"Sir?" Winkfield said, blinking at him.
"Don't pretend you're deaf! I must write a letter."
Considerably dismayed, Winkfield said: "It's very late, sir. Now, won't you——"
"I know it's late. The letter must be written at once, if it is to catch the mail. What time does it leave Sheffield for London?"
"At six in the morning, I believe, sir, but——"
"Joseph must ride in to catch it. Tell him!"
The valet almost wrung his hands. "I beg you, sir, don't ask me to bring you pen and ink at this hour! The doctor particularly desired you not to sit up, and it's past ten o'clock now!"
"Damn the doctor! And you, too! Do as I bid you!"
"Sir——"
Sir Peter put up his hand and grasped the valet's arm, shaking it feebly. "Winkfield, old friend, I have no time—no time! Do you want me to sleep peacefully tonight?"
"God knows I do, sir!"
"Then don't thwart me! I know what I'm about. I'm well, too—very well!"
The valet gave a despairing sigh, and went over to where a court-cupboard stood, and opened it. "You'll kill yourself, sir," he said bitterly.
"Very likely. Do you think I care for that? Let me but tie one knot tight, and the sooner this miserable existence ends the better I shall be pleased! I shall see it out: I always do what I mean to, don't I?"
"Yes, sir—more's the pity!"
Sir Peter gave a dry chuckle. He waited until a tray had been laid across the arms of his chair, and the standish set upon it. Then he said abruptly: "That was a very different visitor from the other I received last night."
"Yes, indeed, sir!"
"Cutter-rigged! nothing queer or yawl-like about him! knew his grandfather."
"You did, sir? It seems a strange thing for him to be keeping the gate, but he's very much the gentleman, of course."
Sir Peter dipped the pen in the standish. "Impudent dog! He's courting Miss Nell!"
"So I have been given to understand, sir."
Sir Peter shot a look up at him. "It will do, won't it?"
"I think so, sir. If I may say so, I never saw Miss Nell in such a glow. It quite took me aback, the way she looked at the Captain. Rose will have it he was sent by Providence."
"Maybe. He comes in the very nick of time, at all events. What's the name of my attorney? It ain't Raythorne—he died years ago. Who's the fellow that succeeded him?"
"Mr. Marshside, sir," said Winkfield wonderingly.
"Marshside! Ay, that's it! Hold this damned paper steady for me!"
He began to write, slowly, and with a little difficulty. "When does the mail reach London?"
"I'm told they do the journey in sixteen-and-a-half hours now, sir. It should reach the General Post Office at about ten in the evening, though it hardly seems possible."
"Glad I don't travel by it!"
"No, sir, very uncomfortable it must be, racing along at such a pace."
Sir Peter grunted, and dipped his pen in the ink again. By the time he had scrawled his signature at the foot of the single sheet, he was a good deal exhausted, and his hand was shaking. Winkfield took the pen from between his fingers. "There, sir, you don't need to do any more. I'll seal it up, and direct it for you."
"Marshside—somewhere in Lincoln's Inn Fields," Sir Peter muttered.
"Yes, sir, I know."
"It must catch the mail!"
"I promise it shall, sir."
Sir Peter seemed satisfied, and said no more. He let Winkfield do what he wished with him. Only when his head lay on the pillow did he revive a little, and open his eyes. They were surprisingly bright, even rather impish. "I can still keep my horses well together!" he said. "I'll show you!"
CHAPTER X.
CAPTAIN STAPLE found no one stirring in the stables, when he left the house, and was soon trotting down the road towards the toll-gate. The light was dim, gathering clouds obscuring the moon, and a little chill wind was bringing a few leaves fluttering down from the trees. He encountered nobody on the road, and in a few minutes saw ahead of him the yellow glow of the storm-lantern hanging on the gate. He dismounted when he reached it, and, before opening the gate, trimmed the lamp, which was flaring too high. Having done this to his satisfaction, he turned, and went to pull back the gate a little way, to enable Beau to pass. As he set his hand on it, the fitful wind blew towards him the unmistakable smell of burning tobacco. Faint though it was, his nostrils caught it, and while he pretended to be fumbling for the fastening on the gate, keeping his head bent, his eyes searched the shadows cast by the overgrown hedge which flanked the road, beyond a rough grass verge and a ditch. Almost immediately he saw the tiny thread of smoke, creeping upward from the faintest red glow just discernible in the long grass not six feet from where he stood. Someone had knocked out a pipe within the last few minutes, and the dottle was still smouldering.
