Part 21 (1/2)

”Do you take d.i.c.k with you?” she asked, with too much indifference.

She held a big hat of straw by the ribbons and swung it to and fro.

She did that also with too much indifference.

”No,” said I, ”I leave him behind. Make of him what you can. He cannot tell what he does not know.”

The sum of d.i.c.k's knowledge, I thought, amounted to no more than this--that I had last night visited the shed, in spite of the dead sailor-men. I forgot for the moment that he was in my bedroom when I rose that morning.

The door of the shed was fastened on the inside; I rapped with my knuckles, and Tortue's voice asked who was there. When I told him, he unbarred the door.

”There is no one behind you?” said he, peering over my shoulder.

”Nay! Do you fear that I have brought the constables to take you? You may live in Tresco till you die if you will. What! Should I betray you, whose life you saved only last night?”

Peter opened the door wide.

”A night!” said he, with a shrug of the shoulders. ”One can forget more than that in a night, if one is so minded.”

I followed him into the shed. Here and there, through the c.h.i.n.ks in the boards, a gleam of light slipped through. Outside it was noonday, within it was a sombre evening. I pa.s.sed through the door of the part.i.tion into the inner room. The rafters above were lost in darkness, and before my eyes were accustomed to the gloom I stumbled over a slab of stone which had been lifted from its place in the floor. I turned to Tortue, who was just behind me, and he nodded in answer to my unspoken question. The spade and the pick had stood in that corner to the left, and this slab of stone had been removed in readiness. The darkness of the shed struck cold upon me all at once, as I thought of why that slab had been removed. I looked about me much as a man may look about his bedroom the day after he has been saved from his grave by the surgeon's knife. Everything stands as it did yesterday--this chair in this corner, that table just upon that pattern of the carpet, but it is all very strange and unfamiliar. It was against that board in the part.i.tion that I leaned my back; there sat George Glen with his evil smile, here Tortue polished his knife.

”Let us go out into the sunlight, for G.o.d's sake!” said I, and my foot struck against a piece of iron, which went tinkling across the stone floor. I picked it up. ”They are gone,” said I, with a s.h.i.+ver, ”and there's an end of them. But this shed is a nightmarish sort of place for me. For G.o.d's sake, let us get into the sun!”

”Yes, they are gone,” said Tortue, ”but they would have stayed if they dared, if I hadn't set you free, for they went without the cross.”

I was still holding that piece of iron in my hand. By the feel of it, it was a key, and I slipped it into my pocket quite unconsciously, for Tortue's words took me aback with surprise.

”Without the jewelled cross? But you had the plan,” said I, as I stepped into the open. ”I heard you describe the spot--three chains in a line east of the east window in the south aisle of the church.”

”There was no trace of the cross.”

”It was true then!” I exclaimed. ”I was sure of it, even after Roper had found the stick and the plan. It was true--that grave had been rifled before.”

”Why should the plan have been put back, then?”

”G.o.d knows! I don't.”

”Besides, if the grave had been rifled, the spot of ground on St.

Helen's Island had not. There had been no spade at work there.”

”Are you sure of that?”

”Yes.”

”And you followed out the directions?”

”To the letter. Three chains east by the compa.s.s of the eastern window in the south aisle of St. Helen's Church, and four feet deep! We dug five and six feet deep. There was nothing, nor had the ground been disturbed.”

”I cannot understand it. Why should Adam Mayle have been at such pains to hide the plan? Was it a grim joke to be played on Cullen?”

There was no means of answering the problem, and I set it aside.