“What is it?” cried the vicar.
“Read it out!” yelled the squire, flinging the crumpled paper ball upon the table. “If you love me, read it out and tell me what to do.”
Doctor Syn recovered the note, which had bounced from the table to the floor, and when he had unravelled it and smoothed it straight and flat, he read:
“Ship Inn.
“To Sir Antony Cobtree of the Courthouse, Leveller of Marsh Scotts.
“Sir: I beg to inform you on behalf of the British Admiralty that the person of Mister Rash, Dymchurch schoolmaster, has disappeared. I feel sure that there is somebody in power who is organizing Romney Marsh for his own ends. Somebody is running wool to France, and from the clever organization of these runs, I know that some cultured brain is directing affairs. Your attitude of utter indifference forces me to suspect you. As Leveller of the Marsh Scotts you are in a safe place to control such a scheme, and so I have taken a strong measure in attaching the person of your son, Mister Denis Cobtree. If the body of that unfortunate schoolmaster, dead or alive, is not produced before me within the next twenty-four hours, I shall take steps to force your hand.
“Now what am I to do? Press gang at Rye! Twenty-four hours! What have I got to do with that flabby-faced schoolmaster? Where’s he got to? How the devil should I know? P’raps he thinks that I have danced him off somewhere. Never heard of such a thing in my life. But what am I to do? That’s what I want to know! What am I to do? My poor Denis! Why, I wouldn’t have quarrelled with him if I’d known. Why has that schoolmaster disappeared? By what infernal right, I say, has that insignificant anæmic louse disappeared?”
Doctor Syn then briefly related the bo’sun’s story of Rash’s disappearance, which the squire listened to impatiently.
“Well, sir,” the latter exclaimed at the conclusion, “as far as that schoolmaster’s concerned, I don’t mind if he’s roasting on Lucifer’s spit, for I dislike the man, but when his disappearance concerns the safety of my son, my God! he’s got to put in an appearance and be quick about it. For I’ll have him routed out of his infernal hiding-place. I’ll rouse the Marshmen and have him routed out.”
“That’s all very well. Squire, but how?”
“How, sir?” echoed that irascible gentleman. “How? Do you ask me how? Well, I don’t know! How? Yes, how?”
“That’s the question,” ruefully remarked Doctor Syn.
“Of course it is,” returned the other. “Well, how would you set about it yourself?”
“I’d beat the Marsh up from border to border.”
“So I will, sir, so I will!”
“And I should get that mulatto and hang him, for he’s a sorcerer, a witchman; and I believe that as long as we have such a Jonah’s curse among us that nothing will come right.”
“I’ll do that at once. But we’ve only twenty-four hours.”
Imogene stood up and looked at the squire, and in a steady voice, as if she were pronouncing a definite judgment, she said: “It is enough for me. I will undertake to find your son for you, and the schoolmaster, too.” And without waiting for a reply she swiftly passed out of the room.
“But what can we do?” stammered the squire.
“I should find that mulatto and hang him.”
“But I don’t care a fig about finding him.”
“You must,” persisted the cleric, “for he is the cause of the trouble. Find that mulatto, and leave the rest to Imogene. She has spoken, and you may be sure she’ll keep her word. But find that mulatto!”
XXXI
A Certain Tree Bears Fruit
Jerk was kept busy all day at the Ship Inn, for Imogene had left her post and Mrs. Waggetts, who appeared to have grave matters of her own to fuss about, kept the young potboy in command. He was sorry about this, for he was unable to visit his estate upon the Marsh, and he was eager to view his latest purchase, the gallows. But to his great satisfaction he heard it discussed by a farmer and a fisherman who sat drinking at the bar.
“I tell you that there’s a gallows erected on the Marsh nigh Littlestone Point,” the fisherman was saying. “I could see it quite plain at sunrise when we were running up on to the beach.”
“And you say that there was a man a-hangin’ from it?” said the farmer.
“Aye, that’s what I said, and I thought as how you could tell me what man it was.”
“I don’t know nothing,” replied the farmer, “except that the demon riders was out again last night, and if what you says is right, why, they’re at their tricks again, I suppose.” And the farmer gave the fisherman a knowing wink. However, this didn’t trouble Jerry, for the laugh was all on his side. Not content with an empty scaffold, he had gone out the night before, while Doctor Syn and the captain had been chatting in the sanded parlour, and collected two great sacks full of dried sticks and sand, which, with the help of a few tightly knotted lengths of twine, he had converted into the semblance of a man, and this same dummy he had hanged from the rusty chain. It had looked splendid swinging there with the mist wrapped round its feet. This indeed was playing hangman’s games with a vengeance.
