Doctor Syn - Russell Thorndyke (new reading txt) 📗
- Author: Russell Thorndyke
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“Ask her to be so kind as to step in,” said the squire, with a touch of deference and awakened interest.
Imogene accordingly came into the room. Perfectly at ease she stood there, until with almost regal grace she accepted the chair that the squire brought forward. Yes, he thought the vicar was right. Her clothes were rough indeed, but her manner would have sat well on an empress.
“You have brought a note for me, I think—Imogene?” said the squire at last. He was ridiculously uncertain whether to call her Imogene as usual, or Madame; in fact in his confusion he was as near as not saying Mistress Cobtree, which would have been awful. Imogene held out a small sealed packet, and looked at the fire, and so taken up was the squire with looking at her and thinking of the Incan millions that, if Doctor Syn had not shuffled his foot, he would have forgotten to open the letter at all. But the moment he had, the girl, the Incan millions, his anger against his son, the mission *call ‘ of the Doctor, everything was forgotten, for he crunched the letter in his hand, threw his head back, and looking at the ceiling with the most appalled expression on his face, cried out: “If there’s a God in heaven, come down quick and wring this captain’s neck!”
“What is it?” cried the vicar.
“Read it out!” yelled the squire, flinging the crumpled paper ball upon the table. “If you love me, read it out and tell me what to do.”
Doctor Syn recovered the note, which had bounced from the table to the floor, and when he had unravelled it and smoothed it straight and flat, he read:
“Ship Inn. “To Sir Antony Cobtree of the Court House, Leveller of Marsh
Scott s. “Sir: I beg to inform you on behalf of the British Admiralty that the person of Mister Rash, Dymchurch schoolmaster, has disappeared. I feel sure that there is somebody in power who is organizing Romney Marsh for his own ends. Somebody is running wool to France, and from the clever organization of these runs, I know that some cultured brain is directing affairs. Your attitude of utter indifference forces me to suspect you. As Leveller of the Marsh Scotts you are in a safe place to control such a scheme, and so I have taken a strong measure in attaching the person of your son, Mister Denis Cobtree. If the body of that unfortunate schoolmaster, dead or alive, is not produced before me within the next twenty-four hours, I shall take steps to force your hand.
[Signed] “Captain Howard Collyer,
“Coast Agent and Commissioner.
“P.S. There is a press gang at work in Rye who will ship your son to sea in twenty-four hours.”
“Now what am I to do? Press gang at Rye! Twenty-four hours! What have I got to do with that flabby-faced schoolmaster? Where’s he got to? How the devil should I know? P’raps he thinks that I have danced him off somewhere. Never heard of such a thing in my life. But what am I to do? That’s what I want to know! What am I to do? My poor Denis! Why, I wouldn’t have quarrelled with him if I’d known. Why has that schoolmaster disappeared? By what infernal right, I say, has that insignificant anaemic louse disappeared?”
Doctor Syn then briefly related the bo’sun’s story of Rash’s disappearance, which the squire listened to impatiently.
“Well, sir,” the latter exclaimed at the conclusion, “as far as that schoolmaster’s concerned, I don’t mind if he’s roasting on Lucifer’s spit, for I dislike the man, but when his disappearance concerns the safety of my son, my God! he’s got to put in an appearance and be quick about it. For I’ll have him routed out of his infernal hidingplace. I’ll rouse the Marshmen and have him routed out.”
“That’s all very well. Squire, but how?”
“How, sir?” echoed that irascible gentleman. “How? Do you ask me how? Well, I don’t know! How? Yes, how?”
“That’s the question,” ruefully remarked Doctor Syn.
“Of course it is,” returned the other. “Well, how would you set about it yourself?”
“I’d beat the Marsh up from border to border.”
“So I will, sir, so I will!”
“And I should get that mulatto and hang him, for he’s a sorcerer, a witchman; and I believe that as long as we have such a Jonah’s curse among us that nothing will come right.”
“I’ll do that at once. But we’ve only twenty-four hours.”
Imogene stood up and looked at the squire, and in a steady voice, as if she were pronouncing a definite judgment, she said: “It is enough for me. I will undertake to find your son for you, and the schoolmaster, too.” And without waiting for a reply she swiftly passed out of the room.
“But what can we do?” stammered the squire.
“I should find that mulatto and hang him.”
“But I don’t care a fig about finding him.”
“You must,” persisted the cleric, “for he is the cause of the trouble. Find that mulatto, and leave the rest to Imogene. She has spoken, and you may be sure she’ll keep her word. B ut find that mulatto!”
JERK was kept busy all day at the Ship Inn, for Imogene had left her post and Mrs. Waggetts, who appeared to have grave matters of her own to fuss about, kept the young potboy in command. He was sorry about this, for he was unable to visit his estate upon the Marsh, and he was eager to view his latest purchase, the gallows. But to his great satisfaction he heard it discussed by a farmer and a fisherman who sat drinking at the bar.
