Here she was on her bed, a girl of three-and-twenty, in petticoat and a shawl, with no weapons but her own brain to oppose a fellow twice her age and eight times her strength who, if he realised she had watched the scene tonight from her window, would encircle her neck with his hand and, pressing lightly with finger and thumb, put an end to her questioning.
Then Mary swore; a thing she had done only once before in her life, when chased by a bull at Manaccan, and then it had been for the same purpose as now — to give herself courage and a certain bold pretence.
"I'll not show fear before Joss Merlyn or any man," she said, "and, to prove it, I will go down now, in the dark passage, and take a look at them in the bar, and if he kills me it will be my own fault."
She dressed hurriedly and pulled on her stockings, leaving her shoes where they were, and then, opening the door, she stood and listened for a moment, hearing nothing but the slow choking tick of the clock in the hall.
She crept out into the passage and came to the stairs. By now she knew that the third step from the top creaked, and so did the last. She trod gently, one hand resting on the bannister and the other against the wall to lighten her weight, and so she came to the dim hall by the entrance door, empty except for one unsteady chair and the shadowed outline of the grandfather clock. Its husky breathing sounded loud beside her ear, and it jarred upon the silence like a living thing. The hall was as black as a pit, and, although she knew she stood alone there, the very solitude was threatening, the closed door to the unused parlour pregnant with suggestion.
The air was fusty and heavy, in strange contrast to the cold stone flags that struck chill to her stockinged feet. As she hesitated, gathering courage to continue, a sudden beam of light shone into the passage that ran at the back of the hall, and she heard voices. The door of the bar must have swung open, and someone come out, for she heard footsteps pass into the kitchen and in a few minutes return again, but whoever it was still left the door of the bar ajar, as the murmur of voices continued and the beam of light remained. Mary was tempted to climb the stairs again to her bedroom and seek safety in sleep, but at the same time there was a demon of curiosity within her that would not be stilled, and this part of her carried her through to the passage beyond, and so to crouch against the wall a few paces only from the door of the bar. Her hands and her forehead were wet now with perspiration, and at first she could hear nothing but the loud beating of her heart. The door was open enough for her to see the outline of the hinged bar itself, and the collection of bottles and glasses, while directly in front ran a narrow strip of floor. The splintered fragments of the glass her uncle had broken still lay where they had fallen, and beside them was a brown stain of ale, spilt by some unsteady hand. The men must be sitting on the benches against the further wall, for she could not see them; they had fallen to silence, and then suddenly a man's voice rang out, quavering and high, the voice of a stranger.
"No, and no again," he said. "I tell you for the final time, I'll not be a party to it. I'll break with you now and for ever, and put an end to the agreement. That's murder you'd have me do, Mr. Merlyn; there's no other name for it — it's common murder."
The voice was pitched high, trembling on the final note, as though the speaker were carried away by the force of his feelings and had lost command of his tongue. Someone — the landlord himself, no doubt — made reply in a low tone, and Mary could not catch his words, but his speech was broken by a cackle of laughter that she recognised as belonging to the pedlar. The quality of it was unmistakable — insulting and coarse.
He must have hinted a question, for the stranger spoke again swiftly in self-defence. "Swinging, is it?" he said. "I've risked swinging before, and I'm not afraid of my neck. No, I'm thinking of my conscience and of Almighty God; and though I'll face any man in a fair fight, and take punishment if need be, when it comes to the killing of innocent folk, and maybe women and children amongst them, that's going straight to hell, Joss Merlyn, and you know it as well as I do."
Mary heard the scraping of a chair, and the man rise to his feet, but at the same time someone thumped his fist on the table and swore, and her uncle lifted his voice for the first time.
"Not so fast, my friend," he said, "not so fast. You're soaked in this business up to your neck, and be damned to your blasted conscience! I tell you there's no going back on it now; it's too late; too late for you and for all of us. I've been doubtful of you from the first, with your gentleman's airs and your clean cuffs, and by God I've proved myself right. Harry, bolt the door over there and put the bar across it."
There was a sudden scuffle and a cry, and the sound of someone falling, and at the same time the table crashed to the floor, and the door to the yard was slammed. Once more the pedlar laughed, odious and obscene, and he began to whistle one of his songs "Shall we tickle him up like Silly Sam?" he said, breaking off in the middle. "He'd be a little body without his fine clothes. I could do with his watch and chain, too; poor men of the road like myself haven't the money to go buying watches. Tickle him up with the whip, Joss, and let's see the colour of his skin."
"Shut your mouth, Harry, and do as you're told," answered the landlord. "Stand where you are by the door and prick him with your knife if he tries to pass you. Now, look here, Mr. Lawyer-Clerk, or whatever you are in Truro town, you've made a fool of yourself tonight, but you're not going to make a fool of me. You'd like to walk out of that door, wouldn't you, and get on your horse, and be away to Bodmin? Yes, and be nine in the morning you'd have every magistrate in the country at Jamaica Inn, and a regiment of soldiers into the bargain. That's your fine idea, isn't it?"
Mary could hear the stranger breathe heavily, and he must have been hurt in the scuffle, for when his voice came it was jerky and contracted, as though he were in pain. "Do your devil's work if you must," he muttered. "I can't stop you, and I give you my word I'll not inform against you. But join you I will not, and there's my last word to you both."
There was a silence, and then Joss Merlyn spoke again. "Have a care," he said softly. "I heard another man say that once, and five minutes later he was treading the air. On the end of a rope it was, my friend, and his big toe missed the floor by half an inch. I asked him if he liked to be so near the ground, but he didn't answer. The rope forced the tongue out of his mouth, and he bit it clean in half. They said afterwards he had taken seven and three-quarter minutes to die."
Outside in the passage Mary felt her neck and her forehead go clammy with sweat, and her arms and legs were weighted suddenly, as though with lead. Little black specks flickered before her eyes, and with a growing sense of horror she realised that she was probably going to faint.
She had one thought in her mind, and that was to grope her way back to the deserted hall and reach the shadow of the clock; whatever happened, she must not fall here and be discovered. Mary backed away from the beam of light and felt along the wall with her hands. Her knees were shaking now, and she knew that at any moment they would give beneath her. Already a surge of sickness rose inside her, and her head was swimming.
Her uncle's voice came from very far away, as though he spoke with his hands against his mouth. "Leave me alone with him, Harry," he said: "there'll be no more work for you tonight at Jamaica. Take his horse and be off, and cast him loose the other side of Camelford. I'll settle this business by myself."
Somehow Mary found her way to the hall, and, hardly conscious of what she was doing, she turned the handle of the parlour door and stumbled inside. Then she crumpled in a heap on the floor, her head between her knees.