Текст книги "The COURAGEOUS EXPLOITS OF DOCTOR SYN "

Автор книги: Russell Thorndike

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10

THE SCARECROW’S RIVAL

Although the Scarecrow did not tolerate independent smuggling in his territory, and compelled any man or gang of

men with such propensities to join his band of Nightriders or take the consequences, he had a soft spot for “old

Katie,” and made it possible for her to earn good money by the smuggling of Hollands.

“Old Katie” lived by herself in a little cottage at St. Mary’s-on-the-Marsh. Although she had turned seventy, she

was as strong as a horse and fearless. Many a Marsh farmhand or fisherman who displeased her, had received a

blow on the nose that had staggered him and left ‘Old Katie’ victorious, since no retaliation was permitted by order

of the Scarecrow who had proclaimed her as ‘an old body that was to be left alone.’ Maybe she took advantage of

this privilege, for she herself left nobody alone, and would get what she wanted out of anybody, either by the sheer

strength of her arm or through her engaging personality. She could out-talk the very devil himself, as she often

boasted, ‘and when I can’t, I hits.’ Despite this war-like tendency the old woman was popular, not only for her

rough humor and quick retorts, but for what she could do for people in need.

Now amongst a large section of human beings there is no need so persistent as the craving for strong drink, and

although most of the ablebodied men on Romney Marsh worked in secret for the Scarecrow, and were able to get for

themselves and families plenty of spirits as part of their payment, there were many who were not so fortunate.

Sickly men whose strength could not cope with the laborious tub-carrying: women whose menfolk would have

nothing to do with the Free Traders, either for fear of the scaffold, or though loyalty to the Government; and then

those poor people who could not afford to buy spirits that were taxed.

To such folk ‘Old Katie’ was a ministering angel, and her jolly red face and vast bulk were eagerly looked for,

since nobody ever suspected that she came in for anything else but a chat. To the sick and depressed she was always

welcome, because she had the latest gossip of the neighborhood, and could embroider upon it in the drollest fashion.

But it was what Katie carried underneath the folds of her voluminous skirt and petticoats that made her most

welcome. This was a pair of bladders each capable of holding a gallon of the best Hollands. They were ingeniously

made with a three-inch tube in their necks made out of cuttings of elder boughs, the pith taken out and vent pegs

inserted for corks. ‘Old Katie’ found this a handier contrivance than a bottle or keg could be, since it was lighter to

carry, and whether full or empty, adapted itself to her figure.

Very often, when leaving her cottage for her Dymchurch clients, with her bladders full, she would encounter that

sympathetic Vicar, Doctor Syn, who would ask her how she did, and whither bound.

“Oh, God bless you, Parson,” the old rascal would answer, curtseying with the greatest difficulty by reason of the

bladders, “and preserve you from ever being afflicted with the dropsy like ‘Old Katie’. Aye, it’s my dropsy you can

walk it down after a bit. I calls in and sees someone for a sit down when I gets tired, and by the time I gets home I

seems to have dispersed the liquid, and I feels thinner then.”

When Doctor Syn used to suggest that the suffer should consult Doctor Pepper, who could no doubt relieve her,

she would answer: “Not me. I’ll come to you, Parson, for the good of my soul, but not to him for my dropsy. I

knows it better than what he can.”

“Well, Katie, I don’t always agree with him myself,” the Vicar would answer. “After all, by our own experience

we should know what is best for our own bodies. Now some people maintain that any strong drink is bad for you

complaint, and so it is if taken to excess, but in moderation, taken purely medicinally, I should recommend you try a

little drop of good Hollands,. Believe me it is a very comforting drink, and if you would care to follow my

prescription, why I will instruct my housekeeper to give you a drop or so to keep by you.”

Katie was secretly amused at his suggestion, and recounting it to her clients would end up saying, “And there I

was a-bulging with the stuff, and he looking that tired and overworked that I longed to give him a measureful there

and then to keep the cold out and put the heart in him.”

