“And then what do you think? That Stafford begins to tear his hair. Just so. Tugs at it with both hands without saying anything. Cloete gives a push to the table which nearly sends the fellow off his chair, tumbling inside the fender; so that he has got to catch hold of it to save himself …
“You know the sort of man I am, Cloete says, fiercely. I’ve got to a point that I don’t care what happens to me. I would shoot you now for tuppence.
“At this the cur dodges under the table. Then Cloete goes out, and as he turns in the street—you know, little fishermen’s cottages, all dark; raining in torrents, too—the other opens the window of the parlour and speaks in a sort of crying voice—
“You low Yankee fiend—I’ll pay you off some day.
“Cloete passes by with a damn bitter laugh, because he thinks that the fellow in a way has paid him off already, if he only knew it.”
My impressive ruffian drank what remained of his beer, while his black, sunken eyes looked at me over the rim.
“I don’t quite understand this,” I said. “In what way?”
He unbent a little and explained without too much scorn that Captain Harry being dead, his half of the insurance money went to his wife, and her trustees of course bought consols with it. Enough to keep her comfortable. George Dunbar’s half, as Cloete feared from the first, did not prove sufficient to launch the medicine well; other moneyed men stepped in, and these two had to go out of that business, pretty nearly shorn of everything.
“I am curious,” I said, “to learn what the motive force of this tragic affair was—I mean the patent medicine. Do you know?”
He named it, and I whistled respectfully. Nothing less than Parker’s Lively Lumbago Pills. Enormous property! You know it; all the world knows it. Every second man, at least, on this globe of ours has tried it.
“Why!” I cried, “they missed an immense fortune.”
“Yes,” he mumbled, “by the price of a revolver-shot.”
He told me also that eventually Cloete returned to the States, passenger in a cargo-boat from Albert Dock. The night before he sailed he met him wandering about the quays, and took him home for a drink. “Funny chap, Cloete. We sat all night drinking grogs, till it was time for him to go on board.”
It was then that Cloete, unembittered but weary, told him this story, with that utterly unconscious frankness of a patent-medicine man stranger to all moral standards. Cloete concluded by remarking that he, had “had enough of the old country.” George Dunbar had turned on him, too, in the end. Cloete was clearly somewhat disillusioned.
As to Stafford, he died, professed loafer, in some East End hospital or other, and on his last day clamoured “for a parson,” because his conscience worried him for killing an innocent man. “Wanted somebody to tell him it was all right,” growled my old ruffian, contemptuously. “He told the parson that I knew this Cloete who had tried to murder him, and so the parson (he worked among the dock labourers) once spoke to me about it. That skunk of a fellow finding himself trapped yelled for mercy … Promised to be good and so on … Then he went crazy … screamed and threw himself about, beat his head against the bulkheads … you can guess all that—eh? … till he was exhausted. Gave up. Threw himself down, shut his eyes, and wanted to pray. So he says. Tried to think of some prayer for a quick death—he was that terrified. Thought that if he had a knife or something he would cut his throat, and be done with it. Then he thinks: No! Would try to cut away the wood about the lock … He had no knife in his pocket … he was weeping and calling on God to send him a tool of some kind when suddenly he thinks: Axe! In most ships there is a spare emergency axe kept in the master’s room in some locker or other … Up he jumps … Pitch dark. Pulls at the drawers to find matches and, groping for them, the first thing he comes upon—Captain Harry’s revolver. Loaded too. He goes perfectly quiet all over. Can shoot the lock to pieces. See? Saved! God’s providence! There are boxes of matches too. Thinks he: I may just as well see what I am about.
“Strikes a light and sees the little canvas bag tucked away at the back of the drawer. Knew at once what that was. Rams it into his pocket quick. Aha! says he to himself: this requires more light. So he pitches a lot of paper on the floor, set fire to it, and starts in a hurry rummaging for more valuables. Did you ever? He told that East-End parson that the devil tempted him. First God’s mercy—then devil’s work. Turn and turn about …
“Any squirming skunk can talk like that. He was so busy with the drawers that the first thing he heard was a shout, Great Heavens. He looks up and there was the door open (Cloete had
