A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh - Thorndike Russell. Страница 32

?Well, o? course they all thought it very wonderful, and, provided with more money by my friend, the priest went off to sleep the night with the coffin. Well,

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I had pretended to be tired that night and had retired to my sleepin?-room early, so they thought, for we were spendin? that night with the friends of my friend. But no sooner had I fastened the entrance to my room than I had got out of the window, which looked out upon the city wall, and climbin? along the parapet I safely reached the ground and set off at a good run to the empty house, gettin? there well before the priest. Now I had told the merchant to be sure and see the priest safe at the house himself, for I feared that fright might keep the rascal away. The merchant promised to do this, for I believe that by this time he was losin? confidence in the family confessor. As soon as I got into my old bedroom I opened the coffin, lifted out the corpse, strippin? him of his funeral clothes, which I donned. Then I hid the corpse in a dark corner of the room behind a screen and got into the great coffin. Now the lids are not screwed down in China, but merely allowed to rest upon the coffin, so I left a very little chink so that I should not have any fear of suffocation. Presently I hears the priest arrive,

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and my friend bids him good-night and leaves him. Well, the fellow possessed more courage than I had credited him with, ?cos he comes promptly into the room, counts out his fresh money on the top of the coffin itself, and then curls himself up alongside it upon the mattress. Just as soon as I heard him beginnin? to breathe heavy I pushed open the coffin lid, callin? upon him by name in most sepulchral tones. He woke up, o? course, and sits up on his side of the bed and looked at the coffin; and then he beheld me a-sittin? up inside the coffin alookin? at him, only, o? course, he didn?t think it was me, but the dead uncle. Well, he was so frightened that I just had an easy walk over him. I jumped at him, I kicked him, I made him swear that he would return every penny of his false-gotten gains to the merchant, and that if the merchant refused he was to give it to the white stranger that sojourned there, and finally, after thrashing the stuffin? out of him, I popped him bodily into the coffin, jammed the corpse from behind the screen in on top of him, and over ?em both I closed the lid. Then

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seein? as how he was unconscious through the drubbin? he had had, and the awful fright, I left him and went home to bed at the house of the friends of my friend, gettin? in as I had got out?through the window. Well, next morning the sly dog turned up and said that the gods had visited him in the night and that the coffin was to be buried twelve feet deep in the merchant?s field, and that he was so overjoyed at having conversed so very pleasantly with the gods that he must insist on returning the gold to the merchant. This the good merchant, of course, refused to accept, so the priest was obliged, according as he had been commanded, to hand it to the white stranger wot sojourned, and with every gold piece out of that sly dog?s pocket, for although a sly dog he certainly was, he was also a cowardly dog, too, and didn?t dare to go against the will of that terrible late lamented uncle of the bereaved one wot was now, and still is, I expect, lying twelve foot down in the field of my inestimable smug-faced

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merchant who was my friend. And that?s the story of the funniest funeral I was ever at, and there ain?t many wot ever seed a funnier one, I should say.?

?I should think not,? said the captain, and filling their glasses once more they pledged each other, and the captain left the sexton to his hammering, and walked out over the Marsh. He had taken good stock of that coffin shop while Mr. Mipps had been chatting, and he was putting two and two together, and the result was four black marks against the sexton, for he knew him to be out of his own mouth an adventurer, and, when it came to the push, an unscrupulous one. Also he had confessed to having dealings with buccaneers, and the captain was quick enough to see that he must have been hand in glove with the ringleaders, probably a ringleader himself, a man of the stamp of England and Clegg. Then he had counted no less than thirteen coffins?finished coffins with closed lids ?in the shop, and he knew that there were only two bodies awaiting burial in the place?the doctor, Sennacherib Pepper, and the sailor killed at the vicarage.

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Therefore, what were the others for? That they were misfits was out of the question, for Mipps was too shrewd a man to make eleven misfits; besides, he would have broken them up for fresh material. No, those eleven coffins were destined for other things besides corpses. And the fourth black mark against the sexton was his terrible hypocrisy and the ready with that hid it. If any man was interested and deeply interested in the great smuggling scheme of Romney Marsh he felt that Mipps was the man, the man-tool of another?s brain, another man mightier than Mipps?the squire probably, Doctor Syn possibly, though he had yet to bring the test to bear upon that curious and enigmatical vicar. But although as yet Doctor Syn was beyond his mental grasp, the Sexton Mipps was within it. He knew that he could make him victim, he was, in fact, sure of his guilt, and, knowing all he did of the man?s character, he fell to wondering how it had been possible for him to fall under the spell of his fascination, for apart from Doctor Syn, whose personality had strongly appealed to him, he would

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rather have had Mipps for his friend than the rest of the village put together, for that odd little man had a rare way of making you like him, for over all his astute cunning hung a veil, an imperceptible something, that was nearly if not altogether lovable. But the hunter goes to no pains to rehearse the beauty of an animal he is stalking, and the captain knew that as soon as he was ready to strike, no amount of personal fascination possessed by any criminal that he was after would stay his hand when the crucial moment came to destroy, and so he puzzled out his plans for cornering not only Mipps but every wrong ?un on the Marsh, and if the squire and Doctor Syn were in the bag?well, so much the better for the bag.

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Chapter 26

The Devil?s Tiring House

If the village was abed by ten o?clock, the coffee shop was very much alive at half an hour after midnight. Jerk, according to his instructions, found himself tapping upon the black window at that very hour and immediately found himself hauled into the house by Mr. Mipps himself. The sexton wore a voluminous riding cloak, heavily tippeted, and a black mask hid the upper part of his face, but Jerk could see by a glance at the fine sharp jaws that Mipps had laid aside his oiliness of manner, his sarcastic wit, and cringing self-complacency, and was allowing the real man that was in him to shine forth for

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once in a way probably for his express advantage. Jerk now saw the iron qualities in the sexton that had struck the love spark upon the flinty bosom of Mrs. Waggetts, for as Mipps walked about among his men, from room to room, and in and out of the coffin shop, which was heavily shuttered, he carried a power upon his shoulders that would have done credit to Boney himself. And the company that Jerk found himself among?well, if the young hangman had suddenly found himself in the greenroom of Drury Lane Theatre in the midst of the great play actors, he could not have been more surprised, for there, collected altogether, were the jack-o?-lanterns, the Marsh witches, and the demon riders, all preparing themselves as for a country fair. Grizzly old men, fishermen, and labourers, as the case might be, were arranging themselves in torn rags of women?s garments, and with a few deft touches of Mipps?s hands, lo! the fishermen and labourers were no more, and Marsh witches took their place. Similarly were the big fellows, hulking great men of Kent,