Poison Island Part 38

"But the schooner--"

"I give you my word of honour, sir, that your s.h.i.+p shall not be visited nor tampered with in any way. Return when you will, you shall find her precisely as she lies now. In another two hours even this faint breeze will have died down, as you are seamen enough to know. The anchorage is land-locked; the bottom is perfect holding; and as for unwelcome visitors, there can be none. I am the sole resident on this island!"

I looked up at Dr. Beauregard sharply; and so, it seemed to me, did Mr. Rogers, who had fallen alongside.

"That is to say," continued the Doctor, quietly, without regarding either of us, "the only male resident."

"All the same I don't like it," persisted the Captain, and shook his head, at the same time lifting his eyes towards Miss Belcher; "and it's clear against my rule."

"Stuff and nonsense!" said Miss Belcher. "We ought to be grateful to Dr. Beauregard for taking this creature Gla.s.s off our hands.

I was thinking a moment ago that for a thousand pounds I'd rather he was anywhere than on board our s.h.i.+p. The least we can do is to bear a hand with him; and if we don't like the house we can come away."

"And before nightfall, if you insist," added Dr. Beauregard, genially. "But the afternoon is young, and between now and nightfall you may all have made your fortunes. Who knows?"

Captain Branscome yielded, after a look at Plinny, who backed up Miss Belcher, declaring herself ardent for new adventures. I began to see that the Captain was wax in the hands of these two, and it puzzled me, who had some experience of him both in school and on s.h.i.+pboard.

Instead, then, of heading for the s.h.i.+p, we rowed past her and up the creek--Mr. Rogers following in his dinghy--and disembarked at the landing-place under the green knoll. While Dr. Beauregard and Mr.

Goodfellow lifted out Aaron Gla.s.s, and while the Captain explained to Mr. Rogers where and how we came by such a pa.s.senger, I stared about me, wondering where the Doctor's house might be and where the approach to it. For I remembered the narrow gorge leading up to the waterfalls and the thick, precipitous woods on either hand; and how, such a party as ours, including two ladies and a sick man, could hope to penetrate those woods or climb those waterfalls was a puzzle.

In ten minutes Mr. Goodfellow had patched up a fairly serviceable litter with the boat's sail and a couple of paddles. Dr. Beauregard bestowed the patient in it carefully enough, and when all was ready, led the way. The two carriers, Mr. Rogers and Mr. Goodfellow, came next with the litter between them, and at a nod from the former I fell in beside him. The Captain and the two ladies brought up the rear.

"Harry," whispered Mr. Rogers, as we wound our way round the knoll, "is this really the man who--"

"This is Aaron Gla.s.s," I said.

He stared down--for he carried the hinder end of the litter--upon the villainous, unconscious face.

"He looks a pretty bad one," said Mr. Rogers, after a pause.

"You should have seen him on the beach," said I.

"I've seen something myself," said he. "Closer, boy--there was a woman came down to the sh.o.r.e just now, waving to the s.h.i.+p and crying.

At first I took her for a child. She was dressed all in white--white muslin and ribbons, you know--the sort of rig you see at a children's party; but when I rowed over close to her--"

"I know her," I said. "I met her in the woods yesterday."

"That explains; though I call it an infernal shame you didn't tell.

I rowed across to find out what ailed her: she stood waving her arms so, and crying--like a child in distress. When I came near she called on to me to stop. 'Not you,' she said, 'the little boy!

Where is the little boy?' I told her that we had a boy on board, but that just now you were off on a cruise; and with that she turned right about, and ran up through the woods and out of sight; but for some way I could hear her crying and calling out just as before: 'The little boy!' it was; 'Where is the little boy?'--meaning you, I suppose."

We were now come to the foot of the first waterfall, an obvious _cul de sac_ for a party which included two ladies and a sick man on a litter. I stood gazing up at the wet, slippery rocks by which I had made my ascent yesterday, and searching in vain for a more practicable path. Dr. Beauregard halted and turned upon me with a smile.

"A moment," said he, "and you will grant that my privacy is rather neatly protected. But first"--he pointed to the water pouring past us from the pool beneath the fall--"you may remark that the stream here has more than twice the volume of the stream you see coming down the rocks."

I looked. The difference was plain enough, and I had been a fool in failing to observe it.

"The reason being," he went on, "that a second and larger stream flows into the pool under the very stones on which you are standing.

I myself laid that channel for it, almost ten years ago, and Nature has very kindly helped to disguise it. Now, if you will follow me--"

He drew aside a mat of creepers overhanging a bush to the left of the path, and, stooping, disappeared into a dim, green tunnel, so artfully contrived that even without its curtain of creepers it suggested no more than a chance gap in the undergrowth. The tunnel zigzagged twice at a sharp angle, and then, quite suddenly, the dimness changed to warm sunlight, and we emerged at his heels upon a prospect that well excused my gasp of astonishment.

We stood at the lower end of a smooth, green glade, through which a broad stream--a river, almost--came swirling, its murmur drowned in the thunder of the waterfall behind us, which the bushes now concealed. The glade was, in fact, a valley-bottom, thinned of undergrowth and set with tall trees; and the stream such a stream as tumbles through many an English deer-park. The whole scene might have been transplanted from England but for a wall of naked cliff, sharply serrated, which enclosed the valley on the left. And under it, like a smooth military terrace at the foot of a fortress, the glade curved upward and out of sight.

