Chapter the Twelfth Penwarden Disappears
As Dick hoped, the scare given to the enemy by his prompt sally from the Towers proved effectual; no further attempt was made to interfere with the boat. Rumours of the contrivance for giving an alarm spread among the villagers, and Mr. Carlyon, without revealing his own misadventure, took care to explain to Petherick, sexton, beadle, and constable, that the intruders would have suffered material damage if they had had the courage to enter the shed. Petherick duly reported this, as the parson intended, adding on his own account that the young monkeys had invented an instrument of torture for all who dared to molest them. The parson’s housekeeper discussed with Petherick a strange stain upon her master’s stock, and Petherick himself, despatched one day to the Truro perruquier with a parcel carefully tied, was amazed when the tradesman, opening it in his presence, revealed a wig, not iron grey, but mottled blue in colour. These matters were a topic of conversation in Polkerran for many a day, and there were some who offered explanations, and some who shook their heads and looked profoundly wise, but discreetly held their tongues. The truth was never known outside the Towers, Dick threatening Sam with excommunication if he breathed a word of it.
One Wednesday, early in December, the boys set out a little before dawn to fish. The air was cold and misty; trickles of condensed moisture ran down their faces and necks, and little pools formed on the rims of their hats. The exercise of rowing warmed them, and the discomfort, always less to their seasoned skins than it would have been to a townsman and a landlubber, was forgotten altogether when the fish rose freely to their bait. They made a good catch after two hours’ work, and turned to row back in order to carry the fish home in time for early breakfast.
They had come nearly a mile from shore, and were pulling hard, the wind blowing off the land against them, when all at once, some distance astern, there loomed out of the mist a three-masted vessel of considerable size.
“Look, Sam,” said Dick, “isn’t that the same craft we saw following the smack that night?”
“’Tis so,” replied Sam; “the night Maister John come home-along. I said he landed from the smack, you mind; you said ’a didn’t; and I don’t care who the man is, but I know I be right.”
“Pull away, Sam. We don’t want to be seen. It may be the French privateer we’ve heard about, and we ought to tell Mr. Mildmay or Penwarden.”
“True, and there’s money if she’s catched. Would they gie us a bit o’t, think ’ee?”
“I daresay. There! She has vanished into the mist again. Do you know if the cutter is in the harbour, Sam?”
“She warn’t yesterday. Maister Mildmay is busy down coast. I’d liever old Joe got the money than he.”
They saw no more of the vessel, even from the top of the cliff. Mr. Trevanion was interested in their news, and agreed that it should certainly be imparted to Penwarden or Mr. Polwhele, Mr. Mildmay being absent.
Dick remembered that the old exciseman had probably been up all night. He sympathised with him in his arduous duty of watching all through the long hours of darkness, in fair or foul weather, frost or rain. At dawn of day Penwarden was accustomed to take a “watch below,” as he called it, until noon, priding himself on requiring no more than four or five hours’ sleep. At noon an old woman from the village came to get his dinner and tidy up, leaving when her work was done, his other meals being prepared by himself. Dick decided not to awaken Penwarden until he had had his sleep out, but to seek Mr. Polwhele, whose house stood on the cliff half-a-mile on the further side of the village. Dick went there by a roundabout way, to avoid meeting the fisher-people and their sour looks. The riding-officer was much surprised at the news he brought.
“’Tis a risky thing on the part of Delarousse, if ’tis indeed he,” said Mr. Polwhele; “and why he should come here I can’t tell, for Polkerran is not worth powder and shot.”
“Maybe to arrange for running a cargo,” said Dick.
“I don’t think that, for ’tis whispered that the folks here do not deal with him any longer. I can’t think ’tis he, but I will run up my signal to warn Mr. Mildmay, if he can see it through the mist. Thank ’ee for the news. Perhaps you will tell Penwarden, and ask him to keep an eye lifting.”
Dick promised to do so, and returned home.
Shortly before twelve, the time when Penwarden was usually moving about again, Dick walked up to the cottage to inform him of the strange vessel. He knocked at the door, but there was no answer. Thinking that the old man was lying later than usual after a tiring night’s duty, Dick felt loth to rouse him, and resolved to wait a while, walking up and down before the cottage, beating himself for warmth’s sake. Now and then he stopped to listen at the door, but there was no sound from within, nor indeed without, except the booming of the surf, the whistle of the wind impinging on the cliff edge, and the screams of gulls which had not yet flown inland to seek their winter sustenance in the neighbourhood of farms. The mist cleared off, and not a sign of the vessel was to be seen on the horizon.
