THE CLOTH MERCHANT.
Every man who had anything to conceal--a file, a suspicious-looking pair
of shears, a paper or snuffbox of clippings--made haste to conceal it;
and for that which was already hidden they sought safer and yet safer
places. There was a deal of the dangerous stuff about. During the
building of the furnaces, filings and such small matters had been
disdained, and for weeks had accumulated uncollected. They began now to
rummage chimneys, dusty rafters, the upper back-shelves of cupboards,
and to hide it again in their gun-cartridges, in hollows they burned in
the galley-baulks of their looms (tallowing all over again), in holes in
yards and gardens, in the linings of their jackets and caps. The work
began within an hour of Cope’s return; it lasted throughout the night.
Even neighbours were scarce to be trusted, for no man knew but in his
own extremity another might turn against him. And as they ran here and
there, hiding and rehiding, they planned itineraries of escape in the
last resort.
Before the next day was two hours old they had reason to congratulate
themselves on their celerity; for before Monjoy’s house in the
Fullergate there stood an empty chaise and a score of redcoats with
muskets. Monjoy’s door stood open.
He had not slept there, however, and presently there issued from the
door Cope--the same waddling, blinking, imbecile Cope--and an officer.
Except for his burins, his sandbag and engraver’s globe of water, they
had found nothing indicative of Monjoy’s trade, and a soldier stepped
forward and set a seal on the lock of the door. Cope hoisted himself
into the chaise, the officer gave orders, and the party swung off down
the Fullergate. It was half-past five in the morning. They halted
opposite Matthew Moon’s warehouse, and Cope lowered himself from the
chaise again.
They would have forced the door, but it was of unexpected strength, and
Moon lived within a stone’s throw. A hasty consultation was held; the
officer rode on to demand the key in the King’s name; and in a quarter
of an hour he had returned with Matthew Moon himself, clad in his shirt
and breeches.
“Good-morning, Mr. Moon, good-morning,” giggled Cope. “I fear I have
disturbed your rest.--Come, lose no time.”
Then Matthew Moon began an extraordinarily loud altercation. He would
see Mr. Cope’s warrant. If Mr. Cope had no warrant he should answer
this. Let him see the warrant. Cope produced it. It was signed by
Parker, and Moon stormed. A search-warrant on Horwick premises signed by
a Ford magistrate! Was that legal? Was that in due form?
“Ask your friend Emmason,” Cope returned, and the merchant continued his
clamour. A very clever man might have supposed he was making a
disturbance for the purpose of warning somebody inside the warehouse,
and Cope was a clever man. He chuckled, and the merchant grew violent.
“I’ve warned ye, ye clammy, filthy hell-toad!” he vociferated; and Cope
turned away. Already the officer was flinging back the bar of the door.
They entered, a couple of soldiers following them.
The ground floor of the warehouse was little more than an office, with
pieces of grey cloth ranged methodically on racks all round it, and a
long counter running down the middle. The ledgers were in a locked
cupboard, and for the present Cope contented himself with setting a seal
on the lock. There was no cellar, no fireplace, or chimney; the floor
was of stone flags, and the ceiling of beams and boards without
underdrawing. Moon obstructed the men at every turn, swearing
outrageously, and Cope’s thick-lidded eyes never for a fraction of an
instant left his face. “You make a deal of noise, Mr. Moon,” he remarked
ironically. “The next floor, gentlemen, I think.”
The first floor was cumbered with bales and wicker skeps, and had double
crane doors, through the chink of the back pair of which a vertical
glimpse of trees and daylight showed. “It will be necessary to disturb
your stock,” Cope observed, still watching the merchant unwinkingly, and
the two soldiers began to move the heavy bales from the walls, examining
every foot for a possible communication with the adjoining warehouse.
They found none. The whole building was no more than a shell, and Moon
could not have moved a muscle of his face without Cope observing it.
Then all at once Cope took the taper and wax and seal from the soldier
and began himself to seal the padlocks of the crane doors. He bent over
a padlock, and Moon continued to rail behind him.
