CHAPTER LXXVII.
The Smith’s Plot Against Gray.—An Accommodating Friend.
When Britton left Jacob Gray in his room, he descended but to the first landing-place of the stairs, and then paused to consider what he had better do under the circumstances so new and so strange as Gray taking refuge with him from some danger to himself, or coming to consult with him upon some common danger to them both. This latter supposition was, however, too extravagant for Britton to believe; and when he came to consider all the circumstances—his finding Gray skulking by the door, and his evident confusion and fear when he was seized and seen, Britton with a blow of his clenched fist upon his hand exclaimed,—
“I see it now—the sneaking villain was acting the spy upon me. He wants to take my life—it’s all a d—d scheme of his, but I will be even with him, or my name ain’t Andrew Britton. Let me consider—I’ll get Bond to watch him home from here—a capital plan—he don’t know Bond, and will never suspect he is followed. Then when he finds out where he lives, we can go together, Bond and I, and knock his infernal brains out. That’ll do.”
Having satisfactorily to himself settled this line of operations, and considering Gray perfectly safe till he chose to release him, Britton made his appearance again in the parlour of the Chequers.
“Come on,” cried Bond, “there hasn’t been no time lost while you was gone for I’ve been drinking for you.”
“I thank you,” said Britton—“landlord, do you hear me, never open your door to a hangman again.”
“It was a piece of great impudence,” said the landlord, “of such a wretch coming here.” Then he added to himself, “Bless me, if he don’t seem quite sober all of a sudden, and he was a going it finely a little while ago. I do wonder now if he will recollect how much liquor he has had.”
“Hurrah!” cried Britton’s guests—“Hurrah for King Britton! We’ll drink his health again.”
“D—n you, then you’ll do it at your own expense,” said Britton. “What do you mean by sotting here at this time, eh? Clear out with you all, will you?”
“Well, I do think it’s—it’s nearly time to go,” hiccupped one man.
“Off with you all!” cried Britton. “Clear the house, landlord.”
The motley assembly, who among themselves could not have mustered the price of a jug of ale, rose in obedience to Britton’s commands, and avowing their intention of coming to see him on the morrow evening, they, with much noise and boisterous clamour, took their departure from the Chequers.
In a very minutes none were in the parlour but the landlord, Britton, and the butcher. The smith then turned to his host, and said,—
“Bring me some spiced canary, and keep every body out of here.”
“Yes, your majesty—most certainly—oh dear yes!”
The spiced canary was soon set before the precious couple, and then Britton, after a hearty draught, handed the liquor to the butcher, who with a nod that might imply any toast that his companion liked to translate it into, nearly finished the beverage.
“Bond,” said Britton, “I want you to do a little job for me.”
“I’m your man,” said the butcher. “What is it?”
“In my bedroom up stairs is a man.”
“A thief?”
“He is a thief, and be cursed to him! For he has robbed me for many years of my due.”
“You want him thrown out of window?”
“No, not exactly. I am interested for many reasons in finding out where he lives. When he leaves here, which I will take care he shall do soon, you follow him.”
“I see—I see.”
“You comprehend. He must not know you are after him, for he is as wily as a fox, but track him home, Bond, like a blood-hound!”
“Eh?” said Bond, rather astonished at the vehemence of Britton.
“I say you must follow him closely, and not let him escape you, on any account.”
“I tell you what will be the best plan,” said Bond; “you don’t want to lose him no how?“
“Dead or alive I will never let him escape me!”
“Then I’ll take my cleaver with me.”
“Your cleaver?”
“Yes; then, you know, then if he should turn round I can easily bring him down with that.”
“Yes—yes; but he has something at his home that I want.”
“Oh, very well. Then we must let him go home first, I suppose. But I’d rather have my cleaver with me, in case of anything handy and delicate being wanted.”
“You may have the devil with you if you like, so that you dog the fellow home, and come back with accurate news of where he lives. I hate him, and must have his life!”
“May I make so uncommon free as to ask what he’s done?”
“Done! He has swindled me out of my own. You know I am a smith? Well, for ten long years I beat the anvil, when I ought to be a gentleman, all through him. For ten years by myself—shunned by every one. I was forced to live by my—work by myself—drink by myself.”
