In the Dead of Night: A Novel. Volume 3 (of 3)

by T. W. Speight

All this time the works at Knockley Holt were being pushed busily forward, much to the bewilderment and aggravation of the good people of Duxley. They were aggravated, and they considered they had a right to be aggravated, because they could not understand, and had not been told, what it was that was intended to be done there. In a small town like Duxley, no inhabitant has a right to put before his fellow-citizens a problem which they find incapable of solution, and then when asked to solve it for them decline to do so. Such conduct merits the severest social reprehension.

Surely next to the madness of building a row of villas on Prior’s Croft, was the puzzling folly of digging a hole in Knockley Holt. After much discussion pro and con, amongst the townspeople—chiefly over sundry glasses of whiskey toddy, in sundry bar parlours, after business hours—it seemed to be settled that Culpepper’s Hole, as some wag had christened it, could be intended for nothing else than an artesian well—though what was the exact nature of an artesian well it would have puzzled some of the Duxley wiseacres to tell, and why water should be bored for there, and to what uses it could be put when so obtained, they would have been still more at a loss to say. The Squire could not drive into Duxley without being tackled by one or another of his friends as to what he was about at Knockley Holt. But the old man would only wink and shake his head, and try to look wise, and say, “It doesn’t do to blab everything nowadays, but between you and me and the post—this is in confidence, mind—I’m digging a tunnel to the Antipodes.” Then he would chuckle and give the reins a shake, and Diamond would trot off with him, leaving his questioner angry or amused, as the case might be.

It was not known to any one in Duxley, except the Squire’s lawyer, that Knockley Holt was now the property of Tom Bristow. That the works there were under Tom’s direction was a well-known fact, but he was merely looked upon as Mr. Culpepper’s foreman in the matter. “Gets a couple of hundred or so a year for looking after the Squire’s affairs,” one wiseacre would remark to another. “If not, how does he live? Seems to have nothing to do when he’s not at Pincote. A poor way of getting a living. Serve him right: he should have stopped with old Hoskyns when he had the chance, and not have thought he was going to set the Thames on fire with his six thousand pounds.”

No one could be possessed by a more burning desire than the Squire himself to know the meaning of the works at Knockley Holt, but having asked once and asked in vain, his pride would not allow him to make any further direct inquiry. Not a day passed on which he saw Tom, that he did not try, by one or two vague hints, to lead up to the subject, but when Tom turned the talk into another channel, then the old man would see that the time for him to be enlightened had not yet come.

But it did come at last, and after what was, in reality, no very long waiting. On a certain afternoon—to be precise in our dates, it was the fifth of May—Tom walked over to Pincote, in search of the Squire. He found him in his study, wearying his brain over a column of figures, which would persist in coming to a different total every time it was added up. The first thing Tom did was to take the column of figures and bring it to a correct total. This done, his next act was to produce something from his pocket that was carefully wrapped up in a piece of brown paper. He pushed the parcel across the table to the Squire. “Will you oblige me, sir,” he said, “by opening that paper, and giving me your opinion as to the contents?”

“Why, bless my heart, this is neither more nor less than a lump of coal!” said the Squire, when he had opened the paper.

“Exactly so, sir. As you say, this is neither more nor less than a lump of coal. But where do you think it came from?”

“There you puzzle me. Though I don’t know that it can matter much to me where it came from.”

“But it matters very much to you, sir. This lump of coal came from Knockley Holt.”

The Squire was rather dull of comprehension. “Well, what is there so wonderful about that?” he said. “I dare say it was stolen by some of those confounded gipsies, and left there when they moved.”