Agatha Webb (22 page)

The torture of the moment continued.

"He climbs like a squirrel," remarked Dr. Talbot, with a touch of
enthusiasm. "Look at him now—he's on the quarterdeck and will be
down in the cabins before you can say Jack Robinson. I warrant
they have told him to hurry. Captain Dunlap isn't the man to wait
five minutes after the ropes are pulled in."

"Those two men have shrunk away behind some mast or other," cried
Knapp. "They are the fellows he's after. But what can they have to
do with the murder? Have you ever seen them here about town, Dr.
Talbot?"

"Not that I remember; they have a foreign air about them. Look
like South Americans."

"Well, they're going to South America. Sweetwater can't stop
them. He has barely time to get off the ship himself. There goes
the last rope! Have they forgotten him? They're drawing up the
ladder."

"No: the mate stops them; see, he's calling the fellow. I can hear
his voice, can't you? Sweetwater's game is up. He'll have to leave
in a hurry. What's the rumpus now?"

"Nothing, only they've scattered to look for him; the fox is down
in the cabins and won't come up, laughing in his sleeve, no doubt,
at keeping the vessel waiting while he hunts up his witness."

"If it's one of those two men he's laying a trap for he won't
snare him in a hurry. They're sneaks, those two, and—Why, the
sailors are coming back shaking their heads. I can almost hear
from here the captain's oaths."

"And such a favourable wind for getting out of the harbour!
Sweetwater, my boy, you are distinguishing yourself. If your
witness don't pan out well you won't hear the last of this in a
hurry."

"It looks as if they meant to sail without waiting to put him
ashore," observed Frederick in a low tone, too carefully modulated
not to strike his father as unnatural.

"By jingoes, so it does!" ejaculated Knapp. "There go the sails!
The pilot's hand is on the wheel, and Dr. Talbot, are you going to
let your cunning amateur detective and his important witness slip
away from you like this?"

"I cannot help myself," said the coroner, a little dazed himself
at this unexpected chance. "My voice wouldn't reach them from this
place; besides they wouldn't heed me if it did. The ship is
already under way and we won't see Sweetwater again till the
pilot's boat comes back."

Mr. Sutherland moved from the window and crossed to the door like
a man in a dream. Frederick, instantly conscious of his departure,
turned to follow him, but presently stopped and addressing Knapp
for the first time, observed quietly:

"This is all very exciting, but I think your estimate of this
fellow Sweetwater is just. He's a busybody and craves notoriety
above everything. He had no witness on board, or, if he had, it
was an imaginary one. You will see him return quite crestfallen
before night, with some trumped-up excuse of mistaken identity."

The shrug which Knapp gave dismissed Sweetwater as completely from
the affair as if he had never been in it.

"I think I may now regard myself as having this matter in my sole
charge," was his curt remark, as he turned away, while Frederick,
with a respectful bow to Dr. Talbot, remarked in leaving:

"I am at your service, Dr. Talbot, if you require me to testify at
the inquest in regard to this will. My testimony can all be
concentrated into the one sentence, 'I did not expect this
bequest, and have no theories to advance in explanation of it.'
But it has made me feel myself Mrs. Webb's debtor, and given me a
justifiable interest in the inquiry which, I am told, you open to-
morrow into the cause and manner of her death. If there is a
guilty person in this case, I shall raise no barrier in the way of
his conviction."

And while the coroner's face still showed the embarrassment which
this last sentence called up, his mind being now, as ever, fixed
on Amabel, Frederick offered his arm to his father, whose
condition was not improved by the excitements of the last half-
hour, and proceeded to lead him from the building.

Whatever they thought, or however each strove to hide their
conclusions from the other, no words passed between them till they
came in full sight of the sea, on a distant billow of which the
noble-ship bound for the Brazils rode triumphantly on its outward
course. Then Mr. Sutherland remarked, with a suggestive glance at
the vessel:

"The young man who has found an unexpected passage on that vessel
will not come back with the pilot."

