MR. W. S. SHARKLEY'S PLOT.
As Sharkley travelled back towards the little mining hamlet, where
the Trevanion Arms stood conspicuously where two roads branched off,
one towards Lanteglos, and the other towards the sea, he revolved in
his cunning mind several projects for obtaining possession of the
papers; but knowing that the old soldier mistrusted him, that he was
quite aware of their value, and that he was as obstinate in his
resolution to preserve them, as he was faithful and true to the son
of Richard Trevelyan, there was an extreme difficulty in deciding on
any one line or plan for proper or honest action, so knavery alone
had scope.
Could he, out of the five hundred pounds received to account, but
bribe Derrick Braddon to lend the papers ostensibly for a time,
receiving in return a receipt in a feigned handwriting, with a forged
or fancy signature, so totally unlike that used by the solicitor,
that he might afterwards safely repudiate the document, and deny he
had ever written it!
To attempt to possess them by main force never came within the scope
of Sharkley's imagination, for the old soldier was strong and wiry as
a young bull, and had been famous as a wrestler in his youth; and
then force was illegal, whatever craft might be.
Ultimately he resolved to ignore the subject of the papers, and seem
to forget all about them; to talk on other matters, military if
possible (though such were not much in Sharkley's way), and thus
endeavour to throw Braddon off his guard, and hence get them into his
possession by a very simple process--one neither romantic nor
melo-dramatic, but resorted to frequently enough by the lawless, in
London and elsewhere--in fact by drugging his victim; and for this
purpose, by affecting illness and deceiving a medical man, he
provided himself with ample means by the way.
Quitting the railway he hastened on foot next day towards the
picturesque little tavern, his only fear being that Derrick might
have suddenly changed his mind, and being somewhat erratic now, have
gone elsewhere.
As he walked onward, immersed in his own selfish thoughts, scheming
out the investment of the two thousand pounds, perhaps of more, for
why should he not wring or screw more out of his employer's
purse?--it was ample enough!--the beauty of the spring evening and of
the surrounding scenery had no soothing effect on the heart of this
human reptile. The picturesque banks of the winding Camel, then
rolling brown in full flood from recent rains; Boscastle on its steep
hill, overlooking deep and furzy hollows, and its inlet or creek
where the blue sea lay sparkling in light under the storm-beaten
headlands and desolate cliffs; away in the distance on another hand,
the craggy ridges of Bron Welli, and the Row Tor all reddened by the
setting sun, were unnoticed by Sharkley, who ere long found himself
under the pretty porch and swinging sign-board of the little inn (all
smothered in its bright greenery, budding flowers, and birds' nests),
where the scene of his nefarious operations lay.
A frocked wagoner, ruddy and jolly, whipping up his sleek horses with
one hand while wiping the froth of the last tankard from his mouth
with the other, departed from the door with his team as Sharkley
entered and heard a voice that was familiar, singing vociferously
upstairs.
"Who is the musical party?" asked he of the round-headed,
short-necked and barrel-shaped landlord, whose comely paunch was
covered by a white apron.
"Your friend the old pensioner, Mr. Sharkley," replied the other,
"and main noisy he be."
"Friend?" said Sharkley nervously; "he ain't a friend of mine--only a
kind of client in a humble way."
"I wouldn't have given such, house-room; but trade is bad--the
coaches are all off the road now, and business be all taken by the
rail to Launceston, Bodmin, and elsewhere."
"Has he been drinking?"
"Yes."
"Pretty freely?" asked Sharpley hopefully.
"Well--yes; we're licensed to get drunk on the premises."
"Come," thought the emissary, "this is encouraging! His intellect,"
he added aloud, "is weak; after a time he grows furious and is apt to
accuse people of robbing him, especially of certain papers of which
he imagines himself the custodian; it is quite a monomania."
"A what, sur?"
"A monomania."
"I hopes as he don't bite; but any way," said the landlord, who had
vague ideas of hydrophobia, "I had better turn him out at once, as I
want no bobberies here."
"No--no; that would be precipitate. I shall try to soothe him over;
besides, I have express business with him to-night."
