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Title: Captain Shannon
Author: Kernahan, Coulson
Language: English
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CAPTAIN SHANNON
CAPTAIN SHANNON
BY
COULSON KERNAHAN
AUTHOR OF “A DEAD MAN’S DIARY,” “A BOOK OF STRANGE SINS,”
“SORROW AND SONG,” “GOD AND THE ANT,” ETC.
[Illustration: [Publisher’s logo]]
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1896
_Copyright, 1896_,
BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY.
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I WHO IS “CAPTAIN SHANNON”? 1
II CAPTAIN SHANNON’S MANIFESTO 9
III THE “DAILY RECORD” TO THE RESCUE 20
IV THE MURDER IN FLEET STREET 25
V THE IDENTITY OF CAPTAIN SHANNON DISCLOSED AT LAST 34
VI I MAKE UP MY MIND TO FIND CAPTAIN SHANNON 44
VII MY FIRST MEETING WITH JAMES MULLEN 52
VIII THE DYNAMITE HULK 66
IX I TAKE UP MY QUARTERS AT CANVEY 74
X I BOARD THE “CUBAN QUEEN” 81
XI PERSONAL EXPLANATIONS 94
XII HOW CAPTAIN SHANNON’S AUTOGRAPH CAME INTO MY POSSESSION 101
XIII I POSSESS MYSELF OF THE SECRET OF JAMES BAKEWELL GREEN 113
XIV ONE OF THE DOCUMENTS WHICH COST MY INQUIRY AGENT HIS LIFE 120
XV A DOCUMENT OF IMPORTANCE 127
XVI HENRY JEANES, ALIAS JAMES MULLEN 136
XVII ON THE HEELS OF JAMES MULLEN 142
XVIII I BECOME A HAIRDRESSER’S ASSISTANT 160
XIX “ARE THERE ANY LETTERS FOR HENRY JEANES, PLEASE?” 166
XX HOW JAMES MULLEN AND MYSELF ALMOST MET 171
XXI HOW I STRUCK JAMES MULLEN’S TRACK 180
XXII THE ARTFULNESS OF JAMES MULLEN 193
XXIII HOW I GOT WEDGED IN A WINDOW, AND LEFT BEHIND 200
XXIV A PRETTY KETTLE OF FISH! 213
XXV JAMES MULLEN AND I MEET AT LAST 219
XXVI AFTER THE EXPLOSION 226
XXVII I PLAY A GAME OF “BLUFF” WITH HUGHES 241
XXVIII I BOARD THE “CUBAN QUEEN” FOR THE SECOND TIME 254
XXIX I TRY A FALL WITH JAMES MULLEN 259
XXX MORE DEVILRY 274
XXXI THE ARREST OF CAPTAIN SHANNON 281
Captain Shannon
CHAPTER I
WHO IS “CAPTAIN SHANNON”?
The year 18-- will be memorable for the perpetration in England and in
Ireland of a series of infamously diabolical outrages. On the scene of
each crime was found--sometimes scrawled in plain rough capitals upon
a piece of paper which was pinned to the body of a victim, sometimes
rudely chalked in the same lettering upon a door or wall--this
inscription--“By order.--Captain Shannon.”
Who Captain Shannon was the police failed entirely to discover,
although the counties in which the crimes occurred were scoured
from end to end, and every person who was known to have been in the
neighbourhood was subjected to the severest examination. That some who
were so examined knew more than they would tell, there was reason to
believe; but so dreaded was the miscreant’s name, and so swift and
terrible had been the fate of those who in the past had incurred his
vengeance, that neither offers of reward nor threats of punishment
could elicit anything but dogged denials.
But when the conspirators carried the war into the enemy’s country, and
successfully accomplished the peculiarly daring crime which wrecked the
police headquarters at New Scotland Yard, the indignation of the public
knew no bounds. If the emissaries of Captain Shannon could succeed in
conveying an infernal machine into New Scotland Yard itself, the whole
community was--so it was argued--at the mercy of a band of murderers.
The scene in the House of Commons on the night following the outrage
was one of great excitement. The Chief Secretary for Ireland declared,
in a memorable speech, that the purpose of the crime was to terrorise
and to intimidate. No loyal English or Irish citizen would, he was
sure, be deterred from doing his duty by such infamous acts; but that
they had to deal with murderers of the most determined type could not
be doubted. The whole conspiracy was, in his opinion, the work of
some half dozen assassins, who were probably the tools of the monster
calling himself “Captain Shannon,” in whose too fertile brain the
crimes had, he believed, originated, and under whose devilishly planned
directions they had been carried out.
The police had reason to suppose that the headquarters of the
conspirators were in Ireland, in which country the majority of the
crimes--at all events of the earlier crimes--had been committed.
He regretted to say, but it was his duty to say, that but for the
disloyal attitude of a section of the Irish people--who, from dastardly
and contemptible cowardice, or from sympathy with the assassins, had
not only withheld the evidence, without which it was impossible to
trace the various outrages to their cause, but had on more than one
occasion actually sought to hinder the police in the execution of their
duty--the conspirators would long since have been brought to book.
The Secretary then went on to denounce in the strongest language what
he called the infamous conduct of the disloyal Irish. He declared,
amid ringing cheers, that the man or woman who sought to shield such
a monster as Captain Shannon, or to protect him and his confederates
from justice, was nothing less than a murderer in the eyes of God and
of man. He informed the House that although the Government had actually
framed several important measures which would go far to remove the
grievances of which Irishmen were complaining, he for one would, in
view of what had taken place, strenuously oppose the consideration
at that moment of any measures which had even the appearance of a
concession to Irish demands. It was repression, not concession, which
must be meted out to traitors and murderers.
Within a month after the delivery of this speech all England was
horrified by the news of a crime more wantonly wicked than any outrage
which had preceded it, a crime which resulted--as its perpetrators
must have known it would result--in the wholesale murder of hundreds
of inoffensive people against whom--excepting for the fact that they
happened to be law-abiding citizens--the followers of Captain Shannon
could have no grievance.
All that was known was that a respectably dressed young man, carrying
what appeared to be about a dozen well-worn volumes from Mudie’s,
or some other circulating library, had entered an empty first-class
carriage at Aldgate station. These books were held together by a
strap--as is usual when sending or taking volumes for exchange to
the libraries--and it had occurred to no one to ask to examine them,
although the officials at all railway stations had, in view of the
recent outrages, been instructed to challenge every passenger carrying
a suspicious-looking parcel.
The theory which was afterwards put forward was that what appeared to
be a parcel of volumes from a circulating library was in reality a
case cunningly covered with the backs, bindings, and edges of books,
and that this case contained an infernal machine of the most deadly
description. It was supposed that the wretch in charge of it had
purposely entered an empty carriage that he might the better carry out
his infamous plan, and that after setting fire to the fuse he had left
the train at the next station.
That this theory afforded the most likely explanation of what
subsequently took place was generally agreed, although one well-known
authority on explosives expressed himself as of opinion that no
infernal machine capable of causing what had happened could be
concealed in so small a compass as that suggested. But it was pointed
out in reply that from arrests and discoveries which had been made in
America and on the Continent, it was evident that the manufacture of
infernal machines and investigations into the qualities of explosives
were being scientifically and systematically carried on.
Though no connection had as yet been traced between the persons who
had been arrested and the perpetrators of the recent outrages, the
probabilities were that such connection existed, and it was asked
whether it might not be possible that some one who was thus engaged in
experimenting with explosives had discovered a new explosive, or a new
combination of explosives, which was different from and more deadly
than anything known to the authorities.
Into the probability or improbability of this and other theories which
were put forward it would be idle here to enter. All that is known is
that the train had only just entered the tunnel immediately to the west
of Blackfriars station when there occurred the most awful explosion
of the sort within the memory of man. The passengers, as well as the
guard, driver, and stoker, not only of the train in which the explosion
took place, but also of a train which was proceeding in the opposite
direction and happened to be passing at the time, were killed to a man,
and with the exception of one of Smith’s bookstall boys, whose escape
seemed almost miraculous, every soul in the station--ticket-collectors,
porters, station-master, and the unfortunate people who were waiting on
the platform--shared the same fate.
Nor was this all, for at the moment when the outrage occurred the train
was passing under one of the busiest crossings in London--that where
New Bridge Street, Blackfriars Bridge, Queen Victoria Street, and the
Thames Embankment converge--and so terrific was the explosion that the
space between these converging thoroughfares was blown away as a man’s
hand is blown away by the bursting of a gun.
The buildings in the immediate neighbourhood, including parts of St.
Paul’s station on the London, Chatham, and Dover railway, the offices
over Blackfriars station, and De Keyser’s Hotel on the opposite side of
the way, were wrecked, and the long arm of Blackfriars Bridge lay idle
across the river like a limb which has been rudely hacked from a body.
But it is not my intention to attempt any realistic description of
the scene, or of the awful sights which were witnessed when, after
the first paralysing moment of panic was over, the search for the
injured, the dying, and the dead was commenced. The number of lives
lost, including those who perished in Blackfriars station, in the
two trains, in the street, and in the surrounding buildings, was
enormous. Several columns of the papers next morning were filled
with lists of the missing and the dead. One name on the list had a
terrible significance. It was the name of the man to achieve whose
murder the lives of so many innocent men and women had been ruthlessly
sacrificed; the name of a man whose remains were never found, but whose
funeral pyre was built of the broken bodies of hundreds of his fellow
creatures,--the name of the Chief Secretary for Ireland.
CHAPTER II
CAPTAIN SHANNON’S MANIFESTO
On the day of the outrage upon the Metropolitan railway a manifesto
from Captain Shannon, of which the following is a copy, was received
by the Prime Minister at his official residence in Downing Street. It
was written as usual in roughly printed capitals, and, as it bore the
Dublin postmark of the preceding day, must have been posted _before the
explosion had taken place_.
“_To the People of Great Britain and Ireland_:
“Fellow countrymen and countrywomen,--The Anarchistic, Nihilistic,
Fenian, and similar movements of the past have all been failures. That
fact there is no denying. I do not mean to say that there have been no
results to the glorious war which has been waged upon a society which
is content to stand by heedless and unconcerned while Russia’s many
millions of starving and suffering fellow-creatures are the slaves of
a system by which the honour, liberty, and life of every man, woman,
and child are at the mercy of a tyrant’s whim and the whims of his
myrmidons,--a society which looks on smiling while Ireland is groaning
under the heel of English oppression, and while capitalists, who yawn
as they seek to devise some new vice on which to squander the wealth
which has become a burden to them, grind down and sweat the poor,
setting one starving man to compete against another for a wage which
can scarce find him and his in dry bread.
“A society which, calling itself Christian, and having it in its power
to mend matters, can, unconcerned, endure such iniquities, is _blood
guilty_, and so long as these things last, upon society shall its
crimes be visited,--with society must all just men and true wage deadly
war.
“What has been done hitherto has not been without results.
“But for the justice which was executed upon the arch-tyrant,
Alexander of Russia; the blow which was struck at English tyranny by
the destruction of Clerkenwell prison; the righteous punishment which
befell those servants of tyrants and enemies of freedom, Burke and
Cavendish,--but for these and other glorious deeds, the bitter cry
of the oppressed all over the world had passed unheard and unheeded;
Ireland had not wrung from reluctant England the few paltry concessions
that have been made, and the dawning of the great day of freedom had
been indefinitely postponed.
“But notwithstanding all that has been done, the fact remains and
cannot be denied that Nihilists, Anarchists, Fenians, and those who,
under different names and different leaders, are fighting for freedom
throughout the world have, up to the present, failed to accomplish the
results at which they aim.
“And why?
“_Because they have been scattered and separate organisations, each
working independently of the other, and having no resources outside
itself._ So long as this sort of thing continues nothing can be hoped
for but the throwing away of precious lives and sorely needed money to
no purpose.
“_But let these scattered forces combine into one organised and
all-powerful Federation, and mankind will be at its mercy._
“This is what has been done.
“The World Federation of Freedom is now an accomplished fact, for _all
the secret societies of the world have combined into one common and
supreme organisation, with one common enemy and one common purpose_.
“That purpose is to rid mankind of the monsters of Monarchy and
Imperialism, and with them of the whole vampire brood of Peers, Nobles,
and Capitalists who, in order that they may live in idleness and
sensuality, grind the face of the poor, and drain, drop by drop, the
hearts’-blood of toiling millions.
“Its object is to declare that all things are the property of the
people. To wrench from the greedy maw of landowners and capitalists
their ill-gotten gains, and to restore them to the rightful possessors.
To sweep from the face of the earth the fat priests, ministers, and
clergy who batten and fatten on the carrion of dead and decaying
religions. To preach the gospel of the happiness of man in place of the
worship of God, and to declare the day of the great republic, when the
many millions who have hitherto been ruled shall become the rulers.
“That this glorious consummation can be attained all at once the
Federation is not so sanguine as to expect. Its members know that
though they have a lever strong enough to move the world they must be
content to work slowly. Mankind is a chained giant. Their aim is to set
him free; but to do this they must be content to knock off his fetters
one by one; and at the last meeting of the World Federation of Freedom
it was unanimously agreed to inaugurate the great struggle for personal
liberty, firstly, by emancipating Ireland from the English rule, and,
secondly, by the overthrowing of Imperialism in Russia.
“The council of the Federation has two reasons for deciding to commence
the plan of campaign by freeing Ireland.
“The first is that the members know well that the greatest enemy with
which they have to contend--the last country to be convinced of the
righteousness of their cause--will be England, that prince-ridden,
priest-ridden, peer-ridden nation of flunkeys and enemies of freedom
which shed the blood of her own children in America rather than grant
them their rightful independence, and now seeks in a similar way to
keep Ireland, India, Canada, and Australia under her cruel heel. At
England, then, it is right and fitting the first blow should be struck.
“The other reason is that Ireland, when she is once set free, and
in the hands of the Federation, is to be made the basis of future
operations. It is very necessary that the Federation should have some
such headquarters, and in regard to size (too large a centre is not
desirable), shape, situation, and compactness, Ireland possesses
peculiar natural advantages for the purpose. An island, surrounded on
all sides as by sentries, by the sea, no hostile force can steal upon
her under cover and unawares. She is practically the key to Europe, and
as a vantage-ground from which to commence operations upon England her
position cannot be bettered.
“Is there a single thinking man or woman who cannot see that monarchy
and imperialism, peers, clergy, and class distinctions are doomed, and
that their utter downfall is only a matter of time? Germany, Russia,
Austria, Italy, France, and England are undermined to the very cores
by Socialism and Anarchy. The mines which are to destroy society, as
society now exists, are laid though they are out of sight, and at any
moment the opportunity may come to fire the train. Such an opportunity
once occurred in France; but what happened then, though it served
to show what hatred of its rulers was seething unsuspected in the
lowest stratum of society, was a mere accident. But if an accidental
outbreak like the French Revolution could set rivers of blood running
in France, what may we not expect from the Great Revolution which, when
it comes--as come it must--will be the result, not of chance, but of
long years of systematic propagation of socialistic principles among
the masses, which will be the outcome of the most subtly-planned and
gigantic scheme for the liberation of mankind which the world has ever
known!
“There are people who will say that what happened on the other side of
the Channel can never happen on this. But those who know what is going
on in London, Manchester, Birmingham, and all the largest towns, know
that we are living on the edge of a volcano; that England is riper for
revolution to-day than France was in 1789, though the danger is as
little suspected now as it was then, and that what happened then, and
worse, may happen at any time in England unless her councillors have
the foresight and the wisdom to _give_ to the people what the people
will assuredly otherwise _take_.
“It must be remembered that in England we have had for more than half
a century a Queen who does not forget that during that time a complete
revolution has taken place in many previously existing beliefs and
systems, a Queen who knows that England will never tolerate another
George IV., who recognises that what was patiently borne sixty, forty,
and twenty years ago, will not be endured for a moment to-day, and
has wisely avoided everything which can put royalty on its trial or
the temper of the people to the test. Hence, though Englishmen know
that a day of reckoning between royalty and the people is nigh, they
have tacitly consented to put off that day so long as she lives,
and to call upon some other and less fortunate sovereign to settle
the account. But the account, too long overdue, will soon have to be
settled. As well might one man hope to stand against an incoming sea,
as well might the courtiers of old King Canute think by their chiding
to stay the rude waves from wetting the feet of their royal master, as
the rich few think that they can withstand the million of the poor when
the poor shall arise in their might and their right to claim as their
own the riches which their labours have accumulated. In whose hands are
those riches now?
“For answer let them look to the words which are written in the very
heart of their seething, starving London, over the portico of the Royal
Exchange, ‘The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof.’ Yes, the
lords’,--this duke’s, that earl’s,--but not God’s--if a God there
be--or the people’s.
“But it is to restore the earth and the fulness thereof to the people
that the World Federation of Freedom is fighting. Its cause is the
cause of the poor, and it is sacred. Long years of toiling for the bare
necessities of life have so broken the spirit of the poor that they
have become almost like beasts of burden that wince before a whip in
the hands of a child, and bow themselves to the yoke at the bidding of
a master whose puny life they could crush out at a blow. It is time
that the poor should be made to see the terrible power which, if only
by virtue of their swarming millions, lies at their command.
“It is for the people of Great Britain to make choice whether they will
throw in their lot with the winning side while yet there is time to
make terms, or whether they will sacrifice their lives and the lives
of their wives and children to support a system by the destruction of
which they will be the first to profit. And in making such choice,
it must be remembered that they have no longer against them for the
purpose of freeing Ireland and of emancipating Russia a handful of
patriots, struggling hopelessly against overwhelming odds, but the
whole of the secret societies of the world. They have against them
the most gigantic and far-reaching organisation which has been formed
within the history of man,--an organisation, the wealth and power
of which are practically unlimited,--which counts among its members
statesmen in every Court in Europe; statesmen who, although they hold
the highest offices of trust in their country’s councils, are secretly
working in connection with the Federation,--an organisation which has
spies and eyes in every place, and will spare neither man, woman, nor
child in the terrible vengeance which will be visited upon its enemies.
“The people of England, and especially of London, will know before the
morrow how far-reaching is the arm of the Federation and how pitiless
its vengeance. Let them be warned by what will occur this day on the
Underground railway, and let them beware lest, by hindering either
actively or passively the work of the Federation, they incur that
vengeance.--By order.
“CAPTAIN SHANNON.”
CHAPTER III
THE “DAILY RECORD” TO THE RESCUE
Three days after the explosion, the “Daily Record,” which had from
the first given exceptional prominence to everything connected with
the outrages, issued a special supplement, in which, in a letter to
the people of England, the editor said that in view of the infamous
conspiracy which had been formed against the welfare of the British
Empire, and against the lives of British citizens, the proprietors
of the “Daily Record” had some months ago decided to bring all their
resources, capital, and energy to bear upon the discovery of the
promoters of the conspiracy. In the carrying out of this investigation,
the services of the very ablest English and foreign detectives had been
engaged, their instructions being that, so long as absolute secrecy was
observed and ultimate success attained, the question of expense was to
remain entirely unconsidered. As a result, he was now able to supply
the names and, in three cases, personal descriptions and portraits of
seven men who were beyond all question the leaders of the movement,
and one of whom--though which he regretted he was at present unable
to say--the notorious Captain Shannon himself. The proprietors of the
“Record” had not intended, he said, to make known their discoveries
until the investigation had reached a more forward and satisfactory
stage, but in view of what had recently occurred they had decided that
it would not be right to withhold any information which might assist
in bringing the perpetrators of the diabolical outrage to justice. In
conclusion, he announced that the proprietors of the “Daily Record”
were prepared to offer the following rewards:--
First, they would pay to any person, by means of whose information the
capture had been effected, a reward of £3,000 per head for the arrest
of any of the seven men whose names appeared on the list.
Secondly, to any person who would give such information as would lead
to the arrest of Captain Shannon, and at the same time furnish proof of
his identity, they would pay a reward of £20,000.
And in offering these rewards they made no exception in regard to the
persons who were eligible to claim them. So long as the person claiming
the reward or rewards had supplied the information which led to the
arrest or arrests of the individuals indicated, the money should be
faithfully paid without question or reservation.
Needless to say the publication of this letter, with the names, and
in three cases with portraits, of the men who were asserted to be the
leaders of the conspiracy, and the offer of such large rewards, created
a profound sensation not only in England and Ireland, but in America
and on the Continent.
One or two of the “Daily Record’s” contemporaries did not hesitate to
censure the action which had been taken as an advertising dodge, and a
well-known Conservative organ declared that such a direct insult to the
authorities was calculated seriously to injure the national prestige of
England; that the Government had made every possible effort to protect
society and to bring the perpetrators of the recent outrages to book,
and that the result of the “Record’s” rash and ill-advised procedures
would be to stultify the action of the police and to defeat the ends
of justice.
On the other hand, the public generally--especially in view of the
fact that the “Record” had succeeded in discovering who were the
leaders of the conspiracy (which the police had apparently failed to
do)--was inclined to give the editor and the proprietors credit for the
patriotism they claimed, and it was confidently believed that the offer
of so large a reward would tempt some one to turn informer and to give
up his confederates to justice.
What the “Daily Record” did for England the “Dublin News”--which had
been consistently loyal throughout, and the most fearlessly outspoken
of all the Irish Press in its denunciation of Captain Shannon--did
for Ireland. It hailed the proprietors and editor of the “Record”
as patriots, declaring that, in view of the inefficiency which the
Government had displayed in their efforts to protect the public, it
was high time that the public should bestir itself and take the matter
into its own hand. It reprinted--by the permission of the “Record”--the
descriptions and portraits of the “suspects,” and distributed them
broadcast over the country, and it announced that it would add to the
amount which was offered by the “Daily Record” for information which
would lead to the arrest of Captain Shannon the sum of £5,000.
CHAPTER IV
THE MURDER IN FLEET STREET
Ten A. M. is a comparatively quiet hour in Fleet Street. The sale of
morning papers has practically dropped, and as the second edition
of those afternoon journals, of which no one ever sees a first, has
not yet been served out to the clamouring and hustling mob at the
distributing centres, no vociferating newsboys, aproned with placards
of “Sun,” “News,” “Echo” or “Star,” have as yet taken possession of the
street corners and pavement kerbs.
On the morning of which I am writing, the newspaper world was sadly in
want of a sensation. A royal personage had, it is true, put off the
crown corruptible for one which would press less heavily on his brow;
but he had, as a pressman phrased it, “given away the entire situation”
by allowing himself for a fortnight to be announced as “dying.” This,
Fleet Street resented as unartistic, and partaking of the nature of an
anti-climax. Better things, it considered, might have been expected
from so eminent an individual; and as such a way of making an end
was not to be encouraged, the Press had, as a warning to other royal
personages, passed by the event as comparatively unimportant.
It was true, too, that the Heir Apparent had on the previous evening
entered a carriage on the Underground Railway as it was on the point
of starting, and that the placards of the “special” editions had in
consequence announced an “Alarming Accident to the Prince of Wales,”
which, when H. R. H. had contemptuously remarked that there never had
been an approach to danger, was changed in the “extra specials” to
“The Prince describes his Narrow Escape.”
The incident had, however, been severely commented on as
“sensation-mongering” by the morning papers (badly in want of a
sensation themselves), and was now practically closed, so that the
alliterative artist of the “Morning Advertiser’s” placards had nothing
better upon which to exercise his ingenuity than a “Conflict among
County Councillors,” and the “Daily Chronicle’s” most exciting contents
were a poem by Mr. Richard le Gallienne and a letter from Mr. Bernard
Shaw. Nor was anything doing in the aristocratic world. Not a single
duke, marquis, earl, viscount, or baron was appearing as respondent or
co-respondent in a divorce case, or as actor in any turf or society
scandal, and there was a widespread feeling that the aristocracy, as a
whole, was not doing its duty to the country.
As a matter of fact, one among many results of the sudden cessation,
three months since, of every sort of Anarchistic outrage, had been
that the daily papers could not seem other than flat reading to a
public which had previously opened these same prints each morning
with apprehension and anxiety. Though the vigorous action taken by
the editor of the “Daily Record,” in London, and of the “Dublin
News,” in Dublin, had not, as had been expected, led to the arrest of
Captain Shannon or his colleagues, it had apparently so alarmed the
conspirators as to cause them to abandon their plan of campaign. The
general opinion was that Captain Shannon, finding so much was known,
and that, though his own identity had not been fixed, the personality
of the leaders of the conspiracy was no longer a secret, had deemed it
advisable to flee the country, lest the offer of so large a reward as
£25,000 should tempt the cupidity of some of his colleagues. And as it
always had been believed that he was the prime source and author of the
whole diabolical conspiracy, the cessation of the outrages was regarded
as a natural consequence of his defalcation.
I was thinking of Captain Shannon and of the suddenness with which he
had dropped out of public notice while I walked up Fleet Street on
this particular morning. As I passed the “Daily Chronicle” buildings
and glanced at the placards displayed in the window I could not help
contrasting in my mind the unimportant occurrences which were there in
small type set forth, with the news of the terrible outrage which had
leapt to meet the eye from the same window three months since. Just as
I approached the office of the “Daily Record” I heard the sound of the
sudden and hurried flinging open of a door, and the next moment a man,
wild-eyed, white-faced, and hatless, rushed out into the road shouting,
“Murder! murder! police! murder!” at the top of his voice.
In an instant the restless, hurrying human streams that ebb and flow
ceaselessly in the narrow channel of Fleet Street--like contending
rivers running between lofty banks--had surged up in a huge wave around
him. In the next a policeman, pushing back the crowd with his right
hand and his left, had forced a way to the man’s side, inquiring
gruffly, “Now then, what’s up? And where?”
“Murder! The editor’s just been stabbed in his room by Captain Shannon
or one of his agents. Don’t let any one out. The assassin may not have
had time to get away,” was the rejoinder.
There are no police officers more efficient and prompt to act than
those of the City of London, and on this occasion they acquitted
themselves admirably. Other constables had now hurried up, and at once
proceeded to clear a space in front of the “Record” office, forming a
cordon on each side of the road, and allowing no one to pass in or out.
A messenger was despatched in haste for the nearest doctor, and when
guards had been set at every entrance to, and possible exit from, the
“Record” office, two policemen passed within the building to pursue
inquiries, and the doors were shut and locked. Among the crowd outside
the wildest rumours and speculations were rife.
“The editor of the ‘Record’ had been murdered by Captain Shannon
himself, who had come on purpose to wreak vengeance for the attitude
the paper had taken up in regard to the conspiracy.”
“The murderer had been caught red-handed and was now in custody of the
police.”
“The murderer was concealed somewhere on the premises, and had in his
possession an infernal machine with which it would be possible to wreck
half Fleet Street.”
(This last report had the effect of causing a temporary diversion in
favour of the side streets.)
“The murderers had got clean away and the whole staff of the ‘Record’
had been arrested on suspicion.” These and many other rumours were
passed from mouth to mouth and repeated with astonishing variations
until the arrival of the doctor, who was by various well-informed
persons promptly recognised as, and authoritatively pronounced to be,
Captain Shaw, the Chief Commissioner of Police, the Lord Mayor, and Sir
Augustus Harris.
Every door, window, and letter-box became an object of fearsome
curiosity. People were half inclined to wonder how they could so many
times have passed the “Record” office without recognising something of
impending tragedy about the building--something of historic interest
in the shape of the very window-panes and key-holes. One man among
the crowd attained enviable celebrity by announcing that he “see the
editor go up that passage and through that door--the very door where
he’d gone through that morning afore he was murdered--scores of times,
_and didn’t think nothink of it_,” which last admission seemed to
impress the crowd with the fact that here at least was a fellow whose
praiseworthy modesty deserved encouragement.
Meanwhile no sign of anything having transpired was to be seen within
the building, and people were beginning to get impatient when, from
somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Thames Embankment, came that
sound so familiar to Cockney ears--a sound which no true Londoner can
hear with indifference--the hoarse vociferation of the newsvendors
proclaiming some sensational news. At first it was nothing but a
distant babel, like the husky barking of dogs, but as it drew nearer
the shouts became more distinguishable, and I caught the words, “’Ere
yer are, sir! ‘Sun,’ sir! Murder of a heditor this mornin’! ’Ere yer
are, sir!”
“That’s smart, that is!” said a fellow who was standing next to me in
the crowd. “T. P. O’Connor don’t let no grass grow under his feet, ’e
don’t. Why, the murdered man ain’t ’ardly cold, and ’ere it is all in
the ‘Sun!’”
“Shut yer jaw,” said a woman near him. “’Tain’t this murder at
all--can’t yer ’ear?” And then as the moving babel, like a slowly
travelling storm-cloud, drew nearer and nearer and finally burst upon
Fleet Street, we could make out what the newsvendors were hoarsely
vociferating.
“’Ere yer are, sir! ‘Sun,’ sir! Murder o’ the heditor o’ the ‘Dublin
News’ this mornin’. Capture o’ the hassassin, who turns hinformer.
Captain Shannon’s name and hidentity disclosed. The ’ole ’ideous plot
laid bare. ’Ere yer are, sir!”
Elbowing my way as best I could through the crowd, I succeeded at last
in getting within a yard or two of a newsboy, and, by offering him a
shilling and telling him not to mind the change, possessed myself of a
“Sun.” This is what I read at the top of the centre page:--
“The editor of the ‘Dublin News’ was stabbed in the street at an
early hour this morning. The murderer was captured and has now turned
informer. The police refuse to give any information in regard to what
has been divulged, but there is no doubt that Captain Shannon’s name
and identity have at last been disclosed, and that the whole hideous
conspiracy is now laid bare. Further particulars in our next edition.”
CHAPTER V
THE IDENTITY OF CAPTAIN SHANNON DISCLOSED AT LAST
The news that the captured conspirator had turned informer and
divulged the name and identity of Captain Shannon created, as may be
supposed, the wildest excitement. Contrary to general expectation, the
authorities seemed willing to accord information instead of withholding
it, though whether this was not as much due to gratification at finding
themselves in the novel position of having any information to accord,
as to their desire to allay public anxiety, may be questioned.
The editor of the “Dublin News” had, it seemed, been speaking at a
public dinner and was returning between twelve and one o’clock from
the gathering. As it was a close night and the room had been hot, he
mentioned to a friend that he thought he should walk home instead of
driving. This he had apparently done, for a police constable who was
standing in the shadow of a doorway near the editor’s residence saw him
turn the corner of the street closely followed by another man who was
presumably begging. The editor stopped and put his hand in his pocket
as if to search for a coin, and as he did so the supposed beggar struck
at him, apparently with a knife. The unfortunate gentleman fell without
a cry, and the assassin then stooped over him to repeat the blow,
after which he started to run at full speed in the direction of the
constable, who drew back within the doorway until the runner was almost
upon him, when he promptly tripped his man up and held him down until
assistance arrived. When taken to the station the prisoner at first
denied, with much bluster, all knowledge of the crime; but when he
learned, with evident dismay, that the murder had been witnessed, and
saw the damning evidence of guilt in the shape of blood-spattering upon
his right sleeve, his bluster gave place to the most grovelling terror,
and though he refused to give any account of himself he was removed to
a cell in a state of complete collapse.
The next morning his condition was even more abject. The result of his
self-communings had apparently been to convince him that the hangman’s
hand was already upon him, and that his only chance of saving his neck
lay in turning informer and throwing himself upon the mercy of the
authorities. The wretched creature implored the police to believe that
he was no assassin by his own choice, and that the murder would never
have been committed had he not gone in fear of his life from the spies
and agents of Captain Shannon, whose instructions he dared not disobey.
He expressed his readiness to reveal all he knew of the conspiracy,
and declared that he was not only aware who Captain Shannon was, but
actually had a portrait of the arch-conspirator which he was prepared
to hand over to the police. He then went on to say that the murder of
the editor of the “Dublin News” was to be companioned in London by the
murder of the editor of the “Daily Record.”
On hearing this last startling piece of news the Dublin police wired
immediately to New Scotland Yard and to the London office of the “Daily
Record,” but the warning arrived at the latter place a few minutes too
late, for when the telegram was taken to the editor’s room he was found
lying stabbed through the heart.