Then happened a very quick piece of work. Like a flash Cope turned from
his sealing, to surprise any change in Moon’s expression. How the
merchant had known that he would turn at that moment he could hardly
have told, save that not until then had the supervisor ceased to watch
him. And though Moon’s brow was moist and beaded with sweat, his lips
were twitched into something like a smile. Cope’s hand shook on the
seal, but the merchant thought he knew now where they were. He kicked
one of the bales.
“There’s almost room for a man in one of these,” he said mockingly.
“Upstairs,” ordered Cope curtly, and they passed up the dark, dusty
staircase to the garret.
In the garret where Monjoy had worked, the heavy two-legged table lay
a-tilt just within the door, and his hearth, the grimy bricks of which
lay scattered over the floor, had been newly dismantled. Save for one
empty box, all else--tests, crucibles, bellows, Monjoy himself--had
gone. Overhead the structure of the rafters showed, and only single
boards divided the garret from the chamber beneath. Cope stood for a
minute blinking at the lately-disturbed bricks of the little
refining-furnace; then he looked rather sheepishly at Matthew Moon.
“My compliments, Mr. Moon,” he said, with evident chagrin. “That was
very creditably well done. Long ago I had some opinion of your ability.
Now, I do not see--no, I do not see--how this could have been improved.
Hn! hn! In the street I didn’t doubt of finding here what I wanted. I
began to doubt a little down below ... yes, I make you my compliments on
having gained perhaps half an hour. Nay,” he seemed suddenly not
altogether to disrelish his own discomfiture, “‘twas excellent, and you
find favour for it. Ah, well! Seal these doors also, men, and downstairs
again quickly.”
The two sets of crane doors were quickly sealed, and they passed down
the narrow staircase again. Before they had reached the basement Monjoy
was in the garret.
Even for that perilous hiding-place he had had to scramble. The double
doors that gave on the crofts and gardens at the back swung inwards,
filling the dingy garret with a flood of morning light. The bar parted,
not in the middle, which was sealed, but at one end, and beyond the
doors was only the thickness of the wall, the sheer drop, and the sky
and the mounting larks. On the sill, where he had stood, lay the
apparatus, and the garret became dark again as Monjoy softly closed the
doors behind him. He stretched himself along the floor, rather pale, for
to any eyes that might have chanced to view the back of the building he
had been about as publicly concealed as the Queen Anne in the niche of
the Piece Hall. He lay there thinking till close on midday.
Long before midday, however, Matthew Moon’s own house had been searched
from cellar to garret; but the famous books of the Association were not
found there. (Indeed, when they did at last come to light it was very
far from Horwick town.) Cope was losing no time. By one o’clock John
Raikes’s house had been gone through--John Raikes, who had handled most
of the silver; but somebody had found time to do goîtred John a
neighbourly service during the night, and nothing was discovered.
Horwick was in a ferment, that rose during the afternoon to a panic, for
a quiet, obscure member of the Association was visited. Who would have
supposed Cope had ever heard of that man? It did not occur to them that
Cope visited, also, the houses of two men who had notoriously held
aloof; no, Cope knew more than they knew themselves. Then the searching
slackened a little. A soldier mounted guard at the door of Matthew
Moon’s warehouse, and another marched a beat opposite the door of his
house. Cope’s own house was guarded back and front, and soldiers smoked
their pipes in the shop of Cole the clogger. The rest built a fire in
the market-place between the pieceboards, stacked their arms like an
encampment, and made themselves comfortable for the August night.
James Eastwood, making haste to his own house at Wadsworth, was the
first to carry the news there. Thence it spread to Back o’ th’ Mooin.
There it seemed to serve as a signal for a succession of drinking bouts,
in which Booth and Brotherton men vied with their fellows of Holdsworth
and Fluett in demonstrations of brutality, so that the quiet and decent
folk kept their houses even from their friends. Murgatroyd paraded his
formidable dog without muzzle. Dick o’ Dean was back and forth every day
as far as the Shelf, where the two men hung in chains, and the youth
Charley had not been a minute sober since the draught of brandy that had
been given him after the drawing of the fatal string. Pim o’ Cuddy, in
Wadsworth, stuck to the parson’s heels as if his very cloth were a
protection, and he blubbered in his sleep (they said) that he had been
led away--led away----.
