The Adventures of Harry Revel

S >> Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch >> The Adventures of Harry Revel

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"'Poor little birds! If people knew
What sorrows little birds go through,
I think that even boys
Would never deem it sport, or fun,
To stand and fire a frightful gun
For nothing but the noise.'"

The shadow of Mr. Archibald seemed doomed to rest upon our
anniversaries. This second one, though more than exciting enough,
had not answered my expectations: and, on the third, when I presented
myself at the Bun Shop it was to learn with dismay that Miss
Plinlimmon had not arrived; with dismay and something more--for I had
walked into the country towards Plympton early that morning and
raided an orchard under the trees of which grew a fine crop of
columbines, seeded from a neighbouring garden. Also I jingled
together in my pocket no less a sum than two bright shillings, which
Mr. Trapp had magnificently handed over to me out of a wager of five
he had made with an East Country skipper that I could dive and take
the water, hands first, off the jib-boom of any vessel selected from
the shipping then at anchor in Cattewater. I knew that Miss
Plinlimmon wanted a box to hold her skeins, and I also knew the price
of one in a window in George Street, and had the shopman's promise
not to part with it before five o'clock that evening. I wished Miss
Plinlimmon to admire it first, and then I meant to enter the shop in
a lordly fashion and, emerging, to put the treasure in her hands.

So I paced the pavement in front of Mr. Tucker's, the prey of a
thousand misgivings. But at length, and fully half an hour late, she
hove in sight.

"I have been detained, dear," she explained as we kissed, "--by
Archibald," she added.

Always that accursed Archibald! "Did he wish you many happy
returns?" I asked, thrusting my bunch of columbines upon her with a
blush.

"You dear, dear boy!" she chirruped. But she ignored my question.
When we were seated, too, she made the poorest attempt to eat, but
kept exclaiming on the beauty of my flowers.

The meal over, she drew out her purse to pay. "We shan't be seeing
Mr. Archibald to-day?" I asked wistfully, preparing to go.

"You may be certain--" With that she paused, with a blank look which
changed to one of shame and utter confusion. The purse was empty.

"Oh, Harry--what shall I do? There were five shillings in it
when--. I counted them out and laid the purse on the table beside my
gloves. I was just picking them up when--when Archibald--"
Her voice failed again and she turned to the shop-woman. "Something
most unfortunate has happened. Will you, please, send for Mr.
Tucker? He will know me. I have been here on several previous
occasions--"

I had not the slightest notion of the price of eatables; but I, too,
turned on the shopwoman with a bold face, albeit with a fluttering
heart.

"How much?" I demanded.

"One-and-ninepence, sir."

I know not which made me the happier--relief, or the glory of being
addressed as "sir." I paid, pocketed my threepence change, and in
the elation of it offered Miss Plinlimmon my arm. We walked down
George Street, past the work-box in the window. I managed to pass
without wincing, though desperately afraid that the shopman might pop
out--it seemed but natural he should be lying in wait--and hold me to
my bargain.

Our session upon the Hoe, though uninterrupted, did not recapture the
dear abandonment of our first blissful birthday. Miss Plinlimmon
could neither forget the mishap to her purse, nor speak quite freely
about it. A week later she celebrated her redemption in the
following stanza:

"A friend in need is a friend indeed,
We have oft-times heard:
And King Richard the Third
Was reduced to crying, 'My kingdom for a horse!'
O, may we never want a friend!
'Or a bottle to give him,' I omit, as coarse."

She enclosed one-and-ninepence in the missive: and so obtained her
work-box after all--it being, by a miracle, still unsold.

CHAPTER VI.

I STUMBLE INTO HORRORS.

It was exactly seven weeks later--that is to say, on the evening
of June 18th, 1811--that as I stood in the doorway whistling
_Come, cheer up, my lads_, to Mrs. Trapp's tame blackbird, the old
Jew slop-dealer came shuffling up the alley and demanded word with my
master.

His name was Rodriguez--"I. Rodriguez, Marine Stores"--and his shop
stood at the corner of the Barbican as you turn into Southside
Street. He had an extraordinarily fine face, narrow, emaciated, with
a noble hook to his nose (which was neither pendulous nor fleshy) and
a black pointed beard divided by a line of grey. We boys feared him,
one and all: but in a furred cloak and skull-cap he would have made a
brave picture. The dirt of his person, however, was a scandal.
I told him that Mr. Trapp had walked over and taken the ferry to
Cremyll, where his boat was fitting out for the summer. "But Mrs.
Trapp is washing-up at the back. Shall I call her?"

"God forbid!" said he. "I am not come to listen, but to speak."

