Never in the history of Dymchurch Rookery that sways above the church and court house had the black-robed inmates such cause to fear the snapping of their fighting tops as during the soul-shaking tempest that swept the English Channel on the night of November 13th, 1775. The giant elms creaked and groaned as the racing wind shrieked in their bent riggings. Far beneath on the flat grass of the low-lying churchyard the headstones of the graves were torn from their sockets and in some cases hurled and splintered against the church. The roof of the old Manor Farm house opposite through the weakening of a beam rained tiles upon the road, while all along the straggling village street chimney tops crashed down. It was braving death to pass the strongest buildings on that ghastly night. And yet two men were daring enough to attempt it, and that when the storm was at its height.
With their scarves drawn tightly round their jaws, the collars of their sea-coats up and their three-cornered hats pulled down to their eyes, they leaned their bodies forward at such an angle that if it had not been for the wind they must have fallen on their faces. Thus did they endeavor to keep their footage against the pressure, fighting their way step by step past the low churchyard wall towards the tall black looming sea-wall over whose top the surf was driving in sheets of foam water.
Two more opposite reasons for these two men thus braving the stinging spray could hardly have been found. In one, it was a dogged sense of duty—in the other a sordid greed.
They had been regaling their spirits in the company of Mr. And Mrs. Waggetts, the proprietors of the 'Ship Inn' and consuming a vast quantity of excellent French brandy which was cheap enough since no duty had been charged upon it. Then they had heard the gun. It echoed above the storm from the desolate pebble nose of Dungeness. A ship was in distress. Simultaneously both men had risen and buttoned their coats.
“You're never going out in this,” protested Mrs. Waggetts.
“There's no call for Merry to, but I must,” answered the shorter of the two. “If a ship's coming ashore, it's my duty to see what manner o' ship she be.”
He was the Preventive Officer. A dogged, bitter man, and most unpopular in the village by reason of his trade. Unlike his companion he possessed at least one virtue. His duty was his god, and it was his dangerous boast that when he was called to discharge it, he had never run away or shirked the worst consequences, although he knew that no throat in Dymchurch was in such constant danger of being cut. He also knew that no one was more likely to cut it than his drinking companion who was, like him, buttoning up his coat.
This Merry belied his name. He was sullen, intractable and cross-grained. So much so that he was known in the village as 'miserable Merry'. But he had his use in the community, for he was a jack-of-all-trades. Tall and cadaverously thin, he was strong, and could pick up a living at most things that came his way. But he didn't say much, as the Preventive Officer found to his cost. He was never talkative in his cups. The Preventive Officer had never got any information out of him. An account of how he had been helping old So-and-so to patch up a boat, or mend a net, uninteresting adventures of fishing, or an opinion of the various harvests he had given a hand at bringing in, but never so much as a hint of the many landings of contraband that the Preventive man had found out about too late, and knew by instinct that miserable Merry had received good hush money.
“Why was he leaving the snugness of the 'Ship' parlour to court disaster outside?” the Preventive Officer asked himself.
A terrific crash near at hand.
“There goes our chimney stack,” whined Mr. Waggetts, who sat propped up with pillows in a wheel-backed armchair by the fire. The blanket round his knees corroborated the fact which his pasty, melancholy face, sunken, the unnatural bright colour on his cheeks, and the large weakened eyes with hanging pouches proclaimed that Waggetts was a sick man.
His wife was the reverse. Large, ugly, vain, but capable. She it was who steered the 'Ship Inn' and made it the profitable concern it was. Her husband's terror lest the chimney would come toppling down upon him resulted in his trying to get out of the chair, but Mrs. Waggetts pushed him gently back as she thrust her head, regardless of the smoke, under the mantle-beam and up the chimney. When it reappeared, she nodded reassuringly to her husband. “Not ours, my love. Must have been one at Sycamore Farm.”
There was another crash from the other side of the house.
“And that'll be something off of the old Manor,” she said cheerfully.
“You won't be so happy when ours goes,” whined her husband.
“Well, I says, it's one of them nights when one must take the crashes as they come and act according.”
Such philosophy was beyond her husband's grasp. His answer was a violent fit of wheezing. Mrs. Waggetts pulled his head forward, pushed it down onto his lap with one hand and gave him several clumps on the back with the other.
Meanwhile the Preventive Officer continued to lash himself taut against the driving wind and spray outside, and as he watched the miserable Merry following his example he cudgelled his slow but sure brain to discover a motive. 'Why should Merry want to come with him?'
“But you ain't never going out, not really?” again protested the landlady.
“I've told Merry there's no reason he should, but if he will, he will,” replied the officer.
“May as well go along and have a look as stay here,” said Merry. A terrific gust of wind shook the old inn and blew the wood smoke into the room. “If the old place is coming down, I'd as lief be crushed under it outside as in here.”
“The inn ain't going to come down,” snapped Mrs. Waggetts. “Ain't it stood all these years? Well then. For shame, trying to scare a sick man.”
