Hungry Hill (5 page)

“How do you know this?”

“Two or three of Captain Nicholson’s own men were speaking of it, sir. The ore is taken up from the mine right enough, but it’s when it is above ground that the mischief starts. I understand that Captain Nicholson is to order some system of watching by night, for it is then that the stuff must be taken away, but whether he has done so or not I cannot say.”

“Is the matter discussed at all in Doonhaven?”

“Not directly, sir. But I had the feeling that the people knew about it all the same.”

John Brodrick thanked the master of the Henrietta, and, ordering his carriage, drove back to Lletharrog, resolved to write to Nicholson that evening and demand an immediate explanation. The letter was never posted, for the very next day there arrived a letter from the mining captain himself, written in great haste and obviously in a state of extreme agitation.

“A system of plunder is in progress,” he wrote, “that, if it continues, will eventually put a stop to our work. Little by little I have noticed losses of material that was stacked above ground, ready for shipment, but two days ago a large consignment disappeared, over which I had stationed a watch, for I had my suspicions that the theft took place after dark. The man in charge-one of my own people, a Cornishman named Collins-was found in the small hours of the morning with a broken head, and is not likely to recover. It seems he was struck from behind, and saw nothing of his assailant. This attack has so intimidated the rest of his fellows that I am having difficulty in getting men to undertake sentry duty at all, and some of them are even talking of packing their things and returning to Cornwall with their families.”

John Brodrick read the letter aloud to his daughters and announced his intention of travelling home to Clonmere immediately.

“I shall send word to London to Henry and John to join me,” he said, “if they can see their way to do so. I have little doubt who is at the bottom of the trouble.”

“You mean Morty Donovan?” said Barbara, after a moment’s hesitation.

“He may not take part in the actual plunder, in fact I think he is too shrewd a man to do so,” replied her father, “but if he is not the brains behind it I shall be extremely astonished.”

“Who do you suppose wrote the anonymous letter?” asked Eliza.

“I neither know nor care,” said John Brodrick. “Possibly one of my tenants who is too scared of Morty Donovan to declare himself.

At any rate, the writer of the letter does not matter. What matters is that the men responsible should be tracked and punished, and this I am determined to do, if I risk my own head being broken in consequence.”

His daughters looked at each other in distress.

“I implore you,” said Barbara, “not to do anything rash. Could you not get assistance from the garrison on the Island?”

“Dear child,” returned her father, “if I cannot quell one or two of my own country-people who have fallen into mischief without engaging the military to take up the matter for me, I should never be able to hold up my head in Doonhaven again. Your great-grandfather did not ask for help when he put down the smuggling seventy-five years ago.”

“No,” said Jane, “but he got shot in the back for doing it.”

John Brodrick looked at his youngest daughter with severity.

“I suppose your brother John has been talking to you,” he said.

Jane shook her head, her eyes filling with tears, and suddenly she got up from her chair at the breakfast-table and ran round to her father, putting her arms about him.

“If you go home,” she said, “please let me come with you. I’m not afraid of the Donovans or anybody, and you will need someone to look after you and see that the house is in order. I’m not a child any longer, I’m nearly fourteen.”

John Brodrick smiled at her, and patted her cheek.

“D’y think Copper John cannot take care of himself?” he said. “Don’t look embarrassed, Eliza, at your end of the table. I know very well what I am called in Doonhaven. So, Jane child, you would look after me, and see that those lazy servants have the water heated, and the dinner served on clean plates, and the linen on my bed not wringing wet?

Well, you must ask Barbara her opinion; it is not within my province. But whatever is decided, I leave here tomorrow for Bronsea in order to embark in the ship that sails for Slane in the evening.”

A letter was dispatched to London informing Henry and John of their father’s return to Doonhaven, and asking them to join him at Clonmere if they could conveniently do so, and the following day John Brodrick and Jane, accompanied by old Martha, embarked on board the steam-packet that plied regularly between Bronsea and Slane. John Brodrick took the opportunity while in Slane, where they were obliged to put up for the night, to see if he could glean any information there about the illegal sale of copper, and if it was known who had the handling of it.

