Most Secret (29 page)

Félix rubbed his hands together, chuckling and beaming. And, try as he would, Kinsmere could not feel anything but friendly towards this solicitous old bandit It was due to Félix, he knew, that he had merely been struck senseless and not killed.

“Well, Félix,” he said in Captain Souter’s own philosophical tone, “we had something of a brawl, don’t you think?”

“I do, I do! Yes, you are in de right. It was one damn fine burly-’urly, you bet. Come!” continued Felix, pouring and draining another bumper. “Soon you get up and be com-for-
table
, yes? We drink de wine and t’row de dice, as I ’ave said long ago. Your are not ’urt; I ’ave look at you. A bump on de ’ead, but it do not bleed. A wound in de shoulder has bleed a leetle; but it is not new wound, I t’ink; you do not get it ’ere. You are well and as good as new.”

Here he looked at Gaines, who was swallowing hard as though swallowing bile.

“And
you,
de great ’oliness which rejoice to kill people when dey are not looking? What ail
you
, Salvation Gaines? Already you ’ave agree this yoong man mus’ not be ’urt or torture: in part because I will not ’ave it and in part because there is still a use for him. Then what ail you, goddam? Why are you so glum? We ’ave got what we were ’ired to get; it is in your clench now; goddam, are you not content?”

“I do the Lord’s work,” cried Gaines, with tears rising to his eyes; “therefore am I sustained in all trials. You are a wicked man, Captain Souter, lewd and a Papist too. Yet there is reason in what you say.”

He took the oilskin packet from the leather pouch. The pouch he thrust into his pocket. Delicately he removed the oilskin, putting that into his pocket too, and weighed the sealed document in his hand.

“Let there be rejoicing! Here,” declared Gaines, “is half of the dispatch that will trap Charles Stuart. Let him henceforward obey the behest of godly men; else he will go for ever on his travels or know the axe and block as his father did. Now are the sinners cast into their pit, and the worthy exalted on high!”

The seaman with cloth and bucket had long ago scuttled out, past a half-broken door which was propped against the bulkhead. With hands none too steady Gaines broke the seals on the document.

“We have but little more to do. We intercept the sloop
Saucy Ann;
we gain the other half of the dispatch. Joy is not complete (no, no!) until both halves are in the possession of the man who employed us. Yet already we may praise the Lord for a consummation. Here—”

Spreading out the document in his fingers, Salvation Gaines stopped dead. His face seemed to grow rigid, the mouth pulled square like a Greek mask. A falsetto screech went piercing up; he flung his arms wide, and executed a couple of convulsive little steps, like the beginning of a
danse macabre,
against the line of partly shattered windows.

“Eh?” roared Felix, starting up. “What is it? What is wrong?”

“What is wrong, you ask?” Then Gaines choked. “Look there, man of sin! Look there!”

He spurned the document from him; it fluttered and fell on the table. The oilskin packet had contained, heavily sealed up, half of a blank sheet of paper.

A
LREADY—BLINDING HEADACHE OR
no, bound wrists or no—Kinsmere had struggled up to a sitting position with his back against the bunk.

What started him off laughing he could never afterwards be sure. It may have been Salvation Gaines’s anguished contortions, like a Puritan clergyman thinking of sin. It may have been the thought of how furiously he had carried himself with sword and pistol to defend a half-sheet of blank foolscap. Anyway, he could not stop. Unlike Gaines’s giggling laughter, which was largely a sneer, his full-throated mirth rang in the wrecked cabin. He kicked out his heels. He leaned back and roared until he was near tears.

Gaines looked at him out of sly little eyes. Then Gaines stood above him, taking the sharp knife from an inside pocket.

“You knew this, I think? You knew the paper was blank?”

“I did
not
know it,” my grandfather retorted truthfully. “Have I lost my senses, that I would challenge Félix and his whole crew to preserve … to preserve …” He felt his jaws working, and exploded into the other’s face. “Let us show a deep pity, shall we, for anyone who would outwit the King of England? And
you,
Salvation Gaines, and your band of malcontents and their precious plotter-in-chief … keeo-whoosh! Haw, Haw, HAW!”

“It will be found less diverting,” Gaines felt the edge of the knife, “when necessary chastisement has been administered. Meanwhile, enough of this! You will tell me—”

“
I
tell you,” Felix roared suddenly. He rose to his feet, shaking a thick arm in the air. “Always you say what a clever faller you are; but you are one imbécile. No, no, no, I tell you! Dis one ’as not got half de dispatch
because de ot’er messenger ’as got it all.”

