Priscilla's Spies
“The sergeant was sent for up to the big house,” said Peter Walsh, “soon
after the strange gentleman came. I don’t know rightly what they wanted
with him. Sweeny was asking Constable Maloney after; but sure the boy
knew no more than I did myself.”
“It’s a curious thing,” said Kinsella, “so it is, damned curious.”
“Damned,” said Peter Walsh.
“I wouldn’t be sorry if the whole lot of them was drownded one of these
days.”
“I wouldn’t like anything would happen to the young lady.”
“Is it Priscilla? I wasn’t meaning her. But any way, Peter Walsh, you
know well the sea wouldn’t drown that one.”
“It would not, surely. Why would it?”
“What I had in my mind,” said Kinsella, “was the rest of them.”
He looked sadly at the sky and then out across the sea, which was
perfectly calm.
“But there’ll be no drowning,” he added with a sigh, “while the weather
holds the way it is.”
“There’s a feel in the air,” said Peter Walsh hopefully, “like as if
there might be thunder.”
A small boat, rowed by a boy, stole past them up the harbour. Neither of
the two men spoke until she reached the slip at the end of the quay.
“I’d be sorry,” said Kinsella, “if anything would happen to them two
that does be going about in Flanagan’s old boat. There’s no harm in them
barring the want of sense.”
“It would be as well for them to be kept off Inishbawn for all that.”
“They never offered to set foot on the island,” said Kinsella, “since
the day I told them that herself and the childer had the fever. The way
it is with them, they wouldn’t care where they’d be, one place being the
same to them as another, if they’d be let alone.”
“That’s what they will not be, then.”
“On account of Priscilla?”
“Her and the young fellow she has with her. They’re out hunting them two
that has Flanagan’s old boat the same as it might be some of the boys at
a coursing match and the hare in front of them. Such chasing you never
seen! It was up out of their beds they were this morning at six o’clock,
when you’d think the likes of them would be asleep.”
“I seen them,” said Kinsella.
“And the one of them is as bad as the other. You’d be hard put to it to
say whether it was Priscilla has put the comether on the young fellow or
him that had her druv’ on to be doing what it would be better for her to
leave alone.”
“Tell me this now, Peter Walsh, that young fellow is by the way of
having a sore leg on him, so they tell me. Would you say now but
that might be a trick the way it would put us off from suspecting any
mischief he might be up to?”
“I was thinking myself,” said Peter, “that he might be imposing on us;
but it’s my opinion now that the leg’s genuine. I followed them up last
night, unbeknown to them, to see would he get out of the perambulator
when he was clear of the town and nobody to notice him. But he kept in
it and she wheeled him up to the big house every step of the way.”
The evidence was conclusive and carried complete conviction to
Kinsella’s mind.
“What would be your own opinion,” said Peter Walsh, “about that one that
does be going about the bay in your own boat along with Jimmy?”
“I wouldn’t say there’d be much harm in her. Jimmy says it’s hard to
tell what she’d be after. He did think at the first go off that it might
be cockles; but it’s not, for he took her to Carribee strand, where
there’s plenty of them, and the devil a one she’d pick up. Nor it’s
not periwinkles. Nor dilishk, though they do say that the dilishk is
reckoned to be a cure for consumption, and you’d think it might be that.
But Jimmy says it’s not, for he offered her a bit yesterday and she
wouldn’t look at it.”
“I don’t know what else it could be,” said Peter Walsh.
“Nor I don’t know. But Jimmy says she doesn’t speak like one that would
be any ways in with the police.”
“She was in Brannigan’s last night, buying peppermint drops and every
kind of foolishness, the same as she might be a little girleen that was
given a penny and her just out of school.”
“If she hasn’t more sense at her time of life,” said Kinsella, “she
never will.”
“Seeing it’s that sort she is, I wouldn’t say we’d any need to be caring
where she goes so long as it isn’t to Inishbawn.”
“She’ll not go there,” said Kinsella, “for if she does I’ll flay the
skin of Jimmy’s back with the handle of a hay-rake, and well he knows
it.”
“If I was easy in my mind about the strange gentleman that’s up at the
big house----”
“It’s a curious thing, so it is, him sending for the sergeant the minute
he came.”
“Bedamn,” said Peter Walsh, “but it is.”
The extreme oddness of the strange gentleman’s conduct affected both
men profoundly. For fully five minutes they sat staring at the sea,
motionless, save when one or the other of them thrust his head forward
a little in order to spit. Kinsella at last got out his pipe, probed the
tobacco a little with the point of his knife so as to loosen it, pressed
it together again with his thumb, and then lit it.
“I wouldn’t mind the sergeant,” he said, “cute and all as he thinks
himself, I wouldn’t mind him. It’s the strange gentleman I’m thinking
of.”
The Tortoise stole round the end of the quay while he spoke. Kinsella
eyed her. He noticed at once that Priscilla was steering with an oar. In
his acutely suspicious mood every trifle was a matter for investigation.
“What’s wrong with her,” he said, “that she wouldn’t steer with the
rudder when she has one?”
“It might be,” said Peter Walsh, “that she’s lost it. You couldn’t tell
what the likes of her would do.”
“She was in trouble this morning when I seen her,” said Kinsella, “but
she had the rudder then.”
Priscilla hailed them from the boat
“Hullo, Peter!” she shouted. “Go down to the slip and be ready to take
the boat. Have you the bath chair ready?”
“I have, Miss. It’s there standing beside the slip where you left it
this morning. Who’d touch the like? What’s happened the rudder?”