Doctor Syn was equally amused when recounting the same incident to Sexton Mipps. “There she was, looking

for all the world like Shakespeare’s Fat Woman of Brentford, and complaining of her dropsy. Now had all that good

Hollands been under her own skin instead of a sheep’s, she would have been in the last stages of the disease. But

since she gets the stuff for next to nothing by the scarecrow’s orders, I thought it best to play the innocent by

suggesting a few drops of the very stuff she was weighed down under. I don’t grudge her the deceit, for she’s a

grand old sinner, though I shall not be surprised if one day we are put to it to save her from the gallows. She is the

only one at the moment outside the Scarecrow’s ruling.”

“And the only one what rules the Scarecrow’s men,” retorted Mipps. “You say she gets the stuff for next to

nothing every night there’s a ‘run’. I says she gets it for nothing now, and that there ain’t no ‘next’ about it. Only

the other night, when Curlew was filling up them bladders with the best, and exp ects her to fumble out payment

farthing by farthing, she holds up them apple cheeks of hers, and says, ‘A woman pays with her beauty, my lad, and

you may kiss me.’ Curlew refused, ‘cos he was afraid she’s tell his wife, whereupon Katie slaps him in the face for

insulting her, and makes him give extra measure at his own expense. I told Curlew it was lucky he was a-wearing

his mask, ‘cos a woman’s fingermarks across his face wouldn’t have done him no good with his wife neither. But

the crime of the whole transaction was that she paid nothing at all for the contraband, and Curlew, who we know

ain’t afraid of Preventive men, was too scared of Katie to ask her.”

“Caution ain’t cowardice, as you’ve often said yourself, sir,” went on Mipps, “and I looks at Katie this way.

Suppose she gets caught by this Captain Blain, for instance, what is making himself such a nuisance, he might well

force an old woman to talk the same as he made young Hart some time ago. No doubt you’d get us out of it

somehow as usual, but is it wise to let Old Katie see too much? She can’t wait for the stuff to be left at her cottage

now, but just rolls up amongst the men when the pack-ponies are being loaded, and tell ‘em she don’t want to wait

about all night. Now I considers that a cock on the steeple sort of attitude ain’t one that would do us any good if the

old girl got into a mess with that there Blain and his men.

“My good Mipps,” soothed Doctor Syn, “although I admit that her drolleries many be irritating at times, I would

stake my clerical wig that ‘Old Katie’ would never betray the Scarecrow. She’s a good old soul with the stoutest

heart, despite the sharpness of her ways.”

Mipps went away shaking his head in doubt, but as things transpired, Doctor Syn was in the right.

Now Captain Blain was not having a happy time. Each day brought him letters of protest from his superiors.

Admiral Chesham, who had taken the place of Troubridge at Dover, was determined to spite his predecessor by

smashing the Romney Marsh smuggling. Admiral Troubridge, at the Admiralty, was equally determined to get the

Scarecrow and pay off many an old score, and being in London he planned to catch him by discovering, if possible,

who was the Receiver in the city who paid such big money for the bulk of the Mash contraband. When his efforts

brought in no result he worked off his spleen by writing taunting letters to his colleague at Dover and insulting ones

to Captain Blain at Dymchurch.

In the ordinary way Blain would have retaliated, and possibly resigned; but the truth was Blain’s rage against his

failure was leveled at the Scarecrow, who has so outwitted him, and he dreaded being recalled from his post till he

had accomplished his purpose.

In this mood he did his best to conciliate Admiral Chesham’s constant reprimands and applied for more men so

that his net could be spread wider.

Burning for results which would stop him from being made a laughingstock, the Admiral doubled the party of

sailors billeted in the Tythe Barn.

These men were posted to watch every house and cottage in the village and the outlying farmsteads as well.

And it was from their observance that ‘Old Katie” was first brought under the suspicion of the Law.

They watched her trudging along the St. Mary’s road enormous with dropsy, and they watched her returning

home after calling at the back-doors of houses and cottages, visibly thinner than when she set out.

The old woman , not being used to browbeating from sailors, went to the Captain and complained that his saucy

devils were ever following her about, and that being a lone widow of attraction she objected.

