Doctor Syn, Russell Thorndyke [rainbow fish read aloud .TXT] 📗
- Author: Russell Thorndyke
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Doctor Syn went to the window to close the shutters and saw Sennacherib Pepper crossing the far side of the churchyard.
“Goodnight, Sennacherib,” he cried out, and shut the shutters. A minute later out came the schoolmaster, but instead of going round for his horse, as Jerry expected, he walked quickly after Sennacherib Pepper. “How long is this going on for, I wonder?” thought young Jerk, as he picked himself up and set off after the schoolmaster.
FOR half a mile out of the village Mr. Rash kept well in the rear of Sennacherib Pepper, and Jerk kept well behind the schoolmaster. It was a weird night. Everything was vivid, either very dark or very light ; such grass as they came to was black grass; such roadways they crossed were white roads ; the sky was brightly starlit, but the mountainous clouds were black, and the edges of the great dyke sluices were pitch black, but the water and thin mud, silver steel, reflecting the light of the sky. Sennacherib Pepper was a black shadow ahead; the schoolmaster was a blacker one; and Jerk— well, he couldn’t see himself; he rather wished he could, for company.
Although Mr. Rash was a very black-looking figure, there was something small and ugly that kept catching the silver steel reflected in the dyke water. What was it.f^ Jerry couldn’t make out. It was something in Mr. Rash’s hand, and he kept bringing it out and thrusting it back into the pocket of his overcoat. But the young adventurer had enough to do, keeping himself from being discovered, else he might have understood and so saved Sennacherib’s life.
When they got about a mile from the village Mr. Rash quickened his pace; Jerry quickened his accordingly, but Sennacherib Pepper, who had no object in doing so, did not quicken his. Once the schoolmaster stopped dead, and the young hangman only just pulled up in time, so near was he; and once again the silver thing came out of the pocket, but this time Mr. Rash looked at it before thrusting it back again. Then he began to run.
“Is that you, Doctor Pepper?” he called out.
“Now this is strange,” thought Jerk, “for the schoolmaster must surely have known what man he was following, and why hadn’t he cried out before?”
Sennacherib stopped. Jerk drew himself down among the rushes in the dyke and crept as near to the two men as he dared; he was within easy earshot, anyhow.
“Who is it?” asked Pepper; and then, recognizing the shoddy young man, he added: “Why, it’s the schoolmaster!”
“Yes, Doctor Pepper,” replied Rash, “and it’s been a hard job I’ve had to recover you, for it’s an uncanny way over the Marsh.”
Just then there was the sound of horses galloping in the distance, Jerk could hear it distinctly.
“What do you want me for?” asked the physician.
“It was the vicar sent me for you, sir,” replied the schoolmaster. “He wants you to come at once; there ‘s somebody dying in the parish.”
“Do you know who it is?” said the physician.
“I believe it’s old Mrs. Tapsole in the Bake House, but I’m none too sure.”
Indeed it seemed to Jerk that uncertainty was the whole attitude of the schoolmaster. He seemed to be listening to the distant noise of galloping and answering old Sennacherib at random. Perhaps the physician also noticed something in his manner, for he looked at him pretty straight and said:
“I don’t think it’s Mrs. Tapsole, either, for I saw her to-day and she was as merry as a cricket.”
“She’s had a fit, sir, that’s about what she’s had,” replied the schoolmaster vaguely.
“Then,” said the physician, “you do know something about it, do you?”
“I know just what I was asked to say,” returned the schoolmaster irritably. “It’s not my business to tell you what’s the matter with your patients. If you don’t know, I’m sure I don’t. You’re a doctor, ain’t you?”
No doubt old Pepper would have pulled the schoolmaster up with a good round turn for his boorishness and extraordinary manner had he not at that instant caught the sound of the galloping horses. “Look there!” he cried.
At full gallop across the Marsh were going a score or so of horsemen, lit by a light that shone from their faces and from the heads of their mad horses. Jerk could see Rash shaking as if with the ague, but for some reason he pretended not to see the hideous sight.
“What are you looking at?” he said, “for I see nothing.”
“There, there!” screamed old Pepper. “You must see something there!”
“Nothing but dyke, marsh, and the highroad,” faltered the schoolmaster.
“No! There—look—riders—men on horses. Marsh fiends!” yelled the terrified physician.
“What in hell’s name are you trying to scare me for?” cursed the trembling Rash. “Don’t I tell you I see nothing? Ain’t that enough for you?”
“Then God forgive me!” cried poor Sennacherib, “for I can see ‘em and you can’t; there’s something wrong with my soul.”
“Then God have mercy on it!” The words came somehow through the schoolmaster’s set teeth; the silver steel leapt from the pocket of his overcoat, and Sennacherib was savagely struck twice under the arm as he pointed at the riders. He gave one great cry and fell forward, while the schoolmaster, entirely gone to pieces, with quaking limbs and chattering teeth, stooped down and cleaned the knife by stabbing it swiftly up to the hilt in a clump of short grass that grew in the soil by the roadside.
