Miranda of the Balcony Part 10

"Because I will not listen to you in my own, house," she answered with spirit.

Wilbraham did not resent the reason, but he watched her warily, as though he doubted it.

"Now," said Miranda, as she stood before him. "You tell me that my husband is living. I have your bare word for it, and out of your lips you have proved to me that your bare word has very little worth."

"The b.u.t.tons are off the foils," said he; "very well. In the Cathedral you corroborated my word. You know that he lives; I know it."

"How do you know it?"

"By adding two and two and making five, as any man with any savvy always can," replied Wilbraham. "Indeed, by adding two and two, one can even at times make a decent per annum."

Mrs. Warriner sat down upon the bench, and Wilbraham, standing at her side, presented the following testimonial to his "savvy." First of all, he drew from one pocket four pounds of English gold, and from the other a handful of dollars and pesetas. "This is what is left of two hundred and thirty pounds, which I won at Monte Carlo in the beginning of May. There's a chance for philosophy, Mrs. Warriner. If I hadn't won that money I shouldn't be standing here now with my livelihood a.s.sured. For I shouldn't have been able to embark on the P. and O.

mail steamer _India_ at Ma.r.s.eilles, and so I shouldn't have fallen in with my dear young friend Charnock."

Miranda fairly started at the mention of Charnock's name in connection with Wilbraham's discovery. Instantly Wilbraham paused. Miranda made an effort to look entirely unconcerned, but Wilbraham's eye was upon her, and she felt the blood colouring her cheeks.

"Oho!" said Wilbraham, c.o.c.king his head. Then he whistled softly to himself while he looked her over from head to foot. Miranda kept silence, and he resumed his story, though every time he mentioned Charnock's name he looked to surprise her in some movement.

"Off Ushant we came up with a brigantine, and I couldn't help fancying that her lines were familiar to me. Charnock lent me his binoculars--a dear good fellow, Charnock!--and I made out her name, the _Tarifa_. I should not have given the boat another thought but for Charnock.

Charnock said she had the lines of a Salcombe clipper. Did you happen to know that the _Ten Brothers_ was a Salcombe clipper? I did, and the moment Charnock had spoken I understood why the look of her hull was familiar; I had seen her or her own legitimate sister swinging at Warriner's moorings in Algeciras Bay. I did not set any great store upon that small point, however, until Charnock kindly informed me that her owner could have gained no possible advantage by altering her rig from a schooner's into a brigantine's. Then my interest began to rise, for he had altered the rig. Why, if the change was to his disadvantage? I can't say that I had any answer ready; I can't say that I expected to find an answer. But since I landed at Plymouth, from which Salcombe is a bare twenty miles, I thought that I might as well run over. One never knows--such small accidents mean everything for us--and, as a matter of fact, I spent a very pleasant half-hour in the back parlour of the Commercial Inn, watching the yachts at anchor and the little sailing boats spinning about the river, and listening to an old skipper, who deplored the times when the town rang with the din of hammers in s.h.i.+pbuilding yards, and twelve--observe, Mrs.

Warriner, twelve--schooners brought to it the prosperity of their trade. The schooners had been sold off, but the skipper had their destinies at his fingers' ends as a man follows the fortunes of his children. Two had been cast away, three were in the Newfoundland trade, one was now a steam-yacht, and the others still carried fruit from the West Indies. He accounted for eleven of them, and the twelfth, of course, was the _Ten Brothers_ wrecked upon Rosevear. I eliminated the _Ten Brothers_, the two which had been cast away, and the steam-yacht. Eight were left."

"Yes?" said Mrs. Warriner.

"I went back to Plymouth and verified the skipper's information. He had given me the owners' names and the names of the vessels. I looked them up in the sailing-lists and I proved beyond a shadow of doubt, from their dates of sailing and arrival at various ports, that not one of those eight schooners could have been the brigantine we pa.s.sed off Ushant. There remained, then, the four which I had eliminated, or rather the three, for the steam-yacht was out of the question. Do you follow?"

Miranda made a sign of a.s.sent.

"Those three boats had been cast away. Two of them belonged to respectable firms, the third to Ralph Warriner. It would of course be very convenient for Ralph Warriner, under the circ.u.mstances, to be reputed dead and yet to be alive with a boat in hand, so to speak. On the other side, would it profit either of the two respectable firms to spread a false report that one of their boats had been cast away?