An alarm was raised as already described, the doors locked, and every
one within the building subjected to the severest examination, but all
that could be discovered was that a well-groomed and young-looking man,
dressed and speaking like a gentleman, had called some ten minutes
before, saying that he had an appointment with the editor. He had
sent up the name of Mr. Hyram B. Todd, of Boston, and the editor’s
reply had been, “Show the gentleman in.” Why this unknown stranger was
allowed access to an editor who is generally supposed to be entirely
inaccessible to outsiders, there was not a particle of evidence to
show. All that was known was that a minute or two before the murder
had been discovered, the supposed Mr. Todd came out from the editor’s
room, turning back to nod “Good-morning; and thank you very much” at
the door, after closing which he left the building. No cry or noise of
scuffling had been heard, but, from the fact that the editor was lying
face downwards over a table upon which papers were generally kept, it
was supposed that he had risen from his chair and walked across the
room to this table to look for a manuscript or memorandum. To do so he
must have turned his back upon the visitor, who had apparently seized
the opportunity to stab his victim to the heart, and had then left the
office just in time to escape detection.
The importance of the arrest which had been made was fully realized
when, two days after its occurrence, the name, personal description,
and portrait of Captain Shannon were posted up on every police-station
in the kingdom, with the announcement that the Government would pay a
reward of £5,000 for information which should lead to his arrest.
He was, it seemed, the fourth man on the “Daily Record’s” list, his
name being James Mullen, an Irish-American, and was described as
between forty and fifty years of age, short, and slightly lame. In
complexion he was stated to be dark, with brown hair and bushy beard,
but his most distinguishable feature was said to be his eyes, which
were described as particularly full and fine, with heavy lids.
Then came the portrait, which, the instant I looked at it, startled
me strangely. The face as I saw it there was unknown to me; but that
somewhere and sometime in my life I had seen the face--not of some
one resembling this man, but of the very man himself--I was positive,
though under what circumstances I could not, for the life of me,
remember. I have as a rule an excellent memory, and I attribute this
very largely to the fact that I _never allow myself to forget_.
Memory, like the lamp which came into the possession of Aladdin, can
summon magicians to aid us at call. But memory is a lamp which must
be kept bright by constant usage, or it ceases to retain its power.
The slave-sprites serve mortals none too willingly, and if, when you
rub the lamp, the attendant sprite come not readily to your call, and
you, through indolence, allow him to slip back into the blue, be sure
that when next you seek his offices he will again be mutinous. And if
on that occasion you compel him not, he will become more and ever more
slack in his service, and finally will shake off his allegiance and
cease to do your bidding at all.
Hence, as I have said, I never _allow myself to forget_, though when I
stumble upon a stubborn matter I go like a dog with a thorn in his foot
till the thing be found. Such a matter was it to remember where and
when I had seen the face that so reminded me of Captain Shannon. Day
after day went by, and yet, cudgel my brains as I would, I could get
no nearer to tracing the connection, and but for sheer obstinacy had
pitched the whole concern out of my mind and gone about my business.
Sometimes I was nigh persuaded that the thing I sought was sentient
and alive, and was dodging me of pure devilry and set purpose. Once it
tweaked me, as it were, by the ear, as if to whisper therein the words
I was wanting, but when I turned to attend it, lo! it was gone at a
bound and was making mouths at me round a corner. It seemed as if--as
sportsmen tell us of the fox--the creature rather enjoyed being hunted
than otherwise, and entered into the sport with as much zest as the
sportsman. Sometimes it cast in my way a colour, a sound, or an odour
(I noticed that when I smelt tobacco I seemed, as the children say, to
be getting “warmer”) which set me off again in wild pursuit and with
some promise of success. And then when I had for the fiftieth time
abandoned the profitless chase, and, so to speak, returned home and
shut myself up within my own walls, it doubled back to give a runaway
knock at my door, only to mock me when I rushed out by the flutter of a
garment in the act of vanishing.
But I was resolved that not all its freaks should avail it ultimately
to escape me, for though I had to hunt it through every by-way and
convolution of my brain, I was determined to give myself no rest till I
had laid it by the heels,--and lay it by the heels I eventually did,
as you shall shortly hear.
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes is of opinion that “Memory, imagination,
old sentiments and associations, are more readily reached through the
sense of smell than by almost any other channel.” The probable reason
for this strange connection between the sense of smell and the mind
is, he tells us, “because the olfactory nerve is the only one directly
connected with the hemispheres of the brain--the part in which we
have every reason to believe the intellectual processes are carried
on. To speak more truly,” he continues, “the olfactory nerve is not a
nerve at all, but a part of the brain in intimate connection with its
anterior lobes. Contrast the sense of taste as a source of suggestive
impressions with that of smell. Now the nerve of taste has no immediate
connection with the brain proper, but only with the prolongation of
the spinal cord.”
Curiously enough, it was in connection with a scent that I ultimately
succeeded in recalling where and under what circumstances I had seen
the face of which I was in search, and but for the fact of my having
smelt a particular odour in a particular place this narrative would
never have been written.
I have said that when I smelt tobacco I felt that I was, as the
children say, “getting warmer.” But, unfortunately, tobacco in the
shape of pipe, cigar, or cigarette is in my mouth whenever I have an
excuse for the indulgence, and often when I have none. Hence, though
the face I sought seemed more than once to loom out at me through
tobacco smoke, I had watched too many faces through that pleasing mist
to be able to recall the particular circumstances under which I had
seen the one in question. Nevertheless, it was tobacco which ultimately
gave me my clue.
The morning was very windy, and I had three times unsuccessfully
essayed to light my cigar with an ordinary match. In despair--for in
a general way I hate fusees like poison--I bought a box of vesuvians
which an observant and enterprising match-vendor promptly thrust under
my nose. As I struck the vile thing and the pestilent smell assailed
my nostrils, the scene I was seeking to recall came back to me. I was
sitting in a third-class smoking carriage on the London, Tilbury, and
Southend Railway, and opposite to me was a little talkative man who
had previously lit his pipe with a fusee. I saw him take out the box
evidently with the intention of striking another, and then I heard a
voice say, “For heaven’s sake, sir, don’t stink the carriage out again
with that filthy thing! Pray allow me to give you a match.”
The speaker was sitting directly in front of me, and as I recalled his
face while I stood there in the street with the still unlighted cigar
between my lips, the open box in one hand and the now burnt-out fusee
arrested half-way toward the cigar-tip in the other, I knew that his
face was the face of Captain Shannon.
CHAPTER VI
I MAKE UP MY MIND TO FIND CAPTAIN SHANNON
The striking of that fusee was a critical moment in my life, for before
the thing had hissed itself into a black and crackling cinder I had
decided to follow up the clue which had been so strangely thrown in my
way. My principal reason for so deciding was that I wanted a rest--the
rest of a change of occupation, not the rest of inaction. I am by
profession what George Borrow would have called “one of the writing
fellows.” But, much as I love my craft, and generous and large-hearted
as I have always found literary men--at all events, large-brained
literary men--to be, I cannot profess much admiration for the fussy
folk who seem to imagine that God made our world and the infinite
worlds around it, life and death, and the human heart, with its joys
and sorrows and hope of immortality, for no other reason than that they
should have something to write about.
Instead of recognising that it is only life and the unintelligible
mystery of life which make literature of any consequence, they seem to
fancy that literature is the chief concern and end of man’s being. As
a matter of fact, literature is to life what a dog’s tail is to his
body--a very valuable _appendage_; but the dog must wag the tail, not
the tail the dog, as some of these gentry would have us to believe. The
dog could, at a pinch, make shift to do without the tail, but the tail
could under no circumstances do without the dog.
You may screw a pencil into one end of a pair of compasses and draw as
many circles of different sizes as you please, but it is from the other
end that you must take your centres, and what the pivot end is to the
pencil, life must be to literature.
Hence it is my habit every now and then to put away from me all that is
connected with books and the making of books, and to seek only to live
my life, and to possess my own soul and this wonderful world about us.
At the particular date of which I am writing, the restlessness which
is so often associated with the literary temperament was upon me. I
craved change, excitement, and adventures, and these the following up
of the clue which I held to the identity of Captain Shannon promised in
abundance.
As everything depended upon the assumption that James Mullen _was_,
as was stated, Captain Shannon, the first question which I felt it
necessary seriously to consider was whether the informer’s evidence
was to be credited; and I did not lose sight of the fact that his
confessions, so far from being entitled to be regarded as _bona
fide_ evidence, were to be received with very grave suspicion. At the
_best_ they might be nothing more than the invention of one who had no
information to give, but who hoped by means of them either to prevent,
or at least to stave off for a time, the otherwise inevitable death
sentence which was hanging over his head.
At the _worst_ it was possible that the pretended Queen’s evidence had
been carefully prepared beforehand by Captain Shannon, and communicated
by him to his agents, to be used in the event of any of them falling
into the hands of the police. In that case the statements which
might thus be put forward, so far from being of assistance to the
authorities, would be deliberately constructed with a view to confuse
and mislead.
The one thing which I found it utterly impossible to reconcile with the
theories I had previously formed about Captain Shannon was that the
informer should have in his possession a portrait of his chief.
Was it likely, I asked myself, that so cunning a criminal would,
by allowing his portrait to get into the possession of his agents,
place himself at the mercy of any scoundrel who, for the sake of an
offered reward, would be ready to betray his leader, or of some coward
who, on falling into the hands of the police, might offer to turn
Queen’s evidence? Was it not far more likely, on the contrary, that
the explanation of Captain Shannon’s having so successfully eluded
the police and kept the authorities in ignorance of his very identity
was that he had carefully concealed that identity even from his own
colleagues?
The more I thought about it the more assured I became that so crafty
a man--a man who was not only an artist but a genius in crime--would
trust absolutely no one with a secret that concerned his own safety. On
the few occasions when he would have to come into personal relation
with his confederates, it seemed more than probable to me that he would
assume some definite and consistent disguise which would mislead even
them in regard to his appearance and individuality.
On being asked how the portrait got into his possession, and whether
it was a good likeness, the informer had replied that he had only seen
Captain Shannon on a single occasion, when he met him one night by
appointment at Euston Station. The portrait had been sent home to him
beforehand, so that he might have no difficulty in recognizing the
person to whom he was to deliver a certain package, and he added that,
so far as he could see, it was an excellent likeness.
Some such explanation as this was just what I had expected, for if
the portrait were intended, as I supposed, to mislead the police, I
was sure that Captain Shannon would invent some plausible story to
account for its being in the possession of one of his colleagues.
Otherwise the fact of a man, for whose arrest a large reward had been
offered, having, for no apparent reason, presented his photograph
to a fellow-conspirator, might arouse suspicion of the portrait’s
genuineness.
That the portrait represented not the real but the disguised Captain
Shannon, I was equally confident. I thought it more than possible that
the man I had to find would be the exact opposite of the man who was
there portrayed, and of the informer’s description. For instance, as
the pictured Captain Shannon was evidently dark, and was said to be
dark by the informer, the real Captain Shannon would probably be fair,
as the more dissimilar was the real Captain Shannon from the Captain
Shannon for whom the police were searching, the less likely would they
be to find him.
Then, again, it had been particularly stated by the informer that James
Mullen was slightly lame, and to this the police attached the greatest
importance. The fact that the man they wanted had an infirmity so
easily recognised and so difficult to conceal was considered to narrow
down the field of their investigations to the smallest compass and to
render the fugitive’s ultimate capture nothing less than a certainty.
For myself, I was not at all sure that this supposed lameness was not
part and parcel of Captain Shannon’s disguise. A sound man could easily
simulate lameness, but a lame man could not so simulate soundness of
limb, and I could not help thinking that if Captain Shannon were, as
had been asserted, lame, he would have taken care to conceal the fact
from his confederates.
If the police could be induced to believe that the man they wanted was
lame, they would not, in all probability, be inconveniently suspicious
about the movements of a stranger evidently of sound and equal limb,
who might otherwise be called on to give an account of himself.
Being curious to know what course they were pursuing, I made it my
business within the next few days to scrape an acquaintance with one of
the ticket-collectors at Euston. After propitiating him in the usual
way by a judicious application of “palm-oil,” I ventured to put the
question whether he had at any time noticed a short, dark, lame man on
the platform where the Irish mail started.
A broad grin came over the fellow’s face in reply.
“What, are they on that lay still!” he said, derisively. “I knew you
was after something, but I shouldn’t have took you for a detective.”
I assured him that I was _not_ a detective, and asked him to explain,
whereupon he told me that immediately after the publication of the
portrait of Captain Shannon, instructions had been sent to all railway
stations that a keen look-out was to be kept for a short, dark, lame
man, whether clean-shaven or bearded, and that if a person in any way
resembling James Mullen (whose portrait was placed in the hands of
every ticket-collector), was noticed, the police should instantly be
communicated with.
“Why, if you was to know, sir,” said the collector, “’ow many short,
dark, respectable gents, what ’appens to be lame, have been took up
lately on suspicion, you’d larf, you would. It’s bad enough to be lame
at hany time, but when you’re going to be harrested for a hanarchist as
well, it makes your life a perfect misery, it do.”
CHAPTER VII
MY FIRST MEETING WITH JAMES MULLEN
And now it is high time that I told the reader something more about
the circumstances under which I had seen James Mullen, and why I was so
positive that he and the man in whose company I had travelled down to
Southend were one and the same person.
Firstly, it must be remembered that I sat opposite to my travelling
companion for more than an hour, during which time I had watched him
narrowly; and secondly, that there are some faces which, once seen,
one never forgets. Such a face was the face of the man I had seen on
that eventful journey. His eyes were bright, prominent, and had heavy
lids. His complexion was clear and pale, and his nose was well shaped,
though a little too pronouncedly aquiline. The nostrils were very
unusual, being thin and pinched, but arching upward so curiously that
one might almost fancy a part of the dilatable cuticle on each side
had been cut away. The finely-moulded chin was like the upper lip and
cheek, clean-shaven, and the lips were full and voluptuous. Thick but
fine and straight, straw-coloured hair was carefully brushed over a
well-formed forehead, and the face, taken altogether, was decidedly
distinguished, if not aristocratic, in the firmness of outline and the
shaping of the features.
After the train had started, Mullen sank back into his seat and
appeared to be thinking intently. I noticed that his eyes were never
still a moment, but darted restlessly from object to object in a
way which seemed to indicate great brain excitability. That he was
excitable was clear from his vehement outburst about the fusee; but
almost the next minute he had, so to speak, made amends for his
apparent rudeness by explaining that he was peculiarly sensitive to
smell, and had an especial dislike to fusees.
Nevertheless the sudden change in the expression of his face at the
moment of the outbreak was remarkable. The previously smooth and
unpuckered brows gathered themselves together into two diagonal
wrinkles that met above the nose, which had in the meantime become
beak-like, and the effect recalled in some curious way a bird of prey.
He was soon all smiles again; but once or twice throughout the journey,
when his thoughts were presumably unpleasant, I caught the same
expression, and it was the fact of my seeing in the photograph this
same unmistakable expression on the face of a man who was apparently
a different person which had set me fumbling with such uncertain hand
among the dog’s-eared pages of the past. The eyes, the hawk-like
wrinkling of the brows, and the nose and nostrils were of course the
same, but the addition of the beard, the evident swarthiness of the
skin, and darkening of the hair led to my failing at first to connect
the portrait with my fellow-passenger to Southend. But the missing link
was no sooner found and the connection established than I felt that the
identity of Mullen with the man I had seen in the train admitted of
no uncertainty, especially as, after examining under a powerful lens,
the photograph which the informer had given to the police, I satisfied
myself that the beard was false.
My next step was to set on foot an inquiry into Mullen’s family history
and antecedents. I hoped, and in fact believed, that the clue which
I held to his identity would in itself enable me to trace him, but
at the same time I fully recognised that circumstances might arise
which would render that clue useless and throw me back upon such
information as could be ascertained apart from it. That I should not be
unprepared for such a contingency was very necessary, and I therefore
commissioned a private detective named Green, whom I knew to be able
and trustworthy, to ferret out for me all that could be discovered of
Mullen’s past.
Having wished him good-bye and good luck, I started for Southend,
whither I intended journeying in the company of the little talkative
man with whom Mullen had had the brush about the fusees. I thought it
more than likely that he was a commercial traveller, partly because of
the deferential stress and frequency with which he interpolated the
word “sir” into any remarks he chanced to make, and partly because
of the insinuating politeness with which he addressed Mullen and
myself--politeness which seemed to suggest that he had accustomed
himself to look upon every one with whom he came into contact as a
possible customer, under whose notice he would one day have occasion
to bring the excellence of his wares, and with whom, therefore, he was
anxious to be on good terms.
That he lived at Southend I knew from an observation he had let fall;
and after watching the barrier at Fenchurch Street station for a couple
of hours, I saw him enter an empty third-class smoking compartment five
minutes before the departure of an evening train. Half-a-crown slipped
into the guard’s hand, with a request that he would put me into the
same carriage and reserve it, effected the desired result, and when
the train moved out of the station the little man and myself had the
compartment to ourselves.
I knew from what I had heard of my companion’s remarks on the occasion
when I had journeyed to Southend with him that, though talkative and
inquisitive, he was also shrewd and observant, as men of his occupation
generally are, and as it would be necessary to ask him two or three
pertinent questions, I thought it advisable to let the first advance
come from him. That he was already eyeing me in order to ascertain
whether an overture towards sociability was likely to meet with a
welcome, I could see. The result was apparently satisfactory, for after
an introductory cough he inquired whether I would like the window up or
down.
Always beware on a railway journey, when you wish to be left to the
company of your newspaper, of the man who is unduly anxious for your
comfort. ’Twere wise to roar him at once into silence, for your gentle
answer, instead of turning away wrath, is often too apt to beget it.
Speak him civilly, and you deliver yourself bound into his hands; for
you have scarce made your bow of acknowledgment, sunk back into your
place and taken up your paper again, before his tongue is hammering
banalities about the weather at the thick end of the wedge he has
inserted.
In the present instance, as the little man sat facing the engine
and with the wind blowing directly in his face, whereas I was on the
opposite and sheltered side, the window rights were, according to
the unwritten laws of the road, entirely at his disposal. But as it
suited my purpose to show a friendly front to his advances, I protested
with many thanks that I had no choice in the matter, and awaited with
composure the inevitable observation about the probability of rain
before morning. From the weather and the crops we got to the results
of a wet summer to seaside places generally, and thence to Southend. I
remarked that I thought of taking a house there, and asked him about
the residents.
“Oh, Southend is very much like other places of the sort,” he answered.
“It’s got a great many pleasant and a few objectionable folks. There
are the local celebrities (eminent nobodies I call them), who, it
is true, are very important personages indeed, their importance in
Southend being only equalled by their utter insignificance and total
extinction outside that locality. And there’s a good sprinkling of
gentlemen with ‘sporting’ tendencies. I must tell you, by the bye,
that the qualities which constitute a man a sportsman in Southend are
decided proclivities towards cards, billiards, and whisky--especially
whisky. But take the Southend folk all round they’re the pleasantest of
people, and a chummier little place I never knew.”
I made a great show of laughing at the little man’s description, which,
as he evidently laid himself out to be a wit, put him in the best of
humours with himself and with me, and I then went on to say that I
thought he and I had travelled down together on another occasion, and
reminded him of the fusee incident.
He replied that he did not recollect me, which was not to be wondered
at, for I had sat well back in the darkest corner, and had taken no
part in the conversation. “But I remember the man who objected so to
the fusee,” he went on with a smile. “He _did_ get excited over it,
didn’t he?”
I said that he certainly had done so, and asked with apparent unconcern
whether the man in question was a friend.
“No, I can’t say that he’s a friend,” was the answer; “but I’ve
travelled down with him several times, and always found him very
pleasant company.”
I was glad to hear this, for it satisfied me that the fact of my having
seen Mullen in the Southend train was not due to a chance visit which
might never have been repeated. Had it been so the difficulty of my
undertaking would have been enormously increased, for I should then
have held a clue only to his identity, whereas I had now a clue to his
whereabouts as well.
“But now you mention it” (which, as I had nothing to mention, was not
the case), my companion went on, “now that you mention it--though it
had never struck me before--it is rather strange that, though I’ve
seen our friend several times in the train, I have never once seen
him anywhere in Southend. In a place like that you are bound to see
any one staying there, and in fact I’ve often knocked up against the
same people half a dozen times in an evening, first on the cliffs,
then on the pier, and after that in the town. But I can’t recall ever
once seeing our fusee friend anywhere. It seems as if when he got to
Southend he vanished into space.”
I looked closely at my companion, lest the remark had been made with
intentional significance and indicated that he himself entertained
suspicions of Mullen’s object in visiting Southend. Such was apparently
not the case, however, for after two or three irrelevant observations
he got upon the subject of politics, and continued to bore me with his
own very positive ideas upon the matter for the rest of the journey.
If Mullen were hiding in the neighbourhood of Southend, the chances
were that he was somewhere on board a boat. To take a house of any
sort would necessitate the giving of references, and might lead
to inquiries, and, on the other hand, the keepers of hotels and
lodging-houses are often inconveniently inquisitive, and their servants
are apt to gossip and pry. If Mullen had a small yacht lying off the
town, and lived on board, as men with the yachting craze sometimes do,
the only person who need know anything about his movements would be
the paid hand, or skipper, and it would be comparatively easy to find
a suitable man who was not given to gossip, and to engage him under
some explanation which would effectually prevent his entertaining any
suspicion as to his employer’s identity.
Before commencing my search for Mullen, I thought it advisable to look
up an old friend of mine, Hardy Muir, a painter, who lives a mile or
two out of Southend.
I was sure he would join heart and soul in an enterprise which had
for its object the hunting down of such an enemy of the race as
Captain Shannon; but to have taken him into my confidence would have
been ill-advised, for had we succeeded in laying hands upon that
arch-conspirator, no one could have prevented Muir from then and there
pounding the monster into a pulp. Personally I had no objection to
such a proceeding, but as I considered that the ends of justice would
be better served by the handing over to the authorities of Captain
Shannon’s person in the whole, rather than in pieces, I decided to
withhold from my impetuous friend the exact reason for my being in
Southend.
As a matter of fact, it was not his assistance that I needed, but that
of a very quiet-tongued, shrewd, and reliable man named Quickly, who
was employed by Muir as skipper of his yacht. It occurred to me that
Quickly would be the very person to find out what I wanted to know
about the boats, concerning which I was unable to satisfy myself. Men
of his class gossip among themselves very freely, and inquiries made by
him would seem as natural as the curiosity of the servants’ hall about
the affairs of masters and mistresses, whereas the same inquiries made
by me, a stranger, would be certain to arouse suspicion, and might even
reach the ears of Mullen himself were he in the neighbourhood.
“All serene, my boy,” said Muir, when I told him that I wanted
Quickly’s help for a few days on a matter about which I was not at
liberty to speak for the present. “You’re just in time. Quickly was
going out with me in the boat, but I’ll call him in.”
“Quickly,” he said, when the skipper presented himself, “this is my
friend Mr. Max Rissler, whom you know. Well, Mr. Rissler’s a very
particular friend of mine, and by obliging him you’ll be obliging me.
He’s to be your master for the next day or two, and I want you to do
just as he tells you, and to keep your mouth shut about it. Now Mr.
Rissler’s going to have some lunch with me. In the meantime, you go
into the kitchen and play ‘Rule Britannia’ on the cold beef and beer,
and be ready to go into Southend with him by the next train, as he’s in
a hurry and wants to set to work this afternoon.”
And set to work we did that very afternoon, the plan pursued being to
make out a list of all the vessels lying off the neighbourhood, and to
ascertain the owners, and whether there was any one else on board. The
task was not difficult, as Quickly seemed to know the name and history
of almost every craft afloat, but the result was disappointing, for
not all our inquiries could discover any one answering to Mullen’s
description, or indeed any one whose presence was not satisfactorily
accounted for.
Even the Nore lightship, which lies several miles out to sea, was not
forgotten, for the very first idea which occurred to me in connection
with Southend and Mullen was, what a snug and out-of-the-world
hiding-place the vessel would make, were it possible to obtain shelter
there.
Had there been only one man in charge, it was not inconceivable that
he might--like the jailer who assisted the head centre, James Stephen,
to escape from Dublin jail in 1865--have been a secret sympathizer
with the conspirators, or at all events in their pay, and that a
fugitive who could offer a sufficiently tempting bribe might succeed in
obtaining shelter and the promise of silence.
I found on inquiry, however, that there was quite a crew on board, and
that the lightship is frequently visited by the Trinity House boats, so
the chance of any one being concealed there was out of the question.
But though I dismissed the lightship from my consideration, I could
not help asking myself if there might not be some similar place in
the neighbourhood of Southend to which the objection which rendered
the Nore lightship impossible as a hiding place would not apply, and
even as I did so the thought of the dynamite hulks off Canvey Island
occurred to me.
CHAPTER VIII
THE DYNAMITE HULK
No one who has not visited Canvey would believe that so lonely and
out-of-the-world a spot could exist within thirty miles of London. Just
as we sometimes find, within half-a-dozen paces of a great central
city thoroughfare, where the black and pursuing streams of passengers
who throng its pavements never cease to flow, and the roar of traffic
is never still, some silent and unsuspected alley or court into which
no stranger turns aside, and where any sound but that of a slinking
footstep is seldom heard,--so, bordering the great world-thoroughfare
of the Thames, is to be found a spot where life seems stagnant, and
where scarcely one of the thousands who pass within a stone’s throw has
ever set foot.
Where the Thames swings round within sight of the sea, there lies, well
out of the sweep of the current, a pear-shaped island, some six miles
long and three miles broad, which is known as Canvey.
Three hundred years ago it was practically uninhabitable, for at high
tide the marshes were flooded by the sea, and it was not until 1623
that James I. invited a Dutchman named Joas Croppenburg and his friends
to settle there, offering them a third for themselves if they could
reclaim the island from the sea. This offer the enterprising Dutchman
accepted, and immediately set to work to build a sea-wall, which so
effectually protects the low-lying marsh-land, that, standing inside
it, one seems to be at a lower level than the water, and can see only
the topmost spars and sails of the apparently bodiless barges and boats
which glide ghost-like by.
But the most noticeable features in the scenery of Canvey are the
evil-looking dynamite hulks which lie scowling on the water like huge
black and red-barred coffins. Upwards of a dozen of these nests of
devilry are moored off the island, and they are the first objects to
catch the eye as one looks out from the sea wall.
In view of the fact that the position of Canvey in regard to one of the
greatest water highways in the world is like that of a house which lies
only a few yards back from a main road, one wonders at first that such
a locality should have been selected as the storage place of so vast
a quantity of a deadly explosive. That it was so selected only after
the matter had received the most careful and serious consideration of
the authorities is certain; and though very nearly the whole of the
shipping which enters the Thames must necessarily pass almost within
hail of the island, the spot is so remote and out of the world that it
is doubtful if any safer or securer place could have been found.
The dynamite magazines consist, as the name indicates, of the
dismantled hulks of old merchant vessels, which, though long past
active service, are still water-tight. One man only is in charge of
each hulk, which he is not supposed to leave, everything that he needs
being obtained for him by the boatman, whose sole duty it is to fetch
and carry for the hulk-keepers.
Not only is a hulk-keeper who happens to be married forbidden to
have his children with him, but even the presence of his wife is
disallowed, his instructions being that no one but himself is under any
circumstances to come on board.
These rules are not, however, very rigidly complied with. A hulk-keeper
is only human, and as his life is lonely it often happens that when
visitors row out to the ship he is by no means displeased to see them,
and half-a-crown will frequently procure admittance, not only to his
own quarters, but to the hold where the explosive itself is stored
in small oblong wooden boxes, each containing fifty pounds. Nor are
instances unknown where the solitude of a married hulk-keeper’s life
has been cheered by the presence of his wife, the good lady joining
her husband immediately after an inspection and remaining with him
until such time as another visit may be looked for. Even if the fact
of her presence on board becomes known on the island the matter is
considered as nobody’s business but the inspector’s, and the love of an
officer of the Crown is not so great among watermen and villagers as to
lead them to go out of their way to assist him in the execution of his
duty.
Had I not had reason to suppose that Mullen was somewhere in the
neighbourhood of Southend, the possibility of his being on one of these
hulks would never have occurred to me. But the more I thought of it the
more I was impressed with the facilities which such a place afforded
for a fugitive to lie in hiding, and I promptly decided that before I
dismissed the hulks from my consideration I must first satisfy myself
that the man I was looking for was on none of them.
A point which I did not lose sight of was that it was quite possible
for a hulk-keeper who was taciturn by nature, and not prone to
encourage gossip, to remain in entire ignorance of what was taking
place throughout the country, and of the reward which had been offered
for the apprehension of Captain Shannon. In fact there is at this
moment in charge of one of the hulks off Canvey a man who is never
known to go ashore, to receive visitors, or to enter into conversation.
Whether he is unable to read I cannot say, but at all events he never
asks for a newspaper, so that it is conceivable that he may not
know--happy man!--whether the Conservatives or Liberals are in power,
or whether England is ruled by Queen Victoria or by Edward the Seventh.
The first thing to be done was to make out a list of the dynamite
hulks--just as I had made a list of the boats off Southend--and then to
take the vessels one by one and satisfy myself that no one was there
in hiding. I need not more fully describe the details of the various
inquiries than to say that, in order to avoid attracting attention,
they were made as at Southend by the waterman Quickly.
Most of the hulks are moored in the creek within sight of Hole Haven,
where the principal inn of the island is situated, and all these we
were soon able to dismiss from our calculation. But there was one hulk,
the “Cuban Queen,” lying, not in the shelter of the creek, but in a
much more lonely spot directly off Canvey, in regard to which I was not
able to come to a conclusion. It lay in deeper water, nearly a mile
out, and no one seemed to know much about the man in charge except that
he was named Hughes and was married. He very rarely came on shore,
but when he did so, returned immediately to his ship without speaking
to anybody, and it was generally believed on the island that he often
had his wife with him. That he _had_ some one,--wife or otherwise,--on
board I soon satisfied myself, and that by very simple means.
The man whose duty it was to wait upon the hulk-keepers was, I found,
a methodical sort of fellow and kept a memorandum book in which he
wrote down the different articles he was instructed to obtain. This
book Quickly managed to get hold of for me, and on looking over it I
saw that from a certain time,--dating some months back,--the supply
of provisions ordered by Hughes had doubled in quantity. This might,
of course, be due to the fact that his wife was on board; and, indeed,
Quickly reported that the hulk attendant had remarked to him, “Hughes
have got his old woman on the ‘Cuban Queen.’ I see her a-rowing
about one night in the dinghy.” But I had made another and much more
significant discovery when looking over the book,--a discovery which
the presence of Hughes’ wife did not altogether explain. This was _that
not only had the quantity of food supplied to Hughes been largely
increased, but that the quality too was vastly superior_.
The man in attendance on the hulk had probably failed to notice this
fact, and I did not deem it advisable to arouse his suspicion by making
further inquiries. But I at once decided that before I put against the
name of the “Cuban Queen” the little tick which signified that I might
henceforth dismiss it from consideration, I should have to make the
personal acquaintance of “Mrs. Hughes.”
CHAPTER IX
I TAKE UP MY QUARTERS AT CANVEY
Up to this point I had, as far as possible, avoided visiting the island
myself, but I now came to the conclusion that the time had come when it
would be necessary to carry on my investigations in person. Fortunately
there was not wanting an excuse by which I could do so without arousing
suspicion. My friend Muir, who is an ardent sportsman, rents a part
of Canvey to shoot over. Hence he is a very familiar figure there, and
is known and loved by every man, woman, child, and dog. To go as his
friend would, I knew, insure me a ready welcome, so I got him to row
me over once or twice in his boat, and then, when we had been seen
frequently in each other’s company, to ask the landlord of the inn at
Hole Haven to find me a bed for a week or two, as I was a friend of his
who had come to Canvey for some shooting. By this means I was able to
keep a constant watch upon the “Cuban Queen” without being noticed by
Hughes, for the sea-wall, as I have elsewhere said, was so high that,
standing outside, one is invisible from the water, but anybody inside,
who wishes to look out to sea, can walk up the sloping bank on the
inner side of the wall until his eyes are level with the top, and then
can peer through the long weedy grasses without attracting attention.
A week passed uneventfully, and then Muir came over, accompanied by
Quickly, for an afternoon’s shooting. After a late lunch we made our
way on foot, and inside the sea-wall, towards the eastern end of the
island. My interest in the sport was not very keen, for I was keeping
half an eye meanwhile upon the hulk; but by the time we started to
retrace our steps it was becoming dark. Just as we reached the point
off which the “Cuban Queen” was lying I fancied I heard the stealthy
dip of oars, and asking Muir and Quickly to wait a moment, I peered
over the sea-wall. Some one was coming on shore from the “Cuban Queen”
under cover of twilight, and instead of making for the usual “hard”
at Hole Haven, the oarsman, whoever he might be, clearly intended
effecting a landing in some more secluded spot. I stole softly back
to Muir and Quickly, telling them what I had seen, and asking them to
crouch down with me under cover of some bushes to wait events.