“Old Gammer Oliver is late, too,” thought Dick. “Perhaps Joe told her not to come at her usual time.”
He took a book from his pocket, and read it, still walking up and down. But he soon tired of this; the hour for the midday meal at the Towers was drawing on; and he would have returned but for his promise to Mr. Polwhele.
“I ought to have hammered hard on the door at once,” he said to himself. “Tired as he must be, he would not mind being disturbed in this case.”
He shut up his book, slipped it into his pocket, and strode briskly towards the cottage, about thirty paces distant. No smoke was rising from the chimney; nothing was audible but the wind rustling the leaves of a laurel bush, and causing the bare tendrils of last year’s creeper to scratch against the wall. The sudden scream of a gull wheeling its flight above the roof made Dick start and look round uneasily. There was nothing living, on four feet or on two, in sight.
He came to the door, and, hesitating no longer, rapped smartly upon it. Neither voice nor movement answered him. Again he knocked, with greater energy, calling the old man by name. The perfect silence when his knuckles ceased their tattoo alarmed him. Joe always locked the door when he left the cottage by day, and locked and bolted it when he retired at night. Still, it was a natural act to turn the handle, and Dick, when he did so, almost laughed, for the door opened, revealing the dark little passage, on one side of which was the bedroom, on the other the kitchen and sitting-room in one. Of course, the old fellow had gone out.
But as Dick stood on the threshold and his eyes became accustomed to the dimness within, this comforting reflection gave way to surprise and apprehension. Half-way down the passage Penwarden’s hat lay on the floor. Near it was a bundle of bulrushes which he had brought back from a voyage in his sea-going days; it usually stood against the wall beneath a portrait of Rodney. Beyond, the glass of a case enclosing a stuffed John-Dory was broken to splinters, which glinted from the stone floor. The passage presented a strange contrast to its usual neat and tidy appearance.
“Joe!” Dick called.
His voice reverberated; there was no other sound. He entered the passage and opened the door of the kitchen. It was empty; nothing was in disorder; a kettle stood on the hob; on the table lay a mug, a knife, and a plate holding a few crumbs of bread, witnesses to the old man’s supper. Dick turned about, crossed the passage, and halted for a moment at the bedroom door, seized by the shaking thought that Joe had been taken ill in the night—was perhaps dead. He called, rapped, and, with quivering nerves, entered. The blind was down, so that he could scarcely see; but there was the bed, empty, the bedclothes disturbed. He pulled up the blind. The cold light of the winter sky flooded the room, and he saw things that filled him with alarm. A chair was overturned; fragments of a pipe and a tinder-box lay beside the bed; a thin hair rug was creased into the shape of billows; on one of the white deals was a dark red stain. The appearance of both room and passage pointed to a struggle. The stain was the fresh mark of blood.
What had become of the old man? Dick felt the answer to his unspoken question. Excisemen had many enemies; sometimes they lost their lives, not merely in open fight with the smugglers, but by insidious attack. Mr. Mildmay had told of ambushes, midnight assaults, torture, brutal murders. Such incidents were almost unknown in the west country; the fair fame of Cornishmen had not been sullied as that of the men of Kent and Sussex had been. But what more likely than that the bitter ill-feeling rife in the village, which had lately vented itself against the inmates of the Towers, should now have sought a new victim in Penwarden? If the smugglers were prepared to go such lengths against the Trevanions, towards whom their hereditary loyalty had for generations been akin to the Scottish clansman’s devotion to his chief, they would scarcely be disposed to spare a humble old seaman, to whom they attributed the heavy losses they had recently suffered.
These thoughts ran through Dick’s mind in a moment. That Penwarden had suffered violent handling he could not doubt. He must at once report the disappearance. He hurried from the room, closing the door, and in the passage met Gammer Oliver, as she was called, the old woman who came daily from the village.
“Oh, Maister Trevanion!” she exclaimed, “you did give me a turn.”
“Mr. Penwarden is not here; something has happened to him. You don’t know anything about him?”
“Do ’ee say it? Lawk-a-deary, and me so late and all! My darter was took bad this morning, or——”
“Do you know anything about him?” repeated Dick.