"But if he won't be soothed?" asked Boniface, anxiously.
"Then you have the police station at hand."
Meanwhile they could hear Derrick above them, drumming on the bare
table with a pint-pot, and singing some barrack-room ditty of which
the elegant refrain was always,--
"Stick to the colour, boys, while there's a rag on it,
And tickle them behind with a touch of the bagonet:
So, love, farewell, for _all_ for a-marching!"
As Sharkley entered, it was evident that the old soldier, whose voice
rose at times into a shrill, discordant, and hideous falsetto, had
been imbibing pretty freely; his weather-beaten face was flushed, his
eyes watery, and his voice somewhat husky, but he was in excellent
humour with himself and all the world. The visitor's sharp eyes took
in the whole details of the little room occupied by his victim; a
small window, which he knew to be twelve feet from a flower-bed
outside; a bed in a corner; two Windsor chairs, a table and
wash-stand, all of the most humble construction; these, with
Derrick's tiny carpet-bag and walking staff, comprised its furniture.
"Come along, Master Sharkley--glad to see you--glad to see any
one--it's dreary work drinking alone. This is my billet, and there
is a shot in the locker yet--help yourself," he added, pushing a
large three-handled tankard of ale across the table.
"Thank you, Braddon," replied the other, careful to omit the prefix
of "Mr.," which Derrick always resented, "and you must share mine
with me. Have you heard the news?"
"From where--India?"
"Yes."
"And what are they that I have not heard--tell me that, Mr.
Sharkley--what are they that I have not heard?" said Braddon with the
angry emphasis assumed at times unnecessarily by the inebriated.
"Is it that your young master is shut up among the Afghans, and
likely, I fear, to remain so?"
"Her Majesty the Queen don't think so--no, sir--d--n me, whatever
you, and such as you, may think," responded Derrick, becoming
suddenly sulky and gloomy.
"Who do you mean, Braddon?" asked the other, drinking, and eying him
keenly over his pewter-pot.
"Did you see to-day's Gazette?"
"The Bankruptcy list?"
"Bankrupts be--" roared Braddon, contemptuously, striking his
clenched hand on the deal table; "no--the _War Office Gazette_."
Mr. W. S. Sharkley faintly and timidly indicated that as it was a
part of the newspapers which possessed but small interest for him, he
certainly had not seen it.
"Well, that is strange now," said Derrick; "it is almost the only bit
of a paper I ever read."
"It ain't very lively, I should think."
"Ain't it--well, had you looked there to-day, you would have seen
that young master Denzil--that is my Lord Lamorna as should be--has
been gazetted to a Lieutenancy in the old Cornish--yes, in
the-old-Cornish-Light-Infantry!" added Derrick, running five words
into one.
"Indeed! but he may die in the hands of the enemy for all
that--though I hope not."
"Give me your hand, Mr. Sharkley, for that wish," said Derrick, with
tipsy solemnity; "moreover, he is to have the third class of the
Dooranee Empire, whatever the dickens that may be. I've drawed my
pension to-day, Mr. Sharkley, and I mean to spend every penny of it
in wetting the young master's new commission, and the Dooranee Empire
to boot. Try the beer again--it's home-brewed, and a first-rate
quencher--here's-his-jolly good-health!"
"So say I--his jolly good health."
"With three times three!"
"Yes," added Sharkley, as he wrung the pensioner's proffered hand,
"and three to that."
Derrick, who, though winding up the day on beer, had commenced it
with brandy, was fast becoming more noisy and confused, to his wary
visitor's intense satisfaction.
"Yes--yes--master Denzil will escape all and come home safe, please
God," said Derrick, becoming sad and sentimental for a minute; "yet
in my time I heard many a fellow--yes, many a fellow--before we went
into action, or were just looking to our locks, and getting the
cartridges loose, say to another, 'write for me,' to my father, or
mother, or it might be 'poor Bess, or Nora,' meaning his wife, 'in
case I get knocked on the head;' and I have seen them shot in their
belts within ten minutes after. I often think--yes, by jingo I
do--that a man sometimes knows when death is a-nigh him, for I have
heard some say they were sure they'd be shot, and shot they were sure
enough; while others--I for one--were always sure they'd escape.
