The refugee’s face changed to a sickly white. His hand toyed feebly with the pistol, but he did not move. I think that we both felt we were in the presence of a stronger mind.
“You had better put that plaything away,” Sleigh said. He showed no fear, but I observed that he watched us narrowly. “A shot would bring the ship about your ears. There is no call for a long tale. I took the governor here for you, but when he told me that some one was stealing his biscuits, I thought I had got the right pig by the ear, and five minutes outside this door have made it a certainty. Two thousand pesetas! Why, hang me,” he added brutally, “if I should have thought, to look at you, that you were worth half the money!”
The other plucked up spirit at the insult. “Who are you? What do you want?” he cried, with an attempt at bravado.
“Precisely. What do I want?” the engineer replied with a sneer. “You are right to come to business. What do I want? A hundred pounds. That is my price, mate. Fork it out and mum’s the word. Turn rusty, and — —” He did not finish the sentence, but grasping his neck in both hands, he pressed his thumbs upon his windpipe and dropped his jaw. It was a ghastly performance. I had seen a garotte and I shuddered.
“You would not give the man up? Your own countryman?” I cried in horror.
“Would I not?” he answered. “You will soon see, if he has not got the cash!”
“A hundred pounds!” the wretched fellow moaned. Sleigh’s performance had completely unmanned him. “I have not a hundred pesetas with me.”
As it happened — alas, it has often happened so with me! — I had but three hundred pesetas, some twelve pounds odd, about me, nor any hope of a remittance nearer than Malaga. Still, I did what I could. “Look here,” I said to Sleigh, “I can hardly believe that you are in earnest, but I will do this. I will give you ten pounds to be silent and let the man take his chance. It is no good to haggle with me,” I added, “because I have no more.”
“Ten pounds!” he replied derisively, “when the police will give me eighty! I am not such a fool.”
“Better ten pounds and clean hands, than eighty pounds of blood money,” I retorted.
“Look here, Mister,” he answered sternly; “do you mind your own business and let us settle ours. I am sorry for you, mate, that is a fact, but I cannot let the chance pass. If I do not get this money some one else will. I’ll tell you what I will do.” As he paused I breathed again, while the miserable man whose life was in the balance looked up with renewed hope. “I will lower my terms,” he said. “I would rather get the money honestly, I am free to confess that. If you will out with two thousand pesetas, I will keep my mouth shut, and give you a helping hand besides.”
“If not?” I said.
“If not,” he answered, shrugging his shoulders — but I noticed that he laid his hand on his knife— “if you do not accept my terms before we are in port at Carthagena, I go to the first policeman and tell him who is aboard. Those are my terms, and you have time to think about them.”
With that he left the cabin, keeping his face to us to the last. Hateful and treacherous as he was, I could not help admiring his coolness and courage, and his firm grasp of the men he had to do with.
For I felt that we were a sorry pair. I suppose that my companion, bad as his position seemed, had cherished strong hopes of escape. Now he was utterly unmanned. He sat on the couch, his elbows on his knees, his head on his hands, the picture of despair. The pistol had vanished into some pocket, and although capture meant death, I judged that he would let himself be taken without striking a blow.
My own reflections were far from being comfortable. The man grovelling before me might deserve death; knowing the stakes, he had gambled and lost. Moreover, he was a complete stranger to me. But he was an Englishman. He had trusted me. He had spent an hour — but it seemed many — in my company, and I shrank from the pain of seeing him dragged away to his death. My nature revolted against it; I forgot what the consequences of interference might be to myself.
“Look here,” I said, after a long interval of silence, “I will do what I can. We shall not reach Carthagena until eight o’clock. Something may turn up before that. At the worst I have a scheme, though I set little store by it, and advise you to do the same. Put on these clothes in place of those you wear.” I handed to him a suit taken from my portmanteau. “Wash and shave. Take my passport and papers. It is just possible that if you play your part well they may not identify you, and may arrest me — despite our friend upstairs. For myself, once on shore I shall have no difficulty in proving my innocence.”
