# The Mystery of Ravensdene Court/Part 3

from Everybody's Magazine, 1922 March, pp. 147–170.
The Captives Find That They Are in the Hands of Precious Rascals, and All Manner of Strange Things Happen to Them
MY connection with the strange double-murder mystery that excited all England early in the year 1912 came about through a visit to Ravensdene Court, near Alnwick, a remote village on the Northumbrian coast, whither I had gone as an ex pert to catalogue and appraise the library which Mr. Francis Raven had recently inherited from an uncle. The morning after my arrival, the body of a man, identified as Salter Quick, a seafarer of Devonport, was found on the beach near the house. He had been stabbed to death. Quick had come north on a search for graveyards containing tombstones bearing the name Netherfield.
There was nothing found on the body except a metal tobacco-box, on the inside of whose lid were scratched some lines and a deeply incised cross-mark. These proved of great interest to Septimus Cazalette, an aged and eccentric authority on numismatics. who was at Ravensdene Court examining a collection of coins and medals the house contained. He photographed the lid and announced his belief that the markings were the plan of some locality—the cross indicating a spot of particular importance. The box itself, I may add, strangely disappeared from the custody of the police at the inquest.
Salter's end was precisely similar to the one which, at the same moment, overtook his brother Noah near Devonport, where he kept an inn. It looked as if the two were in possession of some secret and had been done away with by men who were anxious to obtain it for themselves.
In a few days there arrived a detective named Scarterfield, who had been assigned to the case of Noah Quick, but as this was undoubtedly connected with Salter's murder, he had come north to continue his work. As a result of the investigation he had so far made, he was able to lay before us the following:
In October, 1907, a tramp steamer, the Elizabeth Robinson, sailed from Hongkong for Chemulpo, Korea, but never reached her destination and was never heard of. The list of names of those aboard included Noah and Salter Quick, set down as passengers; William Netherfield, of Blyth, a seaman, and Chuh Fen, a Chinese cook. Yet nearly five years later the Quicks were here in England, and a Chinaman calling himself Chuh Fen had. three years since, visited Lloyds to inquire if the Eliza beth Robinson had ever arrived at Chemulpo. The dectective was anxious to learn something about this Netherfield and to find Chuh Fen. Now, it so happened that a physician in Alnwick by the name of Lorrimore had a very shrewd and able Chinese servant named Wing, who, being consulted, announced his belief he could locate Chuh Fen if he were in England; so Wing was dispatched on this errand.
I offered my services to Scarterfield, and he went to Blyth, whither he presently summoned me. Nothing was known there of William Netherfield, but we got on the track of one Netherfield Baxter, a young man of Blyth, who, after dissipating an inheritance, disappeared in the year 1904, just after a bank-manager named Lester was killed in a bicycle accident. Then it had come out that Lester was a defaulter, and that two chests of plate, some of it jeweled, the property of the late Lord Forestburne, had disappeared from the strong room of the bank. Inventories showed that this treasure originally came from two religious houses in the neighbor hood that had been suppressed in the reign of Henry the Eighth, and which, instead of being turned into the king's treasury, had been sequestrated by the then Lord of Forestburne. Now, was this Baxter the accomplice of Lester in the raid on the bank's strong room? Was he also the “William Netherfield” of the Elizabeth Robinson; did he thereon meet the Quicks and confide to them his secret? Were these markings on the tobacco-box a guide to the place where the plate had been buried?
While struggling with these questions we heard that Baxter had recently been seen in Hull, and thither we went post-haste. There we learned that three weeks before, Baxter, calling himself Norman Belford, had come to the town in company with a Frenchman, whom he addressed as “Vicomte,” and a Chinaman, evidently of high rank. He purchased a yawl and sailed off with his companions, with Norway as their announced destination. Scarterfield was sure, however, that they had gone after the plate, which he believed to be hidden near Blyth, so he went back there while I returned to Ravensdene Court, where Mr. Cazalette, searching through local histories in the library, found a reference to the appropriation of the altar-vessels and so forth belonging to Forestburne Abbey by high-placed persons in the neighborhood.
Mr. Raven lived alone with his nineteen-year-old niece, Marcia, and she and I often took long walks. One day we came upon a clearing in a wood and surprised two men digging there. Presently we found ourselves their captives. I knew at once, from descriptions, that one of the men was Netherfield Baxter. I taxed him with this. He admitted it, and then told us he would have to detain us on board his yacht, anchored near by, for a short time. Thither we proceeded, our captors carrying two large chests, which I did not doubt were those missing from the bank at Blyth. I spoke of the murders of the Quicks, but Baxter vigorously denied any connection with them. He allowed us to send word to Mr. Raven merely that we would not be home that night. On the boat, tea, with plum cake, was served by a Chinaman. Sometime before, Miss Raven and I had had some very delicious plum cake at Lorrimore's, made by Wing, and no sooner had she taken a bite of that which was now offered than she whispered to me:
“Mr. Middlebrook, that man Wing is aboard this yacht. He made that cake!”
IT NEEDED little reflection to convince me that what my fellow prisoner had just suggested was well within the bounds of possibility. It was well within probabilities that Wing, being in Limehouse or Poplar, and in touch with Chinese sailormen, 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, on 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?
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 plain to me, a landsman, that even a small vessel could get in or out of the cove only 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 harbor of great advantages. That the cove was known to the folk of that neighborhood 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. 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.
I went back presently to the tea-table and dropped into my deck-chair again. Baxter was still away from us; as far as I could see, there was no one about.
“What do you suppose is going to happen to us?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at the open door of the galley into which Baxter had vanished.
“I think they'll detain us until they're ready to depart, and then they'll release us,” I answered. “Under other conditions, I shouldn't have objected to meeting him. He's a character.”
“Interesting, certainly,” she agreed. “Do you think he really is a pirate?”
“I don't think he'll have any objection to making that quite clear to us if he is,” I replied cynically. “I should say he'd be rather proud of it. But I think we shall hear a good deal of him before we get our freedom.”
I WAS right there. Baxter seemed almost wistfully anxious to talk with us. A little later he said:
“You think me a strange fellow. Don't deny it. I am, and I don't mind who thinks it. Or—who knows it.”
I made no reply beyond an acquiescent nod, but Miss Raven—who, all through this adventure, showed a coolness and resourcefulness which I can never sufficiently praise—looked steadily at him.
“I think you must have seen and known some strange things,” she said quietly.
“What's really puzzling you at this time,” he said, “is that Quick affair. I know, because I've not only read the newspapers but I've picked up a good deal of local gossip—never mind how. I've heard a lot of the goings-on at Ravensdene Court and the suspicions and so on. And I knew the Quicks—no man better at one time, and I'll tell you what I know. Not a nice story from any moral point of view; but though it's a story of rough men, there's nothing in it at all that need offend your ears. Miss Raven—nothing. It's just a story—an instance—of some of the things that happen to Ishmaels, outcasts, like me.”
We made no answer, and he went on.
“You're both aware of my youthful career at Blyth,” he said. “You, Middle-brook, are, anyway, from what you told me this afternoon, and I gather that you put Miss Raven in possession of the facts. Well, I'll start out from there—when I made the acquaintance of that temporary bank-manager chap. Mind you, I'd about come to the end of my tether at that time as regards money—I'd been pretty well fleeced by one or another, largely through carelessness, largely through sheer ignorance. I was robbed by more than one worthy man of my native town—legally, of course, bless 'em! And it was that, I think, turned me into the Ishmael I've been ever since. As men had robbed me, I thought it a fair thing to get a bit of my own back. Now, that bank-manager chap was one of those fellows who are born with predatory instincts—my impression of him, from what I recollect, is that he was a born thief. Anyway, he and I, getting pretty thick with each other, found out that we were just then actuated by similar ambitions—I from sheer necessity, he, as I tell you, from temperament. And to cut matters short, we determined to help ourselves out of certain things of value stored in that bank and to clear out to far-off regions with what we got. We discovered that two chests deposited in the bank's vaults by old Lord Forestburne contained a quantity of simply invaluable monastic spoil, stolen by the good man's ancestors four centuries before; we determined to have that and to take it over to the United States, where we knew we could realize immense sums on it from collectors, with no questions asked. We carefully removed the lot, brought them along the coast to this very cove, and interred them in those ruins where we three foregathered this afternoon.”
“And whence, I take it, you have just removed them to the deck above our heads,” I suggested.
Into two of the glasses the Chinaman dropped something small and white that sank and dissolved as rapidly as it was put in. It was all over within the fraction of a minute
“Right, Middlebrook; quite right—there they are!” he admitted with a laugh. “A grand collection, too—chalices, patens, reliquaries, all manner of splendid medieval craftsmanship—and certain other more modern things with them—all destined for the other side of the Atlantic, where the market's sure and safe and ready——”
“You think you'll get them there?” I asked.
“I shall be more surprised than I ever was in my life if I don't,” he answered readily. “They'd have been there long since if it hadn't been for an accident which I couldn't foresee—that bank-manager chap had the ill luck to break his neck. Now, that put me in a fix. I knew that the abstraction of these things would soon be discovered, and though I'd exercised great care in covering up all trace of my own share in the affair, there was always a bare possibility of something coming out. So, knowing the stuff was safely planted and very unlikely to be disturbed, I cleared out and determined to wait a fitting opportunity of regaining possession of it. Inquiries, of course, were set afoot about the missing property, but fortunately I was not suspected. And if I had been, I shouldn't have been found, for I know how to disappear as cleverly as any man who ever found that convenient.”
HE THREW away the stump of his cigar, deliberately lighted another, and leaned across the table toward me in a more confidential manner.