“Not a mossel, sir. I hain’t seed the gaffer since I gied un his dinner yesterday. Save us all! What a moil and muddle things be in!”
“Yes, I don’t know what has happened. Tidy up, and bring the door-key to the Towers. I am going now.”
He hastened home, and told the Squire what he had discovered, and what his suspicions were. Mr. Trevanion, often supine and sluggish in matters concerning himself, was energetic enough when he heard of wrong or injustice suffered by others.
“This is scandalous!” he exclaimed. “Do you go at once and find Mr. Polwhele, Dick. I will hurry to the parson. Stay, I’ll give Sam a note for Sir Bevil; we must raise a hue and cry after the old man. Where is Mildmay, I wonder?”
“Mr. Polwhele was going to signal to him, sir,” said Dick.
“That’s right. He must watch the coast. I’ve heard of the wretches shipping off to France preventive men who make themselves troublesome. ’Tis ten to one they will serve Penwarden so; that vessel you saw may have come for that purpose.”
Within a few minutes the three active members of the household had gone their several ways. Dick hastened for the second time to see the riding-officer. As he went he came to a resolution. The smugglers, it was clear, were determined on pursuing their policy of persecution. All who opposed them, or whom they supposed to be their opponents, would have to reckon with their remorseless animosity, which might express itself in open violence or deeds of stealth as necessity demanded. It was to be war, and, as events were shaping themselves, war between the village and the Towers. Well, the war should be fought out. The quarrel had been forced on the Trevanions; they had not willingly departed from their neutrality; but matters had now gone so far that to remain neutral was impossible, and Dick resolved to take once for all the side of the law. He anticipated some difficulty in bringing his father to adopt the same attitude; but at the present moment the Squire was so indignant with the smugglers that, even if he was not ready to throw himself into active opposition to them, he might not forbid Dick to do so. Feeling that at such a crisis all quiet work at his books was impossible, Dick determined to beg Mr. Carlyon to release him, and to devote himself heart and soul to the contest, whether of wits or weapons. The first object must be the rescue of Joe Penwarden.
Mr. Polwhele was still at home.
“This is a new thing, ’pon my life,” he said, when Dick had told him his tidings. “Till now the villains have been only on the defensive; to take the offensive means there’s a new spirit working in ’em. D’you think, now, that your father is right, and John Trevanion is the man behind?”
“I don’t want to say what I think, Mr. Polwhele,” replied Dick. “Whether he is or not, we must put a stop to it. I can’t do much, but what I can do I will.”
“I’m glad to hear it. The curious thing is that John Trevanion has but lately been here. One of the fishers had told him of the strange vessel, and he came for the same purpose as you, to ask me to signal to Mr. Mildmay. He said it was scandalous that the Frenchman should be allowed to cruise at large.”
“Do you think she came to ship Penwarden away, sir? That is my father’s idea.”
“’Tis a notion, now, but not likely, unless John Trevanion came here to throw me off the scent. You saw no small boat pulling to the ship, did you?”
“No, sir.”
“Then I think the Squire is wrong. Now, seemingly, Mr. Mildmay has not seen my signal, but he must be somewhere off the coast. As soon as ’tis dark I will show a light with my telescope lantern; that will fetch him; and if you are ready to join hands with us, I will bring him to the Towers and we’ll hold a council of war. Will the Squire agree to it?”
“I don’t know. I’ll ask him, and if you’ll meet me at six o’clock on the bridge yonder, I will tell you what he says.”
When the Squire returned from his visit to the Parsonage, Dick opened his mind to him. At first Mr. Trevanion shrank from definitely committing himself to the cause of the revenue officers, but when Dick pointed out that his position could scarcely be worse than it was, and that the Trevanion influence might still have some weight with the better-disposed among the village folk, he consented to the riding-officer’s proposal.
“The vicar is coming over this evening,” he said. “We shall at any rate have all the wisdom of the parish.”
At half-past six there met in the Squire’s room, Mr. Mildmay, the riding-officer, Mr. Carlyon, and Dick. They drew their chairs to the fire; the elder men lit their churchwarden pipes, and, with glasses of steaming toddy at their elbows, proceeded to discuss the situation.
“I have a note from Sir Bevil,” said the Squire. “He is sending to Truro for assistance. What shape that may take I don’t know.”
“The shape of a constable or two, probably,” said Mr. Polwhele, “and if they are no better than Petherick, they won’t help us much.”