I asked him then if I could take a message.

"As wine in a leaky vessel, so is a message committed to a child.
Two of my chimneys need to be swept."

"I can remember that, sir," said I.

He eyed me in a way that made me feel uncomfortable. "Yes; you will
remember," he said, as if somehow he had satisfied himself. Yet his
eyes continued to search me. "You have not swept my chimneys
before?"

"I have been working for Mr. Trapp almost three years," said I
demurely.

"Yes, I have seen your face. But I do not often have my chimneys
swept: it is dreadful waste of money. The soot, now--your master and
I cannot agree about it. I say that the soot is mine, that I made
it, in my own chimney, with my own fuel; therefore it should be my
property, but your master claims it. Five years ago I left my
chimneys un-swept while I argued this; but one of them took fire, and
so I lost my soot, and the Corporation fined me five shillings.
It was terrible." He fell back a pace and studied me again.
"If my brother Aaron could see your face, boy, he would want to paint
it and you might make money."

"Where does he live, sir?" I asked.

"Eh? Good boy--good boy! He lives in Lisbon, in the Ghetto off the
Street of the Four Evangelists." He laughed, high up in his nose, at
my discomfiture. "If you ever meet him, mention my name: but first
of all tell your master I shall expect him at five o'clock to-morrow
morning." He wished me good night and shuffled away down the alley,
still laughing at his joke.

At five o'clock next morning, or a little before, Mr. Trapp and I
started for the house. The Barbican had not yet awaked to business.
Its frowzy blinds were down, and out on the Pool nothing moved but a
fishing-boat sweeping in upon the first of the flood.

At the entrance of Southside Street, however, we almost overtook a
soldier walking towards the town. He walked slowly and with a very
slight limp, but seemed to quicken his pace a little, and kept ahead
of us. The barracks being full just then, many soldiers had their
billets about the town, and that one should be abroad at such an hour
was nothing suspicious: yet my eyes were still following him when Mr.
Trapp halted and knocked at the Jew's door. At the sound, I saw the
man start and hesitate for an instant in his stride: and in that
instant, though he held on his pace and was lost to sight around the
street-corner, I recognised him and understood the limp. He was the
man of the bull-chase--Sergeant Letcher (as the sentry had named him)
of the North Wilts.

Nobody answered Mr. Trapp's knock, though he repeated it four or five
times. He stepped back into the roadway and scanned the unshuttered
upper windows. They were uncurtained, too, every one, and grimed
with dust: and through this dust we could see rows of cast-off suits
dangling within like limp suicides.

"Very odd," commented Mr. Trapp. "You're sure he said five o'clock?"

"Sure," said I.

"Besides--five o'clock or six--why can't the old skin-flint answer?"

He knocked again vigorously. A blind-cord creaked, a window went up
over a ship-chandler's shop next door, and a man thrust out his head.

"What's wrong?" he demanded.

"Sorry to disturb ye, Clemow; but old Rodriguez, here, bespoke us to
sweep his chimneys at five, and we can't get admittance."

"Why, I heard him unbolt for ye an hour ago!" said the ship-chandler.
"He woke me up with his noise, letting down the chain."

The door had a latch-handle and Mr. Trapp grasped it. "Drat me, but
you're right!" he exclaimed, as he pressed his thumb and the door at
once yielded. "Huh!" He stared into the empty passage, out of which
a room opened on either hand, each hung with cast-off suits which
seemed to sway slightly in the scanty light filtered through the
shutter-holes. "I don't stomach moving among these. Even in broad
daylight I'm never too sure there ain't a man hidden in one of 'em.
He might be dead, too--by the smell."

He stepped to the foot of the uncarpeted stairs. "Mister Rodriguez!"
he called. His voice echoed up past the cobwebbed landing and seemed
to go wandering aloft among unclean mysteries to the very roof.
Nobody answered.

"Mister Rodriguez!" he called again, and waited. "Let's try the
kitchen," he suggested. "We started with that, last time: and, if my
memory holds good, 'tis the only chimney he uses. He beds in a small
room right over us, next the roof, and keeps a fire going there
through the winter: but the flue of it leads into the same shaft--a
pretty wide shaft as I rec'llect."

We groped our way by the foot of the staircase and along a line of
cupboards to the kitchen. The window of this looked out upon a
backyard piled with refuse timber, packing-cases, and plaster
statuary broken and black with soot. Within, the hearth had been
swept as if in preparation for us. On the dirty table stood a
milk-jug with a news-sheet folded and laid across its top, a
half-loaf of bread, and a plate of meat--but of what kind we did not
pause to examine. It looked nauseous enough. A brindled cat made a
dash past us and upstairs. Its unexpected charge greatly unsettled
Mr. Trapp.

