Chapter the Thirteenth Cross-Currents
Polkerran next day was the stage upon which a series of dramatic incidents were enacted, pure comedy to the spectators, but with a possible tragedy behind the scenes.
At an early hour a mob of boys and girls, with a sprinkling of aged folk verging on second childhood, followed at the heels of Petherick, the constable, as he shambled through the streets, stopping at the corners to ring his bell, shout “Oyez! Oyez!” and mumble the formal words of Mr. Carlyon’s proclamation. He pretended to read them from the sheet of double foolscap that he held at arm’s length before him, but being perfectly illiterate, he in reality recited them by heart, the Vicar having devoted two solid hours since dawn in drumming them into the man’s head. His duty thus religiously performed, Petherick repaired to the tap-room of the Five Pilchards, where he discoursed for a time on habeas corpus, felo de se, and other magical prescriptions, relieving his dryness so frequently with rum-hot that he was at length overcome with emotion, and mingled his liquor with his tears.
Two hours later, Sir Bevil Portharvan rode down with Mr. John Trevanion, a brother magistrate, and a sheriff’s officer from Truro, intending to harangue the populace and impress them with the majesty and terror of the law. But finding that no audience gathered about him except the young and old children aforesaid, a few pallid indoor workmen, and a number of women accompanied by squalling infants in arms—the able-bodied men being, curiously enough, otherwise engaged—he abandoned that part of the programme, and contented himself with solemnly superintending the affixing to the inn-door of a bill, headed with the royal arms, which he had ordered overnight to be printed in Truro.
At noon came Mr. Mildmay, Mr. Polwhele, a posse of excisemen, and a soldier on furlough, who, with the authority of a warrant signed by the Vicar, proceeded to make a thorough search of the houses, beginning with the inn itself. They descended to the cellars, ascended to the lofts; rummaged in clothes presses; turned down beds; rapped at walls for hollow sounds indicating secret passages or receptacles; peeped into horse-troughs, cow-byres, and pigsties; poked in coppers and washtubs; in short, worked themselves into a fine perspiring heat and the village folk into an itching frenzy by the conscientious thoroughness of their inquisition. Some of the men who had been undiscoverable by Sir Bevil were now energetically employed, in advance of the search party, in removing bales, kegs, packets, and canisters, so that when Mr. Mildmay appeared at one end of a street, these interesting objects were collected at the other; and when this end in turn was visited, the barefooted carriers of the articles in question slipped back and replaced them in their former hiding-places.
While Mr. Mildmay and his assistants, after three hours’ unremitting toil, stood mopping their brows and venting their honest opinion of the Polkerran folk, John Trevanion rode down the hill. He reined up when he reached the group, and greeted the discomfited representatives of the law.
“How d’ye do, gentlemen?” he cried. “Have you had any success?”
“Confusion seize ’em, Mr. Trevanion!” replied the lieutenant. “We’ve not seen a sign of the old man, nor discovered a single cask or bundle of contraband. You’d think ’twas the most innocent, duty-paying village in the three kingdoms.”
“That’s most unfortunate. As to the contraband—well, you know, we all like to get our goods as cheap as we may, I don’t disguise it; but old Penwarden is another story. Have you no notion where he is?”
“No more than you, Mr. Trevanion,” said the riding-officer, throwing a keen glance on the horseman.
“Then you must be blank indeed,” said Trevanion with an easy laugh. “’Tis my belief there’s a great deal too much fuss made about old Joe’s disappearance. Surely nobody in Polkerran would wish to injure so ancient an institution. ’Tis a prank, depend upon it, and when the prankers have achieved their object—you and I can guess what that is—they’ll let him loose as sound as a bell.”
Trevanion’s debonair frankness disarmed Mr. Mildmay, to whom he was a comparative stranger. It seemed ridiculous that the Squire should harbour such unworthy suspicions of his cousin.