Not that I was without misgivings. The Spanish civil guards give but short shrift at times, and at the best I might be punished for connivance at an escape. But to some extent I trusted to my nationality; and for the rest, the avidity with which the hunted wretch at my side clutched at the slender hope held out to him drove hesitation from my mind.
As long as I live I shall remember the scene which ensued. The grey light was beginning to steal through the port-hole, giving a sicklier hue to my companion’s features, as I helped him with trembling fingers to dress. The odour of the expiring lamp hung upon the air. The tumbled bed-clothes, the ransacked luggage, the coats swaying against the bulkheads to the music of the creaking timbers, formed surroundings deeply imprinted on the memory.
About seven o’clock I procured some coffee and biscuits and a little fruit, and fed him. Then I gave him my papers, and charged him to employ himself about the cabin. My plan was to be out of the way, ashore, or elsewhere, when Sleigh fired his mine, and to trust my companion to return my luggage and papers to my hotel at Malaga; until I reached which place I must take my chance. In reality I played no fine and magnanimous part, for, looking back, I do not think I believed for a moment that the police would be deceived.
A little after eight o’clock I went on deck, to find that the ship was steaming slowly between the fortified hills that frown upon the harbour of Carthagena; a harbour so spacious that in its amphitheatre of waters all the navies of the world might lie. For a time the engineer was not visible on deck. The steward pointed out to me some of the lions — the deeply embayed arsenal, the distant fort, high-perched on a hill, which the mutineers had seized, the governor’s house over the gateway where the wounded general had died; and we were within a cable’s length of the wharf, crowded with idlers and flecked with sentinels, when Sleigh came up from below.
Although the morning was fine, he was wearing the heavy pea-jacket which I had seen in the engine-room. He cast a spiteful glance at me, then, turning away, he affected to busy himself with other matters. Bad as he was, I think that he was ashamed of the work he had in hand.
“Do we stay here all day?” I asked the steward.
“No, señor, no. Only until ten o’clock,” I understood him to say. It was close upon nine already. He explained that the town was still so much disturbed that business was at a standstill. The San Miguel would land her passengers by boat and go at once to Almeria, where cargo awaited her. “Here is the police-boat,” he added.
Then the time had come. I was quivering with excitement — and with something else — a new idea! Darting from the steward’s side, I flew down the stairs, through the saloon and to my cabin, the door of which I dragged open impatiently. “Give me my papers!” I cried, breathless with haste. “The police are here!”
The man — he was pretending to pack, with his back to the door, but at my entrance he rose with an assumption of ease — drew back. “Why? will you desert me too?” he cried, his face blanched. “Will you betray me? Then, my God! I am lost!” and he flung himself upon the sofa in a paroxysm of terror.
Every moment was of priceless value. This a conspirator! I had no patience with him. “Give them to me!” I cried imperatively, desperately. “I have another plan. Do you hear?”
He heard, but he did not believe me. He was sure that my courage had failed at the last moment. But — and let this be written on his side of the account —
he gave me the papers; it may be in pure generosity, it may be because he had not the spirit to resist.
Armed with them I ran on deck as quickly as I had descended. I found the position of things but slightly changed. The police-boat was now alongside. The officer in command, attended by two or three subordinates, was mounting the ladder. Close to the gangway Sleigh was standing, evidently waiting for him. But he had his eye on the saloon door also, for I had scarcely emerged before he stepped up to me.
“Have you changed your mind, governor? Are you going to buy him off?” he muttered, looking askance at me as I moved forward with him by my side.
My answer took him by surprise. “No, señor, no!” I exclaimed loudly and repeatedly — so loudly that the attention of the group at the gangway was drawn to us. When I saw this, I stepped in front of Sleigh, and before he guessed what I would be at, I was at the officer’s side. “Sir,” I said, raising my hat, “do you speak French?”
“Parfaitement, monsieur,” he answered, politely returning my salute.
