The Air Pirate
of useless stuff covered with rank dock leaves made a forlorn and ugly
picture in that narrow gorge where the sun hardly penetrated.
I passed it soon, and came out upon the main coach road from St. Ives to
Land's End, and, crossing this, found a side lane, which took me direct
to the remote hostelry I had seen from the heights above.
It was a large place, covered with ivy, and no doubt did a considerable
trade eighty years before, when the innumerable tin-mines on the moor
were all at work. Now it seemed forgotten by the world, and all asleep
in the sun. "An ideal base for our operations!" I thought, as I strode
through an open door into a long, low room, with a stone floor and
heavily timbered roof.
It was cool, and so dark after the blazing sunshine that, for a moment,
I could see nothing, though I heard a sound of stertorous breathing.
When my eyes became accustomed to the gloom I saw that there was a man
asleep by the little counter. He sat on a bench which ran along the
wall, and his head was buried in his arms, which rested on a
beer-stained table. By his side stood a bottle half full of whisky.
Supposing him to be the landlord--and no engaging figure at that--I
touched him on the shoulder. It was like springing a trap! Instantly he
snatched away his arms and sat up. For a second sleep held him. Then it
passed away like a breath on glass, and if ever I saw fear on a man's
face I saw it then.
He was dressed in a blue jersey and an alpaca coat, oil-stained and
dirty. His hands were the hands of a mechanic, with grimy nails. But it
was his face that held me. It was sleek and cunning. There was a curious
mixture of refinement and wickedness. He seemed like a naturally
sensitive man, whom circumstances, indulgence, or some special
temptation, had led very deeply astray.
I noted all this while he stared at me with a drooping jaw and bloodshot
eyes. His skin had turned dead-white, like the belly of a fish, and
whatever he was thinking I felt that I would not have that man's
conscience for a million.
"I want you," I said--they were the first words that came.
He made an inarticulate noise.
"You are the landlord, aren't you?"
At that he gave a long breath and his rigidity relaxed. He snatched at
the whisky bottle, poured some into a glass and drank it off neat.
"Lord, how you startled me!" he said glibly. "I was far
away--dreaming--and you frightened me out of my life!"
It was my turn to be amazed, though I showed nothing. The fellow spoke
with a cultivated voice and accent which were impossible to mistake. He
was not what I had thought him.
"I am very sorry," I said; "you must please excuse me. But I naturally
thought ..."
"Of course you did!" he said, and a civil but ugly smile came on his
clever, unpleasant face. "As a matter of fact, Trewhella, the landlord,
has just gone to the village for a few minutes. He asked me to keep
house for him. He's almost due back now."
Thanking him urbanely, I sat down, my mind working very quickly. He
offered me some whisky, and though it was the last thing I wanted, I
accepted after a show of reluctance. He was watching me out of the
corners of his eyes the whole time.
"Can you tell me," I said, with great openness of manner, "if I can get
rooms here, or in Zerran village?"
He became alert at once. "Rooms, to stay in, do you mean?"
"Yes. I am an Oxford tutor, and I have a young foreign gentleman in my
charge whom I am coaching. I want a quiet place for three or four weeks,
and this seems ideal for the purpose."
His face cleared. "I should imagine so," he replied. "I know Trewhella
does let sometimes."
"You live here?" I remarked, with polite indifference.
"I have been here for a year," he answered. "I am, as a matter of fact,
a mining engineer--hence these clothes! I belong to a little private
syndicate of friends who are opening up a disused tin-mine, on the moor
not far away. Ah, here is the landlord! Trewhella, this gentleman wishes
to speak to you." And then to me: "Good-morning, sir. No doubt, if you
come here, I and my friends will see something of you. We are mostly
public-school and University men ourselves, and we often look in here of
an evening after our day's work."
He waved his hand and went out into the sunshine.
CHAPTER X
SIR JOHN CUSTANCE COMES UPON THE HOUSE OF HELZEPHRON
Mr. Trewhella was an elderly Cornishman, with welcoming manners, the
native shrewdness of his race, but without guile. We got on famously
from the word "go." He had three bedrooms and a large sitting-room to
let. His wife, who had driven into St. Ives, was, he asserted, a good
cook. As for Thumbwood, he could wait on us and live with the landlord
and his wife. Finally, there was an empty barn which would hold our car
very comfortably.
"And what would you be thinking of paying, zur?" asked Mr. Trewhella.
"I shall leave that to you. I may tell you that the gentleman I am
preparing for his Oxford examination is wealthy. He is a Japanese
nobleman, and as long as you make us comfortable ..."
This had the desired effect. The landlord became expansive in his slow
way, and showed me all over the premises of his quaint and rambling
dwelling. It was a wild and fantastic spot, an ancient haunt of
smugglers and wreckers, I learnt. The back-yard opened straight into the
short pneumatic turf above the cliffs, the brink of which was not more
than two hundred yards away. Here the stream, which flowed past the inn,
descended in a series of miniature cataracts to a tiny cove of
deep-green water, almost enclosed by two towering precipices, crowned
with jagged spires and pinnacles of rock. There was a little scimitar of
golden sand far down at the water's edge, and the scene was one of
savage grandeur that I have rarely known surpassed in all my travels.
