Peter and Jane; Or, The Missing Heir

Ross, hearing voices in the drawing-room, wakened up, and now appeared with ruffled hair and still clad in his sleeping-suit. He suggested refreshments, and sat down to hear what Dunbar had to say.

Peter's face had a queer set look upon it. Where another man might perhaps have asked questions he showed something of his mother's reserve, and was never more silent than when a moment of strain arrived. He began in a mechanical way to make two fresh cups of coffee, and poured the steaming mixture from the thin saucepan into the cups. 'The day of reckoning seems to have arrived for Purvis,' he said; and then lazily, 'poor brute, he had his points.' Purvis was a common adventurer after all! And he had got close upon two hundred pounds from him on the plea of having some knowledge of his brother, which was simply non-existent. He could see the whole thing now. This cock-and-bull story of the discovery of the missing man was really a very simple ruse for extorting money, and the last seventy pounds which he, Peter, had been fool enough to pay him had been wanted to help Purvis to get away.

'I must search the place thoroughly,' said Dunbar. He finished his coffee; but the ascertaining whether or not any one was concealed in the little house or in the outbuildings was a matter of only a few minutes.

'If he 's got away again,' said Dunbar, 'I 'll eat my hat!'

'Purvis is a slippery customer,' said Ross; 'but he has lived peaceably and openly for a considerable time. If he is wanted you have only to ride up to his door and arrest him.'

Dunbar cleared his throat. 'You mind,' he said, 'the story of the Rosana, which I told you on board the Royal Mail Packet, when we were in the River Plate coming up to Monte Video?'

'I remember,' said Peter briefly. And Ross nodded his head also; every one in Argentine knew the story of the wreck of the Rosana.

'I knew,' said Dunbar, 'that E. W. Smith could not die!'

'Smith being Purvis, I take it,' said Toffy.

'Yes,' said Dunbar, 'or any other alias you please. He is a fair man now with a beard, isn't he? Well, on board the Rosana he was a clean-shaven man with dark hair, but you cannot mistake E. W. Smith's eyes, though I hear his voice is altered.'

'Are you in the police out here?' Peter asked, with a glance at the commissario to whom he had just handed a cup of coffee.

'No, I 'm not,' answered Dunbar, with his usual economy of speech. 'I 'm from Scotland Yard, and I want E. W. Smith on another count. But I 'll come to that some other time. I 'll need to be off now.'

'Your horse is done,' protested Ross, 'and you are pretty well done yourself.'

'I 'm not that far through,' said Dunbar.

'Why not send a wire to Buenos Ayres and wait here until you can get a reply? Purvis may have got on board the train somewhere else, and be at Buenos Ayres now.'

'Yes, that will do,' said Dunbar. He dispatched his telegram by one of the peons, who rode off with it across the camp. In spite of fatigue, Dunbar, with his nervous energy unimpaired, looked as though he would like to have ridden with the telegram himself. Reflecting, however, that there was considerable work still before him, he submitted to stretching himself on a catré and after a short doze and a bath and some breakfast he took up again the thread of his story.

'I 'll not bother you with an account of E. W. Smith's life,' he remarked, 'although there is a good deal in it that would surprise you. I 'll keep to the story of the Rosana as time is short.'

Mr. Dunbar took his faithful friend—his short pipe—from its red-lined case, filled it with tobacco, and began to draw luxuriously.

'The Rosana sprang a leak after her first day out, on her run down the coast, and was lost in twenty fathoms of water. She only carried one boat, and that boat was seen by myself half-burned, but with a bit of her name in gold-leaf still visible on her bows. Tranter was the captain of the boat, and E. W. Smith was clerk and general manager. Every one knew he cheated the company who ran the boat, and cheated the captain too, when he could; and it generally suited him to make Tranter drunk when they were in port. Well, he reaped his profit, and I suppose a good bit of it lies at the bottom of the sea. He was a man who always kept large sums in hand in case of finding himself in a tight place. Did I mention,' said Dunbar, 'that he could not row, though, of course, Tranter could? But Tranter was wanted for steering.'

'I don't understand the story,' said Ross, leaning forward. 'You say that Tranter and this man Purvis, or Smith, escaped from the wreck, and that Purvis could not row?'

'I am coming to that,' said Dunbar, unmoved. 'Observe, the Rosana carried one boat. She had lost her other by an accident, it seems, and the one that remained was not a much bigger one than a dinghy such as men use to go to and from the shore when they are in harbour. Tranter was the first to discover that the Rosana was leaking badly; and the hold was half-flooded before any one knew anything about it, and the Rosana was settling by her head. Smith, it seems, and the captain were armed, or armed themselves as soon as the state of affairs was known; and before the rest of the crew were awake four men were ordered to man the boat and bring her alongside. The hatches were closed down with the rest of the crew still below, and if there was a scuffle two armed men were perfectly capable of keeping order. Smith and Tranter got into the boat, and were rowed ashore in safety. If the whole of the crew had tried to board her there is no doubt about it no one would have been saved, for there were a good many hands on the steamer, and the rush to the one boat would have swamped her. The men who manned the boat and pulled ashore were doubtless glad to save their lives at any price; but they might make it exceedingly unpleasant for the two survivors of the wreck did they make their story known. They were cross-bred natives, whose lives were of no great value to any one but themselves, and there was an easy way for two armed men to silence them on a lonely shore without a soul near.'

