“Remember!” he squeaked. “Gad, gentlemen of the jury, he came as near as possible—You have no idea what a ferocious devil it is.”
I was wondering why on earth Nichols should have wanted to kill such a little thing. Because it was obvious that it must have been Nichols.
“As near as possible murdered myself and Admiral Rowley and a Mr. Topnambo, a most enlightened and loyal … ah … inhabitant of the island, on the steps of a public inn.”
I had it then. It was the little man David Macdonald had rolled down the steps with, that night at the Ferry Inn on the Spanish Town road.
“He was lying in wait for us with a gang of assassins. I was stabbed on the upper lip. I lost so much blood … had to be invalided … cannot think of horrible episode without shuddering.”
He had seen me then, and when Ramon (“a Spaniard who was afterwards proved to be a spy of El Demonio’s—of the prisoner’s. He was hung since”) had driven me from the place of execution after the hanging of the seven pirates; and he had come into Ramon’s store at the moment when Carlos (“a piratical devil if ever there was one,” the little man protested) had drawn me into the back room, where Don Balthasar and O’Brien and Seraphina sat waiting. The men who were employed to watch Ramon’s had never seen me leave again, and afterwards a secret tunnel was discovered leading down to the quay.
“This, apparently, was the way by which the prisoner used to arrive and quit the island secretly,” he finished his evidence in chief, and the beetle-browed, portly barrister sat down. I was not so stupid but what I could see a little, even then, how the most innocent events of my past were going to rise up and crush me; but I was certain I could twist him into admitting the goodness of my tale which hadn’t yet been told. He knew I had been in Jamaica, and, put what construction he liked on it, he would have to admit it. I called out:
“Thank God, my turn’s come at last!”
The faces of the Attorney-General, the King’s Advocate, Sir Robert Gifford, Mr. Lawes, Mr. Jervis, of all the seven counsel that were arrayed to crush me, lengthened into simultaneous grins, varying at the jury-box. But I didn’t care; I grinned, too. I was going to show them.
It was as if I flew at the throat of that little man. It seemed to me that I must be able to crush a creature whose malice was as obvious and as nugatory as the green and red rings that he exhibited in his hair every few minutes. He wanted to show the jury that he had rings; that he was a mincing swell; that I hadn’t and that I was a bloody pirate. I said:
“You know that during the whole two years Nichols was at Rio I was an improver at Horton Pen with the Macdonalds, the agents of my brother-in-law, Sir Ralph Rooksby. You must know these things. You were one of the Duke of Manchester’s spies.”
We used to call the Duke’s privy council that. “I certainly know nothing of the sort,” he said, folding his hands along the edge of the witness-box, as if he had just thought of exhibiting his rings in that manner. He was abominably cool. I said:
“You must have heard of me. The Topnambos knew me.”
“The Topnambos used to talk of a blackguard with a name like Kemp who kept himself mighty out of the way in the Vale.”
“You knew I was on the island,” I pinned him down.
“You used to come to the island,” he corrected. “I’ve just explained how. But you were not there much, or we should have been able to lay hands on you. We wanted to. There was a warrant out after you tried to murder us. But you had been smuggled away by Ramon.”
I tried again:
“You have heard of my brother-in-law, Sir Ralph Rooksby?”
I wanted to show that, if I hadn’t rings, I had relations.
“Nevah heard of the man in my life,” he said.
“He was the largest land proprietor on the island,” I said.
“Dessay,” he said; “I knew forty of the largest. Mostly sharpers in the boosing-kens.” He yawned.
I said viciously:
“It was your place to know the island. You knew Horton Pen—the Macdonalds?”
The face of jolly old Mrs. Mac. came to my mind—the impeccable, Scotch, sober respectability.
“Oh, I knew the Macdonalds,” he said—“of them. The uncle was a damn rebellious, canting, planting Scotchman. Horton Pen was the centre of the Separation Movement. We could have hung him if we’d wanted to. The nephew was the writer of an odious blackmailing print. He calumniated all the decent, loyal inhabitants. He was an agent of you pirates, too. We arrested him—got his papers; know all about your relations with him.”
I said, “That’s all nonsense. Let us hear”—the Attorney-General had always said that—“what you know of myself.”
“What I know of you,” he sniffed, “if it’s a pleasuah, was something like this. You came to the island in a mysterious way, gave out that you were an earl’s son, and tried to get into the very excellent society of … ah … people like my friends, the Topnambos. But they would not have you, and after that you kept yourself mighty close; no one ever saw you but once or twice, and then it was riding about at night with that humpbacked scoundrel of a blackmailer.
“You, in fact, weren’t on the island at all, except when you came to spy for the pirates. You used to have long confabulations with that scoundrel Ramon, who kept you posted about the shipping. As for the blackmailer, with the humpback, David Macdonald, you kept him, you … ah … subsidized his filthy print to foment mutiny and murder among the black fellows, and preach separation. You wanted to tie our hands, and prevent our … ah … prosecuting the preventive measures against you. When you found that
