even making lions smile!" said Cleek serenely. "It would appear that the
gallant Captain von Gossler, nephew, and, in the absence of one who has
a better claim, heir to the late Baron von Steinheid---- That's it, nab
the beggar. Played, sir, played! Hustle him out and into the cab, with
his precious confederate, the Irish-Italian 'signor,' and make a clean
sweep of the pair of them. You'll find it a neck-stretching game,
captain, I'm afraid, when the jury comes to hear of that poor boy's
death and your beastly part in it."
By this time the tent was in an uproar, for the chevalier's wife had
come hurrying in, the chevalier's daughter was on the verge of
hysterics, and the chevalier's prospective son-in-law, was alternately
hugging the great beast-tamer and then shaking his hand and generally
deporting himself like a respectable young man who had suddenly gone
daft.
"Governor!" he cried, half laughing, half sobbing. "Bully old governor.
It's over--it's over. Never any more danger, never any more bad times,
never any more lion's smiles."
"No, never," said Cleek. "Come here, Madame Pullaine, and hear the good
news with the rest. You married for love, and you've proved a brick. The
dream's come true, and the life of ease and of luxury is yours at last,
Mr. Pullaine."
"But, sir, I--I do not understand," stammered the chevalier. "What has
happened? Why have you arrested the Senor Sperati? What has he done? I
cannot comprehend."
"Can't you? Well, it so happens, chevalier, that the Baron von Steinheid
died something like two months ago, leaving the sum of sixty thousand
pounds sterling to one Peter Janssen Pullaine and the heirs of his body,
and that a certain Captain von Gossler, son of the baron's only sister,
meant to make sure that there was no Peter Janssen Pullaine and no heirs
of his body to inherit one farthing of it."
"Sir! Dear God, can this be true?"
"Perfectly true, chevalier. The late baron's solicitors have been
advertising for some time for news regarding the whereabouts of Peter
Janssen Pullaine, and if you had not so successfully hidden your real
name under that of your professional one, no doubt some of your
colleagues would have put you in the way of finding it out long ago. The
baron did not go back on his word and did not act ungratefully. His
will, dated twenty-nine years ago, was never altered in a single
particular. I rather suspect that that letter and that gift of money
which came to you in the name of his steward, and was supposed to close
the affair entirely, was the work of his nephew, the gentleman whose
exit has just been made. A crafty individual that, chevalier, and he
laid his plans cleverly and well. Who would be likely to connect him
with the death of a beast-tamer in a circus, who had perished in what
would appear an accident of his calling? Ah, yes, the lion's smile was a
clever idea. He was a sharp rascal to think of it."
"Sir! You--you do not mean to tell me that he caused that? He never went
near the beast--never--even once."
"Not necessary, chevalier. He kept near you and your children; that was
all that he needed to do to carry out his plan. The lion was as much his
victim as anybody else. What it did it could not help doing. The very
simplicity of the plan was its passport to success. All that was
required was the unsuspected sifting of snuff on the hair of the person
whose head was to be put in the beast's mouth. The lion's smile was not,
properly speaking, a smile at all, chevalier; it was the torture which
came of snuff getting into its nostrils, and when the beast made that
uncanny noise and snapped its jaws together, it was simply the outcome
of a sneeze. The thing would be farcical if it were not that tragedy
hangs on the thread of it, and that a life, a useful human life, was
destroyed by means of it. Yes, it was clever, it was diabolically
clever; but you know what Bobby Burns says about the best-laid schemes
of mice and men. There's always a Power higher up that works the ruin of
them."
With that he walked by and, going to young Scarmelli, put out his hand.
"You're a good chap and you've got a good girl, so I expect you will be
happy," he said; and then lowered his voice so that the rest might not
reach the chevalier's ears. "You were wrong to suspect the little
stepmother," he added. "She's true blue, Scarmelli. She was only playing
up to those fellows because she was afraid the 'senor' would drop out
and close the show if she didn't, and that she and her husband and the
children would be thrown out of work. She loves her husband--that's
certain--and she's a good little woman; and, Scarmelli?"
"Yes, Mr. Cleek?"
