What had attracted my eye at some distance was the unexpected sight of a mast-no, two of them-rising up from the water, bare of sails. As we came closer, I saw that there was even a bit more of the ship to be seen there: the forward gunwales were also barely visible, giving the impression that it was rising from the sea of its own power, like some great monster of the deep. Yet there were no depths where the masts rose up-only shallows. We stood together looking out at it. I, for one, felt something more than curiosity and something less than awe, and yet a bit of both.
“How do you suppose it got there?” Clarissa asked.
“It ran aground,” said I. ”Perhaps it was bad navigation that brought it to such an end. Or it may be that it was driven there by a storm.”
“It looks old. I wonder how long it’s been here.”
“I couldn’t say, though I’m sure there are those in town who could tell us with fair exactitude.” I studied its position in relation to the waterlines in the sand. ”At lowest tide it might be possible to walk out to it or wade there from the shore.”
“Possible for you perhaps,” said Clarissa, ”though not for me with these great skirts I must wear. Sometimes, Jeremy, I simply loathe being a girl.” She gave that a moment’s thought, and then added: ”And sometimes I quite enjoy it.”
Returning to Number 18 Middle Street, we were both surprised to learn that it was well into the afternoon-near three o’clock, as I recall. The meeting (to which I had not been invited) had concluded less than an hour before, and Sir John had asked if there might be a place, perhaps upstairs, where he might take a nap. He was accompanied to the small guest bedroom by Mr. Sarton. Sir John assured him that he was not ill, simply tired. This was heard from Mr. Sarton himself as he prepared to leave on an errand.
“He’s resting very well up there,” said he to me. ”Molly’s working at dinner, and Clarissa is doing what she can to help. How can we entertain you until dinner, Jeremy?”
“Oh, I need not be entertained, sir. So long as I have something to read, I’ll be well satisfied.”
“And have you something to read?”
“Well … as it happens, I don’t.”
“Come along then,” said he, and led me to that small room near the street door which served him as a study. He waved inside. ”Such as it is, my library is here. You are free to browse and read what you find. I must, however, ask you not to disturb the books or papers on the desk. They are part and parcel of something I’m writing-or hope to write.”
(Ah-hah, I had guessed correctly!)
“I shall certainly do that, sir. And I thank you, sir, ever so much.”
With that, he took his leave.
I entered the study and began searching through the nearest shelves. They were better-stocked than he had given out. I did not find what I hoped to-a copy of A Sentimental Journey, that I might resume where I had left off in the library of Sir Simon Grenville’s manor house. Nevertheless, I did find a thing or two to interest me in the shelves along the wall. There was a copy of Dean Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels; and tucked away in a far corner, I found a battered and dog-eared copy of a Latin grammar. It was so old and ill-used that I thought it must be Mr. Sarton’s first book of Latin.
I moved round the desk for a better look at the books in the case below the window. Yet as I did, my eyes fell upon a paper that had been left upon the desk. It was a map, rather crude but clearly drawn, of that stretch of sand beach which Clarissa and I had visited a good deal less than an hour before. There on the right was a rectangle, which was labeled ”shipwreck”; below it, the shoreline; and above and all around it, a shaded area indicating the size and shape of the sandbar which had trapped the ship. Significantly, the sandbar did not stretch the length of the beach: There was a channel marked, a clear passage from the open sea to the shoreline. Distances were noted in yards or feet.
This I found most interesting. I would wager that the map was the work of Dick Dickens. Had he brought it with him or drawn it on the spot? Well, little it mattered, for I daresay that Dickens knew the surrounding area so well that he could have drawn any number of such maps from memory. And if I were not mistaken, Mr. Sarton was now on his way to that sandy beach to study the lay of the land and the look of the sea. Or he might even, at that moment, be surveying the scene from the bluff above the beach, comparing it to the map whose image he now had fixed in his mind.