“By the way,” continued Trevanion, “I am glad I met you. I am having a few friends in on Saturday night—a bit of a randy; that’s our name for it here—and I shall be delighted if you will join us. I haven’t seen so much of you as I should like; this mine I’m starting has kept me busy.”
“I’m much obliged to you,” said Mr. Mildmay, “but I fear——”
“Oh, I know what you would say. But your cutter can spare you for an hour or two. Not for the world would I hinder your duties; to catch that villain Delarousse in particular would be worth a good deal to you; but ’tis dark early; the hour fixed is six; and I won’t say a word if you must leave us before we are ripe.”
“Well, I will come. Thank you.”
“And you too, Mr. Polwhele? The service of your country can spare you for a little while?”
“To be sure. I’ll come too, Mr. Trevanion; ’twill be like old times, indeed.”
The riding-officer’s assent was much more hearty than Mr. Mildmay’s, which was perhaps a little surprising in view of the suspicions he had confessed to on the previous day in speaking to Dick.
“That’s right,” said Trevanion. “I shall be glad to welcome you. The hour is six—did I name it? I hope Penwarden will be found by that time; you’ll feel easier, I dare say. Good-bye, then.”
When he had ridden away, Mr. Mildmay dismissed the underlings and went off to have a meal with the riding-officer.
“That fellow’s too free-and-easy to be the villain the Squire thinks him,” said Mr. Mildmay, as they walked southward out of the village.
Mr. Polwhele smiled.
“I’m beginning to think he’s the cleverest free-trader the duchy ever bred,” he remarked.
“My dear fellow!” expostulated the lieutenant.
“I had my suspicions; this invitation has convinced me,” replied Mr. Polwhele. “Bless my life, to think you are so simple, Mildmay! Don’t you see the game? They’ve put Penwarden out of the way. What does that mean? A big run, as sure as I’m alive. But we two are obstacles; they blink at kidnapping us, but they do better. They invite us to a randy, and while we are making merry they slip inshore, run their cargo, liberate Penwarden, and laugh at us for a pair of jackasses.”
“That’s nonsense, Polwhele. The cutter will be out, though I’m not on it. Besides, didn’t he say we can leave when we like?”
“Yes, with the belief that when he has us there, warmth, good liquor, and pleasant company will prove more attractive than hunting rascals in the cold.”
“Why did you accept, then?”
“First, to look after you, Mildmay. Second, to keep my eyes open. Third, to make Trevanion think I don’t suspect him, so that the smugglers may go forward with their plans. He is playing a deep game, I’m sure of it.”
“That’s detestably unjust, Polwhele,” said Mr. Mildmay, with some heat. “Give a dog a bad name, and——I tell you what. We will both leave at nine; not a minute later. That’s several hours before any run took place that ever I heard of. Nine it shall be, and call me jackass if the shore’s not as quiet all night as the churchyard.”
Meanwhile, what had Dick been doing?
At the hour when Mr. Carlyon was driving the terms of his proclamation into Petherick’s reluctant skull, Dick rose from bed, and taking the key of Penwarden’s cottage, brought to the Towers by Gammer Oliver, went up the cliff to make a more thorough examination of the premises than he had made on the previous day. He wished that he had thought of doing so before, for there had not only been rain in the night which would help to obliterate any traces that the kidnappers might have left on the ground, but the neighbourhood had been visited by inquisitive boys, dairymaids, farm-hands, and idle folk from the village, who tramped round the cottage, gazed at the door, and peered in at the windows, leaving innumerable footprints on the soil.
Dick was puzzled to think how Joe’s captors had obtained entrance to the cottage. It was not by the front door, unless Penwarden had carelessly left it open; its timbers were sound and the lock unbroken; not by the chimney, which was too narrow to admit anything larger than a pigeon. They might have gone through the garden and forced the back door; though they would surely have tried to effect an entrance quietly, while the old man lay asleep.
