“CORNWALL, TO WIT.”
ALL the way down to Redruth and Helston, Paul noticed vaguely that both his fellow-travelers were silent and preoccupied. Mr. Solomons, when he spoke at all, spoke for the most part of Lionel, and of this wicked attempt to deprive him of his patrimony. More than once he took a large folded paper out of his pocket, of very legal aspect, bearing on its face, in most lawyer-like writing, the engrossed legend, “Will of Judah P. Solomons, Gentleman.” This interesting document he opened and showed in part to Paul. It was a cheerful and rather lengthy performance of its own kind, marked by the usual legal contempt for literary style, and the common legal love for most pleonastic redundancy; everything was described in it under at least three alternative nouns, as “all that house, messuage, or tenement and everybody was mentioned by every one of his names, titles, and places of residence, whenever he was referred to, with no stops to speak of, but with a graceful sprinkling of that precious word “aforesaid” as a substitute in full for all punctuation. Nevertheless, it set forth in sufficiently succinct terms that the testator, being then of sound mind and in possession of all his intellectual faculties as fully as at any period of life, did give and devise to his nephew, Lionel Solomons, gentleman, the whole of his estate, real or personal, in certain specified ways and manners and for his own sole use and benefit. The will further provided that in case the said Lionel Solomons, gentleman, should predecease the testator, then and in that case testator gave and devised all his estate aforesaid, real or personal, in trust to the Jewish Board of Guardians of London, to be by them applied to such ends and purposes, in connection with the welfare of the Hebrew population of the Metropolitan Postal District, as might to them seem good in the exercise of their wise and sole discretion.
“It was every penny Leo’s, you see,” Mr. Solomons repeated many times over with profound emotion; “every penny Leo’s. All my life’s savings were made for Leo. And to think that rascal should have tried to deprive him of it! Fourteen years shall he have, if there’s law in England, Sir Paul. Fourteen years, with hard labor, too, if there’s law in England.
As for Sherrard the detective, that moody man, he smiled grimly to himself every time Mr. Solomons made these testamentary confidences to his young friend; and once he ventured to remark, with a faintly significant air, that that would be a confounded fine haul of its sort for the Jewish Board of Guardians, if ever they came in for it.
“But they won’t,” Mr. Solomons answered warmly. “They’ll never come in for it. I’ve only put it there out of a constitutional habit of providing beforehand for any contingency. My heart aint what it used to be. Any sudden shock now ‘ud bring it up short like a horse against a hedge he can’t take. I just added that reminder to the Board of Guardians to show I never turned my back upon my own people. I’m not one of those Jews afraid and ashamed to be known for Jews. A Christian I may be; a man can’t be blamed for changing his religious convictions — on sufficient grounds — but a Hebrew I was born and a Hebrew I’ll remain to the end of the chapter. I won’t ever turn my back upon my own kith and kindred.
“There’s some as does,” the detective remarked enigmatically, and relapsed once more into the corner cushion.
It’s a long way from Paddington to Helston; but the weariest day comes to an end at last; and in time they reached the distant Cornish borough. It was late at night when they disembarked on the platform, but no time was to be lost; if they wanted to stop the Dom Pedro as she passed the Lizard Light, they must drive across at once to the end of the promontory, to arrange signals. So they chartered a carriage without delay at Helston station and set out forthwith on their journey across the long dark moor in solemn silence. They were in no mood for talking, indeed. The day in the train had tired them all, and now they must snatch what sleep they might, against tomorrow’s work, in the jolting carriage.
The drive across the tableland of the Lizard is always, even by day, a wild and lonely one, but on this particular night it was wilder, lonelier, and darker than ever. More than once the driver pulled up his horses in the middle of the road to consider his way, and more than once he got down and walked some yards ahead to see whether by any chance he had missed some familiar landmark. On each such occasion, Mr. Solomons’ fretfulness and anxiety visibly increased. At last he could stand these frequent interruptions to the continuity of the journey no longer. He put his head out of the window and expostulated warmly.