Captain Blain retorted that his men were following every man, woman and child, in the hopes of getting some

clue against the Scarecrow. He then gave orders to his men to watch ‘Old Katie’ more carefully, knowing that even

the arrest of an old woman with proof against her would be better than no result at all.

The Bos’n, whose bulk had been the butt for Katie’s sharp arrows of wit, which he knew amused the men under

him, made life the more miserable for himself by playing the spy on his enemy.

After a deal of creepings and wrigglings and waitings he went to his officer and told him that if he had authority

to arrest the dangerous old hag, he would give the Captain full proof of her iniquities.

And so that very day a shouting and protesting old woman was hustled along the St. Mary’s road before she had

had time to make one call for a ‘sit-down’ and a gossip, and brought before the stern Captain in the Tythe Barn.

The poor old soul was more angry than frightened, and demanded that someone should inform Doctor Syn of the

indignity which she was enduring.

The Captain replied that it had nothing to do with the Parson at the moment, though no doubt he would want to

give her religious consolation before her end.

“Oh, so you’ve hanged me already, have you?” sneered Katie. “But only in your mind, that’s all, and I wouldn’t

exchange anything so black as your mind for all the dropsy in my poor body.”

“I dare say we’ll be able to cure you of the dropsy before we hang you,” laughed the Captain. “Now then hold

her tight, you men. Two more of you grip her legs, and don’t let her struggle while we examine her.”

With a hefty sailor on each arm and leg the unfortunate woman was forced to stand still, while the Captain

walked round to the Bos’n who was behind her.

“Ashamed to look an honest woman in the face, are you?” scoffed Katie.

The Captain did not reply to this taunt, because it was time to put to the proof his Bos’n suspicions.

With a spiker sharpened to a needle-point the Bos’n, who had been gingerly touching the back part of the heavy

skirt about the right hip, suddenly pressed it home.

“It ain’t her , sir,” he whispered, “ ‘cos she don’t cry out. Now let’s tap the dropsy and see what it’s made of.”

He pulled out the spiker as Katie tried to spring forward. But the sailors were ready and pressed her against the

Bos’n hand. The pressure released a stream of liquid which shot straight up into the Captain’s face, which for the

moment blinded him. Having lost one eye against the French, the other one gave him acute pain which made him

curse loudly. At the same time one of the sailors standing by seized a tankard and half filling it with the precious

stream took a gulp, and cried out, “Best Hollands, sweet and strong.”

“Don’t waste a drop, men,” ordered the Bos’n, “for we’ll need it for proof and tasting in the Court.”

As soon as the Captain was sufficiently recovered to take up the command, he ordered his men to rig an old sail

that they had been mending across a corner of the barn, and behind it the old woman was ordered to remove the

other bladder of Hollands, and to push it intact under this temporary curtain.

The Bos’n whispered to the Captain that she would most likely attempt to empty it.

“Oh no, I won’t,” replied Katie proudly, who had overheard. I ain’t one to squeal. I’m caught, and I may as well

be hung for the death of a parcel of miserable sailors as for a couple of sheepskins.”

“What do you mean by that?” demanded the Captain.

“Just this, you wretched fellow,” answered Katie in triumph. “You have been here a good while, you and your

sweepings from Chatham, and yet you ain’t done nothing till now. And what have you done? As far as you know,

arrested a poor old harmless woman for making an honest penny or two by retailing Hollands to poor folk what

can’t afford to buy it in duty tax in order to provide for the bloody-minded members of the dirty House of

Commons. Mind you I says nothing against His Blessed Majesty, King George, God bless him. I only rails against

them Commons, supposed to be elected by us, but who never stands by us. A lot of jumped-up puppets what orders

your precious Navy and Army about I’ll surprise you by handing over the undamaged sheepshskins full of good

liquor you have stolen form the poor I gives it to, just to prove in Court that I gave ‘em of the best. But I’ll surprise

you a good deal more in a minute or so, and that I will, but you first get paper and ink and pen so that you can write

down what I says in evidence, and if it don’t show you all up as a parcel of fools, well I’ve not been called ‘Old

Katie’ all these years.”

