"While he's alone in the private parlour Cloete drinks a glass of brandy and thinks it all out.Then George comes in...The landlady's with her, he says.And he begins to walk up and down the room, flinging his arms about and talking, disconnected like, his face set hard as Cloete has never seen it before...What must be, must be.Dead - only brother.Well, dead - his troubles over.
But we are living, he says to Cloete; and I suppose, says he, glaring at him with hot, dry eyes, that you won't forget to wire in the morning to your friend that we are coming in for certain...
"Meaning the patent-medicine fellow...Death is death and business is business, George goes on; and look - my hands are clean, he says, showing them to Cloete.Cloete thinks: He's going crazy.He catches hold of him by the shoulders and begins to shake him: Damn you - if you had had the sense to know what to say to your brother, if you had had the spunk to speak to him at all, you moral creature you, he would be alive now, he shouts.
"At this George stares, then bursts out weeping with a great bellow.He throws himself on the couch, buries his face in a cushion, and howls like a kid...That's better, thinks Cloete, and he leaves him, telling the landlord that he must go out, as he has some little business to attend to that night.The landlord's wife, weeping herself, catches him on the stairs: Oh, sir, that poor lady will go out of her mind...
"Cloete shakes her off, thinking to himself: Oh no! She won't.
She will get over it.Nobody will go mad about this affair unless I do.It isn't sorrow that makes people go mad, but worry.
"There Cloete was wrong.What affected Mrs.Harry was that her husband should take his own life, with her, as it were, looking on.
She brooded over it so that in less than a year they had to put her into a Home.She was very, very quiet; just gentle melancholy.
She lived for quite a long time.
"Well, Cloete splashes along in the wind and rain.Nobody in the streets - all the excitement over.The publican runs out to meet him in the passage and says to him: Not this way.He isn't in his room.We couldn't get him to go to bed nohow.He's in the little parlour there.We've lighted him a fire...You have been giving him drinks too, says Cloete; I never said I would be responsible for drinks.How many?...Two, says the other.It's all right.
I don't mind doing that much for a shipwrecked sailor...Cloete smiles his funny smile: Eh? Come.He paid for them...The publican just blinks...Gave you gold, didn't he? Speak up!..
.What of that! cries the man.What are you after, anyway? He had the right change for his sovereign.
"Just so, says Cloete.He walks into the parlour, and there he sees our Stafford; hair all up on end, landlord's shirt and pants on, bare feet in slippers, sitting by the fire.When he sees Cloete he casts his eyes down.
"You didn't mean us ever to meet again, Mr.Cloete, Stafford says, demurely...That fellow, when he had the drink he wanted - he wasn't a drunkard - would put on this sort of sly, modest air...
But since the captain committed suicide, he says, I have been sitting here thinking it out.All sorts of things happen.
Conspiracy to lose the ship - attempted murder - and this suicide.
For if it was not suicide, Mr.Cloete, then I know of a victim of the most cruel, cold-blooded attempt at murder; somebody who has suffered a thousand deaths.And that makes the thousand pounds of which we spoke once a quite insignificant sum.Look how very convenient this suicide is...
"He looks up at Cloete then, who smiles at him and comes quite close to the table.
"You killed Harry Dunbar, he whispers...The fellow glares at him and shows his teeth: Of course I did! I had been in that cabin for an hour and a half like a rat in a trap...Shut up and left to drown in that wreck.Let flesh and blood judge.Of course Ishot him! I thought it was you, you murdering scoundrel, come back to settle me.He opens the door flying and tumbles right down upon me; I had a revolver in my hand, and I shot him.I was crazy.Men have gone crazy for less.
"Cloete looks at him without flinching.Aha! That's your story, is it?...And he shakes the table a little in his passion as he speaks...Now listen to mine.What's this conspiracy? Who's going to prove it? You were there to rob.You were rifling his cabin; he came upon you unawares with your hands in the drawer; and you shot him with his own revolver.You killed to steal - to steal! His brother and the clerks in the office know that he took sixty pounds with him to sea.Sixty pounds in gold in a canvas bag.He told me where they were.The coxswain of the life-boat can swear to it that the drawers were all empty.And you are such a fool that before you're half an hour ashore you change a sovereign to pay for a drink.Listen to me.If you don't turn up day after to-morrow at George Dunbar's solicitors, to make the proper deposition as to the loss of the ship, I shall set the police on your track.Day after to-morrow...
"And then what do you think? That Stafford begins to tear his hair.Just so.Tugs at it with both hands without saying anything.Cloete gives a push to the table which nearly sends the fellow off his chair, tumbling inside the fender; so that he has got to catch hold of it to save himself...
"You know the sort of man I am, Cloete says, fiercely.I've got to a point that I don't care what happens to me.I would shoot you now for tuppence.
"At this the cur dodges under the table.Then Cloete goes out, and as he turns in the street - you know, little fishermen's cottages, all dark; raining in torrents, too - the other opens the window of the parlour and speaks in a sort of crying voice -"You low Yankee fiend - I'll pay you off some day.
"Cloete passes by with a damn bitter laugh, because he thinks that the fellow in a way has paid him off already, if he only knew it."My impressive ruffian drank what remained of his beer, while his black, sunken eyes looked at me over the rim.