“Now we're coming to the more immediately interesting part of the story,” he said. “All that I've told you is, as it were, ancient history—we'll get to more modern times, affairs of yesterday, so to speak. After I cleared out of Blyth with a certain amount of money in my pocket—I knocked about the world a good deal, doing one thing and another. I've been in every continent and in more seaports than I can remember. I've taken a share in all sorts of queer transactions from smuggling to slave-trading. I've been rolling in money in January and shivering in rags in June. All that was far away, in strange quarter of of the world. for I never struck this country again until comparatively recently. I could tell you enough to fill a dozen fat volumes, but we'll cut all that out and get on to a certain time, now some years ago, whereat, in Hongkong, I and the man you saw with me this afternoon, who, if everybody had their own, is a genuine French nobleman, came across those two particularly precious villains, the brothers Noah and Salter Quick.”
“Was that the first time of your meeting with them?” I asked. Now that he was evidently bent on telling me his story, I, on my part, was bent on getting out of him all that I could. “You'd never met them before—anywhere?”
“Never seen nor heard of them before,” he answered. “We met in a certain house of call in Hongkong much frequented by Englishmen and Americans; we became friendly with them; we soon found out that they, like ourselves, were adventurers, would-be pirates, buccaneers, ready for any game; we found out. too, that they had money and could finance any desperate affair that was likely to pay handsomely. My friend and I, at that time, were also in funds—we had just had a very playing adventure in the Malay Archipelago, a bit of illicit trading, and we had got to Hongkong on the lookout for another opportunity. Once we had got thoroughly in with the Quicks, that was not long in coming. The Quicks were as sharp as their name—they knew the sort of men they wanted. And before long they took us into their confidence and told us what they were after and what they wanted us to do in collaboration with them. They wanted to get hold of a ship and to use it for certain nefarious trading-purposes in the China seas—they had a plan by which all of us could have made a lot of money. Needless to say, we were ready enough to go in with them. Already they had a scheme of getting a ship such as they particularly needed. There was at that time lying at Hongkong a sort of tramp steamer, the Elizabeth Robinson, the skipper of which wanted a crew for a trip to Chemulpo, up the Yellow Sea. Salter Quick got himself into the confidence and graces of this skipper and offered to man his ship for him, and he packed her as far he could—with his own brother, Noah, myself, my French friend, and a certain Chinese cook of whom he knew and who could be trusted—trusted, that is, to fall in with whatever we wanted.”
“Am I right in supposing the name of the Chinese cook to have been Chuh Fen?” I asked.
“Quite right—Chuh Fen was the man,” answered Baxter. “A very handy man for anything, as you'll admit, for you've already seen him—he's the man who attended on Miss Raven and who served our supper. I came across him again in Limehouse recently, and took him into my service once more. Very well—now you understand that there were five of us all in for the Quicks' plan, and the notion was that when we'd once got safely out of Hongkong. Salter, who had a particularly greasy and insinuating tongue, should get round certain others of the crew by means of promises helped out by actual cash bribes. That done, we were going to put the skipper, his mates and such of the men as wouldn't fall in with us in a boat with provisions, and let them find their way wherever they liked, while we went off with the steamer. That was the surface-plan—my own belief is that, if it had come to it, the two Quicks would have been quite ready to make skipper and men walk the plank, or to have settled them in any other way. Both Noah and Salter, for all their respectable appearance, were born out of their due time—they were admirably qualified to have been lieutenants to Captain Kidd or any other seventeenth-century pirate. But in this particular instance their schemes went all wrong. Whether it was that the skipper of the Elizabeth Robinson, who was an American and cuter than we fancied, got wind of something, or whether somebody split to him, I didn't know, but the fact is that one fine morning when we were in the Yellow Sea, he and the rest of them set on the Quicks, my friend, myself and the Chinaman, bundled us into a boat and landing us on a miserable island to fend for ourselves. There we were, the five of us a precious bad lot, to be sure—marooned.”
“You'd a stiff time of it?” I suggested.
”Worse than you'd believe,” he answered. ”That old Yankee skipper was a vindictive chap, with method in him. He'd purposely gone off the beaten track to land us on that island, and he played his game so cleverly that not even the Quicks, who were as subtle as snakes knew anything of his intentions until we were all marched over the side at the point of ugly-looking revolvers. If it hadn't been for that little Chinese whom you've just seen, we would have starved, for the island was little more than a reef of rock, rising to a sort of peak in its center—worn-out volcano, I imagine—and with nothing eatable on it in the way of flesh or fruit. But Chuh was a godsend. He was clever at fishing, and he showed us an edible seaweed out of which he made good eating, and he discovered a spring of water—altogether he kept us alive. All of which,” he suddenly added, with a darkening look, “made the conduct of these two Quicks not merely inexcusable but devilish!”
“What did they do?” I asked.
“I'M COMING to it,” he said, “all in due order. We were on that island several weeks, and from the time we were flung unceremoniously upon its miserable shores to the day we left it, we never saw a sail or a wisp of smoke from a steamer. And it may be that this, and our privations, made us still more birds of a feather than we were. Anyway, you, Middlebrook, know how men thrown together in that way will talk—nay, must talk unless they'd go mad—talk about themselves and their doings and so on. We all talked—we used to tell tales of our doubtful pasts as we huddled together under the rocks at night, and some nice, lurid stories they were, I can assure you. The Quicks had seen about as much of the doubtful and seamy side of seafaring life as men could, and all of us could contribute something. Also, the Quicks had money, safely stowed away in banks here and there—they used to curse their fate, left there apparently to die, when they thought of it. And it was that, I think, that led me to tell, one night, about my adventure with the naughty bank-manager at Blyth, and of the chests of old monastic treasure which I'd planted up here on this Northumbrian coast.”
“Ah!” I exclaimed. ”So you told Noah and Salter Quick that?”
“I told Noah and Salter Quick that,” he replied slowly. “Yes—and I can now explain to you what Salter was after when he appeared in these parts. I read the newspaper accounts of the inquest and so on, and I «aw through everything, and could have thrown a lot of light on things; only I wasn't going to. But it was this way; I told the Quicks all about the Blyth affair—the truth was, I didn't believe we should ever get away from that cursed island—but I told them in a fashion which, evidently, afterward led to considerable puzzlement on their part. I told them that I buried the chests of old silver, wherein were the other valuables taken from the vaults of the bank, in a churchyard on this coast, close to the graves of my ancestors—I described the spot and the lie of the ruins pretty accurately, Now, where the Quicks—Salter, at any rate—got puzzled and mixed was over my use of the word 'ancestors.' What I meant—but never said—was that I had planted the stuff near the graves of my maternal ancestors, the old de Knaythvilles, who were once great folk in these parts, and of whose name my own Christian name, Netherfield, is, of course, a corruption. But Salter Quick, to be sure, thought the graves would bear the name Netherfield, and when he came along this coast it was that name he was hunting for. Do you see?”
“THEN Salter Quick was after that treasure?” I said.
“Of course he was!” replied Baxter. “The wonder to me is that he and Noah hadn't been after it before. But they were men who had a good many irons in the fire—too many, and some of them far too hot, as it turned out—and I suppose they left this little affair until an opportune moment. Without a doubt, not so long after I'd told them the story, Salter Quick scratched inside the lid of his tobacco-box a rough diagram of the place I'd mentioned, with the latitude and longitude approximately indicated—that's the box I read in the papers there's been so much fuss about, and I'll tell you more about it in due process. But now about that island and the Quicks, and how they and the rest of us got out of it. I told you that the center of this island rose to a high peak, separating one coast from the other. Well, one day, when we'd been marooned for several weary weeks and there didn't seem the least chance of rescue, I, my French friend and the Chinaman crossed the shoulder of that peak and went along the other coast, prospecting—more out of sheer desperation than in the hope of finding anything. We spent the next night on the other side of the island, and it was not until late on the following afternoon that we returned to our camp, if you can call that a camp which was nothing but a hole in the rocks. And we got back to find Noah and Salter Quick gone—and we knew how they had gone when the Chinaman's sharp eyes made out a sail vanishing over the horizon. Some Chinese fishing-boat had made that island in our absence, and these two skunks had gone away in her and left us, their companions, to shift for ourselves. That's the sort the Quicks were—that was the kind of tricks they'd play on so-called friends! Do you wonder, either of you, that both Noah and Salter eventually got—what they got?”
We made no answer to that beyond, perhaps, a shake of our heads. Then Miss Raven spoke.
“But—you got away in the end,” she suggested.
“We got away in the end—sometime later, when we were about done for,” assented Baxter, “and in the same way—a Chinese fishing-boat that came within hail. It landed us on the Kiangsu coast, and we had a pretty bad time of it before we made our way to Shanghai. From that port we worked our passage to Hongkong; I had an idea that we might strike the Quicks there, or get news of them. But we heard nothing—of those two villains, at any rate. But we did hear that the Elizabeth Robinson had never reached Chemulpo—she'd presumably gone down with all hands, and we were supposed, of course, to have gone down with her. We did nothing to disabuse anybody of the notion; both I and my friend had money in Hongkong, and we took it up and went off to Singapore. As for our Chinaman, Chuh, he said farewell to us and vanished as soon as we got back to Hongkong, and we never set eyes on him again until very recently, when I ran across him in a Chinese eating-house in Poplar.”
“From that meeting, I suppose, the more recent chapters of your story begin,” I suggested. “Or do they begin somewhat earlier?”
“A bit earlier,” he said. “My friend and I came back to England a little before that—with money in our pockets—we'd been very lucky in the East—and with a friend of ours, a Chinese gentleman, mind you, we decided to go in for a little profitable work of another sort and to start out by lifting my concealed belongings up here. So we bought this craft in Hull—then ran her down to the Thames—then, as I say, I came across Chuh Fen and got his services and those of two other compatriots of his, then in London, and—here we are! You see how candid I am—do you know why?”
