He read Matthew Moon’s letter at the chink, half a line at a time. It was brief. Eastwood was in Wadsworth. Nothing had come of the searching yet. They had been through such-and-such houses, and so forth. It said nothing of the errand on which he was sending Cicely. Arthur was to remain where he was and not to use the rope he sent yet (it was an inch-rope, and very long). They seemed to be giving him, Matthew, his liberty, that he might have a chance to commit himself; that was all right, and Teddy was a good lad. Monjoy ate his supper in darkness, stretched himself on the floor, and soon slept soundly. Early the following morning, Saturday, he heard noises downstairs in the warehouse and glided noiselessly to his doors again. They had come for the books of Matthew Moon’s business, but they departed quickly.
Monjoy had had vague ideas of warning Cope in person—harebrained notions of disguise, of getting to the house adjoining Cope’s, passing from dormer to dormer under cover of the pear-tree, of visiting Cope in his bed. Presently he abandoned them. Moon must carry the message. He split a board from his empty box, and from the bricks of the broken hearth he scraped with his knife a quantity of soot. He mixed this with spittle, and then, making a pen of a splinter of wood wrapped round with his handkerchief, he rubbed into the dingy board a letter. It was neatly enough done considering the materials; he was an engraver; and he smiled as he worked, for this at least was as honest as Cicely could desire. He blew Cicely a kiss from his prison, and then he split his board from end to end that it might be carried doubled with the message inside. About eight o’clock he heard Teddy’s call.
“Mr. Moon, Teddy,” he said, throwing down the pieces when he had drawn up his bundle.—“I say, Teddy, pewits don’t nest in nettles, you know.”
“Keep low, Arthur—we’ll get you away,” quoth Teddy, with huge importance. “Cope’s been to Wadsworth to-day.”
“Ay? You’re a great man, Teddy. Off with you!” Monjoy answered; and a quarter of an hour later Teddy was marching through the soldiery in the market-place with his flat boards shouldered like a gun. The soldiers laughed, and one of them flung a bone from the pot at him.
At warning Cope, however, Matthew Moon demurred; he would have nothing to do with it, and informed Monjoy so on the Sunday. Himself (he said), he would be well pleased to see Cope stuck like a pig so he were not required to do it himself: hell would be the richer by a devil as cruel as any it held. Sign it, too! Was Monjoy mad?... Teddy had brought ink and paper this time, and Monjoy wrote back: Very well, then he would see to it himself, and that very night. Cope was getting near the wolves’ country at Wadsworth. Once out of the garret, there would be no getting back; therefore Matthew need not trouble himself to send further provisions.—Teddy bore off this answer, but the pewit’s call came again soon after the Piece Hall clock had struck eleven. Matthew Moon cursed him for a fool, but yielded. “But I’ll not give him your name,” he wrote, “unless you want to lug me in too. He’s able to arrest me any minute, and I want to have you out of the way first. No names, except those of the three men.”
“All right, Teddy,” said Monjoy.
And Cicely carried food by night to the stackyard, wasting her cunning had she but known it. It was only a question of time before she was followed, and (to come to that at once) it happened on that very Sunday evening. Reaching the stackyard, she found herself forestalled, and she lay low with her basket under a wall, listening in an agony of fear to the voices of three strangers, who talked in an outhouse. She heard her husband’s name spoken. They were questioning Webster, the owner of the stackyard; and it was much that she did not throw herself at their feet and implore mercy for him there and then. Matthew had judged wisely to keep her in ignorance. The voices ceased; she heard steps; she thrust her basket into the roadside weeds and fled. Dooina Benn had to watch Sally that night, and by morning a further calamity had happened. This was the disappearance from the niche in the kitchen of Eastwood Ellah. He had scarcely stirred since he had been put there, and, maybe, they had grown a little careless in watching him; anyway, he was gone. Neighbours were sent to search for him. Cicely was calmer, but very pale, and she started at sudden sounds.
At nine o’clock on the Monday morning the soldiers in the clogger’s shop saw Matthew Moon walk up the croft. They stretched their necks for a sight of the man who had publicly abused Jeremy Cope—Cope of Bow Street, the most ruthless manhunter in the land (you had to leave Horwick to learn of what consequence the Horwick folk were). Moon demanded of the sentry at the door whether Mr. Cope was up, and at a sign from the sentry one of the soldiers went inside to announce the visitor.
Cope, in a grey dressing-gown, was drinking chocolate at a desk and opening letters. He rubbed his hands as if with pleasure at seeing the merchant.