That there were two persons in the boat was evident, for in another
minute we heard the grinding of the keel upon the shingle, followed by
a few whispered words. A low voice said, “Pass me out the parcel and
I’ll push her off.” Again we heard the stones scrunch as the boat was
slid back into the water. “Good-nights” were exchanged, and receding
oar-dips told us that the boat was returning to the hulk. Then somebody
climbed the sea-wall, and stood still for half a minute as if looking
around to make sure that no one was in sight. Our hiding-place was
fortunately well in shadow, and we ran very little risk of discovery,
but it was not until the person who had landed had turned and taken
some steps in the opposite direction that I ventured to lift my head.
Night was fast closing in, but standing as the new-comer was upon the
sea-wall, silhouetted against the darkening sky, I could distinctly
see that the figure was a woman’s. “Hughes’ old woman, zur,” Quickly
whispered in my ear; but I motioned to him to be silent, and so we
remained for a few seconds.
Then Muir spoke, with evident disgust, and not in a whisper either:
“Look here, Master Max Rissler, eaves-dropping and foxing about after
women isn’t in my line. You haven’t told me what your little game is,
and I haven’t asked you. I’ve a great respect for you, as you know, but
if you’re playing tricks with that poor devil’s wife, why, damme, man,
I’d as soon knock your jib amidships as look at you.”
I could have strangled the big-hearted blundering Briton, but had to
content myself with shaking a fist at him and grinding my teeth with
vexation until I grinned, for “Mrs. Hughes” was still within earshot.
It did not lessen my annoyance to know, from the approving grimace
which I could feel, rather than see, on the generally expressionless
face of Quickly, that he also credited me with evil designs upon “Mrs.
Hughes,” and shared his master’s sentiments.
Him too I was strongly moved to strangle; and that I resisted the
temptation was due chiefly to the fact that I had present need of his
services.
“Look here, old man!” I said to Muir when I thought it safe to speak.
“Did you ever know me do a dirty action?”
“Never, my boy,” he responded promptly.
“Well I _can’t_ tell you my purpose in this business just now, except
to say that if you knew it you’d be with me heart and soul, and that
if my surmise is right the person we have just seen dressed like a
woman isn’t a woman at all but a man. He isn’t going to Hole Haven, for
he’s just turned down the path that leads to the ferry at Benfleet. It
looks as if he meant catching the nine o’clock train for London from
Southend. He must be followed, but not by me, and for two reasons:
the first is that while he’s away I must get by hook or by crook upon
the ‘Cuban Queen;’ the second is that I don’t want him to see me, as
in that case he’d know me again. Will you trust me that all’s square
until I can tell you the whole story, and in the meantime will you let
Quickly follow that man and try to find out for me where he goes? It is
most important that I should know.”
“All serene, my boy,” said Muir, slapping his great hand into mine too
vigorously to be altogether pleasant, and too loudly to be discreet
under the circumstances. “All serene; I’ll trust you up to the hilt;
and I’m sorry I spoke. Do what you like about the skipper, and I’ll
never ask a question.”
I turned to Quickly: “Can you get round to the station without being
seen, before that person gets there, so that he shan’t suppose he’s
followed?”
“Ees zur,” said Quickly, “if I go through the churchyard and cross yon
field.”
“Off you go, then,” I said. “Here are three pounds for expenses. Get
to the station before he does and keep an eye for him from the window
of the men’s waiting-room, where he can’t see you. If he goes into any
waiting-room it will have to be into the ladies’, while he has that
dress on. So you go into the general room. But take tickets before
he gets there, one to Shoeburyness, which is as far as the line goes
one way, and the other to London, which is as far as it goes in the
opposite direction. If he waits for the next down train, you wait
too, and go where he goes, but if he takes the up train to London,
slip out and into the same train when his back is turned. Wherever he
goes, up or down, you’re to go too, and when he gets out, shadow him,
without being seen yourself, and make a note of any place he calls at.
Then when you’ve run him to earth, telegraph to Mr. Muir at the inn
here--not to me--saying where you are, and I’ll join you next train.
But keep your eyes open at all the stations the train stops at to see
he doesn’t get out and give you the slip. Do this job well and carry it
through and there’ll be a couple of ten-pound notes for you when you
get back. And now be off.”
CHAPTER X
I BOARD THE “CUBAN QUEEN”
The opportunity to pay a surprise visit to the “Cuban Queen” in the
absence of “Mrs. Hughes” had come at last, and as I had already hit
upon a plan by which I might carry out my purpose, without giving
Hughes cause to suspect that my happening upon him was other than
accidental, I proceeded at once to put it into effect.
Telling Muir that I would rejoin him at the inn before long, I slipped
off my clothes, tossed them together in a heap on the beach with a big
stone atop to keep them from being blown away, and plunged into the
water. I am a strong swimmer, and the tide was running out so swiftly
that when I reached the “Cuban Queen,” which was moored about a mile
from shore, I was not in the least “winded,” and indeed felt more
than fit to fight my way back against the current. But, in order that
the game should work out as I had planned, it was necessary for me to
assume the appearance of being extremely exhausted. Hence when I found
myself approaching the hulk I began to make a pretence of swimming
feebly, panting noisily meanwhile, and sending up the most pitiful
cries for help.
As I had expected and intended, Hughes came on deck, and looking over
the ship’s side inquired loudly, “Wot’s the ---- row?”
Hughes, I may here remark, was, as I soon discovered (you could not be
in his company for half a minute without doing so), a man of painfully
limited vocabulary. Perhaps I should say that his colour sense had
been developed at the expense of his vocabulary, for if he did not
see everything in a rose-coloured light, he certainly applied one
adjective, vividly suggestive of crimson, to every object which he
found it necessary to particularise.
“Wot’s the ---- row?” he repeated, when there was no immediate reply to
his question.
“Help!” I gasped faintly, pretending to make frantic clutches at a
mooring chain, and clinging to it as if half dead with exhaustion and
fear.
“Who are yer?” he inquired suspiciously, “an’ how’d yer get ’ere?”
I was anxious to play my part so as not to arouse his suspicion, hence
I did not reply for at least a minute, but continued to pant, gasp, and
cough, until my breath might reasonably be supposed to have returned,
and then I said faintly, “Help me to get on board and I’ll tell you.”
“You can’t coom aboord,” he answered surlily. “No one ain’t allowed
aboord these ships.”
“I _must_,” I said, with as much appearance of resolution as was
consistent with the half-drowned condition which I had assumed.
“Must yer?” he said. “We’ll ---- soon see about that,” and then for the
second time he put the question, “Who are yer, and ’ow’d yer get out
’ere?”
I replied, in sentences suitably abbreviated to telegraphic terseness,
that my name was Max Rissler. Was a friend of Mr. Hardy Muir. Was
staying at Canvey for shooting. Had thought would like a swim. Had got
on all right till I had tried to turn, and then had found current too
strong. Had become exhausted, and must have been drowned if had not
fortunately been carried past hulk.
Hughes evidently considered the explanation satisfactory, for his next
question was not about myself but about my intentions.
“And what are you going to do now?”
“Come on board,” I answered promptly.
“Yer can’t do that,” he said. “No one ain’t allowed aboord these ----
boats.”
“I must,” I replied. “This is a case where you’d get into trouble for
keeping the rules, not for breaking them. You can’t talk about rules
to a half-drowned man. It would be manslaughter. Help me on board and
get me some brandy--I suppose you’ve some by you--and I’ll pay you well
and not say a word to any one. And be quick about it for I can’t hold
on here much longer. You’ll be half-a-sovereign the richer for this
night’s job, and if you’re quick I’ll make it a sovereign.”
Grumbling audibly about it being “a ---- fine lay this--making a poor
man run the risk of getting the sack because ---- fools choose to play
the ---- monkey,” he unlashed the dinghy, and having brought her round
to where I was clinging, he assisted me in, and with a few dexterous
strokes took us to the side of the hulk over which a rope ladder was
hanging. “Afore you go aboord,” he growled, putting a detaining hand
upon my arm, “’ave yer got any hiron concealed about yer person?”
“Iron?” I said. “What do you mean? And where could I conceal anything?
Every stitch of my clothes is lying over there on the beach.”
“My instructions is,” he replied doggedly, “that I hask hevery one wot
comes aboord this boat whether they’ve got any hiron concealed about
’em. That’s my dooty an’ I does it. ’Ave you or ’ave you not got hiron
on your person?”
“Certainly not,” I said, “unless the iron in my blood’s going to be an
objection. And now stop this fooling and get me some spirit as fast as
you can for I’m half dead.”
As a matter of fact, I was beginning to feel chilled to the bone,
besides which it was very necessary I should keep up the _rôle_ I had
assumed.
Hughes disappeared below, but soon returned with half a tumbler of rum
and water and a dirty, evil-smelling blanket. The rum I tossed off
gratefully, but the blanket I declined.
“Very well,” said Hughes. “But you look as white as a ---- sheet
already, and you’ll find it none too warm going back in the dinghy
with nothing on.”
“I’m not going back in the dinghy with nothing on, my good fellow,”
I replied calmly. “You’ve got a fire or a stove of some sort below,
I suppose, and I’m going down to sit by it while you row back and
get my clothes for me. Then you can put me ashore, and I shall have
much pleasure in handing you over the sovereign I’ve promised you, on
condition you give me your word not to speak of this fool’s game of
mine. I don’t want to be made the laughing-stock of the island. I told
them I was a good swimmer, and if they heard that I had to sing out for
help and had to be taken back to shore like a drowned kitten I should
never hear the last of it, especially from that big brute of a Muir
who’s always bragging about his own swimming.”
Something like a grin stole over the fellow’s forbidding face.
“Muster Muir’e don’t like no soft-plucked uns, ’e don’t; and you did
sing out ---- loud, and no mistake. You told un you could swim, did ye?
Why, Muster Muir, I seen him swim out two mile and more, and then--”
“Confound Mr. Muir,” I interrupted angrily. “Do you think I’m going to
stay here all night while you stand there jawing and grinning. Be off
with you and get my clothes for me or you won’t see a halfpenny of the
pound I promised you.”
“It was two poun’ as you promised me,” said the fellow, lying
insolently, now that he had--as he thought he had--me in his power.
“And ---- little too for a man wot’s running the risk of getting the
billet by lettin’ strangers on boord, dead against the rools. But I
don’t leave my ship for no ---- two pounds, I don’t You’ll ’ave to come
along wi’ me in the dinghy; an’ mind I ’as the money afore you ’as the
clothes. None of your monkey tricks with me, I tell yer. Come, wot’s it
to be? Are you going back wi’ me, or will you wait for Mr. Muir to come
and fetch yer? I can let ’im know in the morning (this with an impudent
grin) as you’ve been rescooed.”
“I don’t go ashore without my clothes if I stop here all night,” I
said firmly; “it’s inhuman to ask me. What harm could I do to the
confounded ship for the few minutes you’re away? I don’t want to stay
here any longer than I can help, I assure you. It was a sovereign I
promised you; but if you’ll row ashore as fast as you can and get
my clothes, and promise to keep your mouth shut, you shall have two
pounds. Will that please you?”
“Make it three,” said he, “and I’ll say done.”
“Very well,” I answered, “only be as quick as you can, for the sooner
I’m out of this thieves’ den and have seen the last of your hangman
face the better. And now I’ll go down out of the cold; and perhaps you
won’t grudge me another dram of that rum of yours, considering how
you’ve bled me to-night.”
Motioning me to follow, he led the way to the stern of the ship,
where, as I knew, the hulk-keeper’s quarters were situated, the
dynamite being stored, as I have already said, in the hold.
A cockpit, from which there shot up into the night an inverted pyramid
of yellow light, marked the entrance to the cabin, and into this
Hughes, disdainful of stairs, shuffled feet foremost, swinging a
moment with his palm resting on either ledge and his body pillared by
rigid arms before he dropped out of sight, like a stage Mephistopheles
returning to his native hell. Not being familiar with the place, I
decided to content myself with a less dramatic entrance, and picked my
way accordingly down the steep stairs and into the little cabin which
served as kitchen, sitting-room, and dormitory. A lighted oil-stove
stood in the centre, beside which Hughes placed a wooden chair.
“You’ve got very comfortable quarters here,” I said, looking round
approvingly after I had seated myself. “If one doesn’t mind a lonely
life (it _is_ lonely I suppose?), one might do worse than turn
hulk-keeper.”
Hughes grunted by way of reply, but whether this was to be taken as
signifying acquiescence or dissent I was unable to say, his face being
at the moment hidden in a corner locker, whence he presently emerged
with a bottle of Old Tom and a glass.
“There’s the ---- rum, and there’s the ---- glass; and now don’t you
stir out of that ---- chair,” he said, with a liberal use of his
favourite adjective. Then, much to my relief, he betook himself up
the stairs and on to the deck, where I could hear him muttering and
swearing to himself as he unlashed the dinghy.
That I was excited and eager, the reader may believe; but though,
the moment Hughes’ back was turned, my eyes were swivelling in their
sockets and sweeping the sides of the cabin with the intentness of a
search-light, I did not think it advisable to leave my seat and set
about the search in earnest until he had actually left the hulk. But
no sooner was he well out of the way than I was at work, with every
sense as poised and ready to pounce as a hovering hawk.
Not often in my life have I experienced so bitter a disappointment. I
had hoped great things of this visit to the “Cuban Queen;” but though
I searched every part of the hulk, including the hold, which, as there
happened at that moment to be no dynamite on board, was not secured,
I found no evidence as to the sex of Hughes’ visitor. To describe
the fruitless search in detail is unnecessary. Whoever “Mrs. Hughes”
might be, she had evidently taken pains to insure that every trace
of her presence should be removed. I could not even tell whether she
had shared the sleeping bunk with Hughes, for the coverings had been
stripped off, leaving the bare boards without so much as a pillow, and
the entire cabin had apparently been turned out and scrubbed from end
to end immediately before or after her departure.
The visit from which I hoped so much had proved a lamentable failure. I
was not one penny the wiser and three pounds poorer for my trouble, not
to speak of having got a chill, of which I should think myself cheaply
rid if it ended in nothing worse than a cold.
“The scheming rascal,” I said to myself. “I might have known he
wouldn’t have let me down here if he hadn’t been aware that every sign
of his having a companion on board had been cleared away. I suppose the
secret of it all is that he has got word that the inspector’s coming to
pay the hulks a visit shortly, and he’s packed off Mrs. Hughes until
it’s all over. Very likely she set things straight herself before she
went. All his pretended reluctance to go for my clothes and to leave me
here was put on that he might bleed me to the tune of another pound. I
should only be serving him out in his own coin if I gave information
that he’s had a woman on board.
“If it _was_ a woman? It’s very odd, though, that she hasn’t left
some little sign of her sex behind her--a hairpin, a button, or a
bonnet-pin. There are only short hairs (Hughes’ evidently) on the brush
and comb, but she may have had her own and have taken them with her.
But anyhow I might have expected to find, if not some hair-combings, at
least a stray hair or two which would have let me into the secret, and
the neighbourhood of the mirror’s the most likely place to find them.”
But, search as I would, not a single hair could I find, and in another
half-minute the near dip of oars announced Hughes’ return. As I heard
him jerk the sculls from the rowlocks, and the grinding of the dinghy
against the ship’s side, I took another despairing look around in the
hopes of lighting on something that had hitherto escaped my notice. One
object after another was hastily lifted, investigated, and as hastily
put down, but always with the same result. As I heard Hughes’ step upon
the deck my eyes fell upon a little square of soap which had fallen to
the floor and had escaped the notice--probably of Hughes as well as
of myself--on account of its being hidden by the corner of an oilskin
which was hanging from the wall. This oilskin I had taken down to
overhaul, and it was when replacing it that I found the soap, which
I saw, when I lifted it, was of better quality than one would expect
to find in such a place. It was still damp from recent usage, and as
I turned it over two or three hairs came off from the under side and
adhered to my hand. As I looked at them I gave a low, long, but almost
silent, whistle. They were beyond question the bristles of a shaving
brush which was fast going to pieces from long service. And that I was
not mistaken in so thinking was proved by the fact that the under side
of the soap still bore the marks made by the sweep of the brush over
the surface, and that the lather upon it was damp.
Some one had been shaving, and that quite recently, on the “Cuban
Queen.” It could not be Hughes, for he wore a thick, full beard. If
the person who passed as “Mrs. Hughes” really was a woman she was not
likely to have recourse to a razor to enhance her charms. If, on the
other hand, that person was a man, who was personating a woman for
purposes of disguise, a razor would be an absolute necessity among his
toilet requisites.
CHAPTER XI
PERSONAL EXPLANATIONS
We often read of a novelist “taking the reader into his confidence,”
but at this point of my narrative I should like to reverse the process,
and ask my readers to take me into theirs. Were I telling my story by
word of mouth instead of by pen, I should lay a respectful hand, my
dear madam, upon your arm, or hook a detaining forefinger, my dear
sir, into your button-hole, and, leading you aside for a few minutes,
should put the matter to you somewhat in this way: “From the fact of
your following my record thus far, you are presumably interested in
detective stories, and have no doubt read many narratives of the sort.
You know the detectives who have been drawn--or rather created--by
Edgar Allan Poe, and in more recent times by Dr. Conan Doyle and Mr.
Arthur Morrison--detectives who unravel for us, link by link, in the
most astounding and convincing manner, and by some original method of
reasoning, an otherwise inexplicable mystery or crime.
“And you know too the familiar bungler who is always boasting about
his astuteness, unless, as occasionally happens (but only in the pages
of a detective novel, for in real life our friends are more ready
to record our failures than our successes), he has some applauding
Boswell--a human note of exclamation--who passes his life in ecstasies
of admiring wonder at his friend’s marvellous penetration. And as it
is not unlikely that you have your own opinion as to what a detective
should or should not do under certain circumstances, I ask you at this
point of my narrative to take me into your confidence and let me put to
you the following question. Suppose it had been you, and not I, who, in
the hope of getting sight of James Mullen--as we will for convenience’
sake call the person passing as Mrs. Hughes--had kept a watch upon the
‘Cuban Queen,’ as described in Chapter IX. And suppose it had been
you and not I who had been in the company of Muir and Quickly that
evening, and had seen Mullen come from the hulk in a boat, under cover
of twilight, and proceed in the direction of Benfleet, whence he could
take train either to London or to Southend. Would you in that case
have acted as I did, and instructed Quickly to shadow him, so that
you might get an opportunity of paying a surprise visit to the ‘Cuban
Queen’ in Mullen’s absence? or would you have abandoned your proposed
visit to the hulk and decided to follow him yourself?”
Let me sum up briefly the arguments for and against either course as
they presented themselves to me when I had so hastily to make choice.
In the first place, I had to recognise that in intrusting the task to
Quickly I had one or two very ugly possibilities to face. Though a
sensible fellow enough for ordinary purposes, he was hardly the sort
of man one would select for so delicate a piece of work as that of
shadowing a suspect. He might prove himself sufficiently clever to
carry it through successfully, but it was much more likely that he
would fail, and it was even conceivable that he might so bungle it
as to attract the attention of Mullen, and thus to frighten away the
very bird for whom I was spreading a net. But what weighed with me
even more than this was that in deputing Quickly to follow Mullen I
was losing sight--at all events for a time--of the central figure of
my investigations, as they then stood--of the person whom, rightly or
wrongly, I suspected to be the object of my search--and this was a
course which no one placed as I was could adopt without the gravest
misgiving.
On the other hand, the reasons which most influenced me in deciding to
intrust the task of shadower to Quickly were equally weighty. If the
person who was secreted on the “Cuban Queen” were James Mullen, he was
not likely, in view of the hue and cry that had been raised, and of the
vigorous search which was being made, to venture far from so secure a
hiding-place, and the probability was that he had gone to some station
up or down the line--probably to Southend--to post some package in
order that it might not bear the Canvey postmark.
Another reason was that I could not ask for an arrest merely upon
suspicion, and it was quite possible that to obtain the necessary
evidence I might have to keep an eye upon Mullen for some time to come.
By shadowing him upon the present occasion, I ran the risk of being
seen and recognised, which would not so much matter in the case of
Quickly. Then, again, it was highly desirable I should pay my surprise
visit to the “Cuban Queen” in the absence of the suspected party, and
if I neglected to do so on the present occasion I might not get another
opportunity.
If I could satisfy myself by a visit to the hulk that the person who
had been concealed there was really a woman, I need trouble myself no
further about the vessel and its occupants. But if, on the other hand,
I found evidence which went to prove that the supposed Mrs. Hughes was
of the male sex, I should have good cause to believe that I had indeed
discovered the hiding-place of the redoubtable James Mullen.
My last reason was that at the moment when I was called upon to make my
decision, I was wearing a Norfolk shooting jacket and knickerbockers.
This costume, especially in the streets of London, would render me
conspicuous, and in fact would be the worst possible attire for so
ticklish a job as that of shadowing a suspect, whereas Quickly’s dress
would attract no attention either in town or country.
I have asked my readers to take me into their confidence and to face
with me the dilemma in which I was placed, because I am in hopes that
most of them will admit that under the circumstances, and especially
in view of the conspicuous dress I happened to be wearing, I acted
rightly. Those who so decide will not be too hard upon me when I
confess that, in allowing myself to lose sight of the person who had
been in hiding on the hulk, I made, as events proved, a fatal and,
but for other circumstances, an irretrievable mistake. That I am but
a bungler at the best is, I fear, already only too evident, though
I make bold to say that it is not often that I bungle so badly as I
did on this occasion. The results of that bungle--results big with
consequences to others and to myself--were twofold. The first was that
Quickly never returned from the quest upon which I had despatched him,
nor from that day to this has any word of him been received. He simply
disappeared as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed
him. The second was that he was companioned in his disappearance by
the person whom I had instructed him to follow. James Mullen, if James
Mullen it were, did not come back to the hulk, and I had after a time
to admit to myself that, so far as Canvey Island and the “Cuban Queen”
were concerned, “the game was up.”
CHAPTER XII
HOW CAPTAIN SHANNON’S AUTOGRAPH CAME INTO MY POSSESSION
The set-back I had received, so far from causing me to abandon my
search for Mullen, only nerved me to fresh endeavour, though how to go
to work I could not for some time determine. To threaten Hughes that I
would report him to the authorities unless he made terms for himself by
telling me all he knew about his mysterious visitor, was not a course
which commended itself to me. I might, as a last resource, and in the
event of everything else failing, be compelled to so bold a step, but
for the present I felt that the wisest thing I could do would be to
trace Quickly’s movements after he had started to shadow the person who
had come ashore from the hulk. This would, however, necessitate my
leaving Canvey, and in the meantime it was of the highest importance
that an eye should be kept upon the “Cuban Queen.”
It was quite within the bounds of possibility that Mullen might yet
return, in which case he would probably do so by night. Hence it was
at night that I kept my keenest watch upon the hulk, and in order to
do this I thought it advisable to leave the inn and install myself in
a small furnished cottage, which, by an unexpected stroke of luck, I
was able to rent very cheaply. But, as I could not pursue my inquiries
in regard to the fate of Quickly and keep an eye at the same time upon
the “Cuban Queen,” I decided to send for a friend of mine, named Grant,
whom I could trust implicitly.
Grant took the next train to Benfleet--the nearest station to
Canvey--on receiving my telegram, and, after hearing my story, assured
me of his readiness and willingness to co-operate in the search for
Mullen. He promised to keep an unwinking eye upon the “Cuban Queen”
while I was away, and to let me know should any suspicious stranger
come upon the scene. The matter being thus satisfactorily arranged, I
started off to see what I could learn about the ill-fated Quickly.
My theory was that that luckless wight had so clumsily performed the
work of shadowing as to bring himself under the notice of the person
shadowed, who would then have reason to believe that the secret of
his hiding-place was known, at all events to one person. Under such
circumstances Mullen would in all probability decide that, in order to
insure the return of the secret to his own keeping, Quickly must be
despatched to the limbo of the “dead folk” who “tell no tales;” and I
felt tolerably certain that, on discovering he was being shadowed, he
had led the way to some secluded spot where he or his accomplices had
made an end of the shadower.
How I set to work to collect and to sift my evidence I need not here
describe in detail, but will sum up briefly the result of my inquiries.
Quickly had reached the station some minutes before the arrival of any
other passenger, and in accordance with my instructions had gone at
once to the general waiting-room, where he remained until the train
started. Some few minutes afterwards a woman carrying a bag had entered
the booking-office and taken a third-class single ticket to Stepney.
When the train drew up at the platform she had seated herself in an
empty carriage near the centre, and Quickly had entered a smoking
carriage at the end. When the train reached Stepney she passed through
the barrier, followed at some distance by a man answering to the
description of Quickly.
The woman had then bought an evening paper from a newsboy, and crossing
the road slowly had turned down a by-street which led to the river. The
man, after looking in a tobacconist’s window for half a minute, had
taken the same turning, but upon the other side of the road.
There I came to a dead stop, for not one jot of evidence as to the
subsequent movements of either of the two could I discover, and,
reluctant though I am to admit myself beaten, the fact could no longer
be disguised that in that direction too I was checkmated.
“Another throw back, Grant,” I said, when I entered the cottage at
Canvey after this fresh reverse.
“Well, what are you going to do now?” inquired my friend and
collaborator when he had heard my story. “Give it up, as we did the
other riddles of our school-boy days?”
“Give it up! What do you take me for? But, hollo! For whom is that
letter?” I said, pointing to an envelope which was lying on the table.
“For you. Hardy Muir brought it over. It was sent under cover to him
from London.”
“At last!” I said, breaking the seal. “It’s from Green, the detective
whom I put on to ferret out Mullen’s past. I told him that if he wanted
to write he was to slip the letter into an envelope addressed to Muir
at the Hogarth Club in Dover Street. He’s been long enough finding
anything out. Let’s hear what he has to say, now he does condescend to
write. It is dated from Baxenham, near Yarby. I knew the place well
years ago--used to yacht round there as a lad. Nasty coast, too, with
some curious currents and very dangerous sands. Here’s his letter.”
“MAX RISSLER, ESQ.,
“DEAR SIR,--When you asked me to see what I could find out about
James Mullen I did not expect to turn up anything much in the way
of trumps. But, sir, I always act honourable, and I have found
something which I think is valuable. Sir, it is so valuable, and
the reward offered for the capture of James Mullen is so big, that
I cannot afford to part with the information to any one else. So I
ask you, sir, as man to man, to let me withdraw from your service.
The man that finds Mullen has got his fortune made, and what I have
discovered ought to be worth twenty-five thousand pounds to me. Sir,
I could have gone on taking your money as you allow for exs. and kept
my mouth shut, but I want to act honourable, believing as you have
always acted honourable by me. So, sir, I beg to give notice that I
withdraw from your service as regards the aforesaid James Mullen,
and hope you will not take offence. My exs. up to the present as I
have drawn in your pay are thirty-one pound. Sir, if you will take my
I O U, and I find Mullen, I will pay you back double money. But if
you say you must have the money, I can get it. I hope you will take
the I O U, as I want my money just now, and oblige. Sir, I am on the
track.--Your obedient servant,
“JAMES BAKEWELL GREEN.
“P. S.--My address is c/o Mrs. Brand, Elm Cottage, Baxenham.”
“What a rascal,” said Grant, when I had finished this letter. “He ought
to say he’s on the make as well as on the track.”
“I don’t think he’s a rascal,” I answered. “I have always found
him above board and square. If he is really on Mullen’s heels the
temptation to turn his discovery to his own account is pretty strong.
Twenty-five thousand pounds, not to speak of the kudos, isn’t made
every day, my boy. It’s rather like shaking an apple-tree in order
that somebody else may pick up the fruit,--to do the work and then
see another man go off with the money-bags. No, I think he’s acted
honourably in giving me due notice that he’s going to run the show
himself, and in offering to return the ‘exs.’ as he calls them. Many
men would have gone on taking the coin while working on their own
account.”
“What are you going to do?” queried Grant.
“Run down to Baxenham to-morrow. I don’t suppose I shall get any change
out of Green, but I may hear something that will help me to put two and
two together in regard to our late visitor on the ‘Cuban Queen.’ As
Green has been working on my money and in my service I shan’t feel any
qualm of conscience in finding out his wonderful secret--if I can--and
of making use of it if I do find it.”
Next morning I was up betimes to catch an early train to town and
thence to Yarby, where I arrived late in the afternoon. Baxenham is a
little village on the coast, some five miles distant, and the shortest
way there from Yarby is by a footpath across the fields.
A lovelier walk I have seldom had. The sunset was glorious, so glorious
that for a while I sat like one rapt, dreaming myself back into the
days of my childhood, and forgetful of everything but the beauty that
lay before me.
I remembered the fair-haired little boy who day after day, as the
afternoon was waning, would climb the stairs which led to a tiny garret
under the roof. There was only one window in this garret, a window
which faced the west and was cut in the roof itself. Looking down, one
saw the red tiles running away so steeply beneath that the little boy
could never glance at them without a catching of breath, and without
fancying what it would be like to find oneself slipping down, down the
steep descent until one reached that awful place--the world’s edge, it
seemed to him--where the roof ended in a sheer and terrible abyss.
But it was to see the sunset that the little boy would climb the stairs
each day, and as he dreamed himself out into that sunset it seemed a
part of himself--not merely a thing at which to look.
It seemed to draw him to itself and into itself. It seemed to him as
if, as he gazed, two little doors opened somewhere in his breast and
his soul flew out like a white bird into the distant west. He knew that
his body was still standing by the window, but he himself was away
there among the purple and crimson and gold. He was walking yonder
sunlit shining shore that bent round to form a bay for a golden sea. He
was climbing yonder range of mountain peaks--peaks which, though built
of unsubstantial cloud, were more beautiful than any show-place of the
tourist’s seeking--peaks upon whose shining summit the soul might stand
and look out upon the infinite--peaks which might be climbed by the
fancy of those whose fortune it might never be to see an Alpine height.
And when the purple and crimson had faded into citron, and the citron
into gray; when the gold had paled to silver and darkened to lead; and
the bird had fluttered back like a frightened thing to his breast--then
the little boy would creep downstairs again, dry-eyed, but sad at heart
with a strange sense of loneliness and loss.
As I sat there watching the last of the sunset, that little boy seemed
to look out at me with desolate reproachful eyes, asking what the man
had to give the boy in exchange for his dreams. Then a bat flew by,
so closely that I felt the cold fanning of its wings upon my face, so
suddenly that I drew back with a start and awoke to real life again.
Evening was already closing in. An hour ago the setting sun had
looked out over the horizon’s edge and flooded the stretch of
meadow-land--now so gloomy and gray--with a burst of luminous gold
which tipped every grass-blade and daisy-head with liquid fire. Now on
the same horizon’s edge the gusty night-rack was gathering. The glory
and the glamour were gone, and darkness was already abroad. A wind
which struck a chill to the heart moaned eerily over the meadows, and
white mists blotted out bush and tree.
If I was to reach Baxenham before nightfall I had no time to lose; so,
with a sigh for the vanished sunset and my vanished dreams, I rose to
continue my walk.
Another field and a thickly-wooded plantation, and then, as I turned a
bend where the path wound round among the trees, I found myself upon
the sea-beach along which my path lay. In front, about a couple of
miles away, I could see the church tower of Baxenham, over which red
Mars burned large and lurid among a score of tiny stars that quivered
near him, like arrow-heads shot wide of the mark; and low in the south
the slender moon was like a finger laid to command silence on the lip
of night. The beauty of the scene so possessed me that I stood still an
instant with face turned seaward and bared head, and then--almost at my
feet--I saw lying in the water a dark body that stirred and rocked, and
stretched forth swaying arms like a creature at play. For one moment I
thought it was alive, that it was some strange sea-beast come ashore,
which was now seeking to regain its native element, but in the next I
knew it for the body of a man, lying face downward and evidently dead.
There is horror enough in the silent and stone-cold stillness of death,
but to see death put on the semblance of life, to see dead arms reach
and the dead body stir and sway, as they did that night, when the
incoming tide seemed to mock at death and to sport, cruel and cat-like,
with its victim, is surely more horrible still.
With hands scarcely warmer than his I drew the dead man up upon the
sands and turned him upon his back that I might see his face. It was
the face of Green, the inquiry agent, and in his hand he held a small
green bottle, which was lashed to his wrist by a handkerchief worked
with his own initials, “J. B. G.” “Suicide!” I whispered to myself
as I stooped to untie the handkerchief and bend back the unresisting
fingers. The bottle was short and stumpy, with a wide mouth and a glass
stopper secured by a string, and was labelled “Lavender Salts.” I cut
the string and, drawing out the stopper, held the thing to my nose.