True to her word the full bladder was pushed under the screen of sail-cloth, and a few minutes later ‘Old Katie’

appeared in her tight figure. No semblance of dropsy about her. The only bulk she carried was hard muscle. The

real Katie was hard, slim and virile, and her face, though still colored like a russet apple, was set in the grimmest

expression. But her bright eyes still laughed as she walked proudly towards the Captain.

The Bos’n instinctively drew his cutlass and stood guard beside his chief. This seemed to amuse ‘Old Katie,’

“You’ve caught me red-handed with the goods on me, Captain,” she laughed, “and for that I am willing to take

consequence. But I am about to give you the surprise of your life. However, Mister Captain Boils and Blains, as

they say in the ‘Oly Scriptures when talking of them plagues in Egypt, which, if I may say so, you so closely

resembles, there’s a little duty (and I knows how you values duty in the King’s Navy), a very little piece of duty,

what I owes to myself, and as it can’t be you, since I has some sort of respect to an officer of King George, though

only for his uniform, it just happens to be this dropsy-limbed Bos’n of yours whom I despises like this.”

Quick as lighting her left should er swung round. Quick as thunder in a close-reefed storm came up her old

gnarled fist right under the Bos’n’s jaw, and down he went, cutlass and all, unconscious on the wooden floor of the

vicarage barn. “and the blessed Lords of the Level will agree at my trial that I owed him that for his dirty sauce and

followings of me about. And now for the surprise, Captain Boils. Ask me my name. Oh yes, I has a better name

than ‘Old Katie’.”

“Yes, woman, I demand that,” cried the astounded Captain. “If you were ever married I demand your married

name so that I can charge you not only with the offense of smuggling, which can hang you, but with another

grievous offence of striking a servant of the King when in execution of his duty.”

“Well, Captain Boils or Blains or Blain, I’ll tell you,” replied the unruffled Katie. “My real name and the name I

glories in is not Missus So and So, but the name you longs to get. I am the Scarecrow.”

“Nonsense,” ejaculated the Captain.

“It ain’t nonsense,” replied ‘Old Katie.’ “And that you and you sweepings from the dirty dockyards will find to

your cost. You will try me as the Scarecrow, but my followers will rescue me, by popping your corpses one by one

upon the Dymchurch scaffold.”

“And what do you suppose is the good of a lie like that?” he demanded.

“You’re disappointed that I ain’t a man, eh?” jeered the old woman. “But it was I that outrode the Prince of

Wales when he hunted with the Romney foxhounds, and it was I who scored off you and a hundred better men than

you who served the dirty Government. Being an old woman was my salvation. No one suspected me. But you

must own that I’m powerful by the way I tapped out that fat old Bos’n of yours just now. I see the old bladder is

recovering. So you’d best attend to him and then send a messenger to the admiralty that you have succeeded where

so many have failed.”

“I don’t mind who the Scarecrow is so long as I hang him,” cried the Captain. “I’ll put you under guard and do

as you wish. I’ll call for Doctor Syn. You may confess to him, and on that evidence my work here is done. But

what is your legal name?”

“Haven’t one,” replied Katie. “Only what you calls an illegal one. My name is THE SCARECROW.”

And that was all that Captain Blain could get out of ‘Old Katie.’

An hour later she was brought under escort to the Vicarage, and the Vicar of Dymchurch received her full

confession that she was indeed the Scarecrow. She was then placed under Naval guard and locked in the cells of the

Court House, while Sir Antony Cobtree, as First Magistrate of Romney Marsh, ordered her to be held till he could

summon the Lords of the Level for her trial.

Doctor Syn seemed very upset that the Scarecrow should turn out to be one that he had always had some regard

for, and had viewed only as a dear, quaint, queer old character. He was more upset that he had been ordered to

attend the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth, who wished him to bring his wisdom of Ecclesiastical Law to the

meetings of the House of Convocation. So after a long interview with Katie he departed by coach, but promised to

be back to support her at her trial at the Court House, and to do what he could to save her neck.