“It would be interesting to know, Mr. Baxter,” said Miss Raven. “Please tell us.”
“WELL,” he said, with deliberation, “some men in my position would have thought nothing about putting bullets through with of you when we met this afternoon—you hit on our secret. But I'm not that sort—I treat you as what you are, a gentlewoman and a gentleman, and no harm whatever shall come to you. Therefore, I feel certain that all I've said and am saying to you will be treated as it ought to be—by you. I dare say you think I'm an awful scoundrel, but I told you I was an Ishmael—and I certainly haven't got the slightest compunction about appropriating the stuff in those chests on deck. One of the Forestburnes stole it from the monks—why shouldn't I steal it from his successor? It's as much mine as his—perhaps more so, for one of my ancestors, a certain Geoffrey de Knaythville, was at one time lord abbot of the very house that the Forestburnes stole that stuff from. I reckon I've a prior claim, Middlebrook?”
“I should imagine,” I answered guardedly, “that it would be very difficult for anybody to substantiate a claim to ecclesiastical property—of that particular nature—which disappeared in the sixteenth century. What is certain, however, is that you've got it. Take my advice—hand it over to the authorities.”
He looked at me in blank astonishment for a moment; then laughed as a man laughs who is suddenly confronted by a good joke.
“Hah, hah, hah!” he let out at the top of his voice. “Good! You're a born humorist, friend Middlebrook!” He pushed the claret nearer. “Fill your glass again! Hand it over to the authorities? Why, that would merit a full-page cartoon in the next number of Punch. Good—good! But,” he went on, suddenly becoming grave again, “we were talking of those scoundrelly Quicks. Of course we—that is, my French friend and I—have been, and are, suspected of murdering them?”
“I think that is so,” I answered.
“Well, that's a very easy point to settle if it should ever come to it,” he replied. “And I'll settle it, for your edification, just now. Noah and Salter Quick woe done to death, one near Saltash, in Cornwall, the other near Alnwick, in Northumberland, several hundreds of miles apart, about the same hour of the same day. Now, my friend and I, so far from being anywhere near either Saltash or Alnwick on that particular day and night, spent them together at the North Eastern Railway Hotel at York. I went there the day before from London; he joined me from Berwick. We met at the hotel about six o'clock; we dined in the hotel; we played billiards in the hotel; we slept in the hotel; we breakfasted in the hotel; the hotel folks will remember us well, and our particulars are duly roistered in their books on the date in question. We had no hand whatever in the murders of Noah and Salter Quick, and I give you my word of honor—being under the firm impression that, though I am a pirate, I am still a gentleman—that neither of us have the very slightest notion who had.”
Miss Raven made an involuntary murmur of approval, and I was so much convinced of the man's good faith that I stretched out my hand to him.
“Mr. Baxter,” said I, “I'm heartily glad to have that assurance from you. And whether I'm a humorist or not, I'll beg you once more to take my advice and give up that loot to the authorities—you can make a plausible excuse and throw all the blame on that bank-manager fellow, and, take my word for it, little will be said—and then you can devote your undoubtedly great and able talents to legitimate ventures.”
“That would be as dull as ditch-water, Middlebrook,” he retorted, with a grin. “You're tempting me. But those Quicks—I'll tell you in what fashion there is a connection between their murder and ourselves, and one that would need some explanation. Bear in mind that I've kept myself posted in those murders through the newspapers, and also by collecting a certain amount of local gossip. Now—you've a certain somewhat fussy and garrulous old gentleman at Ravensdene Court——”
“Mr. Cazalette!” exclaimed Miss Raven.
“Cazalette is the name,” said Baxter. “I have heard much of him, through the sources I've just referred to. Now, this Mr. Cazalette, going to or coming from a place where he bathed every morning, which place happened to be near the spot whereat Salter Quick was murdered, found a blood stained handkerchief?”
“He did,” said I. “And a lot of mystery attaches to it.”
“That handkerchief belongs to my French friend,” said Baxter. “I told you that he joined me at York from Berwick. As a matter of fact, for some little time just before the Salter Quick affair he was down on this coast, posing as a tourist, but really just ascertaining if things were as I'd left then at the ruins in the woods above this cove and what would be our best method of getting the chests of stuff away. For a week or so he lodged at an inn somewhere, I think, near Ravensdene Court, and he used sometimes to go down to the shore for a swim. One morning he cut his foot on the pebbles, and stanched the blood with his handkerchief which he carelessly threw away—and your Mr. Cazalette evidently found it. That's the explanation of that little matter. And now for the tobacco-box.”
“A much more important point,” said I.
“JUST so,” agreed Baxter. “Now, my friend and I first heard of the murder while we were at York. In the newspaper that we read there was an account of a conversation which took place between this old Mr. Cazalette and a police inspector, regarding a certain metal tobacco-box found on Salter Quick's body. Now, I give you my word that that news was the first intimation we had ever had that the Quicks were in England. Until then we hadn't the slightest idea that they were in England—but we knew what those mysterious scratches in the tobacco-box signified—Salter had made a rude plan of the place I had told him of, and was in Northumberland to search for it. Then, later, we read your evidence at the opening of the inquest, and heard what you had to tell about his quest of the Netherfield graves, and—just to satisfy ourselves—we determined to get hold of that tobacco-box, for, you see, as long as it was about, a possible clue, there was a danger of somebody discovering our buried chests of silver and valuables. So my friend came down again in his tourist capacity, put up at the same quarters, strolled about, fished a bit, botanized a bit, attended the adjourned inquest as a casual spectator and—abstracted the tobacco-box under the very noses of the police! It's in that locker now,” continued Baxter, with a laugh, pointing to a corner of the cabin, “and with it are the handkerchief and your old friend Mr. Cazalette's pocketbook——”
“Oh! your friend got that, too, did he?” I exclaimed. “I see!”
“He abstracted that, too, easily enough, one morning when the old fellow was bathing,” assented Baxter. “Naturally, we weren't going to take any chances about our hidden goods being brought to light. We're highly indebted to Mr. Cazalette for making so much fuss about the tobacco-box, and we're glad there was so much local gossip about it. Eh?”
I remained silent a while, reflecting.
“It's a very fortunate thing for both of you that you could, if necessary, prove your presence at York on the day of the murder,” I remarked at last. “Your doings about the tobacco-box and the other things might otherwise wear a very suspicious look. As it is, I'm afraid the police would probably say—granted that they knew what you've just told us so frankly—that even if you and your French friend didn't murder Salter Quick and his brother, you were probably accessory to both murders. That's how it strikes me, anyway.”
“I think you're right,” he said calmly. “Probably they would. But the police would be wrong. We were not accessory, either before or since. We haven't the ghost of a notion as to the identity of the Quicks' murderers. But since we're discussing that, I'll tell you both of something that seems to have completely escaped the notice of the police, the detectives and of you yourself, Middlebrook. You remember that in both cases the clothing of the murdered men had been literally ripped to pieces?”
“Very well,” said I. “It had—in Salter's, anyway, to my knowledge.”
“And so, they said, it had in Noah's,” replied Baxter. “And the presumption, of course, was that the murderers were searching for something?”
“Of course,” I said. “What other presumption could there be?”
Baxter gave us both a keen, knowing look, bent across the table and tapped my arm as if to arrest my closer attention.
“How do you know that the murderers didn't find what they were seeking for?” he asked in a low, forceful voice. “Come, now!”
I stared at him; so, too, did Miss Raven. He laughed.
“That, certainly, doesn't seem to have struck anybody,” he said. “I'm sure, anyway, it hasn't struck you before. Does it now?”
“I'd never thought of it,” I admitted.
“Exactly! Nor, according to the papers—and to my private information—had anybody,” he answered. “Yet it would have been the very first thought that would have occurred to me. I should have said to myself, seeing the ripped-up clothing, 'Whoever murdered these men was in search of something that one or other of the two had concealed on him, and the probability is he's got it.' Of course!”
“I'm sure nobody—police or detectives—ever did think of that,” said I. “But—perhaps with your knowledge of the Quicks' antecedents and queer doings, you have some knowledge of what they might be likely to carry about them.”
He laughed at that, and again leaned nearer to us.
“Aye, well!” he replied. “As I've told you so much, I'll tell you something more. I do know of something that the two men had on them when they were on that miserable island and that they, of course, carried away with them when they escaped. Noah and Salter Quick were then in possession of two magnificent rubies—worth no end of money!”
I COULD not repress an unconscious, involuntary start on hearing this remarkable declaration.
“Heaps of money!” he went on. “Do you know anything about rubies? Not much? Well, the ruby, I dare say you do know, is the most precious of precious stones. The real true ruby, the Oriental one, is found in greatest quantity in Burma and Siam, and the best are those that come from Mogok, which is a district lying north of Mandalay. These rubies that the Quicks had came from there—they were remark ably fine ones. And I know how and where those precious villains got them.”
“Yes?” I said, feeling that another dark story lay behind this declaration. “Not honestly, I suppose?”
“Far from it,” he replied, with a grim smile. “Those two rubies formed the eyes of some ugly god or other in a heathen temple in the Kwangtung province of southern China where the Quicks carried on more nefarious practises than that. They gouged them out—according to their own story. Then, of course, they cleared off.
“My own belief is that after Salter Quick joined Noah at Devonport, both brothers were steadily watched by men who knew what they had on them, and that when Salter came north he was followed, just as Noah was tracked down at Saltash. And I should say that whoever murdered them got the rubies—they may have been on Noah; they may have been on Salter; one may have been in Salter's possession, one in Noah's. But there—in the rubies—lies, in my belief, the secret of those murders.”
Then, with a curt politeness, he bade us both good-night and went off on deck, and we two captives looked at each other.
