Dead Man's Rock Part 41

"A merry Christmas, Mr. Jasper Trenoweth! Peace on earth and good-will--You will bear no malice by that time. So a merry Christmas, and a merry Christmas-box! likewise the compliments of the season, and a happy New Year to you! Where are you going to spend Christmas, Mr. Trenoweth--eh? I am thinking of pa.s.sing it by the sea. You will, perhaps, try the sea too, only you will be _in_ it.

Thames runs swiftly when it has a corpse for cargo. Oho!

"At his red, red lips the merrymaid sips For the kiss that his sweetheart stole, my lads-- Sing ho! for the bell shall toll!

"I'm afraid no bell will toll for you, Mr. Trenoweth; not yet awhile at any rate. Not till your sweetheart is weary of waiting--

"And the devil has got his due, my lads-- Sing ho! but he waits for you!

"Both waiting for you, Mr. Trenoweth, your sweetheart and the devil-- which shall have you? 'Ladies first,' you would say. Aha! I am not so sure. By the way, might I give a guess at your sweetheart's name?

Might it begin with a C? Might she be a famous actress? Claire perhaps she calls herself? Aha! Claire's pretty eyes will go red with watching before she sets them on you again. Fie on you to keep so sweet a maiden waiting! And where will you be all the time, Mr.

Jasper Trenoweth?"

He stopped at last, mastered by his ferocity and almost panting. But I, for the sound of Claire's name had maddened me, broke out in fury--

"Dog and devil! I shall be lying with all the other victims of your accursed life; dead as my father whom you foully murdered within sight of his home; dead as those other poor creatures you slew upon the _Belle Fortune_; dead as my mother whose pure mind fled at sight of your infernal face, whose very life fled at sight of your handiwork; dead as John Railton whom you stabbed to death upon--"

"Hush, Mr. Trenoweth! As for your ravings, I love to hear them, and could listen by the hour, did not time press. But I cannot have you talking so loudly, you understand;" and he toyed gently with his knife; "also remember I must be at Dead Man's Rock by half-past eleven to-night."

"Fiend!" I continued, "you can kill me if you like, but I will count your crimes with my last breath. Take my life as you took my friend Tom Loveday's life--Tom whom you knifed in the dark, mistaking him for me. Take it as you took Claire's, if ever man--"

"Claire--Claire dead!" He staggered back a step, and almost at the same moment I thought I caught a sound on the other side of the part.i.tion at my back. I listened for a moment, then concluding that my ears had played me some trick, went on again--

"Yes, dead--she killed herself to-night at the theatre--stabbed herself--oh, G.o.d! Do you think I care for your knife now?

Why, I was going to kill myself, to drown myself, at the very moment when I heard your voice and came on board. I came to kill you.

Make the most of it--show me no mercy, for as there is a G.o.d in heaven I would have shown you none!"

What was that sound again on the other side of the part.i.tion?

Whatever it was, Colliver had not heard, for he was musing darkly and looking fixedly at me.

"No, I will show you no mercy," he answered quietly, "for I have sworn to show no mercy to your race, and you are the last of it.

But listen, that for a few moments before you die you may shake off your smug complacency and learn what this wealth is, and what kind of brood you Trenoweths are. Dog! The treasure that lies by Dead Man's Rock is treasure weighted with dead men's curses and stained with dead men's blood--wealth won by black piracy upon the high seas--gold for which many a poor soul walked the plank and found his end in the deep waters. It is treasure sacked from many a gallant s.h.i.+p, stripped from many a rotting corpse by that black hound your grandfather, Amos Trenoweth. You guessed that? Let me tell you more.

"There is many a soul crying in heaven and h.e.l.l for vengeance on your race; but your death to-night, Jasper Trenoweth, shall be the peculiar joy of one. You guessed that your grandfather had crimes upon his soul; but you did not guess the blackest crime on his account--the murder of his dearest friend. Listen. I will be brief with you, but I cannot spare myself the joy of letting you know this much before you die. Know then that when your grandfather was a rich man by this friend's aid--after, with this friend's help, he had laid hands on the secret of the Great Ruby for which for many a year he had thirsted, in the moment of his triumph he turned and slew that friend in order to keep the Ruby to himself.

