CHAPTER XIII
THE RESULT OF VAINGLORY
The room was empty—empty of human presence, anyway. I saw at the first glance that it was a shabby, faded place, in keeping with all that one could see of the house itself, from the outside. The matting on the floor was worn and in holes; the furniture was qualified for a second-hand shop; here and there the wall-paper hung in ribbons. There was a bar on one side, and some shelves behind it, but neither showed much evidence of trade: the stock of bottles on the shelves was negligible. Nevertheless, there was an aroma of stale beer and inferior spirits, mingled with the smell of rank tobacco, and a couple of recently-used glasses on the counter showed that somebody had been in the room not long before.
I went in and looked round more narrowly, intent on discovering any possible sign of Uncle Joseph Krevin’s temporary residence in this derelict hostelry. And before I had been across the threshold a moment I found one; an unmistakable one, too. There was a shabby writing-table in one of the windows, and on its ledge I saw a tobacco pipe which I knew to be Uncle Joseph’s property—I had seen him smoking it at our house. It was a pipe of peculiar shape, with a square instead of a rounded bowl, and it had a silver-perforated top to it. I picked it up—the bowl was faintly warm. I judged from that—putting two and two together in the approved detective fashion—that my precious kinsman was somewhere about. But as I laid the pipe back in its place I made a second discovery, and I saw at once that it was equally important with the first—Cherry, perhaps, might have considered it more important. There was a cheap, uncorked bottle of ink on the dusty writing table, and a much-corroded steel pen near it, and on a loose sheet of ancient blotting-paper, an envelope, addressed to some wine-and-spirit firm. It needed but a glance at it to assure me that the handwriting was identical with that which I had seen on the envelope found in Uncle Joseph’s lodgings in Calthorpe Street. There was no doubt about that!—I was as certain of it as if I had had the two envelopes before me, side by side.
I think it was at that particular point that I said farewell to common sense and calm judgment. What I ought to have done was to go quietly away and tell Cherry of my discoveries. But I was young and impulsive and anxious to distinguish myself—perhaps I wanted to show Pepita how very clever I was. I think I had a notion of bringing the whole thing to a dramatic climax there and then by my own unaided efforts. And instead of following Keziah’s oft-repeated advice to count twenty before deciding on any important step, I rushed on my fate, beginning the rush by going out again to the front of the inn and beckoning Pepita to come to me at the door. Pepita came, diffident, wide-eyed, wondering.
“What is it, Ben?” she demanded. “You look as if you’d found something!”
“I have!” said I, in a whisper intended to convey a world of meaning. “Something that’ll surprise you—and everybody. Look here!—just do as I tell you. There’s nobody about—come inside with me, and keep your ears and eyes open, and you’ll see what happens. Come on!”
She looked at the unpromising frontage of the place with evident disfavour.
“Doesn’t look very nice, Ben,” she objected. “If the people are as dirty as the house”
“Never mind!” said I. “You’ll be all right; I’ll see to that! And it’ll be better than a play! Follow me, now.”
I led her to the room which I had just left, and pointing her to the cleanest of the old chairs, knocked loudly on the counter of the bar. I knocked, still louder, three or four times, and got no answer. Then, just as I was thinking of exploring more of the house, a door at the back of the bar opened, and a man stood before us.
I took this man for the landlord, whose name, Charles Getch, I had already noticed on the signboard outside. He was not a nice-looking man. To begin with, there was something sinister about his face; to end with, he had a curious cast in his left eye. He was a big man, as big as Uncle Joseph, but more muscular; a man, I thought, of great strength. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, high above his elbow, and I noticed what powerful arms he possessed; it flashed across my mind that he had been, perhaps, a pugilist in his day. And there was nothing polite or welcoming about his manner; instead, he gave me a cold look and as coldly demanded what he could do for me.
“You can give me a bottle of Bass and another of lemonade, if you please,” I said. “I’ve knocked about a dozen times!”
“More or less—less, I think,” he answered, coolly. “I heard you, my lad!—but I was otherwise occupied just then.”
I saw that I should get no advantage in any exchange of words with this man, and it nettled me. And as soon as I had got my beer and I had given Pepita the lemonade, I let off my heavy artillery in what I hoped would be a crushing broadside.
“Mr. Krevin in?” I demanded, laying down half-a-crown. “Mr. Joseph Krevin?”
He gave me a quick, inquiring glance as he picked up the coin, and his reply came sharp as my question.
“Nobody of that name here, young fellow!” he answered. “Don’t know the name!”
