Doctor Syn - Russell Thorndyke (new reading txt) 📗
- Author: Russell Thorndyke
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Jerry still looked at the captain. Certainly he had never beheld any one more unlike an apothecary. By the widest stretch of his imagination he could not picture the captain mixing drugs or making experiments.
“It’s my opinion…” he said, and then hesitated.
“Yes?” thundered the captain, with an eagerness that seemed to welcome any opinion.
“— well, it’s my opinion, sir, that Doctor Syn is off his head—mad, sir.”
“And it’s my opinion, potboy,” said the captain, as if he valued his own opinion as highly as Jerry Jerk’s, “it’s my opinion that he’s nothing of the kind. He’s feigning madness. He had to do something, you see, to get out of the room, so he called me something that he knew would take my breath away for the moment, knowing me to be dense, and he succeeded, for if any man was unqualified to be an apothecary, I’m the fellow. An analyzing apothecary!”
Then the captain sat down in the armchair and laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks, and Jerry was obliged to join in, though he didn’t know what he was laughing at. At length he stopped and became most suddenly grave. Getting up, he placed his hands on Jerry’s shoulders.
“Look here, potboy,” he said, “you and I have common secrets that I know. What the devil you were doing out on the Marsh the night before last I don’t know, but that you saw the schoolmaster kill Pepper I do know.”
“You know?” cried Jerk, utterly astonished. “Then Doctor Syn must have told you, for I never breathed a word.”
“I know all about it, my boy, because I was hiding in the same dyke as you. Now see here, from what I’ve seen of you, I imagine you can be relied upon. We’ll pluck a leaf out of that parson’s book. We’ll find out his mystery. We’ll find out the whole mystery of this damned Marsh, and as to being apothecaries, why, damme, so we will. We’ll take him at his word.”
“And be apothecaries, sir?” asked Jerry, more puzzled now than ever.
“Yes,” cried the captain, slapping his great hands up and down upon Jerry’s shoulders. “Apothecaries make experiments, don’t they?”
“I dare say they do, sir,” replied Jerk.
“Well, so will we, my lad,” went on the captain, as happy as a sand boy. “We’ll set a trap for all this mystery to walk into. We’ll set a big trap, my lad— big enough to hold all the murderers and mulattoes on the Marsh, the demon riders as well, and certainly not forgetting the coffins in Mipps’s shop nor the bottles of Alsace Lorraine beneath this floor. We’ll catch the lot, my boy, and analyze ‘em. Yes, damn ‘em! we’ll analyze ‘em, inside and outside, by night and by day. And when we’ve analyzed ‘em thoroughly, why, we’ll give ‘em to Jack Ketch—to old Jack Ketch, who’ll hang ‘em up to dry. Not a word, my boy, to any one; not a word. Here’s a guinea bit to hold your tongue; and look to hear from me before the day’s out, for I shall want your help to-morrow night.”
And the captain was gone. Literally rushed out of the door he had, leaving Jerk alone in a whirl.
“Well,” he said to himself, “if a man ever deserved a third breakfast, I’m the one, and here goes; for both of these fellows is stark, staring mad, though it’s wonderful the way they all seems to take to me.”
And thrusting the precious guinea bit into his pocket, Jerk again vigorously attacked the victuals.
“TALK about an ‘ealthy child, and there he is,” said Mrs. Waggetts, entering the sanded parlour with Sexton Mipps. “and eat; nothing like eating to increase your fat, is there, Mister Mipps? But, there, I suppose you never had no fat on you to speak of, ‘cos if ever a man was one of Pharaoh’s lean kine, you was.”
“It’s hard work wot’s kept me thin, Missus Waggetts,” replied the sinister sexton; “hard work and scheming; and a little of both would do our young Jerry here no harm.”
“As to work,” replied Jerry, gulping down more food, “there ain’t been no complaints against me, I believes, Missus Waggetts?”
“Certainly not, Jerry, my boy,” replied that lady affably.
“That’s good,” said Jerk, and then turning to the sexton he added: “And as to scheming, Mister Sexton, how do you know I don’t scheme?^ Some folks are so took up with their own schemes that p’raps they don’t get time to notice wot others are a-doin’. I has lots of schemes, I has. I thinks about ‘em by day, I does, and dreams of ‘em at night.”
“And they gives you a rare knack of puttin’ away Missus Waggetts’ victuals, I’m a-noticin’,” dryly remarked the sexton.
“Lor’, I’m sure he’s heartily welcome to anything I’ve got,” returned the landlady. “It fair cheers me up to see him eat well, and it’ll be a fine man he’ll be making in a year or so.”
“Aye, that I will,” cried young Jerk; “and when I’m a hangman I ain’t a-goin’ to forget my old friend. I’ll come along from the town every Sunday, I will, and we’ll go and hear Parson Syn preach just the same as we does now, and Mister Mipps will show us into the pew, and everybody will turn round and stare at us and say: *Why, there goes Hangman Jerk!’ Then we’ll come back and have a bite of supper together, that is providing I don’t have to sup with the squire at the Court House.”
“That ‘ud be likely,” interrupted Mipps.