“Strange man!” murmured Miss Raven. She gave me a direct glance that had a lot of meaning in it. “Mr. Middlebrook,” she went on in a still lower voice, “let me tell you that I'm not afraid. I'm sure that man means no personal harm to us. But—is there anything you want to say to me be fore I go?”
“Only this,” I answered: “Do you sleep very soundly?”
“Not so soundly that I shouldn't hear if you called me,” she replied.
“I'm going to mount guard here,” I said. “I, too, believe in what Baxter says. But—if I should, for any reason, have occasion to call you during the night, do at once precisely what I tell you to do.”
The Chinaman who had been in evidence at intervals since our arrival came into the little saloon with a can of hot water and disappeared into the inner cabin which had been given up to Miss Raven. She softly said good-night to me, with a reassurance of her confidence that all would be well, and followed him. I heard her talking to this strange makeshift for a maid for a moment or two; then the man came out, grinning as if well pleased with himself, and she closed and fastened the door on him. The Chinaman turned to me, asking in a soft voice if there was anything I pleased to need.
“Nothing but some rugs and pillows to sleep on,” I answered.
He opened a locker on the floor of the place and, producing a number of cushions and blankets from it, made me up a very tolerable couch. Then, with a polite bow, he, too, departed, and I was left alone.
Everything on board that strange craft was as still as the skies above her decks. I heard no sound whatever save a very gentle lapping of the water against the vessel's timbers and, occasionally, the far-off hooting of owls in the woods that overhung the cove. These sounds, of course, were provocative of slumber; I had to keep smoking to prevent myself from dropping into a doze. And perhaps two hours may have gone in this fashion, and it was, I should think, a little after midnight when I heard, at first far away toward the land, then gradually coming nearer, the light, slow plashing of oars that gently and leisurely rose and fell.
THIS, of course, was the Frenchman, coming back from his mission to Berwick—he would, I knew, have gone there from the little wayside station that lay beyond the woods at the back of the cove and have returned by a late train to the same place. Somehow—I could not well account for it—the mere fact of his coming back made me nervous and uneasy. I was not so certain about his innocence in the matter of Salter Quick's murder. On Baxter's own showing, the Frenchman had been hanging about the coast for some little time, just when Salter Quick descended upon it. He, like Baxter, if Baxter's story were true, was aware that one or other of the Quicks carried those valuable rubies; even if, the York episode being taken for granted, he had not killed Salter Quick himself, he might be privy to the doings of some accomplice who had. Anyway, he was a doubtful quantity, and the mere fact that he was back again on the yawl made me more resolved than ever to keep awake and preserve a sharp lookout.
I heard the boat come alongside; I heard steps on the deck just outside my open door; then Baxter's voice. Presently, too, I heard other voices—one that of the Frenchman, which I recognized from having heard him speak in the afternoon; the other, a soft, gentle, laughing voice—without doubt that of an Easterner. This, of course, would be the Chinese gentleman of whom I had heard—the man who had been seen in company with Baxter and the Frenchman at Hull. So now the three principal actors in this affair were all gathered together, separated from me and Miss Raven by a few planks, and close by were three Chinese of whose qualities I knew nothing. Safe we might be—but we were certainly on the very edge of a hornets' nest.
I heard the three men talking together in low, subdued tones for a few minutes; then they went along the deck above me and the sound of their steps ceased. But as I lay there in the darkness, two round disks of light suddenly appeared on a mirror which hung on the boarding of the cabin immediately facing me, and, turning my head sharply, I saw that in the bulkhead behind me there were two similar holes, pierced in what was probably a door, which would, no doubt, be sunk flush with the boarding and was possibly the entrance to some other cabin that could be entered from a farther part of the deck. Behind that, under a newly lighted lamp, the three men were now certainly gathered.
I got out of my wrappings and my corner so noiselessly that I don't believe any one actually present in my cabin would have heard even a rustle, and tiptoeing in my stockinged feet across to the bulkhead which separated me from the three men, put an eye to one of the holes. To my great joy I then found that I could see into the place to which Baxter and his companions had retreated. It was a sort of cabin, rougher in accommodation than that in which I stood, fitted with bunks on three sides and furnished with a table in the center, over which swung a lamp. The three men stood round this table, examining some papers—the lamplight fell full on all three. Baxter stood there in his shirt and trousers; the Frenchman also was half dressed, as if preparing for rest. But the third man was still as he had come aboard—a little, yellow faced, dapper, sleek Chinaman, whose smart velvet-collared overcoat, thrown open, revealed an equally smart dark-tweed suit beneath it, and an elegant gold watch-chain festooned across the waistcoat. And on the table before the three stood a whisky-bottle, a siphon of mineral water, and glasses, which had evidently just been filled.
Baxter and the Frenchman stood elbow to elbow; the Frenchman held in his hands a number of sheets of paper, foolscap size, to the contents of which he was obviously drawing Baxter's attention. Presently they turned to a desk which stood in one corner of the place, and Baxter, lifting its lid, produced a big ledgerlike book, over which they bent, evidently comparing certain entries in it with the papers in the Frenchman's hand. What book or papers might be, I, of course, knew nothing, for all this was done in silence. But had I known anything or heard anything, it would have seemed of no significance compared with what I just then saw—a thing that suddenly turned me almost sick with a nameless fear and set me trembling from toe to finger.
The dapper and smug Chinaman, statuesque on one side of the table, immovable save for an occasional puff of his cigar, suddenly shot into silent activity as the two men turned their backs on him and bent, apparently absorbed, over the desk in the corner. Like a flash (it reminded me of the lightninglike movement of a viper), his long, thin fillers went into a waistcoat pocket; like a flash emerged, shot to the glasses on the table and into two of them dropped something small and white—some tabloid or pellet—that sank and dissolved as rapidly as it was put in. It was all over, all done, within, literally, the fraction of a minute; when, a moment or two later, Baxter and the Frenchman turned round again, after throwing the ledgerlike book and the papers into the desk, their companion was placidly smoking his cigar and sipping the contents of his glass between the whiffs.
I was by that time desperately careless as to whether I might or might not be under observation from the open door and stairway of my own cabin. I remained where I was, my eye glued to that ventilation-hole, watching. For it seemed to me that the Chinaman was purposely drugging his companions for some insidious purpose of his own—in that case, what of the personal safety of Miss Raven and myself? But I reflected that it would be useless to make a scene. The only thing to do was wait.
Nothing happened. Baxter gulped down his drink as a single draft; the Frenchman took his in two leisurely swallows; each flung himself on his bunk, pulled his blankets about him, and, as far as I could see, seemed to fall asleep instantly. But the Chinaman was more deliberate and punctilious. He took his time over his cigar and his whisky; he pulled out a suitcase from some nook or other and produced from it a truly gorgeous sleeping-suit of gaily striped silk; it occupied him quite twenty minutes to get undressed and into this grandeur, and even then he lingered, fiddling about in carefully folding and arranging his garments. In the course of this, and in moving about the narrow cabin, he took apparently casual glances at Baxter and the Frenchman, and I saw from his satisfied, quiet smirk that each was sound asleep. And then he thrust his feet into a pair of bedroom slippers, as loud in their coloring as his pajamas, and suddenly turning down the lamp with a twist of his wicked-looking fingers, he glided out of the door into the darkness above. At that I, too, glided swiftly back to my blankets.
I HEARD steps, soft as snowflakes, go along the deck above me. For an instant they paused by the open door at the head of my stairway; then they went on again and all was silent as before. But in that silence, above the gentle lapping of the water against the side of the yawl, I heard the furious thumping of my own heart—and I did not wonder at it, nor was I then, nor am I now, ashamed of the fear that made it thump. Clearly, whatever else it might mean, if Baxter and the Frenchman were, as I surely believed them to be, soundly drugged. Miss Raven and I were at the positive mercy of a piack of Chinese adventurers who would probably stick at nothing.
I suppose it was nearly an hour that passed—it may have been more; it may have been less. What I know is that it gave me some idea of what an accused man may feel who, waiting in a cell below, wonders what the foreman of the jury is going to say when he is called upstairs once more to the dock which he has vacated pending that jury's deliberations. There I lay, sweating with fear, rapidly disintegrating as to nerve-power, becoming a lump of moral rag and bone—and suddenly, unheralded by the slightest sound, I saw the figure of a man on my stairway, his outline silhouetted against the sky and the stars.
It was not because of any bravery on my part—I am sure of that—but through sheer fright that, before I had the least idea of what I was doing, I had thrown myself clear of rugs and pillows, sprung to my feet, made one frenzied leap across the bit of intervening space and clutched my intruder by his arms before his softly padded feet touched the floor of the cabin. My own breath was coming in gasps—but the response to my frenzy was quiet and cool as an autumnal afternoon.
“Can you row a boat?”
I shall never forget the mental douche which dashed itself over me in that clear yet barely perceptible whisper, accompanied, as it was, by a ghostlike laugh of sheer amusement. I released my grip, staring in the starlight at my visitor. Chuh Fen!
“Yes,” I answered, steadying my voice and keeping it down to as low tones as his own. “Yes—I can.”
He pointed to the door behind which lay Miss Raven.
“Wake missy—as quietly as possible,” he whispered. “Tell her get ready—come on deck—make no noise. All ready for you—then you go ashore and away—see? Not good for you to be here longer.”
“No danger to her?” I asked him.
“No danger to anybody. You do as I say,” he answered. “All ready for you—nothing to do but come on deck forward, get into the boat, be off. Now!”
Without another word he glided up the stairway and disappeared. For a few seconds I stood irresolute. Was it a trick, a plant? Should we be safe on deck—or targets for Chinese bullets, or receptacles for Chinese knives? Maybe—yet——
I suddenly made up my mind. It was but one step to the door of the little inner cabin. I scraped on its panels. It opened instantly, a crack.
“Yes?” whispered Miss Raven.
