The Second R. Austin Freeman Megapack

by R. Austin Freeman

  For there was the lighthouse—or half of it, rather—standing up above the fogbank, clear, distinct, and hardly a mile away. The gilded vane, the sparkling lantern, the gallery, and the upper half of the red-and-white-ringed tower, stood sharp against the pallid sky, but the lower half was invisible. It was a strange apparition—like half a lighthouse suspended in mid-air—and uncommonly disturbing, too. It raised a very awkward question. If he could see the lantern the light-keepers could see him. But how long had the lantern been clear of the fog? That was the question, and the answer to it might come in a highly disagreeable form.

  Thus he meditated as, with one hand on the tiller, he munched his biscuit and sipped his grog. Presently he picked up the stamped envelope and drew from it a letter, which he tore into fragments and dropped overboard. Then, from his pocket-book, he took a similar but unaddressed envelope, from which he drew out its contents, and very curious those contents were. There was a letter, brief and laconic, which he read thoughtfully. “These,” it ran, “are all I have by me, but they will do for the present, and when you have planted them I will let you have a fresh supply.” There was no date and no signature, but the rather peculiar handwriting, in jet-black ink, was similar to that on the envelope addressed to Joseph Penfield, Esq.

  The other contents consisted of a dozen sheets of blank paper, each of the size of a Bank of England note. But they were not quite blank, for each bore an elaborate water-mark, identical with that of a twenty-pound banknote. They were, in fact, the “paper blanks” of which Purcell had spoken. The envelope with its contents had been slipped into his hand by Purcell, without remark, only three days ago.

  Varney refolded the “blanks,” enclosed them within the letter, and slipped letter and “blanks” together into the stamped envelope, the flap of which he licked and reclosed.

  “I should like to see old Penfield’s face when he opens that envelope,” was his reflection as, with a grim smile, he put it away in his pocket-book “And I wonder what he will do,” he added mentally; “however, I shall see before many days are over.”

  Varney looked at his watch. He was to meet Jack Rodney on Penzance Pier at a quarter to three. He would never do it at this rate, for when he opened Mount’s Bay, Penzance would be right in the wind’s eye. That would mean a long beat to windward. Then Rodney would be there first, waiting for him. Deuced awkward, this. He would have to account for his being alone on board, would have to invent some lie about having put Purcell ashore at Mousehole or Newlyn. But a lie is a very pernicious thing. Its effects are cumulative. You never know when you have done with it. Apart from moral considerations, lies should be avoided at all cost of present inconvenience; that is, unless they are absolutely unavoidable, and then they should be as probable as can be managed, and not calculated to provoke inquiry. Now, if he had reached Penzance before Rodney, he need have said nothing about Purcell—for the present, at any rate, and that would have been so much safer.

  When the yacht was about abreast of Lamorna Cove, though some seven miles to the south, the breeze began to draw ahead, and the fog cleared off quite suddenly. The change of wind was unfavourable for the moment, but when it veered round yet a little more until it blew from east-north-east, Varney brightened up considerably. There was still a chance of reaching Penzance before Rodney arrived; for now, as soon as he had fairly opened Mount’s Bay, he could head straight for his destination and make it on a single board.

  Between two and three hours later the Sandhopper entered Penzance Harbour, and, threading her way among an assemblage of luggers and small coasters, brought up alongside the Albert Pier, at the foot of a vacant ladder.

  Having made the yacht fast to a couple of rings, Varney divested himself of his oilskins, locked the cabin scuttle, and climbed the ladder. The change of wind had saved him after all, and as he strode away along the pier he glanced complacently at his watch. He still had nearly half an hour to the good.

  He seemed to know the place well and to have a definite objective, for he struck out briskly from the foot of the pier into Market Jew Street, and from thence, by a somewhat zigzag route, to a road which eventually brought him out about the middle of the esplanade. Continuing westward, he entered the Newlyn Road, along which he walked rapidly for about a third of a mile, when he drew up opposite a small letter-box, which was let into a wall. Here he stopped to read the tablet, on which was printed the hours of collection, and then, having glanced at his watch, he walked on again, but at a less rapid pace.

