Collected works of j s f.., p.533
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 533
“Those are the chests that disappeared from the bank at Blyth,” I whispered. “Now you understand?”
She gave me a quick, comprehending look.
“Then we are in the hands of Netherfield Baxter?” she murmured. “That man — there.”
“Without a doubt,” I answered. “And the thing is — show no fear.”
“I’m not a scrap afraid,” she answered. “It’s exciting! And — he’s rather interesting, isn’t he?”
“Gentlemen of his kidney usually are, I believe,” I replied. “All the same, I should much prefer his room to his company.”
Baxter just then came over to us, rubbing from his fingers the soil which had gathered on them from handling the chests. He smiled politely, with something of the air of a host who wants to apologise for the only accommodation he can offer.
“Now, Miss Raven,” he said, with an accent of almost benevolent indulgence, “as we shall be obliged to inflict our hospitality upon you for a day or two — I hope it won’t be for longer, for your sake — let me show you what we can give you in the way of quarters to yourself. We can’t offer you the services of a maid, but there is a good cabin, well fitted, in which you’ll be comfortable, and you can regard it as your own domain while you’re with us. Come this way.”
He led us down a short gangway, across a sort of small saloon evidently used as common-room by himself and his companion, and threw open the door of a neat though very small cabin.
“Never been used,” he said with another smile. “Fitted up by the previous owner of this craft, and all in order, as you see. Consider it as your own, Miss Raven, while you’re our guest. One of my men shall see that you’ve whatever you need in the way of towels, hot water, and the like. If you’ll step in and look round, I’ll send him to you now. As he’s a Chinaman, you’ll find him as handy as a French maid. Give him any orders or instructions you like. And then come on deck again, if you please, and you shall have some tea.”
He beckoned me to follow him as Miss Raven walked into her quarters, and he gave me a reassuring look as we crossed the outer cabin.
“She’ll be perfectly safe and secluded in there,” he said. “You can mount guard here if you like, Mr. Middlebrook — in fact, this is the only place I can offer you for quarters for yourself — I dare say you can manage to make a night’s rest on one of these lounges, with the help of some rugs and cushions, and we’ve plenty of both.”
“I’m all right, thank you,” said I. “Don’t trouble about me. My only concern is about Miss Raven.”
“I’ll take good care that Miss Raven is safe in everything,” he answered. “As safe as if she were in her uncle’s house. So don’t bother your head on that score — I’ve given my word.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said. “But as regards her uncle — I want to speak to you about him.”
“A moment,” he replied. “Excuse me.” We were on deck again, and he went forward, poked his head into an open hatchway, and gave some order to an unseen person. A moment later a Chinaman, the same whose face I had seen as we came aboard, shot out of the hatchway, glided past me as he crossed the deck with silent tread, and vanished into the cabin we had just left. Baxter came back to me, pulling out a cigarette case. “Yes?” he said, offering it. “About Mr. Raven?”
“Mr. Raven,” said I, “will be in great anxiety about his niece. She is the only relative he has, I believe, and he will be extremely anxious if she does not return this evening. He is a nervous, highly-strung man—”
He interrupted me with a wave of his cigarette.
“I’ve thought of all that,” he said. “Mr. Raven shall not be kept in anxiety. As a matter of fact, my friend, whom you met with me up there at the ruins, is going ashore again in a few minutes. He will go straight to the nearest telegraph office, which is a mile or two inland, and there he will send a wire to Mr. Raven — from you. Mr. Raven will get it by, say, seven o’clock. The thing is — how will you word it?”
We looked at each other. In that exchange of glances, I could see that he was a man who was quick at appreciating difficulties and that he saw the peculiar niceties of the present one.
“That’s a pretty stiff question!” said I.
“Just so!” he agreed. “It is. So take my advice. Instead of having the wire sent from the nearest office, do this — my friend, as a matter of fact, is going on by rail to Berwick. Let him send a wire from there: it will only mean that Mr. Raven will get it an hour or so later. Say that you and Miss Raven find you cannot get home tonight, and that she is quite safe — word it in any reassuring way you like.”
I gave him a keen glance.
“The thing is,” said I. “Can we get home tomorrow?”
“Well — possibly tomorrow night — late,” he answered. “I will do my best. I may be — I hope to be — through with my business tomorrow afternoon. Then—”
At that moment the other man appeared on deck, emerging from somewhere. He had changed his clothes — he now presented himself in a smart tweed suit, Homburg hat, polished shoes, gloves, walking cane. Baxter signed to him to wait, turning to me.
