Round the Fire Stories

by SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

  “What on earth could he want at that hour of night? McEvoy dressed hurriedly and rushed downstairs. His companion, with a set smile upon his lips, which was belied by the ghastly pallor of his face, was sitting in the dim light of a solitary candle, with a slip of paper in his hands.

  “‘Sorry to knock you up, Willy,’ said he. ‘No eavesdroppers, I suppose?’

  “McEvoy shook his head. He could not trust himself to speak.

  “‘Well, then, our little game is played out. This note was waiting for me at home. It is from Moore, and says that he will be down on Monday morning for an examination of the books. It leaves us in a tight place.’

  “‘Monday!’ gasped McEvoy; ‘today is Friday.’

  “‘Saturday, my son, and 3 a.m. We have not much time to turn round in.’

  “‘We are lost!’ screamed McEvoy.

  “‘We soon will be, if you make such an infernal row,’ said Jelland harshly. ‘Now do what I tell you, Willy, and we’ll pull through yet.’

  “‘I will do anything—anything.’

  “‘That’s better. Where’s your whisky? It’s a beastly time of the day to have to get your back stiff, but there must be no softness with us, or we are gone. First of all, I think there is something due to our relations, don’t you?’

  “McEvoy stared.

  “‘We must stand or fall together, you know. Now I, for one, don’t intend to set my foot inside a felon’s dock under any circumstances. D’ye see? I’m ready to swear to that. Are you?’

  “‘What d’you mean?’ asked McEvoy, shrinking back.

  “‘Why, man, we all have to die, and it’s only the pressing of a trigger. I swear that I shall never be taken alive. Will you? If you don’t I leave you to your fate.’

  “‘All right. I’ll do whatever you think best.’

  “‘You swear it?’

  “‘Yes.’

  “‘Well, mind, you must be as good as your word. Now we have two clear days to get off in. The yawl Matilda is on sale, and she has all her fixings and plenty of tinned stuff aboard. We’ll buy the lot tomorrow morning, and whatever we want, and get away in her. But, first, we’ll clear all that is left in the office. There are 5,000 sovereigns in the safe. After dark we’ll get them aboard the yawl, and take our chance of reaching California. There’s no use hesitating, my son, for we have no ghost of a look-in in any other direction. It’s that or nothing.’

  “‘I’ll do what you advise.’

  “‘All right; and mind you get a bright face on you tomorrow, for if Moore gets the tip and comes before Monday, then—’ He tapped the side pocket of his coat and looked across at his partner with eyes that were full of a sinister meaning.

  “All went well with their plans next day. The Matilda was bought without difficulty; and, though she was a tiny craft for so long a voyage, had she been larger two men could not have hoped to manage her. She was stocked with water during the day, and after dark the two clerks brought down the money from the office and stowed it in the hold. Before midnight they had collected all their own possessions without exciting suspicion, and at two in the morning they left their moorings and stole quietly out from among the shipping. They were seen, of course, and were set down as keen yachtsmen who were on for a good long Sunday cruise; but there was no one who dreamed that that cruise would only end either on the American coast or at the bottom of the North Pacific Ocean. Straining and hauling, they got their mainsail up and set their foresail and jib. There was a slight breeze from the southeast, and the little craft went dipping along upon her way. Seven miles from land, however, the wind fell away and they lay becalmed, rising and falling on the long swell of a glassy sea. All Sunday they did not make a mile, and in the evening Yokohama still lay along the horizon.

  “On Monday morning down came Randolph Moore from Jeddo, and made straight for the offices. He had had the tip from someone that his clerks had been spreading themselves a bit, and that had made him come down out of his usual routine; but when he reached his place and found the three juniors waiting in the street with their hands in their pockets he knew that the matter was serious.

  “‘What’s this?’ he asked. He was a man of action, and a nasty chap to deal with when he had his topmasts lowered.

  “‘We can’t get in,’ said the clerks.

  “‘Where is Mr. Jelland?’

  “‘He has not come today’

  “‘And Mr. McEvoy?’

