by John Buchan
“Then by God we’re all on the same side. No need for more talk. Action’s the word, for Cranmer’s on the road with an hour’s start. We must get horses and follow. There’ll be no beasts in the Overy stable — Cranmer would see to that. Wood Rising, curse it, is twenty miles off, so I cannot get my own. . . . Wait a minute. There’s the Cup and Cross not a mile off. John Cherrybook has the inn, an honest fellow that can breed a good greyhound. John will find us horses. Is there any man about the place to take a message?”
“I do not know,” the maid faltered. “I know no one on the estate. When I have been here before I have never left the house.”
“Then, Eben, you must go. You know the inn?”
Eben nodded. “Ay, the auld house aside the mill-dam?”
Sir Turnour scribbled something on one of his famous cartes-de-visite.
“Any conveyance he has got — curricle, gig, chaise, drag — any blessed thing so it be not a farm cart. Four horses if he can find them — if not, a pair — but they must have pace. John can put his hand on good blood. I’ve seen him win a race at the hunt meeting on a tit of his own breeding. There’s ten guineas in John’s pocket if he can fill the bill, beside a handsome price for the hire. Quick, man, not a moment’s delay, and if John makes difficulties, fetch him up here for me to handle. . . . What are you after, my lord?”
Harry Belses had been talking apart with Mollison and was now lighting two tall pewter candle-sticks which she had fetched.
“I am about to make an inquisition of these chambers. Cranmer did not come here merely to give his wife a chance of bidding farewell to her old home. He had some damnable purpose which I intend to unravel.”
Sir Turnour grunted. “I’m for forty winks, for God knows when I may get sleep again.” He made a bed out of a great leather divan and a couple of rugs, and flung himself down on it. Mr Dott did the same, and since the salt air had made him drowsy, was soon asleep. Unfortunately he snored, and did not desist till Sir Turnour stretched a long leg and kicked him in the ribs. After that for the better part of an hour there was peace.
It was broken by Eben’s return and the inrush of wind from the hall door. Sir Turnour, a seasoned campaigner, was in an instant on his feet.
“The landlord will dae his best,” Eben reported. “He sent his humble respects to your honour, and he’ll get the beasts and a curricle for them to run in, but ane o’ them is five mile off at a farm-toun, so it’ll be the back o’ midnight afore they’re ready. His word was that he’ll have breakfast at the Cup and Cross whenever we like to come, and that we can start if we’re willing on the chap o’ one. He kenned that Cranmer had been here, but nae mair, for it seems the body gangs and comes like a warlock, and though he’s the mistress’s tenant, he has little wark wi’ the maister.”
Sir Turnour consulted a massive watch. “Then I’ve time for another snooze,” he said. But at that moment candlelight wavered on the staircase, and Belses and the maid appeared.
Harry’s face was white in spite of the weathering of the sea winds. He had made some sort of toilet, and his fair hair was brushed neatly back from his brows. Again Sir Turnour was struck by his unpleasing resemblance to that young Lord Byron whom he did not love.
“Will you come with me, sir?” Harry said. “I have found something of moment, something which explains much.”
Sir Turnour rose grumblingly to follow and so did Mr Dott, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Eben, after a word with the maid, joined them.
On the first floor was a pilastered upper hall, out of which opened a drawing-room and a library, and what seemed once to have been a boudoir. Much of the furniture was under dust-sheets, and the great chandeliers were in linen bags, but in the library certain articles had been cleared. In particular the dust had been partly rubbed from a low book-case intended for folios, which had also a long drawer. There was a big writing-table where the same thing had happened, and in the boudoir a little escritoire showed signs of recent use.
“Mollison has the keys,” said Harry, “for these pieces of furniture are for her mistress’s special use. Look at the contents, Sir Turnour.”
In the drawer of the book-case were plans and maps, which at first sight seemed innocent enough. But a second glance dispelled the impression. There was a chart of a patch of Suffolk shore with soundings marked, and certain routes traced and annotated. These annotations were in the French tongue, and seemed to be for the guidance of a hostile landing, for there were notes on the strength of the coast defences. The thing may have been a clever invention, but, to anyone scrutinising it, it had the look of the work of an enemy intelligence department, prepared with the assistance of an ally. There were other papers of the same kind, including an elaborate list of east coast garrisons, with details of proposed troop movements.
