Part 26 (1/2)

”Reminds!” she exclaimed. ”There's no reminding about it! Do you know what I think? That man Wing is aboard this yacht! He made that cake!”

CHAPTER XIX

BLACK MEMORIES

There was so much of real importance, not only to us in our present situation, but to the trend of things in general, in Miss Raven's confident suggestion that her words immediately plunged me into a thoughtful silence. Rising from my chair at the tea-table, I walked across to the landward side of the yawl, and stood there, reflecting.

But it needed little reflection to convince me that what my fellow-prisoner had just suggested was well within the bounds of possibility. I recalled all that we knew of the recent movements of Dr. Lorrimore's Chinese servant. Wing had gone to London, on the pretext of finding out something about that other problematical Chinese, Lo Chuh Fen. Since his departure, Lorrimore had had no tidings of him and his doings--in Lorrimore's opinion, he might be still in London, or he might have gone to Liverpool, or to Cardiff, to any port where his fellow-countrymen are to be found in England. Now it was well within probabilities that Wing, being in Limehouse or Poplar, and in touch with Chinese sailor-men, should, with others, have taken service with Baxter and his accomplice, and, at that very moment there, in that sheltered cove on the Northumbrian coast, be within a few yards of Miss Raven and myself, separated from us by a certain amount of deck-planking and a few bulkheads. But why? If he was there, in that yawl, in what capacity--real capacity--was he there? Ostensibly, as cook, no doubt--but that, I felt sure, would be a mere blind. Put plainly, if he was there, what game was that bland, suave, obsequious, soft-tongued Chinaman playing? Was this his way of finding out what all of us wanted to know? If it came to it, if there was occasion--such occasion as I dared not contemplate--could Miss Raven and myself count on Wing as a friend, or should we find him an adherent of the strange and curious gang, which, if the truth was to be faced, literally held not only our liberty, but our lives at its disposal? For we were in a tight place--of that there was no doubt. Up to that moment I was not unfavourably impressed by Netherfield Baxter, and, whether against my better judgment or not, I was rather more than inclined to believe him innocent of actual share or complicity in the murders of Noah and Salter Quick. But I could see that he was a queer mortal; odd, even to eccentricity; vain, candid and frank because of his very vanity; given, I thought, to talking a good deal about himself and his doings; probably a megalomaniac. He might treat us well so long as things went well with him, but supposing any situation to arise in which our presence, nay, our very existence, became a danger to him and his plans--what then? He had a laughing lip and a twinkle of sardonic humour in his eye, but I fancied that the lip could settle into ruthless resolve if need be and the eye become more stony than would be pleasant. And--we were at his mercy; the mercy of a man whose accomplice might be of a worse kidney than himself, and whose satellites were yellow-skinned slant-eyed Easterns, pirates to a man, and willing enough to slit a throat at the faintest sign from a master.

As I stood there, leaning against the side, gloomily staring at the sh.o.r.e, which was so near, and yet so impossible of access, I reviewed a point which was of more importance to me than may be imagined--the point of our geographical situation. I have already said that the yawl lay at anchor in a sheltered cove. The position of that cove was peculiar. It was entered from seawards by an extremely narrow inlet, across the mouth of which stretched a bar--I could realize that much by watching the breakers rolling over it; it was plain to me, a landsman, that even a small vessel could only get in or out of the cove at high water. But once across the bar, and within the narrow entry, any vessel coming in from the open sea would find itself in a natural harbour of great advantages; the cove ran inland for a good mile and was quite another mile in width; its waters were deep, rising some fifteen to twenty feet over a clear, sandy bottom, and on all sides, right down to the bar at its entrance, it was sheltered by high cliffs, covered from the tops of their headlands to the thin, pebbly stretches of sh.o.r.e at their feet by thick wood, mostly oak and beech.