“It _is_ lavender salts,” I said, “or has been, for it’s light enough
to be empty. No, there’s something inside it still. Let’s see what it
is,” and with that I turned the bottle mouth downward over my open
palm. A slip of neatly-folded paper fell out, which I hastily opened.
Four words were printed upon it in rude capitals--“By order.--Captain
Shannon.”
CHAPTER XIII
I POSSESS MYSELF OF THE SECRET OF JAMES BAKEWELL GREEN
When I look back upon that moment I find myself wondering at the
singular effect which the discovery of the dead man’s identity had
upon my nerves. It turned them in a second’s space from quivering and
twitching strings to cords of iron. It acted upon the brain as a cold
douche acts upon the body. It was as if a man had staggered heavy with
drink to a pump, and after once dipping his head under the tap had come
up perfectly sober. And the mental effect was equally curious. I do
not think I am in the general way unsympathetic, or indifferent to the
misfortunes of others, but on this occasion I found myself as coldly
calculating the possible advantages and disadvantages to myself of
Green’s untimely end as if I had been a housewife reckoning up what she
had made or lost by the sale of eggs.
My first procedure was to secure the piece of paper which I had found
in the bottle. “I may want Captain Shannon’s autograph one of these
days,” I said to myself, “and even were it not so I should be unwise to
leave this document upon the scene. If, when the body is found, it is
believed that Green was drowned by misadventure there is less chance
of awkward questions being asked and inconvenient inquiries made. Such
inquiries might bring to light the fact that he was engaged, by my
directions, in investigating Mullen’s antecedents, and the matter might
come to the ears of Mullen himself.
“And now another thing. I’m afraid Green’s papers have been taken by
the murderer, otherwise I ought to secure them. They might contain a
clue to the secret to which the poor man attached such importance. Ah!
I thought so; they’ve gone, for the pocket-book which I know he carried
is missing, although his watch, chain, money, and other belongings are
left. But stop a minute. When I gave Green my address I remember he
took out his cigar-case, removed the cigars, and showed me that the
case had a secret pocket for papers. He said that he never carried
important papers in a pocket-book, which is the first thing a thief or
a rogue who wishes to abstract a document goes for, and that he had had
his taken from him twice--once by force and once by a cunning theft.
“But Mullen would not know that Green kept documents in his cigar-case,
and probably wouldn’t trouble to take it. Let me see. Yes, here it is,
in the breast pocket, and I _think_ I can feel papers inside the silk
lining. We’ll look at them by-and-bye. Anything else in his pockets
that I might require? No. Then I’ll slide the body back into the water.
He’s evidently been dead many hours, and it can make no difference to
him, poor fellow. That’s it. He’s just as he was when I found him. Now
I’ll be off. Good night, Mr. James Bakewell Green. I won’t press you
for that I O U.”
Still wondering at my heartlessness, I turned and walked in the
direction of Yarby. But I had more important matters than my own
mental attitude to consider, for the first thing which I had to ask
myself was, “By whose hand did Green meet his end?” It was, of course,
possible either that he had committed suicide, or that the paper
bearing the signature of “Captain Shannon” had been placed where I
found it by some one who, for reasons of his own, had taken Green’s
life, and hoped by attributing the crime to Captain Shannon to divert
suspicion from himself. But I soon decided that neither of these
alternatives was worth consideration. For the motive of the crime
one had not far to look. Green had, on his own showing, discovered
something which might lead to Captain Shannon’s arrest, and there could
be no doubt that, should the fugitive get wind of this, his first step
would be to rid himself of so dangerous an enemy.
From the circumstance under which I discovered the body of my
unfortunate agent, I came to the conclusion that he was on board a
yacht when the crime was effected.
Having often yachted off Yarby I was tolerably familiar with the coast,
and knew that the place where I found the body was the very spot
towards which, with every incoming tide, a strong current sets. And
as matters stood it looked as if the corpse had been carried thither
from the open sea. That it had not been placed where it was by any
one on the shore--at all events since the outgoing tide--was evident
from the fact that my own were the only footmarks on the soft smooth
stretch of sandy mud which led down to the water’s edge. But what
struck me as especially strange was that, though Green was otherwise
fully dressed, he was wearing no boots. It was very unlikely that he
had walked two miles along a rocky beach with unprotected feet. But
if he had, for any reason, been persuaded to go upon a yacht, it was
quite possible that he might take his boots off--firstly, because no
yacht owner who prides himself upon the trimness of his craft and the
whiteness of her decks cares to have a visitor tramping about in heavy
and perhaps muddy boots; and secondly, because a landsman who is so
shod would find it difficult to get a safe foothold upon the slippery
decks of a small vessel. My theory was that Green had been decoyed
upon a yacht under some pretext, or that he had been foolhardy enough
to go on board of his own accord, perhaps in the hope of obtaining
further and final evidence of Mullen’s identity, or, it may be, with
the idea of achieving the fugitive’s arrest. Once on board, he had in
all probability been the victim of foul play. Very likely he had been
rendered insensible by a blow on the head given from behind, after
which he had been carried out to sea, where he could be despatched
at leisure, and without any risk of his cries being heard or the
act witnessed, as might be the case on land. After that the bottle
containing the paper inscribed “By order.--Captain Shannon,” had been
fastened to his wrist and the body cast adrift, to serve as a warning
to others like him who might elect to enter the lists against the
arch-assassin. But apart from the question of how Green met his end,
I had to recognise that if the body were found while I was in the
neighbourhood, and foul play were suspected, I, as a stranger, might
be called on to give an account of myself, and might even be arrested
on suspicion. Hence I decided to return to town at once, but as the
crime might at any moment be discovered and an alarm raised, I thought
it highly inadvisable to carry about with me anything which could be
identified as the dead man’s property, and that I should do well to
investigate the cigar-case at once and get it out of my possession.
Two neatly-folded sheets of paper--a diagram and a letter--were
concealed in the secret pocket, and one glance at them satisfied me
that they were the documents of which I was in search.
CHAPTER XIV
ONE OF THE DOCUMENTS WHICH COST MY INQUIRY AGENT HIS LIFE
As I could not secure a carriage to myself in the train by which I
returned to town I had to defer a closer examination of the papers
I had found until I had gained the seclusion of my own chambers in
Buckingham Street.
The first of the documents contained in Green’s cigar-case was a
letter, evidently addressed to Mullen. It was dated from “Stavanger,
Norway,” and ran as follows:--
“JAMES,--I know all. I have never tried to spy into your affairs,
but I have known for a long time that you have been engaged in
some secret undertaking which I felt sure was for no good purpose.
Your sudden disappearances and equally sudden reappearances and
the large sums of money you have had, have always been a source of
anxiety to me. That it was some political plot you were engaged in
I was certain, for you were not at such pains to disguise your real
views before me as you were before others. I remember your wild
talk about society having conspired to rob you from before your
birth,--of your being denied the right to bear your father’s name,
and of your mother’s name being a dishonour to you. That your father
was a villain to our mother I know, and it may be that from him you
inherit your evil tendencies, and that God may not hold you morally
responsible for them. But James, bad as your father must have been,
he was, after all, your father, and the language you sometimes used
about him has made me, who am used to your violence, shudder and turn
sick.
“James, I promised our dead mother on her death-bed that I would try
to be to you all that she was. She could do almost as she liked with
you--could soften you and turn you from evil as no other person in
the world could. There was some strange sympathy between you and her.
Perhaps your knowledge of her one and only sin made you tender and
chivalrous to her, just as it sometimes--God forgive me!--made me,
who am so different from you and her, hard. And perhaps her memory
of her one sinning made her gentle and tender to you in your many. I
have had children of my own since then, James, and I think something
has thawed in my heart that was cold as ice before.
“I remember that in those childish days, when you would come to our
mother after some wild and wicked deed, she would take you in her
arms and speak softly to you, and that you would become another
creature and would seek to undo the evil you had done. But I used
to become impatient. I wished that you should be punished, and I
remember that my words would turn you to stone again and bring that
hard glitter that I so hated into your eyes. Yes, and when I saw her
caressing you, whom I would have had flogged, I used to feel--though
she was my mother as well as yours--as if I were a stranger in the
house, and could not be of the same flesh and blood as you and she.
“That is long ago, James, and we are no longer boy and girl, but
man and woman. But my heart tells me that I have not kept my promise
to her. She said to me when she was dying, ‘Mary, I am afraid for
James. He can be chivalrously generous to those who appeal to his
protection; he can be heartlessly cruel to those who oppose his will.
You remember how as a boy he fought like a wild cat with two lads
twice his size in defence of the homeless cur that crawled to his
feet when they were stoning it; and you remember that upon the same
day, because his own dog snarled at him, he beat it about the head so
mercilessly that we had to kill it. Mary, I am afraid for James; I am
the one and only soul in this world--where, young as he is, he feels
himself an outcast--who understands him. And everything depends upon
his associations. He might be a good man or he might be criminal.
Mary, promise me you will not be too hard with him--promise me that
you will try to understand him, and to make allowance, and to be
gentle.’
“I promised her, James, and I meant to keep my promise, but I know
now that I have not done so. I did not grudge you money. I gave you
more of what my father left me than I kept. But I did not try to be
to you what I promised our mother to be. I know now, though I did not
know it then. I have reason to know it now, for my little son Stanley
looks up at me with your eyes to reproach me with it. What you once
were he now is in looks and in disposition. I fear for him as your
mother feared for you; and his mother knows now that the promise I
made to your mother I did not keep.
“James, if you have done evil I am greatly to blame. If I had kept
my promise, if I had tried to take our dead mother’s place in your
life, if I had aimed at being your companion, and at winning your
confidence, if I had sought to keep evil influences away and to set
good influences at work, you might never have formed the associations
you have formed. That you have done the things they lay to your
charge I cannot believe. I have seen the ‘Daily Record,’ and the
portrait, and I know only too well, in spite of the disguise,
that the James Mullen who is accused of being Captain Shannon is
my half-brother James. I will never believe--nothing will make me
believe--that it is really true, and that you are responsible for
the inhuman crimes which you are said to have committed or to have
caused to be committed. That you are associated with men who are
capable of any wickedness is, I fear, only too true; men who, by
flattering that fatal vanity of yours, which I know so well--that
constitutional craving to be thought important and a power, of which
I can see traces in the Manifesto which was published after the
explosion--have made you their tool, and have persuaded you to accept
responsibilities for actions in which you had no hand, I can readily
believe. But that you, whom I have known to do such chivalrous
actions, you whom I have seen empty your pockets to relieve some
beggar whose woe-begone looks had appealed to your pity, could
deliberately plan the murder of hundreds of inoffensive people, I
cannot and never will believe.
“Until I received your letter I did not know where to write to you,
and I feared to send to the old address lest my note should fall
into wrong hands. You say that you have got into a scrape, and that
I must help you to get out of England, as you cannot trust your
associates--which I can well believe. You say, too, that you must
get right away to America or Australia, and that I must lend you the
steam yacht, as it would not be safe to go by any ordinary passenger
steamer, all of which are being watched. You say you would not drag
me into such a miserable business if you could help it, but that
you dare not risk the chance of attracting the attention in which
your chartering yourself a boat big enough to cross to America might
result.
“Well I see the force of all this, and I will do what I can to help
you, but only on one condition. How heartily my husband and I abhor
the acts of those with whom you are associated you must know. Not
even to save your life, not even to keep our connection with you from
becoming known, not even to save our children from being branded
throughout their lives as the relatives of a man who was accused of
the blackest murder, would we move hand or foot in any matter which
might even in the smallest detail further the infamous scheme in
which your associates are engaged.
“But Stanley and I have talked it over, and if you will absolutely
and unconditionally promise to sever yourself entirely from your
associates, and never again to take part in any political plotting,
we will do as you ask and bring the steam yacht to the place you
mention, and remain there until you can make an opportunity to join
us. We will then take you to America or Australia, or whatever
country you think will be safest, will allow you a certain yearly
sum which will enable you to begin life over again, and if possible
to retrieve your terrible past. I tell you frankly that it is only
after days of entreaty that I have got Stanley to consent to this.
Had it not been that he knows my life is hanging by a thread, and
that for you, my only brother, to be given up to the police by
information which came through me would kill me, I believe he would
have telegraphed at once to the police after receiving your letter
and told them where you could be found. It is right to tell you that
the terrible shock I received when I saw the ‘Daily Record,’ and knew
that my half-brother was ‘Captain Shannon’ brought on hemorrhage of
the lungs afresh, and so badly that my life was at first despaired of.
“But whether I live or die, Stanley has promised me--and you know he
never goes back from his word--that if you will accept the conditions
we impose he will help you to get out of the country. But he will do
nothing until he has received that promise, so send us a line at once.
“And now, James, as it is quite possible that I may die before then
and never see you again, I wish to make one last and perhaps dying
request. You know how nobly my dear father acted when he found out
about you; how, to save our mother’s reputation, he gave out that
you were his nephew, whom he intended to adopt as his son. James,
for his sake, for my sake, for our dead mother’s sake, promise me
that should you be arrested you will never let our connection with
you be known. It could do you no good, and it would mean that our
mother’s guilty secret would come out, and my innocent children would
be disgraced and dishonoured throughout their lives by her shame and
your guilt. If you have one spark of natural affection left you will
promise me this.--Your broken-hearted sister,
“F.”
CHAPTER XV
A DOCUMENT OF IMPORTANCE
It was a copy, and not the original, of this pitiful letter which I
found in the cigar-case, as was evident from the fact that the document
was in Green’s handwriting, and to this I attached some importance.
As matters stood it _looked_ as if Green had in some way contrived to
intercept Mullen’s correspondence; and it also looked as if, after
making himself acquainted with the contents of Mullen’s letters, Green
had carefully resealed them and let them go on to the person for whom
they were intended. That he must have had some reason for not retaining
in his possession what might prove so valuable a piece of evidence was
very clear, and after thinking the matter over I came to the following
conclusion.
Although Mullen had given an address to which a letter might be sent to
him by his sister, it was not likely that he himself was actually to be
found at that address. On the contrary, it was more than probable that
he had arranged some complicated and roundabout system of reforwarding
correspondence, so that even if the police should find out the address
to which the letter was sent, they would still have before them the
difficult task of tracing the letter to the address to which it had
been reforwarded, and perhaps again reforwarded, before they could
come to the actual hiding-place of the fugitive, who in the meantime
would get wind of what was going on and would promptly decide that it
was high time for him to change his quarters. And I felt tolerably
sure that his manner of making a change would be like that of certain
sea-fowl who, upon the approach of an enemy, dive out of sight beneath
the water, where they twist and turn and eventually come up far out of
reach and range, and in any other direction than that in which they are
looked for.
Hence it was possible that though Green had succeeded, as I say, either
in intercepting or obtaining access to Mullen’s correspondence,
he might not be any nearer to discovering the criminal’s actual
whereabouts. But if Green merely took a copy of this letter and then
let it go on to Mullen, the latter would very likely fall into the
trap of keeping the appointment which he had made with his sister,
and could then be arrested and handed over to justice. For though his
sister had--lest the letter should fall into other hands than those
for which it was intended--cautiously refrained from mentioning her
own or her husband’s name, or from giving any address except that of
a foreign town, she had, woman-like, forgotten that there were not
likely to be many large steam yachts belonging to an English gentleman,
whose wife was in bad health, lying at the same moment off such a place
as Stavanger. An experienced inquiry agent like Green would have no
difficulty in learning the name of such a vessel and of its owner; and
that he had taken steps to obtain the necessary information was very
clear from the second document which I found in his cigar-case. Here it
is--
Viscount Dungannon, } { Mary Hatherwick
shot in U. S. A. } { Coyne, daughter of
in 1881, } and { John Coyne, Esq.,
} { of Galway,
had son,
known as James Cross, who afterwards
assumed the name of James Mullen.
----:----
This Mary { was } Henry Cross
Hatherwick Coyne { afterwards } (d. 1886);
(d. 1880) { married to }
and had daughter,
Flora Hatherwick Cross, b. 1865;
m. in 1885 to Stanley Burgoyne, Esq.
The meaning of this document--a document which affords some interesting
data to the student of heredity--evidently was that James Mullen was
the illegitimate son of the famous, and also infamous, Lord Dungannon
by a Miss Mary Coyne, the daughter of an Irish gentleman. The fact
that Miss Coyne had been seduced and had given birth to a child had
probably been kept a secret, for if Green’s notes were correct she had
afterwards married a Mr. Henry Cross, by whom she had a daughter, Flora
(now Mrs. Stanley Burgoyne), who was therefore Mullen’s half-sister,
and the writer of the letter a copy of which I had found in Green’s
cigar-case.
How Green had contrived to find out the address to which Mullen
was having his letters sent there was no evidence to show. Whether
it was due to a singularly lucky fluke or to his own astuteness I
could not say, and am not likely ever to know, but I quite realised
and understood that it was possible for him to have made such a
discovery. And I recognised and understood also that, after having
read the letter which gave him the clue to Mullen’s connection with
Mrs. Stanley Burgoyne, the other facts which he had ferreted out in
regard to Mullen’s parentage would not be difficult to arrive at. What
I could _not_ understand, however, was by what means he had succeeded
in intercepting Mullen’s letters. If Green had been an official from
Scotland Yard he would no doubt be allowed to intercept letters which
might be written by or addressed to suspected persons, but that the
postal authorities would permit a private inquiry agent to tamper with
their mail bags was not to be entertained. That Green was staying in
the same house as Mullen, and was able in that way to lay hands on the
latter’s correspondence, was very unlikely. Nor was it likely that my
late inquiry agent had succeeded in bribing a postman, for though it
may not be impossible to find dishonest postmen, the odds are very much
against finding the dishonest man in the one particular office with the
mails of which one wishes to tamper.
A far more probable theory was that which had at first occurred to
me, namely, that the letters had been directed to the care of a
tobacconist, or, more likely still, of a hairdresser. It is matter of
common knowledge that many hairdressers add to their business takings
by allowing letters, on each of which a fee of one penny is charged,
to be addressed to their care. Though generally implying a not very
creditable connection, these letters are, as a rule, of no more
criminal character than assignations with people to whom the recipient
has thought it unadvisable to give his real name or address, or whose
letters he is anxious should not come under the notice of his family.
If Green had intercepted the letters at a tobacconist’s shop, the
first thing to find out was where that tobacconist’s shop was situated,
and the only way to do so would be to trace the inquiry agent’s recent
movements. Hence I decided that I could not do better than run down to
Yarby again and see what could be learned about him. But before I could
do this with safety I should have to ascertain whether the body had
been found, and whether suspicions of foul play were entertained, as in
that case it would not be advisable to visit the neighbourhood for the
present.
The morning paper of the following day settled that point
satisfactorily, for on opening my “Daily News” I read the following
announcement:--
“SAD DEATH FROM DROWNING.--Mr. Robert Bakewell Green, a visitor from
London, was accidentally drowned at Baxenham, near Yarby, yesterday.
The body was discovered late last night on the beach by the Baxenham
rural postman. From the fact that the unfortunate man was wearing no
boots it is supposed that he had taken them off in order to pursue
the pastime--so popular among Cockney visitors to the seaside--of
paddling among the small pools left by the last tide. Doctor Ellis,
who examined the body, is of opinion that while so engaged the
deceased was overcome by faintness and was drowned in quite shallow
water, the body being subsequently washed up upon the beach by the
incoming tide. An inquest will be held.”
Five minutes after I had read this paragraph I was on my way to catch
the next train to Yarby. The reader will remember that Green had given
his address as “Care of Mrs. Brand, Elm Cottage, Baxenham,” and my
first step was to interview this lady, under the pretence of being a
Press representative who had come down to collect further particulars
about her late lodger. From Mrs. Brand I learned among other facts that
Green had been in the habit of paying frequent visits to Cotley, a
seaside town some twenty miles inland.
To Cotley I according betook myself, and curiously enough the very
first thing that caught my eye after leaving the station was the
legend, “Letters Taken,” displayed in the window of a tobacconist’s
shop immediately fronting the booking-office entrance. The door was
closed, but as I pushed it open a bell overhead announced the arrival
of a customer.
I found myself in a small shop with another room beyond, on the swing
doors of which were the words, “To the Hairdressing Saloon.” There was
no one behind the counter, nor, so far as I could see, was there any
one in the hair-cutting rooms. But on the counter before me lay half
a dozen letters, apparently thrown there by an impatient postman who
could not wait for the proprietor’s return. One of them was for “Mr.
Robert Bakewell Green,” the inscription being in his own handwriting;
another was addressed in a woman’s hand to “Mr. Henry Jeanes,” and I
saw that it bore a Norwegian stamp and the Stavanger postmark. Could
“Henry Jeanes” be the name under which James Mullen was having letters
sent to him?
CHAPTER XVI
HENRY JEANES, ALIAS JAMES MULLEN
It had been raining heavily when the train drew up at the Cotley
platform, but as I did not know how far I might have to walk I had put
up my umbrella when leaving the station only to put it down again as I
entered the hairdresser’s shop. I was holding the half-closed umbrella
in my hand when my eye caught sight of the two letters. To sweep them
as if by accident into the folds of the umbrella was the work of a
second, and then as I turned quickly round I saw a man without a
hat and wearing a white apron slip out of the door of a publichouse
opposite and run hastily across the road towards the shop, wiping his
mouth with his hand as he did so.
As I expected, he was the proprietor of the establishment, and after
wishing me good-morning and apologising for being out of the way by
explaining that he had been across the road to borrow a postage stamp,
he proceeded to tuck me up in a white sheet preparatory to cutting my
hair.
The demand for postage stamps had evidently been heavy that afternoon,
and the task of affixing them had no doubt resulted in an uncomfortable
dryness of the mouth, which necessitated the frequent use of liquid.
Under the circumstances I considered this rather fortunate than
otherwise, for the man was not unaware of his condition, and did his
best to palliate it by being so obligingly communicative in regard to
any question I asked him that I could, had I wished it, have acquainted
myself with all that he knew about every customer who patronised his
establishment.
“You have letters addressed here sometimes, don’t you?” I asked, as he
was brushing my hair.
“Yes, sir, we ’ave letters addressed ’ere,” he made answer; “but
strictly confidential, of course,” whispering this in my ear with
drunken gravity, and adding, after a pause, with a meaning leer, “Hand
very convenient too, under certain circumstances. Is there hany little
thing you can do for us in that way yourself, sir? If so we should be
’appy to accept your commission.”
The only little thing I was minded to do for him was to kick him,
and that right heavily, but repressing the unregenerate desire of
the natural man, I affected to be thinking the matter over, and then
replied--
“Why, yes, I think you might. My name is Smithers--Alfred John
Smithers, so if any letters addressed to that name come here you’ll
know they are for me, won’t you?”
“Certainly,” he said. “Only too ’appy to oblige a customer at hany
time. Living ’ere, sir?”
“Staying for a week or so,” I answered, “and I may perhaps come to
live, but am not sure yet. By-the-bye, do you ever get any letters for
my friend Mr. Henry Jeanes?”
“Mr. Henry Jeanes? Oh, yes, sir. And you are the _second_ gentleman
that’s harsked me the same question. Mr. Green ’e harsked me as well.”
“Mr. James Bakewell Green?” I said. “Oh, yes; he is a friend of mine
too.”
“Hindeed, sir!” (This with a deprecatory cough, as if he did not
think much of the late Mr. Green, and was inclined in consequence to
reconsider the favourable opinion he had apparently formed of myself.)
“Curious gentleman, Mr. Green. Never bought nothing in the shop, Mr.
Green didn’t. Most gentlemen as ’as their letters addressed ’ere takes
a bottle of our ’air wash now and then for the good of the ’ouse; but
Mr. Green ’e never ’ad as much as a stick of shaving soap at hany time.
’E was halways harsking questions too, as I told Mr. Jeanes.”
“Oh,” I said, beginning to see daylight in regard to the means by which
Mullen had got to know that Green was making inquiries about him. “How
did you come to mention the matter to Mr. Jeanes?”
“Mr. Jeanes ’e left particular word, sir, that if hanybody harsked
after ’im we was to be sure and let ’im know.”
“I see,” I said. “And when do you expect Mr. Jeanes to call again?”
“Mr. Jeanes never calls, sir. We ’aven’t ever seen ’im. ’E sent us
hinstructions that all letters wot come for ’im was to be put in a
henvelope and addressed to ’im at Professor Lawrance’s ’air-cutting
establishment at Stanby, and we was to let ’im know if any one harsked
after ’im.”
At that moment the bell over the tobacconist’s shop outside announced
the entrance of a customer, and two young men pushing open the swing
door of the hairdressing saloon, seated themselves to await their turn.
Under the circumstances, and especially as I had learnt all I
required, I did not think it wise to ask further questions, but I had
a particular reason--which the reader shall shortly hear--for wishing
to possess a specimen of the handwriting in which the letters for Henry
Jeanes, Esq., that were sent on to the care of Professor Lawrance’s
establishment at Stanby, were directed.
“Can you spare me a second in the outside shop?” I said to the
hairdresser.
“With pleasure, sir,” he answered, following me out. “What can I do for
you?”
“Look here,” I said, pushing half-a-sovereign towards him over the
counter, “that’s for your trouble in letting me have my letters
addressed here. And now another matter. I’ve not been very well to-day,
and want to see a doctor. Who’s the best man to go to?”
“Dr. Carruthers, Devonshire ’Ouse, Grayland Road, sir. Best doctor in
the town, sir,” he responded.
“Would you mind writing it down for me? I’ve got a beastly memory.”
“With pleasure, sir,” he said, producing a bottle of ink, a pen, and a
sheet of paper from a drawer. “That’s it, sir. Much obliged, sir. I’ll
be very careful about the letters, and good-day, sir.”
CHAPTER XVII
ON THE HEELS OF JAMES MULLEN
I had already decided that my next destination must be Stanby, where it
would be necessary to pay a visit to Professor Lawrance’s hair-cutting
establishment. But first I had to read the letters I had secured, so
I turned into a small quiet-looking hotel and, having ordered dinner,
asked that I might have the use of a bedroom. Then I rang for a jug
of boiling water, and on its arrival I dived into the folds of my
umbrella, and having brought up the two epistles which were there
secreted I proceeded to hold them over the steam until the gum was so
moist that it was possible to open them.
The letter for Green was, as I have said, directed to himself in his
own writing. It contained nothing more important than a sheet of
blank notepaper, which, as the reader will already have surmised, had
evidently been sent as a “blind,” its purpose being to afford the
inquiry agent an excuse for calling at the shop where it had been
delivered.
The letter addressed to Mr. Henry Jeanes--that which had attracted
my attention from the fact of its bearing the postmark of the very
town in Norway where I had reason to believe Mullen’s sister was
staying--promised to be more interesting, and it was with no little
eagerness that I opened it and read as follows:--
“JAMES,--Your letter to hand. I cannot reply at present, as Stanley
has gone to Bergen; but I will write you again on his return.
“F.”
Though short, and unimportant as regards contents, this letter was
of the highest importance in other respects. Firstly, because it was
evidently from Mrs. Stanley Burgoyne, and intended for the eye of James
Mullen, and so in every way confirmed the genuineness of the letter I
had found in Green’s cigar-case; and secondly, because it disclosed
some information that I might otherwise have had much difficulty in
discovering--the name under which Mullen’s correspondence was being
addressed to him.
It was of the highest importance--if Mullen was to fall into the
trap which I was preparing for him--that he should have no cause to
suspect his correspondence was again being tampered with; so, as it
was possible that Mrs. Burgoyne might refer to this epistle in a later
letter, I carefully resealed the note and handed it to the postman,
whom I saw delivering letters in the street where the shop whence I had
obtained it was situated.
“What’s this?” he said when he had looked at it.
“You dropped it when making your last call,” I answered.
He looked surprised at first, and afterwards suspicious. “I don’t
remember seeing that letter when I sorted my delivery,” he said; “and
I ain’t in the habit of dropping letters in the street--been at it too
long for that. How do I know this ain’t a put-up job?”
“Give it me back at once, you insolent fellow,” I replied, “and I’ll
do what I ought to have done at first--take it to the head office and
report you to the postmaster for negligence. I go out of my way to do
you a courtesy, and perhaps save you from getting into trouble for
carelessness in the execution of your duty, and I get insulted for my
pains. Give it me back, or come with me to the head office and we’ll
soon put this matter right.”
“I humbly ask your pardon, and hope there is no offence, sir, I am
sure,” he answered, with a change of manner which showed that he did
not relish the threat of being reported for negligence. “I’ll see the
letter’s delivered all right, and I’m much obliged to you, sir, I am
sure, and hope you won’t think no more of it.”
“I’m not sure that I oughtn’t to take the letter to the office now,” I
said. “However, I don’t want to get a man into trouble for an accident,
but keep a civil tongue in your head another time, young man, or you’ll
not get off so cheaply as you have this.”
He touched his cap, and promising to profit by my advice, slipped the
letter in with what I supposed were others bearing the same address;
so wishing him good-day I entered a stationer’s shop and purchased a
couple of envelopes and two sheets of paper. Each sheet of paper I
folded and put into an envelope, which I then addressed in pencil to
myself, at the post-office, Stanby. Then, after posting them, I made my
way to the station and took a ticket to Stanby.
As I had to wait some time for a train, besides changing twice at
junctions, it was late when I reached that town, and I had some
difficulty in finding Professor Lawrance’s hair-cutting establishment,
which was in a side street, and was already closed for the night. On
the other side of the way, and only a few doors down, was a not very
clean-looking temperance hotel and coffee palace, and here I secured
a bedroom and sitting-room, from the latter of which, as it faced the
street, I should be able to keep an eye upon every one who entered or
left Professor Lawrance’s establishment.
I then went to bed, but was up early next morning and called at
the post-office, where the two envelopes which I had posted on the
preceding day at Cotley were awaiting me. These I took with me to
my room at the hotel, and having bought a piece of india-rubber on
the way I rubbed out the pencilled name and address, after which I
re-addressed the envelope in ink to Mr. Henry Jeanes, at Professor
Lawrance’s Hair-cutting Rooms, Stanby, imitating as closely I could the
handwriting of the barber at Cotley, of whose calligraphy I had secured
a specimen.
Most of my readers will already have guessed why I troubled to post
these pencil-addressed letters to myself at Cotley, and then, after
rubbing out the direction, re-addressed them in ink to Jeanes, at
Professor Lawrance’s establishment at Stanby, but as some may fail to
do so, I had better perhaps explain myself.
If a letter for Jeanes should be forwarded on to Professor Lawrance’s
rooms from Cotley, that letter it would be my business, by hook or by
crook, to abstract. But to do this without attracting suspicion, it
would be necessary to have a dummy letter with which to replace it,
and the dummy would have to bear the Cotley postmark, and be directed
in a hand as much resembling the handwriting on the original letter as
possible. How to arrange all this had puzzled me at first, for though I
did not anticipate any difficulty in hitting upon a pretext by which to
obtain a specimen of the Cotley barber’s handwriting, or in imitating
that handwriting when obtained, I could not see how to get over the
difficulty of the postmark. A postmark is not an easy thing to forge
without specially prepared tools, and until the idea occurred to me of
posting at Cotley a letter addressed in pencil to myself at Stanby,
and then rubbing out the address and re-addressing it to Jeanes, I
was rather at a loss to know how to effect my purpose. However, the
difficulty was now satisfactorily surmounted, and armed with my dummy
letters I set out to make the acquaintance of Professor Lawrance.
He was an extremely unprepossessing, not to say villainous-looking man,
and regarded me with what I could not help thinking was a suspicious
eye when I entered. I submitted to be shaved and shampooed, both of
which operations he performed badly, though he regaled me meanwhile
with his views in regard to the winner of the Derby, and also of a
prize-fight which was coming off that day.
“By-the-bye,” I said, as I was drawing on my gloves, “can one have
letters addressed here?”
“No,” he replied shortly, “yer can’t. It don’t pay--on the usual
terms.”
“I know that,” I said, “or I shouldn’t have asked you. But I’m willing
to pay special terms.”
“Is it ’orses?” he inquired gruffly.
“Yes, horses,” I said, taking up the cue which he had given me; “but
it’s a fool’s game, and I’ve lost a lot of money over it already.”
“Ah!” with a grin. “And yer’ve got a hintroduction, of course. I don’t
take on customers of that sort without a hintroduction. It ain’t safe.”
