Part 21 (1/2)
I looked up and found, to my relief, that Cherry-Cheeks, like a sensible girl, had crept out of the room, and her share in the affair was never even suspected.
Drawing my tuck, I touched the back of his neck with the point. He flinched and squirmed, great drops of sweat larded his nasty face, and I knew the fear of death and h.e.l.l was in his marrow.
”Do exactly what I say,” I whispered, ”or through it goes. Understand?”
He could hardly nod his ugly head for the trembling of his body, and I fairly dithered as I knelt on him. I made him rise, and then caught hold of the skirt of his coat. Holding him by it at arm's length, I stuck my point to his neck again, and said, ”Forward.”
I marched him downstairs and along the pa.s.sage. There was great risk of being met by some one, and it was the most anxious time I had had since the affair with the sergeant in the house-place at the Hanyards. Oddly enough, as I drove him along, the thought came to me of the bygone days when Jack and I had played horses just like this at the Hanyards, and when my prisoner stuck a trifle at the door of the guest-room, I growled at him, ”Come up!” It was a strange trick of the mind. To me he was just play-horse Jack dawdling to look at ten-year-old Kate feeding her chickens.
I got him in unseen without and unnoticed within, for the Colonel and Master Freake were again at their arguments of state, hammer and tongs, and they minded the click of the door behind them no more than the crack of a spark at their feet. Indeed the Colonel said ”Pis.h.!.+” with great vehemence, and Master Freake's ”My dear sir!” had a shake of pepper in it.
As for me, I like a man who, when he gets into a thing, gets into it up to the neck.
Margaret added to my amus.e.m.e.nt, for as I p.r.i.c.ked my prisoner on into the fire-light, and peeped over his shoulder, he being a good six inches shorter than I, madam leaned forward and became absorbed in the high debate.
”I beg to report, sir,” said I, as indifferently as I could manage to speak, ”the capture of a spy.”
”Hang him at daybreak,” said the Colonel, without so much as looking at him. ”Pish, man, the trade in salted herrings is no more a nursery of seamen than I'm--Damme, what's this, Oliver? Damme, it's Weir. Your servant, Mister Weir, and I shall vastly relish seeing you strung up.”
I gave a brief account of where and how I had found him, making no mention of our helpful girl friend, but pointing out that he had co-scoundrels at work for him in the inn.
”Another good piece of work, Oliver,” said the Colonel. ”I like the way you use your available material. I've seen many things used as gags, but not a book before; yet it makes a very good one. Keeps him quiet as a stone and withal leaves him free to lick up a few crumbs of learning.”
Margaret had not looked at me yet, and indeed seemed bent on keeping her face, heightened in colour by the warmth and glow of the fire, turned away from me. Now a rather big matter had come into my mind, so I said urgently, ”Name of a dog,” and thus shook her into looking at me.
Whereupon, I pointed first to Mr. Freake, then to the spy, and wagged my head sagely. Her quick mind saw at once that I was afraid that our friend would be compromised if we were not careful. She promptly said something to her father in an unknown tongue, and by the c.o.c.k of his eye I knew he'd taken the point.
”My good friend,” he said, ”pray step over to his wors.h.i.+p the Mayor and ask him to come over and commit this rascally spy to the town jail. Say, I beg, that I am grieved to have to disturb him, but His Majesty's servants must ever be at the disposal of His Majesty's affairs.”
I grinned behind the spy's back at this masterly way of getting George's servant to do James's work. Master Freake started at once, and, stepping with him to the door, I whispered, ”Give us fifteen minutes.”
”Right!” he whispered back again. ”Look in your holsters!”
As soon as he had gone, the Colonel ordered me to guard the door, and this gave me the chance of putting on my boots again. The Colonel, cutting off with his sword a good length of bell rope, made a swift and most workmanlike job of tying the spy into a knot. He then opened the window, and, Margaret taking my place meanwhile, he and I cautiously bundled Weir on to the balcony, shut down the window, and left him safe and silent.
”Be in the porch in ten minutes, Margaret, ready to start. Oliver, get the horses there ready in that time. You ride the troop-horse, and Freake has provided a mare for Margaret. Quick's the work and sharp's the motion!”
Margaret and I started together to carry out our orders. Once in the pa.s.sage we had to go different ways, and I bowed and was going mine without a word, when she put her hand on my arm and stayed me.
”I'm sorry you've lost your Virgil,” she said.
I wondered, as already so many times I had wondered, at the somersaults of feeling she was capable of. Where was now the Margaret of the short, disdainful laugh? Not here, in the twilight between the bright room and the black yard. Here was a subtle, mysterious Margaret, half regret and half caprice, with one thought in her eyes and another on her lips.
”So am I, madam. I wish it had been Kate's cookery-book.”
She would have mastered me had I stayed another second. I bowed again and left her.
And this is, perhaps, the best place to say that I did not lose my Virgil after all. Here it is on the table as I write, still the dearest of all my books. On each side of the healing an irregular curve of teeth-marks cuts into the yellowing parchment. Dear, brave Cherry-Cheeks sent it home by the hands of a vagrom pedlar, laboriously and exactly writing on the package the inscription she found on the fly leaf:
OLIVER WHEATMAN, Esquire, of the Hanyards, Staffords.h.i.+re, _Aetatis anno_ 13
I routed out ostlers, and by dint of a judicious blend of cursings and bribings had the horses ready under the archway in time. Margaret was there waiting, with our pretty maid fluttering around her. The Colonel was within, settling with the word-warrior host. I helped Margaret into the saddle and led her horse into the street, turning its head northward. In a moment, her father clattered after her on Sultan. I went back to smile farewell to Cherry-Cheeks and deal out my bribes, but was after them before they had trotted a stone's throw.