He had a book packed in his valise, which he had meant to read in the chair by his fire, but this was reduced to glowing embers, and when he would have put more coal on it he found that there was no scuttle in the room. It hardly seemed worth while to ring for it, so he undressed, and got into bed, setting the candle on the table beside him, and thrusting his watch and his pocket-book under the pillow. The bed was a feather one, and though rather smothering, not uncomfortable. He opened his book, and began to read, occasionally raising his head to listen intently. His room was situated too far from the tap for him to be able to hear the murmur of voices there. He heard nothing at all, not even the stir of a mouse.
This dense stillness began presently to make him feel uneasy. It was not very late, and it would have been natural had some sounds broken the silence. In any inn one expected to hear noises: the voices of other guests; footsteps; the slam of a door; the clatter of crockery; or the rumble of wheels in the courtyard. The Pelican, of course, had no courtyard, and obviously did not enjoy much custom; but it did seem odd that he had seen no servant in the house other than the tapster. One would have thought that there would have been at least a waiter, and a chambermaid. He wondered who would clean the boots he had put outside his door, and whether anyone would bring him any shaving-water in the morning.
The silence was so profound that when a coal dropped in the grate it made him start. He was neither a nervous nor an imaginative young man, and the realization that Miss Gateshead had communicated to him some of her alarm vexed him. More than once he found himself lowering his book to glance round the room; and the creak of the chair in which he had sat to pull off his boots actually made him sit up in bed to make sure that he was alone.
When the candle was burnt down to a stub he began to be sleepy; and after finding that the printed words before his eyes were running one into the other, he closed the book, and snuffed the candle. A faint glow showed that the fire still lived. He turned on his side, the feather-bed billowing about him, and in less than ten minutes was asleep.
He awoke he knew not how much later, but so suddenly and with such a certainty that something had roused him that he was alert on the instant, and listening intently. His first thought was that Miss Gateshead must have called to him, but not a sound reached his ears. The glow from the hearth had disappeared; the room was in darkness.
He raised himself on his elbow. As he crouched thus, his ears straining, his eyes trying unavailingly to pierce the night, the conviction that he was not alone took such strong possession of his mind that the sweat broke out on his body. He stretched out his hand, and groped cautiously on the table for the tinder-box. It brushed against the candlestick, which made a tiny sound as it was shifted on the table, and in that moment it seemed to John that something moved in the room. He said breathlessly: ‘Who’s there?’
As he spoke, his fingers closed over the tinder-box. He sat up with a jerk, felt the bed move as something cannoned into it, and, even as he flung up his hands to grapple his unknown visitant, was thrust roughly down again on to his pillows, a hand clamped over his mouth, and another gripping his throat in a strangling hold. He struggled madly, trying to wrench away the clutch on his windpipe. His hands brushed against something warm and furry; a voice breathed in his ear: ‘Dub your mummer!’
He tore at the unyielding hands, writhing, and trying to kick his feet free of the bedclothes, the bed creaking under his frenzied efforts. The grip on his throat tightened till the blood roared in his ears, and he felt his senses slipping from him. ‘Still! Still!’ hissed Waggleswick. ‘One squeak out of you, and I’ll land you a facer as’ll put you to sleep for a se’ennight! Bow Street, clod-pole!—Bow Street!’
He stopped struggling, partly from surprise at these last words, partly because the breath was choked out of him. The hand on his throat slightly relaxed its grip. He drew a sobbing breath, and distinctly heard the creak of boards under a stealthy footfall. It seemed to come from the direction of the wall-cupboard beside the fireplace.
‘For God’s sake, lay you still!’ Mr Waggleswick’s breath was hot in his ear.
He was free, and heard the stir of the bed-curtains, as though Waggleswick had shrunk behind them. He lay perfectly still, rigid and sweating. If Waggleswick were indeed a Bow Street Runner, he ought undoubtedly to obey his instructions; if he were not, it did not seem as though he would have much compunction in silencing those who defied him in a manner highly unpleasant to them. The darkness seemed to press on his eyeballs; he had difficulty still in breathing, but his senses were quite acute, and he caught the sound of a key softly, slowly turning in a lock. This unquestionably came from the direction of the cupboard; a faint lightening of the gloom gradually appeared as the door of the cupboard opened, as though a very dim light had been concealed there. It was obscured by a monstrous shadow, and then dwindled, as the door was pushed to again.
