Dead Mens Money | Page 3

him up to the station with the ticket for the chest; he was back with it
before long, and I had to help him carry it up to Mr. Gilverthwaite's
room. And never had I felt or seen a chest like that before, nor had the
man who had fetched it, either. It was made of some very hard and dark
wood, and clamped at all the corners with brass, and underneath it there
were a couple of bars of iron, and though it was no more than two and a
half feet square, it took us all our time to lift it. And when, under Mr.
Gilverthwaite's orders, we set it down on a stout stand at the side of his
bed, there it remained until--but to say until when would be
anticipating.
Now that he was established in our house, the new lodger proved
himself all that he had said. He was a quiet, respectable, sober sort of

man, giving no trouble and paying down his money without question or
murmur every Saturday morning at his breakfast-time. All his days
were passed in pretty much the same fashion. After breakfast he would
go out--you might see him on the pier, or on the old town walls, or
taking a walk across the Border Bridge; now and then we heard of his
longer excursions into the country, one side or other of the Tweed. He
took his dinner in the evenings, having made a special arrangement
with my mother to that effect, and a very hearty eater he was, and fond
of good things, which he provided generously for himself; and when
that episode of the day's events was over, he would spend an hour or
two over the newspapers, of which he was a great reader, in company
with his cigar and his glass. And I'll say for him that from first to last
he never put anything out, and was always civil and polite, and there
was never a Saturday that he did not give the servant-maid a half-crown
to buy herself a present.
All the same--we said it to ourselves afterwards, though not at the
time--there was an atmosphere of mystery about Mr. Gilverthwaite. He
made no acquaintance in the town. He was never seen in even brief
conversation with any of the men that hung about the pier, on the walls,
or by the shipping. He never visited the inns, nor brought anybody in to
drink and smoke with him. And until the last days of his lodging with
us he never received a letter.
A letter and the end of things came all at once. His stay had lengthened
beyond the month he had first spoken of. It was in the seventh week of
his coming that he came home to his dinner one June evening,
complaining to my mother of having got a great wetting in a sudden
storm that had come on that afternoon while he was away out in the
country, and next morning he was in bed with a bad pain in his chest,
and not over well able to talk. My mother kept him in his bed and
began to doctor him; that day, about noon, came for him the first and
only letter he ever had while he was with us--a letter that came in a
registered envelope. The servant-maid took it up to him when it was
delivered, and she said later that he started a bit when he saw it. But he
said nothing about it to my mother during that afternoon, nor indeed to
me, specifically, when, later on, he sent for me to go up to his room.

All the same, having heard of what he had got, I felt sure that it was
because of it that, when I went in to him, he beckoned me first to close
the door on us and then to come close to his side as he lay propped on
his pillow.
"Private, my lad!" he whispered hoarsely. "There's a word I have for
you in private!"
CHAPTER II
THE MIDNIGHT MISSION
Before he said a word more, I knew that Mr. Gilverthwaite was very
ill--much worse, I fancied, than my mother had any notion of. It was
evidently hard work for him to get his breath, and the veins in his
temples and forehead swelled out, big and black, with the effort of
talking. He motioned to me to hand him a bottle of some stuff which he
had sent for from the chemist, and he took a swig of its contents from
the bottle neck before he spoke again. Then he pointed to a chair at the
bed-head, close to his pillow.
"My lungs!" he said, a bit more easily. "Mortal bad! Queer thing, a
great man