  “‘He has not come either.’

  “Randolph Moore looked serious. ‘We must have the door down,’ said he.

  “They don’t build houses very solid in that land of earthquakes, and in a brace of shakes they were all in the office. Of course the thing told its own story. The safe was open, the money gone, and the clerks fled. Their employer lost no time in talk.

  “‘Where were they seen last?’

  “‘On Saturday they bought the Matilda and started for a cruise.’

  “Saturday! The matter seemed hopeless if they had got two days’ start. But there was still the shadow of a chance. He rushed to the beach and swept the ocean with his glasses.

  “‘My God!’ he cried. ‘There’s the Matilda out yonder. I know her by the rake of her mast. I have my hand upon the villains after all!’

  “But there was a hitch even then. No boat had steam up, and the eager merchant had not patience to wait. Clouds were banking up along the haunch of the hills, and there was every sign of an approaching change of weather. A police boat was ready with ten armed men in her, and Randolph Moore himself took the tiller as she shot out in pursuit of the becalmed yawl.

  “Jelland and McEvoy, waiting wearily for the breeze which never came, saw the dark speck which sprang out from the shadow of the land and grew larger with every swish of the oars. As she drew nearer, they could see also that she was packed with men, and the gleam of weapons told what manner of men they were. Jelland stood leaning against the tiller, and he looked at the threatening sky, the limp sails, and the approaching boat.

  “‘It’s a case with us, Willy,’ said he. ‘By the Lord, we are two most unlucky devils, for there’s wind in that sky, and another hour would have brought it to us.’

  “McEvoy groaned.

  “‘There’s no good softening over it, my lad,’ said Jelland. ‘It’s the police boat right enough, and there’s old Moore driving them to row like hell. It’ll be a ten-dollar job for every man of them.’

  “Willy McEvoy crouched against the side with his knees on the deck. ‘My mother! my poor old mother!’ he sobbed.

  “‘She’ll never hear that you have been in the dock anyway,’ said Jelland. ‘My people never did much for me, but I will do that much for them. It’s no good, Mac. We can chuck our hands. God bless you, old man! Here’s the pistol!’

  “He cocked the revolver and held the butt towards the youngster. But the other shrunk away from it with little gasps and cries. Jelland glanced at the approaching boat. It was not more than a few hundred yards away.

  “‘There’s no time for nonsense,’ said he. ‘Damn it! man, what’s the use of flinching. You swore it!’

  “‘No, no, Jelland!’

  “‘Well, anyhow, I swore that neither of us should be taken. Will you do it?’

  “‘I can’t! I can’t!’

  “‘Then I will for you.’

  “The rowers in the boat saw him lean forwards, they heard two pistol shots, they saw him double himself across the tiller, and then, before the smoke had lifted, they found that they had something else to think of.

  “For at that instant the storm broke—one of those short sudden squalls which are common in these seas. The Matilda heeled over, her sails bellied out, she plunged her lee rail into a wave, and was off like a frightened deer. Jelland’s body had jammed the helm, and she kept a course right before the wind, and fluttered away over the rising sea like a blown piece of paper. The rowers worked frantically, but the yawl still drew ahead, and in five minutes it had plunged into the storm
wrack never to be seen again by mortal eye. The boat put back, and reached Yokohama with the water washing halfway up to the thwarts.

  “And that was how it came that the yawl Matilda, with a cargo of five thousand pounds and a crew of two dead young men, set sail across the Pacific Ocean. What the end of Jelland’s voyage may have been no man knows. He may have foundered in that gale, or he may have been picked up by some canny merchantman, who stuck to the bullion and kept his mouth shut, or he may still be cruising in that vast waste of waters, blown north to the Bering Sea, or south to the Malay Islands. It’s better to leave it unfinished than to spoil a true story by inventing a tag to it.”