Was the sigh which was Frederick's only answer one of relief? It
certainly seemed so.

Mr. Sutherland was right. Sweetwater did not return with the
pilot. According to the latter there was no Sweetwater on board
the ship to return. At all events the minutest search had not
succeeded in finding him in the cabins, though no one had seen him
leave the vessel, or, indeed, seen him at all after his hasty dash
below decks. It was thought on board that he had succeeded in
reaching shore before the ship set sail, and the pilot was
suitably surprised at learning this was not so. So were
Sweetwater's friends and associates with the exception of a
certain old gentleman living on the hill, and Knapp the detective.
He, that is the latter, had his explanation at his tongue's end:

"Sweetwater is a fakir. He thought he could carry off the honours
from the regular force, and when he found he couldn't he quietly
disappeared. We shall hear of him again in the Brazils."

An opinion that speedily gained ground, so that in a few hours
Sweetwater was all but forgotten, save by his mother, whose heart
was filled with suspense, and by Mr. Sutherland, whose breast was
burdened by gratitude. The amazing fact of Frederick, the village
scapegrace and Amabel's reckless, if aristocratic, lover, having
been made the legatee of the upright Mrs. Webb's secret savings
had something to do with this. With such a topic at hand, not only
the gossips, but those who had the matter of Agatha's murder in
hand, found ample material to occupy their thoughts and tongues,
without wasting time over a presumptuous busybody, who had not
wits enough to know that five minutes before sailing-time is an
unfortunate moment in which to enter a ship.

And where was Sweetwater, that he could not be found on the shore
or on the ship? We will follow him and see. Accustomed from his
youth to ramble over the vessels while in port, he knew this one
as well as he did his mother's house. It was, therefore, a
surprise to the sailors when, shortly after the departure of the
pilot, they came upon him lying in the hold, half buried under a
box which had partially fallen upon him. He was unconscious, or
appeared to be so, and when brought into open light showed marks
of physical distress and injury; but his eye was clear and his
expression hardly as rueful as one would expect in a man who finds
himself en route for the Brazils with barely a couple of dollars
in his pocket and every prospect of being obliged to work before
the mast to earn his passage. Even the captain noticed this and
eyed him with suspicion. But Sweetwater, rousing to the
necessities of the occasion, forthwith showed such a mixture of
discouragement and perplexity that the honest sailor was deceived
and abated half at least of his oaths. He gave Sweetwater a
hammock and admitted him to the mess, but told him that as soon as
his bruises allowed him to work he should show himself on deck or
expect the rough treatment commonly bestowed on stowaways.

It was a prospect to daunt some men, but not Sweetwater. Indeed it
was no more than he had calculated upon when he left his savings
behind with his old mother and entered upon this enterprise with
only a little change in his pocket. He had undertaken out of love
and gratitude to Mr. Sutherland to rid Frederick of a dangerous
witness and he felt able to complete the sacrifice. More than
that, he was even strangely happy for a time. The elation of the
willing victim was his, that is for a few short hours, then he
began to think of his mother. How had she borne his sudden
departure? What would she think had befallen him, and how long
would he have to wait before he could send her word of his safety?
If he was to be of real service to the man he venerated, he must
be lost long enough for the public mind to have become settled in
regard to the mysteries of the Webb murder and for his own
boastful connection with it to be forgotten. This might mean years
of exile. He rather thought it did; meanwhile his mother! Of
himself he thought little.

By sundown he felt himself sufficiently recovered from his bruises
to go up on deck. It was a mild night, and the sea was running in
smooth long waves that as yet but faintly presaged the storm
brewing on the distant horizon. As he inhaled the fresh air, the
joy of renewed health began to infuse its life into his veins and
lift the oppression from his heart, and, glad of a few minutes of
quiet enjoyment, he withdrew to a solitary portion of the deck and
allowed himself to forget his troubles in contemplation of the
rapidly deepening sky and boundless stretch of waters.