“That was d—d hard.”
“It was; and all through this man. Hilloa there—more canary.”
Britton was fast relapsing into his former state of semi-intoxication, and he struck his fists repeatedly upon the table as he continued,—
“He has been my bane—my curse—and he is so now! He boasts of his cunning, and calls me a muddle-headed beast. I’ll muddle his head for him. Curse him—curse him.”
“A precious rogue he must be,” said the butcher.
“He is a sneaking, cowardly villain. He is one of those who won’t do his share of an ugly job, and yet wants more than his share of the reward.”
“Humph! An ugly job.”
“Yes—I said it—drink—drink.”
“What’s his name?” said the butcher.
“His name is Jacob Gray.”
“A nice name for a small party. Well, we’ll settle his business for him—humanely, you know, Master Britton, always humanely, say I. My cleaver is the thing—there ain’t no sort of trouble with it, you may depend.”
“Bond,” whispered Britton.
“Britton,” said Bond.
“If there should be any occasion, which I think there will be, to smash this fellow, do you mind lending me that same cleaver of yours?”
“Sartinly not.”
“Thank you—thank you. Keep a look out now, by the door, and when you see a pale, ill-looking scoundrel walk out—no, sneak out, I mean—follow him. He will be the proper man, I wait here your return, good Master Bond, and then we can take what steps, after you have found out where he lives, we may agree upon. More canary there!”
Britton kept taking huge draughts of liquor as he instructed the butcher, in what he wished him to do, and now his voice began to thicken, and he had but a very confused recollection of what he had confided to him, and what he had kept secret.
“D—n the Old Smithy,” he cried; “who cares? Not I. I’d live there again although there are some strange sights and sounds.”
The butcher looked confused, and then in his peculiar elegant phraseology he asked Britton what the h—ll he meant.
“What do I mean?” said Britton; “why, I mean what I say, to be sure. You know what I mean well enough—I tell you this infernal thing that’s now up stairs, kept me at the anvil for years, when I ought to have been, as I am now, a gentleman.”
“Oh,” said the butcher, “I suppose he gave you an amazing lot of work and wouldn’t pay for any of it till it was all done?”
“I suppose you’re a fool,” said Britton.
“Thank you,” replied Bond; “you may abuse me as much as you like, I’m your best friend, and can stand it. You know you’ll go far afore you can find another fellow as can drink as much as me.”
Britton seemed struck with the force and truth of this remark, and he took another huge draught of liquor before he replied,—
“That’s true—you are a good fellow; never mind me—I—I should like to see the Old Smithy again before the last drop goes down my throat.”
“The old who?”
“The Old Smithy at Learmont. I’ve had some pleasant hours there and some unpleasant ones, just as it happened. In for a penny, you know, and in for a pound, so I wasn’t going to say nay to the squire, you understand, and be d—d to you.”
“Yes, I understand, that is to say, I don’t exactly comprehend,” said Bonds trying to look very knowing.
“Then you’re a fool,” again cried Britton.
“Very well,” said Bond, with tipsy gravity, “very good—this here’s the state of the case:—You’ve got an animal up stairs, you says—very good. You wants me to take my cleaver, and see what’s to be done.”
“That’s the thing.”
“Then what the deuce do you mean by keeping the creature waiting for, eh?”
“Because I know him,” laughed Britton. “It’s Jacob Gray, you know.”
“Oh, is it? It may be Jacob anything else for all I know about him.”
“I tell you it’s Jacob Gray,” reiterated Britton, striking his fist on the table.
“Very well,” roared the butcher, dealing a much louder blow than Britton’s and making the glasses dance again.
“Then I know he’s trembling—groaning with fear. He thinks his last hour is come—I know he does. He suffers now more than as if we were to go up now and cut his throat.”
“Stop a bit,” said the butcher, “always knock creturs on the head afore you cuts their throats—mallet ’em first—always mallet first—it’s so very humane, it is.”
“Come on,” cried Britton; “you, know what you have to do. Follow him closely and surely, and bring me word where he lives. Then we can go to-morrow night, and you may mallet him till he has no head to mallet—hurrah!”
