CHAPTER III.

MR. W. S. SHARKLEY'S PLOT.

As Sharkley travelled back towards the little mining hamlet, where the Trevanion Arms stood conspicuously where two roads branched off, one towards Lanteglos, and the other towards the sea, he revolved in his cunning mind several projects for obtaining possession of the papers; but knowing that the old soldier mistrusted him, that he was quite aware of their value, and that he was as obstinate in his resolution to preserve them, as he was faithful and true to the son of Richard Trevelyan, there was an extreme difficulty in deciding on any one line or plan for proper or honest action, so knavery alone had scope.

Could he, out of the five hundred pounds received to account, but bribe Derrick Braddon to lend the papers ostensibly for a time, receiving in return a receipt in a feigned handwriting, with a forged or fancy signature, so totally unlike that used by the solicitor, that he might afterwards safely repudiate the document, and deny he had ever written it!

To attempt to possess them by main force never came within the scope of Sharkley's imagination, for the old soldier was strong and wiry as a young bull, and had been famous as a wrestler in his youth; and then force was illegal, whatever craft might be.

Ultimately he resolved to ignore the subject of the papers, and seem to forget all about them; to talk on other matters, military if possible (though such were not much in Sharkley's way), and thus endeavour to throw Braddon off his guard, and hence get them into his possession by a very simple process--one neither romantic nor melo-dramatic, but resorted to frequently enough by the lawless, in London and elsewhere--in fact by drugging his victim; and for this purpose, by affecting illness and deceiving a medical man, he provided himself with ample means by the way.

Quitting the railway he hastened on foot next day towards the picturesque little tavern, his only fear being that Derrick might have suddenly changed his mind, and being somewhat erratic now, have gone elsewhere.

As he walked onward, immersed in his own selfish thoughts, scheming out the investment of the two thousand pounds, perhaps of more, for why should he not wring or screw more out of his employer's purse?--it was ample enough!--the beauty of the spring evening and of the surrounding scenery had no soothing effect on the heart of this human reptile. The picturesque banks of the winding Camel, then rolling brown in full flood from recent rains; Boscastle on its steep hill, overlooking deep and furzy hollows, and its inlet or creek where the blue sea lay sparkling in light under the storm-beaten headlands and desolate cliffs; away in the distance on another hand, the craggy ridges of Bron Welli, and the Row Tor all reddened by the setting sun, were unnoticed by Sharkley, who ere long found himself under the pretty porch and swinging sign-board of the little inn (all smothered in its bright greenery, budding flowers, and birds' nests), where the scene of his nefarious operations lay.

A frocked wagoner, ruddy and jolly, whipping up his sleek horses with one hand while wiping the froth of the last tankard from his mouth with the other, departed from the door with his team as Sharkley entered and heard a voice that was familiar, singing vociferously upstairs.

"Who is the musical party?" asked he of the round-headed, short-necked and barrel-shaped landlord, whose comely paunch was covered by a white apron.

"Your friend the old pensioner, Mr. Sharkley," replied the other, "and main noisy he be."

"Friend?" said Sharkley nervously; "he ain't a friend of mine--only a kind of client in a humble way."

"I wouldn't have given such, house-room; but trade is bad--the coaches are all off the road now, and business be all taken by the rail to Launceston, Bodmin, and elsewhere."

"Has he been drinking?"

"Yes."

"Pretty freely?" asked Sharpley hopefully.

"Well--yes; we're licensed to get drunk on the premises."

"Come," thought the emissary, "this is encouraging! His intellect," he added aloud, "is weak; after a time he grows furious and is apt to accuse people of robbing him, especially of certain papers of which he imagines himself the custodian; it is quite a monomania."

"A what, sur?"

"A monomania."

"I hopes as he don't bite; but any way," said the landlord, who had vague ideas of hydrophobia, "I had better turn him out at once, as I want no bobberies here."

"No--no; that would be precipitate. I shall try to soothe him over; besides, I have express business with him to-night."