"It daunts me--I declare it do!" he confided hoarsely. "But he's
been here, anyway; and he expects us." He waved a hand towards the
hearth. "Shall I call again? Or what d'ye say to getting it over?"

"I'm ready," said I. To tell the truth, the inside of the chimney
seemed more inviting to me than the rest of the house. I was
accustomed to chimneys.

"Up we go, then!" Mr. Trapp began to spread his bags. He always used
the first person plural on these occasions--meaning, no doubt, that I
took with me his moral support. "The shaft's easy enough, I mind--
two storeys above this, and all the flues leadin' to your right.
I'll be out in the street by the time you hail."

I hadn't a doubt he would. "One week to Midsummer!" I cried, to
hearten me--for we were both counting the days now between us and the
fishing. He grinned, and up I went.

The chimney was foul, to be sure, but once past the first ten or a
dozen feet I mounted quickly. Towards the top the shaft narrowed so
that for a while I had my doubts if it could be squeezed through: but
I found, on reaching it, that the brickwork shelved inwards very
slightly, though furred or crusted with an extra thick coating of
soot below the vent. Through this I broke in triumph, sweating from
my haste; and brushing the filth from my eyes, leaned both arms on
the chimney-pot while I scanned the roofs around for a glimpse
between them, down to the street and Mr. Trapp. I did so at ease,
for a flue entered the main shaft immediately below the stack, which
was a decidedly dumpy one--in fact, less than five feet tall; so that
I supported myself not by the arms alone but by resting my toes on
the ridge where flue and shaft met.

Now, as the reader will remember, it was the height of summer, and
the day had brightened considerably since we entered the house.
The sudden sunshine set me blinking, and while I cleared my eyes it
seemed to me that a man--a dark figure--something, at any rate, and
something a great deal too large to be mistaken for a cat--stole from
under the gable above which my chimney rose, and, swiftly crossing a
patch of flat leaded roof to the right, disappeared around a
chimney-stack on the far side of it.

I ceased rubbing my eyes and stared at the stack. It was a tall one,
rising from a good fifteen feet below almost to a level with mine,
and I could not possibly look over it. _Something_, I felt sure,
lurked behind it, and my ears seemed to hold the sound of a soft
footstep. I forgot Mr. Trapp. By pulling myself a little higher I
could get a better view, not of the stack, but of the stretch of roof
beyond it: nobody could break cover in that direction and escape me.
I took a firm grip on the corroded bricks and heaved on them.

Next moment they had given way under my hands, falling inwards: and I
was falling with them.

I kicked out, striving to find again with my toes the ridge where the
flue joined the shaft--missed it--and went shooting down to the right
through a smother of soot.

The total fall--or slide, rather--was not a severe one, after all;
twenty feet perhaps, though uncomfortable enough for sixty. I pulled
myself up quite suddenly, my feet resting on a ledge which, as I
shook the soot off and recovered my wits, turned out to be the upper
sill of a grate. Then, growing suddenly cautious when the need for
caution was over, I descended the next foot or two back foremost, as
one goes down a ladder, and jumped out into the room clear of the
hearthstone.

And with that, as I turned, a scream rose to my throat and died
there. I had almost jumped upon the stretched-out body of a man.

CHAPTER VII.

I ESCAPE FROM THE JEW'S HOUSE.

It was Mr. Rodriguez. He lay face downward and slantwise across the
front of the hearth, with arms spread, fingers hooked, and his neck
protruding from the collar of his dingy dressing-gown like a plucked
fowl's. He had cast a slipper in falling, and the flesh of one heel
showed through its rent stocking. For a moment I supposed him in a
fit; the next, I was recoiling towards the wall, away from a dark
moist line which ran from under his left armpit and along the uneven
boards to the far corner by the window, and there, under a disordered
truckle-bed, spread itself in a pool.

With my eyes glued upon this horrid sight I slowly straightened
myself up--having crouched back until I felt the wall behind me--and
so grew aware of a door beside the chimney-breast, and that it stood
ajar upon the empty landing. The dead man's heels pointed towards
it, his head towards the window at the foot of the bed.

And still my shaken wits could not clutch at the meaning of what I
saw. I only felt that there was something horrible, menacing,
hideously malignant in the figure at my feet: only craved for
strength of will to dash by it, reach the door and fling myself down
the stairs--anywhere--away from it. Had it stirred, I believe it had
then and there destroyed my reason.