The affair was panning out beyond my reckoning, but from what had
transpired I felt sure that I should be safe in assuming he was more of
a betting agent than a barber, and that the wisest thing for me to do
would be, by bluffing boldly, to lead him to suppose I knew all about
him; so I nodded assent as airily as possible, and as if his question
had been a mere matter of course.
“Who is it?” he asked point blank.
“Morrison,” I replied, without a moment’s hesitation--“Henry Morrison,
of Doncaster. You recollect him--tall man, clean-shaven and small eyes.
Wears a fawn coat and a brown billycock. He said any money I put on
with you would be quite safe.”
The barber nodded. “Like as not, though I don’t rekerllect him from yer
description. Well, wot d’yer want me to back?”
“Ah, that’s what I wish _you_ to tell me,” I said--this time at least
with absolute truthfulness, for as a matter of fact I did not know as
much as the name of one of the horses, or what was the race which we
were supposed to be discussing.
“Greased Lightning’s the lay,” he said. “It’s a dead cert. I can get
yer level money now. It’ll be four to two hon to-morrow. How much are
yer going to spring?”
I replied that he could put a “flimsy” on for me; and after he had
entered the amount and my name--which I gave as Henry Watson--in a
greasy notebook, I wished him good morning, promising to call again
soon to see if there were any letters.
The rest of the day I spent for the most part in my bedroom watching
the customers who patronised Professor Lawrance’s saloon; nor was my
vigil without result in assisting me to form an opinion as to the class
of business which was there carried on. Not more than a dozen people
entered the establishment during the day, and the majority of them
had called neither to be shaved nor to have their hair cut. My reason
for coming to this conclusion was not that I had such telescopic and
microscopic eyes as to be able to detect in every case whether the
caller had been under the barber’s hand since his entrance, but because
most of Professor Lawrance’s customers did not remain inside his shop
more than half a minute, and because, too, I saw a letter in the hand
of more than one of those who came out. And as the postman never
passed the door without making a delivery, and the callers were all
more or less horsey in dress and appearance, the evidence seemed to
point pretty clearly to the fact that Professor Lawrance was, as I had
already surmised, more of a betting agent than a barber.
I looked in next morning, ostensibly to be shaved, but in reality to
try to get sight of any letters which might have come addressed to the
Professor’s care. That worthy forestalled me by gruffly volunteering
the information that there were no letters; nor could I succeed in
leading the conversation to the subject in which I was interested.
The morning after, however, I waited until I saw some one--who
looked more like a customer in search of a barber than of a betting
agent--enter the shop, and then followed him. He was at that
moment being lathered for shaving, so after wishing the Professor
good-morning, and remarking that I was in no hurry, I took a
seat close to the mantel-shelf and pretended to read the “Daily
Telegraph.” It was on this mantel-shelf, as I was aware, that the box
containing the letters was kept, but on looking round I saw to my
dismay that the mantel-shelf had been cleared for the display of a
big coarsely-coloured picture of “The Great Fight between Slade and
Scroggins.” The picture was labelled, “To be raffled for--the proceeds
for the benefit of the widow.”
Whether this was intended as a delicate way of intimating that the
conflict had proved fatal to one of the conflicting parties, or whether
the widow in question was the relict of the artistic genius whose brain
had conceived and whose hand had drawn the picture, I am unable to
say, as particulars were not given. In regard to the details of the
raffle, however, the promoters of the enterprise had condescended to be
more explicit, as another label announced that the price of tickets was
sixpence, and that they were “to be obtained of the Professor.” I was,
however, more concerned at the moment in ascertaining what had become
of the letters, so I scanned the room carefully, shifting meanwhile the
outspread and interposed broadsheet of the “Daily Telegraph”--like a
yachtsman setting his canvas close to the wind--so as to keep myself
out of reach of the Professor’s too-inquisitive glance, and switching
my eyes from object to object until they discovered the missing letters
placed upon a rack which hung upon the wall near the window.
“It’s very dark here, or else my sight’s getting bad and I shall have
to take to glasses. I’m hanged if I can read this small print,” I said
aloud, standing up and moving towards the window, as if to get a better
light. For half a minute I pretended to read, and then I leisurely
shook out the newspaper to its fullest extent, in order to reverse the
sheet, thus hiding myself completely from the Professor’s eye.
As I did so I took the opportunity to snatch the packet of letters
from the rack. It was no easy matter to shuffle through them with one
hand and without attracting attention, but I accomplished the task
successfully, and not without result, for the bottom letter of the
packet was for Mr. Henry Jeanes, and was in the handwriting of the
barber at Cotley.
The reader will remember that I had prepared two envelopes bearing the
Cotley postmark, and addressed to Jeanes in as close an imitation of
the barber’s handwriting as possible. Into one of these envelopes I had
that morning slipped a sheet of blank paper on which was pasted the
newspaper cutting about the finding of the body of poor Green (I had a
reason for doing so which will shortly transpire), and this envelope
I was at that moment carrying just inside my sleeve. To abstract the
original letter and replace it by the dummy was the work of a few
seconds. It was well that I had come thus prepared, for in the next
instant the Professor had snatched the packet from my hand, and was
asking in a voice quivering with fury, “What the dickens I meant by
such impudence?”
“What’s the excitement?” I said, as calmly and unconsciously as
possible. “I was only looking if there was one for me? There’s no harm
done.”
“Oh, isn’t there?” he said. “But there soon will be if yer get meddling
’ere again,” and with one swiftly-searching and darkly-suspicious
glance at my face he fell to examining the letters, and, as I could see
by the movement of his lips, counting them one by one to see that none
was missing. My heart, I must confess, jumped a bit when he came to the
forgery with which I had replaced the letter I had abstracted. But the
result was apparently satisfactory, for he put the packet back upon the
rack without further comment and took up the discarded shaving brush
to continue his task. I did not feel at the best of ease when, after
the customer had paid and departed, a surly “Now then!” summoned me to
the operating chair, for it was not altogether reassuring to have a
razor, in the grip of such a ruffian, at one’s throat. But, though the
shave was accomplished with none too light a hand, and the scoundrel
drew blood by the probably intentional and malicious way in which he
rasped my somewhat tender skin, he did me no serious injury, and it
was not long before I was back at the hotel and engaged in opening the
abstracted letter.
There were two documents inside, the first of which was addressed to
Jeanes in Mrs. Stanley Burgoyne’s handwriting, and ran as follows:--
“JAMES,--We are glad to have your promise, and will carry out our
part of the contract faithfully. We shall remain here as you direct
until you telegraph the word ‘Come,’ when we shall start for England
at once, and you can count on the yacht being at the place you
mention within four days and ready to start again at a few hours’
notice. We shall be just off the boat-builder’s yard where our little
yacht is laid up.
“I do _not_ see any necessity for doing as you say in regard to
sending the present crew back to England under the pretence that we
are not likely to be using the yacht for some time, and then, after
getting the ship’s appearance altered by repainting and rechristening
her the name you mention, engaging another crew of Norwegians.
“This seems to me a very unnecessary precaution. Your connection with
us is never likely to be discovered, unless by your own confession.
However, I suppose you know best, and we will do as you say.
“F.”
The other letter was on a half-sheet of notepaper, and in the
handwriting of the barber at Cotley. Here it is:--
“RESPECTED SIR,--Mr. Green has not called since I last wrote you. But
a person named Smithers came and asked questions. I did not like the
look of him and would not tell him anything, but said I did not know
any Mr. Jeanes.--Respectfully,
“JAMES DORLEY.
“P. S.--Smithers smelt of rum. He had been drinking. He was a
low-looking man, and I did not like his eye.”
“I’m pained to hear you don’t like my eye, Mr. James--Mr. ‘Truthful
James,’” I said sarcastically as I put the letter down, glancing
sideways all the same at a mirror on the wall to see if I could
detect any sinister expression in my eye which could account for the
unfavourable opinion Mr. James had formed of that feature. “And so
you didn’t tell me anything, didn’t you, you precious rascal? Some day
I may have an opportunity of telling _you_ something, and then it is
possible you may find something else to dislike about me as well as my
eye. In the meantime I’ll take the liberty of detaining your letter,
as it would put Mullen on the alert if I let it go on to him. His
sister’s letter he must have, for if I fail to set hands on him here, I
can take him when he keeps his appointment with her on the steam yacht,
on board which he hopes to get out of the country. So I mustn’t lose a
moment in resealing her letter and getting it back by hook or by crook
to the letter-rack whence I got it. I’m not easy about the forgery
with which I replaced it. If there had chanced to be only two or three
letters waiting to be called for this morning, and I had abstracted one
without replacing it with a dummy, the Professor would be bound to have
noticed that a letter was missing. But I’m running a risk in leaving
the forged dummy there a moment longer than I can help. Mullen might
call and have it given him, or it may get sent on; and though I flatter
myself that the forgery is so well done that even Mullen is not likely
to notice any difference in the handwriting, and though it is possible
also that he will think the cutting about Green’s death had been sent
him by the Cotley barber, I’d much rather that the dummy didn’t fall
into his hands.
“To have forged a letter from the Cotley barber would have been
extremely dangerous, for I didn’t then know how the rascal addressed
Mullen. And to have enclosed a blank sheet of paper would at once
suggest the trick which had been played. The newspaper cutting was the
only thing I could think of that had the look of being a _bona fide_
enclosure from the rascal at Cotley. He had to my knowledge informed
Mullen that Green was inquiring about him, and what was more natural
than that, seeing a notice of Green’s death in the papers, he should
send it on to his principal. But all the same, the sooner I get the
dummy back into my own hands the better, for I don’t think--”
At this point I broke off my meditations abruptly. I had been sitting
in full view of Professor Lawrance’s door, and just then I saw him put
his head out, look up and down the street as if to see whether he could
safely be away for a few minutes without the probability of a customer
popping in, and then cross the road in the direction of the nearest
publichouse.
“If I’m to make the exchange, it’s now or never,” I said, snatching
up the letter from Mrs. Burgoyne which, after copying, I had put back
into its envelope and resealed. In another half-minute I had crossed
the road and was ascending the stairs which led to Professor Lawrance’s
hair-cutting establishment.
CHAPTER XVIII
I BECOME A HAIRDRESSER’S ASSISTANT
To replace the dummy letter by the original and to pocket the former
did not take long, and as no step upon the stair announced the
Professor’s return I thought I might as well avail myself of the
opportunity of ascertaining anything that was to be learnt about his
other correspondents. With this end in view I put out my hand to take
down the packet again when a voice behind me said:--
“Wot a hinterest he do take in correspondence to be sure. Be damned if
he ain’t at ’em again!” And as I turned round I saw the Professor in
the act of closing the door, locking it, and putting the key in his
pocket.
“Now then, Mr. ’Enery Watson,” he said, with an ugly look upon his
face, “you and me ’as got to come to a hunderstanding. You comes here
very haffable like a-wanting to back a ’orse, with a hintroduction
from Mr. ’Enery Morrison, o’ Doncaster. Tall man, clean-shaved, small
heyes, wore a fawn coat and a billycock ’at, did he? Ah! I knows
’im--Valker’s ’is name. ’Orses!”--this with scorn too withering to be
expressed by means of pen and ink--“_You_ know hanythink about ’orses!
Why, yer sneakin’ goat, there ain’t a knacker in the cats’-meat yard
wot wouldn’t put ’is ’eels in yer face if ’e ’eard yer talk about a
gee-gee!”
He looked me up and down contemptuously for a moment, and then with a
sudden accession of fury, and with the sneer in his voice changed to a
snarl, said:--
“Yer come ’ere, do yer, a-spying and a-prying, and takes rooms over
the way to keep a watch upon me and my customers. And yer want to get
yer ’and on them letters there, so as to find some hevidence to lay
hinformation agin me, do yer? Think I didn’t know yer was a-watchin’ me
through the korfey palis winder? That’s wot I went out for. I knew as
yer’d be slippin’ over ’ere direckly my back was turned. But I copped
yer, yer slinkin’ toad! and yer ain’t got nothink to lay hinformation
on; and I’ll take care yer don’t!”
“My good man,” I replied quite coolly, “don’t distress yourself
unnecessarily. I know very well that you are carrying on illegal
transactions, and I could make things uncomfortable if I chose to give
the police a hint. But I’m not a detective, and I don’t concern myself
one way or the other with your doings, legal or illegal. What I came
here to find out is purely a private family affair, and has nothing in
the world to do with you or your betting business. A man I know has
disappeared, and his family are anxious to get news of him. I’ve got an
idea that he is in Stanby, and that he is having letters addressed to
your care under an assumed name. Now look here. You’ve got it in your
power to spoil my game, I admit; and I’ve got it in my power to give
the police a hint that might be inconvenient to you. But why should you
and I quarrel? Why shouldn’t we do a little business together to our
mutual benefit? I can pay for any help you give, and if you’ll work
with me I’ll guarantee that your name shan’t be mentioned, and to keep
my mouth shut about any little business transactions of your own which
you’re engaged in. Well, what is it to be? Will you accept my offer or
not? You get nothing by refusing, and gain a good deal by accepting.
You run this show to make money, and not for pleasure, I take it; and
I’m ready to put a good deal more money in your pocket than you’d make
in the general way, and not to interfere with your usual business
either. I shouldn’t have supposed it wants much thinking about.”
“Wot d’ yer call a good deal more money?” he asked shortly, but not
without signs of coming to terms.
“Five, fifteen, or twenty pounds.”
“An’ who is it yer after? There’s some of my pals as I wouldn’t give no
one the bulge on, and there’s some as I don’t care a crab’s claw abawt.”
“My man isn’t one of your pals, I’m pretty sure, though I can’t tell
you his name--anyhow, not for the present,” I answered. “But who are
the pals you won’t go back on?”
“Is it George Ray?”
“No.”
“’Appy ’Arry?”
“No.”
“Alf Mason?”
“No.”
“Bob the Skinner?”
“No.”
“Fred Wright?”
“No.”
“Give us yer twenty pun’ then. I’m on. I don’t care the price of ’arf a
pint about none of the others.”
“Not so fast, my friend; you’ve got to earn the money before you get
it. And it’ll depend on yourself whether it’s ten, fifteen or twenty.
Now listen to me. What I want you to do is to make an excuse for me
to stay in your shop, so as to get a look at the people who come for
letters. You must pretend to engage me as your assistant, and fix me
up in a white apron, and so on. If any one asks questions you can say
I’m a young man who’s come into a little money and wants to drop it in
starting a hairdressing establishment, and I’ve come to you to help me
do it. You can tell them that you don’t let me cut any of your regular
customers, but that I make myself useful by stropping the razors,
lathering the ‘shaves,’ and practising hair-cutting on odd customers
and schoolboys. I could do that much, I think, without betraying
myself. The sooner we begin the better. Give me a white apron, if
you’ve got one to spare, and I’ll put it on straight off. Here’s five
pounds down to start with, and I’ll give you another five for every
week I’m here. Is it a bargain?”
“No, it ain’t. Ten pun’ down, and ten pun’ a week’s my figger, and no
less. I ain’t a-going to injure my business by taking hamitoors to
learn the business on my customers out of charity. Them’s my terms. Yer
can take ’em or leave ’em, as yer like.”
In the end we compounded the matter for ten pounds down and five pounds
weekly, and having arrayed myself in a white apron and a canvas coat,
braided red, which the Professor tossed me from a drawer, I assumed
those badges of office--the shears, shaving-brush and comb--and took
my place behind the second operating chair to await customers and
developments.
CHAPTER XIX
“ARE THERE ANY LETTERS FOR HENRY JEANES, PLEASE?”
Were it not that they have no immediate connection with my story,
I should like to describe here some of the curious and amusing
experiences which befell me while I was acting as assistant to a barber
and betting agent. But in a narrative like the present it is perhaps
best that I should confine myself to the incidents and adventures which
have direct bearing upon my search for Captain Shannon.
That the Professor would betray me to his clients I did not think at
all likely, as to do so would necessitate his admitting to them that
he had been bribed to allow a spy, if not a detective, to enter his
service under a disguise, and to have access to the correspondence of
the establishment. At the same time, I did not think it advisable--at
all events for the present--to take him into my confidence by telling
him who was the object of my search. Hence I had to pursue my
investigations in a more or less indirect manner, inquiring first about
one of the parties for whom letters came and then about another, and
so getting an opportunity to refer to Jeanes without appearing to be
more curious about him than about the others. In reply to my casual
question as to who Jeanes was, the Professor replied, with apparent
indifference, that the party in question was young and good-looking,
and that he did not suppose the correspondence which was being carried
on meant any more than a foolish love-affair.
Several days went by, and the letter for Jeanes still remained uncalled
for, until one afternoon the Professor asked me, as he had asked me
on previous occasions, if I would keep an eye to the shop while he
ran over the way to get half-a-pint. I nodded assent, and, promising
that he would not be long, he disappeared down the stairs, only to
return immediately afterwards for his pipe, which was lying on the
mantel-shelf. As he passed the rack he took the letters down and ran
through them as if to see how many there were, and then giving me a
look, which I took to mean that it would be no use my tampering with
them in his absence, he again descended the stairs in search of the
desired refreshment.
He had been gone about a quarter of an hour when a man, muffled up
to the nose with a big “comforter,” and with a soft hat pulled down
so closely over his brows that little more of him was visible than
a pair of blue spectacles, opened the door and, without coming in,
stood coughing and panting like a consumptive on the mat outside. As
he did not show any disposition to enter, I inquired what he wanted,
but shaking his head, as if to indicate that he was unable to answer,
he continued hacking and coughing with stooped head and bent shoulders
for half a minute, and then in a hollow voice, which seemed strangely
familiar to me, asked if there was a letter for Mr. Henry Jeanes.
As calmly as if his coming were a thing of the utmost indifference to
me I reached for the packet of letters in order to select that which
was addressed to Jeanes. To my dismay I found it gone, but repressing
the exclamation of surprise which rose to my lips I turned to the
waiting messenger and shook my head.
He mumbled something that sounded like “Thank you,” and then, closing
the door, toiled painfully downstairs. Scarcely had he reached the
first landing before I had made what is called in music-hall parlance a
“lightning change.”
Tearing off my canvas coat and white apron and tossing them in a heap
upon a chair, I shot into, rather than got into, my reefer jacket, and
snatching at my hat was down the stairs and out in the street before my
visitor was half-way to the first corner, which led to an unfrequented
side street. The instant he had turned it I was after him like the
wind, and, looking warily round, saw him making for a narrow lane that
ran at right angles to the direction in which he was going. No sooner
was he hidden by the corner than I was after him once again, but not
so hurriedly as to forget to stop and peer cautiously round before
exposing my own person to view. The sight which met my eyes put me,
I must confess, fairly out of countenance, for there, just round the
corner, with the crush hat pushed to the back of his head, the muffler
thrown open and the blue spectacles in the hand which he pointed
derisively at me, was none other than the Professor, literally rolling
about with uncontrollable laughter.
“Oh, my poor korf! it is so bad I ain’t able to speak!” he gasped
between his convulsions of merriment. “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Oh, you
’a’porth o’ pigeon’s milk wot thought you could get up early enough in
the mornin’ to take a rise out of old Tom Lawrance! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
Oh, you feedin’-bottle fool and mug as thought yer’d got the bulge on
Downy Tom! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Come and laugh at him, sonnies, for the
biggest fool and mammy’s-milk Juggins and Johnny in all Stanby!”
CHAPTER XX
HOW JAMES MULLEN AND MYSELF ALMOST MET
The Professor was in such huge good humour at the success of his ruse
that when we returned together to the hair-cutting establishment he
was almost inclined to be genial, especially as I took the joke in
good part, and frankly admitted that I had never been so “let through”
before. So friendly was he, in fact that he readily agreed to my
proposal that I should go over the way and bring back a bottle of
something to ease his cough; and after I had pledged “Downy Tom,” and
expressed the intention of getting up a little earlier in the morning
the next time I meant trying to steal a march upon him, and “Downy
Tom” had pledged me in what--in delicate allusion to recent events--he
humorously termed pigeon’s milk, but which was in reality the best Old
Tom, we fell to discussing events almost confidentially.
“So it _is_ Jeanes as yer after--as I always suspected, though you
never harsked questions about him direct, but only as if by haccident
and among the others” he said, as he lit his pipe. “It ’ud have saved a
lot of trouble if yer’d told me so at fust.”
“What do you mean by ‘saved trouble’?” I asked.
“Why, if I’d ’ave knowed it was Jeanes for certain, I’d ’ave ’elped
yer--for a consideration, of course. I only took yer into the shop
because I meant to find out who yer _was_ hafter. Jeanes ain’t nothink
to me; but there is some of my pals as I wouldn’t have no ’arm come
to, not for a pot o’ money. And I knew if I ’ad yer there I could find
out who it was yer wanted, and give ’im the tip if it was a pal. Why,
I’ve been a-playin’ with yer all this time--a-playing hoff first one
name and then another to see if it was your bloke. Then when I began
to suspect it _was_ Jeanes, I planned the little game I played yer
ter-day--an’ _didn’t_ yer tumble prettily! Ha, ha, ha, ha!” and off the
Professor went again into a paroxysm of laughter at my expense.
It suited my purpose to humour him, so I joined good-humouredly in the
laugh against myself; but as a matter of fact I had not been quite such
a “pigeon” as the Professor supposed. Up to a certain point the scoring
had been in my favour, and not in his, for I had succeeded, not only in
intercepting an important letter which had been sent to his care, but
also in returning that letter--after I had made myself acquainted with
its contents--to the place whence I took it, so that it might reach the
hand of the person to whom it was addressed.
But I knew very well that, should the Professor’s suspicions be once
aroused--as must have been the case after he detected me in the act
of examining the letters--I should not only never again be allowed to
go within the reach of the rack where he kept them, but should in all
probability be refused admission to his shop. Hence I had no choice
but to adopt the somewhat daring course of openly offering him a bribe
to take me into his service. If he really were Mullen’s confederate
he would already have had cause to suspect my motives, but if, on the
other hand, Mullen and the Professor had no other connection than that
the former was having his letters addressed to the latter’s shop, it
was quite within the bounds of possibility that the worthy Professor
would, for a consideration, be prepared to tell me all he knew about
the customer in question. That the object of the leading questions he
had from time to time put to me was to discover whom I was in search
of, I had been well aware, although I freely admit that I had been,
as I have said, “let through” in regard to the man who had called for
Jeanes’s letter.
When the Professor had had his laugh out I asked him quietly if he knew
that the letter for Jeanes was gone.
“Do I know it’s gone, yer bally fool?” he said. “Why, of course I do.
Wasn’t it me came and called yer for it just now when I had such a bad
korf; and didn’t yer say there wasn’t any letter?”
“Yes, yes,” I said, looking rather foolish; “of course I know that you
came and asked for a letter, and that I told you there wasn’t one, but
I didn’t know that you knew that the letter was really gone.”
“Well, considerin’ as it was me took it when I came back to get my
pipe, I ought ter know,” he answered, and then, with a sudden change of
manner, “Look ’ere, Watson, or whatever yer name is, I think us two can
do a deal together. Yer want to get ’old of ’Enery Jeanes, don’t yer?”
I nodded.
“Supposin’ I knew where ’e was to be found at this very minute, wot ’ud
yer give me for the hinformation?”
“Ten pounds,” I answered.
He snorted.
“Can’t be done under twenty, ready money. Give us yer twenty and I’ll
tell yer.”
“No,” I said. “Take me to where Jeanes is to be found, wherever it is,
and I’ll give you, not twenty, but fifty pounds, as soon as I’m sure it
is the right man. I swear it, so help me God! and I won’t go back on my
word.”
His eyes sparkled.
“Yer a gentleman, I b’lieve,” he said, “and I’ll trust yer. But yer
must keep my name out of it. Now listen. When I went down the stairs to
get that ’arf-pint I met Jeanes a-comin’ up for ’is letters. I guessed
it was ’im yer was after, and I wasn’t going to ’ave no harrests nor
rows in my shop. Besides, if yer wanted ’im bad, I guessed yer’d be
willin’ to drop money on it and if there was any money to be dropped I
didn’t see why I shouldn’t be the one to pick it up.”
Here was news, indeed! If the Professor was to be believed--and,
notwithstanding my recent experience, I failed to see what motive he
could have for misleading me in this instance--the man I was in search
of had been in the town, and in that very house, scarcely more than two
hours ago! And I had been sitting there idly, when every moment, every
second, was precious!
“Go on! go on!” I said excitedly. “Tell me the rest as fast as you can.
There’s not a moment to spare. I’ll see you don’t lose by it.”
He nodded and continued, but still in the same leisurely way.
“Well, I harsked Jeanes to wait while I fetched the letter. That’s wot
I came back to get my pipe for. Yer remember I took the letters down
and pretended to count ’em? Well, I sneaked it then and gave it ’im.
He gave me a sovereign, and said there wouldn’t be any more letters
comin’ for ’im, and ’e shouldn’t be calling at the shop no more. Then
’e harsked me wot time the next train left for London, and I told ’im
in a quarter of an hour, and ’e said that wouldn’t do, as ’e ’adn’t ’ad
no lunch and was starvin’ ’ungry. So I told ’im there wasn’t another
for two hours and a ’arf, and ’e said that would do capital, and where
was the best place to get dinner. I told ’im the Railway Hotel, and ’e
went there, ’cos I followed him to make sure. Then I whipped back and
played that little game on yer just to make sure it _was_ Jeanes yer
wanted. And now I guess that fifty pounds is as good as mine. Jeanes’ll
be at the hotel now, or if ’e’s left there we can make sure of ’im
at the station when ’e catches the London express. Wot d’ yer want
him for? Looks a ’armless, pleasant kind of bloke, and very pleasant
spoken.”
“What’s he like?” I said.
“Youngish, fair, and big eyes like a gal’s. Wore a blue serge suit and
a white straw ’at.”
“Clean shaven?” I asked.
“Yes, clean shaved; or any’ow, ’e’d no ’air on ’is face.”
“That’s the man,” I said. “Well, come along, we’ll be off to the hotel.
Do you know any one there, by-the-bye?”
“I knows the chief waiter. ’E often ’as five bob on a ’orse with me.”
“All right. Then you’d better go in first and see your friend the
waiter and find out where Jeanes is. If he heard anybody asking for him
by name in the hall he might think something was wrong and make a bolt.
Then you’d lose your fifty pounds--which would be a pity.”
The Professor assented, and we started for the Railway Hotel, he
walking in front as if without any connection with me, and I some
twenty paces behind. When the swing doors closed upon his bulky figure
I stopped, as we had arranged, and pretended to look into a shop window
until he should rejoin me.
I had been nervous and excited when we set out, but now that the crisis
had come, and I was so soon to stand face to face with Henry Jeanes
_alias_ James Cross, _alias_ James Mullen, _alias_ Captain Shannon, I
was as cool and collected as ever I was in my life.
The next moment the Professor came hurrying out, with a face on which
dismay was plainly written.
“’E’s been there, right enough,” he said, all in a burst, and with
a horrible oath, his features working meanwhile with agitation, the
genuineness of which there was no mistaking. “But instead of ’aving
lunch, as ’e told me ’e should, the ---- ’ad a glass of sherry and
caught the 12.15 express to London, and ’e’s more than got there by
now, rot ’im!”
CHAPTER XXI
HOW I STRUCK JAMES MULLEN’S TRACK
Whether Jeanes, _alias_ Mullen, had noticed any signs of curiosity in
regard to his movements on the Professor’s part, and had intentionally
misinformed that worthy; whether his suspicions had been aroused by his
discovering that he was being shadowed to the hotel; or whether his
change of plans was entirely accidental, I had no means of knowing; but
that my adversary in the game of chess I was playing had again called
“check” just when I had hoped to come out with the triumphant “mate”
was not to be denied. The only additional information I succeeded in
eliciting from the Professor was that Jeanes had visited the shop some
month or so ago and had arranged that any letters sent there for him
should be kept till he came for them. He had left half-a-sovereign on
account and had called four times, receiving three letters, including
that which had been handed to him by the Professor.
As for that precious rascal, I need scarcely say that I placed no
reliance whatever upon what he said, and had seriously considered
whether the story of his giving Jeanes the letter on the stairs,
and then shadowing his customer to the hotel might not be an entire
fabrication. I did not for a moment believe that he knew who Jeanes
really was, for had he done so he would, I felt sure, have lost no time
in securing the reward by handing the fugitive over to the police. But
I quite recognised the possibility of his being in Jeanes’s pay, and
had seriously asked myself whether the statement that Jeanes would not
be having any more letters addressed to the shop, and would not be
visiting Stanby again, might not be a ruse to get me out of the way.
But that the Professor’s surprise and dismay when he found Jeanes
gone from the hotel were genuine, no one who had witnessed them could
have doubted, and as the circumstances generally tended to confirm his
story, I was forced to the conclusion that he had, in this instance at
all events, told the truth.
In that case I should be wasting time by remaining longer at Stanby; so
after arranging with the Professor that if Jeanes called again, or if
any other letters arrived for him, the word “News” should at once be
telegraphed to an address which I gave, I packed my bag and caught the
next train to town.
Mullen had called “check” at Stanby, it is true, but I was not without
another move, by means of which I hoped eventually to “mate” him,
and what that move was, the reader who remembers the contents of the
intercepted letters will readily surmise.
In one of those letters the person to whom it was addressed was told
that the steam yacht, by means of which he was to escape would be
lying just off the boat-builder’s yard where the little yacht was laid
up. Any one who did not know from whom the letter was, or under what
circumstances it had been written, would not be any the wiser for this
piece of information. But to one who knew, as I did, that the writer
was the wife of Mr. Stanley Burgoyne, it would not be a difficult thing
to ascertain the name of any small yacht of which that gentleman was
the owner, and the place where it was likely to be laid up.
Whether Mullen intended to abandon or to carry out the plan he had
formed for making his escape by the help of his sister, I had no means
of knowing. If he suspected that his letters had been intercepted,
he was tolerably sure to abandon the arrangement, or at all events
to change the scene of operations. But if he was unaware of the fact
that I had taken up the thread which poor Green had dropped, it was
possible that he might assume his secret to be safe now Green was
satisfactorily disposed of, and might carry out his original plan,
in which event he would walk of his own accord into the trap which I
was preparing for him. In any case I should be doing right in making
inquiries about Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Burgoyne and their yacht, and with
this end in view I purchased a copy of the current “Yachting Register.”
Turning to the letter B in the list of owners, I found that Mr. Stanley
Scott Burgoyne’s club was the Royal London, and that he had two boats,
one a big steam yacht called the “Fiona,” and the other a little
five-tonner named the “Odd Trick.” It was no doubt in the former that
Mr. and Mrs. Burgoyne had gone to Norway and by means of which Mullen
was to fly the country, and it was probably to the latter that Mrs.
Burgoyne had referred in her letter.
No one can be led to talk “shop” more readily than your enthusiastic
yachtsman, and it did not require much diplomacy on my part to
ascertain, by means of a visit to the Royal London Club House in Savile
Row--in company with a member--that Mr. Burgoyne’s little cruiser was
laid up at Gravesend, in charge of a man named Gunnell.
Him I accordingly visited, under the pretext of wanting to buy a yacht,
and after some conversation I remarked casually--
“By-the-bye, I think you have my friend Mr. Stanley Burgoyne’s
five-tonner, the ‘Odd Trick,’ laid up here, haven’t you?”
“I did have, sir,” was the reply, “but Mr. Burgoyne he telegraphed that
I was to let his brother-in-law, Mr. Cross, have the boat out. That
there’s the telegram wot you see slipped in behind the olm’nack.”
For the second time in the course of this curious enterprise the
information I was in need of seemed to come in search of me instead
of my having to go in search of it. I had felt when I started out
to pursue my inquiries about Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Burgoyne, by
interviewing the waterman Gunnell, that it was quite possible I might
learn something of importance, but I had not expected to strike the
trail red-hot, and so soon, for “Cross,” as the reader may perhaps
remember, was the name by which Mullen was known to his family.
“Mullen” had been used only in connection with the conspiracy.
Lest the man should see by my face how important was the information
he had let drop, I stooped as if to flick a splash of mud from my
trousers-leg before replying.
“Ah, yes,” I said at length, straightening myself and bending forward
indolently to look at the telegram, which I read aloud.
“To Gunnell, Gravesend.--Get ‘Odd Trick’ ready and afloat. Mr. Cross
will come for her.--BURGOYNE.
“Windsor Hotel, Scarborough.”
