The Toll-Gate Read online

  ‘You go stow your whids and plant ’em!’ recommended Chirk. ‘Seems to me –’

  ‘That’s enough!’ The Captain, looking up from forcing one bruised foot, not without difficulty, into his shoe, spoke authoritatively. ‘We’ve not reached the end of this yet. I want you first to inspect the chests, Stogumber. Come!’

  ‘One of ’em’s open,’ said Chirk. ‘Did you do that, Soldier?’

  ‘Yes, Stornaway and I opened it to see what was in it. But we didn’t break the seals or the lock. Someone had opened it before us, though I don’t think any of the bags were stolen from it. Take a look!’

  Mr Stogumber, running his eye over the chests, said reverently: ‘All on ’em! All six on ’em! Lord, I thank ’ee! There don’t look to be nothing gone from this one. Quite certain sure it wasn’t you as broke the lock, big ’un?’

  ‘Well, may I be snitched!’ exclaimed Chirk. ‘So now you’ve took it into that cod’s head o’ yours that the Soldier’s a prig, have you? If that don’t beat all to shivers! P’raps you’d like to have me turn out my pockets?’

  ‘I ain’t accusing neither of you of no such thing,’ said Stogumber, carefully closing the chest. ‘All I says is that if the Capting did break the lock, for to see what was in the chest, it’s what anyone might ha’ done, even though he mightn’t like to mention it. And the only thing as I’ve a fancy to see out of your pockets, queer-cull, is that long-nosed pop of yours!’ He began to rope the chest again, adding frankly: ‘And I don’t know as I’ve so very much of a fancy to see that neither – things being the way they are! If you didn’t break this lock, big ’un, who did?’

  The Captain, who had seated himself on one of the chests, said, rather wearily: ‘I suspect, the gatekeeper. I told you we had not yet come to the end.’

  ‘The gatekeeper!’ said Stogumber, turning it over in his mind. ‘By Hooky, you’ve very likely hit it! Came up here to help himself to the rhino, and – We got to search this place!’

  ‘What a peery cove you are, Redbreast!’ said Chirk admiringly. ‘No one wouldn’t think so, to look at you, neither!’

  ‘You pick up your glim, Jack-Sauce, and come and help me look around this hole in the ground!’ said Stogumber.

  The Captain rose to his feet again, and followed them, limping a little. The passage leading to the river was soon discovered, and in another few minutes Stogumber, having stared in amazement at the stream, swept his lantern along the chamber, and saw the body of the murdered gatekeeper. It had been partially disinterred, and its appearance was so ghastly that Chirk, who had not expected to see it exposed, gave a sharp gasp, and involuntarily recoiled. Mr Stogumber did not recoil. He walked solidly forward, and in phlegmatic silence surveyed it. ‘Knifed!’ he said, and looked over his shoulder. ‘Does either of you coves know if the corp’ is Brean?’

  ‘Ay, that’s him,’ said Chirk shortly. ‘And if it’s all the same to you, Redbreast, I’d take it very kind in you if you was to stop shining your glim on him!’

  ‘I’m agreeable,’ responded the Runner. He came back to where John was standing, leaning his shoulder against the wall. ‘If, big ’un,’ he said, ‘you seen that poor cove like we see him now afore this – mind, I ain’t asking no questions! – all I says is, if you did, I don’t blame you for breaking Coate’s neck, and dang me, I’d like to shake that great famble of yours! Though it goes against the shins with me that I can’t bring him to the nubbing-cheat!’ he added regretfully, his square hand lost in the Captain’s. ‘The best thing we can do now is to brush. I got to send for my patrol, and it looks like you’re a trifle fagged, Capting Staple.’

  ‘I’m not tired, but my feet are thawing, and one of them’s devilish bruised,’ said John. ‘We’ll go back into the main chamber, but we can’t leave the cavern like this.’

  ‘God love you, Soldier, ain’t you had enough yet?’ demanded Chirk irascibly.

  ‘No, I haven’t. There’s a great deal of untidiness about this business, and I don’t like untidiness! I must make all right for Stogumber.’

  ‘I’m obliged to you,’ said the Runner heavily. ‘I ain’t complaining, but the more I thinks on it the more I wonder what they’re going to say, up at Headquarters, when they knows that I let you come into this cavern without me, ah, and let you break Coate’s neck, ’stead of leaving that to the hangman!’