It's what we soldiers call a presentiment; but of course, you, as a
lawyer, can know nothing about it. With sixty rounds of ammunition
at his back, a poor fellow will have a better chance of seeing Heaven
than if he died with a blue bagfull of writs and rubbish."
Then Derrick indulged in a tipsy fit of laughter, mingled with tears,
as he said,
"You'd have died o' laughing, Mr. Sharkley, if you'd seen the captain
my master one day--but perhaps you don't care about stories?"
"By all means, Braddon," replied Sharkley, feeling in his vest pocket
with a fore-finger and thumb for a phial which lurked there; "I
dearly love to hear an old soldier's yarn."
"Well, it was when we were fighting against the rebels in Canada--the
rebels under Papineau. We were only a handful, as the saying is--a
handful of British troops, and they were thousands in
number--discontented French, Irish Rapparees, and Yankee
sympathisers, armed with everything they could lay hands on; but we
licked them at St. Denis and St. Charles, on the Chamblay river--yes,
and lastly at Napierville, under General Sir John Colborne; and
pretty maddish we Cornish lads were at them, for they had just got
one of our officers, a poor young fellow named Lieutenant George
Weir, into their savage hands by treachery, after which they tied him
to a cart-tail, and cut him into joints with his own sword.
Well--where was I?--at Napierville. We were lying in a field in
extended order to avoid the discharge of a field gun or two, that the
devils had got into position against us, when a ball from one
ploughed up the turf in a very open place, and Captain Trevelyan
seated himself right in the furrow it had made, and proceeded to
light a cigar, laughing as he did so.
" Are you wise to sit there, right in the line of fire?' asked the
colonel, looking down from his horse.
"'Yes,' says my master.
"'How so?'
"Master took the cigar between his fingers, and while watching the
smoke curling upwards, said,
"'You see, colonel, that another cannon ball is extremely unlikely to
pass in the same place; two never go after each other thus.'
"But he had barely spoken, ere the shako was torn off his head by a
second shot from the field piece; so everybody laughed, while he
scrambled out of the furrow, looking rather white and confused,
though pretending to think it as good a joke as any one else--that
was funny, wasn't it!"
So, while Derrick lay back and laughed heartily at his own
reminiscence, Sharkley, quick as lightning, poured into his tankard a
little phial-full of morphine, a colourless but powerful narcotic
extracted from opium. He then took an opportunity of casting the
phial into the fire unseen, and by the aid of the poker effectually
concealed it.
"What a fine thing it would have been for Mr. Downie Trevelyan if
that rebel shot had been a little lower down--eh, Derrick?" said he,
chuckling.
"Not while the proud old lord lived, for he ever loved my master
best."
"But he is in possession now--and that, you know, is nine points of
the law."
"Yes--and he has a heart as hard as Cornish granite," said Braddon,
grinding his set teeth; "aye, hard as the Logan Stone of Treryn
Dinas! Here is confusion to him and all such!" he added,
energetically, as he drained the drugged tankard to the dregs; "if
such a fellow were in the army, he'd be better known to the Provost
Marshal than to the Colonel or Adjutant, and would soon find himself
at shot-drill, with B.C. branded on his side. But here's Mr.
Denzil's jolly good-health-and-hooray-for-the-Dooranee-Empire!" he
continued, and applied the empty tankard mechanically to his lips,
while his eyes began to roll, as the four corners of the room seemed
to be in pursuit of each other round him. "I dreamt I was on the
wreck last night--ugh! and saw the black fins of the sea-lawyers,
sticking up all about us."
"Sea-lawyers--what may they be?"
"Sharks," replied Braddon, his eyes glaring with a curious
expression, that hovered between fun and ferocity, at his companion,
whose figure seemed suddenly to waver, and then to multiply.
"Ha, ha, very good; an old soldier must have his joke."
"So had my master, when he sat in the fur-ur-urrow made by the shell.
