The Dead Secret, Wilkie Collins [best historical biographies .TXT] 📗

more than I intended ever to tell anybody⁠—I must tell you that the letter is locked up.”

“Locked up in a room?”

“Worse than that⁠—locked up in something inside the room. The key that opens the door⁠—even if I get it⁠—the key that opens the door of the room is not all I want. There is another key besides that, a little key⁠—” She stopped, with a confused, startled look.

“A little key that you have lost?” asked Uncle Joseph.

“I threw it down the well in the village on the morning when I made my escape from Porthgenna. Oh, if I had only kept it about me! If it had only crossed my mind that I might want it again!”

“Well, well; there is no help for that now. Tell me, Sarah, what the something is which the letter is hidden in.”

“I am afraid of the very walls hearing me.”

“What nonsense! Come! whisper it to me.”

She looked all round her distrustfully, and then whispered into the old man’s ear. He listened eagerly, and laughed when she was silent again. “Bah!” he cried. “If that is all, make yourself happy. As you wicked English people say, it is as easy as lying. Why, my child, you can burst him open for yourself.”

“Burst it open? How?”

Uncle Joseph went to the window-seat, which was made on the old-fashioned plan, to serve the purpose of a chest as well as a seat. He opened the lid, searched among some tools which lay in the receptacle beneath, and took out a chisel. “See,” he said, demonstrating on the top of the window-seat the use to which the tool was to be put. “You push him in so⁠—crick! Then you pull him up so⁠—crack! It is the business of one little moment⁠—crick! crack!⁠—and the lock is done for. Take the chisel yourself, wrap him up in a bit of that stout paper there, and put him in your pocket. What are you waiting for? Do you want me to show you again, or do you think you can do it now for yourself?”

“I should like you to show me again, Uncle Joseph, but not now⁠—not till we have got to the end of our journey.”

“Good. Then I may finish my packing up, and go ask about the coach. First and foremost, Mozart must put on his greatcoat, and travel with us.” He took up the musical box, and placed it carefully in a leather case, which he slung by a strap over one shoulder. “Next, there is my pipe, the tobacco to feed him with, and the matches to set him alight. Last, here is my old German knapsack, which I pack last night. See! here is shirt, nightcap, comb, pocket-handkerchief, sock. Say I am an emperor, and what do I want more than that? Good. I have Mozart, I have the pipe, I have the knapsack. I have⁠—stop! stop; there is the old leather purse; he must not be forgotten. Look! here he is. Listen! Ting, ting, ting! He jingles; he has in his inside money. Aha, my friend, my good leather, you shall be lighter and leaner before you come home again. So, so⁠—it is all complete; we are ready for the march now, from our tops to our toes. Goodbye, Sarah, my child, for a little half-hour; you shall wait here and amuse yourself while I go ask for the coach.”

When Uncle Joseph came back, he brought his niece information that a coach would pass through Truro in an hour’s time, which would set them down at a stage not more than five or six miles distant from the regular post-town of Porthgenna. The only direct conveyance to the post-town was a night-coach which carried the letter-bags, and which stopped to change horses at Truro at the very inconvenient hour of two o’clock in the morning. Being of opinion that to travel at bedtime was to make a toil of a pleasure, Uncle Joseph recommended taking places in the day-coach, and hiring any conveyance that could be afterward obtained to carry his niece and himself on to the post-town. By this arrangement they would not only secure their own comfort, but gain the additional advantage of losing as little time as possible at Truro before proceeding on their journey to Porthgenna.

The plan thus proposed was the plan followed. When the coach stopped to change horses, Uncle Joseph and his niece were waiting to take their places by it. They found all the inside seats but one disengaged, were set down two hours afterward at the stage that was nearest to the destination for which they were bound, hired a pony-chaise there, and reached the post-town between one and two o’clock in the afternoon.

Dismissing their conveyance at the inn, from motives of caution which were urged by Sarah, they set forth to walk across the moor to Porthgenna. On their way out of the town they met the postman returning from his morning’s delivery of letters in the surrounding district. His bag had been much heavier and his walk much longer that morning than usual. Among the extra letters that had taken him out of his ordinary course was one addressed to the housekeeper at Porthgenna Tower, which he had delivered early in the morning, when he first started on his rounds.

Throughout the whole journey, Uncle Joseph had not made a single reference to the object for which it had been undertaken. Possessing a child’s simplicity of nature, he was also endowed with a child’s elasticity of disposition. The doubts and forebodings which troubled his niece’s spirit, and kept her silent and thoughtful and sad, cast no darkening shadow over the natural sunshine of his mind. If he had really been traveling for pleasure alone, he could not have enjoyed more thoroughly than he did the different sights and events of the journey. All the happiness which the passing minute had to give him he took as readily and gratefully as if there was no uncertainty in the