This was not long delayed. In a very few minutes, the highwayman was tossing his hat and coat on to a chair, and saying: “I’m to tell you, Soldier, the Squire’s not so stout today, which is why Miss Nell ain’t left the house. Seems there was a bit of a kick-up this morning, which threw Squire into some kind of convulsion. Howsever, he’s been sleeping pretty well all day, and they say as he’s middling well now.”
“What happened?” John demanded.
“The butler-cove had back-words with Coate’s man,” replied Chirk, accepting a tankard, and blowing the froth from it expertly. “By all accounts, he mistook one of the wenches for a light-skirt, and acted according, and she, not having a fancy for a stub-faced cull—and wapper-eyed at that, so Rose tells me!—set up a screeching fit to burst anyone’s listeners. So this old cove tells Gunn that what with him being in the habit of prigging the drink, and never coming into the house but what he’s ale-blown and uncommon full o’ bounce, he won’t have him there no more, and if he sets his foot over the threshold again, he’ll have up Squire’s groom, and the stable-boy, which is a fine, lusty lad, to take and throw him out. Then in walks Mr. Henry Stornaway, and he flies into his high ropes in a brace o’ snaps, and tells the butler-cove he’s as good as master at Kellands, and things will be as he wants ’em to be. Which the butler-cove says they won’t, not while Squire’s above ground. So off goes this Henry in a twirk, and as soon as Squire’s own man is out o’ the way he goes in to see his granfer. What he said to him no one don’t know, but Squire’s man come back to find Squire fair foaming at the mouth, and trying to get out of his chair to give this Henry a leveller. Which his man was so obliging as to have done for him, which, so far as anyone could tell, Squire not being able to speak, pleased the old gager considerable. Then Miss Nell goes off and dresses Coate down like you never heard, and tells him if him or Henry goes next or nigh Squire, or Gunn sets foot in the house, she’ll have in the constable from Tideswell to heave ’em out, the whole scaff and raff of ’em. Rose had her ear to the door, misdoubting there might be a turn-up of some sort, but by what she tells me Coate did his best to come over Miss Nell with a lot o’ bamboozling talk, saying as Henry was a buzzard, and Gunn a worse ’un, and he’d see as she wasn’t troubled no more. Then she tells him to his teeth that the sooner he pikes the better pleased she’ll be, and he says as she’ll do well to take care, ’cos if she meddles with him it’ll be very much the worse for her, and Squire, and Henry too. Rose says he sounded as wicked as if he was the Black Spy himself, and gives a laugh which makes the blood curdle in her veins.—But I don’t set much store by that,” he added indulgently, “women’s blood being remarkable prone to curdle. So that’s how it is, Soldier—excepting that Henry’s took to his bed with a chill, which Rose says is true enough, him sneezing fit to bring the roof down.”
John was silent for a moment, frowning over this intelligence. He looked up at last, and asked curtly: “Did you ask Rose if she knew of a cave near the Manor?”
“I did, and in a manner o’ speaking she does, only it would queer her to tell us where it is, because she ain’t ever seen it. There’s a couple of small caves in the hills north o’ Squire’s place, and one big ’un, very like the one at the Peak, she says, but Squire closed up the entrance to that afore ever Rose went to the Manor, Henry’s pa having broke his leg in it. It’s on his land, you see, but there ain’t no road to it, and Squire never took a fancy to show it to folks, like they show the one at the Peak. Miss Nell’s pa, which was Squire’s eldest son, Mr. Frank, was with Henry’s pa when he broke his leg, the pair of ’em being no more than shavelings, and he run off to get help, which was just as well, seemingly cos there’s water in the cavern, and when it rises it don’t take more than five or six hours to flood it. So Squire wouldn’t let no one go in it no more, and Rose says she doubts the lads nowadays don’t even know where it is, nor nothing about it. She says she’ll take her oath Miss Nell and her brother never knew there was a big cave, ’cos Squire laid it on everyone they wasn’t to be told, them being the kind of young ’uns as ’ud think it rare sport to go getting drownded in a cavern.”
“But Henry might have known!” John said. “No doubt his father told him of his adventure in it! I’m much obliged to you, Chirk!”
Chirk eyed him shrewdly. “You’re welcome. What might you be meaning to do?”
“Find the cavern, and discover what the secret of it is. If it’s being used to serve some purpose—why, that would explain what brought Coate to Kellands, and what made him ally himself with such a creature as Henry Stornaway!”
“If it is,” agreed Chirk sceptically.
“The more I think of it, the more convinced I am that nothing could be more likely,” declared John. “Jerry Chirk, I’ve a strong notion I am going to enjoy myself!”