  When he reached the outskirts of Newlyn, he turned and began slowly to retrace his steps, looking at his watch from time to time with a certain air of impatience. Presently a quick step behind him caused him to look round. The newcomer was a postman, striding along, bag on shoulder, with the noisy tread of a heavily shod man and evidently collecting letters. Varney let him pass, watched him halt at the little letter-box, unlock the door, gather up the letters, and stow them in his bag, heard the clang of the iron door, and finally saw the man set forth again on his pilgrimage. Then he brought forth his pocket-book, and drawing from it the letter addressed to Joseph Penfield, Esq., stepped up to the letter-box. The tablet now announced that the next collection would be at 8.30 P.M. Varney read the announcement with a faint smile, glanced again at his watch, which stood at two minutes past four, and dropped the letter into the box.

  As he walked up the pier with a large paper bag under his arm, he became aware of a tall man who was doing sentry-go before a Gladstone bag that stood on the coping opposite the ladder, and who, observing his approach, came forward to meet him.

  “Here you are, then, Rodney,” was Varney’ s rather unoriginal greeting.

  “Yes,” replied Rodney, “and here I’ve been for nearly half an hour. Purcell gone?”

  “Bless you! yes, long ago,” answered Varney.

  “I didn’t see him at the station. What train was he going by?”

  “I don’t know. He said something about taking Falmouth on the way; had some business or other there. But I expect he’s gone to have a feed at one of the hotels. We got hung up in a fog; that’s why I’m so late. I’ve been up to buy some grog.”

  “Well,” said Rodney, “bring it on board. It’s time we were under way. As soon as we are outside I’ll take charge, and you can go below and stoke up at your ease.”

  The two men descended the ladder and proceeded at once to hoist the sails and cast off the shore ropes. A few strokes of an oar sent them clear of the lee of the pier, and in a few minutes the yacht Sandhopper was once more outside, heading south with a steady breeze from east-north-east.

  CHAPTER II

  In which Margaret Purcell receives a Letter

  Daylight dies hard in the month of June, and Night comes but tardily into her scanty reversion. The clock on the mantelpiece stood at half-past nine, and candles twinkled on the supper table, but even now the slaty-grey band of twilight was only just stealing up behind the horizon to veil the fading glories of the western sky.

  Varney sat at the old-fashioned, oval, gate-legged table with an air of placid contentment, listening to and joining in the rather disconnected talk (for hungry people are poor conversationalists) with quiet geniality but with a certain remoteness and abstraction. From where he sat he could see out through the open window the great ocean stretching away to the south and west, the glittering horizon, and the gorgeous evening sky. With quiet pleasure he had watched the changing scene—the crimson disc of the setting sun, the flaming gold softening down into the sober tints of the afterglow—and now, as the grey herald of the night spread upwards, his eye dwelt steadily on one spot away in the south-west. At first faintly visible, then waxing as the daylight waned, a momentary spark flashed in the heart of the twilight grey, now white like the sparkle of a diamond, now crimson like the flash of a ruby. It was the light on the Wolf Rock.

  He watched it thoughtfully as he talked: white—red, white—red, diamond—ruby, so it would go on every fifteen seconds through the sh
ort summer night—to mariners a warning and a guide; to him, a message of release; for another, a memorial.

  As he looked at the changing light, he thought of his enemy lying out there in the chilly depths on the bed of the sea. It was strange how often he thought of Purcell. For the man was dead; had gone out of his life utterly. And yet, in the two days that had passed, every trivial incident had seemed to connect itself and him with the man who was gone. And so it was now. All roads seemed to lead to Purcell. If he looked out seaward, there was the lighthouse flashing its secret message, as if it should say, “We know, you and I; he is down here.” If he looked around the table, still everything spoke of the dead man. There was Philip Rodney—Purcell and he had talked of him on the yacht. There was Jack Rodney, who had waited on the pier for the man who had not come. There, at the hostess’s right hand, was the quiet, keen-faced stranger whom Purcell, for some reason, had not wished to meet; and there, at the head of the table, was Margaret herself, the determining cause of it all. Even the very lobsters on the table (lobsters are plentiful at the Land’s End) set him thinking of dark crawling shapes down in that dim underworld, groping around a larger shape tethered to an iron weight.

