The Lost Heir

"Are you going to take them out at once?"

"No, not until I come back. I must get on board the barge as soon as possible. We will bundle them all in, in case any of those fellows should come along."

Three planks were removed from the side of the shed next to the stack, and an opening was seen. Some turf was taken up and a trapdoor exposed. The kegs and tobacco were speedily carried down into a large cellar, the trapdoor was closed, and the boards placed securely in position and fastened by six long screws. Then they returned to the house. The teapot and cups were on the table, the kettle was boiling, and in two or three minutes they were taking tea. Scarcely had they begun their meal when there was a knock at the door. Bill got up and opened it, and two coastguards entered.

"We saw there was a light burning, and thought that you might be here, Bill. The wind is bitter cold."

"Come in and have a cup of tea or a glass of rum, whichever you like best. As you say, the wind is bitter cold, and I thought that I would land and have a cup of tea. I shall catch the barge up before she gets to Pitsea."

The coastguardsmen accepted the offer of a cup of tea, glancing furtively round the room as they drank it.

"It is good tea."

"'Tis that," Bill said, "and it has never paid duty. I got it from an Indiaman that was on the Nore three weeks ago. She transshipped part of her cargo on my barge and floated next tide. It was one of the best jobs I've had for some time, and stood me in fifty pounds and a pound or two of tea."

"Perhaps a chest of it!" one of the men said with a laugh.

"Well, well, I am not sure that it was not a chest. I like my cup of tea, and so does Betsy; and there is no getting tea like this at Stanford."

They chatted for about ten minutes, when Bill remarked, "I must be going," and they went out together, and taking his place in his boat he rowed up the creek, while the coastguards continued their walk along the bank.

"He is not a bad 'un, Tom," one of them said. "I guess he is like a good many of the others, runs a keg occasionally. However, his place has been searched half a dozen times, and nothing has been found. We have drunk many a glass of ale with him at the 'Lobster Smack' at Hole Haven, and I am sure I don't want to catch him unless there is some information to go on. The barge passed us half an hour ago, and I knew that it was no use looking in her, but of course when the boatswain said this afternoon, 'Just follow that barge when she gets under way, and see if she goes on to Pitsea,' we had to do it; but the boat was late for us where the creek branches off round the island, and before we were across he must have got more than half an hour's start of us. And I am not sorry, Tom. We have got to do our duty, but we don't want to be at war with every good fellow on the marshes."

"Right you are, Dick; besides, they are as slippery as eels. Who can tell what they have got under their lime or manure? Short of unloading it to the bottom there would be no finding it, if they had anything; and it is a job that I should not care for. Besides, there aint no place to empty it on; and we could not go and chuck a cargo overboard unless we were quite certain that we should find something underneath. As you say, I dare say Bill runs a keg or two now and then, but I don't suppose that he is worse than his neighbors; I have always suspected that it was he who left a keg of whisky at our door last Christmas."

In the meantime Bill had overtaken his barge, and they soon had her alongside of the little wharf at Pitsea.

"Tide is just turning. She will be aground in half an hour," he said. "As soon as you have got these mooring ropes fastened, you had better fry that steak and have your supper. I shall be over by seven o'clock in the morning. If Harvey and Wilson come alongside before that, tell them they can have the job at the usual price, and can set to work without waiting for me. It will be pretty late before I am in bed to-night."

It was over a mile walk back to his cottage. As soon as he arrived he sat down to a hearty supper which his wife had prepared for him. He then got three pack-saddles out of the cellar, put them on the horses, and fastened four kegs on each horse. Tying one behind the other, he started, and in an hour the kegs were stowed in the cellars of four farmers near Stanford. It was midnight before he returned home. At half-past six he was down to breakfast.

"Well, uncle, how are you?" he asked the child, who was already up.

"I am not your uncle," the boy replied; "you are my uncle."

"Ah, well, it's a way of speaking down here. It does not mean that anyone is one's uncle; it is just a way of speaking."

The child nodded. He was learning many things.