"There's nothing better than a good woman on this earth, my lad. Always
remember that. I think you, too, have got one. I hope you have. I hope
you will be happy. What's that? Owe me? Not a rap, my boy. Or, if you
feel that you must give me something, give me your prayers for equal
luck when my time comes, and send me a slice of the wedding cake. The
riddle's solved, old chap. Good-night!"
FOOTNOTE:
[O] Reprinted by special permission from "Cleek, the Master Detective."
Copyright, 1918, by Doubleday, Page and Company.
[Illustration]
XVII.--The Roll-Call of The Reef[P]
_By A. T. Quiller-Couch_
"YES, sir," said my host, the quarryman, reaching down the relics from
their hook in the wall over the chimney-piece; "they've hung there all
my time, and most of my father's. The women won't touch 'em; they're
afraid of the story. So here they'll dangle, and gather dust and smoke,
till another tenant comes and tosses 'em out o' doors for rubbish. Whew!
'tis coarse weather, surely."
He went to the door, opened it, and stood studying the gale that beat
upon his cottage-front, straight from the Manacle Reef. The rain drove
past him into the kitchen, aslant like threads of gold silk in the
shine of the wreck-wood fire. Meanwhile, by the same firelight, I
examined the relics on my knee. The metal of each was tarnished out of
knowledge. But the trumpet was evidently an old cavalry trumpet, and the
threads of its parti-colored sling, though fretted and dusty, still hung
together. Around the side-drum, beneath its cracked brown varnish, I
could hardly trace a royal coat-of-arms and a legend running, "Per Mare
Per Terram"--the motto of the marines. Its parchment, though black and
scented with woodsmoke, was limp and mildewed; and I began to tighten up
the straps--under which the drumsticks had been loosely thrust--with the
idle purpose of seeing if some music might be got out of the old drum
yet.
But as I turned it on my knee, I found the drum attached to the
trumpet-sling by a curious barrel-shaped padlock, and paused to examine
this. The body of the lock was composed of half a dozen brass rings, set
accurately edge to edge; and, rubbing the brass with my thumb, I saw
that each of the six had a series of letters engraved around it.
I knew the trick of it, I thought. Here was one of those word padlocks,
once so common; only to be opened by getting the rings to spell a
certain word, which the dealer confides to you.
My host shut and barred the door, and came back to the hearth.
"'Twas just such a wind--east by south--that brought in what you've got
between your hands. Back in the year 'nine, it was; my father has told
me the tale a score o' times. You're twisting round the rings, I see.
But you'll never guess the word. Parson Kendall, he made the word, and
he locked down a couple o' ghosts in their graves with it; and when his
time came he went to his own grave and took the word with him."
"Whose ghosts, Matthew?"
"You want the story, I see, sir. My father could tell it better than I
can. He was a young man in the year 'nine, unmarried at the time, and
living in this very cottage, just as I be. That's how he came to get
mixed up with the tale."
He took a chair, lighted a short pipe, and went on, with his eyes fixed
on the dancing violet flames:
"Yes, he'd ha' been about thirty year old in January, eighteen 'nine.
The storm got up in the night o' the twenty-first o' that month. My
father was dressed and out long before daylight; he never was one to
bide in bed, let be that the gale by this time was pretty near lifting
the thatch over his head. Besides which, he'd fenced a small 'taty-patch
that winter, down by Lowland Point, and he wanted to see if it stood the
night's work. He took the path across Gunner's Meadow--where they buried
most of the bodies afterward. The wind was right in his teeth at the
time, and once on the way (he's told me this often) a great strip of
oarweed came flying through the darkness and fetched him a slap on the
cheek like a cold hand. He made shift pretty well till he got to
Lowland, and then had to drop upon hands and knees and crawl, digging
his fingers every now and then into a shingle to hold on, for he
declared to me that the stones, some of them as big as a man's head,
kept rolling and driving past till it seemed the whole foreshore was
moving westward under him. The fence was gone, of course; not a stick
left to show where it stood; so that, when first he came to the place,
he thought he must have missed his bearings. My father, sir, was a very
religious man; and if he reckoned the end of the world was at
hand--there in the great wind and night, among the moving stones--you
may believe he was certain of it when he heard a gun fired, and, with
the same, saw a flame shoot up out of the darkness to windward, making a
sudden fierce light in all the place about. All he could find to think
or say was, 'The Second Coming! The Second Coming! The Bridegroom
cometh, and the wicked He will toss like a ball into a large country';
and being already upon his knees, he just bowed his head and 'bided,
saying this over and over.
