CHAPTER XIV
UNDER EXAMINATION
My first instinct, immediately followed out, was to spring to my feet in an attitude of readiness; my second, acted on in the same movement, to plant myself in front of Pepita. And at that, Uncle Joseph Krevin, for reasons best known to himself, held up a fat, disapproving hand.
“I’m surprised at you, Nephew Benjamin, acting as if there was any likelihood of harm coming to a young lady while I’m present!” he said, in his most sanctimonious manner. “And sorry I am that the pretty miss should be put to any inconvenience, such as this here unfortunate state o’ things! But all that comes through you, Benjamin, a-poking of your nose into matters as doesn’t concern you!”
I was boiling with rage, all the fiercer because I had a shrewd idea that it was utterly ineffectual, and I maintained my ground, keeping Pepita in her chair behind me. And I dared to be as impudent as I could.
“That’s all rot!” I retorted. “And you look here!—both of you! If you don’t let us walk out of this house, and at once, you’ll both find yourselves in a hole! You’re liable to prosecution now, and”
But Uncle Joseph once more held up the fat hand.
“I wouldn’t excite myself, if I were you, Benjamin,” he interrupted. “Excitement’s bad for anybody, and I can’t allow it to myself, consequent upon my weak heart. And there’s no occasion for it, neither. All that me and Mr. Getch wants is a little private conversation, and it rests with you, Benjamin, to make it of a friendly natur’. Me and Mr. Getch don’t want to have no words with you, I’m sure—we’re kindly-natured men, I think, and disposed to treat them fair as treats us fair. And I should suggest, Benjamin, that you resume your seat, and prove yourself amenable to what we’ll call the present circumstances.”
“The present circumstances are that you’ve locked up Miss Marigold and myself against our wills and are liable to severe punishment for it!” said I. “And you’ll get it! Do you think we’ve no friends, and that they won’t track us? We shall have been looked for ever since noon, and”
Again a wave of the fat hand and the unctuous voice—Uncle Joseph was evidently cock-sure about the safety of his own situation. “I wouldn’t worrit myself about them things if I was you, Benjamin,” he said. “You’re as safe here—and the young lady—as we are from interruption. It’ll be a long time before any notion gets abroad that you’re where you are or anybody comes seeking you at the Shooting Star—and if they did, they’d go away no wiser than when they came! You wasn’t seen to come here by anybody, Nephew Benjamin, and ’cepting me and Mr. Getch and the lady what brought you your dinners, there’s nobody knows you are here. And I should advise you to make the best of the sittywation and be friendly. Friendly!—that’s all we want.”
“Are you going to let us out?” I demanded.
Uncle Joseph made no very immediate reply. Instead, he took a chair—the best and biggest chair in the room—and plumping himself into it settled his big figure comfortably, and, placing his hands on his pudgy knees, looked at us in turn. As for the landlord, he leaned against the door, his hands in his pockets, watching. It seemed a long time before Uncle Joseph spoke.
“That’s one o’ them questions as is difficult to answer, Benjamin,” he said at last, after chewing the proposition well over. “You’d ought to know as one intended for the law that these is questions to which it’s uncommon difficult to give a plain affirmytive or an ekally plain neggytive to. I can conceive the difficulty myself, for if I happened to be put in a witness-box”
“You’ll find yourself in something else than a witness-box, if you go on!” I broke in, rudely, and of set purpose. “There’s another spot—the dock! That’s more likely to be your destination—on the way to something still more impossible to escape from!”
I felt a tug at my coat, and Pepita spoke gently.
“Don’t, Ben!” she murmured. “There’s no need”
“Thank you, missie!” said Uncle Joseph. “There is no need, as you kindly say, and glad I am to find that Benjamin has somebody at his elbow to admonish him. It doesn’t become young men to show violence to their elders, especially when those elders is rellytives—brothers o’ their own mother, too!”
“Who’s showing violence!” I exclaimed. “If anybody’s had any violence shown to them, it’s us! You”
“Oh, no, Nephew Benjamin, I think not!” remonstrated Uncle Joseph. “No, Benjamin, I really couldn’t allow that suggestion in Mr. Getch’s presence. Mr. Getch, I’m sure, wouldn’t harm a canary bird, let alone a young lady and gentleman”
“Never laid a finger on ’em!” muttered Getch. “Not me!”
“And sent you in a handsome dinner, I’m told,” continued Uncle Joseph reproachfully. “Same as him and me had ourselves!—no, Benjamin, considering as how you come here like an enemy, a-poking your nose into matters which don’t concern you, I think you’ve been treated uncommon well—I do, indeed, and I’m sure missie there’ll agree with me.”
