I had no longer any hope. I saw now and again Roper, as he slapped down a spadeful of earth beside me, look with a grim significant smile at me, and perhaps his fellow would catch the look and imitate it. I noticed that George Glen, as he took down the lantern from time to time and held it over the trench, would flash it towards me; and he, too, would smile and perhaps wink at Roper in the trench. The winks and smiles were easy as print to read. They were agreeing between themselves: the unspoken word was going round; they did not mean to keep their part of the bargain, and when they left the Abbey grounds the mound upon Adam’s grave would be a foot higher than when they entered them.
But this unspoken understanding had no longer any power to frighten me. I tried to catch Peter Tortue’s attention; I shuffled a foot upon the ground; but he paid no heed. He was on all fours by the grave-side peering into the trench, and I dared not call to him. I wanted to contradict what I had said outside the shed upon the hillside. I wanted to whisper to him:
“The plan you search for is not there.”
If they were meaning to break their part of the bargain it mattered very little, for I was unable to keep mine.
I had suspected that from the moment the boulder was uprooted; I knew it a moment after the lantern was hung upon the headstone. The stone had rested on that grave for two years, yet at the fresh pressure of the pick it had given and swayed and rolled from its green pedestal. It had tumbled at my feet, and there was not even a clot of earth or a pebble clinging to it. Moreover, on the grave itself there was grass where it had rested. For all its weight, it had not settled into the ground or so much as worn the herbage. Yet it had rested there two years!
The lantern was hung upon the headstone, and its light showed to me that close to the ground the headstone had been chipped. It was as though some one had swung a pick and by mistake had struck the edge of the headstone. Moreover, whoever had swung the pick had swung it recently. For whereas the face of the granite was dull and weatherbeaten, this chipped edge sparkled like quartz.
The aspect of the grave itself confirmed me. Some pains had been taken to replace the sods of grass upon the top, but all about the mound, wherever the lantern-light fell, I could see lumps of fresh clay.
The grave had been opened, and recently — I did not stop then to consider by whom — and secretly. It could have been opened but for the one reason. There would be no plan there for Glen to find.
Roper uttered an exclamation and stopped digging. His spade had struck something hard. Glen lowered the lantern into the trench, and the light struck up on to his face and the face of the diggers.
I hazarded a whisper to Tortue, and certainly no one else heard it, but neither did Tortue. Roper struck his spade in with renewed vigour, and a stifled cry which burst at the same moment from the five mouths told me the coffin — lid was disclosed. I whispered again the louder:
“Tortue! Tortue!” and with no better result.
The pick was handed down at Roper’s call. I spoke now, and at last he heard. He turned his head across his shoulder towards me, but he only motioned me to silence. The pick rang upon wood, and now I called:
“Tortue! Tortue!”
Still no one but Tortue heard. This time, however, he rose from his knees and came to me. Glen looked up for an instant.
“See that he is fast!” he said, and so looked back into the grave.
“What is it?” asked Tortue.
“The plan has gone. Loose my hands!”
I could no longer see Roper; he had stooped down below the lip of the trench.
“Gone!” said Tortue. “How?”
“Some one has been here before you, but within this last week, I’ll swear. Loose my hands.”
“Some one!” he exclaimed savagely. “Who? who?” and he shook me by the arms.
“I do not know.”
“Swear it.”
“I do. Loose my hands.”
“Remember it is I who save you.”
His knife was already out of his pocket; he had already muffled it in his coat and opened it; he was making a pretence to see whether the end was still fast. I could feel the cold blade between the rope and my wrist, when, with a shout. Roper stood erect, the stick in one hand, a sheet of paper flourishing in the other.
He drew himself out of the trench and spread the paper out on a pile of clay at the graveside. Glen held his lantern close to it. There were four streaming faces bent over that paper. I felt a tug at my wrists and the cord slacken as the knife cut through it.
“Take the rope with you,” whispered Tortue.
The next moment there were five faces bent over that paper.
“On St. Helen’s Island,” cried Glen.
“Let me see!” exclaimed Tortue, leaning over his shoulder. “Three — what’s that? — chains. Three chains east by the compass of the east window in the south aisle of the church.”
And that was the last I heard. I stepped softly back into the darkness for a few paces, and then I ran at the top of my speed westwards towards New Grimsby, freeing my arms from the rope as I ran. Once I turned to look back. They were still gathered about that plan; their faces, now grown small, were clustered under the light of the lantern, and Tortue, with his flashing knife-blade, was pointing out upon the paper the position of the treasure. Ten minutes later I was well up the top of the hill. I saw a lugger steal round the point from New Grimsby and creep up in the shadow towards the Abbey grounds.
I spent that night in the gorse high up on the Castle Down. I had no mind to be caught in a trap at the Palace Inn.
From the top of the down, about an hour later, I saw the lugger come round the Lizard Point of Tresco and beat across to St. Helen’s. As the day broke she pushed out from St. Helen’s, and reaching past the Golden Ball into the open sea, put her tiller up and ran by the islands to the south.
There was no longer any need for me to hide among the gorse. I went down to the Palace Inn. No one was as yet astir, and the door, of course, was unlocked. I crept quietly up to my room and went to bed.