“What are you waiting like this for, man?” he cried in an angry tone. “Don’t you know your way? I declare it’s too bad. If you couldn’t find the road from Helston to the Lizard, you oughtn’t to have taken us. There’s thousands at stake — thousands of pounds worth of bonds that rogue has stolen; and if we’re not at the Lizard in time to catch him, he may get clean off with them to South America.”
The man looked back at his fare with a half-contemptuous glance. “That’s the way of all you London people,” he answered gruffly with the stolid Cornish moroseness. “Always a fault-finding. And yet there’s fog enough, they tells me, too, in London!”
“Fog!” Mr. Solomons ejaculated, catching hastily at his meaning with the quickened perception that comes at any great critical moment of life.
“Aye, fog,” the man answered. “Lizard fog, they calls it. Fog that thick you can’t hardly see your hand before you. It’s bad enough driving over Helston moor dark nights anytime; but with fog like this, it’s a toss-up if ever we get at all to Lizard Town.”
Mr. Solomons gazed out blankly into the black night. He saw it at a glance. It was all too true. A finger-post stood by the roadside opposite, but even with the light from the carriage-lamp falling full upon it, he could hardly make out its shape, far less its lettering, through the dim, misty shroud that intervened between him and the roadside. He flung himself back on the cushions with a groan of despair. “If we go on at this snail’s pace,” he cried in the bitterness of his heart, “we shall never reach there in time to stop her. That thief’ll get off clear with the bonds to South America, and Leo’ll be ruined!”
The driver laughed again in the old man’s face — the hard, dry, sardonic Cornish laugh. “That’s the way of you London people,” he repeated once more, with the critical frankness and openness of his race. “Thinks you knows everything, and aint got no common gumtion about anything anyhow! Why, who supposes the steamer can get past the Lizard in a fog like this, when we can’t so much as find our way on the open road across the moor by dry land from Helston? What delays us’ll delay her. She’ll anchor till morning, and wait for it to clear, that’s what she’ll do, unless she bears away out to sea southward. She couldn’t get past the lighthouse in this sort of weather, could she?”
“No; couldn’t she, though?” Mr. Solomons cried, appeased and relieved. “You think she’ll wait till the fog lifts in the morning?”
“She’s bound to,” the driver answered confidently, “if she don’t want to go to pieces on Cadgwith cliffs or on the rocks over yonder by the church at St. Ruan’s. There’s many of ’em as has gone to pieces in a fog nigh Cadgwith, I tell you. Aye, and many a ship as has drownded them by the dozen, so as the Cadgwith men has made fortunes time and again out of the salvage. ‘God’s providence is my inheritance’ — that’s the motto of the Cadgwith men ever since the days when their fathers was wreckers,” and the driver laughed to himself a sullen, hard laugh, indicative of thorough appreciation of the grimly humorous view of Providence embodied in the local coastwise proverb.
A strange shudder passed through Mr. Solomons’ massive frame. “Gone to pieces in a fog!” he repeated. “You don’t mean that! And drowned there, too! That’d be worse than all. He might go down with the bonds in his case! And, anyhow, he’d do us out of the fourteen years’ imprisonment.”
The detective glanced over at Paul with a curious look whose exact meaning Paul was at a loss to determine.
“If he drowns.”
“If he drowns,” the officer said in that restrained tone he had so often adopted, “that’s the hand of God. The hand of God, you see, cancels and overrides any magistrate’s warrant.”
Mr. Solomons clenched his fist hard and looked blankly in front of him.
“All the same,” he said fiercely, with long-smoldering indignation, “I don’t want to lose all my precious bonds, and I don’t want the fellow to get off his fourteen years’ imprisonment.”
“Whoever he may be?” the detective murmured tentatively.
“Whoever he may be,” Mr. Solomons assented, with angry vehemence. “I’m an honest man. I’ve worked hard for my money. Why should I and my nephew be beggared by anyone?”
They drove on still through the gloom and mist, and gradually felt their way by stumbling steps across the great open moor toward the point of the Lizard. As they drew nearer and nearer they could hear the foghorn at the lighthouse blowing loudly now and at frequent intervals, and bells were ringing, and strange noises along the coast resounded hoarsely. But all around was black as midnight, and when at last they reached the Lizard Lighthouse even the great electric light itself hardly traversed the gloom or shed a faint ray at the base of its own tall and dripping pedestal. Mr. Solomons hustled out, and hurriedly informed the coastguardsman at the preventive station of the nature of their errand. The coastguardsman shook his head gravely.
