THE PLUM CAKE
In the few moments which elapsed between my catching sight of that
yellow face peering at us from the rail and our setting foot on the
deck of what was virtually a temporary prison, I had time to arrive at
a fairly conclusive estimate of our situation. Without doubt we were
in the hands of Netherfield Baxter and his gang; without doubt this
was the craft which they had bought from the Hull ship broker; without
doubt the reason of its presence on this lonely stretch of the coast
lay in the proceedings amongst the ruins beneath whose walls we had
come face to face with our captors. I saw--or believed that I
saw--through the whole thing. Baxter and his accomplices had bought
the yawl, ostensibly for a trip to the Norwegian fjords, but in
reality that they might sail it up the coast, in the capacity of
private yachtsmen, recover the treasure which had been buried near the
tombs of the de Knaythevilles, and then--go elsewhere. Miss Raven and
I had broken in upon their operations, and we were to pay for the
accident with our liberty. I was not concerned about myself--I fancied
that I saw a certain amount of honesty in Baxter's assurances--but I
was anxious about my companion, and about her uncle's anxiety. Miss
Raven was not the sort of girl to be easily frightened, but the
situation, after all, was far from pleasant--there we were,
defenceless, amongst men who were engaged in a dark and desperate
adventure, whose hands were probably far from clean in the matter of
murder, and who, if need arose, would doubtless pay small regard to
our well-being or safety. Yet--there was nothing else for it but to
accept the situation.
We went on deck. The vessel was at anchor; she lay, a thing of
idleness, quiet and peaceful enough, in a sheltered cove, wherein, I
saw at a glance, she was lost to sight from the open sea outside the
bar at its entrance, and hid from all but the actual coastline of the
land. And all was quiet on her clean, freshly-scoured decks--she
looked, seen at close quarters, just what her possessors, of course,
desired her to be taken for--a gentleman's pleasure yacht, the crew of
which had nothing to do but keep her smart and bright. No one stepping
aboard her would have suspected piracy or nefarious doings. And when
we boarded her, there was nobody visible--the Chinaman whom I had seen
looking over the side had disappeared, and from stem to stern there
was not a sign of human life. But as Miss Raven and I stood side by
side, glancing about us with curiosity, a homely-looking grey cat came
rubbing its shoulder against the woodwork and from somewhere forward,
where a wisp of blue smoke escaped from the chimney of the cook's
galley, we caught a whiff of a familiar sort--somebody, somewhere, was
toasting bread or tea-cakes.
We stood idle, like prisoners awaiting orders, while our captors
transferred from the boat to the yawl two biggish, iron-hooped
chests, the wood of which was stained and discoloured with earth and
clay. They were heavy chests, and they used tackle to get them aboard,
setting them down close by where we stood. I looked at them with a
good deal of interest; then, remembering that Miss Raven was fully
conversant with all that Scarterfield had discovered at Blyth, I
touched her elbow, directing her attention to the two bulky objects
before us.
"Those are the chests that disappeared from the bank at Blyth," I
whispered. "Now you understand?"
She gave me a quick, comprehending look.
"Then we are in the hands of Netherfield Baxter?" she murmured. "That
man--there."
"Without a doubt," I answered. "And the thing is--show no fear."
"I'm not a scrap afraid," she answered. "It's exciting! And--he's
rather interesting, isn't he?"
"Gentlemen of his kidney usually are, I believe," I replied. "All the
same, I should much prefer his room to his company."
Baxter just then came over to us, rubbing from his fingers the soil
which had gathered on them from handling the chests. He smiled
politely, with something of the air of a host who wants to apologise
for the only accommodation he can offer.
"Now, Miss Raven," he said, with an accent of almost benevolent
indulgence, "as we shall be obliged to inflict our hospitality upon
you for a day or two--I hope it won't be for longer, for your
sake--let me show you what we can give you in the way of quarters to
yourself. We can't offer you the services of a maid, but there is a
good cabin, well fitted, in which you'll be comfortable, and you can
regard it as your own domain while you're with us. Come this way."