I remembered then that if need arose she was to do unquestioningly anything I told her to do.
“Dress at once and come out,” I said. “Be quick!”
“I've never been undressed,” she answered. “I lay down in my clothes.”
“Then come now,” I commanded. “Wait for nothing!”
She was out of the room at once and by my side in the gloom. I laid a hand on her arm, giving its plump softness a reassuring pressure.
“Don't be afraid,” I whispered. “Follow me on deck. We're going.”
“Going!” she said. “Leaving?”
“Come along,” said I.
I WENT before her up the stairway and out on the open deck. The night was particularly clear; the stars were very bright; the patch of water between the yawl and the shore lay before us calm and dark; we could see the woods above the cove quite plainly, and at the edge of them a ribbon of white, the silver-sanded beach. And also, at the forward part of the vessel we were leaving, I saw, or fancied I saw, shadowy forms—the Chinese were going to see us off.
But one form was not shadowy or problematical. Chuh was there, awaiting us, his arms filled with rugs. Without a word he motioned us to follow, preceded us along the side of the yawl to the boat, went before us into it, helped us down, settled us, put the oars into my hands, climbed out again and leaned his yellow face down to me.
“You pull straight ahead,” he murmured. “Good landing-place straight before you; dry place on beach, too—morning come soon; you get away then through woods.”
“The boat?” I asked him.
“You leave boat there—anywhere,” he answered. “Boat not wanted again—we go, soon as high water over bar. Hope you get young missy safe home.”
“Bless you!” I said, under my breath.
Then, remembering that I had some money in my pocket, three or four loose sovereigns, as luck would have it, I thrust a hand there in, pulled them out, forced them into the man's clawlike fingers. I heard him chuckle softly; then his head disappeared behind the jail of the yawl and I shoved the boat off, and for the next few minutes bent to those oars as I had certainly never bent to any previous labor, mental or physical, in my life. And Miss Raven, seeing my earnestness, said nothing but quietly took the tiller and steered us in a straight line for the spot which the Chinaman had indicated. Neither of us—strange as it may seem—spoke one single word until, at the end of half an hour's steady pull, the boat's nose ran on to the shingly beach beneath a fringe of dwarf oak that came right down to the edge of the shore. I sprang out with a feeling of thankfulness that it would be hard to describe, and for a good reason found my tongue once more.
“What does all this mean?” she said at last suddenly. “Why have they let us go?”
“No idea,” I answered. “But—things have happened since Baxter said good-night to us. Listen!” And I went on to tell her of all that had taken place on the yawl since the return of the Frenchman and his Chinese companion. “What does it look like?” I concluded. “Doesn't it seem as if the Chinese intend foul play to those two?”
“Do you mean—that they intend to—to murder them?” she asked in a half-frightened whisper. “Surely not that?”
“I don't see that a man who has lived the life that Baxter has can expect anything but a violent end,” I replied callously. “Yes; I suppose that's what I do mean. I think the Chinese mean to get rid of the two others and get away with the swag—cleverly enough, no doubt.”
“Horrible!” she murmured.
“Inevitable,” said I. “To my mind, the whole atmosphere was one of—that sort of thing. We're most uncommonly lucky.”
She became silent again and remained so for some time, while I went on at my task, binding strips of rug about my feet and ankles to take the place of the boos I had left on board.”
“I don't understand it!” she exclaimed, after several minutes had gone by. “Surely those men must know that we, once free of them, would be sure to give the alarm. We weren't under any promise to them, what ever we were to Baxter.”
“I don't understand anything,” I said. “All I know is the surface of the situation. But that gentle villain who saw us off the yawl said that they were sailing at high water—only waiting until the water was deep on the bar outside there. And they could get a long way, north or south or east, before we could set anybody on to them. Suppose they get rid of Baxter and his Frenchman—what's to prevent them making off across the North Sea to, say, some port in the north of Russia? They've got stuff on board that would be salable any where; no doubt they'll have melted it all into shapeless lumps before many hours are over.”
Once more she was silent, and when she spoke again, it was in a note of decision.
“No; I don't think that's it at all,” she said emphatically. “They're dependent on wind and weather, and the seas aren't so wide but that they'd be caught on our information. I'm sure that isn't it.”
“What is it, then?” I asked.
“I've a sort of vague, misty idea,” she answered, with a laugh that was plainly intended to be depreciatory of her own power. “Suppose these Chinese—you say they're awfully keen and astute—suppose they've got a plot among themselves for handing Baxter and the Frenchman over to the police, the authorities, with their plunder. Do you see?”
I HAD just finished the manufacture of my novel foot-wear, and I jumped to my padded feet with an exclamation that—this time—did not come from unpleasant contact with the sharp stones.
“By George!” I said. “There is an idea in that! There may be something in it.”
“We thought Wing was on board,” she continued. “If so, I think I may be right in offering such a suggestion. Suppose that Wing came across these people when he went to London, took service with them in the hope of getting at their secret; suppose he's induced the other Chinese to secure Baxter and the Frenchman—that, in short, he's been playing the part of detective. Wouldn't that explain why they sent us away?”
Just then our discussion was stopped by a startling noise. Across the three-quarters of a mile of water which separated us from our recent prison came the sound, clear and unmistakable, of a revolver-shot followed almost instantly by another. Miss Raven, who had risen to her feet, suddenly sat down again. A third shot rang out—a fourth-—a fifth; we saw the flashes of each; they came without doubt from the deck of the yawl.
“Firing,” she murmured.
“Fighting!” said I. “That's just— Listen to that!”
Half a dozen reports, sharp, insistent, rang out in quick succession; then two or three, all mingling together; the echoes followed from wood and cliff. Rapidly as the flashes pierced the gloom, the sounds died out—a heavy silence followed.
And then, at that moment, we both heard something else. Somewhere outside the bar but close to the shore, a steam-propelled vessel was tearing along at a breakneck speed.
AS WE stood there watching, the long yellow light on the eastern horizon suddenly changed in color—first to a roseate flush, then to a warm crimson; the scenes round us, sky, sea and land, brightened as if by magic. And with equal suddenness there shot round the edge of the southern extremity of the cove, outlining itself against the red sky in the distance, the long, low-lying hulk of a vessel—a dark, sinister-looking thing which I recognized at once as a torpedo-destroyer. It was coming along about half a mile outside the bar at a rate of speed which would, I knew, quickly carry it beyond our field of vision. And I was wondering whether from its decks the inside of the cove and the yawl lying at anchor there were visible when it suddenly slacked in its headlong career, went about seaward, and, describing the greater part of a circle, came slowly in toward the bar, nosing about there beyond the line of white surf, for all the world like a terrier at the lip of some rat-hole.
Suddenly, right behind her, far across the gray sea, the sun shot up above the horizon—her long dark hull cut across his ruddy face. And we were then able, to make out shapes that moved here and there on her deck. There were live men there—but on the yawl we saw no sign of life.
Yet, even as we looked, life sprang up there again. Once more a shot rang out, followed by two others in sharp succession. And as we stared in that direction, wondering what this new affray could be, we saw a boat shoot out from beneath the bows with a low, crouching figure in it which was evidently making frantic efforts to get away. Somebody on board the yawl was just as eager to prevent this escape; three or four shots sounded—following on one of them the figure in the boat fell forward with a sickening suddenness.
“Got him!” I said involuntarily. “Poor devil—whoever he is!”
“No!” exclaimed Miss Raven. “See! He's up again!”
The figure was struggling to an erect position—even at that distance we could make out the effort. But the light of the newly risen sun was so dazzling and confusing that we could not tell if the figure were that of an Englishman or a Chinaman—it was, at any rate, the figure of a tall man. And whoever he was, he managed to rise to his feet and to lift an arm in the direction of the yawl, from which he was then some twenty yards away. Two more shots rang out—one from the yawl, another from the boat. It seemed to me that the man in the boat swayed, but a moment later he was again busy at his oars. No further shot came from the yawl, and the boat drew farther and farther away from it in the direction of a spit of land some three or four hundred yards from where we stood. There were high rocks at the sea-end of that spit—the boat disappeared behind them.
Calling to me to look, Miss Raven pointed across the cove and beyond the bar to a boat that had put off from the destroyer and was being pulled at a rapid rate toward the line of surf which, under the deepening tide, was now but a thin streak of white. It seemed to me that I could see the glint of arms above the flash of the oars—anyway, there was a boat's crew of bluejackets there.
“They're going to board her!” I exclaimed. “I wonder what they'll find.”
“Dead men,” answered Miss Raven quietly. “What else? After all that shooting! I should think that man who's just got away was the last.”
“There was a man left on board who fired at him—and at whom he fired back,” I pointed.
“Yes—and who never fired again,” she retorted. “They must all— Oh!”
She interrupted herself with a sharp exclamation, and turning from watching the bluejackets and their boat, I saw that she was staring at the yawl. From its forecastle a black column of smoke suddenly shot up, followed by a great lick of flame.
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “The yawl's on fire!”
I guessed then at what had probably happened. The man who had just disappeared with his boat behind the spit of land farther along the cove had in all likelihood been one of two survivors of the fight which had taken place in the early hours of the morning. He had wished to get away by himself, had set fire to the yawl and sneaked away in the only boat, exchanging shots with the man left behind and probably killing him with the last one. And now—there was smoke and flame above what was doubtless a shambles.
But by that time the boat's crew from the destroyer had crossed the bar and entered the cove, and the vigorously impelled oars were flashing fast in the sheltered waters. The boat disappeared behind the drifting smoke that poured out of the yawl; presently we saw figures hurrying hither and thither about her deck.
“They may be in time to get the fire under,” I said. “Better, perhaps, if they let the whole thing burn itself out. It would bum up a lot of villainy.”