“It ain't stood many storms like this one,” argued the pessimist. “You weren't up on the sea-wall p'raps this evening? No. Well, I were. And I notices something that was queer. It's November, ain't it? And there ain't a weather prophet on the Marsh wot hasn't said we're in for a cold snap this winter. 'Severe', they all says. As I saw them copper-coloured clouds piling up beyond Dungeness to-night, I found I was sweatin' hot. And there was a hush all about one that by right you only get about midsummer. It ain't natural, not this heat in November. And there—”
A vivid flash of lightning lit up the dim room and with no more than a second's pause the thunder answered it in a sharp crackle that ended in a loud voluminous peal.
“What did I tell you?” asked Merry. “If that ain't unseasonable, wot is?”
“Thunder in November, eh?” was the comment of the Preventive Officer.
“Strange, eh?” wheezed the invalid. “What my grandfather would have called a 'Homen'. He saw lots. The last he saw was on the night he died, but I forgets what sort it was.”
“Try and think, love,” encouraged his spouse.
But the invalid's effort of thought was destroyed in a fit of coughing as the Preventive Officer opened the door and let the draught in.
Another gust of storm and another crash of destruction.
“Won't be much left of Dymchurch by the time this has done with it,” pronounced Merry.
“I wonder,” replied the Preventive officer. “That's right though, I'll be bound.”
If Merry thought the Preventive man was answering him, he was mistaken. The Preventive Officer was answering his own thoughts, and was not aware that he had spoken aloud. His brain had been busy searching for a motive that would make Merry brave the storm, and his arguments to himself ran something on these lines: 'By my standard of judging men, this miserable Merry is without doubt the worst of the bad lots in Dymchurch. He can certainly put his hands to a job of work when it serves him, but beyond that he has not a redeeming quality. There's nothing he wouldn't or couldn't do, for he's capable enough. He'd cut a man's throat as soon as a pig's, and there's been human throat cutting on this Marsh in my time, and no murderer strung up. What more likely then than that this dirty brute ain't the throat-cutter in chief for the smugglers. There's many a man who don't think twice about defrauding the Government who would shrink from violence. Such folk have only to mention to Merry that So-and-so is a menace, and Merry cuts So-and-so's throat, and when a hue and cry is raised, such folk keeps mum through fear of what this cutthroat might do or say. Now, suppose this 'ere ship in distress is nothing more than a laden lugger caught by the storm, full of contraband. She goes ashore here and in the name of the Government I make a seizure. That touches the pockets of most of 'em in Dymchurch, and might touch a neck or two with Jack Ketch hemp. A stab in the dark from this rogue would save 'em a lot of trouble. A cry wouldn't be heard on a night like this, nor no one notice a body sunk in the mud of the sluice-gate. Well, let Merry try such a prank and he's mine body and soul, and a very useful gentleman, too. I'd rather have him obeying me than a regiment of Dragoons. Let's see, left-handed, ain't he? Then his knife will be handy in his left pocket, or he wouldn't have done up his coat so tight.'
As he turned in the door and said 'good night', not even Merry noticed that a short-muzzle pistol had been transferred from the right to the left pocket of the officer's heavy coat. Merry did not suspect the reason why the officer fetched along beside him on his left side, and for support against the wind or comfort against the storm grasped his left arm tightly with his right. Indeed, the officer's hand dropped into Merry's pocket and gripped his wrist, almost as though he had put him under arrest. Meanwhile, the ugly knife lay at the bottom of the deep pocket, idle but safe. Even when these ill-assorted companions of Law and Disorder had to negotiate their way over the branches of a great tree that had been blown across the road from the Grove House, the comfortable residence of Dr. Sennacharib Pepper, the local physician and surgeon, even then did the officer keep Merry's wrist shackled in his strong fingers. Lights were burning in the Grove House. Evidently, Dr. Pepper expected the storm to give him a duty call, and was not yet abed.
At the corner of Grove House the road turns and forks into an upper path which runs up a bank and snuggles its way immediately below the sea-wall. Up this path the two struggled, making their way towards a snugly-gabled house known as 'the Sea-Wall Tavern'. The events of this night were, however, destined to change this name. The two adventurers looked up at the bedroom window, where in the light of a candle a good-looking young woman was peering through the diamond-shaped panes. Behind her loomed the figure of her husband.
Making a trumpet of his spare hand, the Preventive Officer shouted: “Ahoy, Abel Clouder.”
In a vivid flash of lightning Abel looked down over his wife's shoulder and recognised the two men standing on the gravel path beneath the window. At the same time his wife pointed out to sea and uttered a frightened cry that was echoed by what seemed like the wailing of lost souls.
Abel made a sign to the men below and disappeared from the window. In a few seconds they heard the chains being taken down from the door, and it suddenly opened inwards. The two men dashed into the passage and turned to help the owner close the door. Against the fury of the wind, it took their combined force to do it.
“There's a ship in distress, ain't there?” asked the Preventive man. “Do you know her?”
“No,” answered Abel. “Come upstairs and have a look. There'll be lightning again in a minute.”
