I felt like a child caught out in some misdemeanor, and was hot with shame and sick embarrassment. If he then was the stranger in the crimson cloak, walking his house in the small hours, it was not for me to question it. To be discovered thus, prying in his secrets, with the key not only of this door, but of his summerhouse as well, was surely something he could never pardon.
“Forgive me,” I said. “I have acted very ill.”
He did not answer at once, but first made certain that the door was closed. Then he lit further candles, and, laying aside his cloak, drew a chair up to the table.
“It was you,” he said, “who made a crack there in the panel? It was not there before you came to Menabilly.”
His blunt question showed me what a shrewd grasp he had of my gaping curiosity, and I confessed that I was indeed the culprit. “I will not attempt to defend myself,” I said. “I know I had no right to tamper with your walls. There was some talk of ghosts, otherwise I would not have done it. And one night during last week I heard footsteps.”
“Yes,” he said. “I had not thought to find your chamber occupied. I heard you stir, and guessed then what had happened. We are somewhat pushed for room, as you no doubt realize, otherwise you would not have been put into the gatehouse.”
He waited a moment, and then, looking closely at me, he said: “You have understood, then, that there is a secret entry to this chamber.”
“Yes.”
“And the reason you are here this evening is that you wished to find whither it led?”
“I knew it must be within the buttress.”
“How did you come upon that key?”
This was the very devil, but there was nothing for it but to tell him the whole story, putting the blame heavily upon myself and saying little of Joan’s share in the matter. I said that I had looked about the summerhouse, and admired the view, but as to my peering at his books, and his father’s will and lifting the heavy mat and finding the flagstone—nay, he would have to put me on the rack before I confessed to that.
He listened in silence, regarding me coldly all the while, and I knew what an interfering fool he must consider me.
“And what do you make of it, now you know that the nightly intruder is none other than myself?” he questioned.
Here was a stumbling block. For I could make nothing of it. And I did not dare voice that secret very fearful supposition that I kept hidden at the back of my mind.
“I cannot tell, Jonathan,” I answered, “except that you use this entry for some purpose of your own, and that your family know nothing of it.” At this he was silent, considering me slowly, and then, after a long pause, he said to me: “John has some knowledge of the subject, but no one else, except my steward Langdon. Indeed, the success of the royal cause we have at heart would gravely suffer should the truth become known.”
This last surprised me. I did not see that his family secrets could be of any concern to His Majesty. But I said nothing.
“Since you already know something of the truth,” he said, “I will acquaint you further, desiring you first to keep all knowledge of it to yourself.”
I promised, after a moment’s hesitation, being uncertain what dire secret I might now be asked to share.
“You know,” he said, “that at the beginning of hostilities I, with certain other gentlemen, was appointed by His Majesty’s Council to collect and receive the plate given to the royal cause in Cornwall, and arrange for it to be taken to the Mint at Truro and there melted down?”
“I knew you were Collector, Jonathan—no more than that.”
“Last year another Mint was erected at Exeter, under the supervision of my kinsman, Sir Richard Vyvyan, hence my constant business with that city. You will appreciate, Honor, that to receive a great quantity of very valuable plate, and be responsible for its safety until it reaches the Mint, is a heavy burden upon my shoulders.”
“Yes, Jonathan.”
“Spies abound, as you are well aware. Neighbors have long ears, and even a close friend can turn informer. If some member of the rebel army could but lay his hands upon the treasure that so frequently passes into my keeping, the Parliament would be ten times the richer, and His Majesty ten times the poorer. Therefore all cartage of the plate has to be done at night, when the roads are quiet. Also it is necessary to have depots throughout the county, where the plate can be stored until the necessary transport can be arranged. You have followed me so far?”
“Yes, Jonathan, and with interest.”
“Very well, then. These depots must be secret. As few people as possible must know their whereabouts. It is therefore imperative that the houses or buildings that serve as depots should contain hiding places, known only to their owners. Menabilly, as you have already discovered, has such a hiding place.”
I found myself getting hot under the skin, not at the implied sarcasm of his words, but because his revelation was so very different from what I—with excess of imagination—had supposed.
“The buttress against the far corner of this room,” he continued, “is hollow in the center. A flight of narrow steps leads to a small room, built in the thickness of the wall and beneath the courtyard, where it is possible for a man to stand, and sit, though it is but five feet square. This room is connected with a passage, or rather tunnel, which runs under the house and so beneath the causeway to an outlet in the summerhouse. It is in this small buttress room that I have been accustomed, during the past year, to hide the plate. You understand me?”
I nodded, gripped by his story, and deeply interested.
“When the plate is brought to this depot, or taken away, we work by night, my steward, John Langdon, and I. The wagons wait down at Pridmouth, and we bring the plate from the buttress room, along the tunnel to the summerhouse, and so down to the cove in one of my handcarts, where it is placed in the wagons. The men who conduct the procession from here to Exeter are all trustworthy, but none of them, naturally, know whereabouts at Menabilly I have kept the plate hidden. That is not their business. No one knows that but myself and Langdon, and now you, Honor, who—I regret to say—have really no right at all to share the secret.”
I said nothing, for there was no possible defense.
“John knows the plate has been concealed in the house, but has never inquired where. He is, as yet, ignorant of the room beneath the buttress, as well as the tunnel to the summerhouse.”
Here I risked offence by interrupting him.
“It was providential,” I said, “that Menabilly possessed so excellent a hiding place.”
“Very providential,” he agreed. “Had it not been so I could hardly have set about the business. You wonder, no doubt, why the house should have been so constructed?”
I confessed to some small wonder on the subject.
“My father,” he said briefly, “had certain—how shall I put it?—shipping transactions, which necessitated privacy. The tunnel was therefore useful in many ways.”
In other words, I said to myself, your father, dear Jonathan, was nothing more or less than a pirate of the first order, whatever his standing and reputation in Fowey and the county.
“It happened also,” he said in a lower tone, “that my unfortunate eldest brother was not in full possession of his faculties. This was his chamber, from the time the house was built in 1600 until his death, poor fellow, twenty-four years later. At times he was violent, hence the reason for the little cell beneath the buttress, where lack of air and close confinement soon rendered him unconscious and easy then to handle.”
He spoke naturally, and without restraint, but the picture that his words conjured up turned me sick. I saw the wretched, shivering maniac choking for air in the dark room beneath the buttress, with the four walls closing in upon him. And now this same room stacked with silver plate like a treasure-house in a fairy tale.
Jonathan must have seen my change of face, for he looked kindly at me and rose from his chair.
“I know,” he said, “it is not a pretty story. It was a relief to me, I must admit, when the smallpox that carried off my father took my brother too. It was not a happy business caring for him, with young children in the house. You have heard, no doubt, the malicious tales that Robert Bennett spread abroad?”
I mentioned vaguely that some rumor had come to my ears.
“He took the disease some five days after my father,” said Jonathan. “Why he should have taken it, while my wife and I escaped, we shall never know. But so he did, and, becoming violent at the same time with one of his periodic fits, stood not a chance. It was over very quickly.”
There were sounds of the servants moving from the kitchens.
“You will return now to your apartment,” he said, “and I will go back the way I came. You may give me John Langdon’s key. If in future you hear me come to this apartment, you will understand what I am about. I keep accounts here of the plate temporarily in my possession, which I refer to from time to time. I need hardly tell you that not a word of what has this night passed between us must be spoken about to any other person.”
“I give you my solemn promise, Jonathan.”
“Good night, then, Honor.”
He helped me turn my chair into the passage, and then, very softly, closed the door behind me. I got to my own room a few moments before Matty came upstairs to draw the curtains.