“Here are people coming along the beach,” remarked Miss Raven suddenly. “Look! They must have seen the smoke rising.”
I turned in the direction in which she was looking and saw on the strip of land and pebble beneath the woods a group of figures, standing at that moment and staring in the direction of the burning ship, which had evidently just rounded the extreme point of the cove at its southern confines. There were several figures in the group, and two were mounted. Presently they moved forward in our direction at a smart pace; before they had gone far I recognized the riders.
“A search-party!” I exclaimed. “Look—that's Mr. Raven in front, and surely that's Lorrimore, behind him! They're looking for us.”
WE EXPLAINED the situation in as few words as possible.
“There may be men on there that need medical assistance,” said Lorrimore. “Where's this boat you mentioned, Middlebrook? I'm going off to that vessel. Two of you men pull me across there.”
“I'll go with you,” said I. “I left my boots in the cabin—I may find them—and a good deal else. The boat's just along here.”
The search-party was a mixed lot—a couple of local policemen, some gamekeepers, two or three fishermen, one of Mr. Raven's men servants. Two of the fishermen ran the boat into the water; Lorrimore and I sprang in.
“This is the most extraordinary affair I ever heard of,” he said, as he sat down at my side in the stern. “You didn't see all these Chinamen? Miss Raven says that you actually suspected my man Wing to be on board.”
“Lorrimore,” said I, “in ten minutes you'll probably see and learn things that you'd never have dreamed of. Whether your man Wing is on board or not I don't know—but I know that that girl and I have had a marvelous escape from a nest of human devils. I can't say for myself, but—has my hair whitened?”
“Your hair hasn't whitened,” he said. “You were probably safer than you knew, safe enough, if Wing was there.”
“You've heard nothing of him from London?” I suggested.
“Nothing from anywhere,” he replied. “Which is precisely why I feel sure that when he went there he came in contact with these people and has been playing some deep game.”
“Deep—yes!” said L “Deep, indeed! But what game?”
He made no answer; we were now close to the yawl and he was staring expectantly at the figures on her deck. Suddenly two of these detached themselves from the rest, turned, came to the side, looked down on us. One was a grimy-faced, alert-looking young naval officer, very much alive to his job; the other, not quite so smoke-blackened but eminently businesslike, was—Scarterfield.
“Good Heavens!” I muttered. “So—he's here!”
Scarterfield, as we pulled up to the side of the yawl, was evidently telling the young officer who we were; he turned from him to us as we prepared to clamber aboard and addressed us without ceremony, as if we had been parted from him but a few minutes since our last meeting.
“You'd better be prepared for some unpleasant sights, you two,” he said. “This is no place to bring an empty stomach to at this hour of the morning—and I fancy you've no liking for horrors, Mr. Middlebrook.”
“I've had plenty of them during this night, Scarterfield,” said I. “I was a prisoner on board this vessel from yesterday afternoon until soon after midnight, and I've sat on yonder beach listening to a good many things that have gone on since I got away from her.”
He stared at me in astonishment.
“Middlebrook,” he said earnestly, “I don't understand it at all. You say you were on this vessel—during the night? Then, in God's name, who else was on her—whom did you find here—what men?”
He turned a quick, eye on the naval officer.
“Then one of 'em's escaped—somehow!” he exclaimed. “There's only five here—and every man Jack is dead! Where's the other?”
“One did escape,” said I. I, too, looked at the lieutenant. “He got off in a boat just as you and your men were approaching the bar yonder—I thought you'd see him.”
“No,” he answered, shaking his head; “we didn't see anybody leave. The yawl lay between us and him most likely.”
Lorrimore and I, giving no heed just then to the detective's questionings about the escaped man, went toward the after part of the deck. Busied with their labors in getting the fire under control, the bluejackets had up to then left the dead men where they found them—with one exception. The man whom they had found in the bows had been carried aft and laid near the entrance to the little deck-house—some hand had thrown a sheet over him. Lorrimore lifted it—we looked down. Baxter!
“That's the fellow we found right forrard,” said the lieutenant. “He's several slighter wounds on him, but he'd been shot through the chest—heart, perhaps—just before we boarded her. That would be the shot fired by the man in the boat, I suppose—a good marksman! Was this the skipper?”
“Chief spirit,” said I. “He was lively enough last night. But—the rest?”
“They're all over the place,” he answered. “They must have had a most desperate to-do of it. The vessel's more like a slaughter-house than a ship.”
Scarterfield jogged my elbow as I stood staring at these unholy sights. He was keener of look than I had ever seen him.
“That fourth Chinaman,” he said; “I must get him, dead or alive. The rest's nothing—I want him!”
I GLANCED round; Lorrimore, after an inspection of the dead men, had walked aside with the lieutenant and was in close conversation with him. I, too, drew the detective away to the side of the yawl.
“Scarterfield,” I said in a whisper, “I've grounds for believing that the fourth Chinaman is—Lorrimore's servant—Wing.”
“What!” he exclaimed. “The man we saw at Ravensdene Court?”
“Just so,” said I. “And who went off to London, you remember, to see what he could do in the way of discovering the other Chinaman, Chuh Fen.”
“Yes—I remember that,” he answered.
“There is Chuh Fen,” I said, pointing to one of the silent figures. “And I think that Wing not only discovered him but came aboard this vessel with him as part of a crew which Baxter and his French friend got together at Limehouse or Poplar. As I say. I've grounds for thinking it.”
Scarterfield looked round, glanced at the shore, shook his head.
“I'm all in the dark—about some things,” he said. “I got on the track of this craft—I'll tell you how later—and found she'd come up this coast, and we got the authorities to send this destroyer after her—I came with her, hell for leather, I can tell you, from Harwich. But I don't know a lot that I want to know. Baxter, now—you're sure that man laying dead there is the Baxter we heard of at Blyth and traced to Hull?”
“Certain,” said I. And then I gave him a brief account of what had happened since yesterday.
When I told him of Baxter's theory about the rubies, Scarterfield obviously pricked his ears.
“Now, there's something in that,” he said, with a regretful glance at the place where Baxter's dead body lay under its sheet. “I wish that fellow had been alive to tell more. For he's right about those rubies—quite right. The Quicks had 'em—two of em.
“You know that?” I exclaimed.
“I'll tell you,” he answered. “After we parted, I was very busy investigating matters still further in Devonport and in London. And—through the newspapers, of course—I got in touch with a man who told me a lot. A Mr. Isidore Baubenheimer, dealer, as you may conclude, in precious stones. But I'll show you Baubenheimer's own words—I got him to make a clear statement of the whole thing and had it taken down in black and white, and I have a typed copy of it in my pocketbook—glance it over for yourself.”
He produced a sheet of paper, folded and endorsed and handed it to me. It ran thus:
MY place of business in Hatton Garden is a few doors away from the garden entrance to the old Mitre Tavern, which lies between that street and Ely Place. On, as far as I can remember, the seventh or eighth March last, I went into the Mitre about halfpast eleven o'clock one morning, expecting to meet a friend of mine who was often there about that time. He hadn't come in—I sat down with a drink and a cigar to wait for him.
In the little room where I sat there were three other men—two of them were men that I knew, men who dealt in diamonds in a smallish way. The other was a stranger, a thick-set, middle-aged seafaring sort of man, hard-bitten, dressed in a blue-serge suit of nautical cut;
I could tell from his hands and his general appearance that he'd knocked about the world in his time. Just then he was smoking a cigar and had a tumbler of rum and water before him, and he was watching, with a good deal of interest, the other two, who, close by, were showing each other a quantity of loose diamonds which, evidently to the seafaring man's amazement, they spread out openly on their palms.
After a bit they got up and went out, and the stranger glanced at me. Now, I am, as you see, something of the nautical sort myself, bearded and bronzed and all that—I'm continually crossing the North Sea—and it maybe he thought I was of his own occupation. Anyway, he looked at me as if wanting to talk.
“I reckon they think nothing of pulling out a fistful o' them things hereabouts, mister,” he said. “No more to them than sovereigns and half-sovereigns and bank-notes is to bank clerks.”
“That's about it,” said I. “You'll see them shown in the open street outside.”
“Trade of this part of London, isn't it?” he asked.
“Just so,” said I. “I'm in it myself.”
He gave me a sharp, inquiring look at that. “Ah!” he remarked. “Then you'll be a gentleman as knows the vally of a thing o' that sort when you sees it?”
“Well, I think so,” I answered. “I've been in the trade all my life. Have you got anything to dispose of? I see you're a seafaring man, and I've known sailors who brought something nice home now and then.”
“Same here,” said he; “but I never known a man as brought anything half as good as what I have.”
“Ah!” said I. “Then you have something?”
“That's what I come into this here neighborhood for this morning,” he answered. “I have something, and a friend o' mine, says he to me, 'Hatton Garden,' he says, 'is the port for you—they eats and drinks and wallers in them sort o' things down that way,' he says.
“So I steers for this here; only, I don't know no fish—d'ye see?—as I could put the question to what I wants to ask.”
“Put it to me,” said I, drawing out my card-case. “There's my card, and you can ask any body within half a square mile if they don't know me for a trustworthy man. What is it you've got?” I went on, never dreaming that he'd got anything at all of any great value, “I'll give you an idea of its worth in two minutes.”
But he glanced round at the door and shook his head.
“Not here, mister,” he said. “I wouldn't let the light o' day shine on what I got in a public place like this, not nohow. But,” he added, “I see you've a office and all that. I ain't undisposed to go there with you if you like—you seem a honest man.”
“Come on, then,” I said. “My office is just round the corner, and though I've clerks in it, we'll be private enough there.”
“Right you are, mister!” he answered. And he drank off his rum and we went out and round to my office.
I took him into my private room—I had a young-lady clerk in there (she'd remember this man well enough) and he looked at her and then at me.
