HOW THEY LAID TRAPS FOR THE DEVIL
The Doctor insisted on taking care of Gard. He took him into his own
house at Dixcart, and began at once a course of treatment based on
common-sense and the then most scientific attainment, and calculated to
repair the waste of the Rock and build him up anew in the shortest time
compatible with an efficient and permanent cure.
Even when Gard felt quite himself again and would have returned to his
work, the genial autocrat would not hear of it.
“Just you stop here, my boy,” he ordered. “An experience such as you
have had needs some getting over. You can stand a good rest and some
fattening up, and those ---- mines must wait.”
Meanwhile, the Island was in a smoulder of suspicion and superstition.
No one had yet ventured openly to point the finger at any reasonably
possible doer of deeds so dark. Behind carefully closed doors of a
night, indeed, here and there a whisper suggested that the Frenchwoman
might be at the bottom of it all. But the mistake that had already been
made, and the consequences that came so terribly near to completing it
beyond repair, made them all cautious of open speech or action.
Gard’s story explained the mystery of the dead stranger and relieved the
public mind to that extent.
The Sénéchal was disposed to agree with his views on the matter.
“I never heard of those caves on L’Etat,” he said musingly, as they sat
over their pipes one night; “and I’m sure no one else knew of them. But
there was much free-trading round here in the old times, and I’ve no
doubt many a Customs man disappeared and was never heard of again, just
like this one. All the Islands felt very sore about the new regulations,
and our people stick at nothing when their blood is up.”
“They do not,” said Gard feelingly.
“I’d like to get into that inner cave,” said the Doctor longingly.
“You couldn’t,” said Gard, looking at his size and girth. “It’s a mighty
tight squeeze under the slab, and that tunnel would beat you. Unless
you’ve been brought up to that kind of thing, you couldn’t stand it. It
would give you nightmares for the rest of your life.”
“That’s a rare lass, that little Nance,” said the Sénéchal. “There’s
some good in Sark after all, Mr. Gard.”
“She was an angel to me,” said Gard with feeling. “If it had not been
for her, I could never have held out. Not for what she brought me, but
the fact that she came. But it was terrible to me to think of her coming
through that Race. I begged her not to, but she would have her way.
Three times she risked her life for me--”
“Three times!” said the Sénéchal. “Ma fé, but she’s a garche to be proud
of!”
“Ay, and to be more than proud of,” said Gard. “She has given me my
life, and I will give it all to making her happy.”
“I wouldn’t swim across to L’Etat for any woman in the world,” said the
Doctor. “Because, in the first place, I couldn’t. She must have nerves
of steel, to say nothing of muscles. In the dark, too! And you wouldn’t
think it to look at her.”
“It needed more than nerves or muscles,” said Gard quietly.
Not a man among the Islanders--much less a woman--would go anywhere near
the Coupée after dark. Even Nance confessed to a preference for daylight
passages. And Gard, when he went down into Little Sark for a walk, as
part of his cure, could not repress a cold shiver whenever he passed the
fatal spot where two men had gone over to their deaths.
All the old wives’ tales were dug up and passed along, growing as they
went. Little eyes and mouths grew permanently rounded with horrors, and
the ground was thoroughly well spaded and planted with sturdy shoots
warranted to yield a noisome harvest of superstition for generations to
come.
The occupants of Clos Bourel and Plaisance carefully locked their doors
of a night now.
Old Mrs. Carré at Plaisance vowed she had heard the White Horses go
past, on the nights before Tom Hamon and Peter were found. And every one
knew that when the ghostly horses were heard, some one was going to die.
But as she had said nothing about it before, her contribution to the
general uneasiness was received with respect before her face but with
open doubt behind her back.
Old Nikki Never-mind-his-name--lest his descendants, if he had any,
take umbrage at the matter--swore that he had not only seen the ghostly
steed pass Vauroque in the dead of night, but that it bore a rider whose
head was carried carefully in his right hand. Unfortunately, the
headless one passed so quickly that Nikki said he could not distinguish
his features--having looked for them first in the wrong place--and so he
could not say for certain who the next to die would be; but from the
knowing wag of his head the neighbours were of opinion that he knew more
than he chose to tell, and he gained quite a reputation thereby.