But it did not stir. And all the while I knew that the thing lay
with its breast in a bath of blood; that it had been stabbed in the
back and the blood welling down under the clothes had gathered in a
pool, ready to gush and spread on all sides as soon as the body
should be lifted or its attitude interfered with. I cannot tell how
I found time to reason this out; but I did.

I knew, too, that I could not scream aloud if I tried: but I had no
desire to try. _It_ might wake and lift up its head! I felt
backwards with my hand along the wall, groping unconsciously for
something to aid my spring towards the door; but desisted. For the
moment I could not lift a foot.

With that--either this was all a dream or I heard footsteps on the
flat roof outside; very slow, soft footsteps, too, as of somebody
walking on tiptoe. But if on tiptoe, why was he coming _towards_ me?
Yet so it was; my ear told me distinctly.

As his feet crunched the leads close outside the window I caught a
gleam of scarlet; then the frame grew dark between me and the
daylight, and through the pane a man peered cautiously into the room.

It was Archibald Plinlimmon.

He peered in, turning his face sideways for a better view and shading
it, after a moment, with his hand. So shaded, and with the daylight
behind it, his face after that first instant became an inscrutable
blur.

But while he peered speech broke from me--words and a wild laugh.

"Look at it! Look at it!" I cried, and pointed.

He drew back instantly, and was gone.

"Don't leave me! Mr. Plinlimmon--please don't leave me!" I made a
leap for the window--halted helplessly--and fell back again from the
body. I was alone again. But power to move had come back, and I
must use it while it lasted. If I could gain the stairs now . . .

Stealthily, and more stealthily as the fear returned and grew, I
reached the door, pushed it open, and looked out on the landing. But
for a worm-eaten trunk and a line of old suits dangling from pegs
around the wall, it was bare. The little light filtered through a
cracked and discoloured window high up in the slope of the roof.
The stairhead lay a short two yards from me, to be reached by one
bold leap.

This, however, was not what I first saw; nay, how or when I saw it is
a wonder still. For, across the landing, a door faced me; and, as I
pushed mine open, this door had moved--was moving yet, as if to shut.

It did not quite shut. It came to a standstill when almost a foot
ajar. Beyond it I could see yet other suits of clothes hanging: and
among these lurked someone, watching me, perhaps, through the chink
by the hinges. I was sure of it--was almost sure I had seen a hand
on the edge of the door; a hand with a ring on one of its fingers,
and just the edge, and no more, of a black cuff.

For perhaps five seconds I endured it, my hair lifting: then, with
one sharp scream I dashed back into the room and across the corpse;
struggled for a moment with the window-sash; and flinging it up,
dropped out upon the leads.

Out there, in the restorative sunshine, my first thought was to crawl
away as fast and as far as possible; to reach some hiding-place where
I might lie down and pant, unpursued by the horrors of that house.
The roofs on my right were flat; I staggered along them, halting at
every few steps to lean a hand for support against one or other of
the chimney-stacks, now growing warm in the sunshine.

From the far side of one, as I leaned clinging, a man sprang up,
almost at my feet. It was Archie Plinlimmon again. He had been
flattening himself against its shadow; and at first--so white and
fierce was his face--I made sure he meant to hurl me over and on to
the street below.

"What do you want? What have you seen?" Though he spoke fiercely,
his teeth chattered. "Oh--it's you!" he exclaimed, recognising me
through my soot.

"Mr. Plinlimmon--" I began.

"I didn't do it. I didn't--" He broke off. "For Heaven's sake, how
are we to get down out of this?"

"There's no way on the street side," I answered, "unless--"

He took me up short. "The street? We can't go that way--it's as
much as my neck's worth. Yours, too."

"Mr. Trapp's waiting for me," I answered stupidly.

"Who knows who isn't waiting?" he snapped. "We'll have to cut out of
this." He pointed downward on the side away from the street.
"I say, what happened? Who did it, eh?"

"I slipped in the chimney," I answered again. "He wanted his
chimneys swept this morning. We knocked--Mr. Trapp and I--and no one
answered: then we tried the door, and it opened. There was no one
about, and no one in the street but Sergeant Letcher."

He began to shake. "Sergeant Letcher? What do you know about
Sergeant Letcher?"

"Nothing, except that he was in the street--the man the bull chased,
you know."

He was shaking yet. "I ought to kill you," said he. "But I didn't
do it. Look here, show me a way down and I'll let you off.
You're used to this work, ain't you?"

"How did you come up?" I asked, innocently enough.

"By the Lord, if you ask questions, I'll strangle you! You were in
the room with--with _it_! I saw you: I'll swear I saw you. Get me
down out of this, and hide--get on board some ship, and clear.
See? If you breathe a word that you've seen me, I'll cut your heart
out. You understand me?"

