the imagination. You seem to me a real millionaire now. You’ve given me
some personal information; I’ll give you some in return. I earn three
hundred a year, and perhaps sixty pounds a year extra for overtime. I
live by myself in two rooms in Muscovy Court. I’ve as much money as I
need, and I always do exactly what I like outside office. As regards the
office, I do as little work as I can, on principle--it’s a fight between
us and the Commissioners who shall get the best. They try to do us down,
and we try to do them down--it’s pretty even on the whole. All’s fair in
war, you know, and there ain’t no ten commandments in a Government
office.’
Racksole laughed. ‘Can you get off this afternoon?’ he asked.
‘Certainly,’ said Hazell; ‘I’ll get one of my pals to sign on for me,
and then I shall be free.’
‘Well,’ said Racksole, ‘I should like you to come down with me to the
Grand Babylon. Then we can talk over my little affair at length. And may
we go on your boat? I want to meet your crew.’
‘That will be all right,’ Hazell remarked. ‘My two men are the idlest,
most soul-less chaps you ever saw. They eat too much, and they have an
enormous appetite for beer; but they know the river, and they know their
business, and they will do anything within the fair game if they are
paid for it, and aren’t asked to hurry.’
That night, just after dark, Theodore Racksole embarked with his new
friend George Hazell in one of the black-painted Customs wherries,
manned by a crew of two men--both the later freemen of the river, a
distinction which carries with it certain privileges unfamiliar to the
mere landsman. It was a cloudy and oppressive evening, not a star
showing to illumine the slow tide, now just past its flood. The vast
forms of steamers at anchor--chiefly those of the General Steam
Navigation and the Aberdeen Line--heaved themselves high out of the
water, straining sluggishly at their mooring buoys. On either side the
naked walls of warehouses rose like grey precipices from the stream,
holding forth quaint arms of steam-cranes. To the west the Tower Bridge
spanned the river with its formidable arch, and above that its suspended
footpath--a hundred and fifty feet from earth.
Down towards the east and the Pool of London a forest of funnels and
masts was dimly outlined against the sinister sky. Huge barges, each
steered by a single man at the end of a pair of giant oars, lumbered and
swirled down-stream at all angles. Occasionally a tug snorted busily
past, flashing its red and green signals and dragging an unwieldy tail
of barges in its wake. Then a Margate passenger steamer, its electric
lights gleaming from every porthole, swerved round to anchor, with its
load of two thousand fatigued excursionists. Over everything brooded an
air of mystery--a spirit and feeling of strangeness, remoteness, and the
inexplicable. As the broad flat little boat bobbed its way under the
shadow of enormous hulks, beneath stretched hawsers, and past buoys
covered with green slime, Racksole could scarcely believe that he was in
the very heart of London--the most prosaic city in the world. He had a
queer idea that almost anything might happen in this seeming waste of
waters at this weird hour of ten o’clock. It appeared incredible to him
that only a mile or two away people were sitting in theatres applauding
farces, and that at Cannon Street Station, a few yards off, other people
were calmly taking the train to various highly respectable suburbs whose
names he was gradually learning. He had the uplifting sensation of being
in another world which comes to us sometimes amid surroundings violently
different from our usual surroundings. The most ordinary noises--of men
calling, of a chain running through a slot, of a distant siren--
translated themselves to his ears into terrible and haunting sounds,
full of portentous significance. He looked over the side of the boat
into the brown water, and asked himself what frightful secrets lay
hidden in its depth. Then he put his hand into his hip-pocket and
touched the stock of his Colt revolver--that familiar substance
comforted him.
The oarsmen had instructions to drop slowly down to the Pool, as the
wide reach below the Tower is called. These two men had not been
previously informed of the precise object of the expedition, but now
that they were safely afloat Hazell judged it expedient to give them
some notion of it. ‘We expect to come across a rather suspicious steam
launch,’ he said. ‘My friend here is very anxious to get a sight of her,
and until he has seen her nothing definite can be done.’
‘What sort of a craft is she, sir?’ asked the stroke oar, a fat-faced
man who seemed absolutely incapable of any serious exertion.
‘I don’t know,’ Racksole replied; ‘but as near as I can judge, she’s
about sixty feet in length, and painted black. I fancy I shall recognize
her when I see her.’
‘Not much to go by, that,’ exclaimed the other man curtly. But he said
no more. He, as well as his mate, had received from Theodore Racksole
one English sovereign as a kind of preliminary fee, and an English
sovereign will do a lot towards silencing the natural sarcastic
tendencies and free speech of a Thames waterman.
‘There’s one thing I noticed,’ said Racksole suddenly, ‘and I forgot to
tell you of it, Mr Hazell. Her screw seemed to move with a rather
irregular, lame sort of beat.’
Both watermen burst into a laugh.
‘Oh,’ said the fat rower, ‘I know what you’re after, sir--it’s Jack
Everett’s launch, commonly called “Squirm”. She’s got a four-bladed
propeller, and one blade is broken off short.’
‘Ay, that’s it, sure enough,’ agreed the man in the bows. ‘And if it’s
her you want, I seed her lying up against Cherry Gardens Pier this very
morning.’