Gaines stood stock-still, fingers at his lower lip.

“Regard!” said Félix, somewhat superfluously. “Consider! T’ink what you yourself ’ave tell me. Dees one is yoong man. He ’ave never carry de dispatch before, eh? And your king is not one trusting faller. But dees yoong man will be one damn fine decoy, yes, and t’row us off while de o’ter messenger go to Calais?”

To my grandfather, now, the scheme showed as both simple and inevitable.

“Is this true, Roderick Kinsmere?” snarled Gaines.

“I don’t know; I can’t say. Yet I would lay any wager it
is
true. Whereat, gentlemen, you have had your labour for nothing. You are most royally bubbled and undone.”

“Does it truly appear so, lewd youth? Tremble; you have cause to tremble! For the Lord is not mocked, nor am I. We are come but to the second part of a plan hardly disturbed. You are an obstinate and stupid young man. In your ridiculous efforts to serve Charles Stuart, which Providence sets at naught, you have killed several men and badly injured others. Yet you are
not
dead, as such behaviour merits. You are
not
hung up by the thumbs. You have not even had your ears cropped or your nose slit to the bone: that is, not yet. I have been most merciful; can you guess why?”

“There is a use for me, somebody said.”

“There is indeed a use,” Gaines fingered the knife, “even for such as you. We had thought to take half a dispatch in your possession, and the other half from an oafish fellow now aboard the
Saucy Ann.
Our plan is altered but a little: the entire document we will take from the man Bygones Abraham.

“How ingenious is the Lord! The sloop
Saucy Ann
has a longer journey round than we. And we are, by happy circumstance, the faster vessel. With full knowledge of the course she customarily sets and no bad weather to delay her, Captain Souter has reckoned we should meet her in the Straits—when?”

“It be any time now, I tell you,” roared Félix. “We sight her; we over’aul her; we take her. Eh, yoong man?”

“Félix, for God’s sake! It is you, and this praying murderer—and his Lord too, if you think
Him
concerned—who must completely have lost your senses. An act of piracy in the Narrow Seas …”

“Tchaa!” said Gaines, lifting one shoulder. “The law of man, it may be, would apply some such name to it, if indeed we attacked the vessel. But we are about pious work. Shall we use such extreme measures: unless, to be sure, they become needful?”

“By de Virgin and St. Joseph,” swore Félix, heaving his chest and chuckling, “by de Virgin and St. Joseph, but I ’ope dey are needful. Hoist de bones! Blood in de scuppers! Rum-tiddlety-um-tum, ha, ha!”

Giving a fillip to his beard, shaking his head so that hair and earrings danced, he peered round benevolently. A knifelike kind of malice edged Salvation Gaines’s mouth.

“Enough of this, Captain Souter! Tales of violence from the West Indies must not carry your impetuousness too far. There is a difference, let’s allow, between an act of piracy off Barbadoes and an act of piracy in the Straits of Dover. Can you not see the nature of that difference?”

“Difference—bah! It’s all water,” argued Félix. “Besides, we be very polite.”

“Enough, I say!” This time Gaines addressed Kinsmere. “The sloop
Saucy Ann
mounts fewer than twenty guns. She can neither fight nor run away. In a good cause we must employ craft to take the man Abraham unawares, lest he destroy the paper as you so foolishly threatened to do. The
better
plan, therefore—”

“One man I ’ave got,” Félix said suddenly, “wit’ de educated voice in six languages. Is called Longstaffe; will be de mate now Garlick is gone. Hah, dass it! Him I will put on de quarter-deck beside me to shout: ‘Captain Félix Alexandre Charlemagne Souter present ’is compliments; and you  ’eave to damn quick, please, or he give you a broadside.’ What you t’nk of dat, yoong man?”

“I am not inclined to favour it, Félix.”

“You are not, goddam? W’y not?”

“It is overhasty, I think; it comes to business with a thought too much of the abrupt. Let me suggest a better one. ‘Captain Félix Alexandre Charlemagne Souter presents his compliments, and begs leave to pay a short visit aboard your vessel.’ How’s that?”

Gaines, pale with fury, made a short, threatening gesture.

“Have you some notion, Roderick Kinsmere, that I speak in jest?”

“Oh, go to the devil! If you have no intent to take and sink the sloop, how else can you hope to trap Bygones?”

“With
your
help.”

“Oh?”