Arriving at the cottage, Dick unlocked the door, entered, and went through the passage to the back door, which opened on a tiny garden. The lock had not been tampered with. Penwarden was very proud of his garden, devoting many hours a day in the summer, when his duties were light, to the cultivation of peonies, fuchsias, nasturtiums, and other flowering plants, together with onions, artichokes, and vegetable marrows. The flowers were on one side of a narrow path, the vegetables on the other. There was a small gate in the rear fence. At this time of year the ground was bare, Penwarden finding nothing to do but a little rake and spade work.
A glance at the path apprised Dick that the captive had been carried out this way. The pebbles were disturbed; parts of the boxwood borders were trampled down, and over the edge there were prints of heavy boots on the brown earth. Dick examined the kitchen window. The explanation was at once clear to him. There were deep scratches on the sill and the woodwork; the conclusion was irresistible; the kidnappers had climbed into the kitchen and gained the bedroom before Penwarden was aware of their presence. That they had carried their victim out by the back door seemed to show that at any rate they had taken him inland, and not down to the shore. How the front door came to be unlocked was a puzzling circumstance, since they had clearly neither entered nor come out that way.
Dick went again to the back, and sought to trace the footsteps beyond the gate; but the grass there was so beaten down by the rain and the feet of the curious idlers, that the most careful investigation must prove fruitless. He returned into the cottage, to make a thorough search of the bedroom. Gammer Oliver had made the bed, straightened the rug, set the chair on its legs, and washed over the stained plank. It seemed probable that his instruction to her to tidy up had robbed him of any chance of making a discovery. But Dick resolved not to err again through over-haste, and, the small window admitting little light, he found a candle, lit it, and began to prowl methodically round the room. For some time his search met with no reward, but all at once, catching a glint of light reflected from some object on the floor in the angle between a grandfather’s clock and the fireplace, he stooped, and picked up a large steel button, to which hung by the broken threads a torn scrap of blue cloth.
Dick felt a thrill of excitement. Penwarden had not been carried away unresisting. He knew that already by the signs of struggle formerly observed. The severed button was an additional proof. No doubt it had been wrenched off in the fight—from whose coat? Not from Joe’s; his buttons were the regulation brass buttons of the Government service. Many of the fishers had steel buttons on their winter coats, and one button was like another. But it occurred to Dick that the particular garment which had lost this button might not yet have been repaired, and he wondered whether the Vicar’s search-warrant would justify Mr. Mildmay in demanding that all the blue coats in the village should be spread out on the beach for examination. The absurdity of the idea struck him at once. Of course the very garment that was wanted would not appear. But he thought of a better way—one that would arouse no suspicion, though it might prove impossible of execution. He would go down into the village and scrutinise the clothes of all the men he met. The owner of the lost button was probably one of the most active of the smugglers, and not an indoor man, so that there was some chance of meeting him in the street, on the beach, or on the jetty.
He set off at once. On the way he met Sir Bevil and other horsemen riding from the Dower House, where John Trevanion had entertained them after the futile ceremony in the village. The fishers, who were not to be seen when Sir Bevil was burning to address them, now stood smoking at the corners, in front of the inn, on the jetty, and elsewhere. They appeared to be very much amused. Some of them scowled at Dick as he passed; others laughed and spat; one asked him with an oath what he was staring at. Dick was seldom in the village now, and the hostility of the folk’s attitude might have made his heart sore had he not been hardened to it.
He walked along as unconcernedly as he could, standing for a few moments to watch some fishers mending nets on the beach, and lingering until their movements brought the front of their coats into view. Some coats were brown, some blue; some had steel buttons, others bone. Not one was lacking. Presently he came to the jetty, where Isaac Tonkin, sitting on an upturned tub, was superintending some repairs to the seine-net in his lugger. He wore a blue coat, but his arms were folded, one hand holding his pipe to his mouth. He threw one glance at Dick, but made no movement, and thenceforth ignored him.