But such griefs and anxieties as weighed upon this man's breast
are not so easily shaken off. Before he realised it his thoughts
had recurred to the old theme, and he was wondering if he was
really of sufficient insignificance in the eyes of his fellow-
townsmen not to be sought for and found in that distant country to
which he was bound. Would they, in spite of his precautions,
suspect that he had planned this evasion and insist on his return,
or would he be allowed to slip away and drop out of sight like the
white froth he was watching on the top of the ever-shifting waves?
He had boasted of possessing a witness. Would they believe that
boast and send a detective in search of him, or would they take
his words for the bombast they really were and proceed with their
investigations in happy relief at the loss of his intrusive
assistance?

As this was a question impossible for him to answer, he turned to
other thoughts and fretted himself for a while with memories of
Amabel's disdain and Frederick's careless acceptance of a
sacrifice he could never know the cost of, mixed strangely with
relief at being free of it all and on the verge of another life.
As the dark settled, his head fell farther and farther forward on
the rail he was leaning against, till he became to any passing eye
but a blurred shadow mixing with other shadows equally immovable.

Unlike them, however, his shadow suddenly shifted. Two men had
drawn near him, one speaking pure Spanish and the other English.
The English was all that Sweetwater could understand, and this
half of the conversation was certainly startling enough. Though he
could not, of coarse, know to what or whom it referred, and though
it certainly had nothing to do with him, or any interest he
represented or understood, he could not help listening and
remembering every word. The English-speaking man uttered the first
sentence he comprehended. It was this:

"Shall it be to-night?"

The answer was in Spanish.

Again the English voice:

"He has come up. I saw him distinctly as he passed the second
mast."

More Spanish; then English:

"You may if you want to, but I'll never breathe easy while he's on
the ship. Are you sure he's the fellow we fear?"

A rapid flow of words from which Sweetwater got nothing. Then
slowly and distinctly in the sinister tones he had already begun
to shiver at:

"Very good. The R. F. A. should pay well for this," with the quick
addition following a hurried whisper: "All right! I'd send a dozen
men to the bottom for half that money. But 'ware there! Here's a
fellow watching us! If he has heard—"

Sweetwater turned, saw two desperate faces projected toward him,
realised that something awful, unheard of, was about to happen,
and would have uttered a yell of dismay, but that the very
intensity of his fright took away his breath. The next minute he
felt himself launched into space and enveloped in the darkness of
the chilling waters. He had been lifted bodily and flung headlong
into the sea.

Sweetwater's one thought as he sank was, "Now Mr. Sutherland need
fear me no longer."

But the instinct of life is strong in every heart, and when he
found himself breathing the air again he threw out his arms wildly
and grasped a spar.

It was life to him, hope, reconnection with his kind. He clutched,
clung, and, feeling himself floating, uttered a shout of mingled
joy and appeal that unhappily was smothered in the noise of the
waters and the now rapidly rising wind.

Whence had come this spar in his desperate need? He never knew,
but somewhere in his remote consciousness an impression remained
of a shock to the waves following his own plunge into the water,
which might mean that this spar had been thrown out after him,
perhaps by the already repentant hands of the wretches who had
tossed him to his death. However it came, or from whatever source,
it had at least given him an opportunity to measure his doom and
realise the agonies of hope when it alternates with despair.

The darkness was impenetrable. It was no longer that of heaven,
but of the nether world, or so it seemed to this dazed soul,
plunged suddenly from dreams of exile into the valley of the
shadow of death. And such a death! As he realised its horrors, as
he felt the chill of night and the oncoming storm strike its
piercing fangs into his marrow, and knew that his existence and
the hope of ever again seeing the dear old face at the fireside
rested upon the strength of his will and the tenacity of his life-
clutch, he felt his heart fail, and the breath that was his life
cease in a gurgle of terror. But he clung on, and, though no
comfort came, still clung, while vague memories of long-ago
shipwrecks, and stories told in his youth of men, women, and
children tossing for hours on a drifting plank, flashed through
his benumbed brain, and lent their horror to his own sensations of
apprehension and despair.