Whether by Cope’s favour or not, Matthew Moon was suffered to go about
unmolested; but he was watched at every turn, knew it, and even when
alone no more betrayed himself than he had done when Cope had wheeled so
swiftly round from the sealing of the crane door. Crossing the
market-place, he noticed two or three strangers in plain clothes among
the soldiers, and these seemed to hang constantly about the door of the
“Cross Pipes.” At first he felt a wrathful mounting of his blood. Had
Cope not finished with that house yet? Then suddenly his brows
contracted; he thought he saw the reason; and he began to plot again.
A butcher’s lad, an impudent, whistling young rascal, called at his
house for orders for meat. Matthew gave the lad a letter, with precise
instructions, for Dooina Benn, to be given to her at her own home.
Dooina was now taking turns with Cicely to watch Sally, who had been
given another draught.
“You’re sure you understand, Teddy?” said the merchant anxiously, and
the lad gave him an intelligent look and a grimace.
“Ye don’t want it ta’en straight to the ‘Pipes,’ ye mean?” he said, and
the merchant nodded and gave him sixpence.
The lad delivered the message to Dooina (with whom Cole the clogger had
taken up his quarters), and so it came to Cicely Monjoy, who read it and
thrust it immediately into the kitchen fire. It informed her that for
the present Arthur was safe, and that if all should seem quiet about two
o’clock in the morning she was to take a basket of provisions to
Webster’s stackyard, a mile out of Horwick, near the dean in which she
had returned Arthur his ring. She was to do this on successive nights,
and should she not see Arthur, she was to do it none the less. The
crafty merchant contrived, also, to communicate with Webster, who owned
the stackyard. Except for himself, Matthew Moon, cloth merchant, there
was none to set a spoke in Cope’s wheel, and he took to ways a little
more devious than his ordinary with readiness. “He’ll watch his wife,
will he?” he muttered. “Well, wives won’t tell what they don’t know.”
In the meantime Arthur Monjoy sat on the empty box in the garret up the
Fullergate. Except for a crust that he had slipped into his pocket in
preparing for his busy night, he had not eaten since the previous
midday, and it was now evening--Friday evening. Matthew, however, would
see to that, if Matthew still had his liberty; and, in anticipation,
Monjoy had occupied himself during the day by shredding to pieces an old
end of crane-rope and knotting the fibres together. Towards eight
o’clock (as he knew from the chiming of the Piece Hall clock) he opened
his crane doors an inch or two, and paid out his length of string till
it touched earth; then he fastened the other end of it to the empty box
and tightened his belt.
He was oddly cheerful. One immediate care only was on his mind--the
warning of Cope. Whether or not it was a duty to Cope, it was now one to
Cicely, and he cogitated long without result. Some way would, however,
present itself.
Between eight and nine he felt a gentle tug at his string. He started
up, and then, suddenly irresolute, stood with one hand on the bar of the
double door and the other pulling at his whiskers. He listened intently;
somebody below gave a little dental whistle--“_Hey, Johnny Cope, are ye
waukin’ yet._” That tune might be from either friend or foe, for Cope
was malignant enough to use the air that had been his own mocking.
Monjoy put his hand into his pocket for a coin and stooped to the ray of
light that came through the crack of the doors.
It was shield--‘answer.’ He knelt, set his hand to the bar, and opened
the doors. It was clear sunset. He opened the doors wide and put his
head and shoulders out. Looking down, at first he could not see anybody;
then, all but hidden in the docks and grass and nettles at the foot of
the wall, heedless of stings, taking cover for sheer delight in the fun,
he saw Teddy.
“Sss, Teddy!” he called softly; the boy was fastening a bundle to the
string. “Can you hear?--Not that tune!----”
Teddy comprehended, and gave the sharp cry of the pewit, that comes
naturally to the throat of a lad, and is scarce to be imitated by a
man.
“Yes, that’ll do. Quick!”
“Throw them things down; they show,” the boy called up; and Monjoy
dropped the phials and pestles and mortars one by one from the sill.
“Right?” he said, and Teddy nodded. Monjoy drew the bundle up quickly
and closed the doors again.