He led us down a short gangway, across a sort of small saloon
evidently used as common-room by himself and his companion, and threw
open the door of a neat though very small cabin.
"Never been used," he said with another smile. "Fitted up by the
previous owner of this craft, and all in order, as you see. Consider
it as your own, Miss Raven, while you're our guest. One of my men
shall see that you've whatever you need in the way of towels, hot
water, and the like. If you'll step in and look round, I'll send him
to you now. As he's a Chinaman, you'll find him as handy as a French
maid. Give him any orders or instructions you like. And then come on
deck again, if you please, and you shall have some tea."
He beckoned me to follow him as Miss Raven walked into her quarters,
and he gave me a reassuring look as we crossed the outer cabin.
"She'll be perfectly safe and secluded in there," he said. "You can
mount guard here if you like, Mr. Middlebrook--in fact, this is the
only place I can offer you for quarters for yourself--I dare say you
can manage to make a night's rest on one of these lounges, with the
help of some rugs and cushions, and we've plenty of both."
"I'm all right, thank you," said I. "Don't trouble about me. My only
concern is about Miss Raven."
"I'll take good care that Miss Raven is safe in everything," he
answered. "As safe as if she were in her uncle's house. So don't
bother your head on that score--I've given my word."
"I don't doubt it," I said. "But as regards her uncle--I want to speak
to you about him."
"A moment," he replied. "Excuse me." We were on deck again, and he
went forward, poked his head into an open hatchway, and gave some
order to an unseen person. A moment later a Chinaman, the same whose
face I had seen as we came aboard, shot out of the hatchway, glided
past me as he crossed the deck with silent tread, and vanished into
the cabin we had just left. Baxter came back to me, pulling out a
cigarette case. "Yes?" he said, offering it. "About Mr. Raven?"
"Mr. Raven," said I, "will be in great anxiety about his niece. She is
the only relative he has, I believe, and he will be extremely anxious
if she does not return this evening. He is a nervous, highly-strung
man--"
He interrupted me with a wave of his cigarette.
"I've thought of all that," he said. "Mr. Raven shall not be kept in
anxiety. As a matter of fact, my friend, whom you met with me up there
at the ruins, is going ashore again in a few minutes. He will go
straight to the nearest telegraph office, which is a mile or two
inland, and there he will send a wire to Mr. Raven--from you. Mr.
Raven will get it by, say, seven o'clock. The thing is--how will you
word it?"
We looked at each other. In that exchange of glances, I could see that
he was a man who was quick at appreciating difficulties and that he
saw the peculiar niceties of the present one.
"That's a pretty stiff question!" said I.
"Just so!" he agreed. "It is. So take my advice. Instead of having the
wire sent from the nearest office, do this--my friend, as a matter of
fact, is going on by rail to Berwick. Let him send a wire from there:
it will only mean that Mr. Raven will get it an hour or so later. Say
that you and Miss Raven find you cannot get home tonight, and that she
is quite safe--word it in any reassuring way you like."
I gave him a keen glance.
"The thing is," said I. "Can we get home tomorrow?"
"Well--possibly tomorrow night--late," he answered. "I will do my
best. I may be--I hope to be--through with my business tomorrow
afternoon. Then--"
At that moment the other man appeared on deck, emerging from
somewhere. He had changed his clothes--he now presented himself in a
smart tweed suit, Homburg hat, polished shoes, gloves, walking cane.
Baxter signed to him to wait, turning to me.
"That's the wisest thing to do," he remarked. "Draft your wire."
I wrote out a message which I hoped would allay Mr. Raven's anxieties
and handed it to him. He read it over, nodded as if in approbation,
and went across to the other man. For a moment or two they stood
talking in low tones; then the other man went over the side, dropped
into the boat which lay there, and pulled himself off shorewards.