The scene, I have said, was almost typically English--but to the eye only.

"Faugh!" exclaimed Miss Belcher, looking about her and sniffing suspiciously. "A pretty place enough, but full of malaria, or I'm a Dutchwoman! And what a horrible silence!"

"Malaria?" said Mr. Rogers, quietly. "There's better scent than malaria in this valley, and we're hot on it. Here's the river, and-- What does the chart say, boy? Five trees, a mile and a half from the creek-head? We must have come a mile already. Keep your eyes skinned, and give me a nudge if you see such a clump."

But there was no need to keep my eyes skinned. At the next bend of the glade he and I caught sight of it simultaneously--a clump of n.o.ble pines that would have challenged notice even had we not been searching for them. My heart stood still as I counted them.

Yes; there were five!

"I haven't often wanted to put a knife into a man's back," grunted Mr. Rogers, with a gloomy glance ahead at Dr. Beauregard.

For an instant I made sure the Doctor had overheard him. He halted suddenly, and turned to us with a proprietary wave of the hand towards the trees.

"A fine group, sirs, is it not? I have often regretted that the cliff yonder just cuts off the view of it from my windows.

Indeed, I had almost altered the site of the house to include it.

But health before everything--hey, ladies? There is always a certain amount of fever in these valleys, and you will own, presently, that the site I prepared has its compensations."

He resumed his way past the trees, and--a quarter of a mile beyond them--past an angle of the cliff where the ridge bent sharply back from the river and revealed a narrow gorge, its entrance choked with pines, running up towards the mountain. Here he paused again, and with another wave of the hand.

High on the right of the gorge, on a plateau above the dark pine-tops, a white-painted house looked down on us--a long, low house with a generous spread of shadow under its verandah and a dazzle of light where the upper windows took the sun.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

WE FIND THE TREASURE.

"I've a strong sense of the right of property," said Miss Belcher, sipping her tea.

We had gathered in Dr. Beauregard's deep verandah, at the corner where it took the late afternoon suns.h.i.+ne. The level rays sparkled on the silver and delicate Worcester china of the Doctor's tea equipage, and fell through the open French window into the Doctor's drawing-room. A wonderful room it was, as everything in the house was wonderful, a s.p.a.cious, airy room, furnished in white and gold, with Dresden figures on the mantelshelf; Venetian mirrors, dainty water-colours sunk into the panels, cases of rare books (among them, as I remember, a set of the Cabinet des Fees, bound in rose-coloured morocco and stamped with the Royal arms of France), stands of music, and a priceless harpsichord inlaid with ivory. Next to the airiness of the house, which stood high above reach of the valley mists with their malaria, what most sharply impressed me, and the ladies in particular, was its exquisite cleanliness. Yet Dr. Beauregard a.s.sured us that he kept but one servant--the negress Rosa.

At her master's call she had appeared in the verandah above us as we mounted the last terrace towards the house, and had stood there watching our ascent with no trace of surprise, or, indeed, of any emotion whatever, on her black, inscrutable face. Her eyes met mine as though she had never seen me before. To her care Dr. Beauregard had given over the still unconscious Gla.s.s, and, with a sign to Mr.

Rogers and Mr. Goodfellow to follow her with their burden, she had led the way through the house to the bedroom at the back.

There, in a bed between spotlessly clean sheets, they had laid the patient, and been dismissed by her. It was she who, less than ten minutes later, had brought our tea to us in the verandah, and with our tea many little plates heaped with small cakes and sweetmeats-- all fresh, as though she had been expecting us for hours, and could command the resources of a city. I kept a sharp look-out, but of the strange lady--the lady of the graveyard--I could detect no trace.

Nothing indicated her presence, unless it were the dainty feminine furniture of the drawing-room.

"I've a strong sense of the right of property," said Miss Belcher, sipping her tea and touching the oilskin wrapper, which lay in her lap unopened as Captain Branscome had handed it to her; and so has Jack Rogers here. You tell me, sir, that you hold Mortallone by grant, and doubtless you can show your t.i.tle."

"Willingly, madam." Dr. Beauregard rose, and stepped to the French window. "You can read Spanish?" he asked, turning there and pausing.

"Not a word", answered Miss Belcher. The Doctor smiled. "It would impart nothing it you could," said he, with a smile, "for I will own to you frankly that Mortallone has always been under suspicion of containing treasure, and in the grant all treasure-trove is expressly reserved. I cannot say," he added, smiling again, "that I have strictly observed the clause; but, as between you and me, it legally disposes of my claim."

"Thank you," said Miss Belcher; "but I don't own an equally tender conscience towards Governments." Here Mr. Rogers winked at me, for as a patron of smugglers Miss Belcher enjoyed some reputation, even for a Cornish landowner. "We will leave Government out of the question; but as proprietor--lord of the manor, as we should say at home--you have a right to your share; and that, by English law--which I suggest we follow--is one-third."