CHAPTER XIV
IN WHICH PETER TORTUE EXPLAINS HIS INTERVENTION ON MY BEHALF
AS WILL BE readily understood, when I woke up the next morning I was sensible at once of a great relief. My anxieties and misadventures of last night were well paid for after all. I could look at my swollen wrists and say that without any hesitation, the watchers had departed from their watching, and what if they had carried away the King of Portugal’s great jewelled cross? Helen Mayle had no need of it, indeed, her great regret now was that she could not get rid of what she had; and as for Cullen, to tell the truth, I did not care a snap of the fingers whether he found a fortune or must set to work to make one. Other men had been compelled to do it — better men too, deuce take him! We were well quit of George Glen and his gang, though the price of the quittance was heavy. I would get up at once, run across to Merchant’s Point, and tell Helen Mayle —— My plans came to a sudden stop. Tell Helen Mayle precisely what? That Adam Mayle’s grave had been rifled?
I lay staring up at the ceiling as I debated that question, and suddenly it slipped from my mind. That grave had been rifled before, and quite recently. I was as certain of that in the sober light of the morning as I had been during the excitement of last night. Why? It was not for the chart of the treasure, since the chart had been left. And by whom? So after all, here was I, who had waked up in the best of spirits too, with the world grown comfortable, confronted with questions as perplexing as a man could wish for. It was, as Cullen Mayle had said, at the inn near Axminster, most discouraging. And I turned over in bed and tried to go to sleep, that I might drive them from my mind. I should have succeeded too, but just as I was in a doze there came a loud rapping at the door, and Dick Parmiter danced into the room.
“They are gone, Mr. Berkeley,” he cried.
“I know,” I grumbled; “I saw them go,” and stretched out my arms and yawned.
“Why, you have hurt your wrist,” Dick excla
imed.
“No,” said I, “it was George Glen’s shake of the hand.”
“They are gone,” repeated Dick, gleefully, “all of them except Peter Tortue.”
“What’s that?” I cried, sitting up in the bed.
“All of them except Peter Tortue.”
“To be sure,” said I, scratching my head.
Now what in the world had Peter Tortue remained behind for? For no harm, that was evident, since I owed my life to his good offices last night. I was to remember that it was he who saved me. I was, then, to make some return. But what return?
I threw my pillow at Parmiter’s head.
“Deuce take you, Dicky! My bed was not such a plaguey restful place before that it needed you to rumple it further. Well, since I mayn’t sleep late i’ the morning like a gentleman, I’ll get up.”
I tried to put together some sort of plausible explanation which would serve for Helen Mayle while I was dressing. But I could not hit upon one, and besides Parmiter made such a to-do over brushing my clothes this morning that that alone was enough to drive all reasoning out of one’s head.
“Dick,” said I as he handed me my coat, “you have had, if my memory serves me, some experience of womenfolk.”
Dick nodded his head in a mournful fashion.
“Mother!” said he.
“Precisely,” said I. “Now, here’s a delicate question. Do you always tell womenfolk the truth?”
“No,” said he, stoutly.
“Do you tell them — shall we say quibbles, — then?”
“Quibbles?” said Dick, opening his mouth.
“It is not a fruit, Dicky,” said I, “so you need not keep it open. By quibbles I mean lies. Do you tell your womenfolk lies, when the truth is not good for them to know?”
“No,” said Dick, as steadily as before, “for they finds you out.”
“Precisely,” I agreed. “But since you neither tell the truth nor tell lies, what in the world do you do?”
“Well,” answered Dick, “I say that it’s a secret which mother isn’t to know for a couple of days.”
“I see. And when the couple of days has gone?
“Then mother has forgotten all about the secret.”
I reflected for a moment or two.
“Dick.”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever try that plan with Miss Helen?”
“No,” said he, shaking his head.
“I will,” said I, airily, “or something like it.”
“Something like it would be best,” said Dick.
The story which I told to Helen was not after all very like it. I said:
“The watchers have gone and gone for ever. They were here not for any revenge, but for their profit. There was a treasure in St. Helen’s which Cullen Mayle was to show them the way to — if they could catch him and force him. They had some claim to it — I showed them the way.”
“You?” she exclaimed. “How?”
“That I cannot tell you,” said I. “I would beg you not to ask, but to let my silence content you. I could not tell you the truth and I do not think that I could invent a story to suit the occasion which would not ring false. The consequence is the one thing which concerns us, and there is no doubt of it. The watchers did not watch for an opportunity of revenge and they are gone.”
“Very well,” she said. “I was right after all, you see. The hand stretched out of the dark has done this service. For it is your doing that they are gone?”
I did not answer and she laughed a little and continued, “But I will not ask you. I will make shift to be content with your silence. Did Dick Parmiter come with you this morning?”
“Yes,” I answered with a laugh, “but he was not with me last night.”
Helen laughed again.
“Ah,” she cried! “So it was your doing, and I have not asked you.” Then she grew serious of a sudden. “But since they are gone” — she exclaimed, in a minute, her whole face alight with her thought— “since they are gone, Cullen may come and come in safety.”
