The Kang-He Vase/Chapter 20
CHAPTER XX
THE SOFT-HEARTED MARINER
Pepita had followed me to the gap in the wall, and she saw the things below as soon as I did, and turned on me with a world of surmise in her eyes.
“Ben!” she exclaimed. “What on earth does that mean? That’s the old bag that your uncle carried up from the boat, and that he was so careful about! Thrown away!”
“I know what it means!” said I. “The old scamp has had an accident at this spot. Fallen over the wall in climbing over—that’s it. Look there!—the stones are newly disturbed. He’s evidently come this way from the tower, and meant to cross the moat into the wood on the other side. And he must have slipped, or his weight was too much for the wall—you see how crumbly it is?—and over he went, and I guess he fell on his precious bag. Well! he must weigh seventeen or eighteen stone! But, Pepita, do you see that broken china? I reckon that’s Miss Ellingham’s vase, that all the row’s been about. Smashed!”
“Do you think it is, Ben?” she said wonderingly. “To be sure, I can see queer figures and patterns on it. But why has he left it, and the bag, too?”
“Come over,” I said, beginning to climb the gap. “Steady, now! we don’t want the whole lot down. We must know more about this—it’s important.”
I helped her to climb the wall and down into the moat, and we began to pick up the pieces of broken chinaware from the weeds and grass in which they lay. And from this moment onwards I began to get more and more bewildered and puzzled: the mystery of Cousins’ murder, and the stealing of the Kang-he vase, and Uncle Joseph’s possession of it, and our own kidnapping, and the Getch affair, and the presence on the island of Mandhu Khan, seemed to take on more amazing and baffling features than ever. This, without a doubt, was the vase of which I had heard so much, which I understood to be worth a—to me—immense amount of money, and here it lay, thrown aside like a bit of cheap earthenware! And it was not so badly damaged, after all; true, it was broken into some five or six pieces, but they were clean breaks, and the edges fitted; I had often seen Keziah mend old china which was much more in need of repair than that. However, there it was, cast aside, and there were shavings, of the same sort that I had seen in our spare bedchamber, and there was the bag. And, looking towards the wood, I saw where Uncle Joseph, who was large-footed, had trodden down the thick, long grass as he made his way from the scene of his fall into shelter and safety.
While I was examining the vase and its one-time wrappings, Pepita was looking round about, and she suddenly let out an exclamation that drew me to her side.
“Ben!” she said sharply. “What’s this? And—that?”
She had picked up a queer-looking object from amongst the rank weeds, and now she pointed her other hand to something close by. I saw at once what those things were—they were the broken halves of one of those images which Miss Ellingham had missed after losing the Kang-he vase—the little Indian gods. I remembered what Carsie, the butler, had told me about them when he stopped to talk to me the Sunday night Cherry and I returned from London—“Foul and loathsome objects, I call those figures, one of ’em particularly … why, it had ever so many heads and arms—a monstrosity!—and t’other had some animal’s head instead of a human being’s!” So Carsie had said—and here, indeed, was the many-headed, many-armed thing, in two pieces. And suddenly, glancing around me, I saw the other—a thing with a beast’s head—lying close by … and it also was broken in two.
One by one I carefully examined these images. They were fashioned of some sort of stuff the like of which I had never seen: I could not make out if it was stone, or marble, or an artificial product. It seemed softish to the touch; anyway, you could scrape it with your finger-nail, indenting it easily. One figure—that which Pepita had found—was broken in jagged fashion, as if from a fall; the other appeared to me to have been deliberately broken, or cut—I fancied I could detect the marks of a knife-blade. But in each there was a similar and curious feature. Each contained a hollow space, rounded and smoothed, big enough in both cases to hold something as big, say, as a blackbird’s egg. But if there had been anything in these hollows a careful search in the grass and weeds round about failed to reveal it to us.
This puzzled me even more than the throwing away of the Kang-he vase. But I refrained from saying anything of my amazement and my speculations to Pepita. Instead, I carefully put together the pieces of the vase and the broken halves of the idols, wrapped them all up in the shavings, bundled the lot into the old bag, and hid that behind a clump of thick ivy at the foot of the wall.
“That’s safe enough!” said I. “We shall know where to find it, if need be, in days to come. And now let’s see about that other matter—the boat, if there is one. But of course there is, and we must try to”
I came to a dead stop there, and as my tongue checked itself, Pepita gave a sharp, startled cry and made a grasp at my left arm. Instinctively, my right hand shot into my side pocket and drew the automatic pistol which I had taken from Getch’s dead body. Hand and pistol rose in the air—there, right before us, between us and the wood, stood a man who carried a shot-gun in the crook of his elbow.