“Send the girl away,” he muttered. “There's a matter of undressing—d'ye see?—in getting at what I want to show you.”
I sent her out of the room and sat down at my desk. He took off his overcoat, his coat and his waistcoat, shoved his hand into some secret receptacle that seemed to be hidden in the band of his trousers, somewhere behind the small of his back, and. after some acrobatic contortions and twistings, lugged out a sort of canvas parcel, the folds of which he unwrapped leisurely. And suddenly, coming close to me, he laid the canvas down on my blotting-pad and I found myself staring at some dozen or so of the most magnificent pearls I ever set eyes on and a couple of rubies which I knew to be priceless. I was never more astonished in my life, but he was as cool as a cucumber.
“What d'ye think o' that lot, mister?” he asked. “I reckon you don't see a little lot o' that quality every day.”
“No, my friend,” said I, “nor every year, either, nor every ten years. Where on earth did you get them?”
“Away East,” said he, “and I've had 'em some time, not being particular about selling 'em, but I've settled down in England now, and I think I will sell 'em and buy house-property with the money. What do you fix their vally at, now, mister—thereabouts, anyway?”
“Good Heavens, man!” I said. “They're worth a great deal of money—a great deal!”
“I'm very well aware o' that, mister,” he answered. “Very well aware, indeed—nobody better. I seen a deal o' things in my time, and I ain't no fool.”
“You really want to sell them?” I asked.
“If I get the full price,” said he. “And that, of course, would be a big 'un.”
“The thing to do,” I said, “would be to find somebody who wants to complete a particularly fine set of pearls—some very rich woman who'd stick at nothing. The same remark applies to the rubies.”
“Maybe you could come across some customer?” he suggested.
“No doubt, in a little time,” I answered.
“Well,” he said, “I'm going up north—I've a bit o' business that way, and I reckon I'll be back here in London in a week or so—I'll call in then, mister, and if you've found anybody that's likely to deal. I'll show 'em the goods with pleasure.”
“You'd better leave them with me, and let me show them to some possible buyers,” I said. But he was already folding up his canvas wrapping again.
“Guv'nor,” he answered, “I can see as how you're a honest man, and I treats you as such, and so will, but I couldn't have them things out o' my possession for one minute until I sells 'em. I've a brother, mister,” he added, “as owns a half-share in 'em—d'ye see?—and I holds myself responsible to him. But now that you've seen 'em, guv'nor, find a buyer or buyers—I'll shove my bows round that door o' yours again this day week.” And with that he restored his treasures to their hiding-place, assumed his garments once more, and remarking that he had a train to catch, hastened off, again assuring me that he would call in a week, on his return from the North.
It was not until he had been gone several minutes that I remembered that I had forgotten to ask his name. I certainly expected him to be back at the end of the week—but he didn't come, and just then I had to go away. Now, I take him to have been the man, Salter Quick, who was murdered on the Northumberland coast—no doubt for the sake of those jewels. As for their value, I estimated it, from my cursory examination of them, to have been certainly not less than eighty thousand pounds.
I FOLDED up the statement and restored it to Scarterfield.
“What do y'ou think of that?” he asked.
“Salter Quick, without a doubt,” I answered. “It corroborates Baxter's story of the rubies. He didn't mention any pearls. And I think now, Scarterfield, that Salter Quick's murder lies at the door of one of those Chinamen who, in their turn, are lying dead before us.”
“Well, and that's what I think,” said he. “Though however a Chinaman could be about this coast without the local police learning something of it at the time they were inquiring into the murder beats me. However, there it is—I feel sure of it. And I was going to tell you—I got wind of this yawl down Limehouse way. I found out that she'd been in the Thames, and that her owner had enlisted a small crew of Chinamen and gone away with them, and I found out further that she'd been seen off the Norfolk coast, going north. So then I pitched a hot and strong story to the authorities about piracy and all manner of things, and they sent this destroyer in search of Baxter, and me on her. If we'd only been twelve hours sooner!”
Lorrimore and the lieutenant came up to us.
“My men have got the fire completely beaten,” said the lieutenant, glancing at Scarterfield. “If you want to look round——”
We began a thorough examination of the yawl in the endeavor to reconstruct the affair of the early morning.
Reckoning up everything we saw, it seemed to me, from my knowledge of the preceding incidents, that the drug which the Chinese gentleman, as Baxter had called him, administered had not had the effects that he desired and anticipated, and that one or other of the two men to whom it had been given had been roused from sleep before any attack could be made on both. I figured things in this way: Baxter or the Frenchman or both had awakened and missed the Chinaman. One or both had turned out to seek him, had discovered that Miss Raven and I were missing, had scented danger to themselves, found the Chinese up to some game and opened fire on them. Evidently the first fighting—as I had gathered from the revolver-shots—had been sharp and decisive; I formed the conclusion that when it was over there were only two men left alive, of whom one was Baxter and the other the man whom we had seen escaping in the boat. Baxter, I believed, had put up some sort of barricade and watched his enemy from it; that he himself was already seriously wounded I gathered from two facts—one that his body had several superficial wounds on arms and shoulders, and that in the cabin, behind the hastily constructed barricade, sheets had been torn into strips for bandages which we found on these wounds, where, as far as he could, he had roughly twisted them. Then, according to my thinking, he had eventually seen the other survivor, who was probably in like case with himself as regards superficial wounds, endeavoring to make off, and, emerging from his shelter, had fired on him from the side of the yawl, only to be killed himself by return fire.
A significant exclamation from Scarterfield called me to his side—he, aided by one of the bluejackets, was examining the body of Chuh Fen.
“Look here!” he murmured as I went up to him. “This chap has been searched. After he was dead, I mean. There's a body-belt that he wore—it's been violently torn from him, his clothing ripped to get at it, and the belt itself hacked to pieces in the endeavor to find something. Whose work has that been?”
“The work of the man who got away in the boat,” said I. “Of course he's been after those rubies and pearls, Scarterfield.”
“We must be after him,” he said. “You say you think he was wounded in getting away?”
“He was certainly wounded,” I affirmed. “I saw him fall headlong in the boat after the first shot; he recovered himself, fired the shot which no doubt finished Baxter, and must have been wounded again, for the two men again fired simultaneously, and the man in the boat swayed at that second shot. But once more he pulled himself together and rowed away.”
“Well, if he's wounded, he can't get far without attracting notice,” declared Scarterfield. “We'll organize a search for him presently. But first let's have a look into the quarters that these Chinamen occupied.”
The smoke of the fire—which seemed to have broken out in the forecastle and had been confined to it by the efforts of the sailors from the destroyer—had now almost cleared away, and we went forward to the galley. On a shelf near the stove was laid out what I took to be the things which the vanished cook, whoever he might be, had destined for breakfast—a tempting one of kidneys and bacon, soles, eggs, a curry. I gathered from this, and pointed my conclusion out to Scarterfield, that the presiding genius of the galley had had no idea of the mutiny into which he had been plunged soon after midnight.
“Aye!” said Scarterfield. “Just so—I see your point. And—you think that man of Lorrimore's, Wing, was aboard, and that, if so, he's the man who's escaped?”
“I've strong suspicions,” said I. “Yet they were based on a plum cake.”
“Well, I've known of worse clues,” he rejoined. “But—I wonder— Now, if only we knew——”
Just then Lorrimore came along, poking his head into the galley. He suddenly uttered a sharp exclamation and reached an arm to a black-silk cap which hung from a peg on the boarding above the stove.
“That's Wing's!” he said in emphatic tones. “I saw him make that cap himself.”
THE bit of head-gear which Lorrimore had taken down assumed a new interest. Scarterfield and I gazed at it as if it might speak to us. Nevertheless, the detective showed some incredulity.
“That's the sort of cap that any Chinaman wears,” he remarked. “It may have belonged to any of them.”
“No!” answered Lorrimore, with emphatic assurance. “That's my man's. I saw him making it—he's as deft with his fingers, at that sort of thing as he is at cooking. And since this cap is his, and as he's not among the lot there on deck, he's the man that you, Middlebrook, saw escaping in the boat. And since he is that man, I know where he'd be making.”
“Where, then?” demanded Scarterfield.
“To my house,” answered Lorrimore.
Scarterfield showed more doubt.
“I don't think that's likely, Doctor,” he said. “Presumably he's got those jewels on him, and I should say he'd get away from this with the notion of trusting to his own craft to get unobserved on a train and lose himself in Newcastle. A Chinaman with valuables on him worth eighty thousand pounds? Come!”
“You don't know that he's any valuables of any sort on him,” retorted Lorrimore. “That's all supposition. I say that if my man Wing was on this vessel—as I'm sure he was—he was on it for purposes of his own. He might be with this felonious lot, but he wouldn't be of them. I know him—and I'm off to get on his track. Lay you anything you like—a thousand to one—that I find Wing at my house.”
“I'm not taking you, Lorrimore,” said I. “I don't mind laying the same.”
Scarterfield looked curiously at the two of us. Apparently his belief in Chinese virtue was not great.
“Well,” he said, “I'm on his track, anyhow, and I propose we get away to the beach. There's nothing more we can do here. These naval people have got this job in charge now. Let's leave them to it. Yet,” he added, as we left the galley, and with a significant glance at me, “there is one thing: Middlebrook, wouldn't you like to have a look inside those two chests that we've heard so much about?”
“I certainly should,” I answered.
“Then we will,” he said. “I, too, have some curiosity that way. And if Master Wing has repaired to the doctor's house, he's all right, and if he hasn't, he can't get very far away, being a Chinaman, in his native garments, and wounded.”