“A d—d fool!” muttered the butcher, as he immersed a considerable portion of his immense red face in the bowl of liquor before him, nor took it out while there was a drain left.
The bar was not half-a-dozen paces from the door of the room in which Andrew Britton and Bond had been sitting, and half drunk as the smith was, he fancied, when he had his hand upon the door, that he heard the scuffling of some one’s feet running away from it. This circumstance raised his ire wonderfully, and the suspicion it gave rise to, that the landlord was playing the spy upon him, nearly choked him with rage.
He paused a moment and glanced towards the bar, but no one was to be seen by the lamp which cast a tolerable light over the many bottles and bright measures there collected. Britton muttered a curse, and was about to pass on towards the staircase, when he saw from the other side of the bar a head slowly rise and then suddenly pop down again.
An exclamation of anger was upon his lips, but he repressed it, and a strong desire to perpetrate some practical joke upon the landlord for his cunning propensities occurred to him. After a few moments’ thought, he returned to the room he had just left, and arming himself with a massive poker, he winked mysteriously at the butcher, who followed him in silent amazement, wondering against whom the powerful weapon was about to be used.
When Britton reached the bar, he placed his finger on his lips, as an invocation to Bond to keep silence, and then he stationed himself with the poker in such a position, that if the head should protrude again, he could by a lateral sweep of the heavy bar of iron, for such if was, make sure of dealing upon it a tolerable rap.
In point of fact, the landlord had been listening to the dialogue between Britton and his friend, the butcher, and then had scampered into his own bar, and with an excess of cunning for which there was no sort of occasion, had stooped down behind his own bar, where he might have showed himself boldly, with far less suspicion attached to him.
Britton had taken his measures well, for in less than a minute the top of the landlord’s head appeared, but before his eyes got to the level of the bar, the smith dealt what there was of his head such a terrible thwack with the poker, that he fell down in the bar with a deep groan.
Britton’s delight at this achievement knew no bounds, and without caring in the least whether the landlord’s skull was fractured or not, he sat down on the stairs and laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.
“Here,” he then cried to the butcher, “take this back,” throwing the poker to him, which Bond caught very dexterously in one of his immense hands. “I haven’t been so amused for a long time; keep watch, and I’ll send the fellow down stairs in a minute.”
“That Britton is certainly a clever man in some things,” remarked the butcher, quite confidently to himself, as he lit his pipe calmly by the lamp.
Britton was in a remarkably good humour as he ascended the staircase to liberate Jacob Gray, who, he had not the least idea, had made his escape in the manner we have related. He had had plenty of drink, Jacob Gray, as he imagined, was in his power, and he had been just most amazingly amused by the little affair of the poker.
“Who says Andrew Britton is a fool and a thick-headed brute?” he muttered as he ascended the stairs; “I will be one too many for cunning clever Jacob Gray yet. I have him now safe—I have him. He cannot escape me—though what the devil brought him here, I can’t guess. That’s all a lie about coming here to warn me of anything; he must have been set on to watch me by Learmont, and yet would he venture? I must make him tell me before he goes.”
Britton paused a moment and took a clasped knife from his pocket. Then he added, coolly,—
“I’ll cut off one of his ears if he don’t tell exactly what brought him here. Besides that, it will be a good plan, for he’ll then be identified wherever he goes.”
Britton stopped at the door of the attic to laugh before he unlocked it.
“Jacob is in a horrid fright—I’m sure he is,” he muttered; “d—n me, I’ll—I’ll alarm him a bit.”
Britton applied his mouth to the key-hole, and made an unearthly kind of noise, that had Jacob Gray been there, would have gone far towards frightening him into fits. Then he dealt the door a bang with his fists, that made the whole attic shake again.
“He’s half dead, I know he is,” he cried; “upon my word I haven’t had such a pleasant evening for a long time.”
The smith then, after several efforts, for he was not in the steadiest condition, succeeded in unlocking the door. There burnt the light, nearly expiring, and Jacob Gray was gone.
For a moment Britton could scarcely believe his eyes. He then rushed to the open window, and the truth flashed across his mind. After all Jacob Gray had escaped him. A torrent of curses burst from his lips, and he sunk upon a chair quite exhausted by his ungovernable passion.