Hardly; besides, it would of course be to Warriner's advantage, from the point of view of concealment, to change the rig and the name of his boat. It was all inference and guess-work, no doubt. Charnock, for instance, might have been entirely wrong; the _Tarifa_ might never have been anything but the _Tarifa_ and a brigantine; but the inference and the guess-work all pointed the one way, and I own that my interest was rapidly changing to excitement. My suspicions were strengthened by the behaviour of the _Tarifa_ herself. No news of her approach was recorded in the papers. She didn't make any unnecessary noise about the port she was bound for, nor had she the manners to pa.s.s the time of day with any of Lloyd's signal-stations. The _Tarifa's_ business began to provoke my curiosity. Here was (shall we say?) a needless lack of ceremony to begin with. It didn't seem as if the _Tarifa_ had many anxious friends awaiting her arrival. Besides that, supposing that my suspicions were right, that the _Tarifa_ was the _Ten Brothers_ masquerading under another name, and that perhaps Ralph Warriner was on board, it stood to reason Ralph Warriner would not risk his skin in an English port, without a better reason than a cargo of trade. Comprenny, Mrs. Warriner? I was guessing, conjecturing, inferring; I had no knowledge. So I thought the cargo of the _Tarifa_ was the right end of the stick to hang on to. If I could know the truth about that, I should be in a better position to guess whether it had anything to do with Ralph Warriner. Is that clear?"

It was clear enough to Miranda, who already felt herself enmeshed in the net of this man's ingenious deductions. "Yes," she said.

"Very well. From the brigantine's course, she was evidently making for one of the western harbours. I lay low in Plymouth for a couple of days, and read the s.h.i.+pping news. That wasn't all I did during those two days, though. I went to the Free Library besides, overhauled the file of the _Western Morning News_ and a.s.similated information about the inquest at St. Mary's. The faceless mariner chucked up on Rosevear struck one as interesting. I noticed too that there had been a good many wrecks in the Channel during the heavy weather and the fog just about that time. But before I had come to any conclusion, I opened my newspaper on the third morning and read that the _Tarifa_ had dropped her anchor at Falmouth. I took the first train out of Plymouth, and sure enough I picked the _Tarifa_ up in Falmouth docks. Then I made friends with the port-officers, but I got never a glimpse of Ralph Warriner."

Miranda's hopes revived. She knew very well that Ralph Warriner was not at that time in Falmouth. For the moment, however, she let Wilbraham run on.

"I frankly admit that my hopes sank a little," he continued. "Of course Warriner might have been put ash.o.r.e; but it seemed to me impossible to obtain sufficient certainty of my suspicions unless I actually clapped eyes on him."

Miranda agreed, and her prospects of escaping from this man's clutches showed brighter; for she was not in a mood of sufficient calmness to enable her to realise that Wilbraham would hardly have been so frank, if he had not by now at all events acquired absolute certainty.

"My hopes were to sink yet more," Wilbraham continued. "The brigantine pa.s.sed for a tramp out from Tarifa with a cargo of fruit. I saw that cargo unloaded. There was no pretence about it; it was a full cargo of fruit. The boat was sailing back to Tarifa with a cargo of alkali, and I saw that cargo stowed away in her hold. Mrs. Warriner, my spirits began to revive. That cargo of alkali was most uncommon small; the profit on it wouldn't have paid the decky's wages. Again I inferred. I inferred that the alkali was a blind, and that the _Tarifa_ meant to pick up a cargo of another sort somewhere along the coast, though what the cargo would be I could not for the life of me imagine."

"But it is all guess-work," said Miranda, with an indifference which she was far from feeling.

"I learned one piece of solid cheering information from my friends the port-officers," retorted Wilbraham. "The _Tarifa's_ papers were all quite recent, and yet she was an old boat. She was supposed to be owned by her master."

"And no doubt was," added Miranda, with an a.s.sumption of weariness.

"It appeared that her saloon had caught fire; the saloon had been gutted and the _Tarifa's_ papers destroyed a year before," Wilbraham resumed, untroubled by Mrs. Warriner's objections. "A pretty careless captain that, eh? A most uncommon careless captain, Mrs. Warriner? For a boat to lose her papers--well, its pretty much the same as when a girl loses her marriage lines in the melodramas. A most uncommon careless captain! Or a most astute one, you say. What? Well, I'll not deny but what you may be right. For that brigantine caught fire and burned her papers just about the date when the _Ten Brothers_ went ash.o.r.e on Rosevear. How's that for the long arm?"

"But you did not see my husband," said Miranda, stubbornly.

"And why?" asked Wilbraham, and answered his question. "Because your husband wasn't onboard."

"Then the whole story falls to the ground," exclaimed Miranda, as she rose from her seat.

"Wait a bit, Mrs. Warriner," said Wilbraham, and he sat down on the seat and nursed his leg. "The _Tarifa_ was supposed to belong to her master, who went by the name of John Wilson. Now here's a funny thing.

