Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (34 page)

’Twas a strip of paper,
scarce an inch wide and some twelve inches long. Along both its edges someone
had made chicken-tracks with a pen. One end was roughly torn away. Search as we
might, the missing fragment was not to be found. At last we repaired to the
house.

In the library we
encountered Mrs. Thrale, in philosophical discourse with Dr. Thomas. She looked
at the strange piece of paper, and gave a screech.

“’Tis Ogam!”

“Ogam?”

“I know it well, ’tis the
antique writing of the Irish,” said Dr. Thomas, scanning the page with
interest. “You must understand, sir, that the untutored savages of Ireland,
knowing nothing of pen and paper, had perforce to contrive some way of incising
letters upon wood, stone, horn, and the like. They hit upon a system of
scratching lines on the edges of these objects, as perpendicular or oblique,
and grouped to represent the various letters. Thus it was said of many a
deceased Irish hero, ‘They dug the grave and they raised the stone and they
carved his name in Ogam.’”

“Why, this is a learned
jewel-thief. Pray, Dr. Thomas, translate these triangles and dashes.”

“Alack, sir, I cannot do
it extempore. I must first have my books.”

“You,
ma’am,” says Dr. Johnson to the volatile matron,
“you
are
mighty
familiar with Ogam, pray read it off for us.”

“O Lud, sir, not I, I am
none of your antiquarians.”

“Why, so. Then I must
extract the meaning for myself. ’Twill be no harder than the bi-literal cypher.”

But try as he would, the
strange marks on the edges of the paper would not yield to the theory of the
printer’s case. At last he leaned back.

“
Let us begin afresh.”

“No, sir,” I begged, “let
us have our tea. I am no Spartan boy, to labour while a fox is gnawing my
vitals.”

“Spartan!” cried my
companion. “You have earned your tea, Mr. Boswell. Do but answer me one
question first, we may begin afresh and I think proceed in the right direction.
Pray, what shape is this paper?”

“Sir, long and flat.”

Dr. Johnson dangled it by
one end.

“No, sir, ’tis helical.”

Indeed as it dangled it
coiled itself into a helix.

“Let us restore it to its
proper shape,” said Dr. Johnson. “Pray, Mr. Boswell, fetch me the besom.”

I looked a question, but
my sagacious friend said nothing further, and I went in search of the pretty
housemaid and her besoms. After an interlude of knight-errantry, which taught
me somewhat about women, but naught at all about our puzzle, I returned with
such brooms as the house afforded.

I found my learned friend
surrounded by stocks and staves, thick and thin, long and short. Around them,
one after one, he was coiling the strange paper as a friseur curls hair about
his finger. The results left him but ill satisfied.

“Could I but recall it to
mind,” he muttered, “there is a thing missing, that is germane to this puzzle;
but now ’tis gone from my memory.”

“Why, sir,” said I, “we
are to question the one-legged sailorman.”

“Well remembered, Mr.
Boswell.” He stuffed the coiled paper into his capacious pocket. “Come, let us
be off.”

I bade farewell to my tea
as I followed him. We found the publick room of the Three Crowns nigh empty,
its only occupants being the idling tapster, and two men drinking in the ingle;
but one of them was the man we sought. His companion was a likely-looking youth
with a high-bridged nose, who pledged him in nappy ale.

“Good day, friend,” Dr.
Johnson accosted the maimed sailor.

The fresh-faced youth
rose quietly, pulled a respectful forelock, and made off. Dr. Johnson looked at
the sailorman’s tankard, now empty, and signed to the tapster.

Not that the sailorman’s
tongue wanted loosening. Previous potations had already done the business. He
was all too ready to spin his yarn.

“Nine sea fights I come
through,” he cried, “and lost my peg in the end,
mort
dieu,
in Quiberon Bay.

He dealt his wooden
member a mighty thump with the again emptied tankard. My worthy friend, ever
ready to relieve the lot of the unfortunate, once more signed to the tapster.
As the can was filling, he animadverted upon the wretchedness of a sea-life.

“I marvel, that any man
will be a sailor, who has contrivance enough to get himself into a gaol; for
being in a ship is being in gaol with the chance of being drowned.”

“Ah,” said the peg-legged
sailor mournfully, and buried his nose in his pot.

My friend pressed upon
him a gratuity in recognition of his perils passed. The sailorman accepted of
it with protestations of gratitude.

“’Tis nothing, sir,” replied
my kindly friend. “Do you but gratify my whim, I’ll call myself overpaid.”

“How, whim?” says the
sailorman.

“I’ve a whim,” says
Johnson, “to borrow your wooden leg for a matter of half an hour.”

I stared with open mouth,
but the sailorman shewed no flicker of surprize. He unstrapped the contrivance
immediately and put it in my friend’s hand.

“Pray, Bozzy,” said Dr.
Johnson, “see that our worthy friend here lacks for nothing until I come again.”

Before I could put a
question he had withdrawn, the unstrapped peg in his hand. I was left to the
company of the tapster and the loquacious sailorman. He insisted upon telling
me how he had made his peg himself, and how it had often been admired for its
artistry.

“Here’s this young fellow
now,” he rattled on, gesturing vaguely across the common, “he thinks it a
rarity, and but this morning he had it of me for an hour at a time.”

This statement but
doubled my puzzlement. What in the world could a two-legged man want with a
peg-leg? Surely my learned friend was not intending to personate the one-legged
sailorman? Had the high-nosed youth done so? I tried to recall the glimpse I
had had of the one-legged beggar by the kitchen garden.

