The shadow of the Wolf

About half-past eight on a fine, sunny June morning, a small yacht crept out of Sennen Cove near the Land’s End and headed for the open sea. On the shelving beach of the Cove two women and a man, evidently visitors (or “foreigners” to use the local term), stood watching her departure with valedictory waving of cap or handkerchief, and the boatman who had put the crew on board, aided by two of his comrades, was hauling his boat up above the tide-mark.

A light northerly breeze filled the yacht’s sails and drew her gradually seaward. The figures of her crew dwindled to the size of dolls; shrank with the increasing distance to the magnitude of insects; and at last, losing all individuality, became mere specks merged in the form of the fabric that bore them. At this point the visitors turned their faces inland and walked away up the beach, and the boatmen, having opined that “she be fetchin’ a tidy offing” dismissed the yacht from their minds and reverted to the consideration of a heap of netting and some invalid lobster pots.

On board the receding craft two men sat in the little cockpit. They formed the entire crew, for the Sandhopper was only a ship’s lifeboat, timbered and decked, of light draught and, in the matter of spars and canvas, what the art critics would call “reticent.”

Both men, despite the fineness of the weather, wore yellow oilskins and sou’westers, and that was about all they had in common. In other respects they made a curious contrast, the one small, slender, sharp-featured, dark almost to swarthiness, and restless and quick in his movements: the other large, massive, red-faced, blue-eyed, with the rounded outlines suggestive of ponderous strength: a great ox of a man, heavy, stolid, but much less unwieldy than he looked.

The conversation incidental to getting the yacht under way had ceased and silence had fallen on the occupants of the cockpit. The big man grasped the tiller and looked sulky, which was probably his usual aspect; and the small man watched him furtively. The land was nearly two miles distant when the latter broke the silence with a remark very similar to that of the boatman on the beach.

“You’re not going to take the shore on board, Purcell. Where are we supposed to be going to?”

“I am going outside the Longships,” was the stolid answer.

“So I see,” rejoined the other. “It’s hardly the shortest course for Penzance though.”

“I like to keep an offing on this coast,” said Purcell; and once more the conversation languished.

Presently the smaller man spoke again; this time in a more cheerful and friendly tone. “Joan Haygarth has come on wonderfully the last few months; getting quite a fine-looking girl. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes,” answered Purcell; “and so does Phil Rodney.”

“You’re right,” agreed the other. “But she isn’t a patch on her sister though; and never will be. I was looking at Maggie as we came down the beach this morning and thinking what a handsome girl she is. Don’t you agree with me?”

Purcell stooped to look under the boom and answered without turning his head:

“Yes, she’s all right.”

“All right!” exclaimed the other. “Is that the way—”

“Look here, Varney,” interrupted Purcell; “I don’t want to discuss my wife’s looks with you or any other man. She’ll do for me or I shouldn’t have married her.”

A deep, coppery flush stole into Varney’s cheeks. But he had brought the rather brutal snub on himself and apparently had the fairness to recognize the fact, for he mumbled an apology and relapsed into silence.

When he next spoke he did so with a manner diffident and uneasy as though approaching a disagreeable or difficult subject.

“There’s a little matter, Dan, that I’ve been wanting to speak to you about when we got a chance of a private talk.” He glanced a little anxiously at his stolid companion, who grunted, and then, without removing his gaze from the horizon ahead, replied: “You’ve a pretty fair chance now, seeing that we shall be bottled up together for another five or six hours. And it’s private enough unless you bawl loud enough to be heard at the Longships.”

It was not a gracious invitation. But that Varney had hardly expected; and if he resented the rebuff he showed no sign of annoyance, for reasons which appeared when he opened his subject.

“What I wanted to say,” he resumed, “was this. We’re both doing pretty well now on the square. You must be positively piling up the shekels and I can earn a decent living, which is all I want. Why shouldn’t we drop this flash note business?”