I never saw John Wilson, though I prowled about the docks enough. The port-officers described him to me, a grizzled seafaring man of fifty; but he was always snug in his cabin, and a mate did the show business with the cargo. I grew curious about John Wilson; I wanted to see John Wilson. Accordingly I located the chart-room from the wharf, then I put on a black thumb tie and a dirty collar so as to look like a clerk, and I walked boldly down the gangway and stepped across the deck. I chose my time, you understand. I knocked at the chart-room door. 'Come in,' said a voice, and in I walked. Mrs. Warriner, you could have knocked me down with that dainty parasol of yours if you had been present when I first saw John Wilson.

"'What do you want?' says he, short and sharp.

"'Will you take a load of cotton to Valencia?' says I, and I quoted an insignificant price.

"'I am not such a fool as you look,' said he, and out I went and shook hands with myself on the quay. For John Wilson--"

"Was not my husband," exclaimed Miranda, with almost a despairing violence. "He was not! He was not!"

"You are right, Mrs. Warriner, he was not. But he was a man whom you and I knew as Thomas Discipline, first mate of the schooner-yacht the _Ten Brothers_, of which Captain Ralph Warriner was the certificated master. And observe, please, the whole crew of the _Ten Brothers_ was reported lost upon Rosevear."

"Thomas Discipline might have left the _Ten Brothers_ before," argued Miranda. "His presence on the _Tarifa_ does not connect my husband with that boat."

"That's precisely the objection which occurred to me," said Wilbraham, coolly. "But here was at last a fact which fitted in with my guess-work, and I own to being uplifted. That evening I got the ticket that the _Tarifa_ was to put to sea the next day, and sure enough in the morning she swung out into the fairway and waited for the evening ebb. I pa.s.sed that day in an altogether unenviable state of anxiety, Mrs. Warriner; for if by any chance I was wrong, if she did not mean to take up another cargo of a more profitable kind by dark, if she were to sail clean away for Ushant on the evening ebb, why, the boat might be the _Ten Brothers_ or it might not, and the master might be the late Captain Warriner or he might not. Any way the bottom fell clean out of my little business. But she did not; she got her anchors in about eight o'clock and reached out towards the Lizard in the dusk with a light wind from the land on her beam."

"The story so far," Miranda interrupted, "seems nautical, but hardly to the point."

"Think so?" said Wilbraham, indifferently. "Did I mention that at the mouth of the harbour the _Tarifa_ pa.s.sed a steam launch pottering around the St. Anthony Light? Between you and me, Mrs. Warriner, I was holding the tiller of that steam launch."

"You!" she exclaimed.

"Just poor little me," said he, smiling politely, "with a few paltry thick-uns in my pocket to speculate in the hire of a steam launch. I gave the _Tarifa_ a start and followed, keeping well away on her lee with her red light just in view. That first half-hour or so was a wearing time for me, Mrs. Warriner, I a.s.sure you," and he took off his hat and wiped his forehead, as though the anxiety came back upon him now. He laboured his breath and broke up his sentences with short nervous laughter. He seemed entirely to forget his companion, and the sun, and the Andalusian sierras across the plain; he was desperately hunting the _Tarifa_ along the Spit to the Lizard point.

"I was certain of one thing: that no Captain Warriner had come aboard at Falmouth. So if the _Tarifa_ kept out to sea, why, there was no Captain Warriner to come aboard, and here was I spending my last pounds in running down a will-o'-the-wisp, and the world to face again to-morrow in the grim old way, without a penny to my purse. On the other hand, if there was a Captain Warriner, he would come aboard with the cargo somewhere that night, and I fancied I could lay my finger on that somewhere. I had another cause for anxiety. Grant my guess-work correct, and the last thing the _Tarifa_ was likely to hanker after would be a wasp of a steam launch buzzing in her wake. The evening was hazy, by a stroke of luck, but the wind was light and the sea smooth, and my propeller throbbed out over the water until I thought it must reverberate across the world, and the Esquimaux on Franz Josef Land and the Kanaka in the Pacific would hear it plain as the pulsing of a battles.h.i.+p. However, I slowed the launch down to less than half-speed, and the crew of the _Tarifa_ made no account of me. The brigantine was doing only a leisurely five knots--she was waiting for the dark, I conjectured. Conjectured? I came near to praying it. And as if in answer to my prayer--it sounds pretty much like blasphemy now, doesn't it?--but at that moment I believed it--all at once her red light vanished and my heart went jumping in the inside of me as though it had slipped its moorings. For the _Tarifa_ had changed her course; she was pointing closer to the wind and the wind came offsh.o.r.e; she was showing me her stern instead of her port beam; on the course she was lying now she couldn't clear the Manacles--not by any manner of means.

She was heading for the anchorage I hoped she would; she was standing in towards Helford river. In a little she went about, and seeing her green light, I slowed down again. I could afford to take it easy."

He drew a breath of relief and lolled back upon his seat. Miranda no longer put questions; there was a look of discouragement upon her face; she began bitterly to feel herself helpless in this man's hands, as clay under the potter's thumb.