“You see the purpose, sir?” said Harry. “This house is searched, and the first thing to be discovered is this damning evidence. But that is only the beginning. Look at this,” and he opened two drawers in the library table. In these lay piles of neatly docketed correspondence, some of it in a cypher, some in French in a variety of hands, but also various copies in English of letters to gentlemen of strange names mainly derived from Latin literature.
“I have skimmed some of these, and find them mostly unintelligible. But that is because I have not the knowledge which would give the key. Others, the agents of his Majesty’s Government, will possess that knowledge. I have no doubt about their meaning. They are the papers of a secret organisation which has now served its purpose and has been disbanded. Mark you, many of them are in Mrs Cranmer’s hand, which I know well. To any searcher she will seem to have been the arch-intriguer. There is no line written by Cranmer, and I’ll be sworn that there is no mention of him.
“But there is worse to come,” said Harry, as he led the way into the boudoir. The paint on the panels was dim with age and dirt, the curtains were shabby, and the silk of the embroidered sofa was tarnished, but the gilt mouldings on the escritoire was bright, as if this were the only cared-for object in an uncared-for house.
“There is little in the drawers,” he said, “but there is, of course, a secret receptacle which was not hard to find, and which any searcher would look for. Mollison had no key to it, so I broke it open.” He plunged his hand into an inner crevice.
“Look at these. Not docketed and tied with silk, but hurriedly stuffed away as if in haste. They are a queer motley. Here are ill-written and foully ill-spelt scrawls from some of Cranmer’s London vermin. No names, of course, but the Secretary of State could doubtless throw light on the correspondents. . . . And here is a letter from Mr Perceval dated a week ago, making an assignation for to-morrow night.”
“To-morrow night!” Sir Turnour exclaimed. “Gad, we have run it fine. In a few minutes it will be this night. Where in the devil’s name is John with his horses? Let us have done with this trifling and get us down to the inn.”
“It is no trifling,” said Harry. “I show these things to you to convince you of the reality of the lady’s danger — and of her innocence. That last letter of the Prime Minister is enough to hang her. . . . And mark this other bundle. They are Cranmer’s letters, the bungling schoolboy epistles of an oafish Northumbrian squire from whose mind treason is as remote as philosophy. Written to his wife, and treasured by her loving hands! They are sufficient to acquit Cranmer — and to destroy his lady. I take off my hat to his cunning. Are you a convert, Sir Turnour?”
“I am convinced of the man Cranmer’s devilry.”
“And of the lady’s innocence? Would any human being with a guilty heart thus build up a damning accusation?”
“I am convinced of her peril. About her innocence I do not know. She may be a rotten-hearted baggage, albeit a fool.”
“Yet she told the truth to Nanty Lammas on the hill. This is precisely what she feared. Had she been in any plot would she have thus exposed it?”
Sir Turnour’s patience was exhausted. “A plague on her and all her wo
rks,” he cried. “This folly is delaying us. It is Cranmer we seek, and whether his wife be guilty or guiltless is no concern of mine. Let’s to the Cross and Cup, a speedy breakfast, and the road!”
He strode from the room, but at the top of the staircase came to a sudden halt. There was an alcove which may once have held a statue. In that alcove there was a wicker basket, and in that basket there was a dog.
He was a small black cocker spaniel, and his wet nozzle and flapping ears were raised just over the rim of the basket. Sir Turnour stood over him.
“Now I wonder where you come from?” he said, and stooped down to scratch his head. The spaniel heaved his shoulders, and made as if to rise, thought better of it, and reclined over the rim, lifting his melting eyes to Sir Turnour. He knew with the certainty of all wise dogs that here was a friend.
Mollison hastened to explain.
“It’s Benjamin, sir — I beg pardon — my lord. Benjamin is my mistress’s dog. She thinks the world of him, but he ain’t allowed to go north in case he should be killed by them wild hounds at Hungrygrain. He has hurt his leg, poor little dear, and my lady was nursing him and crying over him. She tied the leg up all nice and comfortable, and she gave me instructions about doctoring him, and money to pay for his bits of meat. Last word she says was, ‘Mollison!’ she says, ‘be kind to Benjamin, and see that whatever happens he has a home.’” At the recollection the woman’s voice trailed off into tears.