That the cove was known to the folk of that neighbourhood it was impossible to doubt, but I felt sure that any strange craft pa.s.sing along the sea in front would never suspect its existence, so carefully had Nature concealed the entrance on the landward side of the bar. And there were no signs within the cove itself that any of the sh.o.r.e folk ever used it. There was not a vestige of a human dwelling-place to be discovered anywhere along its thickly-wooded banks; no boat lay on its white beach; no fis.h.i.+ng-net was stretched out there to dry in the sun and wind; the entire stretch was desolate. And I knew that an equal desolation lay all over the land immediately behind the cove and its sheltering woods. That was about the loneliest part of a lonely coast--by that time I had become well acquainted with it. For some miles, north and south of that exact spot, there were no coast villages--there was nothing, save an isolated farmstead, set in deep ravines at wide distances. The only link with busier things lay in the railway--that, as I also knew, lay about two or two-and-a-half miles inland; as far as I could recollect the map which lay in my pocket, but which I did not dare to pull out, there was a small wayside station on this line, immediately behind the woods through which Miss Raven and I had unthinkingly wandered to our fate; from it, doubtless, the Frenchman, Baxter's accomplice, had taken train for Berwick, some twenty miles northward. Everything considered, Miss Raven and I were as securely trapped and as much at our captor's mercy as if we had been immured in a twentieth-century Bastille.

I went back, presently, to the tea-table and dropped into my deck-chair again. Baxter was still away from us; as far as I could see, there was no one about. I gave her a look which was intended to suggest caution, but I spoke in a purposely affected tone of carelessness.

”I shouldn't wonder if you are right in your suggestion,” I said. ”In that case, I think we should have a friend on board in case we need one.”

”But you don't antic.i.p.ate any need?” she asked quickly.

”I don't,” said I. ”So don't think I do.”

”What do you suppose is going to happen to us?” She asked, glancing over her shoulder at the open door of the galley into which Baxter had vanished.

”I think they'll detain us until they're ready to depart, and then they'll release us,” I answered. ”Our host, or jailor, or whatever you like to call him, is a queer chap--he'll probably make us give him our word of honour that we'll keep close tongues.”

”He could have done that without bringing us here,” she remarked.

”Ah, but he wanted to make sure!” said I. ”He's taking no risks.

However, I'm sure he means no harm to us. Under other conditions, I shouldn't have objected to meeting him. He's--a character.”

”Interesting, certainly,” she agreed. ”Do you think he really is a--pirate?”

”I don't think he'll have any objection to making that quite clear to us if he is,” I replied, cynically. ”I should say he'd be rather proud of it. But--I think we shall hear a good deal of him before we get our freedom.”

I was right there. Baxter seemed almost wistfully anxiously to talk with us--he behaved like a man who for a long time had small opportunity of conversation with the people he would like to converse with, and he kept us both talking as the afternoon faded into evening and the evening fell towards night. He was a good talker, too, and knew much of books and politics and of men, and could make shrewd remarks, tinged, it seemed to me, with a little cynicism that was more good-humoured than bitter. The time pa.s.sed rapidly in this fas.h.i.+on; supper-time arrived; the meal, as good and substantial as any dinner, was served in the little saloon-like cabin by the soft-footed Chinaman who, other than Baxter, was the only living soul we had seen since the Frenchman went away in the boat; all through it Baxter kept up his ready flow of talk while punctiliously observing his duties as host.

Until then, the topics had been of a general nature, such as one might have heard dealt with at any gentleman's table, but when supper was over and the Chinaman had left us alone, he turned on us with a queer, inquisitive smile.

”You think me a strange fellow,” he said. ”Don't deny it!--I am, and I don't mind who thinks it. Or--who knows it.”

I made no reply beyond an acquiescent nod, but Miss Raven--who, all through this adventure, showed a coolness and resourcefulness which I can never sufficiently praise--looked steadily at him.

”I think you must have seen and known some strange things,” she said quietly.

”Aye--and done some!” he answered, with a laugh that had more of harshness in it than was usual with him. Then he glanced at me. ”Mr.

Middlebrook, there, from what he told me this afternoon, knows a bit about me and my affairs,” he said. ”But not much. Sufficient to whet your curiosity, eh, Middlebrook?”

”I confess I should like to know more,” I replied. ”I agree with Miss Raven--you must have seen a good deal of the queer side of life.”