Part 34 (2/2)
”Whereabouts did this man land, Middlebrook?” he asked. ”You saw him, you and Miss Raven, didn't you?”
”We saw him round these rocks,” I replied. ”But then they hid him from us--we couldn't see exactly. Somewhere on the other side of them, anyway.”
We spread ourselves out along the sh.o.r.e, crossing the spit of sand, now encroached on considerably by the tide, and began to search amongst the black rocks that jutted out of it thereabouts. Presently we came across the boat, slightly rocking in the lapping water alongside a ledge--I took a hasty glance into it and drew Miss Raven away. For on the thwarts, and on the seat in the stern, and on one of the oars, thrown carelessly aside, there was blood.
A sharp cry from one of the men who had gone a little ahead brought us all hurrying to his side. He had found, amongst the rocks, a sort of pool at the sides of which there was dry, sand-strewn rock; there were marks there as if a man had knelt in the sand, and there was more blood, and there were strips of clothing--linen, silk, as if the man had torn up some of his garments as temporary bandages.
”He's been here,” said Lorrimore in a low voice. ”Probably washed his wounds here--salt is a styptic. Flesh wounds, most likely, but,” he added, sinking his voice still lower, ”judging from what we've seen of the blood he's lost, he must have been weakening by the time he got here. Still, he's a man of vast strength and physique, and--he'd push on. Look for marks of his footsteps.”
We eventually picked up a recently made track in the sand and followed it until it came to a point at the end of the overhanging woods, where they merged into open moorland running steeply downwards to the beach.
There, in the short, wiry gra.s.s of the close-knitted turf, the marks vanished.
”Just as I said,” muttered Lorrimore, whom with Miss Raven and myself, was striding on a little in advance of the rest. ”He's made for my place--as I knew he would. I knew enough of this country to know that there's a road at the head of these moors that runs parallel with the railway on one side and the coast on the other towards Ravensdene--he'd be making for that.
He'd take up the side of this wood, as the nearest way to strike the road.”
That he was right in this we were not long in finding out. Twice, as our party climbed the steep side of the moorland we came across evidences of the fugitive. At two points we found places whereat a man had recently sat down on the bank beneath the trees, to rest. And at one of them we found more--a blood-soaked bandage.
”No man can go far, losing blood in that way,” whispered Lorrimore to me as we went onward. ”He can't be far off.”
And suddenly we came across our quarry. Coming out on the top of the moorland, and rounding the corner of the woods, we hit the road of which Lorrimore had spoken--a long, white, hedgeless, wall-less ribbon of track that ran north and south through treeless country. There, a few yards away from us, stood an isolated cottage, some gamekeeper's or watcher's place, with a bit of unfenced garden before it. In that garden was a strange group, gathered about something that at first we did not see--Mr. Cazalette, obviously very busy, the police-inspector (a horse and trap, tethered to a post close by, showed how they had come) a woman, evidently the mistress of the cottage, a child, open-mouthed wide-eyed with astonishment at these strange happenings, a dog that moved uneasily around the two-legged folk, whimpering his concern. The bystanders moved as we hurried up, and then we caught glimpses of towels and water and hastily-improvised bandages and smelt brandy, and saw, in the midst of all this Wing, propped up against a bank of earth, his eyes closed, and over his yellow face a queer grey-white pallor. His left arm and shoulder were bare, save for the bandages which Cazalette was applying--there were discarded ones on the turf which were soaked with blood.
Lorrimore darted forward with a hasty exclamation, and had Cazalette's job out of the old gentleman's hands and into his own before the rest of us could speak. He motioned the whole of us away except Cazalette and the woman, and the police-inspector turned to Mr. Raven and his niece, and to myself and Scarterfield.
”I think we were just about in time,” he said, laconically. ”I don't know what it all means, but I reckon the man was about done for.
Bleeding to death, I should say.”
”You found him?” I asked.
”No,” he answered. ”Not at first anyway. The woman there says she was out here in her garden, feeding her fowls, when she saw him stagger round the corner of the wood there, and make for her. He fell across the bank where he's lying in a dead faint, and she ran for water. Just then we came along in the trap, saw what was happening and jumped out.
Fortunately, when we set off, Mr. Cazalette insisted on bringing a big flask of neat brandy, and some food--he said you never knew what you mightn't want--and we gave him a stiff dose, and pulled him round sufficiently to be able to tell us where he was wounded. And he's got a skinful!--a bullet through the thick part of his left arm, another at the point of the same shoulder, and a third just underneath it. Mr.
Cazalette says they're all flesh wounds--but I don't know: I know the man's fainted twice since we got to him. And look here!--just before he fainted the last time, he managed to fumble amongst his clothing with his right hand and he pulled something out and shoved it into my hand with a word or two. 'Give it Lorrimore,' he said, in a very weak voice. 'Tell him I found it all out--was going to trap all of them--but they were too quick for me last night--all dead now.' Then he fainted again. And--look at this!”
He drew out a piece of canvas, twisted up anyhow, and opening it before our wondering eyes, revealed a heap of magnificent pearls and a couple of wonderful rubies that shone in the sunlight like fire.
”That's what he gave me,” said the inspector. ”What is it? what's it mean?”
”That's what Salter Quick was murdered for,” said I. ”And it means that Lorrimore's man ran down the murderer.”
And without waiting for any comment from him, and leaving Scarterfield to explain matters, I went across the little garden to see how the honest Chinaman was faring.
It was a strange, yet a plain story that Wing told his master and a select few of us a day or two later, when Lorrimore had patched him up. To anybody of a hum-drum life--such as mine had always been until these events--it was, indeed, a stirring story. The queer thing, however--at any rate, queer to me--was that the narrator, as calm and suave as ever in his telling of it--did not seem to regard it as anything strange at all--he might have been explaining to us some new way of making a good cake.
At our request and suggestion, he had journeyed to London and plunged into those quarters of the East End wherein his fellow-countrymen are to be found. His knowledge of the district of which Limehouse Causeway forms a centre soon brought him in touch with Lo Chuh Fen, who, as he quickly discovered, had remained in London during the last two or three years, a.s.sisting in the management of a Chinese eating-house.
Close by, in a lodging kept by a compatriot, Wing put himself up and cultivated Chuh's acquaintance. Ere many days had pa.s.sed another Chinaman came on the scene--this was the man whom Baxter had described as a Chinese gentleman. He represented himself to Wing and Chuh as a countryman of theirs who had been engaged in highly successful trading operations in Europe, and was now, in company with two friends, an Englishman and a Frenchman, carrying out another which involved a trip in a small, but well-appointed yacht, across the Atlantic: he wanted these countrymen of his own to make up a crew. An introduction to Baxter and the Frenchman followed, and Wing and Chuh were taken into confidence as regards the treasure hidden on the Northumberland coast.
A share of the proceeds was promised them: they secured a third, trustworthy Chinaman in the person of one Ah Wong, an a.s.sociate of Chuh's, and the yawl, duly equipped, left the Thames and went northward. By this time, Wing had wormed himself completely into Chuh's confidence, and without even discovering whether Chuh was or was not the actual murderer of Salter Quick (he believed him to be and believed Wong to be the murderer of Noah, at Saltash) he had found out that Chuh was in possession of the pearls and rubies which--though Wing had no knowledge of that--Salter had exhibited to Baubenheimer.
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