Mr. Mathias silently noted this curious treatment of the eldest: and Mrs. Thornton told Edward he mustn’t speak like that.
“Tell us what you remember about the capture, will you?” he asked, still of Margaret.
“The what?”
“Of how the pirates captured the Clorinda.”
She looked round nervously and laughed, but said nothing.
“The monkey was in the rigging, so they just came on the ship,” Rachel volunteered.
“Did they—er—fight with the sailors? Did you see them hit anybody? Or threaten anybody?”
“Yes!” cried Edward, and jumped up from his chair, his eyes wide and inspired. “Bing! Bang! Bong!” he declared, thumping the seat at each word; then sat down again.
“They didn’t,” said Emily. “Don’t be silly, Edward.”
“Bing, bang, bong,” he repeated, with less conviction.
“Bung!” contributed Harry to his support, from under the arm of the fanatical aunt.
“Bim-bam, bim-bam,” singsonged Laura, suddenly waking up and starting a tattoo of her own.
“Shut up!” cried Mr. Thornton. “Did you, or did you not, any of you, see them hit anybody?”
“Cut off their heads!” cried Edward. “And throw them in the sea!—Far, far …” his eyes became dreamy and sad.
“They didn’t hit anybody,” said Emily. “There wasn’t anyone to hit.”
“Then where were all the sailors?” asked Mr. Mathias.
“They were all up the rigging,” said Emily.
“I see,” said Mr. Mathias. “Er—didn’t you say the monkey was in the rigging?”
“He broke his neck,” said Rachel. She wrinkled up her nose disgustedly: “He was drunk.”
“His tail was rotted,” explained Harry.
“Well,” said Mr. Mathias, “when they came on board, what did they do?”
There was a general silence.
“Come, come! What did they do?—What did they do, Miss Fernandez?”
“I don’t know.”
“Emily?”
“I don’t know.”
He sat back in despair: “But you saw them!”
“No we didn’t,” said Emily, “we went in the deck-house.”
“And stayed there?”
“We couldn’t open the door.”
“Bang-bang-bang!” Laura suddenly rapped out.
“Shut up!”
“And then, when they let you out?”
“We went on the schooner.”
“Were you frightened?”
“What of?”
“Well: them.”
“Who?”
“The pirates.”
“Why should we?”
“They didn’t do anything to frighten you?”
“To frighten us?”
“Coo! José did belch!” Edward interjected merrily, and began giving an imitation. Mrs. Thornton chid him.
“Now,” said Mr. Mathias gravely, “there’s something I want you to tell me, Emily. When you were with the pirates, did they ever do anything you didn’t like? You know what I mean, something nasty?”
“Yes!” cried Rachel, and everyone turned to her. “He talked about drawers,” she said in a shocked voice.
“What did he say?”
“He told us once not to toboggan down the deck on them,” put in Emily uncomfortably.
“Was that all?”
“He shouldn’t have talked about drawers,” said Rachel.
“Don’t you talk about them, then,” cried Edward: “Smarty!”
“Miss Fernandez,” said the lawyer diffidently, “have you anything to add to that?”
“What?”
“Well … what we are talking about.”
She looked from one person to another, but said nothing.
“I don’t want to press you for details,” he said gently, “but did they ever—well, make suggestions to you?”
Emily fixed her glowing eyes on Margaret, catching hers.
“It’s no good questioning Margaret,” said the Aunt morosely; “but it ought to be perfectly clear to you what has happened.”
“Then I am afraid I must,” said Mr. Mathias. “Another time, perhaps.”
Mrs. Thornton had for some while been frowning and pursing her lips, to stop him.
“Another time would be much better,” she said: and Mr. Mathias turned the examination back to the capture of the Clorinda.
But they seemed to have been strangely unobservant of what went on around them, he found.
V
When the others had all gone, Mathias offered Thornton, whom he liked, a cigar: and the two sat together for a while over the fire.
“Well,” said Thornton, “did the interview go as you had expected?”
“Pretty much.”
“I noticed you questioned them chiefly about the Clorinda. But you have got all the information you need on that score, surely?”
“Naturally I did. Anything they affirmed I could check exactly by Marpole’s detailed affidavit. I wanted to test their reliability.”
“And you found?”
“What I have always known. That I would rather have to extract information from the devil himself than from a child.”
“But what information, exactly, do you want?”
“Everything. The whole story.”
“You know it.”
Mathias spoke with a dash of exasperation:
“Do you realise, Thornton, that without considerable help from them we may even fail to get a conviction?”
“What is the difficulty?” asked Thornton in a peculiar, restrained tone.
“We could get a conviction for piracy, of course. But since ’37, piracy has ceased to be a hanging offence unless it is accompanied by murder.”
“And is the killing of one small boy insufficient to count as murder?” asked Thornton in the same cold voice.
Mathias looked at him curiously.
“We can guess at the probabilities of what happened,” he said. “The boy was undoubtedly taken onto the schooner; and now he can’t be found. But, strictly speaking, we have no proof that he is dead.”
“He may, of course, have swum across the Gulf of Mexico and landed at New Orleans.”
Thornton’s cigar, as he finished speaking, snapped in two.
“I know this is …” began Mathias with professional gentleness, then had the sense to check himself. “I am afraid there is no doubt that we can personally entertain that the lad is dead: but there is a legal doubt: and where there is a legal doubt a jury might well refuse to convict.”
“Unless they were carried away by an attack of common sense.”
Mathias paused for a moment before asking:
“And the other children have dropped, as yet, no hint as to what precisely did happen to him?”
“None.”
“Their mother has questioned them?”
“Exhaustively.”
“Yet they must surely know.”
“It is a great pity,” said Thornton, deliberately, “that when the pirates decided to kill the child, they did not invite in his sisters to watch.”
Mathias was ready to make allowances. He merely shifted his position and cleared his voice.
“Unless we can get definite evidence of murder, either of your boy or the Dutch captain, I am afraid there is a very real danger of these men escaping with their lives: though they would of course be transported.—It’s all highly unsatisfactory, Thornton,” he went on confidentially. “We do not, as lawyers, like aiming at a conviction for piracy alone. It is