But, even here again, doubts were cast upon the matter by some,
especially those who were acquainted with the old gentleman’s
proclivities towards raw spirits of the material kind that paid the
lightest of duties in Guernsey.
All these and very many similar matters were discussed by the
Doctor--who disturbed their minds with horrific accounts of homicidal
mania taking possession of apparently innocent souls--and the Sénéchal
and the Vicar and Stephen Gard, as they sat over their pipes of an
evening in the Doctor’s house. But chiefly the great and troublesome
question of “Who?”
They were all of one mind that the matter must be looked into. The
feeling that a danger was loose in the Island, and might at any moment
fall upon any man, woman, or child, was past endurance. The suspicion
that It might be any one of those they met every day was insufferable.
The only difficulty was to decide how to look into it--what to do, and
how.
Each day they feared to hear of some new outrage. But until the
perpetrator was discovered they could do nothing towards his
suppression. And, on the other hand, it looked as though they could do
nothing towards his discovery until he perpetrated some new outrage.
It was Gard who suggested they should watch the Coupée every night,
armed, and unknown to any but themselves.
And, after much discussion, following out his idea, he and the Sénéchal
and the Doctor, who could bowl over a rabbit as well as any of them, lay
in the heather, on the common above the cutting on the Little Sark side,
for many nights, guns in hand, and eyes and ears on the strain, but saw
and heard nothing.
One night, indeed, when there was a high wind, the Doctor’s marrow
crawled in his backbone at the sound of groanings and moanings and most
dolorous cries for help, coming up out of black Coupée Bay, where they
had picked up Tom Hamon’s and Peter Mauger’s dead bodies.
He sweated cold terrors, for he was on the east headland right above the
bay, till the Sénéchal crawled over to him and whispered--
“Hear ’em?”
“Y-y-yes. What the d-d-deuce and all--”
“Knew you’d wonder what it was--”
“W-w-wonder?” chittered the Doctor.
“It’s only the wind in the cave at the corner below here--”
“Ah! Thought it must be something of that kind,” said the Doctor through
his teeth, clenched hard to keep them in order. “Don’t wonder folks
fight shy of the Coupée. Sounded uncommonly like spirits. Might give
some folks the jumps.”
On another dark and windy night it was the Sénéchal’s turn to get
something of a fright.
As he lay in the heather, gun in hand, and well wrapped up in his big
cloak, with all his faculties concentrated on the wavering pathway
below, it seemed to him that he heard slow heavy footsteps approaching.
His nerves were strung tight. He craned his head to look down into the
cutting, when suddenly there came a wild snuffle at the back of his
neck, and as he jumped up with a startled yelp, one part anger and nine
parts fright, a horse that had grazed down upon him in the darkness,
leaped back with a snort and a squeal and disappeared into the night.
“Ga’rabotin! but I thought it was the devil himself,” said the Sénéchal,
as the others came hurrying up. “Why the deuce can’t people tie up their
horses as they do their cows? I’ll bring it up at the next Chef
Plaids”--which consideration restored his shaken equanimity somewhat,
and made him feel himself again.
Nothing more came of all their watching, and over a jorum of something
hot one night, after they had returned to the Doctor’s house, it was
himself who said--
“After all, it stands to reason. Some evil-possessed soul seeks victims,
and has fixed on the Coupée as the place best fitted for his work. No
one now goes near the Coupée at night--ergo, no victims; ergo,
no--er--no manifestations.”
“H’m! Very clever!” said the Sénéchal, through his pipe. “Where does
that leave us, then?”
“We must have a decoy, of course.”
“H’m! You’ll not get any Sark man to act as decoy to the devil. Besides,
they would talk, and that would upset the whole thing.”
“What about one of your men, Gard?”
“It’s a dangerous game for any man to play, Doctor.... I don’t quite see
how one could ask it of them,”--and after a pause of concentrated
thought and many slow smoke-puffs--“What would you say to me?” and all
their eyes settled on him--the Doctor’s professionally.
“Surely you have suffered enough in this matter, Mr. Gard,” suggested
the Vicar.