"Then it is a way of speaking when I call you uncle?"

"No, no! That is different. A child like you would not call anyone uncle unless he was uncle; while a man my age calls anyone uncle."

"That is funny, isn't it?"

"Well, I suppose, when you think of it, it is; but, as I said, it is a way we have in this part of the country. Well, mother, have you got that fish nearly fried?"

"It will be ready in five minutes. This roker is a very thick one. I put it on as soon as I heard you stirring, and it is not quite ready yet. That was a pretty near escape last night, Bill."

"Yes; but, you see, they can hardly catch us unless they send men down in the afternoon. They cannot get along from the station without passing two or three creeks; and coming along with the tide, especially when there is a breath of wind to help her, we can do it in half the time. You see, I always get the things out from under the cargo and into the boat as we come along, so that the barge shall not be stopped."

"But they might send down a boat from the Thames Haven station, Bill."

"Yes; but then they don't know when the barge is in, or when it is going to start. So we get the best of them in that way. Besides, they have a good bit to go along the river face, and they have to cross a dozen deep cuts to get there. No, I have no fear of them, nor of the others either, as far as that goes. I have more than once had a word dropped, meant to put me on my guard, and instead of landing the things here have dropped them in a deep hole in the creek, where I could pick them up the next night I came in. Things have changed with us for the better, lass. Five years ago we had pretty hard work, with the farm and the old boat, to live at all comfortable; but since I have got into the swim things have changed with us, and I can tell you that I am making money hand over fist. I allow that there is a certain risk in it, but, after all, one likes it all the better for that. If the worst came to the worst they could but confiscate the old barge; if they gave me a heavy fine I could pay it, and if they gave me six months I could work it out, and buy a new barge and half a dozen farms like this on the day I came out."

"But the other would be more serious, Bill?"

"Well, yes; but I don't see any chance of that being found out. A gent comes to me at a spot we have settled on, say on the road halfway between Pitsea and Stanford; he hands me a box, sometimes two; I puts them on one of the horses, and rides over here with them; then I stows them away in that secret place off the store, where there aint a shadow of a chance of the sharpest-eyed coastguardsman ever finding them. They would be too delighted to light on the spirits and bacca to think of digging up the floor underneath. There they lie, till I take them down to the Marden. They put them into the eel tank, and next morning off she sails."

"But you have had heavy cases brought once or twice?"

"Only once – heavy enough to be troublesome. Ten cases there was then, each as heavy as a man could lift. It took me three journeys with three horses, and I had to dig a big hole in the garden to bury them till the Marden had got rid of her eels, and was ready to sail again. Yes, that was a heavy job, and I got a couple of hundred pounds for my share of the business. I should not mind having such a job twice a week. A few months of that, and I could buy the biggest farm on this side of Essex – that is to say, if I could make up my mind to cut it and settle down as a farmer."

"You will never do that, Bill; but you might settle down in Rochester, and buy half a dozen barges, with a tip-top one you would sail yourself. You might have a couple of men and a cabin forward, and a nice roomy place for yourself and me aft; and you could just steer when you liked, or sit down and smoke your pipe and watch her going through the fleet as we worked through the swatchway. That would be more your sort, Bill, and mine too. I know you have money enough laid by to get such a barge."

"That is so, Betsy. I allow that I could do that. I have been thinking of it for some time, but somehow or other one never works one's self up to the right point to give it all up of a sudden and cut the old place. Well, I suppose one of these days I shall do it, if it is only to please you."

"It would please me, you know, Bill. I don't see no harm in running the kegs or the bacca – it's what the people about here have been doing for hundreds of years – but I don't like this other business. You don't know what is in the cases, and you don't ask, but there aint much difficulty in guessing. And I don't much like this business of the child. I did not like it at all at first; but when I found that he had no father nor mother as he knew of, and so it was certain that no one was breaking their heart about him, I did not mind it; and I have taken to him, and he has pretty nearly forgotten about his home, and is as contented as if he had been here all his life. I have nothing more to say about him, though it is as certain as eggs is eggs that it has been a bad business. The boy has been cheated out of his money, and if his friends ever find him it is a nice row that we shall get into."

