional storyteller could desire. It concerns the treasure of Captain Dan, known in his youth as merely Dan, in the village of Geddley on the South Coast.
With the youth of Captain Dan, which occurred—if I may so phrase it—prior to 1737, I have nothing to tell, except that, being “wild like”, and certainly lacking in worldly “plenishings”, he was no credit to the respectability of that quiet seaport village.
In consequence of this double stigma of commission and omission,
he went away to sea, taking his wildness and his poverty along with him; on which it is conceivable that the respectable matrons and maidens of Geddley sighed, though, possibly, with somewhat different feelings.
There you have the whole tale of Dan’s youth in a few words; that is, so far as Geddley is concerned.
Twenty years later he returned, with an ancient and ugly scar from right eyebrow to chin, and two enormous iron-bound chests, whose weight was vouched for by the men he hired to carry them to the old Tunbelly Hostel, that same Tunbelly Inn being fronted on the old High Street Alley, which has been done away this twenty years and more.
Now, if young Dan had lacked offriends and kindliness in his wild and youthful days of poverty, the returned Captain Dan had no cause for complaint on such score.
For no sooner had he declared his name and ancient kinship to the village than there were a dozen to remember him and shake him by the hand in token of those older days, when—as they seemed strangely to forget—there had been no such general desire to grip hands and invite him to sundries of that which both cheers and inebriates.
Yet, at the first of it, there seemed to be every reason to suppose that Captain Dan had forgotten the slights and disrespect that had been put upon the one-time Dan; for he accepted both the hands and the liquors that were offered to him; and these, I need scarcely say, were not stinted when word of those weighty iron-bound chests had gone through the little port; for there was scarcely a man who could refrain from calling in the Tunbelly to welcome “Old Dan, coom back agen. Cap’n Dan, sir, beggin’ your pardin!”
As that first evening of warm welcoming of the returned and now respectable citizen of Geddley wore onward, Cap’n Dan warmed to the good liquor that came so plentiful and freely, and insisted on dancing a hornpipe upon the bar-table. At the conclusion of the warm applause which followed this feat, he declared his intention of showing them that Cap’n Dan was as good as the best— “ ’S good asser besht,” he assured the bar-room generally a great many times; and finally shouted to some of them to bring in his two great chests, which was done without argument or delay, a thing, perhaps, easy to understand.
They were set in the middle of the floor, and all the men in the room crowded round, with their beer-mugs, to watch. But at this point, Cap’n Dan proved he was quite uncomfortably sober; for he ordered every man to stand back, enforcing his suggestion with a big, brass-mounted pistol, which he brought very suddenly out of a long pocket in the skirts of his heavy coat.
Having assured himself of a clear space all around his precious chests, Cap’n Dan pocketed the big, brass-mounted pistol, and pulled out a big snuffbox from which he took ample refreshment. He then dug in amid the snuff with one great, powder-blackened forefinger, and presently brought to view two smallish keys. He replaced the snuffbox in his vest pocket, and set the keys against the side of his big nose, exclaiming, with a kind of half-drunken knowingness, in French:
“Tenons de la verge d’une ancre!” which most of those present understood, being sailormen and in the free-trade, to mean literally the “nuts of the anchor”; but used at that time as a marine catch-phrase, as much as to say, “the key of the situation”; though often used also in a coarser manner.
“Tout le monde a son poste!” he shouted, with a tipsy laugh; and turned to unlock the nearer chest.
There were two great locks on each chest, and a separate key was used for each and the interest was quite undoubted as the cap’n turned back the bolts and lifted the lid of the chest. Upon the top of all there were four long wooden cases containing charts. These he lifted out, and put with surprising care upon the floor. Afterwards there came a quadrant, wrapped in an old pair of knee-breeches; then a compass similarly wrapped in an old body vest. Both of these he put down upon the four chart-cases with quite paternal tenderness.
He reached again into the chest, lurching, and hove out onto the floor a pile of heavily braided uniforms, a pair of great sea boots with iron leg-guards stitched in on each side of the tops, a big Navy cutlass, and two heavy Malay knives without sheaths. And all the time, as he ladled out these somewhat “tarry” treasures, there was no sound in the big, low-ceilinged room, except the heavy breathings of the interested menfolk of Geddley.
Cap’n Dan stood up, wiped his forehead briefly with the back of his hand, and stooped again into the chest, seeming to be fumbling round for something, for the sound of his rough hands going over the wooden inside of the chest was plain to be heard.
Presently he gave a satisfied little grunt, and immediately afterwards there was a sharp click, which, as the landlord of the Tunbelly told certain of his special cronies afterwards, was a sure sign of there “Bein’ a secret lock-fast” within the chest. Be this as it may: the next instant Captain Dan pulled a thick wooden cover or partition, bolted with flat iron bands, out of the chest, and hove it with a crash onto the floor. There he stooped, and began to make plain to the men of Geddley the very good and sufficient reason for the immense weight of the two great chests; for he brought out a canvas bag about the size of a man’s head, which he dropped with a dull, ringing thud onto the floor. Five more of these he brought out, and threw beside the first; and all the time no sound, save the breathing of the onlookers and an occasional hoarse whisper of excited suggestion.