I could be sure now what was discussed at their meeting. More important, I even had a good idea where the operation which Sir John had mentioned to Mr. Perkins would take place. It occurred to me that after Mr. Sarton had returned, I might go for another look at the beach myself. With that in mind, I resolved not to weight myself further with books. I took the two I had chosen and stepped across the hall to the large parlor which served him as a courtroom; there I would hear the magistrate’s return; there I could read without fear of interruption by Clarissa. I browsed through the Latin grammar and found it not near so difficult as I had expected; I resolved to buy one like it as soon as we got back to London. I put it aside and picked up Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, by Lemuel Gulliver, which all the world knows as Gulliver’s Travels. I had read the book when I was but twelve, and I thought it quite funny but little more than that. I had come lately to realize that I had missed much of its meaning and made up my mind to reread it at my earliest opportunity. And so I began it and was well into the second chapter, wherein Lemuel Gulliver learns the language of the Lilliputians as a squad of the little people enter his pockets and make a survey of their contents. Thus far did I go-and no farther-for at that point did I fall fast asleep.
It was Molly Sarton who woke me. She came blustering in, table linen in hand, and began preparing the deal table for dining, the one at which her husband had sat during his morning court session. She looked across the room at me and chuckled.
“Ah, so this is where you went to hide!” said she.
“I wasn’t hiding, I was reading,” said I quite defensively. Then I added, ”Is it late?”
“Late enough. We’ll be eating soon as Clarissa and I can get things on the table. Should be about a quarter of an hour, or not much longer.”
“May I help?”
“You can help by going upstairs and attending to Sir John. He’s been making waking-up noises for the past five minutes, and it’s time somebody looked in on him.”
And I, of course, was that somebody. I ascended to the floor above and had no difficulty in finding which of the two rooms he had situated himself in. It was the door from which issued a medley of coughs and throat-clearing sounds. I opened it and found that he was having his usual difficulty finding his way into his coat. He signaled for his kerchief, which had fallen to the floor. Once he had it in hand, he blew his nose, sneezed, blew his nose again, and thanked me.
It was not long before we were both ready to sup in polite society. I guided Sir John through the door and down the stairs, and then into the courtroom where all but Mrs. Sarton awaited us. Mr. Sarton was engaged in reducing a magnificent haunch of beef to portions of slices, chunks, and chips. Indeed, he had carved so much from it that it was evident he had great confidence in the capacity of his guests. Clarissa looked across the table at me with something akin to fright. At about that time, Mrs. Sarton came into the room, beautifully dressed, her hair nicely coifed with no more than touches of rouge upon her lips and cheeks. She had transformed herself completely.
“Oh, Berty,” said she, ”that’s quite enough, I think.”
“I’m never quite sure. After all, there are five of us.”
“No, that will be fine for the time being. Just dish out the pudding, and serve the wine, and we’ll be underway.”
With that, she smiled and took her place at the foot of the table, whence she presided over the carrots, sauce, and all those condiments and additional pleasures that can make a good meal into a great one.
Reader, I know not how you stand on matters of cookery. There are som
e, it is true, who hold that the French cooking is the best in all the world. We had had a fair sample of it the past two evenings, with its plenitude of small courses, wines with each, subtly spiced sauces with all. And I admit that I thought the strangeness of it quite grand.
Nevertheless, to my mind there is naught that can compare with a good English dinner for hearty flavor, abundance, and pure satisfaction. Be it beef, mutton, pork, or whatever, when cooked to perfection in the English manner, it cannot be equaled. And there could be no question but that Molly Sarton cooked that haunch of beef to perfection. Sir John and I asked so often for more that Mr. Sarton had unexpectedly to carve a bit more. And the Yorkshire pudding was as I had never had it-crisp and buttery, and subtle to the taste. There was but one wine, an excellent claret, yet it was abundantly available-bottles of the best. We were silent through the main course, so absorbed were we in the eating of it. We sighed contentedly through dessert (a fine apple tart), and only when the plate of cheese was brought out did we begin to talk in our usual voluble manner. The Sartons were eager to draw us out, and they questioned Clarissa and me direct on our tour of their town. Mr. Sarton gave forth on the history of Deal Castle; and afterward, I asked him rather pointedly about the shipwreck which was mired in the ocean sands just off the beach and not far from this very house: Did he know how long it had been there? What were the circumstances that had put it there? He had no real information to give, but the odd look that he gave me told me what I wished to know: owlers.