"But by'm by, between two squalls, he made bold to lift his head and
look, and then by the light--a bluish color 'twas--he saw all the coast
clear away to Manacle Point, and off the Manacles in the thick of the
weather, a sloop-of-war with topgallants housed, driving stern foremost
toward the reef. It was she, of course, that was burning the fire. My
father could see the white streak and the ports of her quite plain as
she rose to it, a little outside the breakers, and he guessed easy
enough that her captain had just managed to wear ship and was trying to
force her nose to the sea with the help of her small bower anchor and
the scrap or two of canvas that hadn't yet been blown out of her. But
while he looked, she fell off, giving her broadside to it, foot by foot,
and drifting back on the breakers around Carn Du and the Varses. The
rocks lie so thick thereabout that 'twas a toss up which she struck
first; at any rate, my father couldn't tell at the time, for just then
the flare died down and went out.
"Well, sir, he turned then in the dark and started back for Coverack to
cry the dismal tidings--though well knowing ship and crew to be past any
hope, and as he turned the wind lifted him and tossed him forward 'like
a ball,' as he'd been saying, and homeward along the foreshore. As you
know, 'tis ugly work, even by daylight, picking your way among the
stones there, and my father was prettily knocked about at first in the
dark. But by this 'twas nearer seven than six o'clock, and the day
spreading. By the time he reached North Corner, a man could see to read
print; hows'ever, he looked neither out to sea nor toward Coverack, but
headed straight for the first cottage--the same that stands above North
Corner to-day. A man named Billy Ede lived there then, and when my
father burst into the kitchen bawling, 'Wreck! wreck!' he saw Billy
Ede's wife, Ann, standing there in her clogs with a shawl over her head,
and her clothes wringing wet.
"'Save the chap,' says Billy Ede's wife, Ann. 'What d'ee mean by crying
stale fish at that rate?'
"'But 'tis a wreck, I tell 'e,'
"'I'v a-zeed'n, too; and so has every one with an eye in his head,'
"And with that she pointed straight over my father's shoulder, and he
turned; and there, close under Dolor Point, at the end of Coverack town
he saw another wreck washing, and the point black with people, like
emmets, running to and fro in the morning light. While he stood staring
at her, he heard a trumpet sounded on board, the notes coming in little
jerks, like a bird rising against the wind; but faintly, of course,
because of the distance and the gale blowing--though this had dropped a
little.
"'She's a transport,' said Billy Ede's wife, Ann, 'and full of
horse-soldiers, fine long men. When she struck they must ha' pitched the
horses over first to lighten the ship, for a score of dead horses had
washed in afore I left, half an hour back. An' three or four soldiers,
too--fine long corpses in white breeches and jackets of blue and gold. I
held the lantern to one. Such a straight young man.'
"My father asked her about the trumpeting.
"'That's the queerest bit of all. She was burnin' a light when me an'
my man joined the crowd down there. All her masts had gone; whether they
carried away, or were cut away to ease her, I don't rightly know. Her
keelson was broke under her and her bottom sagged and stove, and she had
just settled down like a setting hen--just the leastest list to
starboard; but a man could stand there easy. They had rigged up ropes
across her, from bulwark to bulwark, an' beside these the men were
mustered, holding on like grim death whenever the sea made a clean
breach over them, an' standing up like heroes as soon as it passed. The
captain an' the officers were clinging to the rail of the quarter-deck,
all in their golden uniforms, waiting for the end as if 'twas King
George they expected. There was no way to help, for she lay right beyond
cast of line, though our folk tried it fifty times. And beside them
clung a trumpeter, a whacking big man, an' between the heavy seas he
would lift his trumpet with one hand, and blow a call; and every time he
blew the men gave a cheer. There (she says)--hark 'ee now--there he goes
agen! But you won't hear no cheering any more, for few are left to
cheer, and their voices weak. Bitter cold the wind is, and I reckon it
numbs their grip o' the ropes, for they were dropping off fast with
every sea when my man sent me home to get his breakfast. Another wreck,
you say? Well, there's no hope for the tender dears if 'tis the
Manacles. You'd better run down and help yonder; though 'tis little help
any man can give. Not one came in alive while I was there. The tide's
flowing, an' she won't hold together another hour, they say.'
