Blind Corner and Perishable Goods Read online

  “Dear, dear,” said Mansel. “That’s shocking. Why, the well will be full before dawn. You might just as well have rested today. Never mind. There’s nothing like exercise. And I expect you miss Ellis and Bunch.” That shaft stung Job into speech.

  ‘“Miss Ellis’?” he groaned. “Oh, good night, nurse!” I was shaking with laughter, but Mansel only smiled.

  “I passed them, coming from Salzburg. To be frank I don’t think they saw me; but they ought to have known the car. And now I must go. I’m sorry to miss Rose Noble, but you must make my excuses and say I was pressed for time. Good night.”

  With that he began to go backwards, and I stepped across the redoubt and out of the gap in its wall. The next second Mansel emerged, and we ran like hares for cover towards the sentinel peak.

  “Behind a tree,” breathed Mansel. “They’re certain to fire.”

  As I whipped round a trunk, somebody fired from the doorway, but the bullet passed over our heads.

  “We must wait for Rose Noble,” said Mansel. “And while they’re putting him wise, we can go on our way. You can’t fire straight and argue at one and the same time.”

  Rose Noble must have been returning, when the shot was fired, for we heard his voice almost at once demanding the truth.

  Instead of telling him directly that we were at hand in the wood, both Punter and Job began to report what had passed with an incoherence which would have distracted anyone, and in an instant they were all three raving like men possessed. Under shelter of this exhibition, we beat our retreat, and, presently joining Carson, passed over the shoulder of the hill and back the way we had come.

  We were well pleased with what we had found, but the head and front of our contentment was naturally furnished by Mansel’s brilliant stroke. Indeed, I cannot believe that the shrewdest of diplomats ever delivered a more dexterous thrust: and, when it is remembered that Mansel’s performance was improvised, that he conceived and executed it with his life, so to speak, in his hand, I think it will be clear that he was a man of lightning apprehension and notable detachment.

  By his admirable fable of the intermittent springs he had offered an answer, at once most credible and gloomy, to every one of the problems that troubled the thieves, and had hanged a very mill-stone about Rose Noble’s neck, for, by confirming the bulk of the suspicions which the latter had openly avowed, he had highly prejudiced such efforts to hearten his fellows as the monster might presently make.

  Indeed, as we afterwards learned, for a fortnight after his exploit, next to no water was taken out of the well, but Rose Noble spent all of his time quelling mutinies, eating his own words and striving by hook or by crook to hold the gang together against some future attempt. That in this he succeeded does him, to my mind, great credit, for I have shown many times how ill he was served and what poor stomachs for work or for danger the other thieves had.

  And here let me say that, to give the devil his due, Rose Noble possessed a commanding personality, swift, vigilant and unearthly strong; and, behind it, like some familiar, stood his astounding instinct, continually showing him things which no manner of wisdom or prudence could ever have perceived. It seems he never ceased to maintain that we were digging, and that with a conviction so infectious, although he could not produce one jot or title of warrant for what he said, the others came to accept this surmise as an established fact, and, though they would draw no water, to search with more or less diligence for any sign of a shaft. And that was, I think, a remarkable achievement: and, as is sometimes the way, it had its reward.

  No one of us will ever forget the ninth night of June.

  That day we had driven our shaft as far as the point from which Mansel had taken the bearing of the well, that is to say, we had covered just eighty-one yards; and there we had altered our course so as to head directly for where the chamber must lie. It seemed certain that eighty-nine yards, at the most, remained to be pierced; but we had fair reason to think that the distance would prove to be less, and that, when we had covered another eighty yards, we might expect any moment to strike the chamber. We were, therefore, come roughly half-way to the region we sought; and this elated us all, as did the knowledge that the thieves were making no serious endeavour to empty the well; for, though because of their vigilance we had been unable again to approach the redoubt, we had twice visited the spot upon which the gutter discharged and found it comparatively dry.

