Kitabı oku: «Ravensdene Court», sayfa 12

The four of us stood steadily gazing at each other for what seemed to be a long and – to me – a painful minute. Then the man whom I took to be Baxter moved a little nearer to us; his companion, hands in pockets, but watchful enough, lounged after him.

"Well, sir?" said Baxter, lifting his cap as he glanced at Miss Raven. "Don't think me too abrupt, nor intentionally rude, if I ask you what you and this young lady are doing here?"

His voice was that of a man of education and even of refinement, and his tone polite enough; there was something of apology in it. But it was also sharp, business-like, compelling; I saw at once that this was a man whose character was essentially matter-of-fact, and who would not allow himself to stick at trifles, and I judged it best to be plain in my answer.

"If you really want to know," I replied, "we are here by sheer accident. Exploring the wood for the mere fun of the thing, we chanced upon these ruins and have been examining them, that's all?"

"You didn't come here with any set purpose?" he asked, looking from one to the other. "You weren't seeking this place?"

"Certainly not!" said I. "We hadn't the faintest notion that such a place was to be found."

"But here it is, anyway," he said. "And – there you are! In the possession of the knowledge of it. And so – you'll excuse me – I must ask a question. Who are you? Tourists? Or – do you live hereabouts?"

The other man made a remark under his breath, in some foreign language, eyeing me the while. And Baxter spoke again watching me.

"I think you, at any rate, are a resident?" he said. "My friend has seen you before in these parts."

"I have seen him," I said unthinkingly. "I saw him amongst the people at Salter Quick's inquest."

The faintest shadow of an understanding glance passed between the two men, and Baxter's face grew stern.

"Just so!" he remarked. "That makes it all the more necessary to repeat my question. Who are you – both?"

"My name is Middlebrook, if you must know," I answered. "And I am not a resident of these parts – I am visiting here. As for this lady, she is Miss Raven, the niece of Mr. Francis Raven, of Ravensdene Court. And really – "

He waved his hand as if to deprecate any remonstrance or threat on my part, and bowed as politely to my companion as if I had just given him a formal introduction to her.

"No harm shall come to you, Miss Raven," he said, with evidently honest assurance. "None whatever!"

"Nor to Mr. Middlebrook, either, I should hope!" exclaimed Miss Raven, almost indignantly.

He smiled, showing a set of very white, strong teeth.

"That depends on Mr. Middlebrook," he said. "If Mr. Middlebrook behaves like a good and reasonable boy – Mr. Middlebrook," he went on, interrupting himself and turning on me with a direct look, "a plain question? Are you armed?"

"Armed!" I retorted scornfully. "Do you think I carry a revolver on an innocent country stroll?"

"We do!" he answered with another smile. "You see, we don't know with whom we may meet. It was a million to one – perhaps more – against our meeting anybody this afternoon, yet – we've met you."

"We are sorry to have interrupted you," I said, not without a touch of satirical meaning. "We won't interrupt any longer if you will permit us to say good-day."

I motioned to Miss Raven to follow me, and made to move. But Baxter laughed a little and shook his head.

"I'm not sure that we can allow that, just yet," he said. "It is unfortunate – I offer a thousand apologies to Miss Raven, but business is business, and – "

"Do you mean to tell me that you intend to interfere with our movements, just because you chance to find us here?" I demanded. "If so – "

"Don't let us quarrel or get excited," he said, with another wave of his hand. "I have said that no harm shall come to you – a little temporary inconvenience, perhaps, but – however, excuse me for a moment."

He stepped back to his companion; together they began to whisper, occasionally glancing at us.

"What does he mean?" murmured Miss Raven. "Do they want to keep us – here?"

"I don't know what they intend," I said. "But – don't be afraid."

"I'm not afraid," she answered. "Only – I've a pretty good idea of who it is that we've come across! And – so have you?"

"Yes," I replied. "Unfortunately, I have. And – we're at their mercy. There's nothing for it but to obey, I think."

Baxter suddenly turned back to us. It was clear that his mind was made up.

"Miss Raven – Mr. Middlebrook," he said. "I'm sorry, but we can't let you go. The fact is, you've had the bad luck to light on a certain affair of ours about which we can't take any chances. We have a yacht lying outside here – you'll have to go with us on board and to remain there for a day or two. I assure you, no harm shall come to either of you. And as we want to get on with our work here – will you please to come, now?"

We went – silently. There was nothing else to do. In a similar silence they led us through the rest of the wood, along the side of the stream which I had expected to find there, and to a small boat that lay hidden by the mouth of the creek. As they rowed us away in it, and rounded a spit of land, we saw the yacht, lying under a bluff of the cliffs. Ten minutes' stiff pulling brought us alongside – and for a moment, as I glanced up at her rail, I saw the yellow face of a Chinaman looking down on us. Then it vanished.

CHAPTER XVIII
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!"