“That’s the wisest thing to do,” he remarked. “Draft your wire.”
I wrote out a message which I hoped would allay Mr. Raven’s anxieties and handed it to him. He read it over, nodded as if in approbation, and went across to the other man. For a moment or two they stood talking in low tones; then the other man went over the side, dropped into the boat which lay there, and pulled himself off shorewards. Baxter came back to me.
“He’ll send that from Berwick railway station as soon as he gets there, at six-thirty,” he said. “It should be delivered at Ravensdene Court by eight. So there’s no need to worry further, you can tell Miss Raven. And when all’s said and done, Mr. Middlebrook, it wasn’t my fault that you and she broke in upon very private doings up there in the old churchyard — nor, I suppose, yours either. Make the best of it! — it’s only a temporary detention.”
I was watching him closely as he talked, and suddenly I made up my mind to speak out. It might be foolish, even dangerous, to do it, but I had an intuitive feeling that it would be neither.
“I believe,” I said, brusquely enough, “that I am speaking to Mr. Netherfield Baxter?”
He returned me a sharp glance which was half-smiling. Certainly there was no astonishment in it.
“Aye!” he answered. “I thought, somehow, that you might be thinking that! Well, and suppose I admit it, Mr. Middlebrook? What then? And what do you — a Londoner, I think you told me — know of Netherfield Baxter?”
“You wish to know?” I asked. “Shall I be plain?”
“As a pike-staff, if you like,” he replied. “I prefer it.”
“Well,” said I, “a good many things — recently discovered by accident. That you formerly lived at Blyth, and had some association with a certain temporary bank-manager there, about whose death — and the disappearance of some valuable portable property — there was a good deal of concern manifested about the time that you left Blyth. That you were never heard of again until recently, when a Blyth man recognized you in Hull, where you bought a yawl — this yawl, I believe — and said you were going to Norway in her. And that — but am I to be still more explicit?”
“Why not?” said he with a laugh. “Forewarned is forearmed. You’re giving me valuable information.”
“Very well, Mr. Baxter,” I continued, determined to show him my cards. “There’s a certain detective, one Scarterfield, a sharp man, who is very anxious to make your acquaintance. For if you want the plain truth, he believes you, or some of your accomplices, or you and they together, to have had a hand in the murders of Noah and Salter Quick. And he’s on your track.”
I was watching him still more closely as I spoke the last sentence or two. He remained as calm and cool as ever, and I was somewhat taken aback by the collected fashion in which he not only replied to my glance, but answered my words.
“Scarterfield — of whose doings I’ve heard a bit — has got hold of the wrong end of the stick there, Mr. Middlebrook,” he said quietly. “I had no hand in murdering either Noah Quick or his brother Salter. Nor had my friend — the man who’s just gone off with your telegram. I don’t know who murdered those men. But I know that there have always been men who were ready to murder them if they got the chance, and I wasn’t the least surprised to hear that they had been murdered. The wonder is that they escaped murder as long as they did! But beyond the fact that they were murdered, I know nothing — nor does anybody on board this craft. You and Miss Raven are amongst — well, you can call us pirates if you like, buccaneers, adventurers, anything! — but we’re not murderers. We know nothing whatever about the murders of Noah and Salter Quick — except what we’ve read in the papers.”
I believed him. And I made haste to say so — out of a sheer relief to know that Miss Raven was not amongst men whose hands were stained with blood.
“Thank you,” he said, as coolly as ever. “I’m obliged to you. I’ve been anxious enough to know who did murder those two men. As I say, I felt no surprise when I heard of the murders.”
“You knew them — the Quicks?” I suggested.
“Did I?” he answered with a cynical laugh. “Didn’t I? They were a couple of rank bad ‘uns! I have never professed sanctity, Mr. Middlebrook, but Noah and Salter Quick were of a brand that’s far beyond me — they were bad men. I’ll tell you more of ’em, later — here’s Miss Raven.”
“I may as well tell you,” I murmured hastily, “that Miss Raven knows as much as I do about all that I’ve just told you.”
“That so?” he said. “Um! And she looks a sensible sort of lass, too — well, I’ll tell you both what I know — as I say, later. But now — some tea!”