"But if he won't be soothed?" asked Boniface, anxiously.

"Then you have the police station at hand."

Meanwhile they could hear Derrick above them, drumming on the bare table with a pint-pot, and singing some barrack-room ditty of which the elegant refrain was always,--

"Stick to the colour, boys, while there's a rag on it, And tickle them behind with a touch of the bagonet: So, love, farewell, for _all_ for a-marching!"

As Sharkley entered, it was evident that the old soldier, whose voice rose at times into a shrill, discordant, and hideous falsetto, had been imbibing pretty freely; his weather-beaten face was flushed, his eyes watery, and his voice somewhat husky, but he was in excellent humour with himself and all the world. The visitor's sharp eyes took in the whole details of the little room occupied by his victim; a small window, which he knew to be twelve feet from a flower-bed outside; a bed in a corner; two Windsor chairs, a table and wash-stand, all of the most humble construction; these, with Derrick's tiny carpet-bag and walking staff, comprised its furniture.

"Come along, Master Sharkley--glad to see you--glad to see any one--it's dreary work drinking alone. This is my billet, and there is a shot in the locker yet--help yourself," he added, pushing a large three-handled tankard of ale across the table.

"Thank you, Braddon," replied the other, careful to omit the prefix of "Mr.," which Derrick always resented, "and you must share mine with me. Have you heard the news?"

"From where--India?"

"Yes."

"And what are they that I have not heard--tell me that, Mr. Sharkley--what are they that I have not heard?" said Braddon with the angry emphasis assumed at times unnecessarily by the inebriated.

"Is it that your young master is shut up among the Afghans, and likely, I fear, to remain so?"

"Her Majesty the Queen don't think so--no, sir--d--n me, whatever you, and such as you, may think," responded Derrick, becoming suddenly sulky and gloomy.

"Who do you mean, Braddon?" asked the other, drinking, and eying him keenly over his pewter-pot.

"Did you see to-day's Gazette?"

"The Bankruptcy list?"

"Bankrupts be--" roared Braddon, contemptuously, striking his clenched hand on the deal table; "no--the _War Office Gazette_."

Mr. W. S. Sharkley faintly and timidly indicated that as it was a part of the newspapers which possessed but small interest for him, he certainly had not seen it.

"Well, that is strange now," said Derrick; "it is almost the only bit of a paper I ever read."

"It ain't very lively, I should think."

"Ain't it--well, had you looked there to-day, you would have seen that young master Denzil--that is my Lord Lamorna as should be--has been gazetted to a Lieutenancy in the old Cornish--yes, in the-old-Cornish-Light-Infantry!" added Derrick, running five words into one.

"Indeed! but he may die in the hands of the enemy for all that--though I hope not."

"Give me your hand, Mr. Sharkley, for that wish," said Derrick, with tipsy solemnity; "moreover, he is to have the third class of the Dooranee Empire, whatever the dickens that may be. I've drawed my pension to-day, Mr. Sharkley, and I mean to spend every penny of it in wetting the young master's new commission, and the Dooranee Empire to boot. Try the beer again--it's home-brewed, and a first-rate quencher--here's-his-jolly good-health!"

"So say I--his jolly good health."

"With three times three!"

"Yes," added Sharkley, as he wrung the pensioner's proffered hand, "and three to that."

Derrick, who, though winding up the day on beer, had commenced it with brandy, was fast becoming more noisy and confused, to his wary visitor's intense satisfaction.

"Yes--yes--master Denzil will escape all and come home safe, please God," said Derrick, becoming sad and sentimental for a minute; "yet in my time I heard many a fellow--yes, many a fellow--before we went into action, or were just looking to our locks, and getting the cartridges loose, say to another, 'write for me,' to my father, or mother, or it might be 'poor Bess, or Nora,' meaning his wife, 'in case I get knocked on the head;' and I have seen them shot in their belts within ten minutes after. I often think--yes, by jingo I do--that a man sometimes knows when death is a-nigh him, for I have heard some say they were sure they'd be shot, and shot they were sure enough; while others--I for one--were always sure they'd escape. It's what we soldiers call a presentiment; but of course, you, as a lawyer, can know nothing about it. With sixty rounds of ammunition at his back, a poor fellow will have a better chance of seeing Heaven than if he died with a blue bagfull of writs and rubbish."