"That fool, your father, kept a Journal--which no doubt you have read over and over again. Did he tell you how I caught him upon Adam's Peak, sitting with this clasp in his hands before a hideous, graven stone? That stone was cut in ghastly mockery of that friend's face; the bones that lay beneath it were the bones of that friend.

There, on that very spot where I met your father face to face, did his father, Amos Trenoweth, strike down my father Ralph Colliver.

"Ah, light is beginning to dawn on your silly brain at last!

Yes, pretending to protect the old priest who had the Ruby, he stabbed my father with the very knife found in your father's heart, stabbed him before his wife's eyes on that little lawn upon the mountain-side; and, when my helpless mother called vengeance upon him, handed the still reeking knife to her and bade her do her worst.

Ah, but she kept that knife. Did you mark what was engraved upon the blade? That knife had a good memory, Mr. Jasper Trenoweth.

"Let me go on. As if that deed were not foul enough, he caused the old priest to carve--being skilful with the chisel--that vile distortion of his dead friend's face out of a huge boulder lying by, and then murdered him too for the Ruby's sake, and tumbled their bodies into the trough together. Such was Amos Trenoweth. Are you proud of your descent?

"I never saw my father. I was not born until three months after this, and not until I was ten years old did my mother tell me of his fate.

"Your grandfather was a fool, Jasper Trenoweth, to despise her; for she was young then and she could wait. She was beautiful then, and Amos Trenoweth himself had loved her. What is she now? Speak, for you have seen her."

As he spoke I seemed to see again that yellow face, those awful, soulless eyes, and hear her laugh as she gazed down from the box upon my dying love.

"Ah, beauty goes. It went for ever on that day when Amos Trenoweth spat in her face and taunted her as she clung to the body of her husband. Beauty goes, but revenge can wait; to-night it has come; to-night a thousand dead men's ghosts shall be glad, and point at your body as it goes tossing out to sea. To-night--but let me tell the rest in a word or two, for time presses. How I was brought up, how my mad mother--for she is mad on every point but one--trained me to the sea, how I left it at length and became an attorney's clerk, all this I need not dwell upon. But all this time the thought of revenge never left me for an hour; and if it had, my mother would have recalled it.

"Well, we settled in Plymouth and I was bound a clerk to your grandfather's attorney, still with the same purpose. There I learnt of Amos Trenoweth's affairs, but only to a certain extent; for of the wealth which he had so bloodily won I could discover nothing; and yet I knew he possessed riches which make the heart faint even to think upon. Yet for all I could discover, his possessions were simply those of a struggling farmer, his business absolutely nothing.

I was almost desperate, when one day a tall, gaunt and aged man stepped into the office, asked for my employer, and gave the name of Amos Trenoweth. Oh, how I longed to kill him as he stood there!

And how little did he guess that the clerk of whom he took no more notice than of a stone, would one day strike his descendants off the face of the earth and inherit the wealth for which he had sold his soul--the great Ruby of Ceylon!

"My voice trembled with hate as I announced him and showed him into the inner room. Then I closed the door and listened. He was uneasy about his Will--the fool--and did not know that all his possessions would necessarily become his son's. In my heart I laughed at his ignorance; but I learnt enough--enough to wait patiently for years and finally to track Ezekiel Trenoweth to his death.

"It was about this time that I fell in love. In this as in everything through life I have been cursed with the foulest luck, but in this as in everything else my patience has won in the end. Lucy Luttrell loved another man called Railton--John Railton. He was another fool--you are all fools--but she married him and had a daughter. I wonder if you can guess who that daughter was?"

He broke off and looked at me with fiendish malice.

"You hound!" I cried, "she was Janet Railton--Claire Luttrell; and you murdered her father as you say Amos Trenoweth murdered yours."