“Of course,” I went on, “I had quite forgotten Mr. Cross telling me,
when I saw him last, that he was going to ask his brother-in-law to
lend him the ‘Odd Trick,’ for a cruise. Whom has he got on board?”
“No one, sir. Mr. Cross was sailing her himself; said he was only going
as far as Sheerness, where he expected a friend to join him who would
help him to handle her.”
“He’s a good sailor, isn’t he?”
“No, sir, that’s just what he isn’t, and that’s why I wanted him
to let me go with him until his friend turned up. But, bless you,
sir, he got that huffy there wasn’t no holdin’ him. And him a very
pleasant-mannered gentleman in the usual way, and free with his money
too.”
Our conversation was interrupted at this point by the entrance of
another waterman with the key of the shed where a boat that was for
sale was laid up. The craft in question was a pretty little cutter,
named the “Pastime,” and I of course made a great pretence of
inspecting her narrowly, and was careful to put the usual questions
about her draught, breadth of beam, findings, and the like, which would
be expected from any intending purchaser.
“Isn’t she rather like the ‘Odd Trick’?” I said casually, being
desirous of getting a description of that vessel without appearing to
be unduly inquisitive.
“Lor’ bless you no, sir!” answered the honest Gunnell. “She’s about the
same _siz_ right enough, but the ‘Pastime’ is cutter-rigged and the
‘Odd Trick’ ’s a yawl. Besides, the ‘Pastime’ is painted chocolate,
and the ‘Odd Trick’ is white, picked out gold.”
This was just the information I required, so after telling Gunnell
that I would let him know my decision when I had seen another boat
which was in the market, I slipped half-a-sovereign into his hand, as
“conscience money,” for taking up his time when I had no intention of
becoming a purchaser, and bade him “Good-day, and thank you.”
The result of my inquiries, though by no means unsatisfactory, had, I
must confess, put me somewhat out of my reckoning. I had all along been
of opinion that Mullen’s hiding-place was on water, as the reader is
aware, but I had not supposed he would be so rash as to trust himself
on a vessel which, if his connection with the Burgoynes should reach
the ears of the police, would be almost the first object of their
inquiries. I could only account for his doing so by presuming that
he was convinced that the secret of his relationship to Mr. and Mrs.
Burgoyne--being known only to them and to him--could not by any means
come to light, and that, taking one thing with another, he considered
it safer to make use of Burgoyne’s boat than to run the risk of
purchasing or hiring what he wanted from a stranger. Or it might be
that as no fresh outrages had occurred for some time the vigilance of
the police had become somewhat relaxed, and that Mullen--knowing it
to be so, and that the hue and cry had subsided--felt that his own
precautions might be proportionately lessened.
Perhaps, too, the ease with which he had hitherto eluded pursuit had
tended to make him careless, over-confident, and inclined to underrate
the abilities of English detectives. But, whatever his reason, the fact
remained that if Gunnell’s story was to be believed--and I saw no cause
to doubt it--Mullen had contrived to get possession of the “Odd Trick”
by means of a telegram which, though purporting to come from the owner
of the boat, Mr. Burgoyne, had in reality been despatched by Mullen
himself.
That he was the sender of the telegram was evident from some inquiries
which I afterwards made at Scarborough. These inquiries I need not
here enter upon in detail, but I may mention that I was able by a
little diplomacy to get a photograph of the original draft (it is not
generally known that the first drafts of telegrams are retained for a
considerable time by the postal authorities) and so became possessed of
a piece of evidence which might one day prove valuable--a specimen of
what was in all probability Mullen’s own handwriting.
But as a matter of fact I had good cause, quite apart from the
inquiries which I instituted at Scarborough, to feel satisfied that the
telegram had been sent by Mullen, or by his instigation, and not by
Burgoyne, as I knew by the date of the letter which Mrs. Burgoyne had
sent to Mullen--the letter which I had intercepted--that her husband
was in Bergen upon the very day on which the telegram from Scarborough
had been despatched.
My next business I decided must be to find the present whereabouts of
the “Odd Trick,” but before setting out to do so I had a point of some
importance to consider. Every one who has studied criminology knows
that each individual criminal has certain methods which are repeated
with very little variation in consecutive crimes. The circumstances
may so vary as to cause the features of the crime to have a different
aspect from the feature of any previous crime, but the methods pursued
are generally the same.
The criminal classes are almost invariably creatures of habit. The fact
that a certain method--be it adopted for the purpose of committing a
crime, concealing a crime, or of effecting the criminal’s escape--has
proved successful in the past is to them the strongest possible reason
for again adopting the same method. They associate that method in
their thoughts with what they call their luck, and shrink from having
to depart from it. Hence the detective-psychologist should be quick to
get what I may--with no sinister meaning in regard to after events--be
allowed to call the “hang” of the criminal’s mind, and to discover
the methods which, though varying circumstances may necessitate their
being worked out in varying ways, are common to most of his crimes.
The detective who can do this has his antagonist at a disadvantage. He
is like the hunter who knows that the hare will double, or that this
or that quarry will try to set the hounds at fault and seek to destroy
the scent by taking to the water. And just as the hunter’s acquaintance
with the tricks of the quarry assists him to anticipate and to
forestall the poor beast’s efforts to escape, so the detective who has
taken a criminal’s measure, and discovered the methods upon which he
works, can often turn the very means which are intended to effect an
escape into means to effect a capture.
I need not point out to the observant reader that Mullen’s one anxiety
in all his movements was to cover up his traces. He could be daring and
even reckless at times, as witness this fact of his having gone away
in a boat, which, should his connection with Mrs. Burgoyne leak out,
would, as I have already said, be the very first object of inquiry. It
would seem, in fact, as if, so long as he had satisfied himself that
he had left no “spoor” behind, he preferred adopting a bold course to
a timid one, as for instance when he openly proclaimed the murder of
Green to be the handiwork of Captain Shannon by leaving a declaration
to that effect folded up in a bottle which was attached to the body.
How he had accomplished that particular crime I did not know, but I had
the best of reasons for knowing that he had left no sign of himself
behind. Carefulness in covering up his traces was indeed the key-word
to his criminal code, and perhaps was the secret of the success with
which he had hitherto carried out his designs. Given any fresh move on
his part, and some cunning scheme for obliterating the trail he had
left behind--for cutting the connecting cord between the past and the
present--might be looked for as surely and inevitably as night may be
looked for after day.
I had--more by luck than by subtlety--traced Mullen to the boatyard at
Gravesend, but there I lost sight of him completely. He had taken the
“Odd Trick” away with him the same evening, I was told, and had gone
down the river, but what had become of him afterwards there was not
the slightest evidence to show. To go down the river in search of him
seemed the natural and only course, but I was beginning by this time
to get some insight into my adversary’s methods, and felt that before
asking myself, “Where has Mullen gone?” I should seriously consider the
question, “What method has he adopted for covering up his traces?”
CHAPTER XXII
THE ARTFULNESS OF JAMES MULLEN
“What method has Mullen adopted for covering up his traces?” I asked
myself, and as I did so a passage from the letter which had been
sent to him by Mrs. Burgoyne--the letter which I had fortunately
intercepted--flashed into my mind.
“I do not see any necessity,” she had written, “for doing as you
say in regard to sending the present crew back to England under the
pretence that we are not likely to be using the yacht for some time,
and then, after getting the ship’s appearance altered by repainting
and rechristening her the name you mention, engaging another crew of
Norwegians.”
If Mullen had considered it necessary to take such precautions in
regard to the steam yacht, he would beyond all question consider it
even more necessary to his safety that a similar course should be
adopted in regard to the boat which, until opportunity came for him
to leave the country, was to carry “Cæsar and his fortunes.” That
boat had been described to me by Gunnell as a five-ton yawl, painted
white, picked out with gold. She had by now, no doubt, been entirely
metamorphosed, and before I set out to continue my search for Mullen it
was of vital importance that I should know something of the appearance
of the boat for which I was to look. According to the waterman Gunnell,
Mullen had gone down the river when he left Gravesend that evening, and
indeed it was in the highest degree unlikely that he had gone up the
river towards London in a small sailing vessel. Every mile traversed in
that direction would render his movements more cramped and more likely
to come under observation, whereas down the river meant the open sea,
with access to the entire sea-board of the country and, if necessary,
of the Continent.
But should the authorities by any chance discover Mullen’s connection
with the Burgoynes and learn in the course of their subsequent
inquiries that he had gone down the river in a five-ton yawl, painted
white, belonging to Mr. Burgoyne, it would in all probability be down
the river that they would go in search of a boat answering to that
description. Mullen was not the man to omit this view of the case from
his calculations, and knowing as I did the methodical way in which he
always set to work to cover up his traces after every move, I felt
absolutely sure that he had taken some precaution for setting possible
pursuers upon the wrong tack.
The very fact that he had told Gunnell he was to call for a friend at
Sheerness and had started off in that direction made me suspicious.
What was to hinder him, I asked, from running back past Gravesend under
cover of darkness and going up the river in search of a place where he
could get the boat repainted or otherwise disguised? The more I thought
of it the more certain I felt that to go in search of the “Odd Trick”
before I had satisfied myself that nothing of the sort had occurred,
would be to start on a fool’s errand, and I decided at last to hire a
small sailing-boat from a waterman and to sail down the river as Mullen
had done and then to beat back past Gravesend and towards London.
This I did, working the river thoroughly and systematically, and
missing no boatyard or other likely place for effecting such a purpose
as that with which I credited Mullen. It was a wearisome task, for the
inquiries had to be made with tact and caution, and it was not until I
had reached Erith that I learned anything which promised to repay me
for my pains. There I was told that a small yacht had recently put into
a certain boat-builder’s yard for repairs, but what these repairs had
been my informant could not tell me. The yard in question was higher
up the river, and thither I betook myself to pursue my inquiries.
The man in charge was not a promising subject, and doggedly denied
having executed any such job as that indicated. Mullen--if it were
he--had no doubt paid him, and paid him well, to hold his tongue, and I
thought none the worse of the fellow for being faithful to his promise,
especially as I was able to obtain elsewhere the information I needed.
The boat which had put into the yard for repairs had come by night and
had left by night; but every waterside place has its loungers, and
the less legitimate work your habitual lounger does himself, the more
incumbent upon him does he feel it to superintend in person the work
which is being done by other people. From some of the loungers who had
witnessed the arrival of the boat which had been put in for repairs I
had no difficulty in ascertaining that her hulk was painted white when
she entered the yard and chocolate brown when she left, and that the
time of her arrival coincided exactly with the date upon which the “Odd
Trick” had left Gravesend. Nor was this all, for two different men
who had seen her come in, and afterwards had watched her go out, were
absolutely sure that, though she went out a cutter, she came in a yawl.
This was an important difference, and would so alter the appearance of
the boat that the very skipper who had been sailing her might well have
been pardoned for not knowing his own craft.
I had played my cards sometimes wisely, but more often foolishly,
while conducting my search for Captain Shannon, but the wisest and
the luckiest deal I made throughout the business was my determination
to spare no pains in ascertaining what step the fugitive had taken to
cover up his tracks, before I set out to look for a five-ton yawl,
painted white, picked out with gold, and bearing the name of the “Odd
Trick.”
But for that determination and the discoveries which resulted from
it I should in all probability have passed unnoticed the little brown
cutter that I saw lying at anchor to the west of Southend as I passed
by in the small steam launch which I hired for the purpose of carrying
on my investigation. And had I passed that cutter unnoticed Captain
Shannon would in all probability have reached America or Australia in
safety, and it is more than likely that this narrative would never have
been written.
To the comment “And small loss too!” which may rise--and not
unreasonably--to the lips of some critics, I can only reply that I
undertook my search for Captain Shannon to please myself, and in search
of excitement. It is the plain story of the adventures which befell
me, and not a literary study, which is here set forth, and I am quite
content to have it written down as such, and nothing more. The one
thing I can safely assert about it is that it is not a story dealing
with the New Woman. If it has any peculiarity at all, it is that it
tells of one of the few pieces of mischief which have happened in this
world since the days of Eve, concerning which it may, without fear of
contradiction, be affirmed that no woman had a hand in it; for, with
the exception of the mere mention of Mrs. Stanley Burgoyne--who never
once comes upon the scene in person--this is a story without a woman in
it.
CHAPTER XXIII
HOW I GOT WEDGED IN A WINDOW, AND LEFT BEHIND
It was some half-mile or so to the west of Southend pier that the
little brown cutter referred to in my last chapter was lying, and,
as I had seen no other boat up or down the river which in any way
corresponded with the description of the boat I was looking for, I at
once decided that before extending my researches in other directions
round the coast I must satisfy myself that the craft in question was
not the “Odd Trick.” In order to do so, and in order also that the
person on board, whoever he might be, should not give me the slip, I
told my man to anchor the steam launch off the pier-head, where steam
launches are often to be seen lying. It did not take long to discover,
by the aid of field-glasses, that there were two people on board the
cutter, one of whom was evidently a paid hand and the other presumably
his employer. That the latter in any way resembled the man for whom
I was looking I could not--much as I should have liked to lay that
flattering unction to my soul--find justification for thinking--at all
events on the evidence of the field-glasses. And as I observed that he
invariably went below if any other boat passed close to the cutter, it
did not seem worth while to attract his attention, and perhaps arouse
his suspicions, by attempting to come to close quarters in order to
make a nearer inspection. The fact that he seemed anxious to keep out
of sight was in itself curious, although no one who was not watching
his movements very narrowly would have noticed it. Somewhat curious too
was another circumstance which happened soon after our arrival. A small
yacht, with three or four young men on board, dropped anchor about a
hundred yards from the brown cutter. She had not been there long before
I saw that the cutter was getting under way for a cruise; but that
the cruise in question was taken chiefly as an excuse to change her
quarters I had reason to suspect, for after sailing a little way out
and circling once round a buoy, as if for the look of the thing, she
sailed in again and brought up a quarter of a mile further west, at a
spot where no other boat was lying.
To any one who had watched this manœuvre as closely as I did it must
have seemed a little strange too that the boat was sailed entirely
by the man who was evidently the paid skipper, his employer neither
taking the tiller nor lending a hand with the sheets. As a rule a
yachtsman who yachts for the love of the thing prefers to handle his
boat himself, and would not give a “thank you” for a sail in which he
plays the part of passenger. Probably I should not have noticed this
trifling circumstance had I not learned from Gunnell that “Mr. Cross”
was no sailor. I had from the first believed that Cross’s story about
his picking up a friend at Sheerness who was to help him with the boat
was a fabrication, and that he had in all probability run in to shore
as soon as he was out of sight of Gunnell and had secured the services
of one of the many watermen who are on the look-out for a job.
Anyhow the circumstances in connection with the brown cutter were
sufficiently suspicious to warrant me in making sure that she was not
the boat I was in search of, and I decided that a watch must be kept
upon her not only by day but also by night. If Mullen were really on
board, and had any intention of changing his quarters, the probability
was that the flitting would be effected by night. I was ready to go
bail for the cutter’s good conduct by day, but if an eye was to be kept
upon her by night it was very necessary that I should have some one to
share my watch. The two men who constituted my crew I knew nothing of
personally, and was not inclined to take into my confidence, so I sent
a letter to Grant, who was still on guard over the “Cuban Queen” at
Canvey, asking him to come to Southend by the first train next morning
and to meet me at the pier-head, whither I would row out to join him in
the dinghy.
He turned up true to time, and, as we had the pier-head to ourselves,
we sat down where we could not be seen by any one on board the cutter,
while Grant related his experiences and I mine. His were soon told, for
no “Mrs. Hughes” had come back to break the monotony of existence on
the “Cuban Queen,” nor had anything occurred at Canvey which concerned
the enterprise in which we were engaged. Then I told my story, after
hearing which and my suspicions in regard to the cutter, Grant agreed
with me that it was highly desirable an eye should be kept upon her at
night as well as by day.
“I’ll tell you what I think will be a good plan,” he said. “I know
a man who has a little boat down here which he isn’t using, and I’m
sure I can arrange to get the loan of her for a week or two. Suppose
I anchor her about as far away on the other side of the brown cutter
as your steam launch is on this side. Then I can keep an eye upon the
cutter at night, and if by any chance she tried to give us the slip,
and made, as I expect she would, for the open sea, she’d have to run
almost into your arms to do it. I should of course follow and hail you
to give chase as I went by, when you could soon overtake her. If, on
the other hand, she goes up the river, it’ll be as easy as driving a
cow into a pen, for once in she’ll have us behind her like a cork in
the neck of a bottle; and even if she gets a bit of a start at first,
a sailing-boat would stand no chance in a race against steam. What do
you think of it?”
I replied that I thought it capital, and after we had arranged a means
of communication I got into the dinghy to row back to the steam launch,
and Grant set off again for Southend to put his plan into effect.
The very next morning, as I was cooking a haddock for breakfast, one of
my men put his head into the little cabin.
“Are you expecting any one from Southend, sir?” he said. “There’s a man
coming out in the skiff, and I think he’s making for us. Seems in a
hurry too.”
I stepped outside and looked in the direction indicated, and there,
sure enough, was a rowing-boat coming along at a great pace, and
apparently heading directly for the steam launch. As soon as the skiff
was within hailing distance its occupant looked over his shoulder,
relinquished a scull, and, arching his hand to windward over his mouth,
hailed us lustily.
“Ahoy there! Are you the ‘Maybelle’?”
“‘Maybelle’ it is,” I bellowed, and, once more bending to his task, the
fellow was alongside of us in half a minute.
“Mr. Max Rissler?” he inquired.
“Yes, my man, I’m Mr. Rissler. What is it?” I replied.
“A letter, sir. I was to be as quick as I could about it,” he said,
handing me with his right hand a note which he had taken from the
lining of his cap, and smearing his forehead with the back of his left
hand, as if to hint that if he were damp outside he was dry within.
“Give him some beer,” I said to my skipper, as I opened the note.
It was in Grant’s writing, and was as follows:--
“Come as fast as you can to Going’s Oyster Bar, in the High Street,
exactly opposite the Royal Hotel. Come ready to go to town if
necessary. If I’m gone when you get to Going’s, wait there till you
receive wire from me.
“F. G.”
As luck would have it, I was already dressed, and in a blue-serge
suit, which, if somewhat shabby, would be inconspicuous anywhere. I
did at first think of changing my yachting shoes--which had tan uppers
with gutta-percha soles--for black boots, but it occurred to me that
the shoes would be extremely convenient for shadowing, and as the tan
uppers made them look like the now common brown shoe, I decided to go
as I was.
“Can you wait here while one of my men and I row ashore?” I said to the
messenger, tossing my yachting cap into an open locker and putting on
the customary hard felt. “He’ll be fresher than you are, and I don’t
want to lose a minute.”
“Yes, sir; I’m in no hurry,” the man replied.
“All right. Here’s something for yourself. Jump in, Brown. You take one
oar and I’ll take the other. Make for the beach, just below the Royal
Hotel. The tide is running in fast, and I shall get there quicker by
boat than if you landed me at the pier and I walked. Put your back into
it, and I ought to be ashore well inside a quarter of an hour.”
Brown bent to with such will that, by means of our united efforts, I
was at Going’s Oyster Bar within twenty minutes from receiving the
message. Grant was sitting where he had a full view of the hotel
opposite, but could not himself be seen from outside. He had his eyes
upon the hotel when I entered, and, except for one quick glance at me,
never took them off again, but motioned me with his hand to the chair
beside him. No one was in the shop, so, without further ado, he began
his story.
“I came ashore last evening to post a letter,” he said, “but kept an
eye on the cutter all the same, and, as it was a fine evening, strolled
up and down the Esplanade before going back to turn in for the night.
By-and-bye I saw a boat coming off from cutter, two men in it, and
making for shore. Waited to see where they were going to land, and then
hid behind bathing machine to shadow ’em. A man got out--looked as if
he had reddish hair and beard--and the other one took dinghy back to
cutter. Man with red beard went to station. It was past eleven, and
there’d be no up train, so I supposed he’d be going on to Shoebury by
the last down train just about due, and decided to go with him. Down
train came in, but he turned as if he’d just come by it, and went to
Royal Hotel. He couldn’t know me, so I followed, bold as brass. Heard
him ask for bed, and I did same. His room was opposite mine, and I
saw him go in. I didn’t go to bed all night lest I should oversleep.
Peeped out at six and saw his boots outside, so he was still there
evidently. Dressed and came down--boots still outside. Wouldn’t wait
for breakfast--came out--slipped in here--sent note to you--had
breakfast--paid bill, but said would wait, as friend was to join me,
and here I am. He hasn’t come out yet. Wonder if there’s any way out
from hotel at back? Great Scott! there he is! Is that your man?”
I looked and saw a man, with reddish hair and beard, and a brown bag in
his hand, leave the hotel and turn to the left in the direction of the
station.
“Don’t know,” I said. “I can’t say I recognise him; but there is
something--I don’t know what--about him that seems familiar. Anyhow,
we’ll shadow him. He is going to the station, I expect, to catch the
10.12 up. I’ll hail that closed carriage passing by. You jump in and
drive to station. You must get there before him. Book to town, and get
in fore part of train. I’ll follow on behind him and get in back part.
Wait in the train till he has passed your carriage at Fenchurch, and
join me as I go by.”
Grant’s reply was to jump into the cab with the words “London and
Tilbury railway. Fast as you can,” and I soon had the satisfaction of
seeing him whirled past the man with the red beard, and disappear round
the corner which led to the station.
“The man _may_ go by the other line--the Great Eastern,” I said to
myself as I followed at a respectful distance, “in which case I must
do the same, and shan’t see Grant at the other end, which is awkward,
as we haven’t arranged a meeting-place. But I hadn’t time to think
of everything, and as the 10.12 will be starting directly it _does_
look as if he was going by that. Ah! he _has_ turned the Tilbury line
corner, so it’s all right after all.”
I waited at the door a moment while the red-bearded man was taking his
ticket. “Fenchurch--third single,” he said briskly. “Fenchurch--third
single,” I repeated as soon as he had passed the barrier, and, hurrying
after, was just in time to see him enter a third smoker in the centre
of the train. I slipped quietly into a carriage in the rear, and in
another couple of minutes we were puffing out of Southend.
Although the man I was shadowing had booked to Fenchurch Street, I
thought it wise at every stoppage to keep an eye upon the passengers
who left the train; and so we journeyed on, making calls at Westcliff,
Leigh, Benfleet, Pitsea Laindon, East Horndon, Upminster and
Hornchurch. At the last-named stopping-place a burly farmer, with a
body like a bullock, leant half out of the window of my carriage to
carry on a conversation with a friend upon the platform, and in doing
so blocked my view completely.
“Will you allow me to get a paper, please?” I said, fuming with
impatience at not being able to obtain a peep outside, although the
train was already moving.
“So I tould ’im I’d give ’im five pun’ ten,” continued the yokel
leisurely, but interpolating a surly “Yer can’t get one ’ere,” which he
threw at me over his shoulder without turning his head or attempting
to withdraw from the window; “I tould ’im I’d give ’im five pun’
ten”--this to the friend who was running along the platform beside the
now quickly-moving train--“and he sez, sez he, ‘I’d rather give ’im to
yer.’ Ha, ha, ha!”
In despair I thrust my head under his arm just in time to see the man
with the red beard disappearing, brown bag and all, through the place
where tickets were collected. To get out and follow him was impossible,
for the yokel drew in his great shoulders almost at the same moment
that I put my head out, and in so doing wedged me into the window like
a plug in a cask, and by the time I could extricate myself the train
had cleared the station and was spanking along toward London.
CHAPTER XXIV
A PRETTY KETTLE OF FISH!
Here was a pretty kettle of fish! For the first desperate moment wild
thoughts of pulling the connecting cord and stopping the train peeped
in my brain like the mad faces seen at the windows of an asylum. But as
the mad faces vanish at the return of the keeper, so in the next moment
wiser counsels prevailed and I was considering the situation with the
seriousness which the facts demanded.
And first I had to ask myself what could be the red-bearded passenger’s
motive for booking to London, and then suddenly changing his plans and
getting out at an unimportant country station? Could it be that he was
indeed James Mullen, and that he was at his old tricks of covering up
his tracks?
If he had reason to believe himself shadowed from Southend, he could
have done nothing wiser than to alight at Hornchurch. A detective
who suspected the traveller’s identity and had watched him enter the
train at one end would in all probability telegraph to the police to
meet the train at the other end and effect an arrest. By getting out
at Hornchurch, Mullen would not only dodge this possible danger, but
would, so to speak, force his adversary to come out into the open,
for though shadowing can be carried on with small risk of detection
in London, where the person so engaged is only a unit in a crowd, a
shadower cannot possibly hope to escape notice in a country village.
Altogether I had to admit that, even if I had seen the red-bearded
man get out at Hornchurch in time for me to follow him, I should have
been uncertain how to act. Probably not more than two passengers
would be likely to leave the train at such a place, and it would be
comparatively easy for a man like Mullen to decide who had legitimate
business in the neighbourhood and who had not. Had I been one of these
passengers I should have brought myself under his direct notice, and
this I was anxious to avoid, as it was quite possible that, in order
to obtain evidence of his identity, circumstances might render it
necessary for me to come in personal contact with him.
So far as I knew, he was at that time unaware of my connection with
Green and Quickly, whose action in constituting themselves private
detectives he might reasonably suppose had been taken upon their own
responsibility, and in the hope of enriching themselves by obtaining
the offered reward.
Knowing, as I did, how long was Mullen’s arm and how merciless his
vengeance, I could not help thinking that had he been aware of my
connection with the two men I have mentioned, and of my intentions
towards himself, he would before this have made an attempt to bestow
upon me some such unmistakable mark of his personal attention as he
had bestowed upon them. That no such attempt had been made argued--so
at least I tried to persuade myself--that I had been lucky enough to
escape his notice and the honour of being entered upon his black list.
To have got out at Hornchurch and denounced the red-bearded man as
Captain Shannon, when I had no shred of actual evidence in support of
my statement, and when it was more than possible he might be some one
else, would not only render me ridiculous, but would mean trumping my
own card by making known to the real Captain Shannon, as well as to the
public generally, the enterprise upon which I was engaged.
All things considered, the incident which had prevented me from seeing
the man I was shadowing leave the train at Hornchurch until it was too
late to follow him was not an unmixed evil, for it was possible that
had I been compelled to act upon the spur of the moment I might have
adopted a course which I should afterwards have reason to regret.
While I had been coming to this conclusion the train had been trundling
along towards the next station, and was already slowing off for a
stoppage. If I were to take action I must do so immediately, and for
the moment I found it difficult to decide whether it would be best to
go on to London or to get out and make my way back to Hornchurch, in
order to pursue inquiries about the red-bearded man and his movements.
If he were, as I suspected, James Mullen, the chances were that he
had got out at Hornchurch, not because he had any business there, but
to put a possible pursuer at fault. In that case he would go on to
London--which was in all probability his destination--by a later train,
or it was possible that he might seek other means of reaching town than
by the line on which he had set out.
And then, all in a moment, I recollected what I ought to have
recollected at first,--that Hornchurch is but a half an hour’s walk
from Romford, where there is a station on the Great Eastern railway.
Might it not be, I asked myself, that Mullen, knowing this, had got
out at Hornchurch in order that he might walk to Romford, and thence
continue his journey to town by another line? Such a manœuvre as this
was just what one might expect from him, and I promptly decided to act
upon the assumption that he had done so.
At Fenchurch Street I joined Grant, and told him in a few hurried words
what had happened, and what were my suspicions.
“If Redbeard has got upon the Great Eastern line at Romford,” I said,
“he can’t go farther than Liverpool Street, the terminus. He may of
course ‘do’ us by getting out at some station immediately preceding the
terminus, but that I must chance, and it’s not at all unlikely he may
come on by an express that doesn’t stop at the intermediate stations.
Anyhow, I’m going to cab it to Liverpool Street to watch all the
Romford trains. You stay here--where you can’t be seen, of course--and
keep an eye upon the other trains that come in. If you see Redbeard,
shadow him, and wire me to the club when you’ve got any news. But
remember Quickly and Green, and take care of yourself. Good-bye.”
CHAPTER XXV
JAMES MULLEN AND I MEET AT LAST
As the cab which I had chartered rattled up the approach to the Great
Eastern terminus at Liverpool Street, I had to admit to myself that the
probability of my falling in again with the red-bearded man scarcely
justified me in feeling so sanguine as I did.
I am not in the general way given to “presentiments,” but on this
occasion I felt almost childishly confident about the result of my
operations. Though I told myself, over and over again, that there is
nothing so hope-destroying to an active mind as compulsory inaction,
and that it was only because I had something definite with which to
occupy myself that I felt so hopeful, not all my philosophy could
persuade me that I should fail in bringing the enterprise to a
successful termination.
Curiously enough, presentiment was for once justified of her assurance,
and at the expense of philosophy, for as the clocks were chiming eight,
and evening was beginning to close in, whom should I see step out upon
the platform from a Romford train but my gentleman of the red beard and
brown bag.
He gave up his ticket and walked out of the station into Liverpool
Street, crossed the road and went up New Broad Street and so to the
Bank. Then he went into a tobacconist’s, whence he emerged puffing a
big cigar, and proceeded up Cheapside until he reached Foster Lane,
down which he turned. Here I had to be more cautious, for on Saturday
night the side streets of the City are deserted. Even in the great
thoroughfares, where during the five preceding days blows have rained
thick and fast, with scarce a moment’s interval, upon the ringing
anvils of traffic, there is a perceptible lull, but in the side streets
there is absolute silence.
When I saw the man with the red beard and brown bag turn down Foster
Lane, which, as every Londoner knows, is a narrow side street at the
back of the General Post Office, I felt that it was indeed a happy
thought which had prevented me from changing my shoes when I received
Grant’s summons in the morning. Had I been wearing my ordinary lace-ups
I should have been in a dilemma, for they are not easy to remove in a
hurry, and in that deserted place the echo of my following footsteps,
had I been thus shod, could not have failed to reach the ear of the
man I was shadowing. To have followed him boldly would have aroused
his suspicions, whereas if I remained far enough behind to avoid
running this risk, I incurred the greater risk of losing sight of him
altogether.
But for the purposes of shadowing, nothing could be better than the
gutta-percha-soled shoes which I was wearing; and by keeping well in
the shadow, and only flitting from doorway to doorway at such times as
I judged it safe to make a move, I hoped to keep an eye upon Redbeard
unseen.
The result justified my anticipations, for when he reached the back
of the General Post Office he stopped and looked hastily up and down
the street, as if to make sure that he was unobserved. Not a soul was
in sight, and I need scarcely say that I made of myself a very wafer,
and was clinging like a postage stamp to the door against which I had
squared myself.
Evidently reassured, he put down his bag, opened it, and lifted out
something that, from the stiff movement of his arms, appeared to
be heavy. This he placed upon the ground, and so gingerly that I
distinctly heard him sigh as he drew his hands away. Then he stood
erect, puffed fiercely at his cigar until it kindled and glowed like a
live coal, took it from his lips, turned the lighted end round to look
at it, and stooped with it in his hand over the thing upon the ground.
I saw an answering spark shine out, flicker for a moment and die away,
and heard Redbeard mutter “Damnation! Hell!” through his teeth. The
next instant I heard the spurt that told of the striking of a lucifer
match, and saw him stoop again over the thing on the ground. A little
point of light, which grew in size and brightness, shone out as I stood
looking on half paralysed with horror. That he had fired the fuse of an
infernal machine I had no doubt, and for one moment my limbs absolutely
refused to move. I tried to call out, but gave utterance only to a
silly inarticulate noise that was more like a bleat than a cry, and
was formed neither by my lips nor tongue, but seemed to come from the
back of my throat. The sound reached the ears of the man with the bag,
however, for he came to an erect posture in an instant, looked quickly
to right and to left, and then walked briskly away in the opposite
direction.
And then the night-stillness was broken by the most terrible cry I have
ever heard--a cry so terrible and unearthly that it seemed to make the
blood in my veins run cold, although I knew that it was from my own
lips and no other that the cry had fallen.
That cry broke the spell that bound me. Even while it was ringing in my
ears I leapt out like a tiger athirst for blood, and, heedless of the
hissing fuse, which burnt the faster and brighter for the wind which I
made as I rushed by it, I was after him, every drop of blood in my body
boiling with fury, every muscle and tendon of my fingers twitching to
grip the miscreant’s throat.
Had he been as fleet of foot as a greyhound he should not have escaped
me then; and though he had thrown the bag away, and was now running for
dear life, I was upon him before he was half-way down Noble Street.