“I am an Englishman, and I wish to lay an information,” I said, speaking in French, and pausing there that I might look at Sleigh. As I had expected, he did not understand French. His baffled and perplexed face assured me of that. He tried to interrupt me, but the courteous official waved him aside.
“The man who is trying to shut my mouth is a smuggler of foreign watches,” I resumed. “He has them about him, and is going to take them ashore. They are in a number of pockets made for the purpose in the lining of his coat. I am connected with the watch trade, and my firm will give ten pounds reward to any one who will capture and prosecute him.”
“I understand,” the officer replied. And, turning to Sleigh, who, ignorant of what was going forward, was fretting and fuming in a fever of distrust, he addressed some words to him. He spoke in Spanish and quickly, and I could not understand what he said. That it was to the point, however, the engineer’s face betrayed. It fell amazingly, and he cast a vengeful glance at me.
That which followed was ludicrous enough. My heart was beating fast, but I could not suppress a smile as Sleigh, clasping the threatened coat about him, backed from the police. He poured out a torrent of fluent Spanish, and emphatically denied the charge; but, alas! he cherished the coat — at which the police were making tentative dives — overmuch for an innocent man with no secret pockets about him.
His “No, señor, no!” his “Por dios!” and “Madre de Dios!” and the rest were breath wasted. At a sign from the grim-looking officer, two of the policemen seized him, and in a twinkling, notwithstanding his resistance, had the thick coat off him, and were probing its recesses. It was the turn of the by-standers to cry, “Madre de Dios!” as from pocket upon pocket came watch after watch, until five dozen lay in sparkling rows upon the deck. I could see that there were those among the ship’s company besides the culprit who gazed at me with little favour; but the eyes of the police officer twinkled with gratification as each second added to the rich prize. And that was enough for me.
Still I knew that all was not done yet, and I stood on my guard. Sleigh, taken into custody, had desisted from his prayers and oaths. I saw, however, that he was telling a long story, of which I could make out little more than the word “Inglese” repeated more than once. It was his turn now. If he had not understood my French, neither could I understand his Spanish. And I noticed that the officer, as the story rolled on, looked at me doubtfully. I judged that the crisis was near, and I interfered. “May I beg to know, sir, what he says?” I asked courteously.
“He tells me a strange story, Mr. Englishman,” was the answer; and the speaker eyed me with curiosity. “He says that Morrissey, the villainous Englishman — your pardon — who was at the bottom of the affair of last Sunday, has had the temerity to return to the scene of his crime, and is on this vessel.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “A strange story!” I answered. “But it is for Monsieur to do his duty. I am the only Englishman on board, as the steward will inform you; and for me, permit me to hand you my papers. Your prisoner wishes, no doubt, to be even with me!”
He nodded as he took the papers. And that upon which I counted happened. The engineer in his rage and excitement had not made his story plain. No one dreamt of the charge being aimed against another Englishman. No one knew of another Englishman. The steward sullenly corroborated me when I said that I was the only one on board; and all who heard Sleigh — befogged, perhaps, by his Spanish, which, good enough for ordinary occasions, may have failed him here — did not doubt that his was a counter-accusation preferred en revanche.
For one thing, the improbability of Morrissey’s return had weight with them; and my credentials were ample and in order. Among these, too, a note for two hundred and fifty pesetas had slipped, which had disappeared when they were returned to me. Need I say how it ended? Or that while the police officer bowed his courteous “Adios” to me, and his men gathered up the watches, and the crew scowled, the prisoner was removed to the boat, foaming at the mouth, and screaming to the last threats which my ears were long in forgetting. I walked up and down the deck, brazening it out, but very sick at heart.
However, the San Miguel, despite her engineer’s mishap, duly left in half an hour — a nervous half-hour to me. With a thankful heart I watched the fort-crowned hills about Carthagena change from brown to blue, and blue to purple, until at length they sank below the horizon.
