The Tale of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice | Page 6

the
house for a week. This was at her request, and of course I couldn't
refuse her. During that week she telephoned to me daily, once in the
morning and once in the evening, always with the same story: she had
seen nothing of him. He had not even been home to collect any of his
clothes. You may imagine the state of anxiety I lived in during that
week, which his disappearance did nothing to palliate, but rather
heightened by leaving everything so mysterious and uncertain. She was
evidently terrified--I could hear it in her voice--but implored me to
keep away, for her sake, if not for mine. At the end of the week he
appeared without warning in the office of the paper where I worked,
and, greeting me without making any allusion to what had happened,
invited me to come for two days' sailing in a small boat which had been
lent him by a friend.
"I was startled enough by this incongruous suggestion, but naturally I
accepted: you couldn't refuse such an invitation from a man who, you
suspected, intended to have such a matter out with you on the open sea.

We started immediately, and all the way down in the train for Cornwall
he talked in his usual manner, undeterred by the fact that I never
answered him. We got out at Penzance, the time then being, I suppose,
about six o'clock in the evening. I had never been to Penzance before,
but he seemed to know his way about, walking me briskly down to the
harbour, where a fishing-smack under the charge of a rough-looking
sailor was waiting for him. By now I was quite certain that he meant to
have it out with me, and for my part, after the long uncertainty of the
week, I asked nothing better than to get to grips with him. All I prayed
for was a hand-to-hand struggle in which I might have the luck to tip
him overboard, so I was rather dismayed when I saw that the sailor was
to accompany us.
"We started without any delay, getting clear of the port just as the
darkness fell and the first stars came out in a pale green sky. I had
never been with him anywhere but in London, and it crossed my mind
that it was odd to be with him so far away, off this rocky coast, in the
solitude of waters; and I looked at the green sky above the red-brown
sails of the fishing-smack, and thought of the barges floating down the
river at Chelsea. They were ships, and this was a ship; they carried men,
and this one also carried men. I looked at my companion, who sat in the
stern holding the tiller. There was a breeze, which drove us along at
quite a smart pace. 'Cornwall,' I said to myself, staring slowly round the
bay and at the black mass of St. Michael's Mount,' Cornwall...'
"I don't know how many hours we sailed that night, but I know that
when the day broke we were out of sight of land. All that while we had
not spoken a word, though to all practical purposes we were alone, the
sailor having gone to sleep for'ard on a heap of nets, in the bottom of
the boat. He was a rough, handsome, foreign-looking fellow, of a type I
believe often to be found in that part of England. I couldn't understand
the object of this sailing expedition at all. It seemed to me an
unnecessarily elaborate introduction to the discussion of a subject
which could as well have been thrashed out in London. Still, as the
other man was the aggrieved party, I supposed that he was entitled to
the choice of weapons; I supposed that his devilish sense of humour
was at the bottom of all this, and I was determined not to give him the

chance of saying I wouldn't play up. But why couldn't he tell me what
was in his mind? How far did he mean to take me out to sea first?
These questions and others raced through my mind during the whole of
that night, while I sat back leaning against the sides of the boat,
watching the stars pass overhead and listening to the gentle sip, sip of
the water.
"At dawn my companion rose, and, shading his eyes with one hand
while with the other he still held the tiller, he stood up scanning the
surface of the waters. I watched him, resolved that it would not be me
who spoke first. After a while he appeared to find what he was looking
for, for he said, 'Nearly there.' I could see nothing to break the whole
pale opal stretch of sunrise-flushing sea but