Part 25 (1/2)

”Just so!” he agreed. ”It is. So take my advice. Instead of having the wire sent from the nearest office, do this--my friend, as a matter of fact, is going on by rail to Berwick. Let him send a wire from there: it will only mean that Mr. Raven will get it an hour or so later. Say that you and Miss Raven find you cannot get home tonight, and that she is quite safe--word it in any rea.s.suring way you like.”

I gave him a keen glance.

”The thing is,” said I. ”Can we get home tomorrow?”

”Well--possibly tomorrow night--late,” he answered. ”I will do my best. I may be--I hope to be--through with my business tomorrow afternoon. Then--”

At that moment the other man appeared on deck, emerging from somewhere. He had changed his clothes--he now presented himself in a smart tweed suit, Homburg hat, polished shoes, gloves, walking cane.

Baxter signed to him to wait, turning to me.

”That's the wisest thing to do,” he remarked. ”Draft your wire.”

I wrote out a message which I hoped would allay Mr. Raven's anxieties and handed it to him. He read it over, nodded as if in approbation, and went across to the other man. For a moment or two they stood talking in low tones; then the other man went over the side, dropped into the boat which lay there, and pulled himself off sh.o.r.ewards.

Baxter came back to me.

”He'll send that from Berwick railway station as soon as he gets there, at six-thirty,” he said. ”It should be delivered at Ravensdene Court by eight. So there's no need to worry further, you can tell Miss Raven. And when all's said and done, Mr. Middlebrook, it wasn't my fault that you and she broke in upon very private doings up there in the old churchyard--nor, I suppose, yours either. Make the best of it!--it's only a temporary detention.”

I was watching him closely as he talked, and suddenly I made up my mind to speak out. It might be foolish, even dangerous, to do it, but I had an intuitive feeling that it would be neither.

”I believe,” I said, brusquely enough, ”that I am speaking to Mr.

Netherfield Baxter?”

He returned me a sharp glance which was half-smiling. Certainly there was no astonishment in it.

”Aye!” he answered. ”I thought, somehow, that you might be thinking that! Well, and suppose I admit it, Mr. Middlebrook? What then? And what do you--a Londoner, I think you told me--know of Netherfield Baxter?”

”You wish to know?” I asked. ”Shall I be plain?”

”As a pike-staff, if you like,” he replied. ”I prefer it.”

”Well,” said I, ”a good many things--recently discovered by accident.

That you formerly lived at Blyth, and had some a.s.sociation with a certain temporary bank-manager there, about whose death--and the disappearance of some valuable portable property--there was a good deal of concern manifested about the time that you left Blyth. That you were never heard of again until recently, when a Blyth man recognized you in Hull, where you bought a yawl--this yawl, I believe--and said you were going to Norway in her. And that--but am I to be still more explicit?”

”Why not?” said he with a laugh. ”Forewarned is forearmed. You're giving me valuable information.”

”Very well, Mr. Baxter,” I continued, determined to show him my cards.

”There's a certain detective, one Scarterfield, a sharp man, who is very anxious to make your acquaintance. For if you want the plain truth, he believes you, or some of your accomplices, or you and they together, to have had a hand in the murders of Noah and Salter Quick.

And he's on your track.”

I was watching him still more closely as I spoke the last sentence or two. He remained as calm and cool as ever, and I was somewhat taken aback by the collected fas.h.i.+on in which he not only replied to my glance, but answered my words.

”Scarterfield--of whose doings I've heard a bit--has got hold of the wrong end of the stick there, Mr. Middlebrook,” he said quietly. ”I had no hand in murdering either Noah Quick or his brother Salter. Nor had my friend--the man who's just gone off with your telegram. I don't know who murdered those men. But I know that there have always been men who were ready to murder them if they got the chance, and I wasn't the least surprised to hear that they had been murdered. The wonder is that they escaped murder as long as they did! But beyond the fact that they were murdered, I know nothing--nor does anybody on board this craft. You and Miss Raven are amongst--well, you can call us pirates if you like, buccaneers, adventurers, anything!--but we're not murderers. We know nothing whatever about the murders of Noah and Salter Quick--except what we've read in the papers.”

I believed him. And I made haste to say so--out of a sheer relief to know that Miss Raven was not amongst men whose hands were stained with blood.

”Thank you,” he said, as coolly as ever. ”I'm obliged to you. I've been anxious enough to know who did murder those two men. As I say, I felt no surprise when I heard of the murders.”

”You knew them--the Quicks?” I suggested.