The manager of the shipping-office was interested and sympathetic,, but hardly helpful. He admitted that he had heard of an underground market in the county and that there were always unscrupulous agents who were prepared to handle the stuff and have it shipped across the water to the smelting companies, but who the agents were, and what shipping firms were concerned, he was not prepared to say.

John Brodrick left the shipping-office in a spirit of grim determination. Matters were even worse than he had expected. He had been away exactly three months, and in that space of time a system of plunder had developed that bade fair to put an end to the mining business altogether. He blamed Captain Nicholson for not having made him aware sooner of what was going on, and Ned Brodrick too.

The latter was awaiting them in Mundy, and on seeing the expression on his employer’s face, at once sought to justify himself for not having written.

“I would have taken ship and come over to you at Bronsea,” he persisted, “but that Captain Nicholson was so persistent that he could deal with the matter himself. And to tell you the truth, sir, I have been so hard put to it with the business of the estate that I felt I must leave the concerns of the mine to him.”

John Brodrick said nothing. He guessed that the truth of the matter was that his brother had passed the three months of his employer’s absence in idleness, sitting about in his mother’s cottage at Oakmount with his feet in the fireplace, and when the weather was fine enough shooting the woodcock on Doon Island, or courting one of the numerous widows in the neighbourhood, who apparently found his lean form and cadaverous appearance not wanting in attraction.

The carriage covered the distance from Mundy to Doonhaven in half the time it had taken a few years back, for the new road had been completed at last, chiefly owing to John Brodrick’s influence with the member of Parliament, “The only injury it can receive,” he observed to Jane, who was leaning from the window of the carriage, “is from the banks that support the road giving way, but I see no prospect of that ever happening. I wonder if Simon Flower has won his bet, and has travelled the distance in two hours, as he boasted he would. Here we are at the mine. You had better drive on to Clonmere with Martha, Jane, and send the carriage back for Ned and myself.”

A thin rain was falling now, and the summit of Hungry Hill was hidden in mist. A broad track led from the road to the mine, the surface deeply rutted by the trucks that passed to and from the mine down to the harbour at Doonhaven, and beside this track were beak the miners’ dwellings, the long row of wooden huts, and finally the sheds and tall chimney of the mine itself. The men who were not below ground, but were employed on the surface, touched their hats when they saw the Director approach, and looked at him with a certain amount of curiosity, there having been no rumour of his return. It was soon known throughout the mine that “Copper John” was home, and the general feeling was one of relief, mingled with apprehension, for stern measures would certainly be taken to deal with the theft of material, and the innocent might suffer with the guilty.

Captain Nicholson received the Director in the counting-house, where they could talk without fear of being overheard. His honest face, usually so full of confidence, was lined with anxiety, and it was plain that he had not slept properly for days. He confirmed that the copper was being smuggled out of the mine and taken into the next county, also to Mundy and to Slane, and there disposed of, but the fellows who were doing it were too cunning to be caught.

“I am convinced,” he declared, “that the men I brought with me have no part in the business, and that it is certain of the local men, Mr. Brodrick, who are to blame. Those of the local men who are not responsible shield their companions, from a misguided sense of loyalty and from fear of reprisals.”

“Do you search the men when they come off duty?”

“I do, Mr. Brodrick. Every man goes to the washing-room when he comes up from below, and is searched, my own people the same as the others. We can find nothing upon a single one of them. And yet the stuff must disappear from the dressing-sheds, before being loaded into the trolleys.

No other way would be possible.”

“I should like to go down into the mine, Nicholson.”

“You shall do so, sir; I will accompany you myself.” The two men donned overalls, and the specially shaped hats, with a lighted candle in front, worn by the miners, and descended the long ladder that led to the various levels below ground, some so narrow that they were only wide enough for each man to go single file. Copper John inspected every gallery, and spoke to each man he saw.