Dick strolled up and down. Excitement utterly possessed him; to his fancy Tonkin was deliberately concealing two out of his four buttons. The two visible were of steel. What could he do to make the man unclasp? But it was not necessary to practise any wile. The simplest causes effected what he desired.
“Feyther,” called Jake Tonkin from the lugger, “fling us a quid o’ yer bacca.”
“’Tis bad for young stummicks,” said the father. “Howsomever, here ’ee be.”
His right arm fell as he sought his pocket: the front of his coat was revealed; one button was missing.
It is probable that Dick, but for his long waiting and his excitement, would not have yielded to impulse. But as Tonkin threw the tobacco into the lugger, Dick stepped up to him, and, holding out the incriminating button, said:
“This is yours, I believe.”
Tonkin stared at him for an instant, blew a cloud from his lips, and held out his hand for the button as if to examine it. In anticipatory triumph Dick handed it to him.
“Did I hear ’ee say as this button do belong to me?” asked the man in a curiously quiet voice.
“Yes, I did say so.”
“Well, drown me if I want it,” and with a flick between his forefinger and thumb he sent it skimming through the air. It fell into the sea a dozen yards away.
Dick’s cheeks flamed with rage at his stupidity in allowing himself to be outwitted. He had had in his possession the sole piece of evidence against the kidnappers, and now it was lost on the sandy bottom of the harbour. Shaken out of his self-control, he said hotly:
“’Twas you that kidnapped Penwarden. Don’t think you will escape. There’ll be an end to this villainy.”
“Go and inform, then, you cussed young slip of a rotted old tree. ’Tis not the first time, neither, you dirty young whelp.”
A burst of laughter from the lugger brought Dick to his sober senses. Disdaining to contradict the aspersion, he turned abruptly on his heel, tingling with fury at his own indiscretion. Jibes and jeers pursued him as he walked towards the homeward road; these stung him less than the knowledge that by his own folly he had thrown away a chance of helping Penwarden.
Gloomy thoughts kept him company as he toiled up the hill. Nor was he cheered by the air of malignant triumph manifest on Doubledick’s fat face, when, half-way up the hill, he met the inn-keeper waddling down. In imagination he heard the gleeful chuckles with which Doubledick would learn of his discomfiture. After the heroic resolution he had lately come to, it was a sorry thing to have been worsted in the first encounter.
Walking more rapidly on the level road past the Dower House, at a cursory glance to the left he saw a short, thickset form scramble over the fence that bounded the premises, and hasten furtively in the direction of the Towers. The sight struck him with surprise and wrath at once, for the slinking figure was undoubtedly that of Sam Pollex. Being himself partially concealed by the hedge, he thought it probable that Sam had not seen him, so, hurrying along, he turned as soon as possible into the grounds of the Towers, and came face to face with Sam as the boy arrived at a little wicket-gate.
“What do you mean by it?” he demanded angrily, holding the gate so that Sam could not pass through.
Sam blushed and dropped his eyes, looking flustered and perturbed.
“Were you not bidden never to go there again?” Dick continued. “Didn’t I say I’d break your head for you if you disobeyed?”
“Iss, you did so,” said Sam ruefully. “Ah, well, you’m better do it and get it over.”
“What were you doing there?” said Dick, still holding the gate.
Sam looked sidelong, shuffled his feet, then, as with a great effort, replied:
“I didn’ go to sell eggs, nor nawthin’ o’ that sort. If you must haul it out of a poor feller, I rambled there to——”
“Well?”
“To see maidy Susan; now I’ve said it.”
“Then you’re a silly ass. She’s years older than you. What does a maid of twenty want with a boy of sixteen?”
“Twenty she is, and sixteen be I, but I’ve a deal more wisdom in my noddle than she, arter all. She’s a simple soul about pilchurs, and night-lines, and buildin’ boats, and all sorts o’ famous things I’ve knowed since I wer table-high, and she do have a tarrible thirst for high knowledge. She’ve a clever little head-piece, too, for when I wer tellin’ to she how pretty ’tis to see a otter divin’ for fish, who should come up-along but Doubledick——”
“Did he see you?” interrupted Dick.
