"DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES."
"So, Master Sheriff," muttered Rumsey, as he stood coolly watching
the thin stream of blood trickling slowly from the prostrate body of
his victim, "that is one of you ticked off, at all events. It was
such a pity you should be calling names for nothing, wasn't it? and
wasps like you are mightily troublesome, not to say dangerous; for
who's to guess where you mightn't go buzzing our plans? Not dead
yet, aren't you?" he went on scowlingly, as a low groan broke from
Goodenough's lips. "Why, you yelled out loud enough for a dozen men.
I swear I could almost have fancied 'twas a woman's screech, 'twas so
shrill;" and he looked round as he spoke. "But then one might fancy
anything in this charnel hole of a place;" and again he cast covert
glances at the shadows thrown upon the wainscotting by the flicker of
the expiring lamp; and crossing to one of the windows, he looked out
through the murky darkness, towards a light gleaming steadily in the
far distance. "Cold as charity it is too. I'd give a gold piece to
be out of this, and drying before the kitchen fire over at the
Thatched House at Hoddesdon yonder, with a cup of mulled sack and a
tender cut.--The mischief seize you!" he growled on, as a deep groan
from the wounded man arrested his speculations, and turning sharply
on him he saw Goodenough feebly move his right hand towards his
breast. "Not still yet? Hang it! Richard Rumsey never pinned a
jerkin so clumsily before. Want it pulled out, do you?" he
continued, with a brutal laugh, as he came close up beside his
victim, and stooping over him, plucked the poignard from his breast.
"Have your way, then. But don't be saying it's my fault, if your
last gasp comes with it." Then with savage indifference he saw the
ebbing thread of life-blood swell into a stream let loose by the
removal of the weapon, and the limbs relax, while the face grows gray
and fixed. "So, I thought as much. Well, go your ways friend, to
your journey's end, and keep yourself ready when you get there, to
welcome the Blackbird and the Chaffinch when they knock. And now I
think I'll be going my road;" and Rumsey glanced meditatively towards
the window. "Another time will serve to explain to Captain Hannibal
how you got yourself into this coil. Stay," and he slowly lifted the
blood-stained poignard still dangling in his fingers. "A mighty
excellent notion!"
[Sidenote: The assassin.]
Kneeling down by the wounded man's side, he wrenched open the
clenched fingers of his right hand, and thrust the hilt of the dagger
between them. "Yes," he muttered; "that will tell its own tale. And
now for the Thatched House."
Returning to the window, and craning out his neck, Rumsey spent
several minutes, first in consideration of the projecting corbels and
cornices, and the stout web work of ivy covering the walls; then
drawing his head back again, he fell to scowling contemplation of his
lamed foot. Once on terra firma, nothing, he knew, was easier than
to find the postern; and if by ill luck it should be locked, the
trees bordering the walls on their inner side would assist him to
scale them, and so away across the Rye by the bridges.
Only the first step was the hard one; but the guilty man knew there
was no choice for him but to grapple with it; and after one or two
clumsy failures, he succeeded in at last obtaining a firm footing on
the window ledge.
[Sidenote: An unexpected appearance.]
Scarcely had he accomplished this feat, than a flash of light broke
across his eyes, with such startling suddenness that it caused him to
sway forward, and he would have dropped headlong into the moat, had
he not stretched out both hands, clinging for dear life to the stout
old ivy trails; and by a wrench and a twist that for some hours
afterward he did not forget, held on by the jutting stone-work of the
window, staring helplessly into the room at the figure of a man, who
stood lantern in hand, in the arch of the door facing him. "Hullo!"
he cried.
"The same to you, colonel," laughingly returned the voice of Lawrence
Lee. "What in the name of Fortune are you about there? Marry! 'Tis
an odd time of night to be practising gymnastics!"
"Lend me a hand for mercy's sake!" gasped Rumsey, "or I shall fall
and break my neck."
"And it would be such a pity that, eh, colonel?" laughed Lee, as he
ran forward. "Have with you then."
"Great heaven!" he cried, stumbling in his haste head foremost across
the body of Goodenough; "what have we here? Sheriff Goodenough!" he
continued in horrified amazement, as he turned his lantern light on
the pale still face, and perceived the pool of blood it lay weltering
in. "Dead? Murdered?"
Rumsey shrugged his shoulders with an air of cool indifference.
"Man!" shouted Lee, turning on Rumsey. "What is the meaning of this?"