He read Matthew Moon’s letter at the chink, half a line at a time. It
was brief. Eastwood was in Wadsworth. Nothing had come of the searching
yet. They had been through such-and-such houses, and so forth. It said
nothing of the errand on which he was sending Cicely. Arthur was to
remain where he was and not to use the rope he sent yet (it was an
inch-rope, and very long). They seemed to be giving him, Matthew, his
liberty, that he might have a chance to commit himself; that was all
right, and Teddy was a good lad. Monjoy ate his supper in darkness,
stretched himself on the floor, and soon slept soundly. Early the
following morning, Saturday, he heard noises downstairs in the warehouse
and glided noiselessly to his doors again. They had come for the books
of Matthew Moon’s business, but they departed quickly.
Monjoy had had vague ideas of warning Cope in person--harebrained
notions of disguise, of getting to the house adjoining Cope’s, passing
from dormer to dormer under cover of the pear-tree, of visiting Cope in
his bed. Presently he abandoned them. Moon must carry the message. He
split a board from his empty box, and from the bricks of the broken
hearth he scraped with his knife a quantity of soot. He mixed this with
spittle, and then, making a pen of a splinter of wood wrapped round with
his handkerchief, he rubbed into the dingy board a letter. It was neatly
enough done considering the materials; he was an engraver; and he smiled
as he worked, for this at least was as honest as Cicely could desire. He
blew Cicely a kiss from his prison, and then he split his board from end
to end that it might be carried doubled with the message inside. About
eight o’clock he heard Teddy’s call.
“Mr. Moon, Teddy,” he said, throwing down the pieces when he had drawn
up his bundle.--“I say, Teddy, pewits don’t nest in nettles, you know.”
“Keep low, Arthur--we’ll get you away,” quoth Teddy, with huge
importance. “Cope’s been to Wadsworth to-day.”
“Ay? You’re a great man, Teddy. Off with you!” Monjoy answered; and a
quarter of an hour later Teddy was marching through the soldiery in the
market-place with his flat boards shouldered like a gun. The soldiers
laughed, and one of them flung a bone from the pot at him.
At warning Cope, however, Matthew Moon demurred; he would have nothing
to do with it, and informed Monjoy so on the Sunday. Himself (he said),
he would be well pleased to see Cope stuck like a pig so he were not
required to do it himself: hell would be the richer by a devil as cruel
as any it held. Sign it, too! Was Monjoy mad?... Teddy had brought ink
and paper this time, and Monjoy wrote back: Very well, then he would see
to it himself, and that very night. Cope was getting near the wolves’
country at Wadsworth. Once out of the garret, there would be no getting
back; therefore Matthew need not trouble himself to send further
provisions.--Teddy bore off this answer, but the pewit’s call came again
soon after the Piece Hall clock had struck eleven. Matthew Moon cursed
him for a fool, but yielded. “But I’ll not give him your name,” he
wrote, “unless you want to lug me in too. He’s able to arrest me any
minute, and I want to have you out of the way first. No names, except
those of the three men.”
“All right, Teddy,” said Monjoy.
And Cicely carried food by night to the stackyard, wasting her cunning
had she but known it. It was only a question of time before she was
followed, and (to come to that at once) it happened on that very Sunday
evening. Reaching the stackyard, she found herself forestalled, and she
lay low with her basket under a wall, listening in an agony of fear to
the voices of three strangers, who talked in an outhouse. She heard her
husband’s name spoken. They were questioning Webster, the owner of the
stackyard; and it was much that she did not throw herself at their feet
and implore mercy for him there and then. Matthew had judged wisely to
keep her in ignorance. The voices ceased; she heard steps; she thrust
her basket into the roadside weeds and fled. Dooina Benn had to watch
Sally that night, and by morning a further calamity had happened. This
was the disappearance from the niche in the kitchen of Eastwood Ellah.
He had scarcely stirred since he had been put there, and, maybe, they
had grown a little careless in watching him; anyway, he was gone.
Neighbours were sent to search for him. Cicely was calmer, but very
pale, and she started at sudden sounds.
At nine o’clock on the Monday morning the soldiers in the clogger’s shop
saw Matthew Moon walk up the croft. They stretched their necks for a
sight of the man who had publicly abused Jeremy Cope--Cope of Bow
Street, the most ruthless manhunter in the land (you had to leave
Horwick to learn of what consequence the Horwick folk were). Moon
demanded of the sentry at the door whether Mr. Cope was up, and at a
sign from the sentry one of the soldiers went inside to announce the
visitor.