“Oh! yes, Cullen may come,” I answered, perhaps a trifle roughly. “Cullen will be safe and may come. Indeed, I wonder that he was not here before this. He stole my horse upon the road and yet could not reach here first. I trudged a-foot, Cullen bestrode my horse and yet Tresco still pines for him. It is very strange unless he has a keen nose for danger.”
My behaviour very likely was not the politest imaginable, but then Helen’s was no better. For although she displayed no anger at my rough words — I should not have cared a scrape of her wheezy fiddle if she had, but she did not, she merely laughed in my face with every appearance of enjoyment. I drew myself up very stiff. Here were all the limits of courtesy clearly over-stepped, but I at all events would not follow her example, nor allow her one glimpse of any exasperation which I might properly feel.
“Shall I go out and search for him in the highways and hedges?” I asked with severity.
“It would be magnanimous,” said she biting her lip, and then her manner changed. “He rode your horse,” she cried, “and yet he has fallen behind. He will be hurt then! Some accident has befallen him!”
“Or he has wagered my horse at some roadside inn and lost! It was a good horse, too.”
She caught hold of my arm in some agitation.
“Oh! be serious!” she prayed.
“Serious quotha!” said I, drawing away from her hand with much dignity. “Let me assure you, madam, that the loss of a horse is a very serious affair, that the stealing of a horse is a very serious affair — —”
“Well, well, I will buy it from you, saddle and stirrup and all,” she interrupted.
“Madam,” said I, when I could get my speech. “There is no more to be said.”
“Heaven be praised!” said she. “And now it may be, you will condescend to listen to me. What am I to do? Suppose that he is hurt! Suppose that he is in trouble! Suppose that he still waits for my answer to his message! Suppose in a word that he does not come! What can I do? He may go hungering for a meal.”
I did not think the contingency probable, but Helen was now speaking with so much sincerity of distress that I could not say as much.
“Unless he comes to Tresco I am powerless. It is true I have bequeathed everything to him, but then I am young,” she said, with a most melancholy look in her big dark eyes. “Neither am I sickly.”
“I will go back along the road and search for him,” and this I spoke with sincerity. She looked at me curiously.
“Will you do that?” she asked in a doubtful voice, as though she did not know whether to be pleased or sorry.
“Yes,” said I, and a servant knocked at the door, and told me Parmiter wished to speak with me. I found the lad on the steps of the porch, and we walked down to the beach.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The Frenchman,” said he, with a frightened air.
“Peter Tortue?”
“Yes.”
I led him further along the beach lest any of the windows of the house should be open towards us, and any one by the open window.
“Where is he?”
Dick pointed up the hill.
“At the shed?” I asked.
“Yes. He was lying in wait on the hillside, and ran down when he saw that I was alone. He stays in the shed for you, and you are to go to him alone.”
“Amongst the dead sailor-men?” said I, with a laugh. But the words were little short of blasphemy to Dick Parmiter. “Well, I was there last night, and no harm came to me.”
“You were there last night?” cried Dick. “Then you will not go?”
“But I will,” said I. “I am curious to hear what Tortue has to say to me. You may take my word for it, Dick, there’s no harm in Peter Tortue. I shall be back within the hour. Hush! not a word of this!” for I saw Helen Mayle coming from the house towards us. I told her that I was called away, and would return.
“Do you take Dick with you?” she aske
d, with too much indifference. She held a big hat of straw by the ribbons and swung it to and fro. She did that also with too much indifference.
“No,” said I, “I leave him behind. Make of him what you can. He cannot tell what he does not know.”
The sum of Dick’s knowledge, I thought, amounted to no more than this — that I had last night visited the shed, in spite of the dead sailor-men. I forgot for the moment that he was in my bedroom when I rose that morning.
The door of the shed was fastened on the inside; I rapped with my knuckles, and Tortue’s voice asked who was there. When I told him, he unbarred the door.
“There is no one behind you?” said he, peering over my shoulder.
“Nay! Do you fear that I have brought the constables to take you? You may live in Tresco till you die if you will. What! Should I betray you, whose life you saved only last night?”
Peter opened the door wide.
“A night!” said he, with a shrug of the shoulders. “One can forget more than that in a night, if one is so minded.”
I followed him into the shed. Here and there, through the chinks in the boards, a gleam of light slipped through. Outside it was noonday, within it was a sombre evening. I passed through the door of the partition into the inner room. The rafters above were lost in darkness, and before my eyes were accustomed to the gloom I stumbled over a slab of stone which had been lifted from its place in the floor. I turned to Tortue, who was just behind me, and he nodded in answer to my unspoken question. The spade and the pick had stood in that corner to the left, and this slab of stone had been removed in readiness. The darkness of the shed struck cold upon me all at once, as I thought of why that slab had been removed. I looked about me much as a man may look about his bedroom the day after he has been saved from his grave by the surgeon’s knife. Everything stands as it did yesterday — this chair in this corner, that table just upon that pattern of the carpet, but it is all very strange and unfamiliar. It was against that board in the partition that I leaned my back; there sat George Glen with his evil smile, here Tortue polished his knife.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 329