"You need not bother yourself about that," the man said; "he aint more likely to be found here than if he was across the seas in Ameriky. We have had him near nine months now, and in another three months, if you were to put him down in front of his own house, he would not know it. Everyone about here believes as he is my nevvy, the son of a brother of yours who died down in the Midlands, and left him motherless. No one asks any questions about him now, no more than they does about Joshua. No, no; we are all right there, missis; and the hundred pounds that we had down with him, and fifty pounds a year till he gets big enough to earn his own grub on the barge, all helps. Anyhow, if something should happen to me before I have made up my mind to quit this, you know where the pot of money is hidden. You can settle in Rochester, and get him some schooling, and then apprentice him to a barge-owner and start him with a barge of his own as soon as he is out of his time. You bear it in mind that is what I should like done."

"I will mind," she said quietly; "but I am as likely to be carried to the churchyard as you are, and you remember what I should like, and try, Bill, if you give up the water yourself, to see that he is with a man as doesn't drink. Most of the things we hears of – of barges being run down, and of men falling overboard on a dark night – are just drink, and nothing else. You are not a man as drinks yourself; you take your glass when the barge is in the creek, but I have never seen you the worse for liquor since you courted me fifteen years ago, and I tell you there is not a night when you are out on the barge as I don't thank God that it is so. I says to myself, when the wind is blowing on a dark night, 'He is anchored somewheres under a weather shore, and he is snug asleep in his cabin. There is no fear of his driving along through it and carrying on sail; there is no fear of his stumbling as he goes forward and pitching over'; and no one but myself knows what a comfort it is to me. You bring him up in the same way, Bill. You teach him as it is always a good thing to keep from liquor, though a pint with an old mate aint neither here nor there, but that he might almost as well take poison as to drink down in the cabin."

"I will mind, missis; I like the child, and have got it in my mind to bring him up straight, so let us have no more words about it."

CHAPTER XIX.

A PARTIAL SUCCESS

Netta had been away three weeks when one morning, just as they were sitting down to breakfast, she suddenly came into the room. With a cry of joy Hilda ran into her arms.

"You wicked, wicked girl!" she exclaimed. "I know that I ought not to speak to you. You don't deserve that I should even look at you, but I cannot help it."

Miss Purcell embraced her niece more soberly, but Hilda saw by the expression of her face that her niece's return relieved her of a burden of anxiety which at times she had had difficulty in concealing.

"In the first place, Netta, before I even give you a cup of tea, tell me if this is a final return, or whether you are going to disappear again."

"That we will decide after you have heard my story," Netta said quietly.

"And have you got any news of Walter?"

"I am not sure; I think so. So you have kept my secret, aunt?"

"I promised that I would, dear, and of course I have kept my word, though it was very difficult to resist Hilda's pleading. Dr. Leeds, too, has been terribly anxious about you, and not a day has passed that he has not run in for a few minutes to learn if there was any news."

"I don't see why he should have known that I have been away."

"Why, my dear," Hilda said, "coming here as often as he does, he naturally inquired where you were, and as I was uncertain how long you would be away, and as he had always been in our counsels, I could hardly keep him in the dark, even had I wished to do so. Now, my dear, let us know all about it; there can be no possible reason for keeping silent any longer."

"Well, Hilda, the whole affair has been very simple, and there was not the least occasion for being anxious. I simply wanted to keep it quiet because I felt that you would raise all sorts of objections to the plan. We had, as you know, thought over a great many methods by which we might overhear a conversation between John Simcoe and the man on Pentonville Hill. But it seemed next to be impossible that it could be managed there. Suddenly the idea came into my brain that, as a servant at Simcoe's lodgings in Jermyn Street, I might have an excellent chance."

Hilda gave an exclamation of horror.

"My dear Netta, you never can really have thought of carrying this out?"

