The Toll-Gate Read online

  He did not look to be at all the sort of man to be engaged on any nefarious enterprise, and within a very few moments John was satisfied that his farm had not been Henry Stornaway’s objective. He was of a chatty and an expansive disposition, only too pleased to enter into conversation with strangers, of whom he saw very few. He was one of the Squire’s tenants, and shook his head sadly over Sir Peter’s illness, saying that things would be very different when he died. It was an easy matter to get him to expatiate on this theme; and it soon became apparent that although he had a great regard for Miss Nell, he didn’t (as he put it) reckon much to Mr Henry, whom he scarcely knew, and who didn’t (if the half of what he heard tell were true) take any interest in the estate. Yes, he had been told that Mr Henry was staying at Kellands, and a fine London friend with him, but you wouldn’t catch Mr Henry coming in to pass the time of day with his grandpa’s tenants, not he! No, he had never seen the London friend, and he didn’t know as he much wanted to, for he had seen another Londoner that week, and a regular leather-head he was! He was wishful to buy a property in the district, but from the silly questions he asked it was easy to see as he was a chap as would be nailed, sure as check! What was he like? He was a muffin-faced chap, a little on the squat, and precious wide in the boughs.

  The Captain, recognizing, from this pungent description, Mr Gabriel Stogumber, rode on his way, a frown knitting his brow. He failed to perceive what object Stogumber could have had in questioning the farmer; and he was still puzzling over this problem when he reached the toll-house. He had been away from it for longer than he had intended, and he found Ben in a mood of considerable disquiet, flatteringly overjoyed to behold him again.

  No one visited him from the Manor that day. He spent the morning in the expectation of seeing Nell; but she did not come; and by the time it became apparent that something had prevented her, Mrs Skeffling had gone home, and there was no one in whose charge John could leave the gate, Ben having been engaged by Farmer Huggate for the whole day, to assist in taking livestock to market. Gatekeeping had never been more irksome, for there were certain questions John wished to ask either of Nell, or of Joseph, who, he supposed, must be even more familiar with the district. Thinking over his strange encounter with Henry Stornaway, and cudgelling his brains to hit upon some solution to account for his presence upon a lonely lane at such an unseasonable hour of the morning, there had flashed across his memory an echo of something Nell had talked of during their drive to Tideswell. If her idle words did indeed hold the key to the mystery, he was still far from understanding it, but it might well be within his power to discover it. Then he remembered the look of sick horror in Stornaway’s face, and he thought it might be wiser to address his questions to Joseph rather than to Nell. But Joseph did not come, and a certain anxiety was added to the Captain’s impatience. When Ben returned from Tideswell, pleasantly weary, and full of all that he had seen and done in the town, John made an attempt to convince him that he had no longer anything to fear in being left for an hour to mind the pike after dark. But Ben, who, while he knew his large protector to be at hand, seemed almost to have forgotten his alarms, no sooner realized that he was in danger of being left alone than he became slightly tearful, and with the utmost urgency begged John not to leave him. It was useless to point out to him that his father’s visitor must by this time know that he would no longer find Brean at the toll-house; he merely said, in considerable agitation, that if John went out he himself would run away, and spend the night with Beau in Farmer Huggate’s big barn. It was plainly useless to argue with him, and the Captain, suppressing exasperation, promised not to leave the toll-house, and commanded him to stop whining. As it happened he was forced to realize that he could scarcely have done so, had Ben been never so willing. After the unaccustomed excitement of the day, the boy was so sleepy that he dropped off before he had finished his supper, and could not be roused. When picked up, and carried off to his truckle-bed, he did no more than stir, and murmur something unintelligible: it seemed unlikely that anything less than a coach-horn blown in his ear would waken him.

  Scarcely an hour later, John had reason to be glad that he had not, after all, gone to Kellands, for he heard the owl’s hoot, twice repeated, which had previously heralded Jeremy Chirk’s arrival at the toll-house. He walked over to the back-door, and opened it. Chirk’s voice, lowered, but sufficiently penetrating, reached him. ‘Lend a hand here, Soldier!’

  John stepped out into the untidy garden, looking towards the wicket-gate. He saw that Chirk, on his feet, was holding it open for Mollie to pass through; and that seated astride the mare was a thick figure which swayed perilously and seemed only to be held in the saddle by Chirk’s hand gripping him. ‘Now what?’ he demanded, striding forward.

  ‘Bear a bob, Soldier!’ Chirk adjured him. ‘I’ve got a cove here as is as sick as a horse. Lift him down, will you? If I was to let go of him, he’d fall, and he’s had one ding on the canister already.’

  ‘Good God, is it Brean?’ John exclaimed, hoisting the burly figure out of the saddle.

  ‘Lord love you, no! I dunno who it is. I found him trying to mill his way out of a row, couple o’ miles back – and a well-plucked ’un he seems to be! Else I wouldn’t have meddled. I doubt I’ll regret it yet: it don’t become a man of my calling to meddle in other folks’ business. But I don’t like to see a game fighter set on from behind, and that’s the truth!’

  ‘Stable the mare!’ said John briefly.

  A few minutes later, Chirk entered the kitchen to find the victim of the late assault slumped in a chair, with the Captain, a somewhat grim look in his face, forcing brandy down his throat.

  ‘Not hopped the twig, has he?’ Chirk asked, shutting the door.

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘I didn’t think he had. He cast up his accounts, back there along the road, but he didn’t swoon off till a minute or two before I got him to the gate. Someone knifed him in the back.’

  ‘I know that. Help me to strip off his coat!’ John said, withdrawing his arm from behind the inert form, and showing his shirt-sleeve stained with blood. ‘He’s lost a good deal of blood, from the look of things, but I should say it’s not serious.’

  Coat and waistcoat were expeditiously removed, and tossed aside. The Captain then ripped up the shirt, and disclosed a long gash down one shoulder, which was still sluggishly bleeding.

  ‘Nothing but a cut. I’ve seen many worse,’ said John, going over to the sink, and pouring some water from the pail that stood under it into a tin bowl.

  ‘Ah!’ said Chirk, with satisfaction. ‘I rather suspicioned I spoilt the cull’s aim! I saw the chive he had in his famble flash in the moonlight, so I loosed off one of my barking-irons over his head, because chives I don’t hold with! They showed their shapes quick then! – him and the other cove.’

  ‘Who were they? Did you see their faces?’

  ‘It would have queered me to do that, Soldier: they were muffled up to the eyes. Well, I was wearing a mask myself, but I don’t go winding scarves round my phiz!’ He shifted the heavy body he was supporting so that John could more easily bathe the gash. ‘If they were foot-scamperers, I don’t know what they were doing on this road, nor what they hoped to prig, nor why they set on a chap like this, that wouldn’t have anything in his pockets worth the taking. Sticking a chive into a cove for the sake of a coachwheel or two, and maybe a silver tatler, is nasty work, Soldier, and I don’t hold with it. Blubberheaded, too,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘That’s the way to get snabbled, sure as a gun! I wonder who this cove is?’

  ‘So do I wonder!’ replied John, competently swabbing the wound. ‘I can tell you his name, however: it’s Stogumber – and I should say he has come by his deserts!’

  As though the sound of his own name had penetrated to his consciousness, Mr Stogumber stirred, and opened his eyes.

  ‘Keep still!’ John said, as he winced.