Everything went very well on the night after Hadleigh Fair. The trick to
draw off the coastguard succeeded completely, and a hundred tubs were run
across Casey Marsh and safely packed away long ere the patrols had begun to
return. But on the very next day Golden Adams began to be a nuisance. He was
in low water, it seemed, and he wanted an advance on account of his share of
the profits. It was in vain that Cloyse pointed out that there were no
profits as yet, nor could be till the tubs were inland, and sold. Golden
Adams, who had a blunt way of saying disagreeable things, pointed out that by
that time Cloyse would be in a position to repudiate his liability
altogether; and he insisted on a payment on account as guarantee of faith. To
this Cloyse opposed the objection that he had not a penny of ready money in
the world, having ventured it all in the cargo; a statement which Adams made
no bones of calling a lie. So the thing stood at deadlock. It appeared to
Cloyse that all the advantages were on his side, since it would be out of the
question for Adams to dispose of any of the secreted liquor on his own
account; for that were a transaction needing special knowledge and
connections, which Adams had no acquaintance with; and moreover, some advance
of money would be needed for transport and reducing—for the spirit was
far above proof. So that old Sim Cloyse bore his partner’s angry departure
with serenity, quiet in his resolve to wait his own convenience, dispose of
the goods at his own opportunity, and deal with the proceeds at his own
discretion.
He saw no more of Adams for a day or two, and concluded that he had gone
home; and his equanimity endured till Murrell arrived to negotiate on Adams’s
behalf. At this it received a great shock. For here was Murrell in possession
of the secret—a man as clever as himself, in another way—and the
fact suggested unpleasant possibilities. What should prevent Murrell, failing
to make an arrangement, from giving information to the revenue officers, and
pocketing a share of the prize-money for himself? He was in no way implicated
in the run, and stood to make most by revealing it; and in old Sim Cloyse’s
simple system of ethics what a man made most by was what a man would do.
More, such a catastrophe would mean worse than the mere loss of the “stuff,”
bad as that would be; it would mean gaol, and a fine whose magnitude sent one
hot and cold to think of—that is, if Murrell’s evidence could connect
one with the matter. Old Sim Cloyse fell into a great disquietude.
On the other hand, he had no idea of how far Murrell’s information went.
Golden Adams, in consulting him, had possibly used very general terms,
without distinctly specifying what the goods were, or where they lay.
Murrell’s use of the words “hidden property”—he had never once
particularized further—gave encouragement to this hope, though Cloyse
was not persuaded; for he could not conceive a conversation between Golden
Adams and Cunning Murrell which should not leave the wizard in possession of
all that Adams had to let out. So that on the whole, Sim Cloyse’s disquietude
increased rather than diminished with reflection.
Plainly something must be done, and that quickly. If Murrell should turn
informer it would probably be soon, lest the tubs were shifted. Obviously the
proper move was to shift them instantly—that night, if possible. But no
arrangements had been made, no men were ready, and nobody was prepared to
receive them. Cloyse decided to house the tubs quietly himself, and with no
help but that of his son—his son and his horses, to be exact. He knew
he was able to lay his hands on three, two that he had bought, with the
design of selling them again, from Hayes, who ran the shrimp-cart to London,
and an old white vanner. He considered that it would be no difficult thing to
lead the three silently out of Leigh at nightfall, over the marsh, and up the
slope to the castle. The tubs were ready slung for carrying, and he expected
that the broad backs of the horses could, with a little contrivance, be made
to carry so many that no more than three journeys, or at most four, would be
necessary. In his old house in Leigh Strand and the outbuildings attached to
it there was room and to spare for the tubs twice over; and though no doubt
there was danger in having the “stuff” on one’s premises, it certainly seemed
to be the less, by far, of the two risks that faced him.