  It was Hanbury’s turn to relieve Mansel; the night was warm and moonlit, and there was no wind at all.

  The relief was more than half done; Carson, indeed, had already descended the shoot, and Mansel was stripped to the waist, when we heard Tester give tongue.

  Sharp and clear, across the water came his deep, vigorous bark, bold and menacing.

  For an instant we stood breathless, staring at the three long windows, through which the sound had come. Then, in a flash, Mansel had entered the shoot. I followed immediately, clad only in a zephyr and shorts, and was in the boat almost as soon as he. Without a word Carson bent to the sculls, and the craft leaped forward.

  Our passage, usually so soon over, seemed that night as though it would never be done, and I well remember remarking how lovely the landscape looked, and what a queer contrast we offered—all of us dripping, and Carson, except for his shoes, mother-naked. All the time Tester was baying someone furiously.

  We were unarmed, and, as we came to the bank:

  “Single file, please,” said Mansel. “We mustn’t bunch. And, when we come to the track, you will bear to the right and Carson to the left.”

  I had the painter, and, before I had made fast the boat, Mansel and Carson were ashore and out of my sight.

  Now the track which led to the quarry lay seventy paces or so from the river’s bank, some half of which they had run before I was out of the boat. An impression was, therefore, given that we were but two, and I ran straight into some stranger at the mouth of the track. He had clearly let the others go and was making good his escape. He was a giant of a man, but I am no feather-weight, and the shock of our encounter sent us both to the ground. I was up in an instant, but he was quicker, and, what was worse, fleeter of foot, for although I pursued him West for a mile or more, he gradually drew away and I had to give up his pursuit.

  I then returned to the quarry, to Mansel’s evident relief; for all he had heard was our fall, and, before he had been able to reach the mouth of the track, the stranger and I were out of earshot. The car did not seem to have been touched, and no one of her locks had been tampered with; Tester was safe and sound; neither Mansel nor Carson had seen or heard anyone, and it seemed likely that the man I had chased had been the sole occasion of Tester’s wrath. Particularly to describe him, however, was beyond my power, for we had met in the shadows and I had not seen his face. He was not one of the thieves nor yet the innkeeper; and, unless they had been reinforced, there was little to suggest that he had to do with the enemy, or, indeed, was anything more to be feared than an inquisitive peasant who had noticed George Hanbury’s arrival and found his behaviour strange. As such we found him unwelcome, but, if he was to see us no more, harmless. Yet, there was about the business one curious, disquieting fact, slight in its way as any ghost, yet one that we could not lay.

  The fellow was a tanner by trade. That I could swear, for he reeked of the tannery. Now, I have always found an odour more reminiscent than even a melody, and I have but to become aware of some perfume to remember directly the circumstances in which I have smelt it before. Yet, though, the moment I scented the fellow, I knew I had encountered his like or his occupation quite recently, for the life of me I could not recall when or where it had been, and no artifice of Mansel’s could bring it back to my mind, but we could not help feeling that, if here was a clue to the interloper’s identity, it would be highly imprudent to cast it away; and, for myself, I was puzzled, for it was unlike my memory, having got so far, to be able to get no further. At last, however, we set aside the riddle, for there was wo
rk to be done, and, as Mansel said with reason, “sometimes the brain is mulish, and will do better if you put up your cudgel and let it be.”

  Our policy had been always to take no avoidable risk, and, since the car had been discovered, our store of timber also had been remarked, we at once decided to get as much of this as the cover of night would allow into the oubliette. As a rule, the relief had brought enough wood to last us for twenty-four hours, and this much had been delivered by Hanbury and Rowley that night; but, since without timber to advance the shaft would be at least a very perilous business, to transfer every balk that we could seemed but a natural precaution.

  We, therefore, set about this removal without more ado. Rowley was brought to help us, while Hanbury and Bell stayed to receive the wood. We laboured with all our might till an hour before dawn, by which time we had carried a great deal, though not, it appeared, so much as we had already employed.