Sir Turnour continued to gaze at the dog, and as he gazed his mind suffered a violent dislocation. He was slightly ashamed, though he did not realise it, of his speech in the boudoir. His dislike of Cranmer seemed to make it imperative to include the lady in his disfavour. Also his pride forbade him to renounce an opinion which had been the cause of his still unredressed grievance against Harry Belses. But he was an honest man, and he was beginning to feel that his harshness could not be wholly justified by facts. Also he was a lover of all dogs, and the spectacle of this little beast, the last thought of his mistress as she went out into darkness and danger, suddenly melted his heart. He stooped again and patted the black head, and then turned to the others with a very red face.
“Belses,” he cried, “I’m an oaf, a lout, a cur, a curmudgeon. Don’t contradict me. I make you a present of these confessions to use as you please. I’ve been talking like a common blackguard. Damme, she must be a good woman, and I defy any man to deny it. A woman with her own neck in peril who would think about her dog is a fine woman, a great woman. Damme, she’s a saint.”
He stooped, poked in the basket, and felt the bandaged leg. The spaniel got to his feet and lifted the wounded paw.
“A deuced workmanlike job, too! Feeling pretty bobbish, little dog? Not much the matter, says you. Good job, for by God you’re coming with us. You’ll see your mistress in twenty-four hours, or my name’s not Turnour Wyse. I’ll wring Cranmer’s neck for my own sake, but first of all I’ll wring his nose for the sake of his lady. March,” he cried, picking up the dog in his arms.
Then a thought struck him.
“Woman, have the goodness to kindle a fire,” he told Mollison. “Belses, get that stuff out of those cursed drawers. We have five minutes to make a bonfire of it.”
Harry protested. “Let us take the papers with us. There is evidence which may be useful” — but he was cut short.
“Burn every dangerous paper — that was my father’s rule, and I mean to follow it. They are safer in charcoal than in the hands of meddlesome lawyers. Won’t Cranmer be mad when he hears of it?”
Like a tornado Sir Turnour swept them downstairs and on the hall hearth superintended the burning of an armful of documents. Like a tornado he swept them out of the house. “You stay here with a quiet mind,” he told Mollison. “You’ll have your mistress back to you within the week, and I’ll be shot if you ever clap eyes again on your master. Benjamin is my particular charge, and I’m a good hand with dogs.” Like a tornado he stormed across the park at the head of his little party, saying no word to them, but speaking much to himself. The part of champion of distressed beauty was new to Sir Turnour, but he would not fail in it for lack of zeal. The fury of his purpose was like an equinoctial gale.
John Cherrybook was a little man of forty, with the sallow skin of the marsh-men, and that indescribable rakishness of gait, that wise cock of the head, and that parsimony of speech which marks all those whose work is with horses. He knew Sir Turnour as a famous figure in the shire, and he had laboured to do his bidding. Horses he had got, a pair not over well matched, one a bay four-year-old with obvious good blood in him, the other a big rangy chestnut which looked more like a ‘chaser than a roadster. They were waiting in an ostler’s charge, and at the inn door stood an odd conveyance, a kind of rustic curricle seated for two, with immense red wheels and a pole which might have belonged to a stage-wagon. Indeed, the whole concern looked like a coach which had somehow lost about three-quarters of its body on the road.
“Best I could do, your honour,” said John. “The quads is all right, barrin’ that the bay is blind o’ the left eye, and the chestnut a bit weak in the off fore. Bad firing’s done that. You’ll find they run nicely together, and if it’s pace you wants you won’t get a faster rig in Norfolk.”
Sir Turnour examined the horses with a critical eye.
“A devilish bad match,” he said. “It looks to me as if their paces would be like a peal of bells. And where in God’s name did you find that Noah’s Ark?”
“‘Twas Mr Walcot had her built — him we called Mad Jack Walcot, wot broke his neck a year come Martinmas. I reckon ‘twas the fastest turn-out in Jack’s hands between here and Norwich.”
“About as much balance as a hay-wain,” Sir Turnour said sourly.
