Starvecrow Farm Part 24

"But he's in hiding. Is he married?"

"Yes."

She frowned as if the news were unwelcome.

"Ah!" she muttered. And then, "What of the others?"

"Giles and Lunt----"

"Ay."

"There's not much they'd stick at," he replied. "They are low brutes; but they are useful. We've to do with all sorts in this business."

"And why not?"

"Why not?"

"Ay! Didn't you tell me the other day, there was no one so mean, if we succeed, he may not rise to the top? nor any one so great he may not fall to the bottom?"

"Well?"

"That's what I like about it."

"Well, it's true, anyway; Henriot"--he was on a favourite topic and thought to reinstate himself by long words--"Henriot, who was but a poor pike-keeper, came to be general of the National Guard and Master of Paris. Tallien, the son of a footman, ruled a province. Ney--you've heard of Ney?--who began as a cooper, was shot as a Marshal with a score of orders on his breast and as much thought of as a king! That's what happens if we succeed."

"And some came down?" she said, smacking her lips.

"Plenty."

"And women too?"

"Yes."

"Ah," she said slowly, "I wish I had been there."

Not then, but later, when the letter had pa.s.sed into her hands, he fancied that he saw the drift of her questions. And he had qualms, for he was not wholly bad. He was not cruel, and the thought of Henrietta's fate if she fell into the snare terrified him. True, Thistlewood, dark and saturnine, a man capable of heroism as well as of crime, was something of a gentleman. He might decline to go far. He might elect to take the girl's part. But Giles and Lunt were men of a low type, coa.r.s.e and brutish, apt for any villainy; men who, drawn from the slums of Spitalfields, had tried many things before they took up with conspiracy, or dubbed themselves patriots. To such, the life of a spy was no more than the life of a dog: and the girl's s.e.x, in place of protecting her, might the more expose her to their ruthlessness. If she fell into their hands, and Bess, with her infernal jealousy and her furious hatred of the cla.s.s above her, egged them on, swearing that if Henrietta had not already informed, she might inform--he shuddered to think of the issue. He shuddered to think of what they might be capable. He remembered the things that had been done by such men in France: things remembered then, forgotten now. And he shuddered anew, knowing himself to be a poor weak thing, of no account against odds.

CHAPTER XIV

THE LETTER

We left Mr. Bishop standing in the middle of the woodland track and following Henrietta with his eyes. He had suspected the girl before; his suspicions were now grown to certainties. Her agitation, her alarm on meeting him, her refusal to parley, her anxiety to be gone, all--and his keen eyes had missed no item of her disorder--all pointed to one thing, to her knowledge of her lover's hiding-place. Doubtless she had been to visit him. Probably she had just left him.

"But she's game, she's very game," the runner muttered sagely. "It's breed does it." And plucking a sc.r.a.p of green stuff from a briar he chewed it thoughtfully, with his eyes on the spot where he had lost the last wave of her skirt.

Presently he faced about. "Now where is he?" he asked himself. He scanned the path by which she had descended, the briars, the thorns, the under-growth. "There's hiding here," he thought; "but the nights are cold, and it'd kill him in the open. And she'd been on the hill.

In a shepherd's hut? Possibly; and it's a pity I was not after her sooner. But we searched the huts. Then there's Troutbeck? And the farms? But how'd he know any one here? Still, I'll walk up and look about me. Strikes me we've been looking wide and he's under our noses--many a hare escapes the hounds that way."

He retraced his steps to the road, and strolled up the hill. His air was careless, but his eye took note of everything; and when he came to the gate of Starvecrow Farm he stood and looked over it. The bare and gloomy aspect of the house and the wide view it commanded impressed him. "I don't wonder they keep a dog," he thought. "A lonely place as ever I saw. Sort of house the pedlar's murdered in! Regular Red Barn!

But that black-eyed wench the doctor is gallivanting after comes from here. And if all's true he's in and out night and day. So the other is not like to be here."

Still, when he had walked a few yards farther he halted. He took another look over the fence. He noted the few sombre pines that masked the gaunt gable-end, and from them his eye travelled to the ragged garden. A while he gazed placidly, the bit of green stuff in his mouth. Then he stiffened, pointing like a game dog. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, his hand went to the pocket in his skirts, where he carried the "barker" without which he never stirred.

On the other side of the breast-high wall, not six paces from him, a man was crouching low, trying to hide behind a bush.

Mr. Bishop had a stout heart. He had taken many a man in the midst of his cronies in the dark courts about St. Giles's; and with six hundred guineas in view it was not a small danger that would turn him. Yet he was alone, and his heart beat a little quicker as he proceeded, with his eyes glued to the bush, to climb the wall. The man he was going to take had the rope about his neck--he would reck little of taking another life. And he might have backers. Possibly, too, there was something in the silence of this hill-side--so different from the crowded alleys in which he commonly worked--that intimidated the officer.

Yet he did not flinch. He was of the true bull-dog breed. He, no more than my Lord Liverpool and my Lord Castlereagh, was to be scared by uncertain dangers, or by the fear of those over whom he was set. He advanced slowly, and was not more than four yards from the bush, he was even poising himself to leap on his quarry, when the man who was hiding rose to his feet.

Bishop swore. And some one behind him chuckled. He turned as if he had been p.r.i.c.ked. And his face was red.

"Going to take old Hinkson?" laughed Tyson, who had come up unseen, and been watching his movements.

"I wanted a word with him," the runner muttered. He tried to speak as if he were not embarra.s.sed.

"So I see," Tyson answered, and pointing with his finger to the pistol, he laughed.

Mr. Bishop, with his face a fine port-wine colour, lowered the weapon out of sight. Then he laughed, but feebly.

"Has he any sense?" he asked, looking with disgust at the frowsy old creature, who mopping and mowing at him was holding out a crooked claw.

"Sense enough to beg for a penny," Tyson answered.

"He knows enough for that?"

"He'd sell his soul for a s.h.i.+lling."

The runner hooked out a half-penny--a good fat copper coin, to the starveling bronze of these days as Daniel Lambert to a dandy. He put it in the old scarecrow's hand.

"Here's for trespa.s.s," he said, and turning his back on him he recrossed the wall.

"That'll stop his mouth," Tyson grinned. "But what are you going to give me to stop mine?"

Bishop laughed on the wrong side of his face.

"A bone and a jorum whenever you'll come and take it," he said.

"Done with you," the doctor replied. "Some day, when that old beldame, mother Gilson, is out, I'll claim it. But if you think," he continued, "that your man is this side of the hill you are mistaken, Mr. Bishop.

I'm up and down this road day and night, and he'd be very clever if he kept out of my sight."

"Ay?"

"You may take my word for that. I'll lay you a dozen wherever he is, he's not this side."

The runner nodded. At this moment he was a little out of conceit with himself, and he thought that the other might be right. Besides, he might spend a week going from farm to farm, and shed to shed and be no wiser at the end of it. Yet, the girl knew, he was convinced; and after all, that was his way to it. She knew, and he'd to her again and have it out of her one way or another. And if she would not speak, he would shadow her; he would follow her hour by hour and minute by minute. Sooner or later she would be sure to try to see her man, and he would nab them both. There were no two ways about it. There was only one way. An old hand should have known better than to go wasting time in random searchings.