  We made no attempt to find a fresh hiding-place for the car; for, for one thing, we had no mind to leave her any more unattended, and, for another, it seemed better in future to berth her each night at a different point, so that, if our visit was expected, at least we should not be playing clean into some peeper’s hands. The boat and sculls we decided to bestow in a culvert some four miles away, for they were nothing to carry, and, to take them up, as we passed, would be but a moment’s work.

  The sky was pale when Rowley and I stood again in the gallery, and before Mansel could come to Salzburg, we knew that the sun would be high; but the smell of the timber all about us did our hearts good, and we lay down to sleep for an hour in the comfortable state of a garrison whose store of munitions is no longer without the fort.

  Now, whether it was this reflection or the scent of the sawn wood that jogged my memory I cannot tell; but my mind whipped back to the tanner, and in a twinkling I remembered when and where I had noticed his particular odour before. And that put an end to my slumber before it was ever begun, and to that of the others as well; for, though I had clean forgotten it, I now recalled perfectly that I had become aware of the smell of tan at one and the same instant that I was felled from behind on that night of alarms and excursions when Mansel was down in the well.

  7. Rose Noble Moves

  There was, naturally, much to be said; but, till Mansel returned to the dungeon, there was nothing to be done. And, since the commentary he made, so soon as he heard my news, was far more valuable than the swarm of conclusions which we had drawn out of the matter, I will set it down, using his words.

  “A great deal is depending on how much the tanner saw. If he saw two come in the car, the presence of a third must have told him that we have some hiding-place hereabouts; if he saw the relief carrying timber, that should make him think; but, if he saw the boat cross the river, he must know a damned sight too much. And it was a moonlit night.

  “The point is—what will he do?

  “His instinct will be to put the innkeeper wise. But the innkeeper is in balk. He will, therefore, endeavour to communicate with him without the knowledge of the thieves. And the only way to do that is through the inn.

  “Now, I think it more likely that now and again the landlord returns to his inn—under escort, of course. Otherwise, long before now, a hue and cry would have been raised. And that wouldn’t suit Rose Noble. About once a week, I imagine, they take him back to the inn; and they give him to understand that, if he gets out of the car, that’s the last living movement he’ll make.

  Again, he has, without doubt, been straitly advised that upon the first sign of any attempt at his rescue he will immediately die. If they’ve got these things into his head—and, though he can’t speak German, from what I’ve seen of Rose Noble, I should say he was above Babel—not fifty home-sweet-homes will drag him out of that car; and he probably tells his people that he’s having the time of his life. And that’s the way, I expect, they get their supplies.

  “Very well. If the tanner tells the innkeeper, what will the latter do? I think it more than likely that he will give us away. I don’t say he’ll do so deliberately; but the tanner’s tidings will startle him, and, unless he’s alone to receive them—and that is most improbable—the thieves will perceive his emotion and demand to be told its cause.

  “The first thing to do, therefore, is to visit the inn. If I had known this last night, I’d have gone there today. As it is, we must wait. I imagine that trouble is coming; but, unless the luck is against us, I don’t think it’s coming just yet.”

  And that, for the moment, was as much as Mansel said; but, as later that night I sailed through the sleeping country towards St. Martin, I could not help wondering whether I was not making this now familiar journey for the last time, and, though the next day was fair as a day can be, I had no pleasure in it, and the pastime of fishing seemed to have lost its savour. Yet, I might have spared my concern; for, when I returned to the dungeon, it was to find all well, and throughout the relief we seemed to have the world to ourselves.

  That night Mansel and Hanbury visited the track below the combe, but found no sign of water drawn out of the well. When Bell and I were come, we began to take in more wood; by dint of working till cock-crow without a break, we carried all that was left, to our comfort more of mind than of body, for, when it was all under ground, we could hardly move.