When he heard my steps he stopped and faced round suddenly, and as he
did so I struck him with my clenched fist full under the jaw, and with
all my strength. Shall I ever feel such savage joy as thrilled me then
as I heard his teeth snap together like the snap of the teeth of an
iron rat-trap, and felt the warm rush of his blood upon my hand? He
went down like a pole-axed ox, but in the next second had staggered
to his knees and thence to his feet. His hand was fumbling at a
side-pocket, whence I saw the butt-end of a revolver protruding, but
before he could get at it I had him by the throat again, where my blow
had knocked the false red beard awry, and I promise you that my grip
was none of the gentlest. Nor, for the matter of that, was my language,
for--though I am by habit nice of speech and not given to oaths--words,
which I have never used before nor since, bubbled up in my throat and
would out, though a whole bench of listening bishops were by.
“You bloody monster!” I cried, and the words seemed to make iron of the
muscles of my arm, and granite of every bone in my fist as I struck him
again and again in the face with all my strength. “You hell miscreant
and devil. By God in heaven I’ll pound the damned life out of you!”
And then the solid ground seemed to stagger and sway beneath me, and
from the neighbourhood of the General Post Office came a sudden blaze
of light in which I saw a tall chimney crook inward at the middle, as a
leg is bent at the knee, and then snap in two like a sugar-stick. There
was a low rumble, a roar like the discharge of artillery, followed by
the strangest ripping, rending din as of the sudden tearing asunder of
innumerable sheets of metal. I was conscious of the falling of masonry,
of a choking limy dust, and then a red darkness closed in upon me with
a crash, and I remember no more.
CHAPTER XXVI
AFTER THE EXPLOSION
My next recollection was that of opening my eyes to find myself lying
at night in my room at Buckingham Street. I made an effort to sit up
in bed, but my head had suddenly become curiously heavy--so heavy that
the effort to raise it was almost too much for me, and I was glad to
fall back upon the pillow, where I lay a moment feeling more faint and
feeble than I had ever felt before. Then there glided gently into the
room--into my bachelor room--a pleasant-looking young woman in a gray
dress with white collar and cuffs.
“What’s happened, nurse?” I said, recognising at once what she
was--which was more than could be said of my voice, for it had become
so thin and piping that its unfamiliarity startled me.
“Oh, nothing has happened of any consequence,” she replied smilingly,
“except that you have not been very well. But you’re mending now, and
another day or two will see you quite yourself.”
“What’s been the matter with me?” I asked.
“You got a blow on the head by the fall of a chimney,” she replied.
“But I can’t let you talk now. Mr. Grant is coming in to sleep here
to-night, as I’ve promised to take a turn sitting up with a patient who
is very ill. You can ask Mr. Grant to tell you anything you wish to
know in the morning, but now you must go to sleep.”
That something _had_ happened, notwithstanding her assurance to the
contrary, I felt sure; but what that something was I did not know, nor
did I very much care, for I felt dull and silly, and more than inclined
to follow her advice.
This I must in the end have done, for when next I opened my eyes it
was broad daylight, and Grant was standing in his shirt sleeves before
the looking-glass, shaving. My head was clearer now, and I was able to
recall what had taken place up to the moment when I had lost my senses
after the explosion at the General Post Office.
“Have they got him, Grant?” I inquired.
He jumped like a “kicking” rifle.
“Good Lord! old man, how you startled me! You’ve made me slash myself
horribly. Got whom?” he said.
“Mullen,” I answered.
“Mullen? Oh, then you do know all about it? No, they haven’t. But how
are you feeling?”
“Like a boiled owl. How long have I been ill?”
“Three weeks. You got knocked on the head by a chimney-pot or
something, and had a touch of concussion of the brain.”
“Was there much damage done?”
“Damage? I believe you. The top of Cheapside pretty near blown away,
and the General Post Office half wrecked.”
“How did I get here?”
“In fine state, my boy--on a stretcher. They were taking you to the
hospital when I came along--which I did as soon as I heard about the
explosion--but I said I knew you, and told them who you were, and had
you brought here instead. And a bad time you’ve had of it, I can tell
you. But now you mustn’t talk any more.”
“Oh, I’m all right! Tell me, were there many people killed?”
“A good many in the Post Office, but not many outside. You see, being
Saturday, most of the places were empty, except for caretakers. And now
go to sleep.”
“One more question only. Does any one know I was after Mullen when it
happened?”
“No, they thought you were passing by chance. You see I told them who
you were, but I couldn’t tell them what had happened, as I didn’t
know, and you couldn’t speak for yourself, so I thought I’d better say
nothing until you were well enough to tell your own story.”
“And Mullen got clean away?”
“Look here, old man, this won’t do, you know. The doctor said you
weren’t to be allowed to talk more than could be helped.”
“Answer me that, then, and I’ll ask no more for the present.”
“Yes, the ruffian got clean away, and no one knows to this day how he
did it. Do you?”
“Yes. I saw him do it.”
“The deuce you did! But there, you shall tell me all about it
to-morrow. Have a drop of beef-tea and then go to bye-bye.”
Which I did.
My powers of recuperation are great, and a few days saw me
comparatively well in body, though by no means easy in mind. Up to
this point my search for Captain Shannon had seemed to me a somewhat
public-spirited and deserving enterprise. To bring such a scoundrel to
justice would be doing a service to the country and to humanity; and
in the wild scene of excitement which I knew would follow the news of
his arrest I liked to picture myself as receiving the thanks of the
community, and in fact being regarded very much as the hero of the hour.
But while I had been lying in my room, idle in body but abnormally
active in brain, the matter had presented itself to me in a very
different light, and I was by no means sure that, were the facts made
public, I should not be looked upon as a knave rather than as a hero.
I had to ask myself seriously whether the course I had taken could be
justified at all, and whether, by withholding from the authorities the
suspicion I entertained about the man with the red beard, and by taking
upon myself the responsibility of keeping, unaided, an eye upon his
movements, I was not morally answerable for the lives which had been
lost in the last terrible outrage he had effected.
It was quite possible that, had I gone to the authorities _before_ the
event and informed them of my unsupported suspicion, I should have
been laughed at for my pains. But were I to come forward _after_ the
event and admit that before the outrage occurred, and while yet there
was time to prevent it, I had suspected the man with the brown bag to
be James Mullen, and yet had withheld my suspicions from the police, I
might be looked upon as less of a fool than a scoundrel.
My motives for having kept silent would be open to the worst
interpretation, and I should be everywhere denounced as an enemy of
society whose criminal vanity had made him think himself capable of
coping single-handed with the greatest artist in crime of the century,
and whose yet more criminal greed and anxiety to secure the entire
reward for himself had led him to withhold from the proper authorities
information by means of which the capture of the arch-murderer might
have been effected and the last dreadful outrage prevented.
Knowing, as I did, how uncontrollable was the feeling of the populace
in regard to the outrage, I could not disguise from myself that a
man who made such a confession as I had to make, would--should he be
recognised in the streets--run a very good chance of being mobbed, if
not lynched.
An infuriated mob is not given to make nice distinctions, and so long
as it has a scapegoat on which to wreak vengeance it does not wait to
inquire too particularly into the question of the scapegoat’s innocence
or guilt.
Let the object of its wrath be not forthcoming, and let some evil or
foolish person raise the cry that this or that luckless passer-by is
the offender’s relative or friend, or even that he has been seen coming
from the offender’s house, or is of the same nationality, and in nine
cases out of ten the mob will “go” for the luckless wight _en masse_.
I have made a study of that wild beast which we call “a mob”--the one
wild beast which civilisation has given us in exchange for the many she
has driven away--and knowing something of the creature and its habits,
I must confess that I would rather fall into the jaws of the wild beast
of the jungle, than into the clutches of the wilder beast of the city
and the slum.
One day--one not very distant day--that wild beast will turn and rend
its keepers, and when once the thing has tasted human blood it will not
be beaten back into its lair with its thirst for blood unglutted.
To be mobbed or lynched in a noble cause and in support of a great
principle is not without its compensations, but there is no glory in
being subjected to physical violence and personal insult as a scoundrel
and a knave.
Worse, however, than the possibility of being mobbed was the certainty
of being held up in many quarters as an object for public odium and
private scorn, and the more I thought about it the less inclined did I
feel to face the consequences of confessing the part which I had played
in the recent tragedy. It was upon my own responsibility, I argued,
that I had entered upon the enterprise, and so long as I kept within
the law it was to myself only that I was responsible for the way in
which that enterprise was carried on. That I had failed meant nothing
more than that what had happened to those whose business and whose duty
it was to have succeeded, had happened also to me; and, after all, I
left things no worse than they were when I took the matter up.
Had it been my intention to abandon my quest I should have no choice
but to acquaint New Scotland Yard with what had come to my knowledge.
But, as a matter of fact, I was more than ever set on bringing the
miscreant, Captain Shannon, to justice--and this not merely for the
sake of reward, or because of the craving for adventure which had
first urged me to the enterprise, but because of the loathing which I
entertained for the monster whom I had with my own eyes seen at his
hellish work. Hence I was justified, I told myself, in keeping my
information to myself, and the more so for the fact that, were I to say
all I knew, the particulars would no doubt be made public, and in this
way reach the ears of Captain Shannon, thus defeating the very end for
which I had made my confession.
Into the questions whether the decision to which I came was right or
wrong, and whether the arguments, with which I sought to square my
decision with my conscience and my sense of duty, were founded on
self-interest and inclination rather than on reason, I will not here
enter.
When that decision was once made, I gave no further thought to the
rights or wrongs of the matter, but dismissing every such consideration
from my mind I concentrated all my energies upon the task of finding
Captain Shannon.
And first, I decided to pay a visit to Southend to see if the little
brown cutter was still there, and if not, to discover what had become
of it.
As one walks down the High Street from the station, the pier lies
directly in front, running out a mile and a quarter to sea on its
myriad slender feet like a giant centipede. To the right are the shady
shrubberies and sunny grass-crowned cliffs of New Southend, and to the
left, with lips stooped to the water’s edge, the Old Town straggles
away seaward, a long line of picturesque irregular buildings--some
cheerful red, others warm yellow, and a few cool gray--reminding one
not a little of some quaint French or Belgian port blinking in the
morning sunshine.
And oh! such skies! such cloud-pomp and pageantry, and, above all,
such sunrises and sunsets! Such dance and sparkle of moving water
when the tide is in, and, more beautiful still, when the tide is out,
such play of light and shadow, such wonderful wealth of colour on the
marshy flats--here a patch of royal purple or opalescent green, there a
rose-gray or pearly-pink, with little shining pools changing from blue
to silver and silver to blue with the passing of every cloud.
Southend is a pretty spot at any time, but after a month spent on a
sick bed in a stuffy London side-street, the view from the pier-hill
seemed to me exceptionally beautiful.
As I stood there drinking my fill of the sweet, strong, brackish air,
and basking in the sunshine, I was conscious of being scrutinised
quietly but very keenly by a man who was lounging near the Royal Hotel.
There was nothing in his appearance or dress--white flannel trousers
and shirt, cricketing blazer and straw hat--to distinguish him from
the hundreds of holiday makers in like attire who are to be seen in
and about Southend during the season, but I recognised him at once,
and with some alarm, as one of the cleverest officers of the detective
force, and one, moreover, who had been specially told off to effect the
capture of Mullen.
In detective stories, as in pantomimes--no doubt for the same
reason--the policeman is too often held up to scorn and ridicule as an
incompetent bungler who is more dangerous to the hearts of susceptible
servant girls than to law-breakers, and more given to deeds of prowess
in connection with the contents of the pantry than in protecting
the lives or properties of her Majesty’s subjects. The hero of the
detective story is very often a brilliant amateur, of whom the police
are secretly jealous, notwithstanding the fact that whenever they
have a difficult case they come, hat in hand, to seek his assistance.
This, after a little light banter for the benefit of the Boswell who
is to chronicle his marvellous doings--and in the course of which,
by-the-bye, the fact that the police are about to arrest the wrong man
is not unfrequently elicited--he condescends to give, the understanding
between him and them being that he shall do the work and they take the
credit.
Why the amateur detective should be the victim of a modesty which is
not always characteristic of the amateur in other professions does not
transpire, but the arrangement is extremely convenient to the policeman
and to the author, the latter probably adopting it lest inquisitive
readers should ask why, if there are such brilliant amateur detectives
as authors would have us to believe, we never hear of them in real life.
Now I should be the last man in the world to cheapen the work of my
fellow-craftsmen. I hold that there is no more unmistakable mark of a
mean mind than is evinced in the desire to extol oneself at the expense
of others, but none the less I must enter my protest against what I
cannot but consider an unwarrantable imputation upon a very deserving
body of men.
Detectives and policemen, taken as a whole, are by no means the
bunglers and boobies that they are made out to be in the pantomimes and
in the pages of detective stories. I do not say that they are all born
geniuses in the detection of crime, for genius is no commoner among
detectives than it is among bakers, bankers, clergymen, novelists,
barristers, or cooks. But what I do say is that the rank and file of
them are painstaking and intelligent men, who do their duty to the
public conscientiously and efficiently; and to dub them all duffers,
because now and then a detective is caught napping, is as unjust as
to pronounce all clergymen fools because a silly sermon is sometimes
preached from a pulpit.
I had managed to get ahead of the police in the investigation I was
conducting, not because of the shining abilities with which I was
endowed, for as the reader knows I had bungled matters sadly on more
than one occasion, but because Fate had thrown a clue in my way at the
start. But I have never underrated the acuteness and astuteness of the
representatives of the Criminal Department from New Scotland Yard, and
it did not greatly surprise me to find, when I commenced operations
again at Southend, that though the little brown cutter was still lying
off the same spot, she was being closely watched by men whom I knew to
be detectives.
Whether they had discovered the relationship between Mullen and the
owner of the “Odd Trick,” and in following up the clue had traced the
boat to Southend, or whether they were in possession of information
unknown to me which led them to believe the fugitive had been hiding in
the neighbourhood, I could not say; but that they were there to effect
the capture of Mullen, should he return to the cutter, I made no doubt.
Mullen, however, was apparently too wary a bird to come back to the
nest until he had satisfied himself that no net had been spread there
to catch him, for that he had got wind of what was going on at Southend
seemed probable from the fact that he never put in an appearance there
again. Nor would it have profited me personally if he had, for in that
case I could scarcely hope to forestall the police in the matter of his
arrest.
Under the circumstances it would be mere waste of time to stay in
Southend, and the question I had now to ask myself was, “Where, then,
is he likely to be?”
As crime begets crime, so question begets question, and “Where, then,
is he likely to be?” had scarcely come to the birth before it was
itself in travail with, “Why not on the ‘Cuban Queen’?”
CHAPTER XXVII
I PLAY A GAME OF “BLUFF” WITH HUGHES
“Why not on the ‘Cuban Queen’ indeed?” I repeated, as I called to mind
the fact that it was there Mullen had lain secure when the hue and cry
were at their height. It was only when the hue and cry had somewhat
subsided that he had ventured forth to commence his devilry afresh; and
what was more likely, now that the hue and cry had been raised once
more, than that he should have crept back to his former hiding-place?
The next afternoon I was in the little cottage at Canvey again, and
should have been there sooner but for the fact that I wished first to
satisfy myself that my movements were not being watched by the police.
I did not intend on this occasion to waste time in trying to find
out whether Hughes had any one on board with him or not, especially
as I was now without Quickly’s assistance. This was a case in which
it seemed to me safer to achieve my purpose by a bold stroke than to
adopt the more cautious course of beating about the bush. The thing to
do would be to engage Hughes in conversation, and when he was off his
guard to charge him suddenly with sheltering a fugitive from justice on
board the “Cuban Queen.” The cleverest rogue is apt to betray himself
when a surprise is thus sprung upon him, and such a clumsy rascal as
Hughes should not be difficult to deal with. I did not doubt that he
would deny the impeachment with much bluster and more bad language, but
by keeping a keen eye upon his face when playing my game of “bluff” I
hoped to be able to come to some definite conclusion in regard to the
theory I had formed concerning Mullen’s whereabouts.
But I had yet to catch the hare which I felt so competent to cook, and
of the two tasks the former promised to be the more difficult. Hughes,
as the reader already knows, did not often leave the hulk, and as it
was quite out of the question that I should seek him there, some plan
for making it necessary for him to come ashore must be devised. After
much brain-cudgelling I hit upon an idea which I immediately proceeded
to carry out. The oil which was burned in Hughes’ cabin was taken out
to him every Monday and Thursday by the attendant whose duty it was to
fetch and carry for the caretakers of the hulks. I knew that it was so
as the man had to pass my door on his way to the boat, and I had seen
the tin can in his hand repeatedly. As a matter of fact, I was at that
moment reminded of the matter, for the day was Thursday, and the man in
question was just going by my gate, carrying the can in one hand and a
small sack of potatoes in the other. If I did not avail myself of this
opportunity I should have to wait until the following Monday before
taking action, so I at once opened the door and hailed him.
“I want you to do a little commission for me,” I said. “You’ll be going
down to the village some time to-day, I know. Could you leave a letter
to Mr. Hayes at the vicarage?”
“Yes, sir,” he said civilly; “with pleasure.”
“That’s right. Put that sack and the can down and come into the other
room while I scribble the letter. I daresay I can find you a glass
of grog in there and a cut of cold beef if you feel like having a
mouthful.”
“Thank you, sir,” he said, unburdening himself of his load and
following me into the inner room. I had not finished my own breakfast
very long, and a small joint was still on the table.
“Pull up and help yourself,” I said, producing knife and fork. “What’ll
you have to drink? I’ve got some old rum. How’ll that suit you?”
“Capital, sir,” he replied.
“All right. It’s in the other room, I think. I’ll be back in a moment.
You make a start, meanwhile, on the cold beef.”
No sooner was I in the other room with the closed door between us than
I whipped out the cork from the paraffin can, and seizing a siphon of
soda-water that stood upon the table--it was the only liquid handy--I
slipped the spout into the mouth of the can and pressed the tap.
“If this isn’t pouring oil on the troubled waters it’s at least pouring
troubled waters on the oil,” I said to myself, when half a tumbler of
soda had hissed into the can. “There’ll be some rosy language about
when Hughes goes to light his lamp after filling it up with this stuff,
for he’ll never get it to light, much less to burn. And if he doesn’t
make the discovery too early the man who looks after his requirements
will be gone, and Master Hughes will have to sit in the dark and go
to bed with his supper uncooked, or come into Canvey and get some
more oil. He _may_, of course, get filling up his cooking stove in
the daytime, and find the oil won’t burn, or he may have enough left
in it to carry him through. But anyhow, if the thing doesn’t work out
as I hope, there will be no harm done, for at the worst they can only
suppose that some water has accidentally got into the can.”
The thing _did_ work out as I had hoped, however, for as night was
beginning to close in I saw Hughes unlashing the dinghy as if to come
ashore, and judging from the sounds which broke the evening stillness
I had reason to believe that he was at his old habit of swearing aloud
to himself. This is a habit which is more soothing to the swearer
than to an enforced listener, especially when the swearer is rowing a
heavy boat against the tide, and jerks out a fresh and aggressively
emphasised oath with each expulsion of breath. On this occasion the
hopes which were expressed about the soul, eyes, limbs, and internal
organs of every one who had been connected with the offending oil,
beginning with the individual who “struck” it, and finishing off with
the shopkeeper who sold it, and the man who brought it to the hulks,
were distinctly uncharitable.
Nor did Hughes confine himself to human beings, for the unfortunate
can in which the oil had been carried and the various matches which
had been struck in his unavailing efforts to light the lamp were with
strict impartiality similarly banned.
“Oil!” he growled as he ran the boat ashore. “I’ll oil ’im and the man
wot sold it too!” (More hopes in regard to the soul, eyes, limbs, and
internal organs of the offender.) “A pretty fine fool ’e made o’ me,
standin’ there burnin’ my fingers and a box of matches trying to find
out what was wrong. Oil! Call that splutterin’ stuff oil! Why, I might
as well ’ave tried to set fire to the river.”
Still swearing, he made fast the dinghy and proceeded, can in hand, in
the direction of the village.
After a time I started to follow, and overtook him just as he was
passing my cottage.
“Good-night,” I called out over my shoulder in passing, as is the
custom in the country.
He replied by bidding me go to a place which, though it may likely
enough have been his ultimate destination, I sincerely hope may never
be mine nor the reader’s.
“I’m sure I know that dulcet voice,” I said, stopping and wheeling
round. “It must be, it _is_, the genial Hughes. How are you, my worthy
fellow?”
The worthy fellow intimated that his health was not noticeably affected
for the better by the sight of me.
“Oh, don’t say that,” I said. “You were most hospitable to me in the
matter of drinks when I had the pleasure of spending a very delightful
hour in your company on board the ‘Cuban Queen’ one evening. Pray
let me return the compliment. This is my cottage, and I’ve got some
excellent whisky aboard. Won’t you come in and have a glass?”
This was a temptation not to be withstood, and he replied a little more
civilly that he “didn’t mind,” and even unbent so far as to answer Yes
or No to one or two casual remarks I made.
When he rose to go, some spirit of mischief prompted me to ask him what
he had in the oilcan, and this, apparently recalling his grievance,
put him in the worst of tempers again, for he snatched at it, savagely
blurting out,--
“What the dickens ’as that got to do with you?”
“Keep a civil tongue in your head, you scoundrel!” I said sharply,
taking a step towards him. “Answer me like that again, and I’ll give
you a lesson you won’t forget!”
“_You_, yer bloomin’ monkey!” he snarled, spitting on the ground in
front of me as an outward and visible sign of his contempt. “_You_ give
me a lesson! And where should I be, do yer think?”
I looked him full in the face and shot my bolt.
“You would be in prison, my good fellow, for harbouring a murderer,
disguised as a woman, and you’d be charged with being an accessory
after the fact.”
He stepped back, paling visibly under his bronze complexion, and
answered, for once, without an oath.
“’E ain’t a murderer. ’E’s a private soldier wot struck ’is superior
officer for comin’ between ’im and ’is wife, and then deserted. I see
it myself in the paper ’e showed me, and I’d ’a done the same if I’d
bin in ’is place. And so ’ud you, Mister.”
“Ho, ho! my friend,” I said to myself. “I was a ‘monkey’ a moment
ago--now I’m a ‘Mister.’ So you are funking it already, are you?”
And then, aloud,--
“Do you think any jury will believe that you thought a private soldier
could afford to pay you what that man’s paying? Now, look here! I’ve
got the whip hand of you, but I don’t wish you any harm, personally. If
you’ll do exactly as I tell you, and play me fair, I’ll pay you the sum
that yonder man’s paying you, and you sha’n’t get into any trouble if I
can help it.”
“Wot d’ yer want me to do?” he asked.
“Answer me one question first. Supposing I were to arrange to take your
place on the ‘Cuban Queen’ for a couple of days. In that case the man
who waits on the hulks would have to be squared to keep his mouth shut.
Could that be done?”
“P’raps. ’E ain’t the inspector. ’E’s paid to wait on us, so as we
don’t ’ave to leave the ’ulks. ’Tain’t ’is business to look after what
we do. P’raps ’e might if it wos worth ’is while.”
“Very well. I’ll give you the money to-night to square him, and some on
account for yourself as well. And now another question. Where does your
wife live?”
“Mill Lane, Chelmsford.”
“That’s all right. When you get back to the ‘Cuban Queen’ you’ll get a
telegram from Chelmsford to say she’s dying, and that you must go to
her. You must show that to the man you’ve got aboard. What do you call
him by-the-bye?”
“Winton.”
“Well, you must show the telegram to Winton, and tell him you intend
applying for leave, and that he must go somewhere else in the meantime.
He won’t want to leave the only safe hiding-place he’s got, and he’ll
try and persuade you not to go, and will perhaps offer you a big money
bribe to stay. You must persist in going; but after a time you must say
that you have a brother at Southend who could come and take your place
while you are away, and that you are sure he’d keep his mouth shut if
he were well paid. Winton will _have_ to consent if you persist. Then
you’ll send a telegram to me, as if I were your brother, asking me to
come over to see you; and when I come you’ll show me the telegram and
ask me to take charge of the hulk while you go away to see your wife. I
shall come at night, so as not to be seen, and shall pretend to agree,
and then you can go ashore and put up at my cottage here until I signal
you to return. Do as I tell you, and play me fair, and I’ll give you
fifty pounds for yourself when it’s all over. What do you say?”
“Can’t be done,” he answered sullenly.
“Why not?”
“’Cos it can’t.”
“Very well. Good-night, then. I’m going straight from this house to
the coastguard station, and shall send two armed men out to the hulk
to arrest the murderer you’ve been harbouring, and two more to arrest
you--you can’t get far away in the meantime--for harbouring him and
for being an accessory after the fact. I suppose you know what the
punishment for that is? And when you come out you’ll be a ruined man.
The hulk-owners will discharge you without a character for gross
violation of rules.”
He looked murder, and had he been less of a coward might have attempted
as well as looked it. Then something seemed to occur to him, and he
stood staring absently at me while turning the matter over in his
bovine brain. I guessed the upshot of his meditations to be somewhat
as follows: “This man, whoever he is, has me in his power and can ruin
me. I wish he were out of the way, but I don’t mean risking my own
neck for him. If I let him go on the hulk Winton is more than likely
to suspect he’s a spy. In that case he’s just the sort of man to knock
the meddling fool on the head, and the job I want done would get done
without my putting my neck in a noose.”
Anyhow, he looked at me curiously for a minute, and then said, in a
more conciliatory tone,--
“What are you going to do to Winton?”
“Arrest him by-and-bye. If I can I’ll keep your name out of it. If I
can’t, and you lose your crib, I’ll make it up to you in some way. But
let me tell you one thing: you’d better play me fair, or it will be the
worse for you. The ‘Cuban Queen’ is being watched night and day, and if
you tell Winton of your meeting with me, and he tries to escape or you
try to give us the slip yourself, you’ll be instantly arrested, and it
will go hard with you then. Play me fair and I’ll play you fair, and no
harm need come to you at all in the matter. Once more, will you come to
my terms? If not, I’m off to the coastguard station. There’s only one
policeman in Canvey, and I shall want two or three men--armed men--for
Winton, and the same for you. I mean business, I can tell you. Come, is
it Yes or No?”
“Yes,” he answered, with a horrible oath. And then we sat down to
arrange the details of our little conspiracy.
CHAPTER XXVIII
I BOARD THE “CUBAN QUEEN” FOR THE SECOND TIME
“But when you had satisfied yourself that there _was_ a man in hiding
on the ‘Cuban Queen,’” says the reader, “and when you had every reason
for suspecting that man to be Mullen, why not at once arrest him? Why
go to work like Tom Sawyer in ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ who, when he wished
to rescue Jim the nigger from the woodshed, must needs make a seven
days’ job of it, and dig the poor wretch out, when it would have been
an easy matter to abstract the key and let him out through the door?”
Why? Well, for several reasons, one of which is that the story would
then have been shorter and perhaps less interesting. Another is that,
though it is true I had good cause to suppose the man in hiding to be
James Mullen, I had no actual proof of his identity.
The reader must remember that I had seen him but twice in my life.
The first time was in the train, going down to Southend, when my only
cause for suspecting him to be Mullen was a fancied likeness to the
published portrait. The second was on the day of the explosion at the
Post Office, and on that occasion he had been cleverly disguised, and
we had not come to close quarters until after dark, when the difficulty
of identification is greatly increased.
Were I, as matters then stood, to give information to the police, I
could only claim to be the means of accomplishing his arrest, whereas,
if I could once obtain satisfactory proof of his identity my chain of
evidence would be complete, and now that I had spent so much time,
thought and money on the enterprise, I preferred to carry it through
myself rather than hand it over to some one else at the last moment.
By taking Hughes’ place upon the “Cuban Queen” I hoped to obtain the
necessary evidence, and once such evidence was in my possession, I
should lose no time in effecting an arrest.
The morning after my interview with Hughes I took train to Chelmsford,
and thence despatched the pretended telegram from his wife. When I got
back to Southend, the telegram which Hughes was to send to his supposed
brother was waiting for me at the address we had arranged between
us. Lest the police should be tampering with letters and telegrams,
I had arranged that Hughes’ message should contain nothing more than
a request that Bill Hughes would come over to see his brother Jim at
Canvey.
To Canvey I accordingly went, calling first at my cottage, where I
arrayed myself in a well-worn suit of waterman’s clothes, which I
had kept there all along lest I should at any time have to assume a
disguise. My next procedure was to shave off the beard which I had been
wearing on the night of the explosion at the Post Office. The fact that
the night had been very dark was against Mullen’s knowing me again, for
though the bursting of the bomb had lit up the whole neighbourhood, the
street in which our encounter had taken place was entirely in shadow,
owing to the height of the buildings on either side.
That it was quite possible he would recognise me, if only by my voice,
I fully realised, and I knew perfectly well that every moment I spent
in his company my life would be in my own hands; but I flattered myself
that I was more than a match for him in a fair fight, and in regard to
foul play,--well, forewarned is forearmed, and I was not unprepared.
I waited until it was dark before starting for the hulk. Hughes came
on deck in reply to my hail, and proved a better actor than might have
been expected. After he had inquired gruffly, “Is that you, Bill?” and
I had responded, “Bill it is, Jim,” and had been bidden come aboard, he
went on--in response to my question of “Wot’s up?”--to speak his part
in the little play which we had rehearsed together. He informed me he
had had a telegram to say that his wife was ill, and that he wished to
go to her, but did not like applying for relief because he had a cove
on board, disguised as a woman (this in a lowered voice, according to
instruction), who had got into a scrape and wanted to lie low awhile.
My supposed brother then went on to ask me if I would take charge of
the hulk in his absence, assuring me that the cove was “a good un to
pay,” and that the job would be worth a five-pound note if I promised
to keep my mouth shut.
To all this Mullen was no doubt listening, so I replied--emphasising my
remark with the expectoration and expletives which might be looked for
from a seafaring man--that I was ready to take over the job and keep my
own counsel. That point being satisfactorily settled, I was invited to
step below and make the acquaintance of the gentleman in the cabin.
CHAPTER XXIX
I TRY A FALL WITH JAMES MULLEN
Some one dressed like a woman was standing by the stove whistling
softly to himself while paring his nails with a pearl-handled knife.
“My brother Bill, sir,” said Hughes gruffly, and I thought rather
nervously, indicating me with the peaked cloth cap which he carried,
rolled scrollwise, in his hand.
I followed suit with a bow, or rather a duck, and a polite
“Good-evening, sir,” but Mullen continued his nail-pairing and
whistling without deigning to look up.
For about a quarter of a minute I stood there feeling, and perhaps
looking, rather foolish. Then Hughes said again, and this time rather
louder, “My brother, sir.”
“There, there, my good fellow, that will do! I haven’t become deaf! I
hear you,” Mullen answered, without raising his head.
He spoke very much in the manner affected by some curates. Each
syllable was carefully pronounced and fell as cleanly cut as if it had
been new pennies which his lips were coining. The aspirates, the “hear”
and “there’s,” he discharged at us as if his mouth had been a tiny
popgun, and he roared at us gently as any sucking dove with the cooing
sound in such words as “do.”
But for all his nicety of speech he had too much of what is commonly
called “side” in his manner to delude any one into the idea that he was
a gentleman.
There is in the bearing of your true aristocrat towards strangers a
certain suave and urbane _hauteur_--as of one who expects and, if need
be, will _exact_ the courtesy he is accustomed to _accord_--which the
man of no breeding thinks can be imitated by the assumption of “side.”
Without his “side” he _might_ conceivably have passed for a gentleman.
As it is, he as surely betrays himself for what he is, as the man who,
by manifesting that over-anxiety to please--which he mistakes for the
easy courtesy of well-bred intercourse--betrays his under-breeding.
Neither Hughes nor I made any reply to what Mullen had said--nor did
the latter seem to expect us to do so, for he looked critically at his
little finger, felt the nail with the tip of his thumb, put the finger
to his teeth, nibbled at it for an instant, and then began scraping the
nail edge very gingerly.
Chafed at his insolence as I was, I could not help noticing that his
hands were small, white, and beautifully shaped, with the long taper
fingers of the artist, and pink carefully-trimmed nails.
When he had quite finished, he closed the knife deliberately and put it
on a little shelf by the bunk, then darting a sudden sideways glance at
me, he inquired sharply, almost viciously, “Well, sir, and what have
you to say for yourself?”
