Priscilla's Spies
do the like of that? Sure there’s fifty ways of stopping a man from
going out in a boat when there’s only one boat for him to go in?”
“There may be fifty ways and there may be more; but I’d be glad if you’d
tell me which of them is any use when there’s a young police constable
sitting on the side of the quay that hasn’t lifted his eye off the boat
since five o’clock this morning?”
“Is there that?”
“There is. The sergeant was up at the big house late last night. I
saw him go myself. What they said to him I don’t know, but he had the
constable out sitting opposite the boat since five this morning the way
nobody’d go near her.”
“Peter Walsh,” said Sweeny, and this time he spoke in a subdued and
serious tone, “let you go in through the kitchen and ask herself to give
you the bottle of whisky that’s standing on the shelf under the bar.
When you have it, come up here for I want to speak to you.”
“Peter Walsh did as he was told. When he reached the bedroom he found
Sweeny sitting on a chair with a deep frown on his face. He was thinking
profoundly. Without speaking he held out his hand. Peter gave him the
whisky. He swallowed two large gulps, drinking from the bottle. Then
he set it down on the floor beside him. Peter waited. Sweeny’s eyes,
narrowed to mere slits, were fixed on a portrait of a plump ecclesiastic
which hung in a handsome gold frame over the chimney piece. His hands
strayed towards the whisky bottle again. He took another gulp. Then,
looking round at his visitor, he spoke.
“Listen to me now, Peter Walsh. Is there any wind?”
“There is surely, a nice breeze from the east and there’s a look about
it that I wouldn’t be surprised if it went to the southeast before full
tide.”
“Is there what would upset a boat?”
“There’s no wind to upset any boat that’s handled right. And you know
well, Mr. Sweeny, that the master can steer a boat as well as any man
about the bay.”
“Is there wind so that a boat might be upset if so be there happened to
be some kind of mistake and her jibing?”
“There will be that much wind,” said Peter Walsh, “at the top of the
tide. But what’s the use? Don’t I tell you, and don’t you know yourself
that the master isn’t one to be making mistakes in a boat?”
“How would it be now if you was in her, you and the strange gentleman,
and the master on shore, and you steering? Would she upset then, do you
think?”
“It could be done, of course, but----”
“Nigh hand to one of the islands,” said Sweeny, “in about four foot
of water or maybe less. I’d be sorry if anything would happen the
gentleman.”
“I’d be sorry anything would happen myself. But it’s easy talking. How
am I to go in the boat when the master has sent down word that he’s
going himself?”
Sweeny took another gulp of whisky and again thought deeply. At the end
of five minutes he handed the bottle to Peter Walsh.
“Take a sup yourself,” he said.
Peter Walsh took a “sup,” a very large “sup,” with a sigh of
appreciation. It had been very trying for him to watch Sweeny drinking
whisky while he remained dry-lipped.
“Let you go down to the kitchen,” said Sweeny, “and borrow the loan of
my shot gun. There’s cartridges in the drawer of the table beyond in the
room. You can take two of them.”
“If it’s to shoot the master,” said Peter Walsh, “I’ll not do it. I’ve a
respect for him ever since----”
“Talk sense. Do you think I want to have you hanged?”
“Hanged or drowned. The way you’re talking it’ll be both before I’m
through with this work.”
“When you have the gun,” said Sweeny, “and the cartridges in it, you’ll
go round to the back yard where you were this minute and you’ll fire two
shots through this window, and mind what you’re at, Peter Walsh, for
I won’t have every pane of glass in the back of the house broke, and I
won’t have the missus’ hens killed. Do you think now you can hit this
window from where you were standing in the yard?”
“Hit it! Barring the shot scatters terrible I’ll put every grain of it
into some part of you if you stay where you are this minute.”
“I’ll not be in this chair at the time,” said Sweeny. “I’ll be in the
bed, and what shots come into the room will go over me with the way
you’ll be shooting. But any way I’ll have the mattress and the blankets
rolled up between me and harm. It’ll be all the better if there’s a few
grains in the mattress.”
“I don’t know,” said Peter Walsh, “that I’ll be much nearer drowning the
strange gentleman after I’ve shot you. But sure I’ll do it if you like.”
“When you have that done,” said Sweeny, “and you’d better be quick about
it--you’ll go down to the barrack and tell Sergeant Rafferty that he’s
to come round here as quick as he can. The missus’ll meet him at the
door of the shop and she’ll tell him what’s happened.”
“I suppose then you’ll offer bail for me,” said Peter Walsh, “for if you
don’t, no other one will, and it’ll be hard for me to go out upsetting
boats if they have me in gaol for murdering you.”
“It’s not that she’ll tell him, but a kind of a distracted story. She’ll
have very little on her at the time. She has no more than an old night
dress and a petticoat this minute. I’m sorry now she has the petticoat
itself. If I’d known what would have to be I’d have kept it from her.
It doesn’t be natural for a woman to be dressed up grand when a lot of
murdering ruffians from behind the bog has been shooting her husband
half the night.”
“Bedam,” said Peter Walsh, “is that the way it is?”
“It is that way. And I wouldn’t wonder but there’ll be questions asked
about it in Parliament after.”
“You’ll be wanting the doctor,” said Peter Walsh, “to be picking the
shot out of you.”
“As soon as ever you’ve got the sergeant,” said Sweeny, “you’ll go round
for the doctor.”
“And what’ll he say when there’s no shot in you?”