  While we were thus engaged, some fifteen yards of our tunnel started to bulge and had to be shored up before we continued the shaft.

  The next day Mansel visited Lerai and ate his lunch at the inn. The landlord’s wife proved only too willing to talk, and the first thing that Mansel learned was that her husband seemed to have thrown in his lot with the thieves, though what in the world they were doing and where they were she could not tell. With that, she had wrung her hands and presently thrown her apron over her head, declaring with tears that, if there were rogue’s company to be had, her lord would be sure to find it, though it lay a day’s journey off; for his mother had been a Roman, and, though she had died at his birth, the blood of lawlessness was in his veins. Then Mansel drew a bow at a venture and, observing that he would have thought that rogues in Carinthia were few, casually spoke of a tanner as the one rustic we had met that had worn the look of a knave. At once the hostess had let out a gush of abuse, avowing that the man and his brother were the black sheep of that part of the land, that her husband knew them well, and had harboured one for a fortnight when a warrant was out for his arrest. On the last two days, she added, the tanner had come to the inn, and, despite her insistence that her husband was away on a journey, had each time stayed for some hours, as though in a hope of his return. But on neither of those two days had the closed car come, as it did from time to time, to take up all manner of food. And here she fell to raving about the stranger’s score, by now amounting to some seventy English pounds, of which not one penny had been paid, declaring that here was the proof that her husband’s union with the thieves was something sinister, for that he was strict as a bailiff where debts were concerned. “However,” says she in the end, “no wind’s so ill that it blows no scruple of good, for the strangers’ ways may be evil, but the tanner’s are worse; and, at last, my husband is out of some villainy, for, now that the tanner has twice gone empty away, I do not think he will return.”

  Herein we hoped very much that the woman was right; for, if the tanner’s discovery came to the knowledge of the thieves, our valuable system of reliefs would certainly be imperilled, if not destroyed, to say nothing of the fact that they would instantly know that we were driving a shaft.

  I have shown already that, since our brush with the tanner, we berthed the car each night at some different place; but Mansel was not satisfied with this precaution, and presently determined that the relief should always begin at eleven o’clock, and that, from ten o’clock onward, one of the four in the dungeon should watch as much as he could of the opposite shore. This may appear to have been an idle exercise, because the sentry was too distant to see or hear any movement which wa
s made in the danger zone; and I must confess that I did not myself account it worth the expense of a workman—for nowadays we laboured to all hours; but Mansel had given the order, and so it was done.

  We had always kept in the dungeon a supply of tinned food, sufficient to last us some days: but this stock we now increased, until, if the worst came to pass, we could live for full three weeks without leaving the oubliette.

  However, the day went by and no one troubled us; if the tanner watched us again, we never saw him; the soil at the foot of the gutter was sometimes drenched, but never the marsh we had made it; and, while the enemy’s labour was fitful, and they had, I think, no concerted plan of action, except to deny us the well, we continued to drive forward with all our might.

  And here let me say that we were by now the owners of Wagensburg; for Ellis had let go his option, and Mansel had purchased the place. But I doubt if seigniory was ever so strangely enjoyed—the freeholders having their being, like rats, in the bowels of the earth, and in constant dread of their presence being observed, and their enemies in possession and coming and going and doing just as they pleased.

  It was thirteen days to an hour since Tester had bayed the tanner, and Bell and I were engaged at the nose of the shaft, when I heard someone running towards us, and, in the next moment, Rowley’s voice. Hanbury desired me, he said, to come to the gallery at once.

  Leaving Bell to put out the search-light and follow me down, I immediately left for the gallery, making what haste I could; but, after the glare of the lamp, I was as good as blind, and the light of the candles which were burning in the shaft and the oubliette, was too feeble to guide my steps.

  However, at last I was down, to find Hanbury at the middle embrasure, peering into the night.

  His report was disquieting indeed.

  “There’s someone across the river: I saw the flash of a torch.”