THE BRASS-BOUND BOX
When Martin reached home that evening he told his friends of the approaching change in his work that was due to Mr. Slocum. Susan Gollop’s red cheeks grew redder as she listened to him.
“That Slocum is a monster!” she cried indignantly. “I’d like to give him a piece of my mind, that I would!”
“Now don’t you go putting your oar in, my woman,” said the constable. “I don’t like the man, but he was within his rights in turning out of the house the boy he dismissed for misbehaviour——”
“Misbehaviour, indeed!” Susan interrupted. “What’s his own behaviour like? Tell me that. Mr. Greatorex ought to know what a temper the man has got, and if he didn’t live so far away I’d tell him myself. Martin shall write it down for me, being no scholar myself, and we’ll send Mr. Greatorex a letter.”
“Avast there!” said Dick. “Look at it sensible, Sue. Mr. Greatorex is the owner of the ship, so to put it, and he’s made Slocum captain. ’Tain’t for us to question his right so to do. And d’you think he’s going to bother his head about the ship’s boy?”
“What ship’s boy?”
“Why, Martin, of course. In a manner of speaking he was the ship’s boy aboard that craft.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” exclaimed Susan. “You and your ship’s boy—and Martin the son of a captain and owner! Gollop, I wonder at your ignorance.”
“Well, my dear, what you can’t help, make the best of. Let things alone, that’s what I say, and maybe Martin’ll never meet Slocum again, and so it won’t matter.”
Martin was not long in deciding that Mr. Slocum had really done him a good turn. He liked his new job—to deliver bread to the ships in the Pool. Their officers, coming into harbour after long voyages, were glad to get a change from the hard, mouldy, and often worm-bitten biscuit which they had to put up with at sea. Mr. Faryner’s excellent loaves found a ready sale among them.
At least once, sometimes twice, a day Martin rowed out from the steps below London Bridge to the vessels that lay against the wharves or at anchor in the river. Sometimes he would send up his bread in a basket lowered over the side; sometimes, after tying his painter to the anchor chains, he would himself swarm up a rope ladder to the deck. Now and then he had to scramble across the lighters surrounding a vessel that was taking in or discharging cargo.
He found all this thoroughly interesting and enjoyable. It was much easier to carry his basket in a boat than to carry it on his arm. He liked to meet and chat with the jolly sailor-men and to see the insides of the ships whose outsides he knew so well. If he could not go to sea himself, he felt that the next best thing was to have something to do with those who did, even if it were only supplying them with bread.
And he was well satisfied with his change of masters. Mr. Faryner, he found, was just as quick-tempered as Mr. Slocum, but he was not mean or spiteful or unjust.
One Saturday when Martin had made a slight mistake in accounting for the money he had received from customers, the baker flew into a rage.
“You’re either a ninny or a rascal!” he cried. “And I don’t know which is worse. Can’t you add two and two? You’re no good to me. Boys are the plague of my life, none of them any good. If they’re not saucy they’re stupid, and if they’re not stupid they’re——. Here, get out of my sight, and don’t stare at me as if I were a fat pig at a fair!”
Martin was careful to keep out of the angry man’s way, and wondered whether, when he received his week’s wages, he would be told to find another job. To his surprise Mr. Faryner seemed to have forgotten the matter that had upset him.
“Here you are, my lad,” he said, as he handed Martin his five shillings. “And you had better take two loaves home to-night instead of one; there are some over, and they’ll be too stale to sell by Monday.”
Like many another quick-tempered man’s, Mr. Faryner’s bark was worse than his bite.
When Martin got home that evening he found Susan Gollop in a great state of excitement.
“I don’t know what’s coming to us all,” she said. “Only think of it! When Mounseer came back from his walk this afternoon he found his room all upside-down and higgledy-piggledy, and me in the house all the time, and never heard a sound!”
“What happened?” asked Martin, remembering the former attempts on the Frenchman’s room.
“Why, someone got in, front or back, I don’t know how, and picked his padlock, and rummaged the room, forced open his cupboard, slit up his mattress, and even ripped the lining of his coat on the peg.”
“But why? What were they seeking?” Martin asked in his amazement. “He seems to have nothing valuable except his sword.”
“Ah! That’s what puzzles me. And what’s more, Mounseer didn’t seem very upset when he came in and found everything topsy-turvy. He just looked round the room, and then he smiled—fancy that; smiled!—as if it was just a muddle made by children.
“ ‘You take it easy, sir,’ says I, and he gave his shoulders a shrug—you know his way—and said, ‘Be so good, madam’—he called me madam—‘to help me arrange.’ And when we were in the middle of putting things straight, who should come in but Mr. Seymour.
“ ‘Dear me!’ says he, all astonished like, ‘what in the world is the matter?’ And just as I was opening my mouth, Mounseer took me up short. ‘Nothing in the world, sir,’ says he, ‘I thank you!’ And he goes straight to the door and shuts it in Mr. Seymour’s face.
“I was fair took aback; where were his French manners? Always so polite to me, calling me madam and all, and yet almost rude to Mr. Seymour!
“Mounseer must have took a dislike to him, that’s all I can say, and very queer it is, for Mr. Seymour is a nice, pleasant-spoken gentleman, with always a ‘Good-day, Mrs. Gollop!’ or ‘Very warm, Mrs. Gollop!’ whenever I meet him on the stairs.”
Martin said nothing to this, though recent incidents had made him uncomfortable, and inclined to share in Mounseer’s evident distrust of the mysterious lodger on the top floor. His doubts were deepened by something that happened that very night.
He was disturbed from a sound sleep by slight noises from the waste land at the rear of the house. They were louder than they had been on the previous occasion, and he guessed that the man below had had more difficulty in attracting Mr. Seymour’s attention.
But things happened as before. There was a short, murmured exchange of words between the two men; the speaker below went away, Mr. Seymour came with scarcely a sound down the stairs. Martin reached his post near the top of the basement staircase in time to hear the same husky voice outside the front door say: “The sloop is back in the river.”
Again Mr. Seymour opened the door wide, and the other man brought in a brass-bound box.
“It’s heavier this time,” said Mr. Seymour. “You must give me a hand with it upstairs.”
“It’s not safe. You’ve got slippers; my sea-boots make too much noise.”
“Take them off, and walk in your stockings!” said Mr. Seymour, impatiently.
The other man growled, but came forward, set the box on the floor, and sat on it while he removed his boots. His features were still concealed from Martin by Mr. Seymour’s figure between him and the candle half-way down the hall. He stood up.
“Heave ho,” he muttered.
And then Martin started, and instinctively shrank back a little. When he looked out again the two men, carrying the box between them, were full in the light of the guttering candle, and in the larger of them he recognised the black-bearded stranger whom he had first seen at the river stairs in the company of Mr. Slocum, and whom he had rowed down to Deptford in Jack Boulter’s wherry.