It was the first time he had looked at me since I had entered
the cabin, and as I met his eye it seemed to me that he started
perceptibly, and that I saw a sudden dilatation of the pupil which gave
a look of consternation if not of fear to his face. The next moment he
turned from me and flashed at Hughes a look of such malignity that I
fully expected to see the look succeeded by a blow--a look which, if I
read it aright, was the portent of a terrible vengeance to the man who
had played him false.
I am almost ashamed to write what followed. Not for the first time
in my life--not for the first time in this enterprise--I acted as
only one could act who was possessed by some spirit of mischief for
his own undoing. Even to myself the impulse which comes over me at
times to play the fool--to say or do at the critical moment the one
word or thing which ought to be left unsaid or undone, is altogether
unaccountable.
This uncertainty of character, this tendency to lose my head and to
bring tumbling about my ears, by the utterance of a word, the entire
edifice which I have perhaps spent laborious months in building up,
has been my stumbling-block through life, and must inevitably stand
in the way of my ever becoming a good detective. But a good detective
I have, as the reader knows, never claimed to be. Were it so, I
should undoubtedly suppress the incident I am about to relate, for it
tells very much against myself without in any way strengthening the
probability of my story.
When the man in hiding on the “Cuban Queen” lifted his head and looked
me in the face, I knew at once that I was in the presence, if not of
James Mullen, at all events of the person with whom I had travelled
to Southend on the occasion when he had objected so forcibly to
the striking of a fusee. The bright prominent eyes, beautiful as a
woman’s, the delicately clear complexion, the straw-coloured hair, the
aquiline nose with the strange upward arching of the nostrils, the
curious knitting of the brows over the eyes, the full lips that spoke
of voluptuousness unscrupulous and cruel, the firm, finely-moulded
chin--all these there was no mistaking, in spite of his woman’s dress.
As I looked at him the scene in the stuffy smoking carriage on the
Southend railway came back to me, and when in his quick, incisive
way he asked, “Well, sir, and what have you to say for yourself?” I
stammered foolishly for a moment, and then, prompted by what spirit of
perversity and mischief I know not, answered him by another question,
which under the circumstances must have sounded like intentional
insolence.
“You’re the man wot couldn’t stand the smell of fusees?”
Had horns suddenly sprouted out on each side of my head he could not
have looked at me with more absolute amazement and dismay. For a
very few seconds he stared wide-eyed with wonder, and then a look of
comprehension and cunning crept into his eyes. They narrowed cat-like
and cruel, the muscles about the cheeks tightened, the lips parted,
showing the clenched teeth, I heard his breath coming and going like
that of a winded runner, and the next second his face flamed out with a
look of such devilish ferocity and uncontrollable fury as I pray God I
may never see on face of man again.
With a howl of hatred more horrible than that of any tiger--for no
wild beast is half so hellish in its cruelty as your human tiger--he
sprang at me, beating at my face, now with closed fist, now open-handed
and with clutching, tearing nails, kicking with his feet, biting and
snapping at my hands and throat like a dog, and screaming like a very
madman.
To this day it consoles me not a little for the lapse of
self-possession which I had just before manifested to think that I
never lost presence of mind during this onslaught. When he came at me,
my one thought was to see that he made use of no weapons. His wild-cat
clawing and scratching it was no difficult matter for any one with a
quick eye and cool head to ward off; but when I saw him clap his hand
to his hip, where, had he been wearing male clothing, a pistol or knife
might well have lain, the eye I kept upon him was, I promise you, a
keen one.
Finding no pocket at his hips reminded him no doubt of his woman’s
dress, for his hand slipped down to the side of his skirt, where it
floundered about as helplessly as a fish out of water.
A woman’s pocket is, to the degenerate male mind, a fearful and
wonderful piece of mechanism. The intention of the designer was
apparently to offer special inducements to pickpockets, and so to
construct the opening that the contents should either fall out
altogether and be lost, or should be swallowed up by dark and
mysterious depths into which no male hand dare venture to penetrate.
The only way to get at anything which happens to be wanted seems to be
to haul the entire pocket to the surface, very much as a fishing-net is
hauled from the depths of the sea, and to turn it inside out in search
of the missing article.
On the occasion in question, Mullen was in too much of a hurry to
adopt this course, and, but for the seriousness of the situation, I
could have smiled, as I held him at arm’s length, to see him diving
and fumbling among those unplumbed depths. When at last he rose, so to
speak, gasping, to the surface, his hand was clutching a pistol-barrel,
but the butt had in some way caught the lining of the dress, and in
order to extricate it he had to turn the entire pocket inside out. In
doing so, a folded paper fell, unseen by him, to the floor, and this I
determined at all costs to secure.
Before he could raise his arm to use the pistol, I laid a hand of iron
upon his. As I gripped the fingers which were grasping the butt they
scrunched sickeningly and relaxed their hold of the pistol, which I
wrenched away and tossed upon the bunk. Then I closed with him that we
might try a fall together. Twisting my heel behind his ankle I jerked
him backwards and had him off his legs in a jiffy. We fell to the
floor--he under and I above--with a crash, and as we did so my hand
closed over the paper, to secure which I had thrown him.
Crumpling it up in a ball I made as if to rise to a sitting posture,
and in doing so managed to slip it into a side pocket. The next moment
I found myself pulled over on my back by Hughes, who asked excitedly if
we were both mad that we thus courted inquiry by fighting like a couple
of wild cats. If the sound of scuffling or firing were heard to come
from the hulk an alarm would, he said, be raised, the coastguardsmen
would row out to discover the cause, and everything would be lost, as
Mullen and I would be called upon to give an account of ourselves, and
he (Hughes) would forfeit his post.
Mullen was evidently of the same opinion, for though he was livid to
the lips, and was trembling with hate and rage until his teeth chinked
in his head like a carelessly-carried tray of china, he gave no sign of
wishing to continue the contest.
Nor was I inclined to shut my eyes to the wisdom of Hughes’ counsel,
for I was already conscious of the fact that by taunting Mullen and
provoking him to blows I was doing my best to spoil my own game. There
was all the difference in the world between his presence on board the
hulk being discovered by the police as a result of a brawl, and his
being arrested on information given by me and supported by proof of his
identity.
Mullen was the first to speak. He was now no doubt convinced that he
had not acted with his customary discretion, for he had even stronger
reasons than I to wish to avoid a visit from the police. So long as it
was a question of brains he might hope to hold his own, but let him
once fall into their hands and they would hold him by the brute force
of number, whereas in me he was pitted against a single foe whom it
might not be difficult to outwit.
“I beg your pardon for what happened just now,” he said, “but before we
go any further tell me where and when I have seen you before.”
“I saw you in the Southend train once. You ’ad a row with a bloke wot
stunk the carriage out with a fusee,” I answered, doing my best to
sustain the _rôle_ I had assumed.
“Ah!” he said, looking very much relieved and with a wonderfully
pleasant smile, “that explains everything. To tell the honest truth, my
good man, I knew I had seen you before, the moment I set eyes on you,
and the fact is I thought you were a detective who has been hunting me
down for a long time, and who has played me one or two tricks too dirty
and too cowardly even for a detective to play, and for which one day I
mean to be even with him.”
He was smiling still, but the smile seemed to have shifted from his
eyes to his teeth, and the effect had ceased to be pleasant. He swung
himself round and away from me, and, with hands clasped behind him and
bent head, commenced pacing backward and forward--evidently deep in
thought--in the scanty space the cabin afforded.
Five minutes went by in silence, and then he began to mutter to himself
in a low voice, turning his head from side to side every now and then
in a quick, nervous, birdlike way, his eyes never still a moment, but
pouncing restlessly first on one object and then on another.
“What’s come to me,” he said to himself, and there was a look on his
face which I have never seen except on the face of a madman--as,
indeed, I am now fully persuaded he was. “What’s come to me that I of
all men in the world should so forget myself as to behave--and before
two louts--like a drunken, screeching, hysterical Jezebel?”
He stopped his restless pacing for a moment, and it seemed to me that
the man was writhing under his self-contempt, as if every word had been
a lash cutting ribbons of flesh from his bare back. Once more he fell
to walking to and fro and holding converse with himself.
“Is the end coming, that I can break down like this?” he asked. “No,
no, it’s this being hunted down day and night, until I get to start at
my own shadow, that has made me nervous and overwrought.
“Nervous! Overwrought! My God! who wouldn’t be so who has led the life
I’ve led these last six months--hearing in the daytime the step of the
officer who has come to arrest me in every sound, and lying wide-eyed
and awake the whole night through rather than trust myself to the
sleep which brings always the same hideous dream, from which I awake
screaming and with the cold sweat running off me like water!”
It was a magnificent piece of acting, if acting it were, and there was
a pathetic break in his voice at the last which, had he not been what
he was, would have made me pity him.
But James Mullen, _alias_ Captain Shannon, was scarcely an object for
pity, as I was soon reminded, for as he looked up my eye met his, and
he read there, I suppose, something of what was passing through my
mind. To such a man’s vanity the mere thought of being considered a
possible object for pity is unendurable. It implies a consciousness of
superiority on the part of the pitier which is resented more fiercely
than an insult or a wrong. For one moment I thought that he was about
to attack me again--not this time with tooth and nail, after the manner
of a wild cat or a hysterical woman, but with a heavy three-legged
stool which was lying upon the bunk, tossed there, I suppose, by Hughes
to be out of the way while he was clearing up.
Mullen turned the edge of a glance toward it without taking his eyes
from mine, and I saw his hand flutter up hesitatingly for a moment like
a startled bird, and then drop dead to his side, and I knew that he was
thinking how dearly, if he dared, he would love to beat the stool again
and again against my face until he had bashed every feature out of
recognition. But on this occasion he managed to keep his self-control,
and contented himself by asking me, with savage irritability, what I
was waiting for, and what I saw strange in him that I stood staring in
that way.
I replied that I was only waiting to know whether he had anything else
to say to me or my brother before the latter left the hulk.
He did not answer except to snap out, “You can go,” to Hughes, but
when, after a surly “Good night both,” that worthy had taken his
departure, Mullen turned to me again.
“Now listen. I’m a dangerous man to trifle with, and a desperate one,
and there are not many things I’d stick at to be level with the man who
played me false. But I can be a good friend to those who play me fair,
as well as a relentless enemy. Act squarely by me while you are here,
and keep your mouth shut when you leave, and you’ll never have cause
to regret it. But if you play tricks here, or blab when you’re gone,
you’ll do the worst day’s work for yourself you ever did in your life.
Do you understand?”
He waited for a reply, so I nodded and said, “Fair do is fair do,
guv’nor. That’s all right.”
“Very well,” he continued; “now we understand each other, and no more
need be said about it. I shall sleep in the hold as I’ve done before,
for if any one came out to the hulk for any reason it wouldn’t do for
them to see me. You’ll take your nap here as your brother did. So I bid
you good-night.”
“Good-night, sir,” I answered civilly, holding the door open for him.
“Now I’ll have a look at the paper that fell out of your pocket in the
tussle, my friend,” I added, as soon as he was out of hearing. “I’ve
got all the night before me; for I don’t intend to take the nap of
which you were speaking until I’ve got you safe in custody--otherwise
it might be a nap to which there would come no waking.”
CHAPTER XXX
MORE DEVILRY
There was no fastening to the door of my cabin, but on passing my hand
over the place where a fastening might have been expected, a flake of
soft substance caught in my finger-nail and dropped to the floor. This,
when I picked it up, proved to be a pellet of bread kneaded to the
consistency of putty or dough. Taking the swing lamp from its bracket
I examined the door more closely and saw that there had once been a
fastening of some sort. A closer examination convinced me that the
person who had removed the fastening had been to the pains of plugging
the empty screw-holes with kneaded bread, after which he had apparently
rubbed dirt-smeared fingers over the place where the fastening had
been, in order to hide the marks left by removal.
When I picked out the bread-plugs--which had only recently been put
in, as they were still damp--I saw that the screw-holes were clean
inside, although there were tiny rings of dirt on the outside where the
roughened edges had brushed against the fingers and collected whatever
it was which had been smeared upon them.
Very softly I opened the door and looked at the other side, where, as I
expected, I found a bolt. A moment’s examination satisfied me that it
was the very bolt which had been on the inside, and that it had only
recently been placed where it was.
“There is some devilry in this,” I said to myself. “Even if the bolt
had not been recently changed I should strongly object to be anywhere
where Mullen could fasten me in if he had a mind to. I shall have to
take out these screws one by one with my penknife and make each hole so
large that the screws don’t bite. Then I’ll replace them, and the whole
concern will look as it was before; but if Mullen should fasten me in,
one good kick will fetch the bolt off and let me out.”
The job was tedious and lengthy, for I had to work in silence and with
a penknife in place of a screw-driver. But I got through it at last,
and having barricaded the door from the inside as best I could, I
pulled out the paper which had fallen from Mullen’s pocket.
A glance was sufficient to satisfy me that my find was no less than the
latter part of another manifesto, printed like previous manifestoes in
rude capitals, and bearing the well-known signature--
“BY ORDER,
“CAPTAIN SHANNON.”
It was evidently an attempt to stir up, for his own ends and purposes,
the disloyalty of the discontented Irish, and by professing to champion
their cause, to enlist their sympathy and co-operation in the war which
was being waged against England. Here is the document itself:--
“If England have annexed Ireland because she is smaller and lies
near, then might France with equal justice annex England, for Ireland
lies no nearer to England than England to France.
“Ireland is no mere pendant to England, like Anglesea or the Isle
of Wight; she is a separate and different country, scarcely smaller
in size, complete in herself, and peopled by a nation of different
creed, different temperament, and different race.
“The Celt shall not be ruled by the Teuton, nor the Teuton by the
Celt.
“God gave Ireland her independence when he cut her off from England
and separated the two countries by dividing seas.
“And they whom God has set asunder let no man join.
“But you have joined us to yourself in the union of bondage and
oppression, and when we cry out under our bondage--a bondage which,
were the cases reversed, England would be as little ready to tolerate
as Ireland--how do you meet our righteous demands?
“By trying to humour us as a woman seeks to humour a troublesome
child to whom she tosses a toy. By sending us what you dare not
insult the Scotch by sending to Scotland--a sawdust figure, of which
you hold the strings, who is to play at being king and holding court
to please us. But we--ah God! was ever so unreasonable a people?--we
do not simper and dance to the fiddling of this dummy king who is not
even of our own choosing, for we are ungracious enough to remember
that we have in our midst men of older lineage and nobler blood than
he.
“And then you cast about in your mind for some other means by which
you can make us loyal under subjection. And when there is born to
that ‘Queen of Ireland’ whom Ireland never sees--though she can
journey far afield to southern France or Italy--another princeling,
for whom royal provision must be made out of the pockets of the
people, who can scarce find their own children in bread, you say,
‘Go to, here is our opportunity; we will make Ireland loyal for ever
by giving this princeling Patrick as one of his many names and by
dubbing him Duke of Connaught.’
“But Ireland, graceless, thankless, stubborn Ireland, is not one
whit more loyal after receiving this royal boon, for she knows that
you rule over her by the coward’s right--the right of the strong to
oppress and make subject the weak.
“You call her your sister while you seek to make her your slave, even
as you call Irishmen your brothers while you have sought to make
their very name a reproach and a fitting subject for your sorry jests.
“You hold Ireland in the thrall of cruel oppression--for cowardice is
always cruel--not because of any sisterly feeling for her or love for
her people, whom you hate and who hate you with an undying hate, but
because you _are afraid to let her go free_.
“But that which you fear shall assuredly come to pass, and Ireland,
which might and would have been your friend and ally were she free,
is but waiting till you are involved in war to prove herself your
deadliest and bitterest enemy and the friend and ally of every
country which calls itself your foe.
“By order.
“CAPTAIN SHANNON.”
No more convincing proof that the fugitive in hiding on the “Cuban
Queen” was Captain Shannon could be wished for than this document, and
the only question I had to consider was how best to accomplish his
arrest.
I decided that the safest plan would be to signal Hughes to return.
He could see the hulk from the top window of my cottage, and I had
arranged with him that a red jersey (the men in charge of the hulks
wear red jerseys not unlike those affected by the Salvationists) slung
over the ship’s side was to be taken as meaning, “Come back as soon as
it is dark, and say that your wife is better.”
His return would, of course, render my presence on the hulk
unnecessary, and there would be nothing further for me to do but to
receive whatever payment Mullen proposed to give me, wish him and
my supposed brother good-bye and come ashore. Thence I should make
straight for the coastguard station and inform the officer in charge
that the notorious Captain Shannon was at that moment in hiding on
the “Cuban Queen” disguised as a woman. The rest would be easy, for
I had hit upon a plan by which, providing that I could count upon
the necessary assistance at the proper moment, the fugitive could be
secured without difficulty or danger, and I saw no reason why the
newspaper placards of the morning after Hughes’s return should not bear
the startling announcement, “Arrest of Captain Shannon.”
CHAPTER XXXI
THE ARREST OF CAPTAIN SHANNON
Six o’clock next morning saw the red jersey, which was to recall
Hughes, slung over the ship’s side, and the preconcerted reply
signalled from the upper window of the cottage.
From then until nightfall I had to possess my soul in patience, and
never in my life has time hung so heavily on my hands as on that
eventful day.
Mullen, who had been up since daybreak, was watching the shipping with
the liveliest interest. By standing on the steps of the cockpit he
could, without being seen himself, get a distant view of every vessel
that passed up or down the great waterway of the Thames.
He was inclined to be friendly, even talkative, and only once was there
a recurrence of the irritability he had manifested on the previous
evening. It happened in this wise.
Some fishing lines were in the cabin, and being badly in want of
something to make the time pass, I baited them with shreds of raw
herring, and threw them over the ship’s side. I got a “bite” directly,
but, on hauling up, found it came from a crab about as big as a
five-shilling piece, whom I tenderly detached from the inhospitable
hook and restored to his native element. I rebaited, sent the lead
whizzing overboard, and again brought up a crab.
“Come to look for the other one, I suppose,” I said to myself. “His
wife, perhaps. I’ll treat her kindly,” and crab number two rejoined its
dear ones.
Again I rebaited, again there was a bite, and again a crab clawing
wildly at the air appeared at the end of the line.
“H’m--a sister this time, or perhaps a daughter. Back she goes,
however,” and crab number three popped safely overboard, only to be
succeeded by crab number four.
“These are Scotch crabs, I should think,” I grumbled, “they’re so
clannish;” but him too I sent on his way rejoicing. Then a fifth
appeared on the scene.
“Oh, hang it all!” I growled. “I shall never get any fish if the crabs
eat up my bait as fast as I put it on. I hoped that last was an orphan,
but it seems as if I had struck another family gathering.”
Crab number six added insult to injury by refusing to let go the bait,
though I turned him over on his back and shook him till he rattled.
“Oh, I can’t stand this,” I said, raising a menacing heel. But more
humane feeling prevailed, and once more I stooped to assist the
pertinacious crustacean to his native deep. A nip from his foreclaws
was all I got for my pains.
“Very well,” I said, “if you _will_ have it, you will.”
Down came the heel, there was a sickening scrunch, and what had been a
crab was a noisome mess.
Then I heard an exclamation of disgust behind me, and, looking guiltily
round, saw that Mullen, who had hitherto been too absorbed in watching
the shipping to interest himself in my fishing, had heard the scrunch
of the crab’s shell under my heel, and had turned to ascertain the
cause.
“You brute!” he said. “Why couldn’t you throw the wretched thing back
into the water?”
“It ain’t none of your business,” I answered sulkily.
“It is my business, and every decent person’s business. The thing never
did you any harm. Besides, look at the ghastly mess you’ve made.”
“Ain’t you never killed nothin’ wot done you no ’arm?” I asked, perhaps
indiscreetly.
“Yes, if I had any reason to do so; just as I’d gladly put my heel on
your ugly brute’s head and crush the life out of you as you’ve crushed
it out of that wretched crab,--but not from wanton destructiveness.”
I did not think it wise to prolong an argument which touched upon such
delicate and personal ground, so I continued my fishing in silence,
and after another exclamation of disgust Mullen turned away to devote
himself once more to the shipping.
Not a vessel went by that he did not scrutinise carefully, and
I noticed that when any small steamer hove in sight he fidgeted
restlessly until she was near enough to allow inspection. That he was
on the look-out either for a ship or for a signal from a ship I felt
sure; and I was inclined to think that the irritability he had just
displayed was due more to nerve tension, and to his disappointment at
not seeing the vessel for which he was watching, than to any other
cause.
One thing seemed certain, however,--Mullen was breaking down under the
strain, and was no longer the man he had been. This was very manifest
later on in the day when a large steam yacht made her appearance at
the mouth of the Thames. All his attention was at once riveted upon
her, and as she crept up the river towards us I could see that he was
becoming feverishly anxious.
“There’s a pair of field-glasses in the hold where I am sleeping,” he
said. “Would you mind getting them for me, like a good fellow? Some
one might see me if I went myself. I want to have a look at yonder big
liner going down the river. I fancy I sailed in her once.”
I did as he requested, and he made a pretence of examining the liner.
“Yes, it is she; I can read her name quite easily,” he said, turning
the glasses from the big ship to the steam yacht. His hand trembled so
that he seemed unable at first to get the focus, and I distinctly saw
the quick fluttering of his pulse in the veins of his wrist.
“What _is_ her name?” I asked.
“‘Fiona,’” he said absently, and then pulling himself up sharp,--“what
am I thinking about? I mean the ‘Walmer Castle,’ of course. I sailed in
her when I went to Peru.”
I had all along expected that it was for his sister’s boat “Fiona” that
Mullen was watching, but hardly that he would tell me so himself; and
that such a man--a man who had carried out his devilish plots as if his
heart had been of cold stone and his nerves of iron--should so give
himself away, as the phrase goes, was proof positive of his complete
breakdown.
He watched the steam yacht until she was in front of us, though, of
course, a considerable distance off,--and then, having apparently
satisfied himself of her identity, he laid the glasses down with a
sigh of relief and went below. As soon as he was out of sight I picked
them up, levelled them at the now receding vessel, and saw, as I had
expected, the word “Fiona” on her bow.
The plot was thickening, indeed, for it was no doubt by Mullen’s
directions that she had come to England (he had probably given
instructions that she was to enter the Thames by daylight so that he
might not miss her), and he would scarcely have sent for her until the
fitting moment to make his escape had arrived. I had scarcely time
to satisfy myself of the steam yacht’s identity and to lay down the
glasses before Mullen reappeared with a plentiful supply of bread and
cheese,--of which he must have been sorely in need, for he had had no
food since early morning. Every shadow of his nervousness was now gone,
and he was in the best of spirits.
“Hughes, my boy,” he said, slapping me on the shoulder boisterously,
for I was sitting with my feet in the cockpit, “how are you getting on?
And what are you going to do with all the fish you have caught, eh?”
I was in no humour to enter into conversation, and as I had caught no
fish--as he very well knew--I pretended to take the last remark in high
dudgeon, and gave him a sulky answer.
But the reaction from his former anxiety was so great, and so set was
he upon drawing me into conversation, that in order to escape him I
made an excuse about getting some tea and went below.
“That’s right; make yourself jolly, my good man. You’re going to do
well out of this job, I can tell you,” he said; “and as it’s beginning
to get a bit dark, and I don’t see any one about, I’ll go on deck to
stretch my legs and get an airing.”
He remained there until night had set in, and then he came into the
cabin.
“I say,” he said, “there’s a boat coming out to us. Who can it be, and
at this time of the day?”
“Most likely it’s Jim come back,” I answered gruffly. “’E said ’e’d
come soon as the missus was better.”
“Of course,” Mullen said pleasantly. “How foolish of me not to think
of it. I’m glad the poor fellow’s wife’s better. But I shall be sorry
to lose your entertaining companionship, my genial friend. _Can’t_ I
persuade you to stay on and favour us with the pleasure of your company
for a day or two longer, as my guest?”
“Guest be blowed!” I replied in my surliest tone. “If that’s Jim
Hughes, the sooner I ’as my money and gets ashore agen the better I’ll
like it.”
“I should be hurt if I thought you meant that,” he said banteringly;
“but I know you don’t. We’ve hit it off together charmingly, I’m sure,
notwithstanding the fact that I’m so ‘difficult’ socially. And I’d make
such delightful plans for your comfort and amusement. It seems hard
that we should have to part.”
At that moment, and not a little to my relief, we heard a voice which
was unmistakably Hughes’, for he was expressing, by means of a liberal
use of his favourite adjective, the unwillingness with which he set
eyes on “the old tub again.”
“Well,” said Mullen, when Hughes entered the cabin, “and how’s your
wife?”
“Better,” was the answer.
“Ah, that’s capital; I congratulate you, I’m sure. So glad to see you
back again. Except, of course, for the fact that we shall be deprived
of your brother’s company. He _is_ your brother you said, didn’t
you? Though really one need hardly ask; the likeness, I’m sure, is
wonderful. But what a man it is, Hughes! Such geniality, such urbanity,
such a flow of spirits, such a fund of information, and, above all,
such manners!”
Hughes, who had probably never seen Mullen in this vein before, looked
first at him and then at me in astonishment.
“Stow your jaw!” I said shortly. “If you’re going to pay me for the
job, pay me and let me go!”
“Certainly, certainly, my dear fellow,” replied Mullen, smiling. “Yes,
you and I _have_ a little account to settle, haven’t we? I’ll pay you,
by all means. I always do pay my debts, and with interest. First, about
the hulk.”
He had been standing by the door all the time, but he now stepped
forward and counted out ten sovereigns upon the table.
“Will that satisfy you and keep your mouth shut?” he said, stepping
back again.
I nodded.
“Put them in your pocket, then, and that matter’s settled.”
I stooped to pick up the coins, but as I did so Mullen suddenly pushed
me with all his strength against Hughes, knocking the two of us
backward upon the bunk.
In another second he had stepped out of the cabin, pulling the door to
with a bang, and then we heard the rattle of the outside bolt in the
socket.
Hughes hurled me off and sprang up with blazing eyes.
“Did you take the bolt off and put it outside?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then ’_e_’s done it, and ’e means mischief for both of us! The ----’s
bad enough for anything. I know ’im; and ’ere we are caught like rats
in a trap.”
“That’s all right,” I said, and hunching my shoulder to the door and
making a pivot of my right foot, I burst the thing open with a crash,
the screws starting from their sockets and pattering upon a locker
opposite like spent bullets.
As I did so, Hughes rushed past me and upon the deck, I after him.
Nor were we too soon, for Mullen was making, as Hughes had evidently
feared, for the dynamite hold. When he heard our footsteps he turned,
and whipping out a revolver, raised it and shot Hughes right through
the heart. The unhappy man flung up his arms and toppled over the
ship’s side into the sea; but before Mullen could turn the weapon upon
me I got in a blow straight from the shoulder, which took him well
under the chin, and tumbled him backward to the bottom of the hold. I
hit hard enough to have knocked him “silly,” and I was not surprised
that he lay for a minute or two like one dead. Then he tried to rise,
but fell back with a groan, apparently quite helpless.
“Are you hurt?” I inquired, kneeling on one knee, the better to look
down into the hold.
He glanced up with a feeble attempt at a smile upon features cruelly
contorted by pain.
“So you’ve won the rubber after all, although I’d arranged everything
so cleverly, as I thought. You and Hughes, once locked securely in the
cabin, and a fuse put to the dynamite, I ought by now to have been half
a mile off in the dinghy, and on my way to join my sister at Gravesend.
We should have slipped off quietly in the confusion of the explosion,
for no one would know that it didn’t occur, as explosions have occurred
before, through the carelessness of the man in charge. And you and
Hughes, the only two people who could set matters right, would have
gone to join the dead men, who tell no tales. Confess, now, wasn’t it a
pretty plan, and worthy of an artist, friend Rissler?”
I started at the mention of my name, seeing which he burst into a
mocking laugh.
“Is it possible? No, it can’t be!” he said. “Don’t, _don’t_ tell me
that you didn’t know I knew who you were. Why, you refreshing person,
it was only because I did know that I pretended to fall into your booby
trap. I only let you take Hughes’ place on board the hulk that I might
get you into my power and rid myself of the pair of you at a sweep. And
to think that you didn’t know that I knew! Why, man alive, I’ve known
all about you from the first, and I could have sent you to join Quickly
and Green long ago if I had minded. But they were mere bunglers, fit
only to put out of the way, just as one would tread upon a spider or
beetle,--whereas you’re really clever, and ingenious, and all that
sort of thing, don’t you know, and you interested me. I don’t say that
if you had had any one you were very fond of,--a wife, sweetheart,
sister,--something might not have happened to _them_, just to let you
know that I was keeping you in mind.
“Once or twice you played your cards quite prettily; but oh! how you
bungled them at others! Still, I might have expected that from your
books. What could be worse of their sort than they? I’ve read them all,
though how I endured it I don’t know. There is _one_ thing _I couldn’t_
endure, however, and that is that you should write about _me_. Spare
me that last indignity and I’ll forgive you the brutal, blackguardly,
costermonger blows you struck me behind the Post Office.”
His eyes shone wickedly as he spoke, and then, for the first time, it
occurred to me (I had been too fascinated by the man to think of it
before) that he must have some motive for thus putting himself to the
trouble of holding me in conversation at a time when he was, as I could
see, suffering the keenest physical pain. What could his motive be?
For answer there came from the space where the dynamite was stored, a
tiny splutter, not unlike the splutter which is given occasionally by a
badly-trimmed lamp.
We had _not_ been in time to prevent him carrying out his devilish
purpose after all! And I--blind fool that I was--had been listening
idly to his chatter, not knowing that every word which fell from his
lips was bringing nearer the certainty of a dreadful fate.
This was why he had forced himself to smile and wear a mask, was it?
But the mask was off now, for catching sight of the horror in my face
as I leapt to my feet, he raised himself on his arm, and glared at me
with a countenance contorted out of all human likeness by devilish hate
and exultation.
“You’re too late, you ----! You’re too late. We’re going to hell
together, and if there’s a deeper hell still, I’ll seize you with a
grip you can’t shake off, and leap with you into the eternal fire. You
sha’n’t escape me there any more than you have here, for we’ll burn
together! You’re too late! you’re too----”
His voice died away in the distance, for I was by this time in the
dinghy, and rowing as man never rowed before. Thank God, I was already
ten yards away--twenty, fifty, a hundred!
Suddenly the sea behind me seemed to open up in one sheet of purple
flame, and I was knocked backward out of the boat as if by a blow from
a clenched fist. Then it seemed as if the sea had picked me up in its
arms--as I had once seen a drink-maddened man pick up a child, whom he
afterwards dashed headforemost against a brick wall--and had flung me
away and away over the very world’s edge.
* * * * *
When I came to myself I was lying high and dry upon the Kentish coast,
carried there, no doubt, by the huge wave that had followed the
explosion.
Captain Shannon had been arrested at last, and by an officer who,
for your crimes and mine, reader,--be they few or many, trivial or
great,--is now hunting each of us down to bring us to justice.
That detective--Detective Death--there is no eluding; and one day he
will lay his hand upon your shoulder and upon mine and say, “Come.”
And we shall have to go.
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Small capitals are changed to all capitals.
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected
after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and
consultation of external sources. Except for those changes noted below,
all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have
been retained.
The following corrections have been applied to the text (before/after):
(p. 19)
Captain Shannon.”
“Captain Shannon.”
(p. 63)
... play “Rule Britannia” on ...
... play ‘Rule Britannia’ on ...
(p. 78)
... upon the “Cuban Queen;” the ...
... upon the ‘Cuban Queen;’ the ...
(p. 102)
... and instal myself ...
... and install myself ...
(p. 107)
... boy. “It’s rather ...
... boy. It’s rather ...
(p. 107)
... return the “exs.” as ...
... return the ‘exs.’ as ...
(p. 107)
... on the “Cuban Queen.” As Green ...
... on the ‘Cuban Queen.’ As Green ...
(p. 134)
... in the haircutting rooms. ...
... in the hair-cutting rooms. ...
(p. 146)
... whose caligraphy I ...
... whose calligraphy I ...
(p. 156)
... just off the boatbuilder’s yard ...
... just off the boat-builder’s yard ...
(p. 167)
... lying on the mantelshelf. ...
... lying on the mantel-shelf. ...
(p. 177)
... one there, by the-bye?”
... one there, by-the-bye?”
(p. 226)
AFTER THE EXPLOSION.
AFTER THE EXPLOSION
(p. 249)
... And so ’d you, ...
... And so ’ud you, ...
(p. 253)
... The “Cuban Queen” is being ...
... The ‘Cuban Queen’ is being ...
(p. 254)
... FOR THE SECOND TIME.
... FOR THE SECOND TIME
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Captain Shannon" ***
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