  They had emerged again into the main chamber. John led the way across it, and stood for a moment, looking down at Coate’s body. ‘I wasn’t here at all,’ he said.

  ‘Eh?’ ejaculated Stogumber, taken aback.

  The Captain turned away, and limped to the chests, setting the lantern he had taken from Chirk on the upturned one, and sitting down on another. ‘I think I had very little to do with the business,’ he said, considering the matter.

  ‘Little to do with it?’ gasped Stogumber. ‘Why –’

  ‘You stow your gab, Redbreast, and put your hearing-cheats forward!’ interrupted Chirk. ‘If you wasn’t here, Soldier, who was it broke Coate’s neck?’

  ‘No one,’ replied the Captain. ‘He fell on the stairs, trying to make his escape.’

  ‘So he did!’ said Chirk. ‘What’s more, I saw him with these very ogles! We’ll put him there natural, so as them as Mr Stogumber brings to fetch these here bodies away will find him there, just like he told ’em they would!’

  ‘It could have happened that way,’ admitted Stogumber cautiously.

  ‘It did happen that way, so don’t let’s have any argle-bargle!’ begged Chirk. ‘What I want to know is, who discovered the cavern, and all this rhino?’

  ‘You did. We have already decided on that, so let me have no argle-bargle from you! I had my own reasons for bearing a hand in the adventure, and I want no part of the reward. I imagine that will be between you and Stogumber.’

  ‘There’ll be plenty for three,’ said Stogumber.

  ‘Well, I don’t want it, and would prefer to have my name kept out of the business.’ He sat frowning into the darkness. ‘I wonder what brought Coate here today?’ he said.

  ‘If it comes to that, Soldier, it’s queering me a bit to know what brought Stornaway here!’ confessed Chirk ruefully.

  ‘Well, it ain’t queering me!’ said Stogumber explosively. ‘I’ve told you already I won’t –’

  ‘Stornaway came with you and Stogumber,’ said the Captain, paying no heed to the interruption. ‘Stogumber could scarcely persuade him to believe that his friend was so villainous. In fact, he wouldn’t believe it without the proof of his own eyes. So you brought him here, and showed him both the treasure, and Brean’s body.’

  ‘Never saw a cove so goshswoggled!’ corroborated Chirk.

  ‘Keep that long tongue of yours still, Jerry!’ commanded the Captain. ‘Of course I see what must have happened! Stornaway was such a ninnyhammer that he made Coate suspicious that he had discovered the truth. When Coate found that he had left the house mysteriously, he came to look for him here, because it was Stornaway who told him about this cavern in the first place!’

  ‘That,’ said Stogumber bitterly, ‘is the only true thing you’ve said yet, Capting Staple!’

  ‘If ever I seen such a death’s head on a mopstick!’ exclaimed the irrepressible Chirk. ‘Nothing don’t please him!’

  ‘Very well,’ said the Captain, getting up. ‘If only the truth will do for you, let’s tell the truth – all of it! You sat at your ease in the Blue Boar while I baited a trap for Coate; you didn’t call up your patrol because I told you not to; you joined hands with a bridle-cull, and let him persuade you not to enter the cavern until I had done what I had to there; you –’

  ‘That’ll do!’ said Stogumber. ‘There’s ways and ways of telling the truth! And while you’re reckoning up the things I done, don’t you go forgetting who broke Coate’s neck, big ’un, else I’d have to remind you!’

  ‘Oh
, I won’t forget!’ promised the Captain. ‘I was alone and unarmed – my reserves not having come up! – and I had a desperate fight with a man who held a loaded pistol. If, when we fell together on this rock floor, his neck was broken, I fancy no one will blame me for it!’

  A silence fell. Chirk coughed deprecatingly. ‘I ain’t never been one for throwing a rub in the way, like this swell trap we’ve got here, Soldier, but I’m bound to say I ain’t so very anxious you and him should blab all the truth!’

  The Captain laughed. ‘Nor I, Jerry! Come, Stogumber, what’s to be gained by blackening that wretched creature’s name? You found no proof that he was a party to these crimes, and although you say he would have shot me in the back you don’t know that either, for you were not here. He’s no longer alive to answer for himself: let him rest!’

