Chapter XIV

IN ENGLAND

IT is not to be supposed that Jack could have disappeared so suddenly and entirely as he had done without leaving behind him much talk and wonder as to what had become of him.

One day, for instance, Mr. Stetson stopped old Hezekiah in the street and began asking after Jack. “I know nought of him, Master Stetson,” said the old man. “He always was a main discontented, uneasy lad as ever I see. Time and time again have he talked to me about running away to sea—and that, whenever I would tell him ’twas time for him to be earning his own living by honest, decent work.”

“But, Mr. Tipton,” said the rector, “I do hear talk that he hath been kidnapped.”

“Mayhap he have been,” said Hezekiah; “but I know naught of him.”

“And are you not, then, going to do anything to try to find him?” cried out the good old rector. “Sure, you would leave no stone unturned to discover what hath become of your nephew.”

“What can I do, master?” said Hezekiah, almost whining. “I’m main sorry Jacky be gone, and am willing to do whatever I can for to find him again, but what can I do?”

“Why, Master Tipton,” said the rector, “that, me-seems, is your affair and not mine. I can hardly tell you how to set about doing your own duty in this thing. But sure am I you should do whatever you can to find what hath become of your poor nephew.”

It was the very general opinion that Jack Ballister had been kidnapped, and nearly every one surmised that old Hezekiah himself had had a hand in it. If any of this talk reached Hezekiah’s own ears he paid no attention to it, but went his way either unconscious of or indifferent to all that his neighbors said about him.

Then, one morning, the old America merchant received a communication from the little attorney, Burton, telling him that if he would stop at his (the attorney’s) office, betwixt the hours of three and five in the afternoon, he should receive certain news in re John Ballister that might be of interest to him.

The old man came promptly at three o’clock, and found the little lawyer rustling among a litter of papers like a little gray mouse. He had a great pair of barnacle glasses perched astride his nose, and he pushed them up on his sharp bony forehead, where they gleamed like two disks of brightness as he turned around to face the old man. There was a moment or two of silence, broken at last by the old America merchant.

“Well, master,” said he, lifting his wig and wiping the bald pate beneath with a red handkerchief—“Well, master, here I be; and what is it you have to say to me about my nephew—about Jacky? I be in a vast hurry this art’noon, master, and wait here with great business upon my hands.”

“Perhaps so, but I dare say you have time to listen to me, though,” said the attorney. “For what I have to say concerns you very nearly, Master Tipton.”

Then he opened the lid of the desk and brought out from a pigeonhole a bundle of papers tied up with a piece of tape. “Some time ago, Master Tipton,” he said, “Sir Henry Ballister, who is an honored client of mine, gave me instructions to look after his nephew, John Ballister, who was left by his father in your ward. When the young man disappeared I wrote to Sir Henry to that effect, and received from him further instructions to inquire into the affair.”

The little lawyer had been untying the packet while speaking. He now spread the papers out in front of him, touching them one by one as he continued: “First of all, Master Tipton,” he said, “I heard it reported that, when last seen, Master John Ballister was in company with one of your own crimps and a party of redemption servants you were shipping to the Americas. I found, further, that the crimp’s name was Weems—Israel Weems. Here is a letter from Weems in answer to one from me, in which letter he acknowledges that Master John Ballister was with him the night that the servants were shipped, and that he did not again see the young man after leaving him at the wharf. Here is another communication from John Barkley, merchant, of London, relating to the cargo of the Arundel, in which it is supposed the young man was carried away. He specified that there were but nineteen servants to be shipped from this port to the Virginia plantations. These are my notes taken during a cursory examination of Jonah Doe, landlord of the Golden Fish Inn.” And so the little man continued, recapitulating his evidence, and touching, as he spoke of them, the different papers spread out on the desk before him. “The result of all this, Master Hezekiah Tipton,” he concluded, “is that it is perfectly conclusive to my mind that Master John Ballister hath been kidnapped and carried away to the Virginias. I don’t say that you had a hand in the business, Master Tipton—I would be loath to suppose so, and to so accuse a fellow-townsman and an old acquaintance; but ’tis my belief your nephew hath been stole, and I would like to hear what you yourself have to say about it.”

Old Hezekiah did not reply immediately. He sat for a while staring absently at the other as though not seeing him. Then suddenly he aroused himself almost as with a start. “Hey?” he said, “How? Oh, ay! what you say appeareth all very true, Master Burton. But—will you let me see them papers?”