“I would give a good deal, and do a good deal, to get to the bottom of
it all. Things will never settle down properly till this matter is
disposed of.”
That, of course, was obvious to them all, but all had the same feeling
that he had already suffered enough in the matter.
But consideration of the Doctor’s suggestion in all its aspects only
served to convince them that, if any such scheme was to be carried out,
it could only be done among themselves, and its dangers were obvious.
It was not a matter to be lightly undertaken by any man. For whoever
undertook the rôle of decoy, undoubtedly took his life in his hands; and
they spent many evenings over it.
The Vicar was absolutely against the idea, but had no alternative to
suggest.
“It is simply playing with death,” said he, “and no man has a right to
do that.”
“It means a good deal for the Island if we can clear it up,” said the
Sénéchal.
But, by degrees, they got to discussion of how it might be done, and
from that to the actual doing was only a heroic step.
The decoy’s head must be well padded, of course, for the heads of both
victims had been the points of attack.
He must be well armed also, and being forewarned and more, he ought to
be able to give a certain account of himself.
And then the Doctor and the Sénéchal would be close at hand and on the
keen look-out for emergencies.
The Doctor undertook to pad his head with something in the nature of a
turban under his hat, which, he vowed, would resist the impact of iron
blows better than metal itself.
“Leave my ears loose, anyway,” said Gard. “I’d like at all events to be
able to hear it coming.”
The Sénéchal had a weapon, part pistol and the rest blunderbuss, which
had belonged to his father, who had always referred to it affectionately
as his “dunderbush.” It had seen strange doings in its time, but had
been so long retired from the active list, that he undertook to load and
fire it himself before he said any more about it.
And he did it next day, with a full charge, in his meadow, with the
assistance of a gate-post and a long cord, and reported it at night as
in excellent order, and calculated to blow into smithereens anything
blowable that stood up before it within the short limit of its range.
At this stage in its proceedings the Vicar reluctantly retired from the
Committee of Public Safety. He acknowledged the sore need of ending the
suspicious and superstitious fears which were beginning to affect the
life of the community in various ways. But he could not see his way to
any participation in means so dangerous to the life of one of their
number as those suggested.
He did his best to dissuade Gard from it. He even reminded him of the
duty he owed to Nance. She had undoubtedly saved his life, and she had a
premier claim upon his consideration--and so on.
To all of which Gard fully assented.
“But,” he said gravely, “we are at a deadlock in this other matter, and
it is just barely possible that this plan may clear it all up. I can’t
say I’m very sanguine that it will. On the other hand, I really don’t
see that any great harm can come to me. The others probably suffered
because they were taken unawares. I shall go in the hope of meeting it,
and shall be ready for it. Unless, Vicar, you really think it is the
devil or something of that sort?”
“I don’t know what to think,” said the Vicar solemnly. “I cannot bring
myself to believe any of our Sark men would do such dreadful things. I
look at each man I meet and say to myself, ‘Now, can it be possible it
is you?--or you?--or you?’--and it does not seem possible; and yet--”
“And yet some one did it, Vicar,” said the Doctor, brusquely, “and
that’s just the trouble. Until we find out _who_ did it, any man may
have done it, and we all look at everybody else, just as you do, and say
to ourselves, ‘Is it you?--or you?--or you?’ Though I’m bound to say
I’ve not got the length yet of doubting either you or the Sénéchal, or
Gard, and I don’t think it’s myself. It might quite conceivably be any
one of us, however, prowling about in our sleep and utterly unconscious
afterwards of evil-doing.”
“A most awful possibility,” said the Vicar. “God grant it may turn out
differently from that.”
“You never know what this inexplicable machine may do,” said the Doctor,
tapping his head. “However, we’ll hope for the best, and I think the
Sénéchal and I ought to be able to see Gard through without any very
disastrous results. If we succeed, he will deserve better of this Island
than any man I know--and a sight more than this Island deserves of him.
I quite understand,” he said, as Gard looked quickly up. “And it does
you credit, my boy; but there are not very many men would do it.”
“Well, I’m afraid I must leave you to it,” said the Vicar, and did so.