He was a medium-sized, stoutly-built, brown-skinned, brown-bearded man, a seafaring man every bit of him, in sea-going garments and sea-boots—a middle-aged man, amiable of expression, and in spite of my threatening attitude, mild of eye. He stared as I raised my pistol, shook his head, and smiled faintly.
“No need for that, young master!” he said quickly. “No harm intended to anybody—by me, anyhow. See!”
He dropped his shot-gun to the grass at his side as he spoke, and moved away from within reach of it as if wishing to prove the truth of his word by corroborative action. And again he smiled.
“What’s it all about?” he asked. “Seems to me there’s strange things afoot, on this here island! Have a care with that gun o’ yours, young man!—they’re ticklish things to play with!”
I dropped the automatic pistol into my pocket, and drew a deep breath—I think of intense relief.
“Strange things!” I exclaimed. “I should think there are strange things!—stranger than you’d think. You’re from that steamer, on the south side, aren’t you? Will you tell me—this girl and I are all alone here—what you came ashore for?”
Staring steadily first at Pepita and then at me, he slowly took a pipe and tobacco pouch from his pockets and leisurely filled the one from the other. He took his time, too, about applying a match to the tobacco, and it was not until he had it in full blast and had blown out a blue cloud of it that he spoke.
“Ah, just so!” he answered. “And what might you be a-doing of, yourselves, now? For I’ll swear you didn’t come here on no picnic party!”
I hesitated. But not for long—something told me that whoever he was, and whatever his trade, he was a man you could speak to with candour.
“I’ll tell you!” I replied suddenly. “We were kidnapped!”
He showed no surprise. Instead, he nodded two or three times, as a man nods who has just heard something that he expected to hear. “From the mainland?” he asked, abruptly.
“If you want to know, from a house called the Shooting Star, at Wreddlesham,” I replied, watching him narrowly. “That is on the mainland.”
Again he nodded—with still more evidence of comprehension.
“Aye!” he said quietly. “Just so! Then I expect you poked your nose—or maybe fell accidental—into a situation where your presence wasn’t desirable?—just so!”
“That’s about it,” I answered. “All the same”
“Carried off so that you couldn’t split, eh?” he interrupted, with a grin. “To be sure! I see! And from the Shooting Star? Then you’ll know Getch?”
I gave him a look which had a meaning in it that he didn’t take.
“Yes!” I said.
“And may be you’ll know a friend—sort of partner of his—called Krevin?” he went on. “A fat man?”
“I know him!” I replied.
“Do you know where they are now?” he inquired. “I make it that Getch carried you out here, and I’ve no doubt Krevin was with him. Now where is Getch?”
I heard Pepita catch her breath at my side, and I pressed the arm which she had slipped through mine when the stranger appeared.
“I’ll tell you!” I answered. “He’s on the beach, about thirty or forty yards away, down there, the other side of those ruins—dead!”
Not the slightest sign of surprise came from him: he only looked at me a little more closely, and repeated my last word, inquiringly. “Dead?”
“Knifed!” I replied. “It must have been during last night. I found him this morning. Cold, then.”
He continued to look at me for a minute or so; then he nodded.
“Aye!” he said, ruminatively. “Just so! Well, as regards Getch, now, it’s the kind of news that them who knew him would never be surprised—Getch being the sort of man he was—to be hearing ’most any time. Dead?—um! But Krevin? Where’s he? For I reckon he’d be with you.”
“I don’t know where he is,” I said. “He was in that tower this morning: we left him there. He sent us out to look for a brown man that’s got on the island somehow and that’s after him!”
“After him?” he said. “A brown man?”
“A Hindu,” I answered. “It may have been he that killed Getch—I don’t know. Anyway, Krevin’s made off from that tower, and I believe the Hindu chap’s stalking him. I thought Krevin was down on the south shore somewhere—I heard what I believed to be a shot from his pistol down there, some time ago.”
“We heard that, aboard our vessel,” he remarked. “And we came off. But we’ve heard nothing, and seen nothing.”
“I think he’s hiding in some hole or other, and the Hindu’s spotted him and is watching him,” I said. “The Hindu went down that way. I watched him go across the heather—he’s a patch of bright scarlet in his turban and he was easy to trace by that.”
“What’s this Hindu fellow after Krevin for?” he inquired. “And why should he kill Getch?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “It’s all part of a mass of mystery! What I know is that Krevin wants to get away from here, and that he told me Getch had arranged for a vessel to put in here to take him off. That’ll be yours, I suppose?”