"I not only thought of it, but did it. With a little management the girl there was got hold of, and as it fortunately happened that she did not like London and wanted to take a country situation, there was very little difficulty, and she agreed to introduce me as a friend who was willing to take her place. Of course, it took a few days to make all the arrangements and to get suitable clothes for the place, and these I sent by parcel delivery, and on the morning of the day that the girl was to leave presented myself at the house. The man and his wife were good enough to approve of my appearance. They had, it seemed, three sets of lodgers, one on each floor; the man himself waited upon them, and my work was to do their rooms and keep the house tidy generally."

Again Hilda gave a gasp.

"There was nothing much in that," Netta went on, without heeding her. "I used to do most of the house work when we were in Germany, and I think that I gave every satisfaction. Of course the chief difficulty was about my deafness. I was obliged to explain to them that I was very hard of hearing unless I was directly spoken to. Mr. Johnstone always answered the bells himself when he was at home. Of course, when he was out it was my duty to do so. When I was downstairs it was simple enough, for I only had to go to the door of the room of which I saw the bell in motion. At first they seemed to think that the difficulty was insuperable; but I believe that in other respects I suited them so well that they decided to make the best of it, and when her husband was out and I was upstairs Mrs. Johnstone took to answering the door bells, or if a lodger rang, which was not very often, for her husband seldom went out unless they were all three away, she would come upstairs and tell me. Johnstone himself said to me one day that I was the best girl he had ever had, and that instead of having to go most carefully over the sitting rooms before the gentlemen came in for breakfast, he found that everything was so perfectly dusted and tidied up that there was really nothing for him to do.

"But oh, Hilda, I never had the slightest idea before how untidy men are! The way they spill their tobacco ash all over the room, and put the ends of their cigars upon mantelpieces, tables, and everywhere else, you would hardly believe it. The ground floor and the second floor were the worst, for they very often had men in of an evening, and the state of the rooms in the morning was something awful. Our man was on the first floor, and did not give anything like so much trouble, for he almost always went out in the evening and never had more than one or two friends in with him. One of these friends was the man we saw with him in the Row, and who, we had no doubt, was an accomplice of his. He came oftener than anyone else, very often coming in to fetch him. As he was always in evening dress I suppose they went to some club or to the theater together. I am bound to say that his appearance is distinctly that of a gentleman.

"I had taken with me two or three things that I foresaw I should want. Among them was an auger, and some corks of a size that would exactly fit the hole that it would make. Simcoe's bedroom communicated with the sitting room, and he always used this door in going from one room to the other; and it was evident that it was only through that that I could get a view of what was going on. I did not see how I could possibly make a hole through the door itself. It was on one side, next to that where the fireplace was, and there was a window directly opposite, and of course a hole would have been noticed immediately. The only place that I could see to make it was through the door frame. Its position was a matter of much calculation, I can assure you. The auger was half an inch bore. I dared not get it larger, and it would have been hopeless to try and see anything with a smaller one, especially as the hole would have to be four or five inches long. As I sometimes went into the room when they were together, either with hot water or grilled bones, or something of that sort, I was able to notice exactly where the chairs were generally placed. Simcoe sat with his back to the bedroom door, and the other man on the other side of the hearthrug, facing him. I, therefore, decided to make the hole on the side nearest to the wall, so that I could see the other man past Simcoe. Of course I wanted the hole to be as low as possible, as it would not be so likely to be noticed as it would were it higher up. I chose a point, therefore, that would come level with my eye when I was kneeling down.

"At about four o'clock in the afternoon they always went out, and from then till six Johnstone also took his airing, and I went upstairs to turn down the beds and tidy up generally. It was very seldom that any of them dined at home; I, therefore, had that two hours to myself. I got the line the hole should go by leaving the door open, fastening a stick to the back of a chair till it was, as nearly as I could judge, the height of the man's face, tying a piece of string to it and bringing it tight to the point where I settled the hole should start, and then marking the line the string made across the frame. Then there was a good deal more calculation as to the side-slant; but ten days ago I boldly set to work and bored the hole. Everything was perfectly right; I could see the head of the stick, and the circle was large enough for me to get all the man's face in view. Of course I had put a duster on the ground to prevent any chips falling onto the carpet.