Baxter came back to me.
"He'll send that from Berwick railway station as soon as he gets
there, at six-thirty," he said. "It should be delivered at Ravensdene
Court by eight. So there's no need to worry further, you can tell Miss
Raven. And when all's said and done, Mr. Middlebrook, it wasn't my
fault that you and she broke in upon very private doings up there in
the old churchyard--nor, I suppose, yours either. Make the best of
it!--it's only a temporary detention."
I was watching him closely as he talked, and suddenly I made up my
mind to speak out. It might be foolish, even dangerous, to do it, but
I had an intuitive feeling that it would be neither.
"I believe," I said, brusquely enough, "that I am speaking to Mr.
Netherfield Baxter?"
He returned me a sharp glance which was half-smiling. Certainly there
was no astonishment in it.
"Aye!" he answered. "I thought, somehow, that you might be thinking
that! Well, and suppose I admit it, Mr. Middlebrook? What then? And
what do you--a Londoner, I think you told me--know of Netherfield
Baxter?"
"You wish to know?" I asked. "Shall I be plain?"
"As a pike-staff, if you like," he replied. "I prefer it."
"Well," said I, "a good many things--recently discovered by accident.
That you formerly lived at Blyth, and had some association with a
certain temporary bank-manager there, about whose death--and the
disappearance of some valuable portable property--there was a good
deal of concern manifested about the time that you left Blyth. That
you were never heard of again until recently, when a Blyth man
recognized you in Hull, where you bought a yawl--this yawl, I
believe--and said you were going to Norway in her. And that--but am I
to be still more explicit?"
"Why not?" said he with a laugh. "Forewarned is forearmed. You're
giving me valuable information."
"Very well, Mr. Baxter," I continued, determined to show him my cards.
"There's a certain detective, one Scarterfield, a sharp man, who is
very anxious to make your acquaintance. For if you want the plain
truth, he believes you, or some of your accomplices, or you and they
together, to have had a hand in the murders of Noah and Salter Quick.
And he's on your track."
I was watching him still more closely as I spoke the last sentence or
two. He remained as calm and cool as ever, and I was somewhat taken
aback by the collected fashion in which he not only replied to my
glance, but answered my words.
"Scarterfield--of whose doings I've heard a bit--has got hold of the
wrong end of the stick there, Mr. Middlebrook," he said quietly. "I
had no hand in murdering either Noah Quick or his brother Salter. Nor
had my friend--the man who's just gone off with your telegram. I don't
know who murdered those men. But I know that there have always been
men who were ready to murder them if they got the chance, and I wasn't
the least surprised to hear that they had been murdered. The wonder is
that they escaped murder as long as they did! But beyond the fact that
they were murdered, I know nothing--nor does anybody on board this
craft. You and Miss Raven are amongst--well, you can call us pirates
if you like, buccaneers, adventurers, anything!--but we're not
murderers. We know nothing whatever about the murders of Noah and
Salter Quick--except what we've read in the papers."
I believed him. And I made haste to say so--out of a sheer relief to
know that Miss Raven was not amongst men whose hands were stained with
blood.
"Thank you," he said, as coolly as ever. "I'm obliged to you. I've
been anxious enough to know who did murder those two men. As I say, I
felt no surprise when I heard of the murders."
"You knew them--the Quicks?" I suggested.
"Did I?" he answered with a cynical laugh. "Didn't I? They were a
couple of rank bad 'uns! I have never professed sanctity, Mr.
Middlebrook, but Noah and Salter Quick were of a brand that's far
beyond me--they were bad men. I'll tell you more of 'em, later--here's
Miss Raven."
"I may as well tell you," I murmured hastily, "that Miss Raven knows
as much as I do about all that I've just told you."
"That so?" he said. "Um! And she looks a sensible sort of lass,
too--well, I'll tell you both what I know--as I say, later. But
now--some tea!"