Purcell kept his blue eye fixed on the horizon and appeared to ignore the question; but after an interval, and without moving a muscle he said gruffly: “Go on,” and Varney continued:

“The lay isn’t what it was, you know. At first it was all plain sailing. The notes were first-class copies and not a soul suspected anything until they were presented at the bank. Then the murder was out; and the next little trip that I made was a very different affair. Two or three of the notes were suspected quite soon after I had changed them, and I had to be precious fly, I can tell you, to avoid complications. And now that the second batch has come into the Bank, the planting of fresh specimens is going to be no sinecure. There isn’t a money-changer on the continent of Europe that isn’t keeping his weather eyeball peeled, to say nothing of the detectives that the Bank people have sent abroad.”

He paused and looked appealingly at his companion. But Purcell, still minding his helm, only growled, “Well?”

“Well, I want to chuck it, Dan. When you’ve had a run of luck and pocketed your winnings is the time to stop play.”

“You’ve come into some money then, I take it,” said Purcell.

“No, I haven’t. But I can make a living now by safe and respectable means, and I’m sick of all this scheming and dodging with the gaol everlastingly under my lee.”

“The reason I asked,” said Purcell, “is that there is a trifle outstanding. You hadn’t forgotten that, I suppose?”

“No, I hadn’t forgotten it, but I thought that perhaps you might be willing to let me down a bit easily.”

The other man pursed up his thick lips, but continued to gaze stonily over the bow.

“Oh, that’s what you thought, hey?” he said; and then, after a pause, he continued: “I fancy you must have lost sight of some of the facts when you thought that. Let me just remind you how the case stands. To begin with, you start your career with a little playful forgery and embezzlement; you blew the proceeds and you are mug enough to be found out. Then I come in. I compound the affair with old Marston for a couple of thousand, and practically clean myself out of every penny I possess, and he consents to regard your temporary absence in the light of a holiday.

“Now, why do I do this? Am I a philanthropist? Devil a bit. I’m a man of business. Before I ladle out that two thousand, I make a business contract with you. I happen to possess the means of making and the skill to make a passable imitation of the Bank of England paper: you are a skilled engraver and a plausible scamp. I am to supply you with paper blanks: you are to engrave plates, print the notes and get them changed. I am to take two-thirds of the proceeds; and, although I have done the most difficult part of the work, I agree to regard my share of the profits as constituting repayment of the loan. Our contract amounts to this: I lend you two thousand without security—with an infernal amount of insecurity in fact—you ‘promise, covenant and agree,’ as the lawyers say, to hand me back ten thousand in instalments, being the products of our joint industry. It is a verbal contract which I have no means of enforcing; but I trust you to keep your word and up to the present you have kept it. You have paid me a little over four thousand. Now you want to cry off and leave the balance unpaid. Isn’t that the position?”

“Not exactly,” said Varney. “I’m not crying off the debt; I only want time. Look here, Dan: I’m making about five-fifty a year now. That isn’t much, but I’ll manage to let you have a hundred a year out of it. What do you say to that?”

Purcell laughed scornfully. “A hundred a year to pay off six thousand! That’ll take just sixty years; and as I’m now forty-three, I shall be exactly a hundred and three years of age when the last instalment is paid. I think, Varney, you’ll admit that a man of a hundred and three is getting a bit past his prime.”

“Well, I’ll pay you something down to start. I’ve saved about eighteen hundred pounds out of the note business. You can have that now, and I’ll pay off as much as I can at a time until I’m clear. Remember that if I should happen to get clapped in chokee for twenty years or so, you won’t get anything. And, I tell you, it’s getting a risky business.”

“I’m willing to take the risk,” said Purcell.

“I daresay you are!” Varney retorted passionately; “because it’s my risk. If I am grabbed, it’s my racket, you sit out. It’s I who passed the notes and I’m known to be a skilled engraver. That’ll be good enough for them. They won’t trouble about who made the paper.”

“I hope not,” said Purcell.

“Of course they wouldn’t; and you know I shouldn’t give you away.”

“Naturally. Why should you? Wouldn’t do you any good.”