“I tell you that there’s a gallows erected on the Marsh nigh Littlestone Point,” the fisherman was saying. “I could see it quite plain at sunrise when we were running up on to the beach.”
“And you say that there was a man a-hangin’ from it!” said the farmer.
“Aye, that’s what I said, and I thought as how you could tell me what man it was.”
“I don’t know nothing,” replied the farmer, “except that the demon riders was out again last night, and if what you says is right, why, they’re at their tricks again, I suppose.” And the farmer gave the fisherman a knowing wink. However, this didn’t trouble Jerry, for the laugh was all on his side. Not content with an empty scaffold, he had gone out the night before, while Doctor Syn and the captain had been chatting in the sanded parlour, and collected two great sacks full of dried sticks and sand, which, with the help of a few tightly knotted lengths of twine, he had converted into the semblance of a man, and this same dummy he had hanged from the rusty chain. It had looked splendid swinging there with the mist wrapped round its feet. This indeed was playing hangman’s games with a vengeance. Impatient as he was to see the fruits of his labour, impatient he had to remain, for he was not released till nightfall, when Mrs. Waggetts entered the bar with Sexton Mipps. Freed at last from duty, Jerry stepped outside, pulling his hat over his eyes and tucking up his collar, for the wind was blowing up for a cold night. He was leaving the yard with a brisk step when he noticed a cloaked figure coming to meet him. It was Imogene.
“Jerry,” she whispered, “who put up that gallows on your plot of land?”
“It’s my gallows,” answered Jerk proudly. “I paid for it, and Mister Mipps it was wot helped me to set it up.”
“It’s a real one, Jerry,” the girl replied.
“Yes, that it is—and ain’t it fine .f^”
“But there’s a man, a real man hanging there.”
At this Jerk slapped his knee with enthusiasm and cried aloud: “Now by all the barrels of rum! if I ain’t fit to take in the devil hisself , wot I believes is a sexton dressed up. For that same corpse wot you’ve seed a-danglin’ from my gallows tree ain’t a corpse at all, but sticks, sand, and sacks wot I invented to look like one.”
“Are you sure, Jerry?” said the girl.
“I’m a-goin’ out there myself now; so come along and see for yourself.”
“I’ve been there once this evening, Jerry.”
“Well, come along o’ me and you shall give the old scarecrow wot’s a-swing on my gallows a good sharp tweak in the ribs.” So off they set through the churchyard and out over the Marsh.
“Jerry,” whispered the girl presently, “there’s something queer going to happen soon. Perhaps tonight. Perhaps to-morrow night. And it’s something uncommon queer, too.”
“Now what makes you think that?” said Jerry, looking up at her.
“I believe, Jerry, that there are certain tides that run from the Channel round Dungeness that wash up the dead seamen from the deep waters, and all the time that they lie near shore waiting for the ebb to take ‘em back to their old wrecked ships in the deep their spirits come ashore and roam about us. I feel that way tonight. I can almost smell death in the air.”
“Well, that’s a funny notion,” remarked the boy. turning it over in his mind, “but I dare say you are right. After all, the sea, what does look so tidy on the top, must have lots of ugly secrets underneath, and I don’t see why it shouldn’t want to wash ‘em ashore once in a way. I’ve often wondered myself about the dead what moves about inside the sea, and I thinks sometimes w^hen the high tide runs into the great sluice and near fills the dykes that perhaps it buries things it’s sick of in the mud. P’raps it’s a-doin’ it now, and that’s wot’s given you them notions.”
“Perhaps it is, Jerry.”
Now the mist was so thick that they did not get a far view of Jerk’s gallows; indeed they had crossed the one-planked bridge over the dyke and half climbed Gallows Tree Hill before they viewed it at all. But as soon as they did Jerry sprang forward crying: “Who’s been messing about with my bag o’ sticks?”
The sacking had been torn, and from the slit appeared a hand. Jerry seized the hand and pulled. The rusty chain squeaked, and one of the rotten links “gave,” and the ghastly fruit of the gallows tree fell upon the young hangman, who was borne to the ground beneath the falling weight. Imogene, with a cry, pulled it from him, and Jerk scrambled to his feet. Then they both looked.
The mildewed sacking, wet with the dense mist, had severed in the fall; the threads had rent at a hundred points, and from the fragments of scattered debris the dead face of Rash looked up with protruding eyes that stared from the blood-streaked flesh.
Jerk’s gallows had borne fruit.
For minutes they stood looking. The cloak had fallen from the girl’s shoulders, and the shrieking wind flapped in her rough dress and tore at her streaming hair. Jerk, with his ambitions fulfilled, found himself most uncomfortably scared. For minutes neither of them spoke. They could only stare. Stare at the huddled horror and listen to the jangle of the broken gibbet chain. Suddenly Imogene remembered something which brought her back to consciousness, for she spoke:
“Jerry, after seeing that, are you afraid to return to the village alone. f^”
Jerry had not yet found his voice, so he shook his head.
“Then go to the Court House and report what we’ve found to the squire, and tell him
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