When Dr. Johnson
returned, he returned in his own guise. We left the sailorman, by this time
snorting with vinous stertorousness in the corner of the ingle, and walked
across the common back to the house.

“Pray, sir, what success?
Did you find the diamond?”

“Find the diamond? No,
sir, I did not find the diamond; but I know where it is, and I know how to lay
the thief by the heels.”

He dug from his pocket
the strange strip of paper. Between the lines of Ogam he had penned the
message:

“£140 tonight 12 a clock
y‘ oak nighest y‘ 3 crowns”

“What shall this signify?”

“Nay, Bozzy, ’tis plain.
But here comes our friend Dr. Thomas. Pray, not a word more.”

I was seething with
curiosity as we supped at the Thrales’ sumptuous table. The talk turned,
willy-nilly, to the strange way in which the Christmas gem had been spirited
from the library. Dr. Johnson admitted himself baffled. He was in a depression
from which he could not be wooed even by the blandishments of the spaniel
Belle, who, spurred by hunger, begged eagerly for scraps; until a new larceny,
committed against himself, restored him to good humour.

It must be said that Dr.
Sam Johnson is scarce a dainty feeder. He is a valiant trencherman, and stows
away vast quantities of his favourite comestibles.

“Ma’am,” says he on this
occasion, unbuttoning the middle button of his capacious vest and picking a
capon wing in his fingers, “ma’am, where the dinner is ill gotten, the family
is somehow grossly wrong; there is poverty, ma’am, or there is stupidity; for a
man seldom thinks more earnestly of anything than of his dinner, and if he
cannot get that well done, he should be suspected of inaccuracy in other things.”

“Oh,” says Mrs. Thrale,
not knowing how to take this, but willing to turn it against him, “did you
never, then, sir, huff your wife about your meat?”

“Why, yes,” replied he,
taking a second wing in his fingers, “but then she huffed me worse, for she
said one day as I was going to say grace: ‘Nay, hold,’ says she, ‘and do not
make a farce of thanking GOD for a dinner which you will presently protest to
be uneatable.’”

At this there was a
general laugh; under cover of which Belle the spaniel, tempted beyond
endurance, reared boldly up, snatched the capon wing from the philosopher’s
fingers, and ran out of door with it.

“Fie, Belle,” cried out
Mrs. Thrale, “you used to be upon honour!”

“Ay,” replied the Doctor
with his great Olympian laugh, “but here has been a
bad influence
lately!”

Not another word would he
say, but devoted himself to a mighty veal pye with plums and sugar.

Yet when we rose from the
table, he sought out the guilty Belle and plied her with dainties.

“’Tis a worthy canine,
Bozzy,” cried he to me, “for she has told me, not only
how
Miss Fanny’s diamond was spirited from the library,
but by
whose
contrivance. Between the good Belle, and yonder strange paper of Ogam, I now
know
where
the conspirators shall
meet, and
when,
and
who
they are, and
what
their object is; to prevent which, I shall make one at
the rendezvous. Do you but join me, you shall see all made plain.”

I was eager to do so.
Muffled in greatcoats, we crossed the common and took up our station under the
great oak a stone’s cast from the Three Crowns. As the wind rattled the dry
branches over our heads, I was minded of other vigils we had shared and other
miscreants we had laid by the heels.

The darkness was
profound. Across the common we saw window after window darken in the Thrale
house as the occupants blew out their candles. Then I became aware of motion in
the darkness, and towards us, stealing along the path, came a muffled shape,
utterly without noise, flitting along like a creature of the night. For a
moment we stood rigid, not breathing; then Dr. Johnson stepped forward and
collared the advancing figure. It gave a startled squeak, and was silent. Dr.
Johnson pulled the hat from the brow. In the starlight I stared at the face
thus revealed.

’Twas Dr. Thomas! I
beheld with horror his awful confusion at being detected.

“Alas, Dr. Johnson, ’tis
I alone am guilty! But pray, how have you smoaked me?”

“Ogam,” says Dr. Johnson,
looking sourly upon the clergyman. “Trust me, you knew that was no Ogam. Ogam
is incised on
both
edges of a right angle, not scribbled on paper.”

“That is so, sir. You
have been too sharp for me. I will confess all. ’Tis my fatal passion for Welsh
antiquities. I have pawned the very vestments of my office to procure them. I
took Miss Fanny’s gem, I confess it, and flung it from the window wrapped in a
leaf from my pocket book.”

“I see it!” I exclaimed. “
’Twas thrown at hazard, and the one-legged sailor carried it thence hid in the
hollow of his wooden leg.

“Nothing of the kind,”
said Dr. Johnson. “The role of the sailor and his wooden leg was quite other.
But say, how much had you for the gem?”

“Two hundred pounds,” replied
the fallen clergyman. “Two hundred pounds! The price of my honour! Alas,” he
cried in a transport of remorse, falling on his knees and holding up his hands
to Heaven, “had I, when I stood at those crossroads, gone another way, had I
but heeded the voice within me which cried,
Turn aside, turn aside, lest thou fall into the hands of thine enemy,
had I but gone swiftly upon the strait way, then in truth we might at the grave’s
end have met together in the hereafter...”

Dr. Johnson heard this
piteous avowal unmoved, but not so I. ’Twas a solemn sight to see the
unfortunate man wring his hands and cry out with anguish, turning up his eyes
to Heaven. Suddenly, however, his gaze fixed eagerly upon the darkened inn. In
the same instant Dr. Johnson whirled, and ran, swiftly for all his bulk, to
where a light coach was just getting in motion. I heard the harness jingle, and
then the startled snort of a horse as my fearless friend seized the near animal
by the bit and forced it to a halt.