A STRANGE MAN IN THE GARDEN.
Indeed, the longer we weighed the pros and cons the more feasible
appeared the simple adventure. We ran, to be sure, the risk of being
waylaid on our passage by an American privateer; but this was a
danger incident to all who sailed on board his Majesty's Post Office
packets in the year 1814. That anything was to be feared from the
man Glass, none of us (I believe) stopped to consider. We thought of
him only as a foiled criminal, a fugitive from justice, and
speculated only on the chance that, with the hue-and-cry out and the
whole countryside placarded, the Plymouth runners would lay him by
the heels.
Undoubtedly he had made for Plymouth. From Torpoint came news that a
man answering to his description had crossed the ferry there on the
morning after the murder. The regular ferryman there had stepped
into a public-house for his regular morning glass of rum-and-water;
and in his absence the small boy who acted as substitute had taken a
stranger across. The stranger, who appeared to be in a sweating
hurry, had rewarded the boy with half a crown; and the boy, rowing
back to the Torpoint side and finding his master still in the tavern,
had kept his own counsel and the money. Now the hue-and-cry had
frightened him into confessing; and his description left no doubt
that the impatient passenger was Aaron Glass.
Such a man had been observed, about two hours later, mingling in a
fish auction on the Barbican; and had actually bidden for a boatload
of mackerel, but without purchasing. From the auction he had walked
away in the direction of Southside Street; and from that point all
trace of him was lost.
Mr. Rogers, who had posted straight to Plymouth from the inquest,
spent a couple of days in pushing inquiries here, there and
everywhere. But not even the promise of a clue rewarded him.
Two foreign-going vessels and four coasters had sailed from the port
on the morning after the murder. The coasters were duly met,
boarded, and searched at their ports of arrival--two at Liverpool,
one at Milford, and one at Gravesend--but without result. If, as
seemed likely, the man had contrived to ship himself on board the
_Hussar_ brig, bound for Barcelona, or the _Mary Harvey_ barque, for
Rio, the chances of bringing him to justice might be considered nil,
or almost nil; for Mr. Rogers had some hope of the _Hussar_ being
overtaken and spoken by a frigate which happened to be starting, two
days later, to join our fleet in the Mediterranean.
During the week or two that followed my father's funeral little was
said of our expedition, although I understood from Plinny that the
start would only be delayed until she and the lawyers had proved the
will and put his estate in order for me. My father's pension had, of
course, perished with him; but he left me a small sum in the funds,
bearing interest between fifty and sixty pounds per annum, together
with the freehold of Minden Cottage. Unfortunately, he had appointed
no trustees, and I was a minor; and even more unfortunately his will
directed that Minden Cottage should be sold "within a reasonably
brief time" after his death, and that the sum accruing should be
invested in Government stock for my benefit; and with this little
tangle to work upon, our lawyers--Messrs. Harding and Whiteway, of
Plymouth--and the Court of Chancery, soon involved the small estate
in complications which (as Miss Belcher put it) were the more
annoying because the fools at both ends were honest men and trying to
do the best for me.
Of this business I understood nothing at the time, save that it
caused delay; and I mention it here only to explain the delay and
because (as will be seen) the sale of Minden Cottage, when at length
the Lord Chancellor was good enough to authorize it, had a very
important bearing on the rest of my story.
Meanwhile, Captain Branscome had, of course, returned to Falmouth,
and would book our passages on the Kingston packet as soon as my
affairs allowed. We received letters from him from time to time, and
on Saturdays and Mondays a passing call from Mr. Goodfellow, on his
way to and from Plymouth. He had stipulated that, before sailing
with us, he should take his inamorata into his confidence; and this
was conceded after Miss Belcher had taken the opportunity of a day's
marketing in Plymouth to call at the dairy-shop in Treville Street
and make the lady's acquaintance.
"A very sensible young person," she reported; "and of the two I'd
sooner trust her than Goodfellow to keep a still tongue. There's no
danger in _that_ quarter!"
Nor was there, as it proved. Mr. Goodfellow told us that he could
hardly contain himself whenever he thought of his prospects; "for,"
said he, "I was born a parish apprentice; in place of which here I be
at the age of twenty with two fortunes waiting for me, one at each
end of the world."
At length, in the last week of July, Messrs. Harding and Whiteway
announced that all formalities were complete; and three days later a
bill appeared on the whitewashed front of Minden Cottage announcing
that this desirable freehold residence with two and a half acres of
land would be sold by public auction on August 6, at 1.30 o'clock
p.m., in the Royal Hotel, Plymouth. Any particulars not mentioned in
the bills would be readily furnished on application at the office
of the vendor's solicitors; and parties wishing to inspect the
premises might obtain the keys from Miss Belcher's lodge-keeper,
Mr. Polglaze--that is to say, from the nearest dwelling-house down
the road.
Plinny, with the help of half a dozen of Miss Belcher's men and a
couple of waggons, had employed these three days in removing our
furniture to the great cricket pavilion above the hill; an excellent
storehouse, where, for the time, it would remain in charge of Mr.
