By this time the public on both sides of the Atlantic were very gravely perturbed. The wildest rumours were flying round: from pirates to sea serpents all sorts of suggestions were put forward.
Both the British and American navies despatched light cruisers to discover what they could; and it may be remembered that when Mr. Wilmot’s patriotic offer to place his airship at the disposal of the authorities was refused, he himself, at his own expense, went far out into the Atlantic to see if he could find out anything.
Nothing was ever discovered; no trace was found of the yacht. And no trace ever will be; for she sank with every soul on board.
Now for the first time I will put down what happened, and show the connection between the two chains of events—the big and the so-called little: between the disappearance of the Hermione and Robin Gaunt’s cry over the telephone. I will tell of the death of Mr. Wilmot, and of what happened to the man called Helias in that lonely spot in Cornwall. And, perhaps, most important of all, certainly most interesting, I will set down word for word the last statement of Robin Gaunt.
VIII
In Which We Come to Black Mine
But before I go on to pick up the thread of my story, I wish again to reiterate one thing. On September 5th, when Drummond rang me up at my office asking me to go round to his house at once, there was no inkling in my mind that there was any connection. Nor was there in his. The events I have just recorded were as irrelevant to us as they appear to be on these pages. In fact the last thing known to us which was connected in any way with Robin Gaunt in our minds was the discovery of Miss Simpson’s body at Paignton.
So it was with a considerable feeling of surprise that I listened to what Drummond had to say over the telephone.
“Found out something that may be of value: can you come round at once?”
I went, to find, to my amazement, a man with him whom I had never expected to see again. It was little rat face, who had been put to watch Toby Sinclair and whom we had saved from hanging in Number 10. He was sitting on the edge of his chair, plucking nervously at a greasy hat in the intervals of getting outside a quart of Drummond’s beer.
“You remember Mr. Perton, don’t you, old boy?” said Drummond, winking at me. “I happened to meet him this morning, and reminded him that there was a little matter of a fiver due to him.”
“Well, gentlemen,” said Mr. Perton nervously, “I don’t know as ’ow I can call it due, for I didn’t do wot you told me to. But I couldn’t, sir: I ’ad a dreadful time. You won’t believe wot them devils did to me. They ’ung me.”
“Did they indeed?” said Drummond quietly. “They don’t seem to have done it very well.”
“Gawd knows ’ow I escaped, guv’nor. They ’ung me, the swine—and left me swinging. I lost consciousness, I did—and then when I come to again, I was laying on the floor in the room alone. You bet yer life I didn’t ’alf do a bolt.”
“A very sound move, Mr. Perton. Have some more beer? Now do you know why they hanged you?”
“Strite I don’t, guv’nor. They said to me, they said—‘You’re bait, my man: just bait.’ They’d got me gagged, the swine: and they was a-peering out of the window. ‘Here they come,’ says one of ’em: ‘trice ’im up!’ So they triced me up, and then they give me a push to start me swinging. Then they does a bunk into the next ’ouse.”
“How do you know they bunked into the next house?” said Drummond.
“Well, guv’nor, there was a secret door, there was—and they’d brought me from the next house.”
He looked at us nervously, as if afraid of the reception of his story.
“How long had you been in the next house, Mr. Perton,” asked Drummond reassuringly, “before they brought you through the secret door to hang you?”
“Three or four hours, sir: bound and gagged. Thrown in the corner like a ruddy sack of pertaters. Just as I told you, sir.”
“I know, Mr. Perton; but I want my friend to hear what you have to say also. During those three or four hours whilst you were thrown in the corner, you heard them talking, didn’t you?”
“Well, I didn’t pay much attention, sir,” said Mr. Perton apologetically. “I was a-wondering wot was going to ’appen to me too ’ard. But there was a great black-bearded swine, who was swearing something awful. And two others wot was sitting at a table drinking whisky. They seemed to be fair wild about something. Then the other bloke come in—the bloke wot had been in Clarges Street that morning, and the one wot had brought me from the Three Cows to the ’ouse. They shut up swearing, though you could see they was still wild.
“ ‘You know wot to do,’ says the new man, ‘with regard to that thing.’ He points to me, and I listened ’ard.
“ ‘We knows wot to do,’ says the black-bearded swab, ‘but it’s damned tomfoolery.’
“ ‘That’s for me to decide,’ snaps the new bloke. ‘I’ll get the others next door, and I’ll do the necessary once they’re there.’ They didn’t say nothing then abaht making me swing, you see, so …”
“Quite, Mr. Perton,” interrupted Drummond. “But they did say something else, didn’t they?”
“Wot, that there bit about Land’s Hend? Wot was it ’e said, now—old black beard? Yus—I know. ‘We’ll all be in ’ell’s end,’ he said, ‘not Land’s Hend if we goes on like this.’ And then someone cursed ’im for a ruddy fool.”
“You’re sure of that, Mr. Perton, aren’t you?” I could hear the excitement in Drummond’s voice. “I mean the bit about Land’s End?”
“Sure