"Well, sure enough, the end was coming fast when my father got down to
the Point. Six men had been cast up alive, or just breathing--a seaman
and five troopers. The seaman was the only one that had breath to speak;
and while they were carrying him into the town, the word went round that
the ship's name was the 'Despatch,' transport, homeward bound from
Corunna, with a detachment of the Seventh Hussars, that had been
fighting out there with Sir John Moore. The seas had rolled her further
over by this time, and given her decks a pretty sharp slope; but a dozen
men still held on, seven by the ropes near the ship's waist, a couple
near the break of the poop, and three on the quarter-deck. Of these
three my father made out one to be the skipper; close to him clung an
officer in full regimentals--his name, they heard after, was Captain
Duncanfield; and last came the tall trumpeter; and if you'll believe me,
the fellow was making shift there, at the very last, to blow 'God Save
the King.' What's more, he got to 'Send us victorious,' before an extra
big sea came bursting across and washed them off the deck--every man but
one of the pair beneath the poop--and he dropped his hold before the
next wave; being stunned, I reckon. The others went out of sight at
once, but the trumpeter--being, as I said, a powerful man as well as a
tough swimmer--rose like a duck, rode out a couple of breakers, and
came in on the crest of the third. The folks looked to see him broke
like an egg at their very feet; but when the smother cleared, there he
was, lying face downward on a ledge below them; and one of the men that
happened to have a rope round him--I forget the fellow's name, if I ever
heard it--jumped down and grabbed him by the ankle as he began to slip
back. Before the next big sea, the pair were hauled high enough to be
out of harm, and another heave brought them up to grass. Quick work, but
master trumpeter wasn't quite dead; nothing worse than a cracked head
and three staved ribs. In twenty minutes or so they had him in bed, with
the doctor to tend him.
Now was the time--nothing being left alive upon the transport--for my
father to tell of the sloop he'd seen driving upon the Manacles. And
when he got a hearing, though the most were set upon salvage, and
believed a wreck in the hand, so to say, to be worth half a dozen they
couldn't see, a good few volunteered to start off with him and have a
look. They crossed Lowland Point; no ship to be seen on the Manacles nor
anywhere upon the sea. One or two was for calling my father a liar.
'Wait till we come to Dean Point,' said he. Sure enough, on the far side
of Dean Point they found the sloop's mainmast washing about with half a
dozen men lashed to it, men in red jackets, every mother's son drowned
and staring; and a little further on, just under the Dean, three or
four bodies cast up on the shore, one of them a small drummer-boy,
side-drum and all; and nearby part of a ship's gig, with 'H.M.S.
Primrose' cut on the sternboard. From this point on the shore was
littered thick with wreckage and dead bodies--the most of them marines
in uniform--and in Godrevy Cove, in particular, a heap of furniture from
the captain's cabin, and among it a water-tight box, not much damaged,
and full of papers, by which, when it came to be examined, next day, the
wreck was easily made out to be the 'Primrose' of eighteen guns, outward
bound from Portsmouth, with a fleet of transports for the Spanish
war--thirty sail, I've heard, but I've never heard what became of them.
Being handled by merchant skippers, no doubt they rode out the gale, and
reached the Tagus safe and sound. Not but what the captain of the
'Primrose'--Mein was his name--did quite right to try and club-haul his
vessel when he found himself under the land; only he never ought to have
got there, if he took proper soundings. But it's easy talking.
"The 'Primrose,' sir, was a handsome vessel--for her size one of the
handsomest in the King's service--and newly fitted out at Plymouth Dock.