“You leave Miss Marigold alone!” said I. “What do you want?”
Uncle Joseph nodded and rubbed his hands. “That’s the first sensible remark we’ve heard you make, Benjamin!” he said. “That’s more like it! And as I said before, and now repeats, all we want is friendliness. Friendly answers, Benjamin, to friendly questions.”
“Such as—what?” I demanded.
“Well, such as—what did you come here for?” he asked. “Come, now!”
“To see you—as I told him,” I answered, pointing at Getch.
But Uncle Joseph’s head wagged.
“You ain’t so fond of me as all that, Nephew Benjamin!” he said, sorrowfully. “You and Keziah, you wasn’t pleased to see your blood-relation, I’m afraid. No, Benjamin, I think you didn’t come here for that!”
“Leastways, not altogether!” remarked Getch, with a sardonic laugh.
“Oh, no!”
“Not altogether, as Mr. Getch kindly remarks,” added Uncle Joseph. “I think you came to see if I was here, Benjamin, along of having rekernised garments of mine a-hanging on the cliff.”
“What if I did?” said I.
“Then I’m afraid, Benjamin, that, having ascertained I was here, you’d have straightway gone back to Middlebourne and told it that I was!” he retorted. “And that wouldn’t have suited my plans.”
“I daresay!” I exclaimed scornfully. “I can quite believe that! Well, perhaps I should. You know as well as I do that you’re under suspicion.”
“I could say a good deal about that, Benjamin; I could say much about that!” he remarked, solemnly. “Every man knows his own business best, and them that’s most suspected is oft-times most innocent. Now, of what am I suspected, Nephew Benjamin? I ask you?—friendly!”
I hesitated a while, watching him, and wondering. I felt sure by that time that no personal violence was likely to be offered to Pepita or myself, and that these two were probably detaining us in order to get information, or until such time as they could get safely away. And hastily summing up the situation, I decided on a policy of frankness—it seemed to me that it would pay, that if I put my cards on the table I should stand a good chance of seeing Uncle Joseph’s hand. And thereafter it would be a case of whose wits were sharpest. …
“You’re suspected of knowing something about the murder of that man Cousins, and of the theft of Miss Ellingham’s Chinese vase!” I said suddenly. “That’s what!”
He drew his hands back from his knee-caps, and began slowly rubbing them to and fro on his big legs.
“Dear, dear!” he said. “And supposing I did know what we’ll call something about them matters, Benjamin?”—he paused a second or two at that, regarding me with a sidelong glance—“Something, I say, not partiklerising how much—what right does that give the police to look for me?”
“They want to know what you know,” I answered.
“Uncommon kind of ’em, I’m sure!” he said, with a flash of humour. “Like them, too!—always a-wanting somebody else to do their work for ’em. They’ve no imagination, them police fellers, Benjamin!—as you’ll find out, long before you’re Lord Chancellor. Now you know, Benjamin, for all that you, or Veller, or that young Scotland Yard chap knows, I might be—eh?”
“What?” I asked, as he paused on a shy glance. “What?”
“I might be on the very same game that they’re on!” he said. “Come, now!”
I started, staring at him.
“You aren’t a detective!” I exclaimed.
He gave me an almost contemptuous look which developed into a certain hardening about eyes and lips.
“You don’t know what I am, my lad!” he retorted, in a different tone. “You know nothing! But now then”—and here he began to speak as if he were a bullying cross-examiner, and I a witness at his mercy—“You tell me! What’s that young Cherry found out about me? And let me tell you, my lad—for we are blood relations, when all’s said and done!—you be candid with me, and I’ll be candid with you, and don’t you forget that at a word from me Getch here can keep you and the young lady locked up, and at a word he can let you go!—eh?”
Here indeed was a sudden and surprising change! But I resolved to stick to my plan—I would let him see what a hole he was in.
“Cherry knows a lot!” I answered. “He knows, to begin with, that you and Cousins met at the Crab and Lobster, at Fishampton.”
“Oh!” he said. “It’s a lot to know, that! And—what else?”
“And that you left cards in our best bedroom with the name of Crippe, Marine Store Dealer of Old Gravel Lane, London, on them,” I continued. “He’s seen Crippe.”
“Wouldn’t get much out of Crippe, neither!” he muttered.
“But you left your brandy bottle in the cave at Fliman’s End,” I went on. “And there was a name on the label—Zetterquist & Vanderpant, St. George Street. Cherry saw them—and he got something there!”
“What?” he demanded.
“The address of your lodgings in Calthorpe Street,” I replied, watching him narrowly.
“Aye?” he said, almost unconcernedly. “And went there?”
“He went there—and he’d good luck there, too!” said I, scarcely able to keep a note of triumph out of my voice.