“Say! He’ll say what I bid him? Ain’t I Chairman of the Board of
Guardians, and doesn’t he owe me ten pounds and more this minute, shop
debts. What would he say?
“He’s a gentleman that likes a drop of whisky,” said Peter Walsh.
“I’ll waste no whisky on him. Where’s the use when I can get what I want
without?”
Peter Walsh meditated on the situation for a minute or two. Then the
full splendour of the plan began to dawn on him.
“The master,” he said, “will be taking down the depositions that you’ll
be making in the presence of the sergeant.”
“He will,” said Sweeny, “for there’s no other magistrate in the place
only myself and him, and its against the law for a magistrate to take
down his own depositions and him maybe dying at the time.”
“There’ll be only myself then to take the strange gentleman to Inishbawn
in the boat.”
“And who’s better fit to do it? Haven’t you known the bay since you were
a small slip of a boy?”
“I have surely.”
“Is there a rock or a tide in it that isn’t familiar to you?”
“There is not.”
“And is there a man in Rosnacree that’s your equal in the handling of a
small boat?”
“Sorra the one.”
“Then be off with you and get the gun the way I told you.”
At half-past ten Sir Lucius and Lord Torrington drove into the town and
pulled up opposite Brannigan’s shop. The Tortoise lay at her moorings, a
sight which gratified Sir Lucius. After his experience the day before
he was afraid that Peter Walsh might have beached the boat in order to
execute some absolutely necessary repairs. He congratulated himself on
having suggested to Sergeant Rafferty that one of the constables should
keep an eye on her.
“There’s the boat, Torrington,” he said. “She’s small, and there’s a
fresh breeze. But if you don’t mind getting a bit wet she’ll take us
round the islands in the course of the day. If your daughter is anywhere
about we’ll see her.”
Lord Torrington eyed the Tortoise. He would have preferred a larger
boat, but he was a man of determination and courage.
“I don’t care how wet I get,” he said, “so long as I have the chance of
speaking my mind to the scoundrel who has abducted my daughter.”
“We’ll take oilskins with us,” said Sir Lucius, getting out of the trap
as he spoke.
The police sergeant approached him.
“Well, Rafferty,” said Sir Lucius, “what’s the matter with you?”
“Have you any fresh news of my daughter?” said Lord Torrington.
“I have not, my Lord. Barring what Professor Wilder told me I know no
more. There was a lady belonging to his party out on the bay looking out
for sponges and she came across----”
“You told us all that yesterday,” said Sir Lucius. “What’s the matter
with you now?”
“What they say,” said the sergeant cautiously, “is that it’s murder.”
“Murder! Good heavens! Who’s dead?”
“Timothy Sweeny,” said the sergeant
“It might be worse,” said Sir Lucius. “If the people of this district
have had the sense to kill Sweeny I’ll have a higher opinion of them in
the future than I used to have. Who did it?”
“It’s not known yet who did it,” said the sergeant, “but there was two
shots fired into the house last night. There’s eleven panes of glass
broken and the wall at the far side of the room is peppered with shot,
and I picked ten grains of it out of the mattress myself and four out of
the pillow, without counting what might be in Timothy Sweeny, which
the doctor is attending to. Number 5 shot it was and Sweeny is moaning
terrible. You’d hear him now if you was to step up a bit in the
direction of the house.”
It would, of course, have been highly gratifying to Sir Lucius to hear
Timothy Sweeny groan, but, remembering that Lord Torrington was anxious
about his daughter, he denied himself the pleasure.
“If he’s groaning as loud as you say,” he said, “he can’t be quite dead.
I don’t believe half a charge of No. 5 shot would kill a man like Sweeny
anyway.”
“If he’s not dead,” said the sergeant, “he’s mighty near it, according
to what the doctor is just after telling me. It’s likely enough that
shot would prey on a man that’s as stout as Sweeny more than it might on
a spare man like you honour or me. The way the shot must have been fired
to get Sweeny after the fashion they did is from the top of the wall in
the back yard opposite the bedroom window. By the grace of God there’s
footmarks on the far side of it and a stone loosened like as if some one
had climbed up it.”
“Well,” said Sir Lucius, “I’m sorry for Sweeny, but I don’t see that I
can do anything to help you now. If you make out a case against any one
come up to me in the evening and I’ll sign a warrant for his arrest.”
“I was thinking,” said the sergeant, “that if it was pleasing to your
honour, you might take Sweeny’s depositions before you go out in the
boat; just for fear he might take it into his head to die on us before
evening; which would be a pity.”
“Is he able to make a deposition?” said Sir Lucius.
“He’s willing to try,” said the sergeant, “but it’s badly able to talk
he is this minute.”
Sir Lucius turned to Lord Torrington.
“This is a confounded nuisance, Torrington,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ll
have to ask you to wait till I’ve taken down whatever lies this fellow
Sweeny chooses to swear to. I won’t be long.”
But Lord Torrington had a proper respect for the forms of law.
“You can’t hurry over a job of that sort,” he said.
“If the man’s been shot at---- Can’t I go by myself? I know something
about boats. You’ll be here for hours.”
“You may know boats,” said Sir Lucius, “but you don’t know this bay.”
“Couldn’t I work it with a chart? You have a chart, I suppose?”
“No man living could work it with a chart. The rocks in the bay are as
thick as currants in a pudding and half of them aren’t charted. Besides
the tides are----”
“Isn’t there some man about the place I could take with me?” said Lord
Torrington.
Peter Walsh was hovering in the background with his eyes fixed anxiously