There was an awkward lull thereafter. Sir John saved the moment, however, by putting to Mr. Sarton a question, one which had troubled me as well.
“Sir,” said he, ”I’ve noted that you and your wife are very careful to whom you open your front door. Understand me, I believe you both act prudently in this. Nevertheless, is it not difficult to manage such a degree of security when your court is in session?”
“Ah, well,” said Mr. Sarton, ”there you’ve put your finger upon it, sir. Our house must be more or less open to the public during court hours. If it were left to us, we would keep the door locked and bolted during those hours, as well. As you may have heard, Sir John, our town jail burned down some months past-with no loss of life, I hasten to add. So far, they have not yet found the money to build another. When they do, I requested that they build it large enough so that the court may be convened there next to the cells with perhaps no more than a wall between.”
“We have a similar arrangement on the ground floor at Number 4 Bow Street.”
“The problem will be solved then,” said Mr. Sarton. ”We can keep our place in Middle Street locked up just as tight as a drum.”
“Why do you feel it necessary to do so?”
“I should think that would be obvious. It’s because of what happened to my predecessor.”
”Oh? What was that?”
“You were never told?”
“Not a word. I assumed he had died of natural causes. He was of an advanced age, was he not?”
“Sixty-four. Since you were not told of any of this, you may not even know his name. It was Herbert Kemp. He held the post here for many years, married, had children, brought them up in this very house. His wife had died a few years before, and he lived alone here. A woman from town came in each day to do the cooking and cleaning. Aside from a peculiar tendency to be more stringent in his application of the law in his rulings, he seemed not to have changed in any way from the man who had been magistrate for so many years before.
“Nevertheless, on a certain night, long after the hour when there were possible witnesses roaming about the streets, a knock came upon his door and he opened it, and he was promptly shot dead by him who had knocked. That, in any case, was what was later supposed to have happened, for there were none about to see what had happened, and naught left by the murderer but a body in the open doorway, which was not found until the morning. Strange, is it not, that these houses be so close together, yet none heard the shot fired. Or, having heard, came down to investigate.”
Sir John shook his head in a manner which seemed to indicate his bewilderment. ”And despite all that, you accepted this post?”
“Despite all that,” said he.
“Were I you, I do not believe I would have done.”
“And that’s just what I told him, as well,” said Molly Sarton. ”Yet if he had not come, we wouldn’t’ve met, and my life would have been much poorer for it.” And she smiled solemnly at her husband across the length of the table.
Following Mr. Sarton’s story, it became rather difficult to recapture our former mood at table. All the lightness had leaked out. It was not long before Sir John shuffled his feet politely and said that perhaps we had better be getting on.
“I’ve provided for your trip back,” said Mr. Sarton.
“Oh? And in what way?”
“We’ve a most dependable hackney coachman here in Deal, perhaps the only dependable one among them. I asked him to come by when things slowed down in the evening, and I do believe I heard him draw up at our door but a few minutes past.”
And so we organized ourselves for our return. Molly Sarton firmly declined our offer to help her clear the table and do the washing up. Mr. Sarton then led the way outside and introduced us to Mick Crawly, an easy sort of fellow, yet at the same time, he seemed good and responsible.
“How did you know when we’d be finishing up?” Sir John challenged the driver.
“Ah, how did I now?” Crawly asked himself. ”Knowing Mrs. Sarton’s reputation as a cook, I was sure that it would take two hours of eating to do justice to any dinner of hers, and to that I added another half of an hour, for you’ve quite a reputation as a talker, sir.”
“Even here in Deal?”
“We’re not so distant from London as you might suppose, though it may seem we are.”