While he went forward to give his orders, I contrived to inform Miss Raven of the gist of our recent conversation, and to assert my own private belief in Baxter’s innocence. I saw that she was already prejudiced in his favour.
“I’m glad to know that,” she said. “But in that case — the mystery’s all the deeper. What is it, I wonder, that he can tell.”
“Wait till he speaks,” said I. “We shall learn something.”
Baxter came back, presently followed by the little Chinaman whom I had seen before, who deftly set up a small table on deck, drew chairs round it, and a few minutes later spread out all the necessaries of a dainty afternoon tea. And in the centre of them was a plum cake. I saw Miss Raven glance at it; I glanced at her; I knew of what she was thinking. Her thoughts had flown to the plum cake at Lorrimore’s, made by Wing, his Chinese servant.
But whatever we thought, we said nothing. The situation was romantic, and not without some attraction, even in those curious circumstances. Here we were, prisoners, first-class prisoners, if you will, but still prisoners, and there was our gaoler; he and ourselves sat round a tea-table, munching toast, nibbling cakes and dainties, sipping fragrant tea, as if we had been in any lady’s drawing-room. I think it speaks well for all of us that we realized the situation and made the most of it by affecting to ignore the actual reality. We chatted, as well-behaved people should under similar conditions, about anything but the prime fact of our imprisonment; Baxter, indeed, might have been our very polite and attentive host and we his willing guests. As for Miss Raven, she accepted the whole thing with hearty good humour and poured out the tea as if she had been familiar with our new quarters for many a long day; moreover, she adopted a friendly attitude towards our captors which did much towards smoothing any present difficulties.
“You seem to be very well accommodated in the matter of servants, Mr. Baxter,” she observed. “That little Chinaman, as you said, is as good as a French maid, and you certainly have a good cook — excellent pastry-cook, anyway.”
Baxter glanced lazily in the direction of the galley.
“Another Chinaman,” he answered. He looked significantly at me. “Mr. Middlebrook,” he continued, “is aware that I bought this yawl from a ship-broker in Hull, for a special purpose—”
“Not aware of the special purpose,” I interrupted, with a purposely sly glance at him.
“The special purpose is a run across the Atlantic, if you want to know,” he answered carelessly. “Of course, when I’d got her, I wanted a small crew. Now, I’ve had great experience of Chinamen — best servants on earth, in my opinion — so I sailed her down to the Thames, went up to London Docks, and took in some Chinese chaps that I got in Limehouse. Two men and one cook — man cook, of course. He’s good — I can’t promise you a real and proper dinner tonight, but I can promise a very satisfactory substitute which we call supper.”
“And you’re going across the Atlantic with a crew of three?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact,” he answered candidly, “there are six of us. The three Chinese; myself; my friend who was with me this afternoon, and who will join us again tomorrow, and another friend who will return with him, and who, like the crew, is a Chinaman. But he’s a Chinaman of rank and position.”
“In other words, the Chinese gentleman who was with you and your French friend in Hull?” I suggested.
“Just so — since we’re to be frank,” he answered. “The same.” Then, with a laugh, he glanced at Miss Raven. “Mr. Middlebrook,” he said, “considers me the most candid desperado he ever met!”
“Your candour is certainly interesting,” replied Miss Raven. “Especially if you really are a desperado. Perhaps — you’ll give us more of it?”
“I’ll tell you a bit — later on,” he said. “That Quick business, I mean.”
Suddenly, setting down his tea-cup, he got up and moved away towards the galley, into which he presently disappeared. Miss Raven turned sharply on me.
“Did you eat a slice of that plum-cake?” she whispered. “You did?”
“I know what you’re thinking,” I answered. “It reminds you of the cake that Lorrimore’s man, Wing, makes.”
“Reminds!” she exclaimed. “There’s no reminding about it! Do you know what I think? That man Wing is aboard this yacht! He made that cake!”