But officers and men looked coldly on me; and that evening, at Almeria, I took up bag and baggage and left the San Miguel. I had had enough of the thanks, and more than enough of the company, of my cabin-fellow, whom I left where I had found him — behind the sailcloth. I believe that he succeeded in making his escape. For fully a month later a friend of mine staying at the Hôtel de la Paz, at Madrid, was placed under arrest on suspicion of being Morrissey; so that the latter must at that time have been at liberty.
KING PEPIN AND SWEET CLIVE.
Upon arriving at the middle of the Close the Dean stopped. He had been walking briskly, his chin from custom a little tilted, but his eyes beaming with condescension and goodwill, while an indulgent smile playing about the lower part of his face relieved its massive character. His walking-stick swung to and fro in a loose grasp, his feet trod the pavement of the precincts with the step of an owner, he felt the warmth of the sun, the balminess of the spring air, and somewhere at the back of his mind he was conscious of a vacant bishopric, and that he was the husband of one wife. In fine he presented the appearance of a contented, placid, unruffled dignitary, until he reached the middle of the Close. There, alas! the ferrel of his stick came to the ground with a thud, and the sweetness and light faded from his eyes as they rested upon Mr. Swainson’s plot. The condescension and goodwill became conspicuous only by their absence. The Dean was undisguisedly angry; he disliked opposition as much as lesser men, and met with it more rarely. For Bicester is old-fashioned, and loves both Church and State, but especially the former, and looks up to principalities and powers, and even now, on account of a mistake he made, execrates the memory of a recreant Bicestrian, otherwise reputable. It was at a public dinner. “I remember,” said this misguided man, “going in my young days to the old and beautiful cathedral of this city. (Great applause.) I was only a child then, and my head hardly rose above the top of the seat, but I remember I thought the Dean the greatest of living men. (Whirlwinds of applause.) Well (smiling), perhaps, I do not think quite that now.” (Dead silence.) And so dull at bottom may a man be whose name is known in half the capitals of Europe, that this degenerate fellow never guessed why the friends of his youth during the rest of the day turned their backs upon him.
Such is the faith of Bicester, but even in Bicester there are heretics. To say that the Dean rarely met with opposition is to say that he rarely met with Mr. Swainson, and that he seldom saw Mr. Swainson’s plot. As a rule, when he crossed the Close he averted his eyes by a happy impulse of custom, for he did not like Mr. Swainson, and as for the lat
ter’s plot, it was anathema maranatha to him. The Dean was tall, Mr. Swainson was taller; the Dean was stubborn, Mr. Swainson was obstinate; so that there arose between them the antagonism that is born of similarity. On the other hand the Dean was stout and Mr. Swainson a scarecrow; the Dean was comely and clerical, but not over-rich, Mr. Swainson was pallid, lantern-jawed, wealthy, and a lawyer, and hence the dislike born of difference. Moreover, years ago, when Mr. Swainson had been Mayor of Bicester, there had been a little dispute between the Chapter and the Bishop, and he had shown so much energy upon the one side as to earn the nickname of the “Mayor of the Palace.” Finally Mr. Swainson delighted in opposition as a cat in milk, and cared as little to have a good reason for his antagonism as puss in the dairy about a sixty years’ title to the cream-pan.
But a sixty years’ title to his plot was the very thing which Mr. Swainson did claim to have. Exactly opposite his house — his father’s and grandfather’s house in which, said his enemies, they have lived and grown fat upon cathedral patronage — lay this debatable land. His front windows commanded it, and on such a morning as this he loved to stand upon his doorstep and gaze at it with the air of a dog watching the spot where his bone lies buried. But if Mr. Swainson was right, that was just what was not buried there; there were no bones there. True, the smoothly shorn surface of the little patch was divided from the green turf round the cathedral only by a slight iron railing, but, said Mr. Swainson, ponderously seizing upon his opponent’s weapon and using it with effect, it was of another sort altogether; of a very different nature. It had never been consecrated, and close as it lay to the sacred pile, being separated from it on two sides but by a sunk fence, it did not belong to it, it was not of it; it was private property, the property of Erasmus John Swainson, and the appanage of his substantial red-brick house just across the Close.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 836