“With your help, willingly given,” Gaines assured him. “I say willingly, and I do not jest; I mean this. You will even thank me, when I have done. For the Lord of Hosts shall open your eyes, and set your feet towards righteousness at last. Do you mark me now, Roderick Kinsmere?”

“Well?”

“I do not know whether the man Bygones Abraham is aware you are aboard the
Thunderer.
If he is not, all doubts shall be set at rest. When we sight the sloop, by Captain Souter’s orders, we will draw close and hail. You will be on the quarter-deck in plain sight. You will call for the man Abraham; you will say that difficulties have arisen, and that he must come aboard the
Thunderer
for discourse with you. Once here, he will be detained; we put back to Dover. Should the captain of the sloop become suspicious, what in pity’s name can he do? Thus does justice triumph; thus is a design accomplished without disorder or any illegal act. You see?”

“Yes, I see. And now the threats begin, I suppose?”

“Threats?”

“‘Do this, or you will feel the knife.’ ‘Do that, else your death will be lingering and unpleasant.’ I am familiar with your tactics, Mr. Salvation Gaines. They will earn you a hemp collar, but they will do much mischief ere that. With what kind of unpleasantness have you a mind to commence?”

“Now, how I am misjudged!” cried Gaines, uprolling his eyes. “How are the godly reviled and traduced when they but seek to do their duty! Threats, wretched boy? I utter none; I carry none out. I will use only sweet persuasion. For there is hope for you; yea, verily, there is hope for you even yet.—Captain Souter!”

Félix, who had sat down and poured himself another bumper, rolled his head round.

“He can do us no further harm, Captain Souter. Since we must be thrice merciful, since we must forgive our enemies, this poor fellow might be made more comfortable, as you suggested. Pray fetch him up; set him in a chair. If you think it prudent, loose his bonds and give him a mouthful of wine. I would plead with him. I would place certain facts before him, and then.—Captain Souter!”

But Félix had been brooding on a different problem.

“‘—present his compliments,’” he was muttering, “‘and beg leave to pay a short visit aboard your vessel.’ Hah! H’m! Mabbe you are right,” he continued, scowling round at Kinsmere and tapping his nose thoughtfully. “You are educate in de politeness. You should tell de right way, eh? But I don’t know. It sound
too
damn polite to me. ’Ow are dey goin’ to know I am a pirate?”

“They’ll see your bones and death’s head, won’t they, all merry and bright over the mainmast? Are you prepared with a pirate flag, Félix?”

“Not yet; where I get one? Oh, goddam! De principle is de right one, so who care? Hoist de bones! Blood in de scuppers! Tra-la-li-la-la, all’s well! What else you say?”

“Help me up, will you?”

Félix surged to his feet, smote his chest a couple of times, and approached at his bow-legged roll. Though my grandfather weighed twelve stone, Felix lifted him as easily and solicitously as a jug of old rum. He put him into a chair beside the table, using his cutlass to sever the rope at Kinsmere’s wrists. Into another silver goblet he poured wine. It was Madeira and sickly sweet, no stuff for a man with a headache, yet it had a grateful warmth once it was gulped down. Kinsmere eased his bruises back into the chair.

“All I regret, me,” Félix proclaimed sadly, “is what dey ’ave done to my belle cabine. Dey ’ave smash de window. Dey ’ave shoot bullets in de bulkhead. Somebody step on Boethius, even. If I find de scoundrel dat step on Boethius, I will give him de cat, you bet Still, is beautiful, hein?” he demanded, and refreshed himself with a look round. “Regard my Spanish chest, wit’ de ivory. Nine ’undred crowns I pay for him …”

“Near to all the damage was done by
our guest
,” said Gaines, playfully thrusting the knife towards Kinsmere. “But we forgive him, don’t we? Yes, we forgive him! Captain Souter, sit down and be silent. I have much to say to our young friend.”

Gaines’s friendliness was as overpowering as his humility or arrogance. In an instant he had become all ingratiating airs and playful ways. He would run into corners and run at you, this time in good will Then he stood with his back to the window, framed against a tilting white-capped Channel.

“Roderick Kinsmere, you have been unjust! A group of worthy gentlemen, gathered together for the public weal under a patron of most noble motives, you have seen fit to designate as a ‘band of malcontents and their plotter-in-chief’!”

“‘Worthy gentlemen,’ is it?”

“Oh, indeed, the most worthy and the most laudable. When you apprehend, when you know the truth, you will join our number.”