“a man to see you, sir.”
“his name?”
“’tis richard breeds, sir, of the ‘dog and duck.’”
“breeds?”
“the landlord, sir.”
“what does he want?”
for answer, dennis wriggled his shoulders, with a scared look.
“you don’t know, of course. tell him to wait me in the hall.”
a few minutes later mr. tuke descended the stairs, and, happening to be in slippered feet, walked without sound in search of his visitor, whom, curiously, he came upon comprehensively examining the fastenings of the oaken shutters, his bullet-head bent low. at a cough the man started erect, and, gasping with embarrassment, ducked an awkward bow to the master of the house.
“they are of good, tough wrought-iron,” said the latter grimly.
“so i see, sir. i was takin’ a hint for my own little place with all respect. i’m lonely situated, too.”
he lied, of course, with scarcely professional ease. he was a short, fleshy man, with an unwholesome damp skin like veal, and rum-buds over his face in patches, as if he were stricken with a plague—which, indeed, he was, of a bibulous order. his manner was very nervous and self-depreciatory, and the only accent of character that marked his tumid physiognomy was in the expression of his ratty and restless little eyes.
mr. tuke took his measure during a moment of silence that was obviously disconcerting to him.
“now, sir,” said the first, at length. “what is your business?”
“i called, your honour, to axe if i could supply your honour with liquor, milk, eggs and garden produce. i keep the ‘dog and duck’ on the stockbridge road, and maybe, i thought, ’twould be handier to your honour and more reasonable-like to deal at a half-way house.”
“that depends. i leave these matters to my servant, who does his catering, i believe, in the village. i know your house of call, and have marked one or two of the visitors you entertain.”
“maybe, sir, maybe. it’s not my business, now is it, to put every gentleman as demands a measure of ale through his catechism?”
“that seems an odd answer. did i make any reflections? scarcely, i think. the law takes means to deal with rogues without consulting the prejudices of landlords.”
the visitor looked very ill at ease. clearly the conversation had taken a turn entirely unexpected by him.
“your honour’s perfectly right,” he said, pressing his damp hands together. “yet the law gives us no licence to refuse a customer for the reason we don’t like his looks.”
eliciting no response—“i’m a peaceable man,” he went on, with some anguish of protest. “give me bowl and pipe and a snug ingle-corner, and fortin may set her cap at me, and die a old maid despite. but ain’t it hard, sir—now ain’t it hard that i’m to be coloured with the reputation of them as takes shelter under my roof and find my character in question for the mere contact?”
“you enlarge greatly upon a hint,” said mr. tuke. “i understand, then, that you have unwelcome guests to entertain?”
mr. breeds winced almost imperceptibly; but his eyes took a glint of cunning.
“i don’t say that,” said he. “i speak on general premises, as they calls ’em, and on behalf o’ the fraternity. mr. brander—him you may a’ seen—is to my knowledge a scholard and an angler; which is not, by your honour’s favour, indictable offences—no, not either of ’em.”
“assuredly. and that other gentleman, with the beetroot face and venerable white hair?”
the landlord sucked his lips together, in an absurd affectation of perplexity.
“oh, him!” he cried suddenly and jovially. “that’s mr. fern, that is—a traveller, from abroad, come on a tower through the old country.”
then, in the same breath, he went on deprecatingly, with a ludicrous decline of spirit:
“it’s all force the favour and take the blame with us, sir. i’m a peaceable soul that loves a pot, and circumstances conspire to upset me.”
mr. tuke looked at the man keenly. somehow the latter seemed in travail with that he could not, or would not, give expression to. his hands shook, and beads of leaden perspiration stood on his forehead. by and by he glanced stealthily at the other, and went flaccid to see himself under scrutiny.
“mr. tuke—your honour,” said he, in a hoarse, vibrative voice, “i weren’t never fitted to be a landlord—that’s the solemn truth. a man as keeps a inn stands balanced between his custom and his conscience; and then comes an extry pot and bowls him off of his legs. give me your word to compensate me agen the loss, and i’ll shut up the ‘dog and duck’ to-morrow and set the place a-fire.”
he said it in a tentative, apologetic way, and was quite ready to join in the other’s cackle of merriment over the suggestion.
“no, no, my friend,” said mr. tuke. “i’ve plenty on my conscience without the guardianship of a scrupulous innkeeper.”
then he added sternly:
“you’ve said much or little, but enough. dree your pothouse weird, my friend; and take the consequences if you knowingly harbour law-breakers. we’ve talked round the subject; and now you can hardly expect me, upon my soul, to fall in with your offer of a half-way market.”
