"You can?" said Helen. She was leaning across the table, her face all lighted up with excitement.
"Yes. There"s the negro above stairs for one thing, Cullen"s servant.
For another I met Cullen Mayle on the road as I was travelling here.
He counterfeited an ague, which he told me he had caught on the Guinea coast. The ague was counterfeit, but very likely he has been on the Guinea coast."
"Of course," cried d.i.c.k.
"Not a doubt of it," said Helen.
"So this is my theory. George Glen came to enlist Adam Mayle"s help and Adam Mayle"s money, in some voyage to Africa. Cullen Mayle overheard it, and got the start of George Glen. So here"s George Glen back again upon Tresco, and watching for Cullen Mayle."
"See!" cried Helen suddenly. "Did I not tell you you were sent here to a good end?"
"But we are not out of the wood yet," I protested. "We have to discover what it was that Glen proposed to Mr. Mayle. How shall we do that?"
"How?" repeated Helen, and she looked to me confidently for the answer.
"I can think of but one way," said I, "to go boldly to George Glen and make terms with him."
"Would he speak, do you think?"
"Most likely not," I answered, and so in spite of my fine conjecture, we did not seem to have come any nearer to an issue. We were both of us silent for some while. The very confidence which Helen displayed stung me into an activity of thought. Helen herself was sunk in an abstraction, and in that abstraction she spoke.
"You are hurt," she said.
My right hand was resting upon the table. It was cut in one or two places, and covered with scratches.
"It is nothing," said I, "I slipped on the hill yesterday night and cut it with the gorse;" and again we fell to silence.
"What I am thinking is this," she said, at length. "You overtook Cullen upon the road, and you reached the islands last night. At any moment then we may expect his coming."
"Why, that"s true," said I, springing up to my feet. "And if d.i.c.k will sail me across to St. Mary"s, we"ll make a shift to stop him."
Helen Mayle rose at that moment from her seat. She was wearing a white frock, and upon one side of it I noticed for the first time a red smear or two, as though she had brushed against paint--or blood. I looked at my hand scratched and torn by the gorse bush. It would have been bleeding at the time when a woman, coming swiftly past us in the fog, brushed against it. The woman was certainly hurrying in the direction of this house.
"You have told me everything, I suppose," I said--"everything at all events that it concerns me to know."
"Everything," she replied.
We crossed that afternoon to St. Mary"s. There was no sign of Cullen Mayle at Hugh Town. No one had seen him or heard of his coming. He had not landed upon St. Mary"s. I thought it possible that he might not have touched St. Mary"s at all, but rowed ash.o.r.e to Tresco even as I had done. But no ship had put into the Road that day but one which brought Castile soap from Ma.r.s.eilles. We sailed back to Tresco, and ran the boat"s nose into the sand not twenty yards from the door of the house on Merchant"s Point. A man, an oldish, white-haired man, loitering upon the beach very civilly helped us to run the boat up out of the water. We thanked him, and he touched his hat and answered with something of a French accent, which surprised me. But as we walked up to the house,
"That"s one of the five," d.i.c.k explained. "He came on the boat with the negro to Penzance. Peter Tortue he is called, and he was loitering there on purpose to get a straight look at you."
"Well," said I, "it is at all events known that I am here," and going into the house I found Helen Mayle eagerly waiting for our return. I told her that Cullen Mayle could not by any means have yet reached the Scillies, and that we had left word with the harbour master upon St.
Mary"s to detain him if he landed; at which she expressed great relief.
"And since it is known I am here," I added, "it will be more suitable if I carry my valise over to New Grimsby and seek a bed at the "Palace" Inn. I shall besides make the acquaintance of Mr. George Glen. It is evident that he and his fellows intend no hurt to you, so that you may sleep in peace."
"No," said she, bravely enough. "I am not afraid for myself."
"And you will do that?"
"What?" she asked.
"Sleep in peace," said I; and putting my hand into my pocket as if by accident, I let her see again the corner of her white scarf. Her face flushed a little as she saw it.
"Oh, yes," she answered, and to my surprise with the easiest laugh imaginable. "I shall sleep in peace. You need have no fear."
I could not understand her. What a pa.s.sion of despair it must have needed to string her to that act of death last night! Yet to-day--she could even allude to it with a laugh. I was lost in perplexity, but I had this one sure thing to comfort me. She was to-day hopeful, however much she despaired yesterday. She relied upon me to rescue Cullen from his peril. I was not sure that I should be doing her the service she imagined it to be, even if I succeeded. But she loved him, and looked to me to help her. So that I, too, could sleep in peace without fear that to-night another scarf would be fetched out to do the office this one I kept had failed to do.
I gave d.i.c.k my valise to carry across the island, and waited until he was out of sight before I started. Then I walked to the palisade at the end of the house. I found a spot where the palisade was broken; the splintered wood was fresh and clean; it was I who had broken the palisade last night. From that point I marched straight up the hill through the gorse, and when I had walked for about twenty minutes I stopped and looked about me. I struck away to my left, and after a little I stopped again. I marched up and down that hill, to the right, to the left, for perhaps the s.p.a.ce of an hour, and at last I came upon that for which I searched--a steep slope where the gra.s.s was crushed, and underneath that slope a sheer descent. On the brink of the precipice--for that I judged it to be--I saw a broken gorse-bush. I lay down on my face and carefully crawled down the slope. The roots of the gorse-bush still held firmly in the ground. I clutched it in my left hand, dug the nails of my right through the gra.s.s into the soil and leaned over. My precipice was no more than a hollow some twenty feet deep, and had I slipped yesterday night, I should not have fallen even those twenty feet; for a sort of low barn was built in the hollow, with its back leaning against the perpendicular wall. I should have dropped perhaps ten feet on to the roof of this barn.