“To be sure I will,” said the other; “and if you can explain the business satisfactorily, Master Tipton, and if you can satisfy Sir Henry Ballister that his nephew is safe and sound, and shall be duly fetched back again with no ill having befallen him, why, I, for one, will be as glad as glad can be.”

“That’s right, that’s right,” said the old man, almost briskly. He adjusted his spectacles as he spoke, and then opened the first paper of the packet and began slowly and deliberately reading it. Then he took up the second and gave it a like close and deliberate scrutiny, and so on through the packet.

“Well, Master Hezekiah,” said the attorney, when the other had finished the perusal of the packet, “now you’ve read these papers, what do you think of ‘em, and what do you intend to do about this business? I will report to Sir Henry Ballister just what you choose for me to say.”

The old man did not reply immediately. He had taken up his spectacles again, and was rubbing them and rubbing them with his red bandana handkerchief. “Those papers, Master Burton,” said he, at last, “bear mightily hard upon me. They make it appear like I kidnapped Jacky myself. Here be you spending all your time a-hunting up evidence to make it look like as though I had dealt foul with my own flesh and blood—and you a neighbor of mine, and I one who hath put many and many a good guinea’s worth of work into your way.”

“That last is true enough, Master Tipton,” said the little lawyer; “and, as I said before, I, for one, have no wish to do aught to harm you. Just you think, Master Tipton,—that was why I sent for you to come and see me; else I would have sent these papers straight to Sir Henry Ballister instead of showing them, first of all, to you.”

“I be much beholden to you, neighbor,” said the old man. “But these papers look mightily ill for me. Suppose anything should happen to you, and those papers should fall into strange hands; how would it be with me then? Ha’ ye thought of that?”

“Ay, ay,” said the little lawyer, “I have thought of it, and it is all arranged for, Master Tipton. If aught should happen to me, I have so arranged it that only a part of these papers go to Sir Henry Ballister. All that concerns you is cared for, so that no harm shall happen you.”

“I be much beholden to you, neighbor,” said the old man again.

“And now,” said the attorney, after another little pause of silence, “what have you to say, Master Tipton? What am I to write to Sir Henry Ballister?”

Then the old America merchant arose: “Well, master,” said he, “all this be so sudden that, to be sure, I don’t know what to say. Give me time to think over it, and then I will talk to you in full some other day. Let me see; this be Wednesday. On Friday next I’ll meet you here, and tell you all that I have to say. Can you give me so long as that?”

“To be sure I can,” said the lawyer. “Take your own time, and ’twill suit me.”

“Very well, then, on Friday next,” said the old man.

It was the next day that the little lawyer returned home by night from the King’s Arms Coffee-House, where he used to spend an occasional bachelor’s evening gossiping with his cronies over his toddy, or talking politics.

It was maybe ten o’clock when he left the coffee-house. There was a chill drizzling rain falling, and the little lawyer shuddered as he stepped out into the darkness, gathering his wrap-rascal more closely about him and turning up the collar about his ears. The night, coming as he did into it from the lights of the warm coffee-house, appeared as dark as pitch. The little lawyer took the middle of the street just lit by the occasional dim light of a corner lamp. There were few folks stirring, and only now and then the sound of a voice or a distant footstep. The far-away baying of a dog sounded from out the more distant hollow of the wet night. The little attorney was recapitulating in his mind the points of an argument he had had with the writer Willowood during the evening. He had had the better of the question, and he felt a warm glow of pleasure as he went stumbling through the night, as he thought, point by point, of the advantage he had had in the discussion. There was some one walking behind him, and it came into his mind to think how easy it would be for some one to knock him upon the head without his neighbors being any the wiser. Then he began again thinking of how he had answered Master Willowood.

The thought of a possible attack upon himself came into his mind again as he reached the mouth of the dark court upon which fronted his own house, and he paused for a moment before he turned into the black and silent street. In the stillness he could hear the rain pattering and dripping everywhere, and there was a light shining dimly from an upper window of a house further down the court.

The attorney thought he heard soft footsteps near him, and he was in the act of turning to satisfy himself that he was mistaken, when in the instant there came a crash as though the heavens had burst asunder. There was a flashing flame of livid fire and a myriad sparkling points of light. The thought had time to shoot through his brain, “What has happened to me?”—the thought and a hundred possibilities of answer,—before the sparks had vanished, and the roaring in his ears had hummed away into the silence of unconsciousness.

It all passed in a moment; there was no struggle and no outcry. Excepting for a quivering twitch, the attorney Burton was lying as though dead, a dark and indistinguishably motionless heap upon the ground, and two men were bending over him, looking down at him.