Then Derrick indulged in a tipsy fit of laughter, mingled with tears, as he said,

"You'd have died o' laughing, Mr. Sharkley, if you'd seen the captain my master one day--but perhaps you don't care about stories?"

"By all means, Braddon," replied Sharkley, feeling in his vest pocket with a fore-finger and thumb for a phial which lurked there; "I dearly love to hear an old soldier's yarn."

"Well, it was when we were fighting against the rebels in Canada--the rebels under Papineau. We were only a handful, as the saying is--a handful of British troops, and they were thousands in number--discontented French, Irish Rapparees, and Yankee sympathisers, armed with everything they could lay hands on; but we licked them at St. Denis and St. Charles, on the Chamblay river--yes, and lastly at Napierville, under General Sir John Colborne; and pretty maddish we Cornish lads were at them, for they had just got one of our officers, a poor young fellow named Lieutenant George Weir, into their savage hands by treachery, after which they tied him to a cart-tail, and cut him into joints with his own sword. Well--where was I?--at Napierville. We were lying in a field in extended order to avoid the discharge of a field gun or two, that the devils had got into position against us, when a ball from one ploughed up the turf in a very open place, and Captain Trevelyan seated himself right in the furrow it had made, and proceeded to light a cigar, laughing as he did so.

" Are you wise to sit there, right in the line of fire?' asked the colonel, looking down from his horse.

"'Yes,' says my master.

"'How so?'

"Master took the cigar between his fingers, and while watching the smoke curling upwards, said,

"'You see, colonel, that another cannon ball is extremely unlikely to pass in the same place; two never go after each other thus.'

"But he had barely spoken, ere the shako was torn off his head by a second shot from the field piece; so everybody laughed, while he scrambled out of the furrow, looking rather white and confused, though pretending to think it as good a joke as any one else--that was funny, wasn't it!"

So, while Derrick lay back and laughed heartily at his own reminiscence, Sharkley, quick as lightning, poured into his tankard a little phial-full of morphine, a colourless but powerful narcotic extracted from opium. He then took an opportunity of casting the phial into the fire unseen, and by the aid of the poker effectually concealed it.

"What a fine thing it would have been for Mr. Downie Trevelyan if that rebel shot had been a little lower down--eh, Derrick?" said he, chuckling.

"Not while the proud old lord lived, for he ever loved my master best."

"But he is in possession now--and that, you know, is nine points of the law."

"Yes--and he has a heart as hard as Cornish granite," said Braddon, grinding his set teeth; "aye, hard as the Logan Stone of Treryn Dinas! Here is confusion to him and all such!" he added, energetically, as he drained the drugged tankard to the dregs; "if such a fellow were in the army, he'd be better known to the Provost Marshal than to the Colonel or Adjutant, and would soon find himself at shot-drill, with B.C. branded on his side. But here's Mr. Denzil's jolly good-health-and-hooray-for-the-Dooranee-Empire!" he continued, and applied the empty tankard mechanically to his lips, while his eyes began to roll, as the four corners of the room seemed to be in pursuit of each other round him. "I dreamt I was on the wreck last night--ugh! and saw the black fins of the sea-lawyers, sticking up all about us."

"Sea-lawyers--what may they be?"

"Sharks," replied Braddon, his eyes glaring with a curious expression, that hovered between fun and ferocity, at his companion, whose figure seemed suddenly to waver, and then to multiply.

"Ha, ha, very good; an old soldier must have his joke."