"Do you know the creek?" he asked, and did not wait for an answer. "I hadn't anch.o.r.ed there for twenty years, but I had a chart of it in my memories." His voice softened, with perhaps some recollection of a yachting trip in the days before his life had grown sour. "Steep hills on each side, and on each side woods. The trees run down and thrust their knees into the water like animals at their watering places of an evening. A mile or so up, a little rose and honeysuckle village nestles as pretty as a poem. There's a noise of birds all day, and all night and day the trees talk. Given a westerly wind, and the summer, I don't know many places which come up to Helford river," and his voice ceased, and he sat in a muse. A movement at his side recalled him.

"But that's not business, you say," he resumed briskly. "I left the _Tarifa_ at the mouth of the creek. The little village a mile or more up is on the southward side; opposite to it, on the Falmouth side, is the coast-guard station; nearer to the mouth, and still on the Falmouth side, a tiny dingle shelters a school-house and half-a-dozen cottages, and still nearer, the road from Falmouth comes over the brow of the hill and dips down along the hill-side. At one point the steep hill-side is broken, there's an easy incline of sand and bushes and soil between the water and the road. The incline is out of sight of the coast-guard. Besides, it is only just round the point and close to the sea. And for that reason I was in no particular hurry to follow the _Tarifa_. I edged the launch close in under the point, waded ash.o.r.e, and scrambled along in the dark until I reached the break in the hill-side. Then I lay down among the bushes and waited. All lights were out on the _Tarifa_, but I could see her hull dimly, a blot of solid black against the night's unsubstantial blackness. I waited for centuries and aeons. There was neither moon nor any star. At last I heard a creaking sound that came from the other end of the world. It was repeated, it grew louder, it became many sounds, the sounds or cart wheels on the dry road. I looked at my watch; the glimmer of its white face made it possible for me to tell the hour. It was five minutes to eleven. For five minutes the sounds drew infinitesimally nearer. Higher up the creek six bells were struck upon a yacht, and then over the waters from the direction of the _Tarifa_ came cautiously the wooden rattle of oars in the rowlocks of a boat. A boat, I say, but it was followed by another and another. The three boats grounded on the sand as the carts reached the break in the hill-side. There were few words spoken, and no light shown. I lay in the bushes straining my ears to catch a familiar voice, my eyes on the chance that a match might be struck and light up a familiar face."

"Well?" said Miranda, breaking in upon his speech. She was strung to a high pitch or excitement, and her face and voice betrayed it.

"I was disappointed," replied Wilbraham, "but I saw something of the cargo which the waggons brought over the hill and the boats carried on board. Backwards and forwards between the _Tarifa_ and the sh.o.r.e they were rowed with unremitting diligence and caution, carrying first longish packing-cases of some weight, as I could gather from the conduct of the men who stumbled with them down the incline. And after the packing-cases, square boxes, yet more unwieldy than the long cases, if one takes the proportion of size. The morning was breaking before the last boat was hoisted on board, and the last waggon had creaked out of hearing over the hill."

"And what was the cargo?" asked Miranda.

"That was the question which troubled me," replied Wilbraham. "I lay on the hill-side in the chill of the morning as disheartened a man as you can imagine. Through a break in the bushes I watched the _Tarifa_ below me, her decks busy with the movement of her crew and from her galley the comfortable smoke coiling up into the air. Breakfast! A Gargantuan appet.i.te suddenly pinched my stomach. Had Warriner gone on board with the cargo? And what was the cargo? And into what harbour would the _Tarifa_ carry it? I had found out nothing. Then on board the brigantine men gathered at the windla.s.s, a chain clinked musically as the anchor was hove short, the gaff of her mainsail creaked up the mast, and the festoons of her canvas were unfolded. The _Tarifa_ was outward bound and I had discovered nothing. I was like a man tied hand and foot and a treasure within his reach. I had had my fingers on the treasure. Again the chain rattled on the windla.s.s; she broke out her foresail and her jib; I saw the water sparkle under her foot and stream out a creaming pennant in her wake. I had lost. In the s.p.a.ce of a second I lived through every minute of my last fifteen years and their dreary vicissitudes. I lived in antic.i.p.ation through another fifteen similar in every detail, and fairly shuddered to think there might be another fifteen still to follow those. I stretched myself out and ground my face in the sand and cursed G.o.d with all my heart for the difference between man and man. And meanwhile the _Tarifa_, with a hint of the sun upon her topsails, slipped out over the tide to sea."

Wilbraham's face was quite convulsed by the violence of his recollections; and with so vivid a sincerity, with a voice so mutable, had he described the growth and extinction of his hopes, that Miranda almost forgot their object, almost found herself sympathising with his endeavours, almost regretted their failure--until she remembered that after all he had not failed, or he would not have been sitting beside her in the Alameda.