  He turned his face resolutely away from the sea. He would think no more of Purcell. The fellow had dogged him through life, but now he was gone. Enough of Purcell. Let him think of something more pleasant.

  The most agreeable object of contemplation within his field of vision was the woman who sat at the head of the table, his hostess. And, in fact, Margaret Purcell was very pleasant to look upon, not only for her comeliness—though she was undoubtedly a pretty, almost a beautiful, woman—but because she was sweet-faced and gracious, and what men compliment the sex by calling “womanly.” She was evidently under thirty, though she carried a certain matronly sedateness and an air of being older than she either looked or was, which was accentuated by the fashion in which she wore her hair, primly parted in the middle; a rather big woman, quiet and reposeful, as big women often are.

  Varney looked at her with a kind of wonder. He had always thought her lovely, and now she seemed lovelier than ever. And she was a widow, little as she suspected it, little as anyone but he suspected it. But it was a fact. She was free to marry, if she only knew it.

  He hugged himself at the thought and listened dreamily to the mellow tones of her voice. She was talking to her guest and the elder Rodney, but he had only a dim idea of what she was saying; he was enjoying the music of her speech rather than attending to the matter. Suddenly she turned to him and asked:

  “Don’t you agree with me, Mr. Varney?”

  He pulled himself together, and, after a momentarily vacant look, answered:

  “I always agree with you, Mrs. Purcell.”

  “And so,” said Jack Rodney, “as the greater includes the less, he agrees with you now. I am admiring your self-possession, Varney; you haven’t the least idea what we were talking about.”

  Varney laughed and reddened, and Margaret looked at him with playful reproach.

  “Haven’t you?” she asked. “But how deceitful of you to answer so readily! I was remarking that lawyers have a way of making a solemn parade of exactness and secrecy when there is no occasion. That was my statement.”

  “And it is perfectly correct,” said Varney. “You know it is, Rodney. You’re always doing it. I’ve noticed it constantly.”

  “Oh, this is mere vindictiveness, because he unmasked your deceit. I wasn’t alluding to Mr. Rodney or anyone in particular. I was just speaking generally.”

  “But,” said Varney, “something must have suggested the reflection.”

  “Certainly. Something did: a letter that I have just received from Mr. Penfield; a most portentous document, and all about nothing.”

  At the mention of the lawyer’s name Varney’s attention came to a sharp focus.

  “It seems,” Margaret continued, “that Dan, when he wrote to Mr. Penfield the other day, put the wrong letter in the envelope—a silly thing to do, but we all do silly things sometimes.”

  “I don’t,” said Rodney.

  “Well, ordinary persons, I mean. Then Mr. Penfield, instead of simply stating the fact and returning the letter, becomes mysterious and alarming. He informs me that the envelope was addressed in Dan’s handwriting, that the letter was posted at Penzance at eight-thirty P.M., that it was opened by him in person, and that the contents, which have been seen by no one but himself, are at present reposing in his private safe, of which he alone has the key. What he does not tell us is what the contents of the envelope were, which is the only thing that matters. It is most extraordinary. From the tone of his letter one would think that the envelope had contained something dreadful and incriminating.”

  “Perhaps it did,” said Varney. “Dan’s political views are distinctly revolutionary, and he is as secret as a whole barrel of oysters. That letter may have contained particulars of some sort of Guy Fawkes conspiracy, enclosing samples of suitable explosives. Who knows?”