“Maybe so, your honour,” John replied cheerfully. “But if you’re for the south your honour knows that the roads is easy going, and on good roads them ‘osses will make as light work of that curricle as if they was yoked to a baby-cart. Speed, you’ll mind, was your honour’s word.”
“So be it. Now for breakfast.”
The landlord ushered them indoors. “I’ve lit a fire in the blue room, and there’s a tasty bit of mutton from the saltings. Follow me, gentlemen, and mind the step down!”
Sir Turnour was a stern commander. In a quarter of an hour he had bustled them through the meal, to the disgust of Mr Dott. “Damn it, sir,” he told him, “if you are still hungry, take a hunch of bread in your pouch.” Then he gave his orders. “My lord and I will take the curricle. And the spaniel — I won’t be separated from the dog. You two must follow as you can. I’m for King’s Lynn. If Cranmer is bound for the Midlands he must pass through it.”
Eben looked out of the window and appeared to be making a calculation. “In anither half-hour we’ll get the ebb. Me and Mr Dott, if a’ gangs right, will be at Lynn as soon as yoursel’. The wind’s better than weel. If ye’re there afore us, wait on us, and if we’re first we’ll wait on you.”
“What’s the sense of that?” Sir Turnour demanded. “We’re chasing Cranmer and dare not lose a moment.”
“But how will ye chase him, sir? By speirin’ along the road if such or such a party has passed that way. That’ll dae fine as far as Lynn, for up to Lynn there’s but the one road for him to take. But ayont Lynn he has the wind o’ ye, and has the choice o’ a dozen ways. We dinna ken where the Merry Mouth inn may be, but he kens, and he’ll gang straight to it like a solan goose fleein’ hame to the Bass. It’s a slow job speirin’ for a man that kens his ain purpose.”
“And that’s God’s truth. But how will it help matters to forgather with you at Lynn? You’re as much in the dark about the Merry Mouth as I am.”
“I’m in the dark, but maybe Bob Muschat’s no. Bob and the Professor has come by anither road, and it’s possible — I’ll no say mair — that they’ve found the whereabouts o’ the Merry Mouth. If they havena’, weel, the Almighty’s no kind to us. If they have, Bob will try to get word to us. He kens we’re a
t Overy, and he’ll say to himsel’, ‘Eben will be lookin’ for me, and there’s but the one place for a tryst, and that’s Lynn. Eben will come by sea, the wind and tide bein’ what they are’ — ye’ll no fickle Bob wi’ wind and tide. ‘Eben,’ he’ll say, ‘will mak a plan wi’ Sir Turnour, for it wad be daft-like to part company, and someway or ither I’ll find the hale clanjamphry at Lynn. So, kennin’ what I ken, Lynn’s the port to steer for.’ Ye maunna pass Lynn, sir, till ye’ve seen huz and Bob.”
“Ye seem mighty sure of your friend’s habits of thought.”
“Aye. We o’ the Free Fishers ken each ither’s minds, or we wad be as feeble a folk as the coneys.”
Sir Turnour burst into a laugh, which made the spaniel by his side shiver delicately.
“You’re talking horse sense, and I’ll do as you say. But by God I believe you’ve another reason. You and that pirate Dott are determined to be in at the finish.”
A slow smile flickered over Eben’s iron face. “I wadna say,” he admitted, “but that my thoughts were workin’ that road.”
So while Sir Turnour and Harry Belses, with a little black dog at their feet, were bestowing themselves in the curricle, Eben and Mr Dott were stumbling over a dark mile of saltings to the channel, where the Merry Mouth was beginning to strain at her moorings with the turn of the tide.
CHAPTER XVII. Tells of a Green Lamp and a Cobwebbed Room
Nanty came to himself in a darkness which smelled foul and oppressive. It was a long time before he had any clear consciousness, for his head throbbed maddeningly, there was a band of hot fire above his brows, and he had fit upon fit of retching nausea. And when the physical misery subsided a little, he could not get his brain to work. His one active sense was smell, and he puzzled hopelessly over the rank odour. It seemed to him like a tan-pit, and he knew only one tan-pit, that beside the harbour at Dysart. He struggled to think how he had got there, and the effort brought back his sickness, so that he could only lie still and moan. Slowly he dropped again into uneasy sleep.