“Not to-night,” he said. “This aint no time for going to signal a ship to stop, no matter for what. You can put out a boat, and try to meet her, if you like; but it aint likely in such weather you’d find her. More chance to he run down yourself unbeknown by her and drownded without her even so much as sighting you.”
“She hasn’t gone by yet?” Mr. Solomons asked eagerly.
“No, she aint gone by yet,” the coastguardsman replied. “But she’s expected every minute. She’d signal by gun or foghorn, I take it. Though we aint heard nothing of her so far, to be sure. Most likely she’s sounded and found herself in shoal water, and so she’s dropped anchor and laid by till morning.”
“Then the best thing for us to do,” Paul suggested, “is to turn in quietly at the hotel for the night, and see whether we can find her early to-morrow.”
To this plan of action, however, neither Mr. Solomons nor the detective would at all consent. They insisted upon remaining about, within call of the lighthouse, on the offchance of the Dom Pedro appearing from minute to minute. One of them felt constrained by duty, the other by animosity and love of money, and neither would yield one jot or title of his just pretentions. So Paul was fain to give way to their combined authority at last, and walk up and down in that damp night-fog by the edge of the cliffs that line round the great promontory.
So weird or impressive a sheet of fog Paul had never before in his life seen. It was partly the place, partly the time, but partly also the intense thickness of that dense Channel sea-mist that enthralled his fancy. He descended by himself slowly, with shambling steps, along the steep path that leads down to the water’s edge at the very point of the Lizard. To render it more visible on dark nights, the coast-guardsmen have whitewashed the dark patches of rock by the side, and piled up along the jagged pinnacles little heaps, or cairns, of white pebbles. But even so aided, it was with difficulty that Paul could pick his way along the uncertain path, especially as in parts it was wet with spray and slimy with the evaporations of salt-water. There was little wind, as is usually the case in foggy weather, but the long Atlantic ground-swell nevertheless made big breakers on the abrupt rocks; and the thunder of the waves, as they surged and burst below among the unseen caves and dark cliffs of the promontory, had a peculiarly wild and solemn sound on that black night, now just merging toward the first cold gray of morning. Paul was afraid to trust himself within sight of the waves, not knowing how near it might be safe to approach; but he sat for a while, alone in the damp darkness, on the narrow ledge that seemed to overhang the hoarse chorus of breakers beneath, and listened with a certain strange poetic thrill to the thunderous music of the Atlantic below him.
And ever and anon, above the noise of the waves, the dull, droning voice of the gigantic foghorn broke in upon the current of his solemn reverie.
It was a night to pity men at sea in.
All at once, as he sat, a sudden flash to eastward, hardly descried through the fog, seemed to illumine for a second, in a haze of light, the mist around him. Next instant a boom sounded loud in his ears — the boom of a great gun, as if fired point blank toward him.
How near it might be, Paul could hardly guess; but he was conscious at the same time of the odor of gunpowder strong in his nostrils, while the choking sensation that accompanies great closeness to a big explosion almost unnerved him, and rendered him giddy for a moment. He rose in alarm at the shock, but his feet failed him. He had hardly the power left to scale the rocks once more by the whitewashed path. The concussion and the foul air had well-nigh stupefied him.
Nevertheless, as he mounted to the lighthouse again he was intuitively aware of what was happening close by. Vague noises and feelings seemed to press the truth on him as if by instinct. A great ship was in danger — in pressing danger — on the rocks of the Lizard.
She had come across the breakers unawares in the dense fog, and had fired her gun for a signal almost point-blank in Paul’s very face. Had he not by good luck been turned the other way, and with his eyes half shut dreamily, as he listened to the thunder of those long Atlantic waves and the moaning of the foghorn, it would certainly have blinded him.
And now, for all Paul knew to the contrary, the big ship was going to pieces on the jagged rocks beneath him there.
Then, with a second flash of intuition, it came home to him more fully, as he recovered his senses from the sudden shock, that this was in all probability the watched-for Dom Pedro — with the thief on board her.