“very well, sir,” said the landlord, chapfallen; and, “bear in mind, mr. breeds,” said the other, “that to be caught examining a householder’s shutters is scarcely a recommendation to his favour.”
he saw the fellow off the premises—marked his going till he was well out of sight; then returned to the hall and pondered the interview.
this seemed to him, as regarded the visitor’s share in it, a confirmation of his suspicions that there was a certain mystery toward which he was the indefinite subject and centre. more—it convinced him that if mischief of any sort was somewhere in process of incubation the tavern of which mr. breeds was landlord was the place most likely to contain the egg.
now, as a man who had once already taken his own life in hand, he was not greatly sensitive to alarms that might have unnerved persons of a more precise conduct. indeed, in the tasteless monotony of his present days, he would have welcomed, perhaps, the necessity of some vigorous action justly undertaken on his own behalf. but it was this blind search for a clue to the intangible—this turning round and round in a vain effort to grasp a chimera, that at first worried and depressed him.
if he could only have received certain confirmation of his surmises that some rascal intrigue was afoot; if in all his little world there had been a single soul he could trust and depend upon, his course would have been easier. as it was, how did the case stand? a very desert loneliness had begotten in him already a distrust of his neighbours, of whom, undoubtedly, were a few of shady visage and equipment. but, here, surely every ale-house had its personnel of loafers and idle rogues; and it seemed monstrous to assume that in broad day, within call, as it were, of a considerable village, a plot—of which a private gentleman, making out life meagrely in a near empty house, was the object—could be hatching at his very door.
that was so; yet his reckoning must include those two enigmatical visitors, the professed end of each of which was far from being, he felt positive, its real one; and must include mr. joseph corby’s pregnant allusions—to the crazed girl—to some unknown quantity with a fanciful title.
considering all this from each and every aspect, he did so work himself up to a state of savage irritation over the intolerable strain it entailed upon a mind prone to pre-occupation in less morbid matters, that he must have in the unfortunate whimple and ease upon him his burden of annoyance.
“tell me,” said he. “do you know anything of this man breeds by reputation?”
“i know—yes, sir; i have heard of him.”
“oh! for heaven’s sake, man, give a straightforward answer for once. i ask you what is his reputation?”
“indeed, sir, it is none of the best; though i have heard nought immediately to his discredit.”
“again and again. isn’t it a mere slander to impute evil and back from specifying it? what is he charged with?”
“nothing, but that his house is the resort of topers and padding gentry.”
“and is it on that account you make a sealed coffin of ‘delsrop’ o’ nights and would have me suffocate in my bedroom?”
the servant showed a distressed hesitation.
“is it, i say?” persisted his master.
“yes, sir—indeed—that is—oh, sir! ’tis an old habit with me. the house is isolated—dark; it lies in the shadow—my god! in what a shadow.”
mr. tuke stared in positive amazement. was the fellow crazed like his sister? a pretty thing if he should discover himself the keeper of a private lunatic asylum.
“control your emotions,” he said coolly. whimple’s lips were trembling. the man had permitted himself an outburst of which for hours he would feel the effects.
“i would ask you,” said mr. tuke, with an irrepressible little sneer—“if the question is unexciting—when did the present owner of the ‘dog and duck’ come into possession?”
“’twas last martinmas, sir. the tavern then had been long to let. ’twas last martinmas.”
“and whence did he come? do you know?”
“no, sir. i don’t know.”
“now, mr. whimple, i want to ask you another question. have you any reason to understand what is implied by the lake of wine?”
if he had accused the man of murder, the latter could not have gone a more ghastly white, or have more by his expression associated himself with that he disowned. he even staggered a little where he stood; and it was painful to witness his sick effort at self-control.
“none whatever?” echoed mr. tuke, closely scrutinizing the servant’s face, and interpreting the tortured answer from the motion of his lips.
“your reply,” he went on, biting as acid, “is convincing, of course. why should you know? i don’t myself, and i am as much interested in the matter as you, maybe. i only asked, because i seek the clue to a mystery that vents itself in strange visits, and secret interviews, and unaccountable sounds at night. then, too, there is a footprint on the flower-bed under the hall-window this morning; but what of that when i have a caretaker so zealous and so scrupulous? only, i take some amusement out of puzzles; but i am impatient, and very apt, at the last, to cut a knot that bothers me with a bullet. you can go.”
he had to repeat his permission before the servant seemed to understand and to gather the nerve to retreat. but, the moment he was vanished, the baronet clapped his hand on the table, with an oath.
“the fellow is in the league against me, whatever it is!” he cried in inward fierceness; and his soul rejoiced that at last it had some tangible justification for its innate antipathy to the man.
it was patent that this lake of wine was the clue to the riddle and the pass-word of the conspirators. but with the last how deeply was the caretaker involved; and to what extent was he to be depended on in the performance of his nightly services? probably his officiousness in that respect was employed as a blind. not probably was his habitual nervousness assumed. in greatest likelihood he was in weak process of corruption—one hand held to his duty, the other to his interest; and, if this were so, no doubt was as to which way his constitutional depravity would eventually decide him to incline.
then would it be wise to here and now give him short shrift of notice, and so rid the house of an incubus and an embarrassment? scarcely; for so should he—robert tuke—not only advertise himself in apprehension of his surroundings, whereby his enemies might be tempted to a bolder policy; but he should drive from his camp an informer, whose uses, so long as he assumed himself undetected, must all be for his intended victim.
no; the fellow must stay for the present, and be treated with a show of consideration, too; else would mistrust awakened in him greatly complicate the situation.
it was a maddening hotch-potch of confusion; the more so as all this fabric of suspicion, being builded on conjecture, might at any moment resolve itself into thin air.
