CHAPTER XIX
BLACK MEMORIES
There was so much of real importance, not only to us in our present situation, but to the trend of things in general, in Miss Raven's confident suggestion that her words immediately plunged me into a thoughtful silence. Rising from my chair at the tea-table, I walked across to the landward side of the yawl, and stood there, reflecting. But it needed little reflection to convince me that what my fellow-prisoner had just suggested was well within the bounds of possibility. I recalled all that we knew of the recent movements of Dr. Lorrimore's Chinese servant. Wing had gone to London, on the pretext of finding out something about that other problematical Chinese, Lo Chuh Fen. Since his departure, Lorrimore had had no tidings of him and his doings—in Lorrimore's opinion, he might be still in London, or he might have gone to Liverpool, or to Cardiff, to any port where his fellow-countrymen are to be found in England. Now it was well within probabilities that Wing, being in Limehouse or Poplar, and in touch with Chinese sailor-men, should, with others, have taken service with Baxter and his accomplice, and, at that very moment there, in that sheltered cove on the Northumbrian coast, be within a few yards of Miss Raven and myself, separated from us by a certain amount of deck-planking and a few bulkheads. But why? If he was there, in that yawl, in what capacity—real capacity—was he there? Ostensibly, as cook, no doubt—but that, I felt sure, would be a mere blind. Put plainly, if he was there, what game was that bland, suave, obsequious, soft-tongued Chinaman playing? Was this his way of finding out what all of us wanted to know? If it came to it, if there was occasion—such occasion as I dared not contemplate—could Miss Raven and myself count on Wing as a friend, or should we find him an adherent of the strange and curious gang, which, if the truth was to be faced, literally held not only our liberty, but our lives at its disposal? For we were in a tight place—of that there was no doubt. Up to that moment I was not unfavourably impressed by Netherfield Baxter, and, whether against my better judgment or not, I was rather more than inclined to believe him innocent of actual share or complicity in the murders of Noah and Salter Quick. But I could see that he was a queer mortal; odd, even to eccentricity; vain, candid and frank because of his very vanity; given, I thought, to talking a good deal about himself and his doings; probably a megalomaniac. He might treat us well so long as things went well with him, but supposing any situation to arise in which our presence, nay, our very existence, became a danger to him and his plans—what then? He had a laughing lip and a twinkle of sardonic humour in his eye, but I fancied that the lip could settle into ruthless resolve if need be and the eye become more stony than would be pleasant. And—we were at his mercy; the mercy of a man whose accomplice might be of a worse kidney than himself, and whose satellites were yellow-skinned slant-eyed Easterns, pirates to a man, and willing enough to slit a throat at the faintest sign from a master.
As I stood there, leaning against the side, gloomily staring at the shore, which was so near, and yet so impossible of access, I reviewed a point which was of more importance to me than may be imagined—the point of our geographical situation. I have already said that the yawl lay at anchor in a sheltered cove. The position of that cove was peculiar. It was entered from seawards by an extremely narrow inlet, across the mouth of which stretched a bar—I could realize that much by watching the breakers rolling over it; it was plain to me, a landsman, that even a small vessel could only get in or out of the cove at high water. But once across the bar, and within the narrow entry, any vessel coming in from the open sea would find itself in a natural harbour of great advantages; the cove ran inland for a good mile and was quite another mile in width; its waters were deep, rising some fifteen to twenty feet over a clear, sandy bottom, and on all sides, right down to the bar at its entrance, it was sheltered by high cliffs, covered from the tops of their headlands to the thin, pebbly stretches of shore at their feet by thick wood, mostly oak and beech. That the cove was known to the folk of that neighbourhood it was impossible to doubt, but I felt sure that any strange craft passing along the sea in front would never suspect its existence, so carefully had Nature concealed the entrance on the landward side of the bar. And there were no signs within the cove itself that any of the shore folk ever used it. There was not a vestige of a human dwelling-place to be discovered anywhere along its thickly-wooded banks; no boat lay on its white beach; no fishing-net was stretched out there to dry in the sun and wind; the entire stretch was desolate. And I knew that an equal desolation lay all over the land immediately behind the cove and its sheltering woods. That was about the loneliest part of a lonely coast—by that time I had become well acquainted with it. For some miles, north and south of that exact spot, there were no coast villages—there was nothing, save an isolated farmstead, set in deep ravines at wide distances. The only link with busier things lay in the railway—that, as I also knew, lay about two or two-and-a-half miles inland; as far as I could recollect the map which lay in my pocket, but which I did not dare to pull out, there was a small wayside station on this line, immediately behind the woods through which Miss Raven and I had unthinkingly wandered to our fate; from it, doubtless, the Frenchman, Baxter's accomplice, had taken train for Berwick, some twenty miles northward. Everything considered, Miss Raven and I were as securely trapped and as much at our captor's mercy as if we had been immured in a twentieth-century Bastille.
