HOW PETER'S DIPLOMACY CAME TO NOUGHT
Peter Mauger had kept himself carefully beyond the range of Julie's wild black eyes. In the state she was in there was no knowing what she might do or say. And the words even of a mad woman sometimes stick like burrs. He began to breathe more freely when she whirled away home.
The Sénéchal and Constable came out of the school-house at last with very grave faces.
"The Doctor says his head was staved in with the blows of some round blunt thing like a mallet," said the Sénéchal to the gaping crowd, "and we must hold a proper inquiry. Any of you who saw Tom Hamon last night will be here at two o'clock to tell us all you know. Tell any others who know anything about it that they must be here too," and he went back into the school-house, and the buzzing crowd dispersed, with plenty to buzz about now in truth.
Peter Mauger went thoughtfully home. He had had no breakfast, and was feeling the need of it, and he had something in his mind that he wanted to think out.
And as he ate he thought, slowly and ruminatingly, and with many pauses, when his jaws stopped working to give his mind freer play, but still very much to the purpose, and as soon as he had done he set out to put his project into execution.
Just beyond the Coupée he met Gard hurrying towards Sark, and the state of Gard's nose and eye, and his torn coat, caught his eye at once.
"What's this about Tom Hamon?" asked Gard hastily.
"He's dead."
"His wife has just told me so. But how did it happen?"
"They're going to find out at school-house at two o'clock. Any that saw him last night are to be there. You'd better be there."
"I'm going now."
"All right," said Peter, and went on his way into Little Sark.
His way took him to La Closerie. But he was not anxious to meet Mrs. Tom, so he hung about behind the hedges till Nance happened to come out of the house, and then he whistled softly and beckoned to her to come to him.
Her face was very pale and troubled, and he saw she had been crying.
"I want to speak to you," he said.
"What is it?"
"Come round here. It's important."
"What is it?" she asked wearily again, when she had joined him behind the green dyke.
"It's this, Nance. You—you know I want you. I've always wanted you—"
"Oh—don't!" she cried, with protesting hand. "This is no time. Peter Mauger, for—"
"Wait a bit! Here's how it is. Doctor says Tom was killed by some one beating his head in with a hammer or something of the kind. Now who beat his head in? Who would be most likely to beat his head in? Not me, for we were mates. Some one that hated him. Some one that he was always quarrelling with—" Her face had grown so white that there was no colour even in the trembling lips. She stared at him with terrified eyes.
"You know who I mean," he said. "If it wasn't him that did it I don't know who it was."
"It wasn't," she jerked vehemently.
"You'd wish so, of course. But—Look here!—I'm pretty sure they met again last night after—"
"Yes, they met, and Tom tried to fight him—"
"Ah—then!"
"And he's gone up at once, as soon as he heard that Tom was found, to tell them all about it."
"Aw!"—decidedly crestfallen at the wind being taken out of his sails in this fashion. "I—I thought—maybe I could help him—"
"Oh you did, did you?"—plucking up heart at sight of his discomfiture. "And how were you going to help him?"
"If he's gone to make a clean breast of it it's all up, of course. If he'd kept it to himself—"
"He might have run away, you mean?"
"Safest for him, maybe. Up above Coupée there's a stone with blood on it. And I picked up this beside it," and he hauled out the button and the bit of blue cloth he had found. "I thought, maybe if he knew about these he might think it safest to go."
"Then every one would have the right to say he'd done it, and he didn't. He knew no more about it than you did."
"I didn't know anything about it."
"Well, neither did he, and he's not the kind to run away."
"Aw, well—I done my best. You'll remember that, Nance. You know what the Sark men are. He'd be safest away. You tell him I say so," and he pouched his discounted piece of evidence and turned and went, leaving Nance with a heavy heart.
For, as Peter said, she knew what the Sark men were—a law unto themselves, and slow to move out of the deep-cut grooves of the past, but, once stirred to boiling point, capable of going to any lengths without consideration of consequences.
And therein lay Gard's peril.