“I wer just agoin’ to tell ’ee. No, ‘a didn’t see me, ’cos I slipped behind Maidy, she being well growed, and says I, ‘That feller is my ’nation enemy,’ says I, and afore I knowed wheer I wer, she whisked me into a little small cupboard place wi’ coats and boots hangin’ on the wall, and commanded me, in a feelin’ whisper, to bide theer till she toled me out. Drown me if I didn’ hear Doubledick go shailin’ past wi’ Maister John, and then there comed a rumblin’ through the wall, and I knowed they two was a-talkin’.”
“Did you hear what they said?” asked Dick eagerly.
“Iss, I did. I hadn’ nawthin’ better to do, so I put my ear to the wall. Iss, I heerd a thing or two.”
“Well, what did you hear? Anything about Penwarden?”
Sam had gradually pushed open the gate, and was now walking beside Dick.
“Not a word. I wer so flambustered in bein’ poked in that hencoop of a place, and thinkin’ what they’d do to me if so be they catched me, that ’twas all mixed up, and I couldn’ tell A from B.”
“But think: you must have heard something clearly. You didn’t lose all your wits, did you?”
“Well, I did hear Maister John say wind was steady, and ’a hoped ’t ’ud hold fair for business.”
“Yes: what then?”
“Don’t ’ee bustle me; then maybe I’ll mind o’ more. Iss, I mind Doubledick said, ‘Hee! hee!’ says he; ‘if it do hold for another forty-eight hours,’ says he;—and be-jowned if I could hear any more o’ that piece of reckonin’, my poor heart was a-strummin’ so.”
“Confound your poor heart!” cried Dick. “Do pull yourself together. It may mean salvation to Joe.”
Sam scratched his head.
“If you’d only been theer instead o’ me!” he muttered. “Ah! ’Twas carriers. Iss: Maister John axed if ’twas settled about carriers. ‘A round score,’ says Doubledick, if ’t wasn’t two; ‘good fellers all; no wamblin’, slack-twisted cripple-toes for this job,’ says he.”
“What job?”
“That I can’t say. But Zacky Tonkin was in it; iss; gie me a minute for rec’lection; iss. Doubledick says, ‘Zacky be sour as a green apple.’ ‘Ha! ha!’ laughs Maister John, ‘’a don’t like playin’ second fiddle,’ says he, which is a passel o’ nonsense, ’cos Zacky never played on fiddle, fust, second, nor last either, all his born days, that I do know. ‘’Tis for ’ee to keep un quiet!’ says Maister John. ‘He hev his uses, but hain’t got a mossel of brains. You’ve got enough for two, Doubledick,’ says he.”
Dick was becoming impatient. The conversation as reported was not very enlightening, and surely Doubledick had not visited the Dower House to discuss such trivialities. But Dick had learnt his lesson; he would not err again by being over-hasty; so he schooled himself to endure the slow trickle of information as it oozed from Sam’s reluctant memory.
“Didn’t they name Penwarden at all?” he asked.
“Never heerd un. The only other names I heerd wer Tom Pennycomequick and Jimmy Nancarrow.”
“Ah! what about them?”
Sam reflected.
“Tom Pennycomequick and Jimmy Nancarrow,” he repeated, as if the repetition would recall the connection. “Iss; I mind o’t. Says Maister John, ‘Who be on guard to-day?’”
“‘On guard!’ Not ‘on the watch’?”
“That’s what ‘a meant, seemingly, but ’a said ’on guard.’ ‘Tom Pennycomequick and Jimmy Nancarrow,’ says Doubledick. There was summat about ’bogeys,’ if I could only mind. Iss, fay; I’ve got un. ‘Two,’ says Maister John, ’what for?’ ‘Hee! hee!’ goes Doubledick; ‘’cos they was afeard to go alone,’ says he. ‘Afeard o’ their own bogeys,’ says Maister John, and then they both laughed so hearty that daze me if I didn’t bust out too, and had to clap the tail of a coat in my jaws so they shouldn’ hear. ‘T’ud ha’ been gashly if they found me, and drawed out o’ me how maidy Susan had put me theer, and—well, you bean’t a-hearkenin’, so I’ll say no more.”
