MR. JACK ROGERS AS A MAN OF AFFAIRS.
"I know," said I, meeting her gaze sturdily, "that you are in
danger."
"How should I be in danger?"
"That I cannot tell you, Miss Isabel, unless you first tell me
something."
She waited, her eyes searching mine.
"Last night," I went on, "in the road--you were expecting someone."
Her chin went up proudly; but a tide of red rose with it, flushing
her throat and so creeping up and colouring her face.
"Was it Archibald Plinlimmon?"
She put up a hand as if to push me aside: but on a sudden turned and
hastened from me, with bowed head, towards the cottage.
"Miss Isabel!" I cried, following her close. "I meant no harm--how
could I mean you harm? Miss Isabel!"
I would not let her go, but followed her to the door, entreating;
even pushed after her into the small kitchen, where at last she faced
on me.
"Why cannot you let me alone, boy? Into what have you come
here to pry? You are odious--yes, odious!" She stamped her foot.
"And I thought last night, that you were in trouble. Was I not
kind to you for that, and that only?" She broke off pitifully.
"Oh, Harry, I am dreadfully unhappy!"
She sank into a chair beside the table, across which she flung an arm
and so leaned her brow and let the sobs shake her.
"And I am here to help you, Miss Isabel: only so much is puzzling me!
Last night you said you had a secret, and that it was a happy one.
To-day you are crying, and it is miserable to see."
"And why should I not be happy?" She lifted a hand to the bosom of
her bodice, and slipped over her third finger the ring she had worn
over-night.
"Why should I not be expecting him?" she murmured.
For the moment I was slow in understanding. But I suppose that at
length she saw that in my eyes which satisfied her: for she drew down
my head to her lap, and sat laughing and weeping softly.
A kettle hanging from a crook in the chimney-place boiled over,
hissing down upon the hot wood-ashes. She sprang up and lifted it
down to the hearth.
"Oh, and I forgot!" Her hand went back to her bodice again.
"Mr. Jack Rogers was here this morning inquiring for you. He drove
up in his tilbury, and said he was on his way to Plymouth. But he
left this note."
I took it and deciphered these words, scrawled in an abominable hand:
"Meet me to-night, nine o'clock, at the place where we parted.
J. R."
"Was Mr. Rogers going to Plymouth?" I asked.
"Yes, and in a hurry, by the pace he was driving."
As you may guess, this news discomposed me. Could Mr. Rogers be
preparing a trap? No: certainly not for me. Whitmore, if anyone, was
his quarry. But I mistrusted that, if he once started this game, it
would lead him on to another scent. That Archibald Plinlimmon was
innocent of the Jew's murder I felt sure. Still--what had he been
seeking on the roofs by the Jew's house? It would be an ugly
question, if Mr. Rogers blundered on it; and in the way of honest
blundering I felt Mr. Rogers to be infinitely capable. Would that,
trusting in his good nature, I had made a clean breast to him!
A clean breast? Isabel too, poor girl, was aching to make confession
to her father. For weeks her secret had been a sword within her,
wearing the flesh, and it eased her somewhat (as I saw) even to have
made confession to me. But she would not speak to her father without
first consulting Archibald. It was he, I gathered, who had enjoined
silence. Major Brooks (and small blame to him) would assuredly
have imposed a probation: old men with lovely daughters do not
surrender them at call to penniless youths, even when the penniless
youth happens to be the son of an old friend. I wished Master
Archibald to perdition for a selfish fool.
I talked long with Isabel: first in the kitchen, and again on our way
back to the summer-house, where her father sat awake and expecting
me, book in hand.
There she left me, and he began to dictate at once as I settled
myself to write.
"First, then, for site. Seek, and instal your Bee
Where nor may winds invade (for winds forbid
His homeward load); nor sheep, nor heady kid
Trample the flowers; nor blundering heifer pass,
Brush off the dew and bruise the tender grass;
Nor lizard foe in painted armour prowl
Round the rich hives. Ban him, ban every fowl--
Bee-bird with Procne of the bloodied breast:
These rifle all--our Hero with the rest,
Snapped on the wing and haled, a tit-bit, to the nest.
--But seek a green moss'd pool, with well-spring nigh;
And through the turf a streamlet fleeting by."
So much, with interminably slow pauses, we accomplished before the
light waned in the summer-house and Isabel called us in to supper,
which we ate together in a low-ceiled parlour overlooking the garden.
At a quarter to nine, on pretence that I had still to make up arrears
of sleep, she signed to me to wish her father good-night and escorted
me out into the passage. A slip of the bolt, and I was free of the
night.
I found the spot where I had dropped into the road, and cautiously
mounted the hedge, putting the brambles aside and peering through
them into the fast falling twilight. A low whistle sounded, and Mr.
Rogers stepped into view on the footbridge. But he left a companion
behind him in the shadow of the alders, and who this might be I could
neither see nor guess.
"Is that you, Master Revel?"
There was no help for it now; so over the hedge I climbed and met
him.
"How did you find out--"
--"Your name? Miss Brooks told me, this morning. But, for that
matter, it's placarded all over Plymouth and at every public and
forge and signpost along the road. You're a notorious character, my
son."
I began to quake.
"Parson," he went on, turning and addressing the figure in the
shadow, "here's the boy. Better make haste, if you have any
questions to ask him before we get to business."
There stepped forward, not Mr. Whitmore (as I was fearfully
expecting), but a figure unknown to me; an old shovel-hatted man
leaning on a stick and buttoned to the chin in a black Inverness
cape. I felt his eyes peering at me through the dusk.
"He seems very young to be a trustworthy witness," croaked this old
gentleman in a voice which seemed to be affected by the night air.
"He's right enough," Mr. Rogers answered cheerfully.
"He shall tell his tale, then, in Mr. Whitmore's presence. I will
not yet believe that a minister of Christ's religion, whose papers--
as I have proved to you--are in order, whose testimonials are
unexceptionable, who has the Bishop's licence--"
"The Bishop's fiddlestick! The Bishop didn't license him to carry
marked guineas in his pocket, and I don't wait for a licence to carry
a warrant in mine."
"You will at least afford him an opportunity of explaining before you
execute it. To be plain with you, Mr. Rogers, this business is like
to be scandalous, however you look at it."
"The constables shall remain outside, and the warrant I'll keep in my
pocket until your reverence's doubts are at rest." Mr. Rogers gave
another low whistle and two men, hitherto concealed at a little
distance in the trees' shadow, stepped silently forward and joined
us. "Ready, lads? Quick march, then!"
We took the path up the valley bottom, and across a grassy shoulder
of the park to a small gate in the ring-fence. Beyond this gate a
lane, or cart-road, dipped steeply downhill to the right; and
following it, we came on a high stone wall overtopped by trees.
"Here's your post, Hodgson," whispered Mr. Rogers, after waiting for
the constables to come up. "Jim will take the back of the house: and
understand that no one is to enter or leave. If anyone attempts it,
signal to me: one whistle from you, Hodgson, and two from Jim.
Off you go, my lad! The signal's the same if I want you--one whistle
or two, as the case may be."
The constable he called Jim crept away in the darkness, while Mr.
Rogers found and cautiously opened a wicket-gate leading to a
courtlage, across which a solitary window shone on the ground-floor
of a house lifting its gables and heavy chimneys against a sky only
less black than itself.
"Gad!" said Mr. Rogers softly, "I wonder what Whitmore's doing?
The fun would be, now, to find one of these windows unfastened, and
slip in upon him without announcing ourselves. 'Twouldn't be the
thing, though, for a Justice of the Peace, let alone Mr. Doidge here.
No: we'll have to do it in order and knock. The maid knows me.
Only you two must keep back in the shadow here while she opens the
door."
He stepped forward and knocked boldly.
To the astonishment of us all the door opened almost at once, and
without any noise of unlocking or drawing of bolts.
"For Heaven's sake, my dear--unless you want to wake the village--"
began a voice testily. It was Mr. Whitmore's, and almost on the
instant, by the light of a candle which he held, he recognised the
man on the doorstep.
"Mr. Rogers? To what do I owe--"
"Good evening, Whitmore! May I come in? Won't detain you long--
especially since you seem to be expecting company."
"It's the maid," answered Mr. Whitmore coldly, though he seemed
confused. "She has stepped down to the village for an hour, to her
mother's cottage, and I am alone."
"So you call her 'my dear'? That's a bit pastoral, eh?"
"Look here, Rogers: if you're drunk, I beg you to call at some other
time. To tell the truth, I'm busy."
"Writing your sermon? I thought Saturday was the night for that.
'Pon my honour now I wouldn't intrude, only the business is urgent."
He waited while Mr. Whitmore somewhat grudgingly set the door wide to
admit him. "By the way I've brought a couple of friends with me."
"Confound it all, Rogers--"
"Oh, you know them." Mr. Rogers, with his foot planted over the
threshold, airily waved us forward out of the darkness. "Mr. Doidge,
your Rector," he announced; "also Mr. Revel--a recent acquaintance of
yours, as I understand."
"Good evening, Whitmore," said the Rector stepping forward. "I owe
you an apology (I sincerely hope) for the circumstances of this
visit, as I certainly discommend Mr. Rogers's method of introducing
us."
Now, as we two stepped forward, Mr. Whitmore had instantly shot out
his right hand to the door--against which Mr. Rogers, however, had
planted his foot--with a gesture as if to slam it in our faces.
But the sombre apparition of the Rector seemed to freeze him where he
stood--or all of him but his left hand which, grasping the
candlestick, slowly and as if involuntarily lifted it above the level
of his eyes. Then, before the Rector had concluded, he lowered it,
turned, and walked hastily before us down the passage.
Still without speaking he passed through a door on his right, and we
followed him into a sparely furnished room lined with empty
book-shelves. A few books lay scattered on the centre table where
also, within the shaded light of a reading lamp, stood a tray with a
decanter and a couple of glasses. Beside this lamp he set down the
candle and faced us. In those few paces down the passage I had
observed that he wore riding-boots and spurs, and that they were
spotlessly bright and clean. But from this moment I had eyes only
for his face, which was ashen white and the more horrible because he
was essaying a painful smile.
"My dear Rector," he began, "this is indeed a--a surprise. You said
nothing of any such intention when I had the honour to call on you in
Plymouth, two days ago."
"Good reason for why," interrupted Mr. Rogers. "Look here,
Whitmore--with the Rector's leave we'll get this over. Do you know
this coin?"
He held forward a guinea under the lamp.
I could see the unhappy man pick up his courage to fix his gaze on
the coin and hold it fixed.
"I don't understand you, Rogers," he answered. "I have, of course,
no knowledge of that coin or what it means. To me it looks like an
ordinary guinea."
"I had it from you last night, Whitmore: and it is not an ordinary
guinea, but a marked one. What's more, I marked it myself--see, with
this small cross behind the king's head. What's more I sold it, so
marked, to Rodriguez, the Jew."
--"Who, I suppose, promptly put it into circulation in Plymouth,
where by chance it was handed to me amid the change when I paid my
hotel-bill--if indeed you are absolutely sure you were given this
coin by me."
"Come, Rogers, that's an explanation I myself suggested," put in the
Rector.
"The folks at the Royal Hotel," answered Mr. Rogers curtly, "tell me
that you paid your bill in silver."
It seemed to me that Mr. Rogers was pressing Whitmore harshly, almost
with a note of private vindictiveness in his voice. But while I
wondered at this my eyes fell on the curate's hand as it played
nervously with the base of the brass candlestick. There was a ring
on the little finger: and in an instant I knew--though I could not
have sworn to it in court--yet knew more certainly than many things
to which I could have testified on oath--that this was the hand I had
seen closing the door in the Jew's House.
Through a buzzing of the brain I heard him addressing the Rector and
protesting against the absurdity, the monstrosity, of the charge--yet
still with that recurring agonised glance at me. But my eyes now
were on Mr. Rogers; and the buzzing ceased and my brain cleared when
he swung round, inviting me to speak. I cannot tell what question he
put to me, but what I said was:
"If you please, sirs, the runners are after me; and it isn't fair to
make me tell yet what happened in the Jew's house, or what I saw
there: for what I told might be twisted and turned against me."
"Nonsense!" interrupted Mr. Rogers. But the Rector nodded his head.
"The boy's right. He's under suspicion himself, and should have a
lawyer to advise him before he speaks. That's only fair play."
"But," I went on "there's another thing, if you'll be pleased to ask
Mr. Whitmore about it. Why is he paying money to a soldier--a man
who calls himself Letcher, but his real name is Leicester? And what
have they been plotting against Miss Isabel down at the Cottage?"