He made no answer to this. For awhile he seemed to be thinking deeply. Suddenly he looked from one to the other of us.
“Where might you young people belong to, when you’re at home?” he asked. “Somewheres on the mainland, these parts?”
“Middlebourne—right opposite this island,” I answered. “Do you know it?”
“Never been there in my life!” he said. “But I’ve heard of it. In the newspapers, of late, though I haven’t seen one of ’em for some days. ’Twas there they found a man—Sol Cousins by name—tied up to an old gibbet-post, wasn’t it?”
“Yes!” I assented.
“Think that had anything to do with all this?” he asked, meaningly. “All this Hindu chap business, and Getch being knifed, and you kidnapped, and so on—what?”
“I should say it’s everything to do with it,” I replied. “All of a piece!”
He ruminated a little over that, and then moved towards his shotgun, as if he meant to pick it up.
“Well, I ain’t a-going to get myself mixed up in things o’ that sort, young master,” he said. “I put in to this here island in consequence of a letter what I got from Getch at a certain port I was in, down Channel, a-purpose to give a passage to Krevin, and maybe to Getch. And as Getch is dead, and Krevin’s having a brown-faced man a-hunting of him, I shall just go my ways! I can stand a good deal, but being a plain man I dislikes mysteries, and I can’t abide murder!”
“You won’t leave this girl and me to be murdered, will you?” I exclaimed. “Come, now!”
He stopped on the instant.
“Do you think there’s the danger of it?” he asked. “Honest?”
“I think there’s great danger of it—or, at any rate, of other trouble,” I answered. “Just see how we’re situated! Nobody ever comes to this island”
“I know that, well enough!” he murmured. “You’re right there.”
“Our friends don’t seem to have the least notion that we’re here,” I continued. “We’re utterly defenceless”
“Not with that gun of yours!” he interrupted.
“I might be caught unawares,” I said. “And, anyway, we’ve no food. Getch and Krevin brought food and liquor with us to the tower, but either Krevin or the Hindu set fire to the stores this afternoon and everything’s burnt. We’re absolutely helpless! Look here!—can’t you take us off in your steamer? Look at this girl!—just think”
He looked at Pepita. And Pepita looked at him. She did more—she held out her hands and turned on the full battery of her dark eyes.
“Do, please, take us away!” she said in her most enticing tones. “Please!”
I could see that he was touched. He nodded at her—appreciatively.
“Aye, aye, missie!” he said. “Just so, to be sure! And I ain’t unwilling—I’m a soft-hearted man, I am, and always had that nature, and oft suffered from it. But the thing is—how to do it?”
“How?” I exclaimed. “Why, there can’t be any difficulty about that! Couldn’t you take us off and put us ashore at Kingshaven”
He gave me a look which indicated a lot.
“No, I couldn’t!” he said, promptly. “Not by no means!”
“Well, any port along Channel—either way,” I suggested.
“Not at present,” he answered. “Not—convenient!”
But I was not going to give up.
“Well, couldn’t you take us—whichever way you like, east or west—and put us off in a boat, on the coast somewhere?” I pleaded.
“We’d make our way home—never fear!”
“Do!” urged Pepita. “Please!”
He took off his cap and scratched his head for awhile. Then he put his cap on again.
“You see!” he said. “There’s my mates! I’m nominally skipper—but it’s a partnership affair. And we’re on a special voyage—not to these parts at all. And I don’t suppose you young people carry money—and you couldn’t very well send money when you got to your friends, because circumstances is such that I couldn’t give you any address, d’ye see?—and, well, my mates—not me, ’cause, as I say, I’m soft-hearted, uncommon”
A sudden notion shot into my brain—an inspiration. With a whispered word of re-assurance to her, I slipped Pepita’s hand out of my arm, and motioning the soft-hearted one to follow me, walked to the end of the moat.
“Look here!” I whispered to him. “Not a word to my young lady, but I’ll tell you something, to be kept a dead secret between you and me—for ever! I found Getch’s body, and I covered it with sea-weed and laid stones on that—you’ll find it if you go straight down there on to the shore; it’s in a corner of some tall black rocks. And Getch’s pockets are full of gold! Sovereigns, you understand? There must be a couple of hundred pounds’ worth, I should think. So is it a bargain, and a secret?”
“Not another word, young master!” he murmured. “I take your meaning! Right!—straight ahead, is it?”
He went quickly away towards the shore, and with a signal to Pepita to stay where she was, I waited for him. He came back within ten minutes, and as he drew near me, he gave me a highly satisfied nod, and slapped various parts of his garments.
“That’s all right, master!” he said quietly. “Now you come along of me!”