A loose floor-board cracked; John’s fists clenched unconsciously, but a warning hand coming from out of the curtains and pressing his shoulder kept him otherwise motionless.
Someone was coming inch by inch towards the bed: someone who knew the disposition of the furniture so exactly that he made no blunder. The heavy coverlet stirred over John’s limbs, and, as his hands came up instinctively, smothering folds were over his face, pressed down and down over nose and mouth. He grabbed at his new assailant’s wrists, but before his fingers could close on them the pressure abruptly left his face, and he heard a sudden scuffle, a strangled, startled oath, and the quick shifting of stockinged feet on the floor.
He flung the quilt off, groping for the tinder-box, which he had dropped on the bed.
“The glim! light the glim!’ panted Waggleswick.
A chair went over with a crash; something was knocked flying from the dressing-table, as the two men swayed and struggled about the room. John’s desperate fingers found the tinder-box, and as with trembling fingers he contrived to strike a light from it, a heavy thud shook the room.
The tiny flame flared up; the landlord and Waggleswick were writhing and heaving together on the floor, silent but murderous.
John lit the candle, and tumbled out of bed, hurrying to Waggleswick’s aid. The treatment he had suffered during the last few minutes had considerably shaken him, and he felt rather dizzy, nor did a wild kick from one of Fyton’s plunging legs do anything to improve his condition. The landlord was immensely strong, and for several minutes he made it impossible for the two other men to overpower him. He and Waggleswick rolled on the floor, locked together, but at last John managed to grab one of his arms, as he was attempting to gouge out Waggleswick’s eye, and to twist it with all his might. Waggleswick, who happened at that moment to be uppermost, was thus enabled to drive home a shattering blow to the jaw. This half stunned the landlord, and before he could recover Waggleswick had vigorously banged his head on the floor. This deprived him of his wits for several minutes, and by the time he was at all able to continue the struggle a pair of handcuffs had been locked round his wrists.
‘Bide, and watch him!’ commanded Waggleswick, out of breath, much abraded, but still surprisingly active. ‘Take my barker, and don’t stand no gammon!’ With that, he thrust a pistol into Mr Cranbrook’s hand, and dived into the cupboard, adding over his shoulder: ‘Hit him over the head with the butt, if he don’t stay still! I don’t want him shot: he’s one for the Nubbing Cheat, he is!’
John found that his knees were shaking. He sat down, and curtly bade the landlord, who seemed to be trying to get up, to stay where he was. He had only just recovered his breath when a glimmer of light shone through the cupboard door, growing brighter as footsteps approached. Mr Waggleswick came back into the room with a lamp.
‘All’s bowman!’ he announced, taking his gun away from John. ‘Caught both the bites red-handed. She’s as bad as he is, and worse! Get up, hang-gallows!’
He endorsed this command with a kick, and the landlord heaved himself to his feet. A settled, dogged expressi
on had descended on to his face; he did not speak, but when John met his eyes he saw that there was so malevolent a look in them that it was almost impossible to believe he could be the same man as the comfortable, smiling host of a few hours earlier.
John shuddered, and turned away to pick up his breeches. When he had pulled these on over his nightshirt, and had thrust his feet into a pair of shoes, Waggleswick invited him to come down and see what had awaited him in the wash-house below his room.
‘Jem and me’ll lock the cull and his moll in the cellar till morning,’ he said. ‘Taken me a rare time to snabble you, my buck, ain’t it? You’ll pay for it! Get down them dancers, and don’t you go for to forget that this litle pop o’ mine is mightly liable to go off! Mighty liable it is!’
He motioned the landlord to go before him into the cupboard, grinning at John’s face of horror. ‘Didn’t suspicion what there was behind these here doors, did you?’ he said.
‘I never tried to open them. Good God, a stairway?’