As he stood on the height and looked down, I saw something which seemed
strangely out of place. A line of street rails, with wooden rollers at
intervals between them, fell at a dizzy angle from a spot some ten yards
away on the turf, ending abruptly on the level, and in front of a
smallish hut of corrugated iron.
"What is the rail for?" I asked. "Surely you don't haul the
boats"--there were two of them lying on the beach--"right up to the top
of the cliff! It must be two hundred and fifty feet!"
"Nigher three hundred, zur. No. Them rails belong to bring up machinery
and stores for Tregeraint Mine by Carne Zerran. They do come by sea in a
lil' steamboat. 'Tes more convenient so. There be a lil' oil engine in
that shed to haul 'em up in trucks. I let the land, for 'tes all mine
down-along, and they do pay me ten pound a year."
We strolled back to the house, Mr. Trewhella proposing a Cornish pasty
and beer for lunch.
"Now you mention it, that gentleman who was keeping house for you just
now said that he was a mining engineer."
The landlord's big, weather-beaten face wrinkled like a stained window.
He began to heave and chuckle, finally exploding in a bellow of
laughter.
"Mr. Vargus!" he spluttered, "Mr. Vargus! He _thinks_ he be a mining
engineer, but a knows no more about it than my pig! He be a clever
gentleman, sure 'nuf. He do have some braäve knowledge to machinery,
I'll allow. But mining, and tin-mining!"
Mr. Trewhella could find no further words to express his contempt for
the mining attainments of my friend with the refined and evil face.
"You see," the landlord continued, as we ate our pasties, "I'm an old
mine-captain myself, bred and born to it. 'Tedn't likely as I could be
deceived. When I heered that a gentleman had come into Tregeraint Manor
and the old mine, and proposed to work it, I laughed, I did. I know
every inch of Wheal Tregeraint, and fifty years ago it was a fine
property. To-day them amatoors up along'll never get enough tin out to
oxidize, let alone smelt."
"Who are they, then, Mr. Trewhella?"
"That's what lots of folk asked when they first come here in twos and
threes. They're gentlemen, zur, like yourself, that's what they are.
Never was such a thing known in these parts, though folk are used to 'em
now. There's Mr. Helzephron, a Cornishman himself, and should know
better, Mr. Vargus, you seed, Mr. Gascoigne, a mad young devil if you
like, and near a dozen more. They all live together in the greät house
on the cliff and work the mine theyselves. Never no one else allowed.
They cooks and does for themselves, just as if they was in a mining camp
in California."
"No women, servants or anything?"
"Never an apron. My missus belong to say they lives like Popish monks,
which she see when travelling with a lady among the Eyetalians. 'Not so,
my tender dear,' says I. 'I never heered that Popish monks spent most of
their evenings in the village inn with a bottle of Scotch whisky afore
each man, and precious little left by closing time!'"
"A hard-drinking lot then?"
"Wonderful at their liquor. I tell you, zur, it's good for me! Now I've
got used to them and their funny ways, I wish they'd stay for ever.
Speaking from a strictly business point of view, that is. But soon
they'll find out they've lost their money and they'll jack it up. 'Tes
not in reason as they can go on, though they do seem so full of hope and
certainty, as you mind to up! But I _know_."
He was obviously pleased with my interest in his talk. I wondered what
he would have said if he had known who I was and why I was there? Under
a calm exterior, a professor munching potato pasty! I was filled with a
furious excitement. The man's gossip was worth a sovereign a word. Here
was, moment by moment, what looked like complete confirmation of our
suspicions. And yet, even as I realized this, I realized also how
infernally clever the scheme was. Without the clue which Danjuro and
myself alone possessed, there was nothing in the world to connect
Helzephron and Tregeraint with the business that was ruffling the calm
of two continents.
It was not my game to ask more direct questions than I could help. It
was better to let the racy stream flow on, with a word of comment now
and then. I ventured a calculated one now.
"Fools and their money are soon parted," said I.
"You may say that, zur! And they've poured out money like water.
Electric light, oal sorts o' cases full of new-fangled machinery, and
that mystery made about the silly old mine you'd think it was a seam of
diamonds."
"It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good, Mr. Trewhella!" I rose
from the table as I spoke. "But what you say about a dozen or more
gentlemen drinking nearly a bottle of whisky each rather surprises me.
I'm no foe to honest enjoyment, but ..."
I put on a slight primness of manner, as became the character I
sustained.
The landlord nodded vigorously. "'Tes so!" he agreed, "and most onusual.
They be gentlefolk, sure 'nuff, but shall I tell 'ee what I think?"
"What's that?"
"I think as most of 'em's dropped out, so to speak. I shouldn't be
frightened if as their families didn't have anything to say to 'em, and
they've nowhere much else to go. Mr. Helzephron knows what he's about,
he do. I judge by a kind o' reckless way they have, 'specially the
younger gentlemen. They don't seem to mind about ordinary things same as
most. Well, I suppose this fool tin-mining keeps 'em out of mischief."
I wondered.
When I set out upon the return journey I took another route. I found
from the landlord that by skirting the coast for a mile in the direction
of St. Ives I could come upon a moorland path that would take me to the
little railway-station of St. Erth. I could then catch a train for
Penzance. My ostensible reason was to vary my walk, my real one that by
this change of plan I should pass by and have a view of Tregeraint Mine
and the Manor House.