You see, we were engaged with Canada rebels at
Napierville--ville--yes exactly, at Naperville, when a twelve-pound
shot----"
He was proceeding, with twitching mouth and thickened utterance, to
relate the whole anecdote deliberately over again, when Sharkley, who
saw that he was becoming so fatuously tipsy that further concealment
was useless, rose impatiently, and abruptly left the room, to give
the landlord some fresh hints for his future guidance.
"Halt! come back here--here, you sir--I say!" exclaimed Braddon, in a
low, fierce, and husky voice, as this sudden and unexplained movement
seemed to rouse all his suspicions and quicken his perceptive
qualities; but in attempting to leave his chair he fell heavily on
the floor.
He grew ghastly pale as he staggered into a sitting posture. Tipsy
and stupefied though he was, some strange conviction of treachery
came over him; he staggered, or dragged himself, partly on his hands
and knees, towards the bed, and drawing from his breast-pocket the
tin case, with the documents so treasured, by a last effort of
strength and of judgment, thrust it between the mattress and
palliasse, and flung himself above it.
Then, as the powerful narcotic he had imbibed overspread all his
faculties, he sank into a deep and dreamless but snorting slumber,
that in its heaviness almost boded death!
* * * * *
The noon of the next day was far advanced when poor old Derrick awoke
to consciousness, but could, with extreme difficulty, remember where
he was. A throat parched, as if fire was scorching it; an
overpowering headache and throbbing of the temples; hot and tremulous
hands, with an intense thirst, served to warn him that he must have
been overnight, that which he had not been for many a year, very
tipsy and "totally unfit for duty."
He staggered up in search of a water-jug, and then found that he had
lain abed with his clothes on. A pleasant breeze came through the
open window; the waves of the bright blue sea were rolling against
Tintagel cliffs and up Boscastle creek; hundreds of birds were
twittering in the warm spring sunshine about the clematis and briar
that covered all the tavern walls, and the hum of the bee came softly
and gratefully to his ear, as he strove to recall the events of the
past night.
Sharkley!--it had been spent with Sharkley the solicitor, and where
now was he?
The papers! He mechanically put his trembling hand to his coat
pocket, and then, as a pang of fear shot through his heart, under the
mattress.
They were not there; vacantly he groped and gasped, as recollections
flashed upon him, and the chain of ideas became more distinct; madly
he tossed up all the bedding and scattered it about. The case was
gone, and with it the precious papers, too, were gone--GONE!
Sobered in an instant by this overwhelming catastrophe--most terribly
sobered--a hoarse cry of mingled rage and despair escaped him. The
landlord, who had been listening for an outbreak of some kind, now
came promptly up.
"Beast, drunkard, fool that I have been!" exclaimed Derrick, in
bitter accents of self-reprobation; "this is how I have kept my
promise to a dying master--duped by the first scoundrel who came
across me! I have been juggled--drugged, perhaps--then juggled, and
robbed after!"
"Robbed of what?" asked the burly landlord, laughing.
"Papers--my master's papers," groaned Derrick.
"Bah--I thought as much; now look ye here, old fellow----"
"Robbed by a low lawyer," continued Derrick, hoarsely; "and no fiend
begotten in hell can be lower in the scale of humanity or more
dangerous to peaceful society. Oh, how often has poor master said
so," he added, waxing magniloquent, and almost beside himself with
grief and rage; "how often have I heard him say, 'I have had so much
to do with lawyers, that I have lost all proper abhorrence for their
master, the devil.'"
"Now, I ain't going to stand any o' this nonsense--just you clear
out," said the landlord, peremptorily.
Then as his passionate Cornish temper got the better of his reason,
Derrick on hearing this suddenly seized Jack Trevanion's successor by
the throat, and dashing him on the floor, accused him of being art
and part, or an aider and abettor of the robbery, in which, to say
truth, he was not. His cries speedily brought the county
constabulary, to whom, by Sharkley's advice, he had previously given
a hint, and before the sun was well in the west, honest Derrick
Braddon was raving almost with madness and despair under safe keeping
in the nearest station house.