Accordingly the horses were made ready, and at the proper time of dark,
when the Leigh houses, standing all ways, seemed to hump their high shoulders
and confer together, black and frowning, plotting to fall murderously on the
next passenger along the narrow way beneath, old Sim Cloyse and young Sim his
son went out silently over the little foothills and the marsh, leading their
horses. The night was not so dark as Cloyse would have preferred had the
circumstances admitted of choice; indeed, at times the moonlight flung down
brightly on everything. But for the most of the time the scurrying clouds
spread a mottle of moving shadow that was near as effectual a screen as solid
darkness itself, and the wind lay so as to carry away from Leigh and any
possible watchers the faint sound made by horses’ feet in the soft ground and
thick herbage.
For near three-quarters of an hour they went in silence, picking their way
carefully, because of holes and ditches. For most of the latter part of the
journey the towers of the castle were fitfully visible, at times springing
suddenly as it were into being, pale and ghostly on the hilltop, and
vanishing as quickly under the shade of the next cloud.
There was a gate in a hedge a hundred and fifty yards from the nearest
corner of the castle, and having opened it with noiseless care, young Cloyse
stayed there with the horses, while his father went forward to observe.
There was no sound but the hum of the wind, and nothing moved that the
wind did not stir, save the unresting tide of shadows. Cloyse crept forward
silently, hidden by shade, bush, and fallen masonry, till he stood in a
narrow passage lying along the face of the foundations, between them and a
row of bushes.
The hole was closed still, and it was plain that the stones piled to block
it had not been disturbed. Cloyse crept back as silently as he had come, and
beckoned to young Sim, They led the horses up, and the older man, taking a
candle-end from his pocket, was indicating by gestures where the animals
could best be tethered, when young Sim, with a start, pointed up to the
wall-foot just above them. Cloyse had scarce time to turn when a blinding
flash met him; and with a crash in his ears and a stinging pang in an arm, he
realised that he had been fired at, and hit.
The horses started and tugged at their halters, and it was more by
instinct than because of reflection that young Sim crouched and began to
hurry downhill with two of them; and his father, his wound notwithstanding,
seized the other horse and followed, crouching also, taking shelter of the
animal and making for the bushes.
He had gone twenty yards, perhaps, when there came another shot, and broke
a thorn bush. There was no pursuit, however; and father and son presently
found themselves beyond the gate and in comparative safety, with a little
relief to qualify a great deal of terror and surprise. The wound bled a good
deal, and was painful, but it was little more than a deep graze, ploughing
the outer surface of the upper arm scarce a quarter of an inch at the
deepest. A tied handkerchief restrained the bleeding for a time, and with
many tremors and much floundering the two reached home at last.
Old Sim Cloyse was disquieted before his journey, but he quaked after it.
For he made no doubt that he had been fired at by a revenue man, and he lay
the night in hourly expectation of a party to arrest him. But the morning
came and found him safe, and it went, and left him undisturbed. With the
passing hours reflection got the better of his fears, and he began to doubt
if his plan had been frustrated by the coastguard after all. Otherwise why
was there no pursuit? And why was he still left unmolested? Young Sim had
perceived but a single dark figure, and had scarce pointed at it when the
shot was fired. True there were two shots, but they might easily have been
fired by one man with a pair of pistols. And if no Queen’s men were concerned
that one man could scarce be other than Golden Adams. Adams was a dangerous
sort of fellow, and quite likely to have mounted guard over the tubs with a
pair of pistols, resolved to prevent any attempt at removing them till his
demands were satisfied.
Now that the notion had occurred to him, Cloyse wondered that he had not
thought of it before, nor laid his plans in view of the possibility. But at
present he was by no means sure, after all, that his assailant was not a
coastguardsman, as he had at first supposed. So he sent young Sim out to spy
about Leigh for an hour.
Young Sim’s observations were reassuring. The coastguard were about their
customary duties in the ordinary sleepy course; the women hung out their
linen and clinked about the muddy Strand in pattens, and quarrelled at the
pump; the men waited the tide, mended their nets, smoked their pipes, and
lounged about the Smack Inn; and in all Leigh there was not a new thing to
hear or to talk about save only the chances of a change of wind. Plainly
there had been no disturbance of the coastguard. If there had been anything
like a seizure during the night—were it merely of one square bottle of
Dutch gin—nobody could have walked the length of Leigh Strand without
hearing of it a dozen times. The linen would still lie within, and the
quarrel at the pump would be held over till to-morrow, or even postponed for
a week, while the business was discussed at length, at large, and again; and
the substitute coastguard would have been in a riot of distraction.