Cap’n Dan stood up as he threw the sixth bag upon the others, and signed dumbly for his brandy-mug, with the result that he had half a score offered to him, as we say in these days, gratis. He took the first, and drained it; then threw it across the room, where it smashed against the far wall. Yet this provoked no adverse comment even from the fat landlord of the Tunbelly; for those six bulging, heavy bags on the floor stood sponsors for many mugs, and, it is to be supposed, the contents thereof.
It will be the more easily understood that no one bothered to remark upon Cap’n Dan’s method of disposing of his crockeryware when you realise that the captain had squatted down upon the floor beside his bags, and was beginning to unlash the neck of one. There was not a sound in the room as he took off the last turn of spunyarn stopper; for each man of Geddley held his breath with suspense and expectation. Then Cap’n Dan, with a quite admirable unconcern, capsized the bag upside-down upon the floor, and cascaded out a heap of coins that shone with a dull golden glitter.
There went a gasp of astonishment, echoing from man to man round the room, and then a chorus of hoarse exclamations, for no man here had ever seen quite so much gold at one time in his life. Yet Cap’n Dan took no heed, but, with a half-drunken soberness, proceeded to unlash the necks of the five other bags, and to empty them likewise upon the contents of the first.
And by the time that the gold from the sixth bag had been added to the heap the silence of the men of Geddley was a stunned and bitter and avaricious silence, broken at last by the fat landlord of the Tunbelly, who, with a nice presence of mind, came forward with the brandy-keg under his arm, and a generous-sized beer mug, which was surely a fit spirit measure for the owner of so prodigious a fortune.
Cap’n Dan was less appreciative of this tender thoughtfulness than might have been supposed, for, with a mixed vocabulary of forceful words, chosen discriminately from the French and English, he intimated that the landlord of the Tunbelly should retire, possibly with all the honours of war, but certainly with speed.
And, as the stout proprietor of the Tunbelly apparently failed to grasp the full and imperative necessity of speed, Cap’n Dan plucked his big brass-mounted pistol from the floor beside him, and let drive into the brandy-keg which reposed, as you know, under the well-intending arm of the fat Drinquobier, this being, as you may as well learn here, the landlord’s name. The bullet drove through the little keg, and blew out the hither end, wasting a deal of good liquor, and scored the head of Long John of Kenworth, who came suddenly to a state of fluency, but was unheeded by the majority of the men of Geddley, who were gathered round the stout landlord of the Tunbelly, where he lay like a mountain of flesh upon the floor of the taproom, s
houting at the top of his fat and husky voice that he was shot, and shot dead at that—which seemed to impress his customers with a conviction of truth.
But as for Cap’n Dan, he sat calmly upon the floor beside his heap of gold coinage, and began unemotionally to shovel it back into the six canvas bags, lashing each one securely, as it was filled. Presently, still unheeding of the death-cries of the very much alive landlord, he rose slowly to his feet, and began to replace the gold in the big chest, replying to Long John of Kenworth’s rendering of the Commination Service merely by drawing forth a second heavy pistol, and laying it ready to his hand across a corner of the chest.
In course of time, the fat landlord having discovered that he still breathed, and Long John of Kenworth having considered discreetly the possibilities of that second pistol, there was a period of comparative quiet once more in the big taproom, during which Cap’n Dan methodically completed his re-storage of his goods in the chest, and presently locked it securely with the two keys.
When this was finally achieved, a sudden silence of renewed interest came down upon the men of Geddley as the captain proceeded to unlock the second chest, which, though, somewhat smaller than the other, was yet considerably the heavier.
Cap’n Dan lifted back the ponderous lid, and there, displayed to view, was the picture of an enormous skull, worked in white silk on a background of black bunting. It was evident that the captain had forgotten, in his half-drunken state, that this lay uppermost in the chest; for he made now a hurried and clumsy movement to turn back the folds of the flag upon itself so as to hide the emblem, which was uncomfortably familiar in that day. Yet that the men of Geddley had seen was obvious, for there came a general cry from the mariners present, some of whom had been privateersmen and worse, of “The Jolly Roger! The Jolly Roger!”
Cap’n Dan stood a moment in a seeming stupid silence, with the flag all bunched together in his hand; then suddenly he turned, and flirted it out wide across the floor, so that the skull and the crossed bones, surmounted by a big D, showed plain. Underneath the D there was worked an hour-glass in red wool. The men of Geddley crowded round, handling the flag, and criticising the designs with something of the eyes of experts; some of them, and notably Long John of Kenworth, saying that it was no proper Jolly Roger, seeing that it held no battleaxe.
The House on the Borderland and Other Mysterious Places Page 52