  Margaret was about to reply, when her glance happened to light on Jack Rodney, and something in that gentleman’s expressive and handsome face gave her pause. Had she been chattering indiscreetly? And might Mr. Penfield have meant something after all? There were some curious points about his letter. She smilingly accepted the Guy Fawkes theory and then adroitly changed the subject.

  “Speaking of Penzance, Mr. Varney, reminds me that you haven’t told us what sort of voyage you had. There was quite a thick fog wasn’t there?”

  “Yes. It delayed us a lot. Purcell would steer right out to sea for fear of going ashore. Then the breeze failed for a time, and then it veered round easterly and headed us, and, as a wind up to the chapter of accidents, the jib-halyards carried away and we had to reeve a new one. Nice crazy gear you keep on your craft, Rodney.”

  “I suspected that rope,” said Rodney—” in fact, I had meant to fit a new halyard before I went up to town. But I should have liked to see Purcell shinning up aloft.”

  “So should I—from the shore,” said Varney. “He’d have carried away the mast or capsized the yacht. No, my friend; I left him below as a counterpoise and went aloft myself.”

  “Did Dan go straight off to the station?” Margaret asked.

  “I should say not,” replied Varney. “He was in a mighty hurry to be off—said he had some things to see to; I fancy one of them was a grilled steak and a bottle of Bass. We were both pretty ravenous.”

  “But why didn’t you go with him if you were ravenous too?”

  “I had to snug up the yacht and he wouldn’t wait. He was up the ladder like a lamplighter almost before we had made fast. I can see him now, with that great suitcase in his hand, going up as light as a feather. He is wonderfully active for his size.”

  “Isn’t he?” said Rodney. “But these big men often are. Look at the way those great lumping pilots will drop down into a boat: as light as cats.”

  “He is a big fellow, too,” said Varney. “I was looking at him as he stopped at the top of the ladder to sing out ‘So long.’ He looked quite gigantic in his oilskins.”

  “He actually went up into town in his oilskins, did he?” exclaimed Margaret. “He must have been impatient for his meal! Oh, how silly of me! I never sewed on that button that had come off the collar of his oilskin coat. I hope you didn’t have a wet passage.”

  “You need not reproach yourself, Mrs. Purcell,” interposed Philip Rodney. “Your neglect was made good by my providence. I sewed on that button when I borrowed the coat on Friday evening to go to my diggings in.”

  “You told me you hadn’t a spare oilskin button,” said Margaret.

  “I hadn’t, but I made one—out of a cork.”

  “A cork?” Margaret exclaimed, with an incredulous laugh.

  “Not a common cork, you know,” Philip explained. “It was a flat circular cork from one of my collecting jars, waterproofed with paraffin wax; a most superior affair, with a beautiful round label—also wa
terproofed by the wax—on which was typed ‘Marine Worms.’ The label was very decorative. It’s my own invention, and I’m rather proud of it.”

  “You may well be. And I suppose you sewed it on with rope-yarn and a sail-needle?” Margaret suggested.

  “Not at all. It was secured with catgut, the fag end of an E string that I happened to have in my pocket. You see, I had no needle or thread, so I made two holes in the cork with the marlin-spike in my pocket-knife, two similar holes in the coat, poked the ends of the fiddlestring through, tied a reef-knot inside, and there it was, tight as wax—paraffin wax.”

  “It was very ingenious and resourceful of you,” Varney commented, “but the product wasn’t very happily disposed of on Dan’s coat—I mean as to your decorative label. I take it that Dan’s interest in marine worms is limited to their use as bait. Now if you could have fitted out Dr. Thorndyke with a set there would have been some appropriateness in it, since marine worms are the objects of his devotion—at least, so I understand,” and he looked interrogatively at Margaret’s guest.

  Dr. Thorndyke smiled. “You are draping me in the mantle of my friend, Professor D’Arcy,” he said. “He is the real devotee. I have merely come down for a few days to stay with him and be an interested spectator of the chase. It is he who should have the buttons.”