The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack. R. Austin Freeman
he is really worrying. He is like me—not much given to fussing and he knows that I am fairly well able to take care of myself, though he doesn’t know that I have got a Captain James Cook to stand by me. But I expect you are getting pretty sick of this monotonous life, aren’t you, Captain J.?”
Osmond shook his head. “Not a bit,” he replied. “It has been a delightful interlude for me. I should be perfectly satisfied for it to go on for the rest of my life.”
She looked at him thoughtfully, speculating on the inward meaning of this statement and noting a certain grave wistfulness that softened the grim face.
“That sounds rather as if Adaffia were not a perfect Paradise, for it has been a dull life for you since the mutiny collapsed and the calm set in, with no one to talk to but me.”
“Adaffia would be all right under the same conditions,” said he.
“What do you mean by the same conditions?” she asked, flushing slightly; and as he did not immediately answer, she continued: “Do you mean that life would be more pleasant there if you had your second mate to gossip with?”
“Yes,” he answered, reluctantly, almost gruffly. “Of course that is what I mean.”
“It is very nice of you, Jim, to say that, but you needn’t have spoiled it by speaking in that crabby tone. It is nothing to be ashamed of. I don’t mind admitting that I shall miss you most awfully if we have to separate when this voyage is over. You have been the best of chums to me.”
She flushed again as she said this and then looked at him a little shyly. For nearly a minute he made no response, but continued to gaze intently and rather gloomily at the water below. At length he said, gravely, still looking steadily at the water:
“There is something, Miss Burleigh, that I feel I ought to tell you; that I wouldn’t tell any one else in the world.”
“Thank you, Jim,” she said. “But please don’t call me Miss Burleigh. It is so ridiculously stiff between old chums like us. And, Jim, you are not to tell me anything that it might be better for you that I should not know. I am not in the least inquisitive about your affairs.”
“I know that,” he replied. “But this is a thing that I feel you ought to know. It has been on my mind to tell you for some days past.” He paused for a few seconds and then continued: “You remember, Betty, that man Osmond that you spoke about?”
“Yes; but don’t call him ‘that man Osmond.’ Poor fellow! I don’t suppose he had done anything very dreadful, and at any rate we can afford to speak kindly of him now that he is dead.”
“Yes, but that is just the point. He isn’t dead.”
“Isn’t dead?” she repeated. “But Captain Cockcram saw that other man, Larkom, painting the name on his grave. Was it a dummy grave?”
“No. But it was Larkom who died. The man Cockeram saw was Osmond.”
“Are you sure? But of course you would be. Oh, Jim! You won’t tell anybody else, will you?”
“I am not very likely to,” he replied with a grim smile, “as I happen to be the said John Osmond.”
“Jim!” she gasped, gazing at him with wide eyes and parted lips. “I am astounded! I can’t believe it.”
“I expect it is a bit of a shock,” he said bitterly, “to find that you have been socialising for more than a week with a man who is wanted by the police.”
“I didn’t mean that,” she exclaimed, turning scarlet. “You know I didn’t. But it is so astonishing. I can’t understand how it happened. It seems so extraordinary, and so—so opportune.”
Osmond chuckled grimly. “It does,” he agreed. “Remarkably opportune. Almost as if I had polished Larkom off ad hoc. Well, I didn’t.”
“Of course you didn’t. Who supposed for a moment that you did? But do tell me exactly how it happened.”
“Well, it was quite simple. Poor old Larkom died of blackwater fever. He was a good fellow. One of the very best, and the only friend I had. He knew all about me—or nearly all—and he did everything he could to help me. It was an awful blow to me when he died. But he never had a chance when once the fever took hold of him. He was an absolute wreck and he went out like the snuff of a candle, though he managed to make a will before he died, leaving the factory and all his effects to his friend James Cook. It was he who invented that name for me.
“Well, of course, when he was dead, I had to bury him and stick up a cross over his grave. And—then I just painted the wrong name on it. That’s all.”
She nodded without looking at him and a shadow seemed to fall on her face. “I see,” she said, a little coldly. “It was a tempting opportunity; and events have justified you in taking it.”
Something in her tone arrested his attention. He looked at her sharply and with a somewhat puzzled expression. Suddenly he burst out: “Good Lord, Betty! You don’t think I did this thing in cold blood, do you?”
“Didn’t you?” she asked. “Then how did you come to do it?”
“I’ll tell you. Poor old Larkom’s name was John, like mine. I had painted in the ‘John’ and was just going to begin the ‘Larkom’ when I happened to look along the beach. And there I saw Cockeram with his armed party bearing down on Adaffia. Of course, I guessed instantly what his business was, and I saw that there was only one thing to be done. There was the blank space on the cross. I had only to fill it in with my own name and the situation would be saved. So I did.”
Her face cleared at this explanation. “I am glad,” she said, “that it was only done on the spur of the moment. It did seem a little callous.”
“I should think so,” he agreed, “if you thought of me sitting by the poor old fellow’s bedside and calmly planning to use his corpse to cover my retreat. As it was, I hated doing it; but necessity knows no law. I have thought more than once of making a dummy grave for myself and shifting the cross to it and of setting up a proper memorial to Larkom. And I will do it when I get back.”
She made no comment on this; and as, at the moment her line tightened, she hauled it in, and impassively detaching a big red snapper from the hook, re-baited and cast the line overboard with a curiously detached, preoccupied air. Apparently, she was reflecting profoundly on what she had just learned, and Osmond, glancing at her furtively from time to time, abstained from interrupting her meditations. After a considerable interval she turned towards him and said in a low, earnest tone: “There is one thing that I want to ask you. Just now you said that you felt you ought to tell me this; that I ought to know. I don’t quite see why.”
“There was a very good reason,” he replied, “and I may as well make a clean breast of it. To put it bluntly, I fell in love with you almost as soon as I saw you, and naturally, I have grown to love you more with every day that has passed.”
She flushed deeply, and glancing at him for an instant, turned her eyes once more on her line.
“Still,” she said in a low voice, “I don’t see why you thought I ought to know.”
“Don’t you?” he rejoined. “But surely it is obvious. You accepted me as your chum and you seemed to like me well enough. But you had no inkling as to who or what I was. It was my clear duty to tell you.”
“You mean that there was the possibility that I might come to care for you and that you felt it your duty to warn me off?”
“Yes. It wasn’t very likely that there would be anything more than friendship on your side; but still it was not impossible. Women fall in love with the most unlikely men.”
At this she smiled and looked him squarely in the face, “I thought you meant that,” she said, softly, “and, of course, you were quite right. But if your intention was to put me on my guard and prevent me from caring for you, your warning has come too