Hemmeridge looked up and fixed his eyes upon me.
‘It is but reasonable I should inform you, Mr. Dugdale,’ continued old marline-spike, ‘that Mr. Hemmeridge is under arrest on suspicion of conspiring with Crabb, with Willett, and with Thomas Bobbins’—he glanced at the man who stood next to the doctor—‘to plunder the ship. Bobbins has given evidence that leaves me in no doubt as to the guilt of Crabb and Willett.’
Crabb uttered a curse through his teeth, accompanied with a look at the young seaman, in the one-eyed gleam of which murder methought was writ too large to be mistaken for any other intention. Old Keeling did not heed him.
‘Bobbins’s story,’ he continued, ‘is to this effect: that Crabb was to swallow a potion which would produce the appearance of death; that the sailmaker was to have a hammock weighted, shaped, and in all respects equipped to resemble the one in which Crabb would be stitched up: that in the dead of night, when the ship was silent, and the deck forward vacant, the sham hammock was to be placed upon the fore-hatch by the sailmaker and Bobbins, and the cover containing that man’—inclining his head at Crabb—‘conveyed into the sailmaker’s cabin, where it was to be cut open, the man freed, and secreted in the berth till consciousness had returned, and he was in a fit state to seize the first opportunity of sneaking into the hold. All this was done,’ old Keeling went on, Mr. Prance meanwhile looking as grave as an owl over the skipper’s shoulder, whilst every now and again a hideous grin would distort Crabb’s frightful mouth, though the sailmaker continued to stare at the captain with a white and determined countenance, and Hemmeridge to listen with a frowning worried look, his leg that crossed the other swinging like a pendulum. ‘The man Crabb got into the hold, was supplied with food and drink by Willett and Bobbins, and with tools to enable him to break into the mail-room’——
‘And I’d ha’ done it too,’ here interrupted Crabb in a voice like a saw going through a balk of timber, ‘if it hadn’t been for the stinking smoke of them blasted blankets.’
‘This inquiry,’ continued Keeling, ‘now entirely concerns Mr. Hemmeridge. You tell me, Mr. Dugdale, that Crabb seemed to you as a stone-dead man.’
‘The devil himself couldn’t ha’ told the difference,’ bawled Crabb. ‘He’s not in it,’ insolently motioning with his elbow towards the doctor. ‘Wouldn’t that blooming Bobbins ha’ said so?’ and he darted another murderous glance at the hairy young sailor.
‘I can assure you, Captain Keeling,’ said I, ‘that the man was perfectly dead. There is not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that Mr. Hemmeridge was fully convinced the body was a corpse. Convinced, captain, but dissatisfied too; and perhaps,’ said I, with a glance at Crabb, ‘it is a pity for more sakes than one that he did not carry out his idea of a post-mortem examination.’
‘Mr. Dugdale,’ exclaimed Hemmeridge in a low, deep, trembling voice, ‘before God and man, I am innocent; and I hope to live to call Captain Keeling to account for this monstrous slander, this enormous suspicion, this dishonourable and detestable accusation.’
‘I’ve never heered,’ said the man named Bobbins, in a long-drawn whining voice, ‘that this gent was consarned. I remembered Crabb asking what was to be done if so be the surgeon should cut him up to see what he died of, and Mr. Willett kissed the Bible afore Crabb and me to this: that if the surgeon made up his mind to open Crabb, Willett was to show him the bottle of physic, and to tell him that Crabb had took it for some bad complaint, and that, though he might look dead, he worn’t so.’