‘You can read the language — I can’t. But I can read a name, even in French. And that’s why I thought you’d better have it.’

Doctor Syn turned to the name, and gave a long low whistle of astonishment. Then quickly reading the letter through he looked up at the highwayman, and his voice was grave. ‘’Tis good that you have such a sensitive touch, Jimmie. Here’s a stupendous piece of news indeed, though for a time I’ve had an inkling that something was afoot. I’ll deal with it, James. As you have gathered, it is a letter written by none other than Robespierre himself to a Monsieur Barsard. For the present I must urge you to keep even that knowledge to yourself. All I can tell you other than this is that he proposes —‘

Upon that instant the nearby hooting of an owl was heard, and the door opened. Doctor Syn quickly replaced the letter in the wallet, which he put in his pocket, as a figure entered the room. Masked and hooded, it was terrible to behold. One might have expected its voice to be sepulchral. Instead came, surprisingly enough, the plaintive, muffled voice of Mr. Mipps. ‘Oh, me mask. Don’t fit,’ he complained. ‘Give Pedro mine. This didn’t fit him neither, but it’ll give me cruel headache, sure as coffin nails. Owls is on. ’Ear ’em? Ain’t you ready? ’Orses are. Why, blow me down! Ain’t you chose your present yet? Ain’t you been lingy? Better be quiddy.’

Mr. Bone made a rush for the table and quickly sorted out some half a dozen trinkets, and turning, begged Doctor Syn to give him his advice, telling him that he meant to make a personal apology to Miss Gordon with one of them, and which did he think suitable?

With a nod of approval for his gentlemanly thought, Doctor Syn began to make his choice from the articles when Mr. Mipps, who was at the table inspecting some of the others, cried, ‘Knock me up solid — ’ere’s the very thing and you’ve been and gone and missed it!’ He held out for them to see a brooch, a dog’s head carved out of crystal, painted, and set in gold looking remarkably life-like.

‘Why, yes,’ cried Doctor Syn, ‘’tis indeed the very thing. For though it is not a poodle, it is at least a white dog and bears a faint resemblance to Mister Pitt.’

‘Poodle,’ repeated Mipps. ‘Is that what you calls ’em? A old-fangled name for a new-fangled dog. Looks more like one of them clipped yew hedges to me.’

Mr. Bone, admitting he had been dense, besought Doctor Syn to give it to her when convenient, to which Doctor Syn replied he would do so the very first thing in the morning, with her own as well. Then, as Jimmie Bone had already been out once that night and ridden hard, he bade him go to rest, adding that he would be informed of the next run, which probably, he said, would not be for a week.

The warning cries of the owl becme more insistent as Doctor Syn leapt into the dry dyke and through the secret door.

Three minutes later three wild mounted figures dashed from the stable, topped the dyke and galloped seawards, whence came the twinkle of innumerable lights as the ‘flashers’ sent their message round the Marsh.

Thus did Pedro say good-bye to his master upon the beach at Littlestone, where a lugger, divested of its cargo, signalled him to board.

The diminutive Spanish captain, mounted now upon the shoulders of an enormous fisherman waiting to carry him out waist deep to the departing vessel, was almost as tall as the gaunt figure astride Gehenna.

In this curious position the two men clasped hands and the Scarecrow whispered: ‘When you reach the Somme and hand your prisoners over to Duloge, bid him from me to watch for a certain Monsieur Barsard. And now, farewell, my little Pedro.’

Standing at the edge of the sea, horse and man motionless, one dark shadow looking bronze against the merging silver of the sea and sky, Doctor Syn watched the lugger till it was almost out of sight, and wondered if his good friend Duloge would meet with one Barsard.

Chapter 14

Concerning a Late-blooming Rose and an Early Visitor

Doctor Syn sat at his desk in the library, in a silver vase before him one late-blooming rose, its red velvet petals already opening to the heat of the room, though he had picked it but half an hour before in the frosty garden beneath his window. Beside it on the table lay a pair of gauntlet riding-gloves. He looked at them and smiled as he noted that they had taken on the shape of her slim, determined hands. The fingers slightly curved as though still mastering some unruly horse, and at the sight he felt a mighty pull at the reins of his own heart. He raised his head and, looking through the curved panes of the bow window, saw behind the sharp etching of the rookery trees the many spiralled stacks of the Court House chimneys. He smiled again, imagining the bustle inside that house, surely continuing from the night before. He wondered how she’d slept, or whether, like himself, she’d been wakeful to the dawn, and then remembered, somewhat wistfully, that her youthful health would undoubtedly have claimed the sleep which he had wooed in vain.

But in spite of his night’s activities and the fact that he had not slept, he felt alive and exhilarated, deliberately stamping from his mind any dark thoughts that might have lingered there. It was with the suspicion of a sigh, therefore, that he forced himself to return to another urgent matter. Taking from his pocket the wallet which Mr. Bone had given him the night before, he fell to an examination of its contents.

There seemed to be some points in Robespierre’s threatening letter to this Barsard that puzzled him, for he read it carefully two or three times, referring to this line or that, his eyes tightening with concentration, and his intelligent face set into lines of perplexed determination. Then like a barrister preparing his brief he wrote upon a slip of paper the questions he had asked himself during his perusal of the letter, and against each question worked out problematical answers. His writing, scholarly and small as print, easy enough to read in the ordinary course of events, assumed a different form, and his fine pen, which usually travelled rapidly, moved carefully, each letter separate, so that upon finishing a phrase it looked like a row of curious numbers or hieroglyphics. Doctor Syn was in fact writing in ancient Greek.

Having come to a satisfactory conclusion, he replaced the letter in the wallet and, putting it in his pocket, rose and went to a distant bookshelf. Here he selected a calf-bound tome, and, taking it to his desk, opened it at random, made a mental note of the page, placed his Greek notes within, and closed it, carrying the volume to its original place upon the shelf.

He then drew from his pocket a notebook which he used for jotting down parochial items — such as notes on sermons — a text here, a phrase there, so that no one upon opening it would have been surprised to see an extra jotting

— Willet on the Romans, page 123.

He was standing by the fire filling his churchwarden pipe with sweet Virginia tobacco when there came a respectful privilege-to-work-there knock upon the door, and upon his pleasant ‘Come in’, Mrs. Honeyballs’s smiling countenance appeared round the door; her rosy face, still shining from the morning soap, peeped out from underneath a large mob cap, while her ample figure, confined within a quantity of starch, bobbed dutifully, as she asked in her usual lilt: ‘How are you this morning, sir? Hope I’m not intrudin’. Mr. Mipps has told me you breakfast at the Court House. Oh dear. Here am I forgettin’. Left him on the doorstep. Such a swagger gentleman. Standing on the doorstep. Shall I ask him in, sir? Didn’t hear his name, sir. Met you in the coach, sir.’

Doctor Syn did not seem to be surprised at this early visitor, though amused at the manner in which Mrs. Honeyballs announced him. With a kindly smile he said: ‘Thank you, Mrs. Honeyballs. Will you ask Captain Foulkes to step in?’