‘Down to the wash-house. Took me three visits to get a sight of them, too! Ah, and you’d have gone down ‘em feet first if I hadn’t have been here, master, like a good few other young chubs! To think I been here four times, and never a blow come worth the biting until you walked in tonight, with your pocket-full o’ flimseys, and your talk of no one suspicioning you was in England! Axing your pardon, you was a regular noddy, wasn’t you, sir?’
Mr Cranbrook agreed to it humbly, and brought up the rear of the little procession that wound its way down a steep, twisting stair to a stone-flagged wash-house, where a huge copper was steaming in one corner, and the tapster was standing over Mrs Fyton, loudly protesting her innocence of evil intent in a chair in the middle of the room.
‘My assistant—junior, o’ course, but a fly cove!’ said Waggleswick, jerking a thumb at the tapster. ‘All right, Jem: we’ll stow ‘em away under hatches now!’
John, whose revolted gaze had alighted on a chopper, lying on a stout, scrubbed table, was looking a little pale. He was left to his own reflections while the prisoners were driven down to the cellar; and his half-incredulous and wholly nauseated inspection of the wash-house made it unnecessary for Waggleswick to inform him, as he did upon his return with Jem, that it had been the Fytons’ practice to chop up the bodies of their victims, and to boil down the remains in the copper. ‘Though I don’t rightly know what they done with the heads,’ added Mr Waggleswick thoughtfully.
John had heard tales reminiscent of this gruesome disclosure, but he had imagined that they belonged to an age long past.
‘Lor’ no, sir!’ said Waggleswick indulgently. ‘There’s plenty of willains alive today! We’ve had this ken in our eye I dunno how long, but that Fyton he was a cunning one!’
‘Ah!’ nodded Jem, signifying portentous assent.
‘You might have told me!’ John said hotly.
‘Well,’ said Waggleswick, scratching his chin, ‘I might, o’ course, but you was in the nature of a honey-fall, sir, and I wasn’t so werry sure as you’d be agreeable to laying in your bed awaiting for Fyton to come an’ murder you unbeknownst if I was to tell you what my lay was.’
A horrible thought crossed John’s mind. ‘Miss Gates-head!’
‘She’s all right and tight! She was knowed to be putting up here, and Fyton never ran no silly risks.’
‘Adn’t got no ‘addock stuffed with beans neither,’ interpolated Jem, somewhat incomprehensibly.
Waggleswick said severely: ‘Don’t talk that cant to flash coves as don’t understand it, sap-head! What he means, sir, is she hadn’t no full purse, like you told us all you had!’
‘Not but what Fyton might ha’ done a bit in the body-snatching line,’ suggested Jem.
Mr Cranbrook shuddered.
‘Well, he ain’t snatched her body,’ pointed out Mr Waggleswick.
John looked at him. ‘She must not know of this! It is ghastly!’
Waggleswick scratched his chin again. ‘I dunno as she need. She won’t be wanted as a witness—like you will, sir!’
‘Yes, of course: I know that! I am very willing. Has that monster disposed of many travellers in this frightful way?’
‘There’s no saying,’ replied Waggleswick. ‘Not above two or three since we got wind of it in Bow Street.’
‘And before? It is horrible to think of!’
‘Ah!’ agreed Jem. ‘Dear knows ‘ow many went into that there copper afore us Runners come down ‘ere!’
On this macabre thought, Mr Cranbrook retired again to his interrupted repose, if not to enjoy much slumber, at least to employ his time profitably in thinking out what plausible tale he would concoct for Miss Gateshead’s benefit in the morning.
4
They met in the coffee-room, still shuttered and unaired. Miss Gateshead was unbarring the shutters when John came into the room, and her comments on the lack of orderly management in the inn were pungent and to the point.
‘I tugged and tugged at the bell, and who do you think brought me a can of hot water at last?’ she said. ‘The tapster!’
‘It is too bad! But the thing is that they were cast into a pucker by the landlady’s being taken ill in the night,’ explained John glibly. ‘Should you mind putting on your bonnet, and stepping out with me to partake of breakfast at one of the other inns?’
‘Not at all!’ replied Miss Gateshead promptly. ‘I am very sorry for the landlady, but she almost deserves to be taken ill for keeping her house in such a shocking state! I will fetch my bonnet and pelisse directly.’ She paused, coloured slightly, and said in a shamefaced voice: ‘I am afraid you must have thought me very foolish last night! Indeed, I cannot imagine what can have possessed me to be so nonsensical! I never slept better in my life! Is it not odd what absurd fancies one can take into one’s head when one is a little tired?’
