The war maker

by Horace Herbert Smith

“I will,” I replied. “I am going to bury myself in a real tomb.”

The lawyer looked up a bit startled. “You don’t mean that you intend to kill yourself?” he asked with some anxiety.

I laughed at him. “Not much,” I told him. “I like to explore strange lands but I always want to come back. If there really are any detectives on my trail, the last place they will look for me is the cemetery, and I will go out there and cache myself away in Sir William Clark’s tomb. It is an ideal hiding place, so far as security is concerned, and you can devote all of your thought to the trial, without any fear that I will be discovered and disarrange things.”

“But people are buried in there,” exclaimed the man of law with a show of horror which evidenced great reverence for the dead.

“So much the better for my purpose,” I said, as I walked out of his office. “I’m off for my tomb.”

The idea of using the Clark tomb, which I had previously noticed while walking through the cemetery, as a hiding place, had come to me while the lawyer was urgently renewing his advice to me to get under cover until the conclusion of the trial. The mausoleum was in an out-of-the-way corner of the dead city and I knew that if I could get inside of it I would be safe from intrusion. It was about twelve by sixteen feet in size and was closed with a solid iron door, but above it was a grating which would furnish plenty of ventilation.

The landlord of the hotel where I was stopping had a delightful Dutch daughter, with whom I had become very friendly, and when I returned there after my talk with the lawyer, she informed me that two men had been around making guarded inquiries regarding a man answering my description. She took them for detectives, she said, and without knowing or suspecting why they were looking for me she had thrown them off the scent. This convinced me that there was a chase on, after all, and that it was getting so hot that I had no time to lose.

With a blanket wrapped about the upper part of my body, and with the pockets of Nourse’s dirty old white overcoat stuffed with pilot bread, canned meats, candles, a dark lantern, and books, I went out to the cemetery that evening. I had some doubt about being able to get into the tomb but I succeeded in picking the lock with a piece of heavy wire and proceeded to take up my abode with the departed Clarks. There were three of them and from the sizes of the caskets I took them to be father, mother, and child. There was one unoccupied niche and in that I arranged my bed, with my blanket and Nourse’s overcoat.

I lived in the tomb for three weeks without arousing the slightest suspicion that it was occupied. My surroundings did not worry me at all—in fact I never had such quiet and orderly companions—and after I had adapted myself to them I was fairly comfortable. My meals were simple to a degree that would have delighted a social settlement worker. I was accustomed to softer beds, but the change did me no harm. I did most of my sleeping during the day, when I could not smoke without fear of being discovered, and every night, between midnight and dawn, I took a walk through the cemetery. Twice a week, at an appointed rendezvous, I met the landlord’s daughter, who brought me a fresh supply of canned stuff, bread, and reading matter, and the latest news of the trial. Twice, toward the last of it, when I was very hungry I ventured into the outskirts of the city and filled up at a cheap eating house. During the early morning and evening I read by the light of the dark lantern, which was so placed, with the blanket as a screen, that its rays could not be seen through the grating over the door. By the time the trial was well over and I was free to come out I had fallen into the routine of my new hotel and was so well situated that, if I could have been assured of about three square meals a week, I would not have complained greatly if I had been forced to stay there six months.

The trial was held before Judge Williams and resulted in a conviction. I had expected no other verdict, for with the option of purchase clause missing from the charter it was a clear case. The lawyers for the defence contended, of course, that Henderson had announced that he had purchased the ship and that only his illness had prevented him from so advising her owners, but they could not satisfactorily explain why he and Wilson had taken to the bush when the vessel was seized. Nourse was subjected to a most severe examination by the prosecuting attorney in an effort to prove that he was not the real Henderson, but he had been thoroughly coached by Joe and Leigh and acquitted himself so well that much of the suspicion which had been entertained that he was playing a part was removed, but not all of it.