So the boys had brave pickings from her in the way of brass-work, ship's
instruments, and the like, let alone some barrels of stores not much
spoiled. They loaded themselves with as much as they could carry, and
started for home, meaning to make a second journey before the
preventive men got wind of their doings, and came to spoil the fun.
'Hullo!' says my father, and dropped his gear, 'I do believe there's a
leg moving!' and running fore, he stooped over the small drummer-boy
that I told you about. The poor little chap was lying there, with his
face a mass of bruises, and his eyes closed; but he had shifted one leg
an inch or two, and was still breathing. So my father pulled out a
knife, and cut him free from his drum--that was lashed on to him with a
double turn of Manila rope--and took him up and carried him along here
to this very room that we're sitting in. He lost a good deal by this;
for when he went back to fetch the bundle he'd dropped, the preventive
men had got hold of it, and were thick as thieves along the foreshore;
so that 'twas only by paying one or two to look the other way that he
picked up anything worth carrying off; which you'll allow to be hard,
seeing that he was the first man to give news of the wreck.
"Well, the inquiry was held, of course, and my father gave evidence, and
for the rest they had to trust to the sloop's papers, for not a soul was
saved besides the drummer-boy, and he was raving in a fever, brought on
by the cold and the fright. And the seaman and the five troopers gave
evidence about the loss of the 'Despatch.' The tall trumpeter, too,
whose ribs were healing, came forward and kissed the book; but somehow
his head had been hurt in coming ashore, and he talked foolish-like, and
'twas easy seen he would never be a proper man again. The others were
taken up to Plymouth, and so went their ways; but the trumpeter stayed
on in Coverack; and King George, finding he was fit for nothing, sent
him down a trifle of a pension after a while--enough to keep him in
board and lodging, with a bit of tobacco over.
"Now the first time that this man--William Tallifer he called
himself--met with the drummer-boy, was about a fortnight after the
little chap had bettered enough to be allowed a short walk out of doors,
which he took, if you please, in full regimentals. There never was a
soldier so proud of his dress. His own suit had shrunk a brave bit with
the salt water; but into ordinary frock an' corduroy he declared he
would not get, not if he had to go naked the rest of his life; so my
father--being a good-natured man, and handy with the needle--turned to
and repaired damages with a piece or two of scarlet cloth cut from the
jacket of one of the drowned Marines. Well, the poor little chap chanced
to be standing, in this rig out, down by the gate of Gunner's Meadow,
where they had buried two score and over of his comrades. The morning
was a fine one, early in March month; and along came the cracked
trumpeter, likewise taking a stroll.
"'Hullo!' says he; 'good mornin'! And what might you be doin' here?'
"'I was a-wishin',' says the boy, 'I had a pair o' drumsticks. Our lads
were buried yonder without so much as a drum tapped or a musket fired;
and that's not Christian burial for British soldiers.'
"'Phut!' says the trumpeter, and spat on the ground; 'a parcel of
Marines!'
"The boy eyed him a second or so, and answered up: 'If I'd a tav of turf
handy, I'd bung it at your mouth, you greasy cavalryman, and learn you
to speak respectful of your betters. The Marines are the handiest body
o' men in the service.'
"The trumpeter looked down on him from the height of six-foot-two, and
asked: 'Did they die well?'
"'They died very well. There was a lot of running to and fro at first,
and some of the men began to cry, and a few to strip off their clothes.
But when the ship fell off for the last time, Captain Mein turned and
said something to Major Griffiths, the commanding officer on board, and
the Major called out to me to beat to quarters. It might have been for a
wedding, he sang it out so cheerful. We'd had word already that 'twas to
be parade order; and the men fell in as trim and decent as if they were
going to church. One or two even tried to shave at the last moment. The
Major wore his medals. One of the seamen, seeing I had work to keep the
drum steady--the sling being a bit loose for me, and the wind what you
remember--lashed it tight with a piece of rope; and that saved my life
afterward, a drum being as good as cork until it's stove. I kept beating
away until every man was on deck--and then the Major formed them up and
told them to die like British soldiers, and the chaplain was in the
middle of a prayer when she struck. In ten minutes she was gone. That
was how they died, cavalryman.'
"'And that was very well done, drummer of the Marines. What's your
name?'
"'John Christian.'