"Right," he answered coolly. "Quite right. Oh, the arts by which I enticed that man to drink and then to crime! Even now I could sit and laugh over them by the hour. Why, man, there was not a touch of guile in the fellow when I took him in hand, and yet it was he that afterwards took your father's life. He tried it once in Bombay and bungled it sadly: he did it neatly enough, though, on the jib-boom of the _Belle Fortune_. I lent him the knife: I would have done it myself, but Railton was nearer; and besides it is always better to be a witness."

What _was_ that rustling sound behind the part.i.tion? Colliver did not hear it, at any rate, but went on with his tale, and though his eyes were dancing flames of hate his voice was calm now as ever.

"I had stolen half the clasp beforehand from the cabin floor where that stupendous idiot, Ezekiel Trenoweth, had dropped it. Railton caught him before he dropped, but I did not know he had time to get the box away, for just then a huge wave broke over us and before the next we both jumped for the Rock. I thought that Railton must have been sucked back, for I only clung on myself by the luckiest chance.

It was pitch-dark and impossible to see. I called his name, but he either could not hear for the roar, or did not choose to answer, so after a bit I stopped. I thought him dead, and he no doubt thought me dead, until we met upon Dead Man's Rock.

"Shall I finish? Oh, yes, you shall hear the whole story. After the inquest I escaped back to Plymouth, told Lucy that her husband had been drowned at sea, and finally persuaded her to leave Plymouth and marry me. So I triumphed there, too: oh, yes, I have triumphed throughout."

"You hound!" I cried.

He laughed a low musical laugh and went on again--

"Ah, yes, you are angry of course; but I let that pa.s.s. I have one account to settle with you Trenoweths, and that is enough for me.

Three times have I had you in my power, Mr. Jasper Trenoweth--three times or four--and let you escape. Once beneath Dead Man's Rock when I had my fingers on your young weasand and was stopped by those cursed fishermen. Idiots that they were, they thought the sight of me had frightened you and made you faint. Faint! You would have been dead in another half-minute. How I laughed in my sleeve while that uncle of yours was trying to make me understand--me--what was my name then?--oh, ay, Georgio Rhodojani. However, you escaped that time: and once more you hardly guessed how near you were to death, when I looked in at the window on the night after the inquest.

Why, in my mind I was tossing up whether or not I should murder you and your white-faced mother. I should have done so, but thought you might hold some knowledge of the secret after your meeting with Railton, so that it seemed better to bide my time."

"If it be any satisfaction to you," I interrupted, "to know that had you killed me then you would never have laid hands on that clasp yonder, you are welcome to it."

"It is," he answered. "I am glad I did not kill you both: it left your mother time to see her dead husband, and has given me the pleasure of killing you now: the treat improves with keeping.

Well, let me go on. After that I was forced to leave the country for some time--"

"For another piece of villainy, which your wife discovered."

"How do you know that? Oh, from Claire, I suppose: however, it does not matter. When I came back I found you: found you, and struck again. But again my cursed luck stood in my way and that d.a.m.ned friend of yours knocked me senseless. Look at this mark on my cheek."

"Look at the clasp and you will see where your blow was struck."

"Ah, that was it, was it?" he said, examining the clasp slowly.

"I suppose you thought it lucky at the time. So it was--for me.

For, though I made another mistake in the fog that night, I got quits with your friend at any rate. I have chafed often enough at these failures, but it has all come right in the end. I ought to have killed your father upon Adam's Peak; but he was a big man, while I had no pistol and could not afford to risk a mistake. Everything, they say, comes to the man who can wait. Your father did not escape, neither will you, and when I think of the joy it was to me to know that you and Claire, of all people--"

But I would hear no more. Mad as I was with shame and horror for my grandfather's cruelty, I knew this man, notwithstanding his talk of revenge, to be a vile and treacherous scoundrel. So when he spoke of Claire I burst forth--

"Dog, this is enough! I have listened to your tale. But when you talk of Claire--Claire whom you killed to-night--then, dog, I spit upon you; kill me, and I hope the treasure may curse you as it has cursed me; kill me; use your knife, for I _will_ shout--"