The COURAGEOUS EXPLOITS OF DOCTOR SYN - Thorndike Russell. Страница 9

Mipps, thinking him to be occupied below the coffin with his buckets, very quickly picked up the parchment he

had thrown down, but Percy saw him do this through the trestles on which the coffin rested, and he wondered why

Mipps who had thrown away the paper should pick it up again, and place it with so much care and so furtively inside

the old tin containing the snuff. He would have liked to have seen that parchment with the drawings, and was about

to ask Mipps if he might do so, when there suddenly dashed through the open door a fisherman named Hart, who,

seeing Percy, shouted out, “ Where’s Mipps?”

“Here he be,” replied that worthy, looking round from the dark corner where the shelves were. “What do you

want, mate? Something wrong?”

“Aye, big trouble, Sexton,” explained the fisherman, who was almost out of breath with running.

‘Trouble?” snapped Mipps, and Percy wondered why he put his finger to his lips, and glanced angrily first

towards the fisherman and then in his direction.

“Personal trouble,” replied Hart. “Nothing to do with King’s men or wicked smugglers. No. It’s that our boat

has been washed up on the tide and badly holed. She’s empty, too, and my young bother had her out last night.

May I have the loan of yours to search for him?”

“Of course, mate,” replied the Sexton, quickly pulling on his coat. ‘I’ll come along and lend a hand. Poor young

Fred. Not come back, eh? And his wife with a new-born kid.”

“Aye, and what seems to make it worse,” went on Hart, “is this day being the old folks’ Golden Wedding. The

only hope is that Fred may have got picked up, but it’s slender.”

“Aye, maybe, by some vessel that couldn’t put him ashore immediate like, replied Mipps. “There’s a good

chance of that, I should say. Fred’s a good swimmer and a strong enough lad, and there weren’t a great sea running

last night. Come along. We can pull round to Dungeness and see if we can hear nay news of him. Last night’s tide

ran that way.”

As he hurried to the door he looked at back at Percy. “Stow them other floats on the shelf there, my lad,” he

ordered, “and don’t go changing ‘em from what we said whatever happens, mind.”

Left alone, Percy’s curiosity got the better of him, for as he placed the spare pieces of wood on the shelf his hand

touched the tin of snuff. There could be no great harm in opening it, he thought, and having a look at the drawings

from which Mipps had fashioned the floats.

When he took the lid off and peered inside, he could see nothing but the dark brown stuff, and no sign of the

parchment. But he remembered that Mipps had given the tin a good shaking, and had thus covered it up with the

snuff. Percy wondered whether he had done this on purpose. Why should Mipps want to hide a small piece of

parchment which he had already crumpled up and thrown carelessly away and then picked up again? Percy put his

ling fingers into the tin, and sure enough he found the parchment buried beneath the snuff. He drew it out very

carefully, anxious not to spill any of the brown dust, which made Mipps sneeze so heartily. He somehow did not

want Mipps to know that he was prying. The little sexton might not like it, he though, and he did not want to vex

one who had shown him such kindness.

He looked at Judy, and was relived that her eyes appeared to be close shut beneath her heavy, languid lids. He

hoped she wouldn’t tell the Sexton what he was doing, but for the life of him he could not resist the temptation. He

had meant to ask the Sexton if he might see it when all was said and done, and this though weighed with him and

gave him a little comfort.

Now although Percy had done little good for himself at school, partly because he hated the master, Mister Rash,

who had no patience with him, and made him a butt upon all occasions, and partly because everyone calling him the

Village Idiot, he took no pains to make them think otherwise, he had at least mastered the alphabet, and could spell

a few words of one syllable. In spite of this limitation he yet knew all the names on the local signposts, and no

sooner had he spread out the piece of parchment, than he recognized that here was a list of familiar places, against

which were sketches of his bits of wood. There, for instance, was the starboard club and the port diamond,

commanded by Judy, and against them was the name Littlestone Beach. After some difficulty he made out the word

at the top of the list to be LANDINGS. Two hearts together against ‘Dungeness, Sou’ west’, made him think of this

sudden trouble to the Hart family.

He not only liked Fred, who had always been kind to him, but he knew how much the old people had looked

forward to the golden Wedding, which was to be a day of great rejoicing, and now it seemed all was spoiled. As he

stowed away the list into the tin and covered it once more with the snuff, his eyes filled with tears of sorrow for the

Harts, so to clear his snivelling, which he had no wish for the parish to see upon his first day of rounds with his new

floats, he stole a good pinch of snuff, had a prodigious sneeze and felt better.

Then with the ace of clubs in his right bucket and the diamond ace in his left, he went back to the well to refill.

Now although the Hart tragedy was the source of village gossip, he could not fail to notice that at each cottage

particular interest was taken in his bits of wood.

Some folk said how good it was of the Sexton to have taken so much pains, and others praised the workmanship

and quaint design. As the interest continued throughout his round, Percy thought of that piece of parchment in the

tin of snuff, and quite suddenly, from one of the livelier cells in his queer and generally sluggish brain, he became

aware of a startling fact which he realized was true, namely, that he was being used to carry these signs at the

Scarecrow’s orders. He knew well enough what the word

LANDINGS signified at the head of the mysterious

list. He knew that there were no landings carried out upon the neighbouring coastline that were not the work of the

Scarecrow. The signs in his buckets meant Littlestone Beach. In spite of the utmost care exerted by all concerned

not to give themselves away when a landing and a run was contemplated, there was a something in the air that made

Percy suspicious. On such nights he would never go out late to dig lug for his patron, Mipps. In fact, Mipps would

generally tell him that he was not in need of lug upon such occasion.

The more Percy thought about it, the more he was convinced that he was being used by the dreaded Scarecrow,

and frightened as he wa s of the gallows permanently standing so close to his well, he was more scared of the

Phantom Rider of the Marsh and his followers of whom such dreadful tales were told.

It was this terror that persuaded him at all costs to keep his dreadful discovery to himself, and not to mention it

even to his mother.

He tried hard to forget what he had guessed, but found it impossible, and to make matters even more frightening

he made another discovery that very evening at the start of his last water-round, which set his heart thumping with

fear.

He was about to enter the open door of the dark barn in which the sailors were billeted when he heard a moan as

of a man in pain. Now Percy had a hatred of pain which made him almost hysterical. He could not bear pain

himself nor to see it in others, and this pitiful moaning coming from the darkness frightened him, and he wished that

there had been a sailor mounting guard outside the barn as there had been in the morning when he had delivered the