The chests which had come aboard the yawl with Miss Raven and myself the previous afternoon—it seemed as if ages had gone by since then—still stood where they had been placed at the time, close to the gangway leading to the main cabin. Lorrimore, Scarterfield, the young naval officer and I gathered round while a couple of handy bluejackets forced them open—no easy business, for whether the dishonest bank-manager and Netherfield Baxter had ever opened them or not, they were screwed up again in a fashion which showed businesslike resolve that they should not easily be opened again. But at last the lids were off—to reveal inner shells of lead. And within these, gleaming dully in the fresh sunlight, lay the monastic treasures of which Scarterfield and I had read in the hotel at Blyth.
WE WENT off from the yawl, the three of us, in the boat which had brought Lorrimore and me aboard her. The group on shore saw us making for the point whereat the escaping figure had landed in the early morning, and followed us along the beach.
We spread ourselves out along the shore, crossing the spit of sand, now encroached on considerably by the tide, and began to search among the black rocks that jutted out of it thereabouts. Presently we came across the boat, slightly rocking in the lapping water alongside a ledge. I took a hasty glance into it and drew Miss Raven away. For on the thwarts and on the seat in the stem and on one of the oars, thrown carelessly aside, there was blood.
A sharp cry from one of the men who had gone a little ahead brought us all hurrying to his side. He had found, among the rocks, a sort of pool, at the sides of which there was dry, sand-strewn rock; there were marks there as if a man had knelt in the sand, and there was more blood, and there were strips of clothing—linen, silk—as if the man had torn up some of his garments for temporary bandages.
“He's been here,” said Lorrimore in a low voice. “Probably washed his wounds here—salt is a styptic. Flesh-wounds, most likely, but,” he added, sinking his voice still lower, “judging from what we've seen of the blood he lost, he must have been weakening by the time he got here. Still, he's a man of vast strength and physique, and he'd push on. Look for marks of his footsteps.”
We eventually picked up a recently made track in the sand and followed it until it came to a point at the end of the overhanging woods where they merged into open moorland running steeply downward to the beach. There, in the short, wiry grass of the close-knitted turf, the marks vanished.
“Just as I said,” muttered Lorrimore, who, with Miss Raven and myself, was striding on a little in advance of the rest. “He's made for my place—as I knew he would. I know enough of this country to know that there's a road at the head of these moors that runs parallel with the railway on one side and the coast on the other toward Ravensdene—he'd be making for that. He'd take up the side of this wood, as the nearest way to strike the road.”
That he was right in this we were not long in finding out.
Coming out on the top of the moorland, and rounding the comer of the woods, we hit the road of which Lorrimore had spoken—a long, white, hedgeless, wall-less ribbon of track that ran north and south through treeless country. There, a few yards away from us, stood an isolated cottage, some gamekeeper's or watcher's place, with a bit of unfenced garden before it. In that garden was a strange group gathered about something that at first we did not see—Mr. Cazalette, obviously very busy, the police inspector (a horse and trap, tethered to a post close by, showed how they had come), a woman, evidently the mistress of the cottage, a child, open-mouthed, wide-eyed with astonishment at these strange happenings, a dog that moved uneasily round the two-legged folk, whimpering his concern. The bystanders moved as we hurried up, and then we caught glimpses of towels and water and hastily improvised bandages and smelled brandy, and saw, in the midst of all this, Wing propped up against a bank of earth, his eyes closed, and over his yellow face a queer gray-white pallor. His left arm and shoulder were bare, save for the bandages which old Cazalette was applying—there were discarded ones on the turf which were soaked with blood.
Lorrimore darted forward with a hasty exclamation, and had Cazalette's job out of the old gentleman's hands and into his own before the rest of us could speak. He motioned the whole of us away except Cazalette and the woman, and the police inspector turned to Mr. Raven and his niece and to myself and Scarterfield.
“I think we were just about in time,” he said laconically. “I don't know what it all means, but I reckon the man was about done for. Bleeding to death, I should say. He's got a bullet through the thick part of his left arm, another at the point of the same shoulder, and a third just underneath it. Mr. Cazalette says they're all flesh-wounds—but I don't know. I know the man's fainted twice since we got to him. And look here! Just before he fainted the last time he managed to fumble among his clothing with his right hand and he pulled something out and shoved it into my hand with a word or two. 'Give it Lorrimore,' he said in a very weak voice. 'Tell him I found it all out—was going to trap all of them—but they were too quick for me last night—all dead now.' Then he fainted again. And look at this!”
He drew out a piece of canvas, twisted up anyhow, and opening it before our wondering eyes, revealed a heap of magnificent pearls and a couple of wonderful rubies that shone in the sunlight like fire.
“That's what he gave me,” said the inspector. “What is it? What's it mean?”
“That's what Salter Quick was murdered for,” said I. “And it means that Lorrimore's man ran down the murderer.”
And without waiting for any comment from him, and leaving Scarterfield to explain matters, I went across the little garden to see how the honest Chinaman was faring.
IT WAS a strange yet a plain story that Wing told his master and a select few of us a day or two later, when Lorrimore had patched him up. To anybody of a humdrum life—such as mine had always been until these events—it was, indeed, a stirring story. The queer thing, however—at any rate, queer to me—was that the narrator, as calm and suave as ever in his telling of it, did not seem to regard it as anything strange at all.
At our request and suggestion he had journeyed to London and plunged into those quarters of the East End wherein his fellow countrymen are to be found. His knowledge of the district of which Limehouse Causeway forms a center soon brought him in touch with Chuh Fen, who, as he quickly discovered, had remained in London during the last two or three years, assisting in the management of a Chinese eating-house. Close by, in a lodging kept by a compatriot. Wing put himself up and cultivated Chuh's acquaintance. Ere many days had passed another Chinaman came on the scene—this was the man whom Baxter had described as a Chinese gentleman. He represented himself to Wing and Chuh as a countryman of theirs who had been engaged in highly successful trading-operations in Europe, and was now, in company with two friends, an English man and a Frenchman, carrying out an other which involved a trip in a small but well-appointed yacht across the Atlantic; he wanted these countrymen of his own to make up a crew. An introduction to Baxter and the Frenchman followed, and Wing and Chuh were taken into confidence as regards the treasure hidden on the Northumberland coast. A share of the proceeds was promised them. They secured a third trustworthy Chinaman in the person of one Ah Wong, an associate of Chuh's, and the yawl, duly equipped, left the Thames and went northward. By this time, Wing had wormed himself completely into Chuh's confidence, and without even discovering whether Chuh was or was not the actual murderer of Salter Quick (he believed him to be and believed Wong to be the murderer of Noah, at Saltash), he had found out that Chuh was in possession of the pearls and rubies which—though Wing had no knowledge of that—Salter had exhibited to Baubenheimer. And as the yawl neared the scene of the next operations, Wing made his own plans. He had found out that its owners, after recovering the monastic treasures, were going to call at Leith, where they were to be met by the private yacht of some American, whose name Wing never heard.
So he made up his mind to escape from the yawl as soon as it got into Leith, to go straight to the police, and there give information as to the doings of the men he was with. But here his plans were frustrated. He was taken aback by the capture of Miss Raven and myself by Baxter and the Frenchman, and though he contrived to keep out of our way, he was greatly concerned lest we should see him and conclude that he had joined the gang. But that very night a much more serious development materialized. The Chinese gentleman, arriving from London, and being met by the Frenchman at Berwick, had a scheme of his own, which, after he had attempted the drugging of his two principal associates, he unfolded to his fellow countrymen. This was to get rid of Baxter and the Frenchman and seize the yawl and its contents for themselves, sailing with it to some port in north Russia. Wing had no option but to profess agreement—his only proviso was that Miss Raven and myself should be cleared out of the yawl. This proposition was readily assented to, and Chuh was charged with the job of sending us ashore. But almost immediately afterward everything went wrong with the conspirators' plans. The drug which had been administered to Baxter and the Frenchman failed to act; Baxter, waking suddenly to find the Chinamen advancing on the cabin with only too evident murderous intent, opened fire on them, and the situation rapidly resolved itself into a free fight, in the course of which Wing barricaded himself in the galley. Before long he saw that, of all the men on board, only himself and Baxter remained alive—he saw, too, that Baxter was already wounded. Baxter, evidently afraid of Wing, also barricaded himself in the cabin; for some hours the two secretly awaited each other's onslaught. At last Wing determined to make a bid for liberty, and cautiously worming his way to the cabin, he looked in and, as he thought, saw Baxter lying either dead or dying. He then hastily stripped Chuh of the belt in which he knew him to carry the precious stones, and taking to the boat which lay at the side of the yawl, pushed off, only to find Baxter after him with a revolver. In the exchange of shots which followed, Wing was hit twice, but a lucky reply of his laid Baxter dead. At that he got away, weak and faint, and managed to make the shore. The rest we knew.
SO THAT was all over, and it only remained now for the police to clear things up, for Wing to be thoroughly whitewashed in the matter of the shooting of Netherfield Baxter, and for everybody in the countryside to talk of the affair for nine days—and perhaps a little more. Mr. Cazalette talked a great deal; as for Miss Raven and myself, as actors in the last act of the drama which ended in such a tragedy, we talked little. But on the first occasion on which she and I were alone again, I made a confession.
“I don't want you—of all people—to get any mistaken impression about me,” I said. “So I'm going to tell you something. During the time you and I were on that yawl, I was in an absolute panic of fear.”
“You were?” she exclaimed. “Really frightened?”
“Quaking with fright!” I declared boldly. “Especially after you'd retired. I literally sweated with fear. There! Now it's out!”
She looked at me not at all unkindly.
“Um,” she said at last. “Then, all I have to say is that you concealed it admirably—when I was about, at any rate. And”—here she sank her voice to a pleasing whisper—“I'm sure that if you were frightened, it was entirely on my account. So——”
In that way we began a courtship which, proving highly satisfactory on both sides, is now about to come to an end—or a new beginning—in marriage.
THE END