“Indeed it often does.”
Happy was I to note that Mr. Crawly’s hackney was of a size and shape comparable to those in London. I would not, in other words, have to ride atop the coach and hang on in fear as we rounded those tight corners which led up to great Mongeham. I climbed in last of all and found the interior quite spacious. All three of us were thus able to sit huddled together against the cold night air upon the same padded bench. It took but a moment to get us settled, and in a moment after that we were underway. Mick Crawly did not drive his team with the same merciless abandon as Lord Mansfield’s man, nor even Will Fowler’s lack of proper concern. He kept his horses moving at a reasonable rate up the narrow roads-no faster than was necessary. As we went, the gentle rocking of the coach soon put Clarissa to sleep.
Unexpectedly, Sir John turned to me and said, ”I met your Dick Dickens today, or perhaps Dickens belongs more properly to Mr. Perkins. In any case, I met him, and I was quite impressed by him.”
“Favorably?”
He chuckled at that. ”Ah yes, you plainly had doubts as to his conversion to the side of right.”
“In fairness,” said I, ”Mr. Perkins seems to have no such doubts. At least he voiced none after I was introduced to his Mr. Dickens.”
“Perhaps that is because the constable successfully underwent a similar conversion-or have you any reason to doubt its sincerity?”
“None at all.”
“Well, there you are.” He hesitated, then went on. ”I’m inclined to accept Dickens as he presents himself because he is in possession of a great deal of information and has been quite generous with it. He is most resentful that he and his troop of customs men have been kept inactive by that dreadful fellow, Eccles, whom we met at Lord Mansfield’s. By the bye, have you any idea why he has stopped all efforts on the Kent coast and blamed Mr. Sarton so unjustly?”
“None whatever,” said I, ”and I have sought some such reason without success.”
“Well, he hopes that by presenting the efforts of the customs and excisemen as fruitless and painting the darkest picture possible, he will get the Army to loan him a detachment of soldiers, cavalry pr
eferred. He is a fool if he believes he will command them. Rather, some fool of a lieutenant will be commanding him.
”But that is all in the nature of a digression,” continued Sir John. ”What I wished to say is this: Mr. Dickens has not sat idle as his chief would have him. No, indeed. He has assembled a most excellent network of spies and informants in the smuggling trade or at the periphery of it. He told me more in a morning than I would have thought possible. He has promised to return tomorrow and tell me even more. Then shall we begin our planning. I do believe that with Mr. Perkins’s help and yours, we shall be able to make it work.”
SIX
In which a battle is fought to a shocking conclusion
I had no exact idea of the time, though I was sure that it was quite late at night. The moon had gained its apex and had started its downward transit. Yet it shone down upon the beach, seemingly as bright as it had only an hour before. Mr. Perkins and I were halfway up the bluff and well concealed behind a grassy hummock. We had successfully evaded detection half an hour earlier when a party of four men with two horses had passed no more than thirty yards away. They were now waiting, down on the beach, just as we were above. Unknown to them, two of Mr. Sarton’s constables also waited quite nearby; yet on that stretch of open beach, the constables were as near invisible as could be, for they had taken shelter beneath one of a number of fisher boats that lay up-ended upon the sand. We were all well armed. Two pistols and a cutlass had been issued by Mr. Sarton to each. And though there were but four of us, we would at least have the advantage of surprise.
There was a ship offshore. I could see it plain enough. It had the appearance of a sloop but was probably what I had heard called a ”cutter” there in Deal. When it hove into view, someone aboard sent up a rocket from a flink pistol. And one who seemed to be in charge of the party on the beach lit a spout lantern and aimed it at the cutter, thus showing that they were ready on the beach to receive the landing party. It had been planned a full three days ago that when the boat from the cutter came, and the four men constituting the landing party were involved in beaching it, the constables were to emerge from their hiding place and rush the smugglers, threatening to shoot any who resisted. Mr. Perkins and I were upon the bluff to stop any that might escape the constables below.
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