The sudden horror of the thing was too much even for the callous Jerk, for his senses failed him and he slid back into the dyke among the rushes, and when he came to himself the first shreds of dawn were rising over Romney Marsh.
THAT he was still dreaming was Jerry’s first thought, but he was so bitterly cold—for his clothes were wet with mud and dyke water— that he quickly realized his mistake; however, it took him a power of time and energy, and not a little courage, before he dared creep forth from his hidingplace. When he did the Marsh looked empty. The sheets of mist had rolled away, and it looked as innocent a piece of land as God had ever made. There was no sound save the tickling bubbles that rose from their mud-bed to burst amid the rushes, no one in sight but the old gentleman lying outstretched upon the road. Jerry crept up to him and looked. He was lying face downward, just as he had fallen, and the white road was stained with a dark bloody smudge.
“Well,” he said to himself, “here’s another job for old Mipps and a trip to the ropemaker’s,” and shivering with cold and horror he set off as fast as he could go toward the village.
Now, when he was within sight of his own house, he began to consider what it was his duty to do. He had his own eyesight to prove the schoolmaster’s guilt; but would he be believed? Could the schoolmaster somehow turn the tables upon him? If he breathed a word to his grandparents he would at once be hauled before that brutal captain; and the captain he felt sure would not believe him. The squire might, but the captain would, of course, take the side of authority, and back up the schoolmaster. Denis Cobtree was not old enough to give him counsel, and, besides that, the captain was staying at the Court House.
No; Doctor Syn was the man to go to. He was kindly and patient, and would anyhow give one leave to speak without interruption. So, crossing the fields, so as not to pass by his grandparents’ windows, he struck out for the vicarage.
Just as he was skirting the churchyard he heard the tramp of feet, and the captain passed along the road, followed by the King’s men. Two of them were bearing a shutter. Then the murder was known already. They were going to get Sennacherib’s body. Yes, it most certainly was, for there was affixed to the church door a new notice. Jerry approached and read the large glaring letters:
A hundred guineas will be paid to any person, or persons, who shall directly cause the arrest of a mulatto, a seaman. White hair; yellow face; dumb; no ears; six feet high; when last seen wearing royal navy cook’s uniform. Necklace of sharks’ teeth around neck. Tattoo marks of a gibbet on right forearm; a cockatoo on left wrist; and a brig in full sail executed in two dyes of tattoo work upon his chest.
This man wanted by the crown for the murder of Sennacherib Pepper, Doctor of Physics and of Romney Marsh. [Signed] Antony Cobtree,
Leveller of the Marsh Scotts, Court House, Dymchurch, and
Howard Collyer, Captain of his Majesty’s Navy, and Coast Agent and Commissioner, Court House, Dymchurch.
The writing on this notice was executed in most scholarly style, and Jerk knew the familiar lettering to be the handiwork of the murderous schoolmaster himself. This colossal audacity was quite terrifying to him. It looked as if it had been written in the blood of the victim; for the black ink was still wet.
As he gazed the church door opened and Doctor Syn came out. He looked pale and worried, as well he might, for indeed this shocking affair had already caused a most shaking sensation in the village.
“This is a bad business, boy,” he said to Jerk, who was still gazing at the notice.
“You may well say that, sir,” replied the boy.
“Poor old Sennacherib,” sighed the cleric. “To think that you went from my friend’s house to meet your death. Well,” he added hotly, shaking his fist across at the Marsh, “let’s hope they catch the rascal, for we will give him short shrift for you, Sennacherib.”
“Aye, indeed, sir,” replied young Jerk, “and let’s hope as how it’ll be the right ‘un when they does.”
“The right what?” asked Doctor Syn.
“The right rascal,” said young Jerk, “for that ain’t him.”
“What do you know about it, my lad?” said the Doctor.
“The whole thing,” replied Jerk, “for I seed the whole of the ugly business. I seed the man with the yellow face last night. I seed him a-comin’ out of your front door with a weapon in his hand.”
“You saw that?” cried the cleric, his eyes shining with excitement. “You could swear that in the Court House?”
“I could do it anywheres,” replied Jerk, “let alone the Court House, and what’s more, I could swear that he never killed Doctor Pepper.”
“How can you possibly say such a thing?” said Doctor Syn.
“Because I seed the whole thing done, as I keep tellin’ you,” answered Jerk, “and it wasn’t him as did it.”
“How do you know?” asked the Doctor hastily. “Where were you?”
“Out on the Marsh,” said Jerk, “all night.”
“What!” ejaculated the vicar, looking at the boy doubtfully. “Are you speaking the truth, my lad?”
“The solemn truth,” replied young Jerk.
“You were out on the Marsh all night?” repeated the astonished cleric. “And pray, what were you doing there?”
“Dogging that schoolmaster,” replied Jerk with conviction.
“Come into the vicarage,” said Doctor Syn, “and tell me all about it.” And he led the boy into the house.
When he had finished his tale Doctor Syn took him into the kitchen
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