  Stogumber looked up at him under lowering brows. ‘You’d go into the witness box and swear you knew him for an honest man, wouldn’t you, Capting Staple?’ he growled. ‘On your oath, you would, I don’t doubt!’

  ‘Stogumber, what could I do but that? His cousin is my wife!’

  Chirk gave a long whistle. ‘So-ho! To be sure, you been smelling of April and May ever since I met you, but I never suspicioned you was married!’

  ‘Two nights ago, in the Squire’s presence. He was dying, and I gave him my word that I would keep his name clean.’

  Another silence fell. ‘If we are going to move Coate’s body,’ suddenly said Stogumber, with some violence, ‘why don’t we do it, ’stead of standing gabbing? As for you, rank-rider, you light the way, and bring the gun along, which he dropped! And if I have any more sauce from you, you’ll be sorry!’

  Twenty minutes later, they came out of the cavern, and stood for a few minutes, dazzled by the sunlight. Chirk, blowing on his numbed fingers, said caustically: ‘There’s coves as pays down their dust to go into places like that! It ain’t going to break my heart if I never see another!’

  ‘Nor mine,’ agreed Stogumber. ‘Fair blue-devilled, I was, and I don’t mind owning it. We better close it up again, till I come back, with my patrol.’

  This done, the Captain left the Runner to tie the fence to the staples again, and went with Chirk to fetch Mollie and the landlord’s cob from where they had been tethered round the spur of the hill. As soon as he was out of earshot of Stogumber, the Captain said sternly: ‘Chirk, how dared you do that?’

  Chirk did not pretend to misunderstand him. He merely said: ‘You’d have had your toes cocked up now if I hadn’t, Soldier.’

  ‘Humdudgeon! I daresay he would have been glad enough to have shot me, could he but have summoned up the resolution, but whether he could have kept his hand steady is another matter! Good God, he was as scared as a rabbit! You had only to shout to him to drop his pistol, and he would have done it – and himself with it, in a swoon of terror! You knew that!’

  ‘If you don’t beat the Dutch!’ remarked Chirk. ‘I didn’t see you with your fambles round Coate’s squeeze, did I? I didn’t hear the crack of his neck breaking, did I? Oh, no! out of course I didn’t!’

  ‘Yes, I killed Coate, and without compunction!’ the Captain said. ‘There were three wretched fellows who owed their deaths to him, and an old man whose last days on earth were made hideous by his plots! But Stornaway was no more than a tool in his hands, and that you knew!’

  ‘Well,’ said Chirk, quite unperturbed by this severity, ‘seeing as you was aiming to marry Miss Nell, Soldier, it seemed to me as you’d be a deal better off without a Queer Nabs like him to call cousins with you!’

  ‘I shall be, of course,’ admitted the Captain frankly. ‘I daresay I should have been obliged, for my wife’s sake, to have extricated him a good few times from the consequences of his own folly. But you have made me feel that I’ve betrayed the Squire’s trust, Jerry, and I don’t like it!’

  ‘You’ve got no call to be hipped over that,’ Chirk told him. ‘By what Rose has told me, Squire would have said I done right. He wouldn’t ha’ cared how soon his precious grandson was booked, so long as he didn’t kick up no nasty dust!’

  The Captain, thinking of the Squire, smiled reluctantly. ‘I suppose he wouldn’t.’

  ‘Besides,’ said Chirk, stripping his greatcoat from Mollie’s back, and shrugging himself into it, ‘while we was about it, it would have been a crying shame not to have made a regular sweep of it! Don’t you go napping your bib over that young weasel, Soldier, because the only difference twixt him and Coate was that he was hen-hearted, and Coate weren’t!’ He hoisted himself into the saddle. ‘I daresay the cob won’t founder under you, if you throw your leg acrost him,’ he observed, handing this sturdy animal’s bridle to John. ‘’Least, not before we get back to the Redbreast, though I wouldn’t ask him to carry you further, me being a merciful man.’

  ‘Did you have any trouble with Stogumber?’ asked John, mounting the cob.

