Murder in the Night (Musaicum Vintage Mysteries). Arthur Gask

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      The string was too knotted to untie, and the old man hesitated for a few moments before cutting it with his knife.

      "I've half a mind not to show you," he went on musingly, with all trace of his anger for the moment gone. "There's that in here that once cost the lives of four good men—and it might cost the lives of a good many more, if it got into wrong hands. But there," he sneered disgustedly, "it's safe with you. You'd want a bucketful before you'd ever dare to taste it. Oh, you miserable coward."

      He cut the string with a jerk, and, opening the box, took out a small packet wrapped in a length of dirty green oilskin.

      "Now, Wacks," he said solemnly, "it's eleven years and more since this oilskins been unwrapped, and I don't know why the devil I am unwrapping it now. I always swore I'd never touch it and that I'd let it die with me."

      He hesitated again, and then, taking a good gulp from the glass at his elbow, unrolled the oilskin clumsily, and a little brown jar rolled on to his knees. It was about the size of a small condensed milk can; the mouth of it was tied over tightly with a piece of greasy looking parchment.

      "No; I'm not going to open it," he growled. "This is as far as we'll go to-day anyhow."

      He held the jar close up for me to inspect, and then, setting it carefully on the table with his shaky hand, fell into a long reverie that I thought best not to interrupt or disturb.

      "Lord! how old I'm growing," he said, presently. "See the date on it. I said eleven years, didn't I? Well, it's more like twenty. Curse you, Wacks, I'm blasted sorry I ever disturbed it. I'm nine years older than I thought—no wonder I feel sometimes as if coffin time was come. Look here, my boy," he went on again, but in quite a gentle voice, "I said I'd tell you, and so I will, but it's a tale that won't do you no good, and maybe you'll be sorry you roused me up to tell it at all."

      "Listen here. Twenty years ago, when I was master of the 'Willing Bird,' from Liverpool to Fremantle, I shipped a Malayan as fireman at Marseilles. I was short handed, and had lost two men in a gale off Finisterre. Well, this new man was just such another as you. A little silly swine that let everyone curse him and never cursed back. A man without a grain of pluck. Everyone harried him from the first moment he came aboard, and he had a rotten time. I couldn't stop it, for I wasn't everywhere in the ship. They bullied him and knocked him about, just because he was a blithering coward, like you, and let 'em do it. He never once hit anybody back, and all he did was to threaten them with something a cousin of his was going to do.

      "'Me cousin at Colombo,' he would jabber, 'he gib me something and me gib you hell den—see.' But all they did was to jeer at him and give him more knocks. No one knew then what he meant. Well, at Colombo he went ashore, and right enough his damned cousin did give him something. He gave him this pot of paste. Two days out from Colombo he ate a teaspoonful of it, and in a couple of hours there was all hell aboard. Someone started him, and in a second he was flying at everyone he met. He knifed the quartermaster through the heart; then he stabbed a deck hand who tried to catch him. Then he rushed on deck, and put up an awful fight there. With everybody on him there was two more stabbed before the mate managed to break his arm with a marlinspike. Even then he fought 'em all like a tiger, and it was only when he broke his back by falling down the forecastle steps that we at last had him under control.

      "The poor brute was quite conscious before he died next day, and he told me all about the jar. It's a stuff the natives take before they go into the jungle after tigers, and it makes a man afraid of nothing in the world. Now you've heard all about it, Mr. Wacks, and will you have a taste?"

      His jeering tones had come back, and he held up the jar, eyeing me with every expression of contempt. I shook my head feebly, and he went on tauntingly.

      "Not a little bit, Mr. Wacks. Just think what it would do. You would go up to the office like a man—like a human being, sir. Think how you would walk into those chaps—think of the grudges you could pay back—think how astonished they would be. Wouldn't their eyes bulge when the blooming bunny showed his claw—wouldn't they gape to see the blasted worm turning round at last! Oh—get out, you little beast—get away from me, quick—I'm sick of your putty face. Get out, I say—get out."

      I got up hastily in real alarm. I had never seen the captain in quite such a kind of rage before. His face twitched horribly, and I thought he was going to have another fit.

      I got to my own room as quickly as I could, and, throwing myself upon the bed, gave way passionately to the tears of a little child.

      Yes—how was it all going to end? As the old man had said, it couldn't go on for ever, and what was I going to do? The story he had told me hadn't interested me in the least. I didn't believe it, and I didn't disbelieve it—I simply hadn't taken it in. But his contempt had stung me somehow, and his bitter tongue had cut me somewhere on the raw. I had never felt so miserable and so hopeless before.

      The next day, Sunday, turned out a fine and glorious day, and I looked to the service in chapel to make up in some way for the humiliations and worries of the week. But everything was against me still, and before the service began I had yet another horrible humiliation to get over.

      As was my general habit, I had got early to the chapel, and had just settled myself comfortably in my accustomed seat, when I heard hurried footsteps behind me. Turning round curiously, I found Lucy's gentle face, all flushed and animated, within a few inches of my own.

      "Oh, do come out, please, Mr. Wacks," she whispered quickly. "Deacon Brown's horse is trying to bolt, and it's tied to the railings. His mother's in the chaise."

      I guessed what had happened at once. Every Sunday Deacon Brown used to bring his old mother to chapel in the chaise, and every Sunday he used to tie the horse up to the chapel railings whilst he went over to the minister's house to have a yarn with him before the service began. Then they would both walk over together, and between them help the old lady out of the chaise, and gallantly escort her up the aisle to her allotted seat in the front pew. The horse was young and mettlesome, and was always rolling its eyes and pricking its ears when anything noisy went by. Everyone had said it would bolt one day, but the deacon had always pooh-poohed and laughingly replied that it was quiet as a lamb, and only showing play.

      I ran out quickly and there was the brute as I had expected, tugging viciously at the cord that held him to the railings, prancing up and dawn and giving the old lady in the chaise a very fair imitation of a steamer dipping in a heavy sea. I looked round in horrible nervousness. There were plenty of women and children round, but I was the only man to be seen.

      "Catch hold of his head, Mr. Wacks," squeaked out an old lady, vigorously brandishing a fearful looking sunshade right in front of the beast's eyes, "catch hold of his head, Mr. Wacks, and hold it low down."

      Catch hold of his head, I thought. How could I get anywhere near the beast, let alone catch hold of his head? His front legs were pumping viciously up and down, and it looked sudden death to me to go anywhere within three yards. I turned quite sick with nervousness and stood stock still, feebly wondering what on earth I was going to do.

      "Catch hold of his head, please," plaintively called out the white-faced old lady in the chaise. "He'll get away if you don't get hold of him quickly."

      Other people began to join in, and I could see contemptuous glances being thrown from all sides in my direction. I stood quite still, however, helplessly doing nothing, with the sweat now all covering my forehead in small beads. Every moment it looked as if the horse would break loose, and every moment I became more and more convinced in my own mind that it was not an occasion where I could successfully interfere. Let the beast jump up and down, I thought. He'll СКАЧАТЬ