“Iron’s broken,” said Priscilla, “and it must be mended tonight. I say,
Kinsella, Jimmy’s leg isn’t near as bad as you’d think it would be,
after having the horn of a wild bull run through it.”
“It wasn’t a bull at all, Miss, but a heifer.”
“I don’t see that it makes much difference which it was,” said
Priscilla.
“Do you hear that now?” said Kinsella to his friend in a whisper.
“Believe you me, Peter Walsh, it’s as good for the whole of us that
she’s not in the police.”
“What’s that you’re saying?” said Priscilla.
The boat, though the wind had almost left her sails, drifted up on
the rising tide and was already past the spot where the two men were
sitting. Peter Walsh got up and shouted his answer after her.
“Joseph Antony Kinsella,” he said, “is just after telling me that it’s
his belief that you’d make a grand sergeant of police.”
“It’s a good job for him that I’m not,” said Priscilla. “For the first
thing I’d do if I was would be to go out and see what it is he has going
on on Inishbawn.”
Peter Walsh, without unduly hurrying himself, arrived at the slip before
the Tortoise. Priscilla stepped ashore and handed him the rudder.
“Take that to the smith,” she said, “and tell him to put a new iron on
it this evening. We’ll want it again tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll tell him, Miss; but I wouldn’t say he’d do it for you.”
“He’d jolly well better,” said Priscilla.
“That same Patsy the smith,” said Peter Walsh, “has a terrible strong
hate in him for doing anything in a hurry whether it’s little or big.”
“Just you tell him from me,” said Priscilla, “that if I don’t get that
rudder properly settled when I want it tomorrow morning, I’ll go out to
Inishbawn, in spite of your rats and your heifers.”
Peter Walsh’s face remained perfectly impassive. Not even in his eyes
was there the smallest expression of surprise or uneasiness.
“What would be the good of saying the like of that to him?” he said.
“It’s laughing at me he’d be, for he wouldn’t understand what I’d mean.”
“Don’t tell me,” said Priscilla. “Whatever villainy there is going on
between you and Joseph Antony Kinsella, Patsy the smith will be in it
along with you.”
Peter Walsh helped Frank into the bath-chair. Priscilla, her face
wearing a most determined expression, wheeled him away.
“That rudder will be ready all right,” she said.
“But what do you think is going on on the island?” asked Frank.
“I don’t know.”
“Could they be smuggling?”
“They might be smuggling, only I don’t see where they’d get anything to
smuggle. Anyway, it’s no business of ours so long as we get the rudder.
I don’t think it’s at all a good plan, Cousin Frank, to be always poking
our noses into other people’s secrets, when we don’t absolutely have
to.”
It occurred to Frank that Priscilla had shown some eagerness in probing
the private affairs of the young couple who had hired Flanagan’s boat.
He did not, however, feel it necessary to make this obvious retort.
Peter Walsh, the rudder under his arm, went back to Joseph Antony
Kinsella, who was still sitting on the edge of the quay.
“She says,” he said, “that without there’s a new iron on that rudder
tomorrow morning, she’ll go out to Inishbawn and the young fellow along
with her.”
“Let Patsy the smith put it on for her, then.”
“Sure he can’t.”
“And what’s to hinder him?”
“He was drunk an hour ago,” said Peter Walsh, “and he’ll be drunker
now.”
“Bedamn then, but you’d better take him down and dip him in the tide,
for I’ll not have that young fellow with the sore leg on Inishbawn. If
it was only herself I wouldn’t care.”
“I’d be afeard to do it,” said Peter Walsh.
“Afeard of what?”
“Afeard of Patsy the smith. Sure it’s a madman he is when his temper’s
riz.”
“Let you come along with me,” said Kinsella, “and I’ll wake him up if
it takes the brand of a hot iron to do it. He can be as mad as he likes
after, but he’ll put an iron on that rudder before ever he gets leave to
kill you or any other man.”
CHAPTER XV
Priscilla wheeled the bath-chair up the hill from the town, chatting
cheerfully as she went.
“It’ll be rather exciting,” she said, “to see these Torrington people. I
don’t think I’ve ever come across a regular, full-blown Marquis before.
Lord Thormanby is a peer of course, but he doesn’t soar to those giddy
heights. I suppose he’ll sit on us frightfully if we dare to speak.
Not that I mean to try. The thing for me to do is to be ‘a simple child
which lightly draws its breath, and feels its life in every limb.’
That’s a quotation, Cousin Frank. Wordsworth, I think. Sylvia Courtney
says it’s quite too sweet for words. I haven’t read the rest of it,
so of course, can’t say, but I think that bit’s rather rot, though I
daresay Lord Torrington will like it all right when I do it for him.”
Frank felt a certain doubt about the policy. Lord Torrington was indeed
pretty sure to prefer a simple child to Priscilla in her ordinary mood;
but there was a serious risk of her over-doing the part. He warned
Priscilla to be exceedingly careful. She brushed his advice aside with
an abrupt change of subject.
“I expect,” she said, “that Mrs. Geraghty will be up at the house again.
Aunt Juliet wouldn’t trust anybody else to hook up Lady Torrington’s
back. I can do my own, of course; but nobody can who is either fat or
dignified. I’m pretty lean, but even I have to wriggle a lot.”
Mrs. Geraghty was up at the house. This became plain to Priscilla
when she reached the gate-lodge. Mr. Geraghty, who was a gardener by
profession, was sitting on his own doorstep with the baby in his arms.
The baby, resenting the absence of his mother, was howling. Priscilla
stopped.
“If you like,” she said, “I’ll wheel the baby up to the house and give
him to Mrs. Geraghty. Aunt Juliet won’t like it if I do. In fact she’ll