The Captain flicked over the staple that held the gate to the side-post, and stepped back a few paces, pulling the gate with one hand, and with the other, holding Beau's bridle, imperceptibly manoeuvring that sagacious animal into presenting his haunch instead of his head to the opening. Beau, who knew very well that his stable lay beyond the gate, snorted, and threw up his head, as though he were jibbing (which indeed he was), and the Captain backed him a little, saying soothingly: "Steady, now, you old fool! What's the matter with you? Come along! You know a gate when you see one!"
Beau certainly knew a gate when he saw one, and would have passed through the narrow opening without the smallest hesitation had his master permitted him to do so. But the hand on his bridle was acting in direct contradiction to the voice, and was forcing him back. Fretted, he tried to jerk his head away, presenting all the appearance of a horse unwilling to approach an obstacle. Meanwhile, the Captain, still talking gently to him, was rapidly scanning the hedge. It was difficult to see more than its ragged outline, but a rift in the clouds disclosed the moon for a few seconds, and in the faint lightening of the scene he thought he could detect a movement in the shadows, as though a man, crouching in the ditch, had shifted his position slightly.
Beau found that the extremely irksome hand on his bridle had relaxed its pressure, and at once stepped forward.
"That's more like it!" said the Captain encouragingly, and led him through the aperture. He fastened the gate again, and walked past the toll-house, and down the road, to where, fifty yards away, a white farm-gate gave access to the big meadow at the top end of which was situated the barn that stabled Beau. Opening it, he turned Beau into the meadow, and pulled the gate shut with a clap behind him. Then he strode back to the toll-house, along the grass verge, keeping in the shadow of the hedge, and treading noiselessly over the soft ground. There he took up a position, just round the corner of the house from the road, and waited.
He had not long to wait. In a minute or two the wicket gate creaked, and an unhurried footstep sounded. Heavy cloud again hid the moon, but there was light enough to see, when the footsteps drew abreast of John, that the figure which passed was that of a stocky man of medium height.
"Waiting for me?"
These pleasantly spoken words made the stocky man stop, and wheel about, grasping the thick stick he carried. Before he had time to raise it (if such had been his intention), he found himself enveloped in an unloving embrace from which it was quite impossible to escape. He seemed to realise this, for he stood perfectly still, merely saying in a mildly expostulatory tone: "Lor' bless you, big 'un, you don't have to squeege the puff out of me!"
"It's you, is it?" said John, removing the stick from his grasp, and casting it aside. "I thought it might be! Let me tell you, Mr. Stogumber, that it is unwise to smoke your pipe when lying in ambush!"
"So that's how you boned me!" said Mr. Stogumber, apparently pleased to have this point explained. "A very leery cove, ain't you?"
"No, but I don't care to be spied upon!" said John.
"Spied upon! What, me?" said Stogumber, in astonished accents. "Seems to me as it's you as laid in wait for me, Mr. Staple! I wasn't meaning no harm! I didn't jump out on you sudden enough to give anyone a spasm! All I done was to come out to stretch my legs. What's put you in such a pelt?"
"Were you stretching your legs in the ditch?" asked the Captain sardonically.
"I won't try to slumguzzle you, big 'un," responded Stogumber. "I wasn't. But this being a very lonely road, d'ye see, and me a peaceable man, I didn't want to run into no trouble. How was I to know you wasn't a bridle-cull?"
"You knew well enough who I was when you heard me speak to my horse! Why didn't you show yourself then?"
"What, and have you laughing at me for being cow-hearted, which I won't deny I am—very!"