During the time he spent underground he left no corner of the mine unvisited, he even helped to lay the charge of gunpowder against one portion of the rock that required blasting, and waited for the subsequent explosion and the clearing of the rubble, and when he and Nicholson climbed at last to the surface it was already late in the afternoon. Copper John showed no sign of fatigue, however, and proceeded at once to inspect the dressing- and sorting-sheds, and even the row of trolleys drawn up in line by the side of the track, until the gathering darkness made further exploration out of the question.

“Well, Nicholson,” he admitted, “we have had little success so far, but I am in no way dispirited, and I think you may be certain that before long I shall get to the bottom of this business. Continue as you are doing, and search every man as he comes up from work, also set a watch by night, paying the men who do so double wages. I shall be over here again in the morning.”

On the following afternoon Copper John set out from Clonmere westward to the Kileen moors, in company with his agent and brother, Ned Brodrick.

The air was soft and warm for the lateness of the season, and the snipe twisted and dived above Kileen bog, flushed by Ned Brodrick’s water spaniel, which ran ahead of his master, his keen nose to the ground.

Doonhaven lay beneath them and behind them, hidden by the woods of Clonmere, with the tip of Hungry Hill in the far distance pointing to the sky. The brothers ignored the road that would have taken them westward across country to the Denmare river, and, turning right, struck a path that ran closely beside the bog for about a mile or so, until it was ended abruptly by a fence that enclosed some farm-buildings, while a rough drive wound up the short, steep hill to the house at the top.

It was a drear, desolate spot, with the piece of garden round about bare and uncultivated, and the house itself of a dirty brown stone, with large, staring windows, for the most part curtainless, and as they walked up the strip of garden a mongrel dog, half-greyhound, half-terrier, came snarling from an outhouse, his tail between his legs.

A woman appeared at the door of the house on hearing the disturbance, and, seeing the strangers, made at first to shut the door, then, apparently thinking better of it, opened it wide, and curtseyed.

She must have been good-looking in her youth, and even now there was something fine about her features and her dark eyes, while she held herself with dignity.

“It’s not often we have your company, Mr.

Brodrick,” she said. “I’m afraid you must have found it rough walking out to this poor place, with the road the state it is in. Did you wish to see my husband?”

“I do, Mrs. Donovan,” replied the other.

“Is he within?”

“He is, and has not been outside for these last three weeks or more, so troubled he has been with that leg of his, that gives him no peace, day or night. You will find him in the parlour, where he has his bed now, since his illness. Don’t trouble to wipe the mud from your shoes, Mr. Brodrick, it can do no damage to my poor carpet that is falling to bits for want of repair.”

The note of self-pity was not lost on John Brodrick. Apologising for the darkness of the passage, the woman opened the door of the parlour.

“Here is Mr. Brodrick and the agent to see you,” she announced. “the gentlemen having walked all the way from Clonmere.”

The room was cold, and full of smoke from the turf fire that gave little heat, and lying upon the trestle bed beneath the window was Morty Donovan, propped up by many pillows that were none too clean.

His mahogany face was paler, and he had aged considerably since John Brodrick had seen him last. He lifted his head at their entrance, and turned his light blue eyes upon them with a blank expression.

“Sit down, gentlemen,” he said, “if you can find a chair that will bear you without breaking. I cannot stand up myself, as you can see, this leg of mine having betrayed me at last. Bring some claret for Mr.

Brodrick, woman, and three glasses, instead of gaping there. We may be poor, but at least don’t let ourselves be wanting in hospitality to the gentry when they call upon us, and I have claret yet in my cellar that would bear comparison with any you may have in Clonmere, Mr. Brodrick.”

The agent looked hopefully at the woman. A glass of claret would have been more than welcome to him at the moment, but his employer waved his hand in dissent.

“I did not come to your house to drink your health or my own, Donovan,” he said, “nor to pass the time of day as neighbours. I have come to tell you that I am perfectly acquainted with the mischief you are causing on Hungry Hill, and that I intend to put a stop to it. It is for that purpose alone that I have returned to this country. If you do not command the men under you to desist in their system of plunder, I shall have every man at the mine arrested and taken into custody.”