'It's a sickening story,' said Ross, getting up and walking towards the window; and unconsciously he clenched his big hand.

'Then how,' said Peter keenly, 'has the story leaked out?'

'Because,' said Dunbar, 'sometimes at a critical moment men do their work badly, or perhaps a native knows how to feign death before his life is actually extinct. Dead men tell no lies, but wounded men don't have their tongues tied in the same way.'

'So one of the men lived to tell tales!' said Peter, leaning forward in his chair; 'and Purvis, who has been here for some time past, is the hero of the story? It is a blackguardly tale, Dunbar, and, thank God, I believe it would have been impossible in England!'

'I don't pass judgment on my fellow-men,' said Dunbar. 'Life is sweet, perhaps, to some of us, and no doubt the whole crew would have swamped the boat, but–'

'But, all the same,' said Toffy, 'you don't mean to let Purvis-Smith get a very light time of it when you do get him.'

'No, I don't,' said Dunbar.

Ross passed out through the door of the little drawing-room to the corridor, and went to see about some work on the farm. The commissario drank his coffee, and Dunbar waited restlessly for his telegram.

After breakfast he and Peter slept for a time, for both were dog-tired, and the day was oppressively hot. In the afternoon a telegram came to say that no news had been heard of Purvis, and that he was believed to be still in the neighbourhood of La Dorada.

'If he is,' said Dunbar, folding up the telegram and putting it into his pocket, 'I think our future duties will not be heavy. The man who has come to light and told the story of the wreck of the Rosana is a native of that favoured spot where already our friend Purvis is not too popular. God help the man if they get hold of him!'

'His little boy is here now,' said Toffy, starting up. 'Purvis came here to leave him in safety.'

Dunbar was writing another telegram to ask the whereabouts of the steamer.

'Then,' he said, 'the story is probably known, and Purvis is aware of it, and has gone north. He daren't show himself near his estancia after this.'

They began to put the story together, piecing it here and there, while Dunbar continued to send telegrams.

Ross strolled in presently to discuss the matter again. 'I don't believe,' he said, 'that Purvis is far off.'

'He is a brave man if he is anywhere near La Dorada,' said Dunbar.

'Purvis is a brave man,' said Ross quietly.

Peter was silent. Only last night he had had good reason to believe that the mystery of his brother's existence was going to be cleared up. But with Purvis gone the whole wearisome business would have to begin again. Why had he not detained the man last night, even if he had had to do it by force, until he had given him all the evidence he possessed? He could not exactly blame himself for not having done so. Purvis had declared that he was only going to Buenos Ayres for a couple of days, and it would have been absurd to delay him that he might give information which perhaps he did not fully possess. Still, the thing had been too cleverly worked out to be altogether a fraud, surely. His thought went back again to the belief that Purvis had got hold of his brother, and had extracted a great deal of information from him, and was only delaying to make him known to Peter until he had arranged the best bargain he could for himself. Looking back on all the talks they had had together there was something which convinced him that Purvis's close application to the search had not been made with a view only of extracting some hundreds of pounds from him, but that the man's game was deeper than that. Purvis was far too clever to waste his talents in dabbling in paltry matters, or in securing a small sum of money for himself. He was a man who worked in big figures, and it was evident that he meant to pull off a good thing.

That his dishonesty was proved was beyond all manner of doubt, and the only thing was to watch events and to see what would now happen. If Purvis gave them the slip what was to be done in the future?

'I believe he will try to save his steamer,' said Ross, after a long silence.

Every one was thinking of the same subject, and his abrupt exclamation needed no explanation.

'If he could trust his hands he might,' said the commissario in halting, broken English; 'but I doubt if they or the peons have been paid lately.'

'Besides, on the steamer,' said Toffy, 'he could be easily caught.'

'Yes,' said Dunbar, 'if he knows that we want to catch him, which he doesn't. He is afraid of the people at La Dorada now; but he is probably unaware of the warm welcome that awaits him in Buenos Ayres.'

Dunbar went to the door again to see if there was any sign of his messenger returning from the telegraph office. The sun was flaming to westward, and Hopwood had moved the dinner-table out into the patio, and was setting dinner there.

'He will do the unexpected thing,' said Ross at last. 'If Purvis ever says he is going to sit up late I know that is the one night of the week he will go to bed early.'

They went out into the patio, and Ross swizzled a cocktail, and they fell to eating dinner; but Dunbar was looking at his watch from time to time, and then turning his glance eastward to the track where his messenger might appear. It was an odd thing, and one of which they were all unaware, that even a slight noise made each man raise his head alertly for a moment as though he might expect an attack.

The sun went down, and still no messenger appeared. They sat down to play bridge in the little drawing-room, and pretended to be interested in the fall of the cards.

'That must be my telegram now,' said Dunbar, starting to his feet as a horse's hoofs were plainly heard in the stillness of the solitary camp. 'Well, I 'm damned,' he said. He held the flimsy paper close to his near-sighted eyes, and read the message to the other men sitting at the table: