“A man to see you, sir.”
“His name?”
“’Tis Richard Breeds, sir, of the ‘Dog and Duck.’”
“Breeds?”
“The landlord, sir.”
“What does he want?”
For answer, Dennis wriggled his shoulders, with a scared look.
“You don’t know, of course. Tell him to wait me in the hall.”
A few minutes later Mr. Tuke descended the stairs, and, happening to
be in slippered feet, walked without sound in search of his visitor,
whom, curiously, he came upon comprehensively examining the fastenings
of the oaken shutters, his bullet-head bent low. At a cough the man
started erect, and, gasping with embarrassment, ducked an awkward bow
to the master of the house.
“They are of good, tough wrought-iron,” said the latter grimly.
“So I see, sir. I was takin’ a hint for my own little place with all
respect. I’m lonely situated, too.”
He lied, of course, with scarcely professional ease. He was a short,
fleshy man, with an unwholesome damp skin like veal, and rum-buds over
his face in patches, as if he were stricken with a plague--which,
indeed, he was, of a bibulous order. His manner was very nervous and
self-depreciatory, and the only accent of character that marked his
tumid physiognomy was in the expression of his ratty and restless
little eyes.
Mr. Tuke took his measure during a moment of silence that was
obviously disconcerting to him.
“Now, sir,” said the first, at length. “What is your business?”
“I called, your honour, to axe if I could supply your honour with
liquor, milk, eggs and garden produce. I keep the ‘Dog and Duck’ on
the Stockbridge road, and maybe, I thought, ’twould be handier to your
honour and more reasonable-like to deal at a half-way house.”
“That depends. I leave these matters to my servant, who does his
catering, I believe, in the village. I know your house of call, and
have marked one or two of the visitors you entertain.”
“Maybe, sir, maybe. It’s not my business, now is it, to put every
gentleman as demands a measure of ale through his catechism?”
“That seems an odd answer. Did I make any reflections? Scarcely, I
think. The law takes means to deal with rogues without consulting the
prejudices of landlords.”
The visitor looked very ill at ease. Clearly the conversation had
taken a turn entirely unexpected by him.
“Your honour’s perfectly right,” he said, pressing his damp hands
together. “Yet the law gives us no licence to refuse a customer for
the reason we don’t like his looks.”
Eliciting no response--“I’m a peaceable man,” he went on, with some
anguish of protest. “Give me bowl and pipe and a snug ingle-corner,
and Fortin may set her cap at me, and die a old maid despite. But
ain’t it hard, sir--now ain’t it hard that I’m to be coloured with the
reputation of them as takes shelter under my roof and find my
character in question for the mere contact?”
“You enlarge greatly upon a hint,” said Mr. Tuke. “I understand, then,
that you _have_ unwelcome guests to entertain?”
Mr. Breeds winced almost imperceptibly; but his eyes took a glint of
cunning.
“I don’t say that,” said he. “I speak on general premises, as they
calls ’em, and on behalf o’ the fraternity. Mr. Brander--_him_ you may
a’ seen--is to my knowledge a scholard and an angler; which is not, by
your honour’s favour, indictable offences--no, not either of ’em.”
“Assuredly. And that other gentleman, with the beetroot face and
venerable white hair?”
The landlord sucked his lips together, in an absurd affectation of
perplexity.
“Oh, him!” he cried suddenly and jovially. “That’s Mr. Fern, that
is--a traveller, from abroad, come on a tower through the old
country.”
Then, in the same breath, he went on deprecatingly, with a ludicrous
decline of spirit:
“It’s all force the favour and take the blame with us, sir. I’m a
peaceable soul that loves a pot, and circumstances conspire to upset
me.”
Mr. Tuke looked at the man keenly. Somehow the latter seemed in
travail with that he could not, or would not, give expression to. His
hands shook, and beads of leaden perspiration stood on his forehead.
By and by he glanced stealthily at the other, and went flaccid to see
himself under scrutiny.
“Mr. Tuke--your honour,” said he, in a hoarse, vibrative voice, “I
weren’t never fitted to be a landlord--that’s the solemn truth. A man
as keeps a inn stands balanced between his custom and his conscience;
and then comes an extry pot and bowls him off of his legs. Give me
your word to compensate me agen the loss, and I’ll shut up the ‘Dog
and Duck’ to-morrow and set the place a-fire.”
He said it in a tentative, apologetic way, and was quite ready to join
in the other’s cackle of merriment over the suggestion.
“No, no, my friend,” said Mr. Tuke. “I’ve plenty on my conscience
without the guardianship of a scrupulous innkeeper.”
Then he added sternly:
“You’ve said much or little, but enough. Dree your pothouse weird, my
friend; and take the consequences if you knowingly harbour
law-breakers. We’ve talked round the subject; and now you can hardly
expect me, upon my soul, to fall in with your offer of a half-way
market.”
“Very well, sir,” said the landlord, chapfallen; and, “Bear in mind,
Mr. Breeds,” said the other, “that to be caught examining a
householder’s shutters is scarcely a recommendation to his favour.”
He saw the fellow off the premises--marked his going till he was well
out of sight; then returned to the hall and pondered the interview.
This seemed to him, as regarded the visitor’s share in it, a
confirmation of his suspicions that there was a certain mystery toward
which he was the indefinite subject and centre. More--it convinced him
that if mischief of any sort was somewhere in process of incubation
the tavern of which Mr. Breeds was landlord was the place most likely
to contain the egg.
Now, as a man who had once already taken his own life in hand, he was
not greatly sensitive to alarms that might have unnerved persons of a
more precise conduct. Indeed, in the tasteless monotony of his present
days, he would have welcomed, perhaps, the necessity of some vigorous
action justly undertaken on his own behalf. But it was this blind
search for a clue to the intangible--this turning round and round in a
vain effort to grasp a chimera, that at first worried and depressed
him.
If he could only have received certain confirmation of his surmises
that some rascal intrigue was afoot; if in all his little world there
had been a single soul he could trust and depend upon, his course
would have been easier. As it was, how did the case stand? A very
desert loneliness had begotten in him already a distrust of his
neighbours, of whom, undoubtedly, were a few of shady visage and
equipment. But, here, surely every ale-house had its _personnel_ of
loafers and idle rogues; and it seemed monstrous to assume that in
broad day, within call, as it were, of a considerable village, a
plot--of which a private gentleman, making out life meagrely in a near
empty house, was the object--could be hatching at his very door.
That was so; yet his reckoning must include those two enigmatical
visitors, the professed end of each of which was far from being, he
felt positive, its real one; and must include Mr. Joseph Corby’s
pregnant allusions--to the crazed girl--to some unknown quantity with
a fanciful title.
Considering all this from each and every aspect, he did so work
himself up to a state of savage irritation over the intolerable strain
it entailed upon a mind prone to pre-occupation in less morbid
matters, that he must have in the unfortunate Whimple and ease upon
him his burden of annoyance.
“Tell me,” said he. “Do you know anything of this man Breeds by
reputation?”
“I know--yes, sir; I have heard of him.”
“Oh! for heaven’s sake, man, give a straightforward answer for once. I
ask you what is his reputation?”
“Indeed, sir, it is none of the best; though I have heard nought
immediately to his discredit.”
“Again and again. Isn’t it a mere slander to impute evil and back from
specifying it? What is he charged with?”
“Nothing, but that his house is the resort of topers and padding
gentry.”
“And is it on that account you make a sealed coffin of ‘Delsrop’ o’
nights and would have me suffocate in my bedroom?”
The servant showed a distressed hesitation.
“Is it, I say?” persisted his master.
“Yes, sir--indeed--that is--oh, sir! ’tis an old habit with me. The
house is isolated--dark; it lies in the shadow--my God! in what a
shadow.”
Mr. Tuke stared in positive amazement. Was the fellow crazed like his
sister? A pretty thing if he should discover himself the keeper of a
private lunatic asylum.
“Control your emotions,” he said coolly. Whimple’s lips were
trembling. The man had permitted himself an outburst of which for
hours he would feel the effects.
“I would ask you,” said Mr. Tuke, with an irrepressible little
sneer--“if the question is unexciting--when did the present owner of
the ‘Dog and Duck’ come into possession?”
“’Twas last Martinmas, sir. The tavern then had been long to let.
’Twas last Martinmas.”
“And whence did he come? Do you know?”
“No, sir. I don’t know.”
“Now, Mr. Whimple, I want to ask you another question. Have you any
reason to understand what is implied by the Lake of Wine?”
If he had accused the man of murder, the latter could not have gone a
more ghastly white, or have more by his expression associated himself
with that he disowned. He even staggered a little where he stood; and
it was painful to witness his sick effort at self-control.
“None whatever?” echoed Mr. Tuke, closely scrutinizing the servant’s
face, and interpreting the tortured answer from the motion of his
lips.
“Your reply,” he went on, biting as acid, “is convincing, of course.
Why should you know? I don’t myself, and I am as much interested in
the matter as you, maybe. I only asked, because I seek the clue to a
mystery that vents itself in strange visits, and secret interviews,
and unaccountable sounds at night. Then, too, there is a footprint on
the flower-bed under the hall-window this morning; but what of that
when I have a caretaker so zealous and so scrupulous? Only, I take
some amusement out of puzzles; but I am impatient, and very apt, at
the last, to cut a knot that bothers me with a bullet. You can go.”
He had to repeat his permission before the servant seemed to
understand and to gather the nerve to retreat. But, the moment he was
vanished, the baronet clapped his hand on the table, with an oath.
“The fellow is in the league against me, whatever it is!” he cried in
inward fierceness; and his soul rejoiced that at last it had some
tangible justification for its innate antipathy to the man.
It was patent that this Lake of Wine was the clue to the riddle and
the pass-word of the conspirators. But with the last how deeply was
the caretaker involved; and to what extent was he to be depended on in
the performance of his nightly services? Probably his officiousness in
that respect was employed as a blind. Not probably was his habitual
nervousness assumed. In greatest likelihood he was in weak process of
corruption--one hand held to his duty, the other to his interest; and,
if this were so, no doubt was as to which way his constitutional
depravity would eventually decide him to incline.
Then would it be wise to here and now give him short shrift of notice,
and so rid the house of an incubus and an embarrassment? Scarcely; for
so should he--Robert Tuke--not only advertise himself in apprehension
of his surroundings, whereby his enemies might be tempted to a bolder
policy; but he should drive from his camp an informer, whose uses, so
long as he assumed himself undetected, must all be for his intended
victim.
No; the fellow must stay for the present, and be treated with a show
of consideration, too; else would mistrust awakened in him greatly
complicate the situation.
It was a maddening hotch-potch of confusion; the more so as all this
fabric of suspicion, being builded on conjecture, might at any moment
resolve itself into thin air.