"I was a little nervous when I set to work to drill that hole; it was the only time that I felt nervous at all. I had beforehand drilled several holes in the shelves of cupboards, so as to accustom myself to use the auger, and it did not take me many minutes before it came through on the other side. The corks were of two sizes; one fitted tightly into the hole, the other could be drawn in or out with very little difficulty. I had gone out one day and bought some tubes of paint of the colors that I thought would match the graining of the door frame. I also bought a corkscrew that was about an inch and a half shorter than the depth of the hole. It was meant to be used by a cross-piece that went through a hole at the top. I had got this cross-piece out with some trouble, and tied a short loop of string through the hole it had gone through. I put the corkscrew into one of the smaller corks and pushed it through until it was level with the frame on the sitting-room side, and found that by aid of the loop of string I could draw it out easily. Then I put one of the larger corks in at the bedroom side of the hole and pushed it in until it was level with that side. Then I painted the ends of the corks to resemble the graining, and when it was done they could hardly be noticed a couple of feet away.

"I had now nothing to do but to wait until the right moment came. It came last night. The man arrived about seven o'clock. Johnstone was out, and I showed him upstairs. Simcoe was already dressed, and was in the sitting room. I lost no time, but went into the bedroom, where the gas was burning, turned down the bed on the side nearest to the door, and then went round, and with another corkscrew I had ready in my pocket took out the inner cork, got hold of the loop, and pulled the other one out also. Even had I had my hearing, I could have heard nothing of what was said inside, for the doors were of mahogany, and very well fitted, and Johnstone had said one day that even if a man shouted in one room he would hardly be heard in the next, or on the landing. I pushed a wedge under the door so as to prevent its being opened suddenly. That was the thing that I was most afraid of. I thought that Simcoe could hardly move without coming within my line of sight, and that I should have time to jump up and be busy at the bed before he could open the door. But I was not sure of this, so I used the wedge. If he tried the door and could not open it, he would only suppose that the door had stuck and I could snatch out the wedge and kick it under the bed by the time he made a second effort.

"Kneeling down, I saw to my delight that my calculations had been perfectly right. I could see the man's face well, for the light of the candles fell full upon it. They talked for a time about the club and the men they were going to dine with, and I began to be afraid that there was going to be nothing more, when the man said, 'By the way, Simcoe, I went down to Tilbury yesterday.' What Simcoe said, of course, I could not hear; but the other answered, 'Oh, yes, he is all right, getting quite at home, the man said; and has almost ceased to talk about his friends.' Then I saw him rise, and at once jumped up and went on turning down the bed, lest Simcoe should have forgotten something and come in for it. However, he did not, and two or three minutes later I peeped in again. The room was all dark, and I knew that they had gone. Then I put my corks in again, saw that the paint was all right, and went downstairs. I told Mrs. Johnstone that, if I could be spared, I should like to go out for two or three hours this morning to see a friend in service. It was the time that I could best be spared. I should have finished the sitting rooms by eight o'clock, and as none of the men have breakfast until about eleven, there was plenty of time for me to make the beds after I got back."

Hilda was crying now. Her relief that hearing that Walter was alive and well was unbounded. She had absolutely refused to recognize the body found in the canal, but she could not but admit that the probabilities were all against her. It was certain that the clothes were his, the child's age was about the same, the body must have been in the water the right length of time, the only shadow of evidence to support her was the hair. She had taken the trouble to go to two or three workhouses, and found that the coroner's assertion that soft hair when cut quite close will, in a very short time, stand upright, was a correct one. She kept on hoping against hope, but her faith had been yielding, especially since Netta's absence had deprived her of the support that she obtained from her when inclined to look at matters from a dark point of view.