He threw down my change, as if in defiance, and, turning away from me, searched for a clean glass and got himself a drink from a bottle which, I noticed, he kept apart from the other small stock. That done, he thrust his hands in his trousers pockets and, leaning against the door from which he had recently emerged, stared at me.
“I think Mr. Krevin is here,” said I. “In fact, I know he is! That’s his pipe, lying on the table, and I’ve just seen his pyjamas, sent from here to be washed at the cottage on the cliff. And if you want to know more, I’m his nephew, and I want to see him—particularly!”
The man’s face was changing, swiftly, all the time I was speaking. When I mentioned and pointed to the pipe he frowned; when I spoke of the pyjamas his eyes grew dark, as with sudden anger and vexation. But as soon as I mentioned my relationship his face cleared in a queer, quick, mysterious fashion, and his manner became almost bland and his tongue silky soft.
“Oh!—you mean the gentleman from London that’s doing a bit of fishing hereabouts?” he said. “Well, now, you might think it strange, but I’d never got his name—right, at any rate. Oh?—and you’re his nephew, eh? And what might your name be, now?”
“If he’s about, tell him that Mr. Heckitt would like to see him,” I replied, loftily. “He’ll understand.”
He muttered something about believing the gentleman might be in the garden, or fishing on the river bank at the back, and opening the door behind him, went off. I turned to Pepita.
“There, you see!” said I. “Nothing like insistence—and directness! And I shall adopt the same tone with Uncle Joseph, and ask him, straight out, what he’s doing here?”
But Pepita shook her head. Somehow, she seemed much less confident about things than I was.
“Ben!” she whispered, after a glance at the door through which the landlord had vanished. “Ben!—don’t you think it’s a very queer thing that your uncle should be here at all?”
I didn’t grasp her meaning, and looked an inquiry.
“Within a couple of miles of Middlebourne, where the police have been inquiring about his doings for some days?” she went on. “And you and Mr. Cherry looking for him, too! And this is a public-house, isn’t it? Men must go in and out of here, every day—and how is it nobody’s seen him?”
“Seems odd, certainly,” I agreed. “But, then, Middlebourne people don’t come this way; there’s nothing to cross the river for. And you heard the landlord say he didn’t know his name—properly, at any rate. And again—he may be hiding here.”
“If he is,” said Pepita, “then that man who’s just gone out knows about it, and is in some secret with him. Be careful, Ben—why not go outside?”
“Outside?” I asked. “Why outside?”
“So that we can run away if—well, if there’s any sign of bother, or anything of that sort,” she replied. “Supposing—supposing your uncle doesn’t want you to know he’s here, and is angry because you’ve come—eh?”
“I’m not afraid of his anger,” I declared. “I’ve got the law behind me, Pepita! You don’t know how powerful the law is! When a man’s backed by the law”
But before I could enlarge on this topic the landlord re-appeared. This time he came in by the door which led to the hall. He smiled at us—and I’m not sure that his smile was not worse than his scowl. “Come this way,” he said invitingly. “He’ll be with you in a minute—quite a surprise, he says, to have a call. If you and the young lady’ll follow me”
We followed him, innocently enough. I remember glancing through the open front door as we passed it, and seeing the bright sunlight lying broad-spread on the wharf outside, and shining on the dancing river and the sea beyond; it would have been well for us if we had damned Uncle Joseph heartily and left him and his host to their devices and turned and fled while we had the chance! I think Pepita had this in mind, but she owned a certain quality, wholly feminine, of passive acquiescence in male projects, and she followed obediently—as I did, too. And Getch went ahead … down a long, vault-like passage.
It was, as I think I have said, a big house; a real old-fashioned place that once upon a time, in the days when Wreddlesham was a port of importance, had doubtless done a great trade. We turned and twisted a good deal in following our guide, and if I had preserved a ha’porth of common sense I should have gathered an idea of danger from more than one thing. We passed many rooms, the doors of which were open. But we did not see a single soul about the place, nor did we hear the sound of a human voice; the big house was strangely silent and solitary. Once I had a notion of going no further, but the idea of confronting Uncle Joseph in dramatic fashion drove it away. And suddenly, at the end of a little passage which broke off from a bigger one, our guide threw open the door of a room and stood aside with a wave of his hand.
“Join you in a minute!” he said, fixing his queer eye on us. “Make yourselves at home!”
We walked into the room; he closed the door on us. I fancied—it may have been only fancy—that I heard him laugh as he did so. But there was no fancy about the next sound. It was that of a key turning in the lock—and it was followed the next instant by another—a bolt driven home into its staple.