‘Most odd!’ agreed Mr Cranbrook, barely repressing a shiver.
The Duel
1
It amused him, entering his house so unexpectedly early in the evening, to know that he had disconcerted Criddon, his porter. He suspected Criddon of having slipped out to dally with a serving-maid at the top of some area steps. The rogue was out of breath, as though, having perceived his master sauntering up the flag-way in the light of the oil street lamps, he had scurried back into the house more swiftly than befitted a man of his bulk. As he took the silk-lined cloak, the curly-brimmed beaver, and the tall cane, he wore a faint air of injury. No doubt he felt ill-used because his master, leaving the ball hours before his carriage had been ordered to call for him, had chosen to walk home, instead of looking in at Watier’s, according to his more usual custom.
He told Criddon he might go to bed, and strolled to the side table, where a letter, delivered during the evening, awaited him. As he broke the wafer and spread open the sheet, his butler came up from the nether regions, but he waved him away, as irritated by his presence as he would have been angered by his absence. He threw the letter aside and opened the door into the dining-room. The room was in darkness, a circumstance which almost caused him to summon back the butler. It was his pleasure that lights should burn in every room which he might conceivably wish to enter in his great house, and well did his servants know it. But he did not call to Radstock, for his nostrils had caught the acrid smell of candles newly blown out, and he was indefinably aware that he was not alone in the room. Some of the boredom left his face: a turn-up with a housebreaker might relieve the monotony of his existence, and would certainly surprise the housebreaker, who would no doubt consider a seeming dandy in satin knee-breeches and a long-tailed coat easy game. He stepped back into the hall, and picked up the heavy chandelier from the side table there. Carrying this into the dining-room, he stood for a moment on the threshold, looking keenly round. The flames of half a dozen candles flickered, and showed him only the furniture, and the wavering shadows it threw. He glanced towards the windows and it seemed to him that one of the brocade curtains bulged slightly. He set
the chandelier down, trod silently to the window, and flung the curtains back.
As he did so, he sprang out of range, and brought his hands up in two purposeful fists. They dropped to his sides. No housebreaker met his astonished gaze, but a girl, shrinking back against the window, the hood of her cloak fallen away from a tangle of silken curls, her frightened face, in which two dark eyes dilated, upturned to his.
For a moment he wondered if Criddon had hidden his doxy in the dining-room; then his critical glance informed him that the girl’s cloak was of velvet, and her gown of sprigged muslin the demure but expensive raiment of the débutante. His astonishment grew. He was so eligible a bachelor that he was accustomed to being pursued, and could recognize and evade every snare set in his path. But this seemed to go beyond all bounds. Anger came into his eyes; he thought he must have been mistaken in his assessment of the girl’s quality, and that a fair Cyprian had invaded his house.
Then she spoke, and her words confirmed him in his first impression. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon! P-pray forgive me, sir!’ she said, in a pretty, conscience-stricken voice.
Anger gave way to amusement. ‘What, ma’am, may I ask, are you doing in my house?’ he demanded.
She hung her head. ‘Indeed, you must think it most odd in me!’
‘I do.’
‘The door was open, so—so I ran in,’ she explained. ‘You see, there—there was a man following me!’
‘If you must walk through the streets of London at this hour, I should hope your footman was following you!’
‘Oh no! No one knows I am not in my bed! My mission is most secret! And I never meant to walk, but the hackney carried me to the wrong house—at least, I fear I gave the coachman the wrong direction, and he had driven away before I was made aware of my mistake. The servant told me that it was only a step, so I thought I might walk, only there was an odious man—! I ran as fast as I could into this street, and—and your door stood open. Indeed, I meant only to hide in the hall until that creature was gone, but then your porter came in, and I was obliged to run into this room, because how could I explain? When I told that other servant where I wished to go, he—he—” She broke off, lifting her hand to a burning cheek. ‘And then you came in, so I slipped behind the curtain.’
Pistols For Two and Other Stories Page 14