I drew myself up the hill again and sat down. The evening was very quiet and still. I was near to the summit of the island. Over my left shoulder I could see the sun setting far away in the Atlantic, and the waves rippling gold. Beneath me was the house, a long one-storied building of granite, on the horn of a tiny bay. The windows looked across the bay; behind the house stretched that tangled garden, and at the end of the garden rose the Merchant"s Rock. As it stood thus in the evening light, with the smoke curling from its chimneys, and the sea murmuring at its door, it seemed quite impossible to believe that any story of turmoil and strife and tragedy could have locality there.
That old buccaneer Adam Mayle, and his soft-voiced son Cullen, whom he had turned adrift, seemed the figures of a dream and my adventure in Cullen"s room--a hideous nightmare.
And yet even as I looked footsteps brushed through the gra.s.s behind me, and turning I saw a sailor with a bra.s.s telescope under one arm and a black patch over one eye; who politely pa.s.sed me the time of day and went by. He was a big man, with a great beard and hair sprouting from his ears and nostrils. He was another of the five no doubt, and though he went by he did not pa.s.s out of sight. I waited, hoping that he would go, for I had a great desire to examine the barn beneath me more closely. It was from the barn that the unearthly screeching had risen which had so terrified d.i.c.k Parmiter. It was between the barn and the house that a girl had brushed against my wounded hand and taken a stain of blood upon her dress.
The hollow was only a break in the steep slope of the hill. The barn could easily be approached by descending the hill to the right or the left, and then turning in. I was anxious to do it, to try the door, to enter the barn, but I dared not, for the sailor was within sight, and I had no wish to arouse any suspicions. Helen had told me everything, she had said--everything which it concerned me to know. But had she? I found myself asking, as I got to my feet and crossed the hill down towards New Grimsby.
The sun had set by this time, a cool twilight took the colour from the gorse, and numberless small winged things flew and sung about one"s face; all round a grey sea went down to a grey sky, and sea and sky were merged; and at my feet the lights began to twinkle in the little fishing village by the sea. I hired a bed at the "Palace" Inn, bade them prepare me supper and then walked on to Parmiter"s cottage for my valise.
There was a great hubbub going on within; d.i.c.k"s voice was explaining, and a woman"s shrill voice overtopped his explanation. The cause of his offence was twofold. He had not been near the cottage all day, so that it was thought he had run away again, and the key of the cottage was gone. It had not been seen since yesterday, and d.i.c.k had been accused of purloining it. I explained to Mrs. Parmiter that it was my fault d.i.c.k had kept away all day, and I made a bargain with her that I should have the lad as my servant while I stayed upon the island. d.i.c.k shouldered my valise in a state of considerable indignation.
"What should I steal the key for?" said he. "It only stands in the door for show. No one locks his door in Tresco. What should I steal the key for?" and he was within an ace of whimpering.
"Come, d.i.c.k," said I, "you mustn"t mind a trifle of a scolding. Why, you are a hero to everybody in these parts, and to one man at all events outside them."
"That doesn"t hinder mother from chasing me about with an oar," he answered.
"It is the fate of all heroes," said I, "to be barbarously used by their womenfolk."
"Then I am d.a.m.ned if I want to be a hero," said d.i.c.k, violently. "And as for the key--of what consequence is it at all if you never lock your door?"
"Of no more consequence than your bruises, d.i.c.k," said I.
But I was wrong. You may do many things with a key besides locking a door. You can slip it down your back to stop your nose bleeding, for instance; if it"s a big key you can weigh a line with it, and perhaps catch a mackerel for your breakfast. And there"s another use for a key of which I did not at this time know, or I should have been saved from considerable perplexity and not a little danger.
CHAPTER X
IN WHICH I LEARN SOMETHING FROM AN ILL-PAINTED PICTURE
I took my supper in the kitchen of the Palace Inn, with a strong reek of tobacco to season it, and a succession of gruesome stories to make it palatable. The company was made up for the most part of fishermen, who talked always of wrecks upon the western islands and of dead men drowned. But occasionally a different accent and a different anecdote of some other corner of the world would make a variation; and doing my best to pierce the haze of smoke, I recognised the speaker as Peter Tortue, the Frenchman, or the man with the patch on his eye. George Glen was there too, tucked away in a corner by the fireplace, but he said very little. I paid, therefore, but a scanty attention, until, the talk having slid, as it will, from dead men to their funerals, some native began to descant upon the magnificence of Adam Mayle"s.
"Ay," said he, drawing a long breath, "there _was_ a funeral, and all according to orders dictated in writing by the dead man. He was to be buried by torchlight in the Abbey Grounds. I do remember that! Mortal heavy he was, and he needed a big coffin."