"Coming it too strong!" said John. "What kind of a flat do you take me for, to be flammed by such gammon as that?"
"Since you ask me, Mr. Staple, I don't know as how I take you for a flat at all, not by any manner o' means!"
"Then stop trying to turn me up sweet, and tell me what the devil you mean by spying on me!"
"Down to every move on the board, ain't you? Seems to me as how a cove as is as knowing as what you are didn't ought to be minding a pike," remarked Stogumber. "What's more, I couldn't hardly believe you could be the pike-keeper, not when I clapped my ogles on that beautiful-stepping tit o' yours! If I was a peevy cove I should suspicion you must have prigged him, but I ain't. I daresay you come by him honest, though what you want with a bang-up bit of blood and bone—you being what you are—I don't know! Howsever, it ain't none of my business——"
"None at all!" John interrupted. "I told you yesterday I'm not a gatekeeper, but a soldier!"
"So you did! And a very handsome trooper you've got! In fact, I was mistook in him: I thought he was a prime 'un!"
"Mr. Stogumber," said John, a grim note in his deep voice, "my horse is not a trooper, as you very well know; and I am only minding the pike to oblige Brean! Now perhaps you'll tell me——"
"Your cousin," nodded Stogumber.
"Now perhaps you'll tell me," continued John, "why you are so interested in my movements?"
"There you go again!" complained Stogumber. "I'm a cove as is interested in most things—not you partic'lar!"
"Are you indeed? Well, I, Mr. Stogumber, am a cove as is interested in you extremely particular!"
"You're bamming me!" said Stogumber.
"No," said John. "Nor am I flattering you!"
"Well, even if you ain't, you don't have to look so bluff, nor to grip my arm so as I can't feel my fingers no more! That's the worst of you big 'uns: you don't know your strength."
"I know mine to the last ounce, and so will you very shortly! I'm interested in you because it seems to me that some business you're mighty anxious to conceal has brought you to these remote parts. Don't spin me any more nacky tarradiddles about this property you have been commissioned to purchase, because we have agreed, have we not? that I am not a flat! You tried yesterday to discover who I am, and how I come to be here; and tonight I find you watching the toll-house. Why is it so important to you to know where I may be going, or what I may be doing, Mr. Stogumber? Just what kind of an under-game are you playing?"
There was a pause. John had the impression that his question had taken Stogumber by surprise, but it was impossible, in the darkness, to read his face. After a moment he said: "You must have had a shove in the mouth, big 'un, though I'm bound to say I never suspicioned it! P'raps you're just betwattled! Did you ever hear tell of the Wansbeck ford?"
"No, and I don't want to hear of it! If you provoke me into losing my temper, Stogumber——"
"Now, don't go for to do that!" begged Stogumber. "I ain't a match for a man of your size! Besides, it wouldn't do you no good if you was to mill me down. O' course, it wouldn't do me much good neither, but it's you as 'ud catch cold—in the long run! If you never heard tell of the Wansbeck ford, p'raps you never heard tell of a signpost being changed round so as to mislead folks?"
"I didn't. And if you're trying to hoax me into believing that you're here by accident tonight, spare your breath! There is no signpost between this gate and the village! Try another fling!"
"Never heard of that neither!" said Stogumber. "That's queer!"
Considerably mystified, John demanded: "Why?"
"'Cos I thought you had," replied Stogumber cryptically. "Either I've been mistook—which ain't likely—or you're as fly a cove as ever tapped a shy one on the shoulder! Which again ain't likely, seeing the size you are, and big 'uns not being, in general, the slyest things in nature! One thing I'm not mistook about is that there's a horse and cart, or maybe it's a carriage, coming down the road. You'll have to leave go of me, Mr. Staple. And if you're going to open the gate, I'd take off that flash shap, if I was you!"
There was indeed a vehicle approaching from the direction of Sheffield. The Captain released Stogumber, and, accepting his advice, removed his hat. But he said somewhat sternly: "You use too much thieves' cant for my taste!"
"Ah!" said Stogumber, stooping to pick up his stick. "And you understand too much of it for mine, big 'un!"