  ‘Not to speak of, I didn’t, excepting how to get him over a hedge, him not being in the habit of it. If it’s all one to you, Soldier, we’ll take him back by way of the road.’ He said over his shoulder, as the mare moved forward: ‘He ain’t a bad cove – for a trap! Him and me got talking while we was waiting for you and Stornaway, and I’m bound to say he’s got a lot of useful ideas in his noddle. We got it settled all right and tight how I come to be mixed up in this business, and a rare Banbury story it is! ’Cos the Redbreast don’t want it known what my lay is, and no more I don’t neither.’ He looked over his shoulder again. ‘Lordy, to think I’ll be setting up respectable, with Rose, before the cat can lick her ear! When the Redbreast told me how much gelt them chubs in Lunnon will pay down for getting the chests back, it made me feel pretty near as queer as Dick’s hatband, ’cos I wasn’t expecting it, nothing like it, I wasn’t! Seems they pays ten per cent, which is very handsome of ’em, I will say. And I owes it all to you, Soldier, which is why I sent Stornaway to roost, not being able to think of nothing else I could do for you!’

  This made John laugh; and he was still chuckling when they rejoined Stogumber by the cavern mouth. That gentleman, receiving his mount from him, said austerely that he was happy to see him in such high gig, and had little doubt that he would find something to amuse him, even if he were on his way to the gallows. ‘Which, from what I seen of you, is where you’ll find yourself one of these days!’ he added, climbing laboriously into the saddle, and groping for his stirrups. ‘And I ain’t going to pull this nag over any more banks, so mark that!’

  ‘No, no, we’ll follow the road!’ John said soothingly. ‘Let’s be off! I don’t know for how long we were in the cavern, but it seems an age since I entered it. I left Ben to mind the gate, too, so I daresay I am quite in his black books by this time.’

  But when they came within sight of the toll-gate there was no sign of Ben. An animated group was gathered about the immaculate person of Mr Babbacombe, and it included, besides a spare man in his Sunday blacks, a burly farmer, driving a cow with her calf; a groom in charge of a gig; Rose Durward; and Nell. Most of these persons appeared to be engaged in acrimonious discussion, but the approach, beyond the gate, of a cavalcade, consisting of three riders and two led horses, caused them to abate their strife. They all turned to see who could be coming to the pike in such force.

  ‘What the devil’s the matter?’ demanded the Captain, dismounting, and pulling open the gate to allow Stogumber and Chirk, who was leading Stornaway’s horse, to pass.

  An outraged cry broke from the man in black. ‘Just as I thought! How dare you open that gate, fellow? How dare you, I say?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I open the gate?’ asked John. ‘I’m its keeper!’

  ‘Oh, no, you are not!’ declared the spare man furiously. ‘You’re an impostor and a rascal! And as for that impudent counter-coxcomb there, it’s very plain to me that he’s a courtcard, or worse!’

  ‘Then let me tell you, you nasty,
distempered old freak,’ struck in Rose, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed, ‘that it’s very plain to me that you’re a vulgar, uncivil make-bait, and if no one else will slap your Friday-face for you, I will!’

  ‘Oh, Rose, pray hush!’ begged Nell, between amusement and dismay. ‘For heaven’s sake, John – !’

  ‘I’ll slap his face for you, Miss Durward, and glad to do it!’ offered the farmer. ‘What call has he to come here, poking his Malmsey-nose into what ain’t none of his business? Threepence for every head of horned cattle! that’s what it says on the board, and threepence I paid the gentleman! What’s more, I’ll pay him threepence more if there’s any one of you can find a horn on the calf’s head!’

  ‘Damn you, Jack, I knew I should catch cold if I let you bamboozle me into staying here!’ said the harassed Mr Babbacombe. ‘Where the devil have you been? No, never mind telling me! What ought this fellow to be charged for his calf? I’ll be hanged if I know! You can’t get away from it: not a sign of a horn on its head!’

  ‘Quibbling! Mere quibbling!’ cried the spare man. ‘You’re in a plot to cheat the tolls! Don’t tell me!’

  ‘I do believe as he’s an Informer!’ said the farmer, staring very hard at the spare man. ‘Let’s take and pitch him in Bob Huggate’s duck pond, guv’nor!’

  At this point, the Captain, who had so far failed to make himself heard, intervened. Pushing the gate wider, he addressed himself to the farmer. ‘You be off, with your horned cattle!’ he said. ‘I won’t charge you for the calf, though I daresay I’m wrong.’

  ‘You are wrong!’ asserted the spare man, dancing with fury. ‘My name is Willitoft, sir! Willitoft!’