  B. 24

  Itold my story when I was taken, and no one would listen to me. Then I told it again at the trial—the whole thing absolutely as it happened, without so much as a word added. I set it all out truly, so help me God, all that Lady Mannering said and did, and then all that I said and done, just as it occurred. And what did I get for it? “The prisoner put forward a rambling and inconsequential statement, incredible in its details and unsupported by any shred of corroborative evidence.” That was what one of the London papers said, and others let it pass as if I had made no defense at all. And yet, with my own eyes I saw Lord Mannering murdered, and I am as guiltless of it as any man on the jury that tried me.

  Now, sir, you are there to receive the petitions of prisoners. It all lies with you. All I ask is that you read it—just read it—and then that you make an inquiry or two about the private character of this Lady Mannering, if she still keeps the name that she had three years ago, when to my sorrow and ruin I came to meet her. You could use a private inquiry agent or a good lawyer, and you would soon learn enough to show you that my story is the true one. Think of the glory it would be to you to have all the papers saying that there would have been a shocking miscarriage of justice if it had not been for your perseverance and intelligence! That must be your reward, since I am a poor man and can offer you nothing. But if you don’t do it, may you never lie easy in your bed again! May no night pass that you are not haunted by the thought of the man who rots in jail because you have not done the duty which you are paid to do! But you will do it, sir, I know. Just make one or two inquiries, and you will soon find which way the wind blows. Remember, also, that the only person who profited by the crime was herself, since it changed her from an unhappy wife to a rich young widow. There’s the end of the string in your hand, and you only have to follow it up and see where it leads to.

  Mind you, sir, I make no complaint as far as the burglary goes. I don’t whine about what I have deserved, and so far I have had no more than I have deserved. Burglary it was, right enough, and my three years have gone to pay for it. It was shown at the trial that I had had a hand in the Merton Cross business, and did a year for that, so my story had the less attention on that account. A man with a previous conviction never gets a really fair trial. I own to the burglary, but when it comes to the murder which brought me a lifer—any judge but Sir James might have given me the gallows—then I tell you that I had nothing to do with it, and that I am an innocent man. And now I’ll take that night, the 13th of September, 1894, and I’ll give you just exactly what occurred, and may God’s hand strike me down if I go one inch over the truth.

  I had been at Bristol in the summer looking for work, and then I had a notion that I might get something at Portsmouth, for I was trained as a skilled mechanic, so I came tramping my way across the south of England, and doing odd jobs as I went. I was trying all I knew to keep off the cross, for I had done a year in Exeter Jail, and I had had enough of visiting Queen Victoria. But it’s cruel hard to get work when once the black mark is against your name, and it was all I could do to keep soul and body together. At last, after ten days of woodcutting and stone-breaking on starvation pay, I found myself near Salisbury with a couple of shillings in my pocket, and my boots and my patience clean wore out. There’s an ale house called “The Willing Mind,” which stands on the road between Blandford and Salisbury, and it was there that night I engaged a bed. I was sitting alone in the taproom just about closing time, when the innkeeper—Allen his name was—came beside me and began yarning about the neighbors. He was a man that liked to talk and to have someone to listen to his talk, so I sat there smoking and drinking a mug of ale which he had stood me; and I took no great interest in what he said until he began to talk (as the devil would have it) about the riches of Mannering Hall.

  “Meaning the large house on the right before I came to the village?” said I. “The one that stands in its own park?”

  “Exactly,” said he—and I am giving all our talk so that you may know that I am telling you the truth and hiding nothing. “The long white house with the pillars,” said he. “At the side of the Blandford Road.”

  Now I had looked at it as I passed, and it had crossed my mind, as such thoughts will, that it was a very easy house to get into with that great row of ground windows and glass doors. I had put the thought away from me, and now here was this landlord bringing it back with his talk about the riches within. I said nothing, but I listened, and as luck would have it, he would always come back to this one subject.

  “He was a miser young, so you can think what he is now in his age,” said he. “Well, he’s had some good out of his money.”

  “What good can he have had if he does not spend it?” said I.

  “Well, it bought him the prettiest wife in England, and that was some good that he got out of it. She thought she would have the spending of it, but she knows the difference now.”

