Bruce Alexander - An Experiment in Treason

He looked up at last. “Do you have arrest warrants?”

I nodded and pulled them from the same pocket from which I had produced the letter. He took them and examined each one, then returned them to me, appearing somewhat bewildered.

“Ned Ferguson was wanted for burglary?”

“That’s right,” said I. “His partner gave witness against him.”

“And this George Burkett?”

“A murderer twice o’er, ” said I, “once in London and now, I assume, again here in Robertsbridge.”

“You two are armed?”

His eyes went first to Mr. Perkins, who opened his coat to display two pistols, worn each on his right side, for it was the side of his good arm. Then did he look at me, and I showed him the brace of pistols, belted one on each hip.

“Since this is all being done proper, I’ll make out a paper that says you’ve got my permission to wear those things and shoot them off if need be.”

I had by this time noted that the driver of the undertaker’s coach had taken such a keen interest in our discussion that he had interposed himself between Constable Perkins and Mr. Hollaby, so that now we seemed to be a group of four, rather than three. I remember well, from my childhood, the curiosity of townsmen. Where little happens, all must be known about that little.

Catching Mr. Hollaby’s attention, I pointed to the intruder in our group.

He nodded his agreement. “We must talk about this some more,” said he. “I’ve an idea. Why don’t we go to the inn and have us an ale? You two must be dry from all that traveling. I’ve got questions for you, and I’m sure you’ll want to hear a few things that I have to tell.” Then said he to the driver: “Henry, you can tell the widow that I’m sorry I couldn’t stay for the rest of the funeral, but I got called away by something important. I’m sure you’ll agree that thui is important, won’t you?”

“Oh, I,certainly do, Mr. Hollaby. All the way from London, Bow Street Runners and all. I’m sure she’ll want to hear all about that. It’ll help ease her pain, I’m sure.”

The story told by the magistrate of Robertsbridge was of the sort I might well have expected to hear. Still, the magistrate was correct in his surmise that we might welcome a pint of ale or two after our journey. And upon learning that it would be near two hours before the next coach for London came through, we were well satisfied to spend the time sipping ale, listening to Peter Hollaby’s tale and telling our own.

The magistrate was much embarrassed to reveal that he had actually aided Burkett in finding Ferguson. The big man had stopped by Hollabys office in the evening three days past and asked his way to Ferguson’s farm. He presented himself as a friend from London come down to Robertsbridge at Ferguson’s invitation.

“He said to me, T know he’s just outside of town, but I don’t know which road to take.’ I pointed out the right one to him, and that just about wrote the end to Ned Ferguson.”

I asked how long the magistrate had known Ned Ferguson, and when it was he had first made his appearance in the town, and I was surprised to learn that it was a good ten months past.

He courted a local girl — called her his “lass,” as a Scotsman would, ‘cause that’s what he was — and was well liked in Robertsbridge. The parents of the girl thought him a good match for their daughter and offered a decent dowry. Though he was a bit tight-lipped about his business (he claimed to be a coffee merchant), which took him off to London with fair frequency, banns were posted in the church, and about a month and a half past Edward Ferguson and his lass were wed.

The magistrate of Robertsbridge was a bit vague about what had happened after that. It was known about town that the young bride was eager to go with her groom on his next trip to London, but following a visit from one of Ferguson’s business associates (Isaac Kidd, according to the description given by Peter Hollaby), he made no more trips to the city and stayed rather close to the house. A change had come over him, and she let it be known to her parents that Ned was acting in a rather disturbing manner.

Yet she was not near so disturbed then as she was early in the morn, two days past, when, finding her husband absent from their bed, she went looking for him about their place and found his body in the barn.

“What was the condition of the body?” asked Mr. Perkins, who had been unusually quiet all through the magistrate’s recitation.

“Well you might ask,” said Hollaby, nodding plainly at the constable’s empty sleeve. “But may I inquire of you, sir, did you have an encounter of your own with this fiendish fellow?”

“Not the kind of encounter you mean,” said Mr. Perkins. “Yet we have met, and ever after he has been trying to frighten me away by chopping off the arms of his victims.”

“But you, I take it, are not frightened?”

“Oh, I’m frightened, right enough, yet I try not to let it bother me.”

“And have you been successful in that?”

“In all truth, I cannot say that I have been.”

“Well, I hope I didn’t cause you any pain making inquiries where it ain’t my business to do so, but I have to tell you, sir, that ever since I was summoned to that barn I have been frightened. I’ve had bad dreams, I have. I wake up nights in a proper sweat. The constable who went out there with me quit the next day. And the young widow — she’s done naught but weep and carry on ever since that dreadful morning, and I can’t say that I blame her any. The place was all bloody, blood on the straw, blood on the walls, and the milk cow was goin’ crazy.”

“What was judged to be the cause of death?” I asked.

“Well, besides having both arms chopped off at the elbows as you two have certainly guessed by now, he had a gash in his throat of a kind so deep it damned near took his head off.”

“Yet he kept quiet through it all?” I asked.

“He was gagged, and Mrs. Ferguson was a sound sleeper. But that fellow — Burkett, was it? — he must have spent an hour or more with him, torturing him, trying to get him to tell something. There must be a lot of money involved in this.”

“No,” said Constable Perkins, “I think Burkett does it because he likes it. No other reason.” Then did he ask if there might be any possibility that Burkett were still in the area of Robertsbridge.

“I’m certain that there’s no chance of that. He was on horseback, and he left in the direction of London at a gallop. You could tell by the track he left.” At that point, he paused. Then he came back to us with a demand. “Now, ” said he, “you’ve heard my story. You must tell me now what this was all about. And don’t say that this man Burkett was a rival coffee trader. We may not have much experience of this kind of thing here in Robertsbridge, but we’re all pretty much agreed that this wasn’t about coffee. You say Ned Ferguson was a burglar …? “

I had a difficult time offering him information enough to satisfy him, yet not so much that he would know the part played in it all by Lord Hillsborough and Lord Mansfield. In fact, I had decided that Mr. Hollaby should know as little as possible about the burglary and nothing at all about Benjamin Franklin, Tommy Skinner, and Arthur Lee. The result was a rather disconnected narrative, one hardly deserving at all to be called a narrative. The magistrate asked many questions, a few of which I could not answer. He looked skeptically at me a number of times and must have thought me a terrible dunce. Nevertheless, I managed to get through my so-called recital of the facts as Sir John would have preferred: divulging as little information as possible.

By contrast, however, Mr. Hollaby seemed to get on wonderfully well with Mr. Perkins. As time grew shorter before the departure of our London-bound coach, he seemed to direct more of his comments and questions to him.