In truth, Dick’s ears were closed; his mind was rapidly piecing together the fragmentary items of information Sam had given him. They had now reached the Towers; Dick went straight to his bedroom, and sat with his elbow on the window-sill, looking out over the grey sullen sea, and striving to bind together these separate strands. The outcome of his meditation was as follows:
Something important was to happen within forty-eight hours, and it depended on the weather. It was now midday on Friday; what was to be done would be done before midday on Sunday. There had been mention of carriers—that implied a smuggling run. Penwarden’s name had not been mentioned, but two men had been said to be on guard. Over whom or what? Not over smuggled goods, for the run had not yet taken place. Not over the revenue officers, for the phrase would then have been “on the watch” or something similar. The word “guard” would naturally be used in connection with a prisoner; that prisoner must be Penwarden: where was he? The men on guard were afraid; no doubt the place chosen for his imprisonment was a lonely spot, not in the village, but somewhere remote from the scene of the impending operations, unless, indeed, it was intended to ship him to France in the lugger that brought the cargo. In that case he would probably be in some secure nook near the shore.
Perplexed, Dick wondered whether he had at last discovered a clue. It was at least worth while to follow it up. The men whose names had been mentioned were well known to him. Pennycomequick was a cobbler, Nancarrow a farmer, whose holding was situated about three miles away on the moor. To make direct inquiries might awaken suspicion: how could he discover where they were? An idea struck him. No doubt their guard would be relieved. Trevanion had been surprised to learn that two were on duty; the task, then, was usually undertaken by one. Was it possible to find out if any one left the village secretly during the day?
Suddenly a simple stratagem occurred to him. He took up an old, worn pair of boots, ran downstairs, and called Sam.
“Take these down to Pennycomequick’s, and tell him to sole them, and to put a good iron tip on the heels. If he is not there, ask when he will be back. Be sure not to forget that, and be as quick as you can.”
“Iss, I woll,” said Sam, “for I do have a hankerin’ arter dinner.”
He hurried away, and returned when Dick was half through his midday meal. Dick heard the boy clumping into the house, but did not go to him at once, being disinclined to enter into explanations with his parents at this stage. He left the table as soon as he could, and found Sam busy with dumpling and gravy in the kitchen.
“Well, Sam?” he said.
“Mistress commands me not to speak wi’ my mouth full,” mumbled the boy. “Now I can tell ’ee,” he went on after a few moments. “Pennycomequick bean’t to home. He be gone to Trura to buy leather.”
“When will he be back?”
“‘Them above alone knows,’ says the woman when I axed her. ‘He said four, but what Pennycomequick says, and what he do, be as far apart as from here to nowhere.’ If that be all you want to know, Maister Dick, I’ll continny work on this noble pudden.”
Dick was satisfied. He returned to his room, and, about three o’clock, mounted to the roof of one of the towers from which the house took its name. With him he carried an excellent spy-glass which remained to the Squire from his seafaring days. From this lofty eyrie a view could be obtained for miles around. If the cobbler and the farmer were on guard together, it was likely that they would be relieved together, and they could hardly return, the one to the village, the other to his farm on the moor, without coming at some part of their journey within range of vision. Dick felt a momentary damping of the spirits when it occurred to him that Penwarden’s place of concealment might be some nook below the cliffs. In that case the sentries would be changed by boat from the harbour, and he would see nothing of them. But even in that case the farmer must ascend the hill and cross the moor, and though he might be concealed at some portions of his road by trees and bushes, he must at length cross open country. Behind the parapet Dick could watch unseen, and he settled himself to wait in patience.