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. I gave her a look which was intended to suggest caution, but I spoke in a purposely affected tone of carelessness.
"I shouldn't wonder if you are right in your suggestion," I said. "In that case, I think we should have a friend on board in case we need one."
"But you don't anticipate any need?" she asked quickly.
"I don't," said I. "So don't think I do."
"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. "Our host, or jailor, or whatever you like to call him, is a queer chap—he'll probably make us give him our word of honour that we'll keep close tongues."
"He could have done that without bringing us here," she remarked.
"Ah, but he wanted to make sure!" said I. "He's taking no risks. However, I'm sure he means no harm to us. 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 anxiously to talk with us—he behaved like a man who for a long time had small opportunity of conversation with the people he would like to converse with, and he kept us both talking as the afternoon faded into evening and the evening fell towards night. He was a good talker, too, and knew much of books and politics and of men, and could make shrewd remarks, tinged, it seemed to me, with a little cynicism that was more good-humoured than bitter. The time passed rapidly in this fashion; supper-time arrived; the meal, as good and substantial as any dinner, was served in the little saloon-like cabin by the soft-footed Chinaman who, other than Baxter, was the only living soul we had seen since the Frenchman went away in the boat; all through it Baxter kept up his ready flow of talk while punctiliously observing his duties as host. Until then, the topics had been of a general nature, such as one might have heard dealt with at any gentleman's table, but when supper was over and the Chinaman had left us alone, he turned on us with a queer, inquisitive smile.
"You think me a strange fellow," he said. "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.
"Aye—and done some!" he answered, with a laugh that had more of harshness in it than was usual with him. Then he glanced at me. "Mr. Middlebrook, there, from what he told me this afternoon, knows a bit about me and my affairs," he said. "But not much. Sufficient to whet your curiosity, eh, Middlebrook?"
"I confess I should like to know more," I replied. "I agree with Miss Raven—you must have seen a good deal of the queer side of life."
There was some fine old claret on the table between us; he pushed the bottle over to me, motioning me to refill my glass. For a moment he sat, a cigar in the corner of his lips, his hands in the armholes of his waistcoat, silently reflecting.
"What's really puzzling you this time," he said suddenly, "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 your 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 re-filled his own glass, took a mouthful of its contents, and glancing from one to the other of us, went on.
"You're both aware of my youthful career at Blyth?" he said. "You, Middlebrook, 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 didn't lose all my money on the turf, Middlebrook, I can assure you—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. There were other matters, too, which were handy—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.
"Right, Middlebrook, quite right—there they are!" he admitted with a laugh. "A grand collection, too—chalices, patens, reliquaries, all manner of splendid mediaeval craftsmanship—and certain other more modern things with them—all destined for the other side of the Atlantic—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, and with that note of dryness which one associates with certainty. "I'm a pretty cute hand at making and perfecting and carrying out a plan. Yes, sir, they'll be there, in good time—and 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. My notion at that time, I remember, was to get hold of some American millionaire collector who would give me facilities for taking up the stuff, to be handed over to him. But I didn't find one, and for the time being I had to keep quiet. 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 towards 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 sea-ports 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 quarters 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 Hong-Kong, 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 Hong-Kong, 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 paying adventure in the Malay Archipelago, a bit of illicit trading, and we had got to Hong-Kong on the look-out 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 the lot 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 Hong-Kong 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 as 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 whatever we wanted."
"Am I right in supposing the name of the Chinese cook to have been Lo Chuh Fen?" I asked.
"Quite right—Lo 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 Quick's plan, and the notion was that when we'd once got safely out of Hong-Kong, 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 Paul Jones or any other eighteenth-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 spilt to him, I don'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 landed us on a miserable island, to fend for ourselves. There we were, the five of us—a precious bad lot, to be sure—marooned!"