Free Doctor Syn A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh by Russell Thorndike Page A

place on one of the benches. Mipps’s entrance seemed to revive the tragedy of the whole business, for there was a pause pending the squire’s opening speech; but the captain was the first to speak. He arose and to the astonishment of everybody took up and lit a pipe which had been lying on the table in front of him.
     
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    “Sir Antony Cobtree and gentlemen,” he said in his great husky sea voice, as he drew the smoke deliberately through the long clay stem and volleyed it back from his set mouth in blue battle clouds across the table, “we have met here to discuss, as Sir Antony Cobtree has already said better than I ever could, the sad and sudden death of Doctor Sennacherib Pepper, killed violently last night on Romney Marsh. The form of this inquiry I leave to the lawyers whose business it is, but before they get busy I’ve got a few things bottled up that I must and will say. I don’t possess the knack of a crafty tongue myself, I’ve the reputation among my colleagues of being the most tactless man in the service; but I’ve also a reputation as a fighter, and when I do fight, it’s a hard fight—a straightforward, open fight. So what I’ve got to say will like enough cause offence to every man in this room from Sir Antony Cobtree downward. I’m no good at strategy; as I say, I fight open; and when I think things—well, I can’t bottle them up; I say ’em out bluntly at the risk of offence. So here it is: I don’t
     
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    like this business—this Doctor Pepper business—” The captain here paused to roll a large volume of smoke across the room.
    The squire took advantage of the pause and said: “If that’s all it is, Captain, come now—which of us do?”
    The captain thought a moment and added: “If the party or parties who committed the crime didn’t like it, why, in thunder’s name, did they do it?”
    “You should know that better than we do,” returned the squire hotly, “for that the murderer was under your employment is fairly obvious.”
    “You are referring to the mulatto seaman,” said the captain. “In the first place, I consider that you should have asked my permission before you issued that public notice affixed to the church door. Until the mulatto is found and can be examined, I deny your right or any man’s right to brand him as a murderer.”
    “You remarked just now, sir,” cried the squire, “that you preferred to leave the business of lawyers to the lawyers. Please do so, and remember that while I
     
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    am head of this jurisdiction on Romney Marsh I’ll brook no dictation from Admiralty men—no, sir, not from the First Lord downward.”
    “Come, come, gentlemen,” said Doctor Syn, drumming his fingers on the table, “I think that this is an ill-fitting time and place for wrangling. The captain has got a bee in his bonnet somehow, and the sooner we get it out for him the better. Let us please hear, sir, what he has to say.”
    The squire nodded his head roughly and sat silent, while the rest of the company waited for the captain to continue, which he presently did, still pulling vigorously at his long clay pipe.
    “The next thing I don’t like,” he went on, “is Dymchurch itself. I don’t like the Marsh behind it, and I don’t like the flat, open coastline; it looks a deal too innocent for me on the surface, and, not being a strategist, I don’t like it.”
    The squire was on edge with irritation.
     
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    “I am sure, sir,” he said sarcastically, “that had the Almighty been notified of your objections during the process of the creation he would have extended Dover Cliffs round Dungeness.” The captain didn’t seem to notice the interruption.
    “Next, I don’t like the people here, leaving Doctor Syn out of it—for he’s a parson and I never could make head or tail of parsons. I say that, from the squire down, you’re none of you swimming the surface. Sir Antony Cobtree went to great pains to lavishly entertain me yesterday, in order that he might politely imprison me last night. I