"Pooh! nonsense!" replied Rumsey, as well as his almost spent breath
permitted him. "Dead! Well, like enough; but murdered--Here, hi!
lend a hand, can't you?"
[Sidenote: Saved for the gallows.]
Lawrence complied; but the hand he placed at Rumsey's disposal was no
very gentle one, and he hauled him to the floor like a sack of bones.
"Speak, man!" he cried.
"Well, give me breathing time," answered Rumsey, shaking himself; and
then, glancing askance at the dark mass upon the floor, he growled
sulkily, "What is it? What do you want to know? Murdered? Well,
killing's no murder, I take it, when a man is driven to it in
self-defence."
"Self-defence!"
"Ay. There's no telling where I mightn't be now, if this quarrelsome
fellow here, had got the best of me. Don't you see the dagger there
in his hand?"
"Where are you hurt?" asked Lawrence, looking from the dagger to
Rumsey.
"I?--I?--Oh!" stammered Rumsey confusedly; "well, well, 'tis nothing
to speak of. A scratch; hardly a mere scratch."
"Who's dagger is this?" demanded Lee, stooping down, and closely
inspecting the weapon in Goodenough's grasp.
"Whose should it be?" rejoined Rumsey, letting his eyes fall shiftily
beneath the penetrating glance of Lee, as it fell on him.
"Faith! well, only I never knew him to carry so much as a bare bodkin
about him," said Lawrence.
[Sidenote: The traitor's tale.]
"Then that shows how little you do know him," retorted Rumsey. "A
more bloodthirsty, cantankerous fellow than he is, isn't to be found
among the lot of us. Why, he's for lopping everybody who doesn't say
'snap' to his 'snip.'"
"'Tis very strange," said Lee thoughtfully.
"A nice thing," grumbled on Rumsey, letting his eyes rest on Lee's
left hand, which hung straight down beside him. "A nice thing to
attack a man in this fashion, as if he was a viper in a rut. And
it's preciously fortunate I'm always prepared for any surprise.
You'd find it a hard matter to catch Richard Rumsey on the hip;" and
he smiled a smile of infinite self-complacency. "What's that
dangling in your fingers there?"
[Sidenote: The key.]
"Only the key of the tower door," absently replied Lee. "But," he
went on, again keenly glancing over Rumsey's figure: "it takes two to
a fair fight--and a pair of weapons. Where is yours?"
"Hadn't I my choice of twoscore at least out of the toys there?" said
Rumsey after an instant's silence, and pointing to the oaken chest.
"If you doubt it look for yourself. A real embarrassment of riches,
eh?" he went on, watching Lee's face, as he lifted the lid of the
chest and stood gazing at its gleaming contents. "Enough to do for a
score of lives if one had 'em. But the best of us has but one in
this bad world," he continued, piously turning up his eyes; "and
Providence has spared me, as you see, from the sword of the ungodly.
I'd have given my best firelock, though, it had not happened;" and
for once Rumsey spoke pure and simple truth. "The fellow had his
faults, but I had a great respect for him."
"And is that what sent you clearing off in such a hurry?" asked
Lawrence, turning contemptuously from Rumsey, and kneeling down
beside Goodenough's motionless body he set his lantern on the floor,
and the key beside it, and raised the wounded man's head; "and
leaving him in this state?"
"Well, you see--" but here a violent fit of coughing interfered with
Colonel Rumsey's powers of articulation. "Hang that open window!" he
said, when speech at last returned; "'tis enough to give a man his
death," he went on, as he closed the pane with such violence that the
draught from it extinguished the dying flame of the lamp. "It
was--h'm--h'm--it was awkward, don't you see, being found here,
with--with no one to tell the tale but myself, as it were; for dead
men tell none," he added with a low chuckle.
"He's not dead," said Lawrence, placing his hand on Goodenough's
heart.
"Bah! dead as a door-nail. I'm mightily sorry for it, to be sure;
but the fellow brought it on himself. What could I do? Necessity
knows no law."
[Sidenote: In the dark.]
And Rumsey, stooping down over Lee as if to scrutinize the
countenance lying pillowed on the young man's arm, contrived to let
his hand drop well over the key upon the floor. Then clutching the
ring of the lantern, he paused and repeated his observation. "Take
my word for it. He's dead as a door-nail. Good-night, Master Lee.
I'll leave you to explain matters, if it's all the same to you."
Lee looked up. Absorbed in his efforts to staunch the flow of blood
from Goodenough's wound, he had hardly heard Rumsey's last words.
As, however, he raised his head the door fell softly to, and he found
himself in total darkness.