And the next thing was a cry from Pepita—Pepita, trembling, and with one of her little brown hands clutching my arm.
“Ben! Oh, Ben! They’ve trapped us!”
That sobered me—as if a bucketful of ice-cold water had been thrown in my face. My grand notions of a dramatic climax went as a fluff of thistledown goes in the wind, and I suddenly saw what an arrant fool I was. Yet I put out a hand, mechanically, and tried the door—fast enough that door was, and ramshackle though a lot of the other fittings of the house seemed, it was solid as granite. I heard my heart beating as I turned to Pepita.
“Don’t be frightened!” I said, feeling myself more afraid than I had ever felt in my life. “It—it can’t last! He—they—perhaps they’ve locked us in while Uncle Joseph gets away, and in any case”
“What, Ben?” she asked nervously as I paused in sheer perplexity. “What?”
“They can’t lock us up here for ever!” I asserted. “We shall be missed”
“But nobody saw us come here!” she interrupted. “There wasn’t a soul about when we came on the wharf outside—don’t you remember?”
I remembered only too well. That outer bit of Wreddlesham was deserted enough, and I couldn’t call to mind that we had seen a living soul since leaving the washing woman on the cliff. And she had retreated into her cottage before we turned away, and probably had no idea as to the direction we had afterwards taken. But I wasn’t going to remind Pepita of that.
“It’s impossible!” said I, endeavouring to answer what I took to be her meaning. “People can’t be got rid of this way in these days! We shall soon be missed and looked for. Your father—and Keziah—and Cherry—and everybody”
“It might take them days and days to find us,” she said. “Oh, Ben, is there no way of getting out?”
I had been looking round as we talked. The room into which Getch had ushered us was a fair-sized one, fitted up as a bed-sitting-room; that is, it contained a suite of old-fashioned furniture and had in one corner a queer old four-poster bed. But it had only one door and one window; the door I knew to be fast. And the window was fast, too; screwed down, I found on examining it, and fitted on its outside with thin but sufficiently strong bars of iron. The panes of glass in the casements were small; if I smashed one to fragments the aperture was not big enough to creep through. And there was no way of attracting the attention of folk without, for immediately in front of the window, at about a yard-and-a-half’s distance, rose a high blank wall of grey stone, evidently the back of some barn, or stable, or warehouse.
“There’s nothing for it but to wait,” I said. “And it’s all my fault! I never dreamed of this, Pepita!”
“Oh, never mind, Ben!” she answered quickly. “It’s perhaps as you say—they’ve locked us up while they get away, and they’ll send somebody to let us out. But how long will that be?”
I knew no more than she did on that point. But my brain had been at work while I examined our surroundings, and I now knew a few things which I certainly hadn’t known when we came, light-hearted and unsuspecting, across the river to fall into this booby-trap. One was that Uncle Joseph Krevin was in hiding here, and had probably been here ever since the night he left our house. Another was that Getch, the landlord (concerning whom I had been cudgelling my brains, with the result that I remembered having heard of him as a newcomer in our parts, who had only recently taken over the licence of this house) was an associate of Uncle Joseph’s, and possibly a sharer in his misdeeds. And a third, which came to me in a sudden flash of illumination, was that the Shooting Star was the mysterious S.S. of the pencilled card which Uncle Joseph had left with the landlady of the Crab and Lobster at Fishampton to be handed to Sol Cousins. Joseph Krevin—Sol Cousins—Charles Getch—that, no doubt, was the triumvirate. And we were safe in the clutches of at any rate two of them. For I had no doubt whatever that Uncle Joseph was under the roof of this half-deserted inn.
The time dragged by, slowly. Because of the high wall in front of the window, the light was bad in that room. Neither Pepita nor I had a watch, and we did not know how the day was going. But judging by the time whereat we had entered the place, it must have been well past noon when we heard the bolt outside withdrawn, the key turned. The door was opened, just enough to admit a hard-faced, dour-looking woman who carried a tray: she had set it down on the table and was out of the room again before I could do anything: the door was re-locked and re-bolted.
“Anyway, we’re not to starve!” I said, trying to cheer up Pepita with a laugh. “Here’s enough to eat and drink, at all events!”
The tray was well laden with food, plain, but good. And being young and hungry we ate and drank and tried to fancy it was a picnic. But then came the afternoon, and more weary waiting. We talked and talked—until we could talk no longer. And it must have been very near the first approach of evening when the door opened again and the sinister looking landlord came in, followed immediately by the big bulk and smug countenance of Uncle Joseph Krevin.