  “Who was she then?” I asked, just for the sake of something to say.

  “She was nobody at all until the old Lord made her his Lady,” said he. “She came from up London way, and some said that she had been on the stage there, but nobody knew. The old Lord was away for a year, and when he came home he brought a young wife back with him, and there she has been ever since. Stephens, the butler, did tell me once that she was the light of the house when fust she came, but what with her husband’s mean and aggravatin’ way, and what with her loneliness—for he hates to see a visitor within his doors; and what with his bitter words—for he has a tongue like a hornet’s sting, her life all went out of her, and she became a white, silent creature, moping about the country lanes. Some say that she loved another man, and that it was just the riches of the old Lord which tempted her to be false to her lover, and that now she is eating her heart out because she has lost the one without being any nearer to the other, for she might be the poorest woman in the parish for all the money that she has the handling of.”

  Well, sir, you can imagine that it did not interest me very much to hear about the quarrels between a Lord and a Lady. What did it matter to me if she hated the sound of his voice, or if he put every indignity upon her in the hope of breaking her spirit, and spoke to her as he would never have dared to speak to one of his servants? The landlord told me of these things, and of many more like them, but they passed out of my mind, for they were no concern of mine. But what I did want to hear was the form in which Lord Mannering kept his riches. Title deeds and stock certificates are but paper, and more danger than profit to the man who takes them. But metal and stones are worth a risk. And then, as if he were answering my very thoughts, the landlord told me of Lord Mannering’s great collection of gold medals, that it was the most valuable in the world, and that it was reckoned that if they were put into a sack the strongest man in the parish would not be able to raise them. Then his wife called him, and he and I went to our beds.

  I am not arguing to make out a case for myself, but I beg you, sir, to bear all the facts in your mind, and to ask yourself whether a man could be more sorely tempted than I was. I make bold to say that there are few who could have held out against it. There I lay on my bed that night, a desperate man without hope or work, and with my last shilling in my pocket. I had tried to be honest, and honest folk had turned their backs upon me. They taunted me for theft; and yet they pushed m
e towards it. I was caught in the stream and could not get out. And then it was such a chance: the great house all lined with windows, the golden medals which could so easily be melted down. It was like putting a loaf before a starving man and expecting him not to eat it. I fought against it for a time, but it was no use. At last I sat up on the side of my bed, and I swore that that night I should either be a rich man and able to give up crime for ever, or that the irons should be on my wrists once more. Then I slipped on my clothes, and, having put a shilling on the table—for the landlord had treated me well, and I did not wish to cheat him—I passed out through the window into the garden of the inn.

  There was a high wall round this garden, and I had a job to get over it, but once on the other side it was all plain sailing. I did not meet a soul upon the road, and the iron gate of the avenue was open. No one was moving at the lodge. The moon was shining, and I could see the great house glimmering white through an archway of trees. I walked up it for a quarter of a mile or so, until I was at the edge of the drive, where it ended in a broad, graveled space before the main door. There I stood in the shadow and looked at the long building, with a full moon shining in every window and silvering the high stone front. I crouched there for some time, and I wondered where I should find the easiest entrance. The corner window of the side seemed to be the one which was least overlooked, and a screen of ivy hung heavily over it. My best chance was evidently there. I worked my way under the trees to the back of the house, and then crept along in the black shadow of the building. A dog barked and rattled his chain, but I stood waiting until he was quiet, and then I stole on once more until I came to the window which I had chosen.

  It is astonishing how careless they are in the country, in places far removed from large towns, where the thought of burglars never enters their heads. I call it setting temptation in a poor man’s way when he puts his hand, meaning no harm, upon a door, and finds it swing open before him. In this case it was not so bad as that, but the window was merely fastened with the ordinary catch, which I opened with a push from the blade of my knife. I pulled up the window as quickly as possible, and then I thrust the knife through the slit in the shutter and pried it open. They were folding shutters, and I shoved them before me and walked into the room.