"He's been out again, sir," said Mr Stiff to Clayton, as he entered the
passage.
"What! Sir Francis?"
"Yes, sir. A man came from down Bermondsey way, and said he had some
news, and I daren't refuse him. You know, sir, it might be valuable,
and it would not do for me to be shutting off the very bit of
information that might be worth anything."
"What kind of man was it?" asked Harry.
"Poor Jack sort of fellow, sir, from river stairs; and I told Sir
Francis, as he told me to tell him of everybody who called only this
morning again, and I showed the man up. Then they went off together in
a cab, and he's just come back, sir."
"What madness--in his state!" exclaimed Harry, and he hurried up the
stairs to find Sir Francis seated on a low chair, with his face buried
in his hands.
Sir Francis looked up as the young man entered, to gaze at him in a
confused, dazed way, as if he did not quite comprehend the meaning of
his coming.
"Was not this rather foolish of you, Sir Francis?" said Harry, gently.
"Indeed you are in no condition for going out. I see how it is, though,
and I feared it when you put in the advertisement; the very name of the
chambers in Regent Street was enough to bring down a host of
reward-seekers. Why did you not take my advice, and refer them to the
police?"
"I couldn't, Clayton--I couldn't," groaned Sir Francis. "You do not
know what I feel, or you would not speak to me as you do. Poor lad!--
poor lad!"
Harry was silent for a few minutes, and then he spoke again.
"It was, of course, a useless quest, sir?"
"I can't tell--I don't know," said Sir Francis, feebly. "I am confused
and troubled in the head, Clayton, and I have been trying hard to
recollect what it all was, and what I did; but as soon as I grasp
anything, it seems to glide from me again."
"Lie down, sir," said Harry, gently, and he passed an arm beneath that
of the old man.
"Not yet--not yet--not yet, Clayton. I think I have it now. Yes, that
is it--I have it. The man came and said they had found some one by the
river-side, and I went half-way with him; and then I suppose I must have
fainted, for I can recollect no more, only that I was brought back--or
no, I think I must have found my way back by myself. This weakness is a
cruel trial just now."
"You must put your strength to the test no more, sir," said Harry,
firmly. "Try and believe that I will do all that is possible. Indeed,
I will leave no stone unturned."
"I know it, Clayton--I know it!" exclaimed Sir Francis; "and indeed I do
try, but this suspense is at times more than I can bear."
At the young man's persuasion, he now went to lie down, giving up in a
weary vacant manner the effort to recollect where the man had been about
to take him. He tried once to recall the names, till Harry felt a dread
of delirium setting in, and it was only by his promising to follow up
the clue that had been freshly opened out, that he kept the afflicted
father to his couch.
Once more alone, Harry rang for Stiff, who, however, could only repeat
what he had before said, and his querist was puzzled as to what should
be the next steps taken.
The problem was solved by the waterside man himself, who came, he said,
to see if the gentleman was well enough to go now.
"He turned ill in the cab, did he not?" said Clayton.
"Yes, sir; would go in a cab, he would. I don't like 'em--ready to
choke yer, they are; but he wouldn't come on a 'bus. 'Fore we'd gone
far, he turns as white as his hankychy, and shuts his eyes curus like,
and gets all nohow in what he was a saying; but he says, he does, `Take
me back, and come agen.' So I brought him back, and now I've comed
agen."
"And now, what is your news?" said Harry. "The gentleman has placed it
in my hands."
The man looked curiously at him for a few minutes, and then rubbed the
bridge of his nose with a rough hand.
"But you see, sir, this is a matter o' offring rewards for some one as
is missing, and I've got a mate in this here job. For, you know, as
soon as ever there's a notice up o' that sort, my mate and I begins to
look out, so as to try if we can't find what's missing, and get what's
offered. Now, I ask your parding, sir, but I should like to know who
you may be, and what you've got to do with it at all? S'pose I leads
you to it, shall we get the ready?"
"You may deal with me precisely as you did with the gentleman you saw
before. You know for yourself that he is too ill to leave the house,
and he has deputed me to act for him, as I told you."
"True for you, sir--I did see it; and as you seem to be a gent as is all
right, let's go."
A cab was brought, and, not without a glance at his unsavoury companion,
Harry followed him into the vehicle.
"Hadn't yer better let me ride outside, sir?" said the man, looking at
the stuffed and cushioned interior with an aspect of disgust.
"No," said Harry; "I want to know what more you have to say respecting
this affair."
The man gave a tug at an imaginary forelock, and then waited apparently
to be questioned, while Harry took in his outward appearance at a
glance.
He was rough and dirty enough to have passed for the veriest vagabond in
existence, but all the same he did not seem as if he belonged to that
portion of society that has been dubbed "the dangerous classes;" for
there was a good open aspect to the brown face, and though the
Bardolphian nose told tales of drams taken to keep out the cold river
mists, on either side a frank grey eye looked you full in the face;
while, greatest test of all, the fellow's palms were hard and horny, and
ended by fingers that had been chipped, bent, bruised, and distorted by
hard labour.
"Well, sir," said the man, "I ain't got much to tell you; only that,
seeing the reward up, my mate and me thought we might as well have it as
any one else, so we set to and--"
"You found him?" exclaimed Harry, eagerly.