CHAPTER XIX
BLACK MEMORIES
THERE WAS SO much of real importance, not only to us in our present situation, but to the trend of things in general, in Miss Raven’s confident suggestion that her words immediately plunged me into a thoughtful silence. Rising from my chair at the tea-table, I walked across to the landward side of the yawl, and stood there, reflecting. But it needed little reflection to convince me that what my fellow-prisoner had just suggested was well within the bounds of possibility. I recalled all that we knew of the recent movements of Dr. Lorrimore’s Chinese servant. Wing had gone to London, on the pretext of finding out something about that other problematical Chinese, Lo Chuh Fen. Since his departure, Lorrimore had had no tidings of him and his doings — in Lorrimore’s opinion, he might be still in London, or he might have gone to Liverpool, or to Cardiff, to any port where his fellow-countrymen are to be found in England. Now it was well within probabilities that Wing, being in Limehouse or Poplar, and in touch with Chinese sailor-men, should, with others, have taken service with Baxter and his accomplice, and, at that very moment there, in that sheltered cove on the Northumbrian coast, be within a few yards of Miss Raven and myself, separated from us by a certain amount of deck-planking and a few bulkheads. But why? If he was there, in that yawl, in what capacity — real capacity — was he there? Ostensibly, as cook, no doubt — but that, I felt sure, would be a mere blind. Put plainly, if he was there, what game was that bland, suave, obsequious, soft-tongued Chinaman playing? Was this his way of finding out what all of us wanted to know? If it came to it, if there was occasion — such occasion as I dared not contemplate — could Miss Raven and myself count on Wing as a friend, or should we find him an adherent of the strange and curious gang, which, if the truth was to be faced, literally held not only our liberty, but our lives at its disposal? For we were in a tight place — of that there was no doubt. Up to that moment I was not unfavourably impressed by Netherfield Baxter, and, whether against my better judgment or not, I was rather more than inclined to believe him innocent of actual share or complicity in the murders of Noah and Salter Quick. But I could see that he was a queer mortal; odd, even to eccentricity; vain, candid and frank because of his very vanity; given, I thought, to talking a good deal about himself and his doings; probably a megalomaniac. He might treat us well so long as things went well with him, but supposing any situation to arise in which our presence, nay, our very existence, became a danger to him and his plans — what then? He had a laughing lip and a twinkle of sardonic humour in his eye, but I fancied that the lip could settle into ruthless resolve if need be and the eye become more stony than would be pleasant. And — we were at his mercy; the mercy of a man whose accomplice might be of a worse kidney than himself, and whose satellites were yellow-skinned slant-eyed Easterns, pirates to a man, and willing enough to slit a throat at the faintest sign from a master.
As I stood there, leaning against the side, gloomily staring at the shore, which was so near, and yet so impossible of access, I reviewed a point which was of more importance to me than may be imagined — the point of our geographical situation. I have already said that the yawl lay at anchor in a sheltered cove. The position of that cove was peculiar. It was entered from seawards by an extremely narrow inlet, across the mouth of which stretched a bar — I could realize that much by watching the breakers rolling over it; it was plain to me, a landsman, that even a small vessel could only get in or out of the cove at high water. But once across the bar, and within the narrow entry, any vessel coming in from the open sea would find itself in a natural harbour of great advantages; the cove ran inland for a good mile and was quite another mile in width; its waters were deep, rising some fifteen to twenty feet over a clear, sandy bottom, and on all sides, right down to the bar at its entrance, it was sheltered by high cliffs, covered from the tops of their headlands to the thin, pebbly stretches of shore at their feet by thick wood, mostly oak and beech. That the cove was known to the folk of that neighbourhood it was impossible to doubt, but I felt sure that any strange craft passing along the sea in front would never suspect its existence, so carefully had Nature concealed the entrance on the landward side of the bar. And there were no signs within the cove itself that any of the shore folk ever used it. There was not a vestige of a human dwelling-place to be discovered anywhere along its thickly-wooded banks; no boat lay on its white beach; no fishing-net was stretched out there to dry in the sun and wind; the entire stretch was desolate. And I knew that an equal desolation lay all over the land immediately behind the cove and its sheltering woods. That was about the loneliest part of a lonely coast — by that time I had become well acquainted with it. For some miles, north and south of that exact spot, there were no coast villages — there was nothing, save an isolated farmstead, set in deep ravines at wide distances. The only link with busier things lay in the railway — that, as I also knew, lay about two or two-and-a-half miles inland; as far as I could recollect the map which lay in my pocket, but which I did not dare to pull out, there was a small wayside station on this line, immediately behind the woods through which Miss Raven and I had unthinkingly wandered to our fate; from it, doubtless, the Frenchman, Baxter’s accomplice, had taken train for Berwick, some twenty miles northward. Everything considered, Miss Raven and I were as securely trapped and as much at our captor’s mercy as if we had been immured in a twentieth-century Bastille.
