The Captain turned, and took unhurried stock of his surroundings. Beside the bed stood a table, with a half-burnt candle on it, the snuffer poised on top of the quenched wick; a gold watch and chain; and a glass containing what appeared to be a paregoric elixir. John set his own candlestick down on this table, and softly parted the bed-curtains. Henry Stornaway was lying on his side, turned away from him, his mouth slightly open, and his night-cap over one eye. John looked down at him, considering him, and then bent over the bed.
Mr. Stornaway woke with a convulsive start, and a shriek that was strangled in his throat. A hand was clamped hard over his mouth, forcing his head back against an equally vicelike grip on the nape of his neck. His body plunged, after the manner of a landed fish; his own hands, scrabbling free of the bedclothes, clawed at the one over his mouth, with as little effect as they would have had upon an iron clamp. A deep, soft voice said close to his ear: “Quiet!”
He could not move his head, but rolling his terrified eyes he caught a glimpse of a face bent over him.
“I am going to take my hand from your mouth,” said that soft voice, “but if you raise the smallest outcry, it will be the last sound you will ever make, for I shall break your neck. Do you understand me?”
Mr. Stornaway, unable to speak, unable to nod, could only tremble, and roll his eyes more frantically than before. He trembled so much that the bed shook, and this seemed to satisfy his captor, for the hand left his mouth. With the best will in the world he could not have cried out; he could do no more than gasp for breath. The grip on his neck had not relaxed; it was not only painful, but it conveyed an exact impression to him of the ease with which this appalling visitor could put his threat into execution.
“Unless you oblige me to, I shan’t hurt you,” John said. “But you will answer me truthfully, and you will not raise your voice! Is that understood?”
“Yes, yes!” he whispered chokingly. “Pray do not——! Pray let me go!”
He then broke into a fit of coughing, saw that dreadful hand descending again to cover his mouth, and dived under the bedclothes. While he thus muffled the sound of his paroxysm, John pushed back the curtains on that side of the bed, and sat down on the edge of it, waiting for his victim to emerge again. When the coughing ceased, and Mr. Stornaway showed no signs of emerging, he pulled the clothes down, saying: “Sit up, you hen-hearted creature! Here, drink this!”
Mr. Stornaway, struggling up on to one elbow, took the glass held out to him. It clattered against his teeth, but he managed to swallow the elixir. It appeared to revive him a little, for he dragged himself to a sitting position, and looked fearfully at his visitor. The candle now cast its light on to the Captain’s face. Stornaway’s eyes stared at him; he gasped: “Who are you?”
“You know very well who I am. Brean’s cousin. Did he never tell you that he had an aunt who married into a better order of society than her own? I am the son of that marriage, and I took a fancy to visit some of the relations I had never before seen. But one of them I didn’t find, Mr. Stornaway. Perhaps you can tell me what has become of Ned Brean?”
“No, no, I haven’t seen him! I don’t know where he is!” Stornaway whispered, white to the lips.
“You’re lying. Ned was working for you and Coate. It was you who bought his services. You wanted him to pass a vehicle, heavily laden, through the pike, and afterwards to deny all knowledge of that vehicle. You wanted him also to assist in unloading from it some very weighty baggage. He did these things, but, later, he disappeared.” He saw that Stornaway was watching him with dilating eyes, and continued: “I think, sir, that you have murdered Ned Brean.”
“No! I swear I did not!”
“Keep your voice down! Why should you hesitate to murder him, when you had murdered two others already?”
“No, no, no, no! It’s a lie! I did not! I would not! I tell you I had no hand in it!”
“No hand either in attempting to murder a Bow Street Runner? Do you take me for a flat?” John said contemptuously. “Do you take him for a flat? Let me tell you that he reached the toll-house, with a knife-slash across his shoulder, and a broken head, and he knew very well who had attacked him! When he is recovered enough to leave his bed, you will be arrested, Mr. Stornaway, and you may try then to convince a jury that you did not thrust a knife into the Runner’s back. I wish you joy of that task!”
“No, I tell you, no!” Stornaway uttered hoarsely, drops of sweat starting on his brow. “I was not there! I knew nothing about it! O God, you must believe me!”
“Believe you! I’ll come to watch you strung up at Tyburn! I know more of you than the Runner has yet discovered. I have been busy while I took charge of the gate—busy tracing your movements since the day you left London! Do not let us waste time! I know that it was you who laid the plans to steal a consignment of sovereigns on its way to Manchester. You not only knew that there would be such a consignment; you persuaded your friend at the Treasury to disclose the very date when it would set out from London!”
“It’s untrue! If he said that, he is a liar! I did not—I never thought of such a thing! It was he who told me, cupshot, one night! I didn’t plan it—it was Nat Coate! He saw how it could be done, but he promised there should be no killing! He promised me!”
“But there was killing, and two men were guilty of that double murder.”
“I was not one! I had no hand in it! On my soul, I had not!”
“You were there, at the ford,” John said implacably. “I know that, if the Runner does not.”
“You can’t prove I was there! I did nothing, nothing! It was Nat, and the Gunns—all of it! Nat and Roger Gunn shot the guards, and Gunn’s brother drove the waggon! It was his own, and when—after the gold was taken off it, he drove it away, before daylight. I can tell you where he lives! It’s in Yorkshire, not far from———”
“Ah, you are altogether contemptible!” John said involuntarily.
This was not perfectly understood. “It’s true! Nat made me go with them, because I know the roads here! I did not wish to! He forced me, I tell you! I was in his power and could not refuse him!”
“You would not have been for long in his power had you carried the information to Bow Street of what he planned to do,” said John.
Tears began to run down Stornaway’s ashen cheeks. “I wish I had! I wish I were well out of the business! Nat said there would be no danger. I never dreamed he meant to shoot the guards! He swore they should be bound and gagged only!”
“How could two armed men be bound and gagged, you fool?”
“I don’t know—I didn’t think! I had no hand in it!” Stornaway repeated desperately.
“No hand in it! Was it Coate, then, who knew where the gold could be hidden safely? Or was it you who knew that somewhere in these hills there is a cavern, in which your father once broke his leg? A cavern which has been closed ever since, and is now almost—but not quite!—forgotten?”
If there had been any suspicion in Stornaway’s mind that the Captain could not possibly know so much about him as he had alarmingly hinted, this evidence that he was uncannily in possession of the one piece of information which could more effectively than all the rest implicate him in the robbery, effectually banished it. He looked so ghastly that John wondered whether he might be going to swoon; and although he opened and shut his mouth several times no sound came from it.