“I cannot believe she is the Scarecrow,” he declared to Captain Blain before taking his departure.

“She says she is, and as she is a remarkable old woman I take her word for it in thankfulness,” he answered. “I

want to catch the Scarecrow, and I have every reason to think I have. For my own credit I shall not be sorry to see

her condemned.”

Perhaps Doctor Syn’s hurried exodus to London was not understood by all at Dymchurch. Perhaps the silence of

the Scarecrow was misunderstood by his followers. ‘Old Katie’s’ trial was due, and the Vicar, usually the most

sympathetic of parsons, was not at hand to comfort the old soul in her trial. Also it seemed that since the Scarecrow,

whom so many knew to be a virile man beneath his mask, had found another to suffer in his stead, he had taken no

steps to effect her rescue.

And thus it was that for the first time in their history the Nightriders agreed to act without orders from their

chief. In the early hours of the morning before the first day of trial, the Beadle was seized by a party of the

Scarecrow’s men, and he was forced to open the cell and release the old woman. They carried her away in triumph

to the Oast House at Doubledyke, only to discover too late that Captain Blain had feared such a rescue and had

fooled them, for the woman was discovered to be none other than the Bos’n tricked out in Katie’s clothes. The

unfortunate sea-dog was dumped into a filled dyke from whence he fortunately escaped by a miracle in time to be in

Court as witness against Katie, whom the Captain has imprisoned at the Vicarage in Doctor Syn’s absence. In the

meantime the news of Captain Blain’s success had spread to London, and broadsheets were being sold in the streets

to tell of the Scarecrow being a woman of seventy.

Doctor Syn read them and laughed to himself, and then he busied himself, thinking with admiration of the

Scarecrow’s rival, ‘Old Katie’, the only retail smuggler on the Marshes. He reappeared in his parish upon the

morning of her trial, and sat at the back listening to her condemnation. Despite her age and sex, she had done too

many heinous crimes against the Realm to be pardoned, and much against his will and conscience Sir Antony had to

bring in the verdict of hanging.

It was then the old Vicar’s cue to stand up when asked by the clerk if there was anything anyone wished to say

further.

“My Lords of the Level,” he said quietly, “since this brave old lady has confessed her faults and told us

something of her daring, there would no more to be said by me, or anyone who wishes the poop distracted old

creature well. But I have had the honor to be received by the Prince of Wales, and have pointed out to His Royal

Highness a promise he made on behalf of the scarecrow when he received the fox’s brush after the Royal hunt

Dinner at Lympne Castle. I reminded His Highness that he had praised the Scarecrow for his spirit of sport in

giving praise where it should be, adding that he had stated publicly that if ever the Scarecrow were taken he would

use his influence to set him free. His Hig hness is so astounded that the Scarecrow is neither man nor ghost but

woman, that he has given me the signature of his Royal father the King, in pardon to ‘Old Katie’ known as the

Scarecrow, so long as she in my opinion keeps the peace of the realm in future. I am sure my old friend Katie will

give me that promise, and on this Royal authority I demand the release of one of my own misguided but brave flock.

I hope ‘Old Katie’s’ promise to keep the peace will stamp out the evils of smuggling. That is if they really exist

amongst my own parishioners.”

There was no answer to the Royal command, and the authorities feared the joy and triumph of the whole parish.

And while Captain Blain swore revenge, though he hardly knew how to get it, Doctor Syn whispered to Mipps as

they strolled with the released Katie to the Vicarage, “The ‘run’ goes forward next week as arranged, for ‘Old Katie’

here will be comfortably lodged in our place in France, and the Scarecrow will be free to show the world that she

was lying out of loyalty, and that he, not she, still rides supreme on Romney Marsh.”

Mipps grinned and nudged the old woman. “Told you he’d get you out of it, didn’t I? And will you be

comfortable in our place in France? My dear old girl, you’ll love it there, and will they love you? “Old Katie’, that

they will.”