Saunders, the head keeper. We ourselves removed to the shelter of
Miss Belcher's lordly roof, as her guests; and Ann, the cook, to a
cottage on the home farm, where that lady--who usually superintended
her own dairy--had offered her the post of _locum tenens_ until our
return from foreign travel. By the morning when the bill-poster came
and affixed the notice of sale, Minden Cottage stood dismantled--a
melancholy shell, inhabited only by memories for us, and for our
country neighbours by mysterious ghostly terrors.
This was one of the many grounds on which we agreed that the Lord
Chancellor had acted foolishly in insisting upon a public auction.
His lordship, to be sure, could not be expected to know that recent
events had utterly depreciated the selling value of Minden Cottage
over the whole of the south and east of Cornwall; that the
homeward-trudging labourer would breathe a prayer as he neared it
along the high-road in the dark, and would shut his eyes and run by
it, nor draw breath until he reached the lodge, down the road; that
quite a number of Christian folk who had been used to envy my father
the snuggest little retreat within twenty miles would now have
refused a hundred pounds to spend one night in it. So it was,
however; and the chance of an "out"-bidder might be passed over as
negligible. On the other hand, Miss Belcher had offered Messrs.
Harding and Whiteway a handsome and more than sufficient price for
the property. She wanted it to round off her estate, out of which,
at present, it cut a small cantle and at an awkward corner.
Moreover, if Miss Belcher had not come forward, Plinny was prepared
to purchase. That Miss Belcher would acquire the place no one
doubted. Still, a public sale it had to be.
Early in the afternoon of the 5th, she left us for Plymouth, to make
arrangements for the bidding. I did not see her depart, having been
occupied since five in the morning in a glorious otter-hunt, for
which Mr. Rogers had brought over his hounds. The heat of the day
found us far up-stream, and a good ten miles from home; and by the
time Mr. Rogers had returned his pack to Miss Belcher's hospitable
kennels the sun was low in the west. I know nothing that will make a
man more honestly dirty than a long otter-hunt, followed by a
perspiring tramp along a dusty road. From feet to waist I was a cake
of dried mud overlaid with dust. I had dust in my hair, in the
creases of my clothes, in the pores of my skin. I needed ablution
far beyond the resources of Miss Belcher's establishment, which, to
tell the truth, left a good deal to seek in the apparatus of personal
cleanliness; and, snatching up the clean shirt and suit of clothes
which the ever-provident Plinny had laid out on the bed for me, I ran
down across the park to the stream under the plantation.
Little rain had fallen for a month past, and, arriving at the pool on
which I had counted for a bath, I found it almost dry. While I stood
there, in two minds whether to return or to strip and make the best
of it, I bethought me that--although I had never bathed there in my
life, the stream would be better worth trying where it ran through
the now deserted garden of Minden Cottage, below the summer-house.
The bottom might be muddy, but the dam which my father had built
there secured a sufficiency of water in the hottest months.
I picked up my clothes again, and, following the stream up to the
little door in the garden wall, pushed open the rusty latch, and
entered the garden.
The hour, as I have said, was drawing on to dusk; and though, perhaps
I ought to say, I am by nature not inclined to nervousness (or I had
not ventured so near that particular spot), yet scared enough I was,
as I stepped on to the little foot-bridge, to see a man standing by
the doorway of the summer-house.
For an instant a terror seized me that it might be a ghost--or,
worse, the man himself, Aaron Glass. But a second glance, as I
halted on a hair-trigger--so to speak--to turn and run for my life,
assured me that the man was a stranger.
He wore a suit of black, and a soft hat of Panama straw with a broad
brim, and held in his hand a something strange to me, and, indeed, as
yet almost unknown in England--an umbrella. It had a dusky white
covering, and he held it by the middle, as though he had been engaged
in taking measurements with it when my entrance surprised him.
It appeared to me for the moment that I had not only surprised him
but frightened him, for the face he turned to me wore a yellowish
pallor like that of old ivory. Yet when he drew himself up and
spoke, I seemed to know in an instant that this was his natural
colour. The face itself was large and fleshy, with bold, commanding
features: a face, on second thoughts, impossible to connect with
terror.
"Hallo, little boy! What are you doing in this garden?"
I answered him, stammering, that I was come to bathe; and while I
answered I was still in two minds about running; for his voice,
appearance, bearing, all alike puzzled me. He spoke genially, with
something foreign in his accent. I could not determine his age at
all. At first glance he seemed to be quite an old man, and not only
old but weary; yet he walked without a stoop, and as he came slowly
across the turf to the bridge-end I saw that his hair was black and
glossy, and his large face unwrinkled as a child's.
"Not after the plums, eh?"
"No, sir; and besides," said I, picking up my courage, "there's no
harm if I am. The garden belongs to me."