“Good luck, eh, Benjamin?” he said. “And what might it be, now?”
“He’d two finds,” I replied. “He found a copy of the Lady’s Circle amongst your papers, from which you’d torn out the page on which there’s a picture of Miss Ellingham’s Chinese vase. He also found an envelope lying on your table, the post-mark of which was Middlebourne.”
I was looking for him to exchange glances with Getch at that. But they didn’t exchange as much as the flutter of an eyelash: they seemed quite unconcerned. And Uncle Joseph’s voice became cooing again.
“Aye, Benjamin, aye!—and what more did this clever young man find out?” he asked.
“Nothing more then,” I answered.
“No?” he said. “Ah! Anything anywhere else—in this damning chain of evidence?”
I was puzzled by Uncle Joseph’s manner, by then. There was something behind all this at which I couldn’t guess. But I thought to floor him with my reserve blow.
“I daresay you’ve heard the name of Mr. Spelwyn—the famous collector?” I said, keeping an eye on him. “Spelwyn—expert in this China rare stuff.”
“It’s not unfamiliar, Benjamin,” he answered. “I’ve heard of a many things and people—in London and elsewhere.”
“Spelwyn says you called on him and offered him a Kang-he vase,” I said slowly, watching the effect. “He told Cherry so! You!”
I saw a curious smile break out about the corners of his lips. But it didn’t spread. He composed his features immediately, and his manner changed once again—to a combination of unctuousness and facetiousness.
“Well, now, that is news!” he said slowly. “Deary-me-to-day!—I thought we should get at something in time. So I called on Mr. Spelwyn and offered to sell him a—what might it be termed?—a Kang-he vase, did I? Oh!—ah! Well, Benjamin, one lives, and one learns! Just so!”
“Didn’t you?” I asked.
He made no answer. Instead, he rose from his chair and looked at Getch.
“I think, Mr. Getch, it’s time these young people had a dish of tea sent in to them,” he said. “And a trifle of that nice cake of your housekeeper’s. And meanwhile you and me can do a bit of reflecting on what we’ve heard. So”
He made for the door, and Getch’s hand went to it. I spoke—sharply.
“What about us?” I demanded. “You promised! And this girl”
“There’s no harm’ll come to the girl, Benjamin, and none to you,” said Uncle Joseph over his shoulder. “You shall have your teas—while me and Mr. Getch has ours and does a spell of meditating. Afterwards …”
They were out of the door and it was locked and bolted again within a minute, and there was nothing to do but wait upon their pleasure. And oddly enough, just then I remembered that once, when I was a little chap, Keziah had taken me to the Zoological Gardens, where I had been much impressed by the captive wild beasts, walking, walking, walking round the iron-barred cages out of which, poor devils! they couldn’t get—I felt as I think they must have felt, at that moment. And I think I swore—softly, but definitely.
“Yes,” remarked Pepita, “exactly!—but I say, Ben, it’s no use slanging that fat old scamp, you know! That’s not the way to get round him. Why don’t you have a go at him with his own weapons, Ben?”
“Because I’m not skilled in the use of ’em!” I retorted, sulkily. “I’m not up to slyness, and subterfuge, and lying, and all the rest of it! What I say is—damn him, and Getch too!”
“I thought you were going to be a lawyer, Ben,” she said. “You needn’t lie, and you needn’t be sly, but you can be—what do they call it?—diplomatic.”
“How are you to be diplomatic with that old devil?” I demanded. “He’s as full of cunning as the sea’s full of water!”
“All the same,” she went on, “if he comes again, I should try to get round him. For oh, Ben, suppose—suppose they kept us here all night, and all to-morrow”
“They—or he—promised that no harm should come to you, Pepita,” I said. “And I can’t believe they’ll keep us here much longer. I think they’ll let us go when it gets dark.”
“It’s getting dark now,” she remarked, glancing round the gloomy room. “Whatever shall we do if they leave us without light, Ben? I’d be frightened—frightened!”
But just then the hard-faced woman was admitted quickly, and as quickly let out again. She brought us tea—plenty of good things, too—and she left a lamp on the tray. We ate and drank, and Pepita, remarking that Uncle Joseph had some creditable points in him and would evidently not allow us to starve, ended up by expressing a pious hope that his and Getch’s meditations would prove favourable to us, and result in our speedy release.
“As I said—perhaps when it’s dark,” I remarked. “Under the darkness”
I glanced towards the window as I spoke, and my tongue was suddenly checked. There, peering in from outside through the glass of a lower pane, his face seen clearly in the light of the lamp, his eyes staring straight at me, was Miss Ellingham’s Hindu servant, Mandhu Khan!