“Petherick shall cry the village to-morrow,” said the Vicar. “Being a justice as well as parson, I have written out a proclamation, summoning all good and true men to give information that will lead to the discovery of Penwarden, dead or alive.”
“I don’t believe they’d murder him,” said Mr. Mildmay, “or they wouldn’t take the trouble to spirit him away. A crack on the head would be a much simpler matter.”
“What do you suppose is their object in kidnapping him?” asked the Vicar.
“Either to hold him while they run a specially valuable cargo, or to ship him to France and keep him permanently out of their way. A fool’s trick; for he’s bound to be replaced, though we’d find it hard to get a better man, old as he is.”
“And foolish in another way,” added the riding-officer. “They ought to know that a deed of that kind will only stir up the rest of us. I wouldn’t give much for their chances of running a cargo yet awhile.”
“Nor for shipping him,” said Mr. Mildmay. “I’ll swear they haven’t done it yet. My boats were up and down the coast all last night. One of them spied that rascally privateer putting in towards St. Cuby’s Cove in the mist this morning, but she sailed away, and though I gave chase, she got off. To-night we’ll have the boats patrolling for miles; I defy ’em to slip through us.”
“When did they seize him, d’you suppose?” asked the Squire.
“In the early morning, I think, Father,” said Dick, “before it was light. The blood stain was quite fresh. They must have hidden him somewhere; they wouldn’t carry him away in the daylight, in case some one saw them.”
“That wouldn’t trouble them, bless you,” said Mr. Mildmay. “All Polkerran and most of the folk around are hand-in-glove with them. They could count on the silence of everybody but a few ranters and psalm-singers, who would either be abed and asleep, or going about their business.”
“I don’t agree with you, Mildmay,” said the Squire. “They would have to pass this house on the way to the village, and they know very well that Dick and young Sam are early birds; they wouldn’t risk meeting them. No; ’twas done in the dark, depend on it.”
“That might be if they took him to the village, but we don’t know that,” retorted Mr. Mildmay. “No doubt there are any number of underground cellars and secret passages in the village: ’twas in some such place that fellow Delarousse was hidden while the dragoons were searching the inn, you may be sure. But those are not the only possible hiding-places. What with nooks, caves, and adits in the abandoned mines, we might search for a month of Sundays and not find the poor fellow.”
“But they won’t hold him long, surely,” said Dick. “What a trouble it would be to guard him and feed him!”
“True; they would expect to be able to ship him soon. If they are planning a run, and find we’re too watchful for them, I’ll be bound they’ll let him loose before long, and we’ll find him one fine morning back again.”
“Dick speaks of guarding and feeding,” said Mr. Carlyon. “May not that give us a clue? It seems probable, as Mr. Mildmay suggests, that he is not in the village. If he is elsewhere, somebody must leave the village to carry food to him, and a vigilant watch would detect the fellow.”
“Bless my life, parson,” said Mr. Polwhele, “you don’t know these rascals. They’re as wary as otters and as slippery as eels. I’ll warrant they’d slip us in broad daylight, and as to the darkness of night, why, a regiment of soldiers wouldn’t be large enough to net ’em.”
“Well, to be practical,” said the Squire. “You, Vicar, as a justice, can give Mr. Polwhele a warrant of search. You may unearth him in the village, and I should begin with the inn; Doubledick’s name suits him. With the coast closely watched by Mr. Mildmay’s men, the kidnappers cannot ship him. Sir Bevil will raise the hue and cry in the neighbourhood inland, and ’tis such a serious matter that I doubt whether any of the yeomen would connive at it. The name of habeas corpus would scare them out of their wits. I’m inclined to think with Mr. Mildmay that the rascals will let him loose in a day or two when they see what a stir they have made; but of course we must not rely on that, but do our best to ferret him out.”
“Very well summed up, Squire,” said the Vicar. “We cannot do more to-night; and, as ’tis not late, perhaps you and these gentlemen would favour me with a rubber. Polwhele trumped my trick last time,” he added, under his breath.
“With all my heart,” cried the Squire. “Dick, bring the cards, and ask Reuben to fry some pilchards. All work and no play, Mr. Mildmay, you know——”
The gentlemen were nothing loth to spend an hour or two in this way. They had supper at eight; the officers then left to attend to their nocturnal duties; and as Mr. Carlyon remained to play piquet with the Squire, Dick went to bed early, resolving to take some independent steps in the morning.