I hadn't a doubt then that he was guilty. His fear was too craven.
"There's a warehouse at the end here," said I, and led the way to it.
But when we reached it, its roof rose in a sharp slope from the low
parapet guarding the leads where we stood.

"But I don't see," he objected; "and, anyway, I can't manage that."

I pointed to a louver skylight half-way up the roof. "We can prise
that open, or break it. It's easy enough to reach," I assured him.

He was extraordinarily clumsy on the slates, but obeyed my
instructions like a child. I wrenched at the wooden louvers.

"Got a knife?" I asked.

He produced one--an ugly-looking weapon, but clean. By good luck, we
did not need it; for as he passed it to me, the louver at which I was
tugging broke and came away in my hand. We easily loosened another
and, squeezing through, dropped into the loft upon a sliding pile of
grain.

The loft was dark enough; but a glimmer of light shone through the
chinks of a door at the far end. Unbolting it, we looked down, from
the height of thirty feet or so, into a deserted lane. Or rather _I_
looked down: for while I fumbled with the bolts Master Archie had
banged his head into something hard, and dropped, rubbing the hurt
and cursing.

It proved to be the timber cross-piece of a derrick used for hoisting
sacks of grain into the loft, working on an axle, and now swung
inboard for the night. A double rope ran through the pulley at its
end and had been hitched back over the iron winch which worked it.
We pushed the derrick out over the lane and I manned the winch
handle, while Master Archie caught hold of the hook and pulley at the
end of the double line. Checking the handle with all my strength I
lowered him as noiselessly as I could. As his feet touched the
cobbles below he let go and, without a thought of my safety, made off
down the lane.

I tugged the derrick inboard and recaptured the rope; cogged the
winch, swung out, dropped hand over hand into the lane, and raced up
it with all the terrors of the law at my heels.

CHAPTER VIII.

POOR TOM BOWLING.

Master Archibald's advice to me--to escape down to the water-side and
conceal myself on shipboard--though acute enough in its way, took no
account of certain difficulties none the less real because a soldier
would naturally overlook them. To hide in a ship's hold you must
first get on board of her unobserved, which in broad daylight is next
to impossible. Moreover, to reach Cattewater I must either fetch a
circuit through purlieus where every householder knew me and every
urchin was a nodding acquaintance, or make a straight dash close by
the spot where by this time Mr. Trapp would be getting anxious--if
indeed Southside Street and the Barbican were not already resounding
with the hue and cry. No: if friendly vessel were to receive and
hide me, she lay far off, across the heart of the town, amid the
shipping of the Dock. Yonder, too, Miss Plinlimmon resided.

If you think it absurd that my thoughts turned to her, whose weak
arms could certainly shield no one from the clutches of the law, I
beg you to remember my age, and that I had never known another
protector. She, at least, would hear me and never doubt my
innocence. She must hear, too, of Archie's danger.

That to reach her, even if I eluded pursuit to the Hospital gate, I
must run the gauntlet of Mr. George--who would assuredly ask
questions--and possibly of Mr. Scougall, scarcely occurred to me.
To reach her--to sob out my story in her arms and hear her voice
soothing me--this only I desired for the moment; and it seemed that
if I could only hear her voice speaking, I might wake and feel these
horrors dissolve like an evil dream. Meanwhile I ran.

But at the end of a lane leading into Treville Street, and as I leapt
aside to avoid colliding with the hind-wheels of a hackney-coach
drawn in there and at a standstill close by the kerb, to my
unspeakable fright I felt myself gripped by the jacket-collar.

"Hi! Bring-to and 'vast kicking, young coal-dust! Where're ye
bound, hey? Answer me, and take your black mop out of a gentleman's
weskit."

"To--to Dock, sir," I stammered. "Let me go, please: I'm in a
hurry."

My captor held me out at arm's length and eyed me. He was a sailor,
and rigged out in his best shore-going clothes--tarpaulin hat, blue
coat and waistcoat, and a broad leathern belt to hold up his duck
trousers, on which my sooty head had left its mark. He grinned at me
good-naturedly. I saw that he had been drinking.

"In a hurry? And what's your hurry about? Business?"

"Ye--es, sir."

"'Stonishing what spirit boys'll put into work nowadays! I've seen
boys run for a leg o' mutton, and likewise I've seen 'em run when
they've broken ship; but on the path o' duty, my sonny, you've the
legs of any boy in my ex-perience. Well, for once, you'll put
pleasure first. I'm bound for Dock or thereabouts myself, and under
convoy." He waved his hand up the street, where twelve or fifteen
hackney-coaches stood in line ahead.

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