“And, after we’ve had supper, I’ll tell you stories about horrible sights I’ve seen in the week, and terrible things I’ve done, and it’ll go hard with Sexton Mipps to keep even with me with weird yarnin’, I tells you.”
“Ha! ha!” chuckled Mipps. “Strike me dead and knock me up slipshod in a buckrum coffin, if this man Jerry Jerk don’t please me. Look at him. Missus Waggetts. Will you please do me the favour of lookin’ at him hard, though don’t let it put you off your feed, Jerry. Why, at your age I had just such notions as you’ve got, but then I never had your advantages. Why, at thirteen years of age I was as growed up in my fancies as this Jerk. Sweetmeats to devil, eh, Jerry? for it’s some who grows above such garbage from their first rocking in the cradle. This Jerry Jerk is a man; why, bless you, he’s more a man than lots of ‘em what thinks they be. Aye, more a man than some of ‘em wot’s a-doin’ man’s work.”
“That’s so,” said Mrs. Waggetts, enthusiastically backing the sexton up. “And don’t you forget that he owns a bit of land on the Marsh, and so he’s a Marshman proper.”
“I doesn’t forget it,” said Mipps, “and I’ve been tellin’ certain folk wot had, how things were goin* with Hangman Jerk, and I’ve made ‘em see that although only a child in regard to age, he ain’t no child in his deeds, and so they agreed with me, Missus Waggetts, that it ‘ud be unjust not to let him have full Marshman’s privileges; and I’ll go bail that Jerk won’t disgrace me by not livin’ up to them privileges.”
“P’raps I won’t, IVIister Sexton, when I knows what them privileges are.”
“You listen and I’ll tell you,” answered the sexton.
“And listen well, Jerry,” added Mrs. Waggetts, “for what Mister!Mipps is a-goin’ to say will like as not be the makin’ of you.”
“I will listen most certainly,” replied Jerk, “so soon as Mister Mipps gets on with it. I’m all agog to listen, but there’s no use in listenin’ afore he begins, is there now?”
“Jerry,” said the sexton, “you’re just one after my own heart. You ought to have lived in my days, when I was a lad. Gone to sea and got amongst the interestin’ gentlemen like I did. Aye, they was interestin’. And reckless they was, too. They was rough—none rougher; but I don’t grudge ‘em all the kicks they give me. Why, it made a man o’ me, young Jerk. I tell you. Master Jerry, that bad as them sea adventurers was, and bad they was—my eye—yes, buccaneers, pirates, and all the rest of it—but bad as they was they did some good, for they made a man o’ me, Jerry. I should never have been the sort o’ man I is now if them ruffians hadn’t kindly knocked the nonsense out o’ me.”
“Shouldn’t you, though?” said Jerry.
“Never, never!” said the sexton with conviction. “But mind you,” he went on, “you has advantages wot I never had. I had to learn all the tricks o’ my trade, and I had to buy my experience. There was no kind friend to teach me my tricks o’ trade, no benevolent old cove wot ‘ud pay for my experience. No, I had to buy and learn for myself, but, my stars and garters! afore they’d done with me I had ‘em all scared o’ me. Even England hisself didn’t a-relish my tantrums; and when I was in a regular blinder, why, I solemnly believes he was scared froze o’ me. There was only one man my superior in all the time I sailed them golden seas, and that man was Clegg hisself. I served on his ship, you know. Jerk. I was carpenter, master carpenter, mind you, to Clegg hisself—to no less a man than Clegg. And on Clegg’s own ship it were, too. She was called the Imogene. I never knew why she was called so. It sounds a high fiddaddley sort o’ name for a pirate ship, but then Clegg was a regular gentleman in his tastes. Why, I remember him sittin’ so peaceful on the roundhouse roof one day a-readin’ of Virgil—and not in the vulgar tongue, neither. He was a-readin’ it in the foreign language wot it was first wrote in, so he told me. And you couldn’t somehow get hold o’ the fact that that benign-lookin’ cove wot was sittin’ there so peaceful a-readin’ learned books had maybe half an hour before strung up a mutineer to the yardarms or made some wealthy fat merchant walk the dirty plank. No, he was a rummun, and no mistake, was that damned old pirate Clegg. But I’d pull my forelock, supposing I had one, all day long to old Clegg, even were I the Archbishop of Canterbury and he only an out-at-heel seadog. Now with England it was different, as I told you, though I’ll own he could beat the devil hisself for blasphemy when he was put out. But I wasn’t afraid o’ him; he was one you could size up like. But Clegg—oh, he was different.
Show me the man wot could size up Clegg, and I’d make him Leveller of Romney Marsh, aye, King of England, supposin’ I had the power. There was only one man wot I ever seed wot made Clegg turn a hair, and that was a rascally Cuban priest, but then he had devil powers, he had. Ugh!” And the sexton relapsed into silence. His listeners watched him, and, watching, they saw him shiver. What old scene of horror was flashing before that curious little man’s mind’s eye? Ah, who could tell? No living body, for the crew of the Imogene had all died violent deaths one after another in different lands, and since Clegg was hanged at Rye, why, Mipps was the only veteran left of that historical ship of crime, the Imogene.
“Pray get on with the business in hand, Mister IVIipps,” said Mrs. Waggetts, “for though I declare I could a-listen to you
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