Old Sim Cloyse was relieved; but with his spirits his natural spite rose
also, and he was more than ever obstinately resolved to seize the tubs at any
cost, were it only to damnify Golden Adams. But meantime young Sim extended
his reconnaissance to Hadleigh, by the road, and undertook, though with no
great readiness, to take a peep at the castle by daylight, and if possible to
ascertain if anything were yet removed.
He had a drink at the Castle Inn, and another at the Crown. At the Crown
Abel Pennyfather was talking of crops to the landlord, nobody else being
there to hear; but at the Castle Dan Fisk was reciting, with facetious
embellishment, the story of Abel Pennyfather’s cow, and the terrific
adventures of Jarge Crick. And in the tap-room Jarge Crick himself, out of a
job for the time, but in no lack of eleemosynary threepenny from a constant
succession of gaping inquirers, was repeating his last night’s experiences
again and again, having already arrived, by natural accretion and the
concatenation of pints, at a tale of hundreds of phantom winged horses, of
all known and unknown colours, bestridden by goblins and skeletons, belching
lightnings and thunderbolts about the hill, whereon Black Men, White Ladies,
and the Devil himself disported at large under the shadows of a flying cohort
of witches on broomsticks, directed by Mrs Martin and her niece Dorrily
Thorn.
But there was no word anywhere of slung tubs, no talk of the coastguard,
no hint of any but supernatural disturbance of last night’s quiet on the
marshes. In that respect young Sim took comfort; but there was matter for
more misgiving in Jarge Crick’s tale. Through all its multiplication of maze
and muddle it was plain to infer that Castle Hill and the marshes had not
been so wholly void of by-chance observers as they had seemed.
Young Sim Cloyse took to the fields east of the lane, so as to approach
the castle without passing within hail of Banham’s. He was a careful youth,
as became his ancestry, and as his sly-heavy face, a smoother copy of his
father’s, gave hint; but he was a youth notwithstanding, and his divagations
with Mag Banham had led him farther than he meant. For indeed they had begun
less from idle fancy—though that had its part—than from pique at
his repulse by Dorrily Thorn, and from the vanity of an obstinate nature. And
now he found himself so far entangled that he took refuge in caution and
avoidance.
The black cottage came in view at one point of his walk, and he was in
some degree tempted to go aside on chance of meeting Dorrily; for the girl
was not a fool, and plainly she must see the superior attractions of his
circumstances and his expectations from his father, over the poverty of a
common seaman; to say nothing of personal comparison, wherein his dense
complacency would admit of no disadvantage. But for the moment there was more
pressing business, and he went on by a circuitous path, which led him to the
eastern side of the castle.
He had seen nobody since he had left Hadleigh, and he could neither see
anybody now nor hear a sound of human origin. He took his way softly among
bushes up such a part of the hill as should lead him unseen to a view of the
place of storage.
It seemed to be still undisturbed. He crept a little closer. It
was
undisturbed, without a doubt; the stones still blocked the opening, and there
was no sign that one had been shifted. He listened again, and peered about
him. The stillness was such that here, bending low near the ground, he could
distinctly hear the mumble of the grazing of a score of sheep on the marsh by
the hill-foot. He grew so confident that he rose boldly and approached the
broken masonry: and then on a sudden was near stricken to his knees by a loud
voice just above him.
“Ho-ho!” sang the voice. “Yow nigh made me drop my glass, I jumped
so!”
And the face of Roboshobery Dove, wide and brown, and crowned as with a
halo by the shiny hat, looked down from his loop-hole.
Young Sim gathered his wits together as well as he might, and made an
indistinct answer, turning from the piled stones and affecting intense
interest in the view toward Leigh.