"So had my master, when he sat in the fur-ur-urrow made by the shell. You see, we were engaged with Canada rebels at Napierville--ville--yes exactly, at Naperville, when a twelve-pound shot----"

He was proceeding, with twitching mouth and thickened utterance, to relate the whole anecdote deliberately over again, when Sharkley, who saw that he was becoming so fatuously tipsy that further concealment was useless, rose impatiently, and abruptly left the room, to give the landlord some fresh hints for his future guidance.

"Halt! come back here--here, you sir--I say!" exclaimed Braddon, in a low, fierce, and husky voice, as this sudden and unexplained movement seemed to rouse all his suspicions and quicken his perceptive qualities; but in attempting to leave his chair he fell heavily on the floor.

He grew ghastly pale as he staggered into a sitting posture. Tipsy and stupefied though he was, some strange conviction of treachery came over him; he staggered, or dragged himself, partly on his hands and knees, towards the bed, and drawing from his breast-pocket the tin case, with the documents so treasured, by a last effort of strength and of judgment, thrust it between the mattress and palliasse, and flung himself above it.

Then, as the powerful narcotic he had imbibed overspread all his faculties, he sank into a deep and dreamless but snorting slumber, that in its heaviness almost boded death!

* * * * *

The noon of the next day was far advanced when poor old Derrick awoke to consciousness, but could, with extreme difficulty, remember where he was. A throat parched, as if fire was scorching it; an overpowering headache and throbbing of the temples; hot and tremulous hands, with an intense thirst, served to warn him that he must have been overnight, that which he had not been for many a year, very tipsy and "totally unfit for duty."

He staggered up in search of a water-jug, and then found that he had lain abed with his clothes on. A pleasant breeze came through the open window; the waves of the bright blue sea were rolling against Tintagel cliffs and up Boscastle creek; hundreds of birds were twittering in the warm spring sunshine about the clematis and briar that covered all the tavern walls, and the hum of the bee came softly and gratefully to his ear, as he strove to recall the events of the past night.

Sharkley!--it had been spent with Sharkley the solicitor, and where now was he?

The papers! He mechanically put his trembling hand to his coat pocket, and then, as a pang of fear shot through his heart, under the mattress.

They were not there; vacantly he groped and gasped, as recollections flashed upon him, and the chain of ideas became more distinct; madly he tossed up all the bedding and scattered it about. The case was gone, and with it the precious papers, too, were gone--GONE!

Sobered in an instant by this overwhelming catastrophe--most terribly sobered--a hoarse cry of mingled rage and despair escaped him. The landlord, who had been listening for an outbreak of some kind, now came promptly up.

"Beast, drunkard, fool that I have been!" exclaimed Derrick, in bitter accents of self-reprobation; "this is how I have kept my promise to a dying master--duped by the first scoundrel who came across me! I have been juggled--drugged, perhaps--then juggled, and robbed after!"

"Robbed of what?" asked the burly landlord, laughing.

"Papers--my master's papers," groaned Derrick.

"Bah--I thought as much; now look ye here, old fellow----"

"Robbed by a low lawyer," continued Derrick, hoarsely; "and no fiend begotten in hell can be lower in the scale of humanity or more dangerous to peaceful society. Oh, how often has poor master said so," he added, waxing magniloquent, and almost beside himself with grief and rage; "how often have I heard him say, 'I have had so much to do with lawyers, that I have lost all proper abhorrence for their master, the devil.'"

"Now, I ain't going to stand any o' this nonsense--just you clear out," said the landlord, peremptorily.

Then as his passionate Cornish temper got the better of his reason, Derrick on hearing this suddenly seized Jack Trevanion's successor by the throat, and dashing him on the floor, accused him of being art and part, or an aider and abettor of the robbery, in which, to say truth, he was not. His cries speedily brought the county constabulary, to whom, by Sharkley's advice, he had previously given a hint, and before the sun was well in the west, honest Derrick Braddon was raving almost with madness and despair under safe keeping in the nearest station house.