"Well, sir, that's for you to say when you sees him. My mate generally
sees people about these sorter things, but I come to-day; and a fine job
I had to get to know where you lived, for I'd forgot the number; but I
found out at last from a gal cleaning the door-step close by. It don't
do for us, you know, to go to no police--they humbugs a man about so;
and I don't know now whether they ain't been down on my mate, 'cos you
see we didn't want to say nothing to them till as how you'd been and
seen it."
Harry shuddered at that last word "it;" there was something so
repellent, though at the same time expressive, in the one tiny syllable
_it_ now, not _him_; and again he shuddered as he thought of the ordeal
through which he had to go. He roused himself at last, though, to ask a
few questions as the cab drove on, the driver making his way over the
river to the Surrey side; and, as soon as they were in the comparative
silence of the narrow streets, Harry learned that during the past night
his companion had been successful in his search, and that what he had
sought lay now in a boat-house far down the Thames in the low-lying
district where wharf and dock and rickety stairs, or steam-boat pier,
alternate with muddy-pile and drain, with bank after bank of slime, over
which the water of the swift tide seemed to glide and play, here and
there washing it up into a foul frothy scum, compounded of the poisonous
refuse daily cast into the mighty stream.
It was a long ride, down deplorable looking streets, where wretched
tumble-down tenements, with frowsy aspect and dingy, patchy windows,
were dominated by lordly warehouses, with great gallows-like cranes at
every floor--floors six, seven, and eight stories from the ground--from
whose open doors men stood gazing down as coolly as if they were on
_terra firma_, though a moment's giddiness must have precipitated them
into the street below.
Harry saw all this as they rode slowly on, in spite of the
pre-occupation of his thoughts, as he tried to nerve himself for the
task to come. Probably his brain was abnormally excited, and the
pictures of the panorama passing the cab-window seemed to force
themselves upon him. Now he was apparently interested in the places
where the ship-chandlers hung out their wares; the next minute, the gate
of a dock, with its scores of labourers waiting for a job, took his
attention; or low public-houses and beer-shops, with their lounging
knots of customers, half labourer, half sailor, or lighterman, with the
inevitable brazen, high-cheeked, muscular woman. A little farther on,
and he would be grazing at a clump of masts rising from behind high
walls. Then came comparatively decent dwellings with a vast display of
green paint, and to the doors brass knockers of the most dazzling
lustre. In nearly every parlour-window he saw was a parrot of grey or
gaudy hue swinging or climbing about. In front of more than one house
were oyster forts with sham cannon; while others again had flagstaff's
rigged up with halyards, vane, and pennant, looking down upon the
bruised figure-head of a ship which ornamented the neighbour's garden.
Maritime population with maritime tastes, the houses of trading skippers
and mates of small vessels. Sea-chests could be seen in baxrows at
every turn, along with the big bolster-like bag that forms the orthodox
portmanteau for a sailor's kit. Here and there he passed, in full
long-shore togs, the dwellers in the sea-savouring houses--passing along
the pavement with one eye to windward, and the true nautical roll which
told of sea-legs brought ashore.
On still, with the rattling of the wretched cab and its jangling windows
seeming to form a tune which repeated itself ever to his ears. The man,
from watching his companion, had taken to drumming the top of the door
with his hard fingers, blackened and stained with tar, while from time
to time he thrust out his head to give some direction or another to the
driver, whose eccentric course seemed as if it would never end.
At last, though, the guide seemed to grow excited, giving his orders
more frequently, the cab being slowly driven in and out of rugged,
tortuous lanes, from one of which it had to back out, so as to give
place to a waggon laden with ships' spars and cables. Narrow ways
seemed the rule, and down these the cab went jolting, till the driver
drew up short at the end of a wretched alley.
Here the guide dismounted.
"Can't get no furrer with cabs here, sir," he said; "we must walk the
rest on it."
Harry told the driver to wait; and then, in a troubled state of mind, he
followed his conductor in and out by wharf and crazy waterside shed,
where paths were wet and muddy, and the few people seen looked
poverty-stricken and repulsive. Tall walls heaved upward to shut out
the light and air from the low, damp dwellings. A few yards farther and
there was the din of iron as rivets were driven cherry-red into the
plates of some huge metallic sea-ark. And again a little farther, and
they were where corn ran in teeming golden cascades out of shoots to
lighter or granary. Farther still, and the rap, rap, incessant rap, of
the caulkers' hammers were heard as they drove in the tarry oakum
between the seams of the wooden vessels.
Iron-workers, black and grimy, painters, carpenters, rope-makers, all
were busy here. Steam hissed and roared and shrieked, as it escaped
from some torturing engine in white wreaths, like the ghost of dead
water hurrying to its heaven of clouds far above the grimy earth. All
forced itself upon Harry Clayton's brain, as he followed his conductor
to where there were loose stones and mud beneath his feet, the black
rushing river on his left hand, and on his right slimy piles, black and
green and brown, with the bolts protruding, and iron rings hanging from
their sides, all eaten and worn away.
There was a channel leading to some dock close by, and foul water was
babbling noisily down through a pair of sluice-falls, and this too
struck him painfully as the plashing fell upon his ear.
All passed away, though, but the one shudder-engendering idea of that
which he had come to see; for a rough harsh voice, proceeding from
another amphibious muddy being, said:--
"You've found some one, then?"
"Ay!" was the response from Harry Clayton's conductor; and making to the
right, the young man found himself beside a low, wet, half-rotten shed.
Volume 3, Chapter V.