“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!”