While he went forward to give his orders, I contrived to inform Miss
Raven of the gist of our recent conversation, and to assert my own
private belief in Baxter's innocence. I saw that she was already
prejudiced in his favour.
"I'm glad to know that," she said. "But in that case--the mystery's
all the deeper. What is it, I wonder, that he can tell."
"Wait till he speaks," said I. "We shall learn something."
Baxter came back, presently followed by the little Chinaman whom I had
seen before, who deftly set up a small table on deck, drew chairs
round it, and a few minutes later spread out all the necessaries of a
dainty afternoon tea. And in the centre of them was a plum cake. I saw
Miss Raven glance at it; I glanced at her; I knew of what she was
thinking. Her thoughts had flown to the plum cake at Lorrimore's, made
by Wing, his Chinese servant.
But whatever we thought, we said nothing. The situation was romantic,
and not without some attraction, even in those curious circumstances.
Here we were, prisoners, first-class prisoners, if you will, but still
prisoners, and there was our gaoler; he and ourselves sat round a
tea-table, munching toast, nibbling cakes and dainties, sipping
fragrant tea, as if we had been in any lady's drawing-room. I think it
speaks well for all of us that we realized the situation and made the
most of it by affecting to ignore the actual reality. We chatted, as
well-behaved people should under similar conditions, about anything
but the prime fact of our imprisonment; Baxter, indeed, might have
been our very polite and attentive host and we his willing guests. As
for Miss Raven, she accepted the whole thing with hearty good humour
and poured out the tea as if she had been familiar with our new
quarters for many a long day; moreover, she adopted a friendly
attitude towards our captors which did much towards smoothing any
present difficulties.
"You seem to be very well accommodated in the matter of servants, Mr.
Baxter," she observed. "That little Chinaman, as you said, is as good
as a French maid, and you certainly have a good cook--excellent
pastry-cook, anyway."
Baxter glanced lazily in the direction of the galley.
"Another Chinaman," he answered. He looked significantly at me. "Mr.
Middlebrook," he continued, "is aware that I bought this yawl from a
ship-broker in Hull, for a special purpose--"
"Not aware of the special purpose," I interrupted, with a purposely
sly glance at him.
"The special purpose is a run across the Atlantic, if you want to
know," he answered carelessly. "Of course, when I'd got her, I wanted
a small crew. Now, I've had great experience of Chinamen--best
servants on earth, in my opinion--so I sailed her down to the Thames,
went up to London Docks, and took in some Chinese chaps that I got in
Limehouse. Two men and one cook--man cook, of course. He's good--I
can't promise you a real and proper dinner tonight, but I can promise
a very satisfactory substitute which we call supper."
"And you're going across the Atlantic with a crew of three?" I asked.
"As a matter of fact," he answered candidly, "there are six of us. The
three Chinese; myself; my friend who was with me this afternoon, and
who will join us again tomorrow, and another friend who will return
with him, and who, like the crew, is a Chinaman. But he's a Chinaman
of rank and position."
"In other words, the Chinese gentleman who was with you and your
French friend in Hull?" I suggested.
"Just so--since we're to be frank," he answered. "The same." Then,
with a laugh, he glanced at Miss Raven. "Mr. Middlebrook," he said,
"considers me the most candid desperado he ever met!"
"Your candour is certainly interesting," replied Miss Raven.
"Especially if you really are a desperado. Perhaps--you'll give us
more of it?"
"I'll tell you a bit--later on," he said. "That Quick business, I
mean."
Suddenly, setting down his tea-cup, he got up and moved away towards
the galley, into which he presently disappeared. Miss Raven turned
sharply on me.
"Did you eat a slice of that plum-cake?" she whispered. "You did?"
"I know what you're thinking," I answered. "It reminds you of the cake
that Lorrimore's man, Wing, makes."
"Reminds!" she exclaimed. "There's no reminding about it! Do you know
what I think? That man Wing is aboard this yacht! He made that cake!"