Cope, in a grey dressing-gown, was drinking chocolate at a desk and
opening letters. He rubbed his hands as if with pleasure at seeing the
merchant.
“You honour me, Mr. Moon--honour me, honour me--hn!--(leave us, you). Be
seated, Mr. Moon, be seated.”
“I’ll stand,” said the merchant; “my business won’t take so long.”
“Nay, sit, and let me ring for a cup of chocolate. I failed--hn!--I fear
I failed a little the other morning in my expression of esteem for you.
To tell you the truth, Mr. Moon, I was for the moment a little
chagrined. Let me make amends now--hn! hn! hn!”
“I think you know my handwriting,” said the merchant abruptly. “I’ve
something here might advantage ye to read, and when ye’ve read it I’d be
obliged if ye’d gi’e me an attestation ye’ve seen it. It might come in
useful for me if aught were to happen to you.”
He handed him a copy of Monjoy’s letter. Cope read it with perfect
composure.
“So you want a sort of receipt for this? Irregular, irregular, Mr. Moon.
Suppose, with your indemnity in your pocket, you were to change your
mind, and even to take a hand in my despatch yourself?...”
“I lose little for want o’ asking; and for changing my mind, I’ve been
i’ one mind all along the sort ye are,” the merchant replied
imperturbably.
Cope patted the air with his smooth deprecating little gesture.
“Tut, Mr. Moon; I did but jest. It’s a superfluous service you render
me, but since you transact everything according to rule, I’ll give you
your discharge of it--hn! hn!” Calmly he endorsed the letter and handed
it back. “Take it, Mr. Moon. Ah, I wish you were not passionate. That’s
a weakness. Generosity and passion, we cannot afford to entertain them.
I say ‘we,’ because a valuable man is lost in you, Mr. Moon. Fatal, I
fear; ah, me!--I tell you, my methods are the only methods. We may have
to override the law a little now and then--lawyers will find us legal
reasons enough after the event. True, an humble instrument like myself
may once in a while be sacrificed; judges will tell us we have exceeded
our duty----”
“I think I’ve warned ye o’ them that’ll sacrifice ye,” interrupted the
merchant bluntly, “and now I’ll bid ye good morning.”
“So soon?” Cope mused. “Now I believe, Mr. Moon, that if I had a warrant
for your arrest in my pocket at this moment I should detain you, if only
for the pleasure of further conversation.” His bruised-looking lids
blinked rapidly.
“I’m capped if ye haven’t,” said Moon composedly; “and lawyers to
whitewash ye afterwards an’ all!”
Cope sighed. “A great pity, a great pity,” he mused, and Matthew Moon
passed heavily down the stairs.
There awaited him at his house, circuitously conveyed from Cicely
Monjoy, a distraught letter, in which she announced that her goings-out
at night had been discovered. This news disturbed him little, as may be
imagined, and he took a taper and burned the letter. But it was certain
that no time would now be lost in searching the stackyard. He would
surely be credited with the dupery, and he now reckoned his time for
activity short. Teddy was not about; Matthew strode unhesitatingly
across the market-place, and walked into the kitchen of the “Cross
Pipes.”
Cicely was alone in the kitchen, and the merchant put up his hand
warningly.
“Quietly!” he said. “He’s safe enough yet--_ssh!_ But there’s no knowing
how little time I have. They’ll ha’ found out about the stackyard in an
hour or two--let me see----”
“Oh, they’ve found out!” Cicely moaned.
“Quiet, I tell ye! He’s not there, and hasn’t been. Let me see----”
“Not there?” whispered Cicely, dazed; and Moon interrupted her with an
impatient gesture.
“Ha’ ye anywhere in Wadsworth ye can put him? (For God’s sake stop that
choking!) Listen! I’ll send Dooina here; get ye off to Wadsworth as fast
as ye can. Find out where he’s to be put, and then back to me. Where’s
your bonnet?--Hark! They’re forming up for the stackyard now. Quick! on
with your bonnet!”
In five minutes Cicely was on her way to Wadsworth, by near cuts and
bypaths, for the soldiers were already marching along the road below her
to Webster’s stackyard.