"So?" He regarded me for some seconds, his hands clasping the
umbrella behind his back. The sight of the bundle of black clothes I
carried apparently satisfied him. "Then you have right to ask
what brings me here. I answer, curiosity. What became of the man
who did it?" he asked, with a glance over his shoulder towards the
summer-house.
"Nobody knows, sir," I answered, recovering myself.
"Disappeared, hey?"
"Yes, sir."
"I fancy I could put my hand on him," he said very coolly, after a
pause. And I began to think I had to deal with a madman.
"Suppose, now, that I do catch him," he went on after a pause.
"What shall I do with him? In my country--for I live a great way
off--we either choke a murderer or cut off his head with a knife."
I told him--since he waited for me to say something--how in England
we disposed of our worst criminals.
"No, you don't," said he quietly. "You let some of the worst go, and
the very worst (as you believe) you banish to an island, treating
them as the old Romans treated theirs. Now, I'm a traveller; and
where do you suppose I spent this day month?"
I could not give a guess.
"Why, on the island of Elba. I'm curious, you know, especially in
the matter of criminals, so I came--oh, a tremendous way--to have a
look at Napoleon Bonaparte, there. Now I'll tell you another thing,
he's going to escape in a month or two, when his plans are ready.
I had that from his own lips; and, what's more, I heard it again in
Paris a week later. From Paris I came across to London, and from
London down to Plymouth, and from Plymouth I was to have travelled
straight to Falmouth, to take my passage home, when I heard of what
had happened here, and that the house was for sale. So I stopped to
have a look at it; for I am curious, I tell you."
He went on to prove his curiosity by asking me a score of questions
about myself: my age, my choice of a profession, my relatives (I told
him I had none), and my schooling. He drew me (I cannot remember
how) into a description of Plinny, and agreed with me that she must
be a woman in a thousand; asked where she lived at present, and
regretted--pulling out his watch--that he had not time to make her
acquaintance. Oddly enough, I felt when he said it that this was no
idle speech, but that only time prevented him from walking up the
hill and paying his respects. I felt also, the longer we talked, I
will not say a fear of him, for his manner was too urbane to permit
it, but an increasing respect. Crazed he might be, as his questions
were disconnected and now and again bewildering, as when he asked if
my father had travelled much abroad, and again it I really preferred
to remain idle at home instead of returning to finish my education
with Mr. Stimcoe; but his manner of asking compelled an answer.
I could not tell myself if I liked or disliked the man, he differed
so entirely from any one I had ever seen in my life. His questions
were intimate, yet without offence. I answered them all, with a
sense of talking to some one either immensely old or divided from me
by hundreds of miles.
In the midst of our talk, and while he was pressing me with questions
about Mr. and Mrs. Stimcoe, he suddenly lifted his head, and stood
listening.
"Hallo!" said he. "Here's the coach!"
I had heard nothing, though my ears are pretty sharp. But sure
enough, though not until a couple of minutes had passed, the wheels
of the _Highflyer_, our evening coach to Plymouth, sounded far along
the road.
The stranger pulled out a bunch of keys from his pocket.
"I will ask you as a favour," said he, "to return these to the
lodge-keeper, from whom I borrowed them. Will you be so kind?"
I said that I would do so with pleasure.
"I have been over the house. It appears--the lodge-keeper tells me--
that I have been almost the only visitor to inspect it.
That's queer, for I should have thought that to an amateur in crime--
with a taste for discovery--it offered great possibilities.
But never mind, child," said this strange man, and shook hands.
"I have great hopes of finding the scoundrel, and of dealing with
him. Eh? 'How?' Well, if we get him upon an island, he shan't get
away, like Napoleon."
With these words, which I did not understand in the least, he turned
and left me, passing out into the lane by the side-gate. A minute
later I heard the coach pull up, and yet a minute later roll on
again, conveying him towards Plymouth. I stole a glance at the
water, at the summer-house, at the tree behind it. Somehow in the
twilight they all wore an uncanny look. On my way home--for I
decided to return and take my bath in the house, after all--my mind
kept running on a story of Ann the cook's, about a man (a relative of
hers, she said) who had once seen the devil. And yet the stranger
had tipped me a guinea at parting, nor was it (except metaphorically)
red hot in my pocket.
Next evening Miss Belcher rode back to us from Plymouth with the
announcement that Minden Cottage was hers. She had not attended the
sale in person, but Maddicombe, her lawyer, had started the bidding
(under her instruction) at precisely the sum which she had privately
offered Messrs. Harding and Whiteway. There was no competition.
In fact, Maddicombe reported that, apart from the auctioneers and
himself, but six persons attended the sale. Of these, five were
local acquaintances of his whom he knew to be attracted only by
curiosity. Of the sixth, a stranger, he had been afraid at first,
but the man appeared to be a visitor, who had wandered into the sale
by mistake. At any rate, he made no bid.
"What sort of man?" I asked.
"As to that, Maddicombe had no very precise recollection, or couldn't
put it into words. A tall man, he said, and dressed in black; a
noticeable man--that was as far as he could get--and, he believed, a
foreigner."