‘Let us go to Cherry Gardens Pier by all means, as soon as possible,’
Racksole said, and the boat swung across stream and then began to creep
down by the right bank, feeling its way past wharves, many of which,
even at that hour, were still busy with their cranes, that descended
empty into the bellies of ships and came up full. As the two watermen
gingerly manoeuvred the boat on the ebbing tide, Hazell explained to the
millionaire that the ‘Squirm’ was one of the most notorious craft on the
river. It appeared that when anyone had a nefarious or underhand scheme
afoot which necessitated river work Everett’s launch was always
available for a suitable monetary consideration. The ‘Squirm’ had got
itself into a thousand scrapes, and out of those scrapes again with
safety, if not precisely with honour. The river police kept a watchful
eye on it, and the chief marvel about the whole thing was that old
Everett, the owner, had never yet been seriously compromised in any
illegal escapade. Not once had the officer of the law been able to prove
anything definite against the proprietor of the ‘Squirm’, though several
of its quondam hirers were at that very moment in various of Her
Majesty’s prisons throughout the country. Latterly, however, the launch,
with its damaged propeller, which Everett consistently refused to have
repaired, had acquired an evil reputation, even among evil-doers, and
this fraternity had gradually come to abandon it for less easily
recognizable craft.
‘Your friend, Mr Tom Jackson,’ said Hazell to Racksole, ‘committed an
error of discretion when he hired the “Squirm”. A scoundrel of his
experience and calibre ought certainly to have known better than that.
You cannot fail to get a clue now.’
By this time the boat was approaching Cherry Gardens Pier, but
unfortunately a thin night-fog had swept over the river, and objects
could not be discerned with any clearness beyond a distance of thirty
yards. As the Customs boat scraped down past the pier all its occupants
strained eyes for a glimpse of the mysterious launch, but nothing could
be seen of it. The boat continued to float idly down-stream, the men
resting on their oars.
Then they narrowly escaped bumping a large Norwegian sailing vessel at
anchor with her stem pointing down-stream. This ship they passed on the
port side. Just as they got clear of her bowsprit the fat man cried out
excitedly, ‘There’s her nose!’ and he put the boat about and began to
pull back against the tide. And surely the missing ‘Squirm’ was
comfortably anchored on the starboard quarter of the Norwegian ship,
hidden neatly between the ship and the shore. The men pulled very
quietly alongside.
Chapter Twenty-Six THE NIGHT CHASE AND THE MUDLARK
‘I’LL board her to start with,’ said Hazell, whispering to Racksole.
‘I’ll make out that I suspect they’ve got dutiable goods on board, and
that will give me a chance to have a good look at her.’
Dressed in his official overcoat and peaked cap, he stepped, rather
jauntily as Racksole thought, on to the low deck of the launch. ‘Anyone
aboard?’
Racksole heard him cry out, and a woman’s voice answered. ‘I’m a Customs
examining officer, and I want to search the launch,’ Hazell shouted, and
then disappeared down into the little saloon amidships, and Racksole
heard no more. It seemed to the millionaire that Hazell had been gone
hours, but at length he returned.
‘Can’t find anything,’ he said, as he jumped into the boat, and then
privately to Racksole: ‘There’s a woman on board. Looks as if she might
coincide with your description of Miss Spencer. Steam’s up, but there’s
no engineer. I asked where the engineer was, and she inquired what
business that was of mine, and requested me to get through with my own
business and clear off. Seems rather a smart sort. I poked my nose into
everything, but I saw no sign of any one else. Perhaps we’d better pull
away and lie near for a bit, just to see if anything queer occurs.’
‘You’re quite sure he isn’t on board?’ Racksole asked.
‘Quite,’ said Hazell positively: ‘I know how to search a vessel. See
this,’ and he handed to Racksole a sort of steel skewer, about two feet
long, with a wooden handle. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is one of the Customs’
aids to searching.’
‘I suppose it wouldn’t do to go on board and carry off the lady?’
Racksole suggested doubtfully.
‘Well,’ Hazell began, with equal doubtfulness, ‘as for that--’
‘Where’s ‘e orf?’ It was the man in the bows who interrupted Hazell.
Following the direction of the man’s finger, both Hazell and Racksole
saw with more or less distinctness a dinghy slip away from the forefoot
of the Norwegian vessel and disappear downstream into the mist.
‘It’s Jules, I’ll swear,’ cried Racksole. ‘After him, men. Ten pounds
apiece if we overtake him!’
‘Lay down to it now, boys!’ said Hazell, and the heavy Customs boat shot
out in pursuit.
‘This is going to be a lark,’ Racksole remarked.
‘Depends on what you call a lark,’ said Hazell; ‘it’s not much of a lark
tearing down midstream like this in a fog. You never know when you
mayn’t be in kingdom come with all these barges knocking around. I
expect that chap hid in the dinghy when he first caught sight of us, and
then slipped his painter as soon as I’d gone.’
The boat was moving at a rapid pace with the tide. Steering was a matter
of luck and instinct more than anything else. Every now and then Hazell,
who held the lines, was obliged to jerk the boat’s head sharply round to
avoid a barge or an anchored vessel. It seemed to Racksole that vessels
were anchored all over the stream. He looked about him anxiously, but
for a long time he could see nothing but mist and vague nautical forms.
Then suddenly he said, quietly enough, ‘We’re on the right road; I can
see him ahead.
We’re gaining on him.’ In another minute the dinghy was plainly visible,
not twenty yards away, and the sculler--sculling frantically now--was
unmistakably Jules--Jules in a light tweed suit and a bowler hat.
‘You were right,’ Hazell said; ‘this is a lark. I believe I’m getting
quite excited. It’s more exciting than playing the trombone in an
orchestra. I’ll run him down, eh?--and then we can drag the chap in from
the water.’
Racksole nodded, but at that moment a barge, with her red sails set,
stood out of the fog clean across the bows of the Customs boat, which
narrowly escaped instant destruction. When they got clear, and the usual
interchange of calm, nonchalant swearing was over, the dinghy was barely
to be discerned in the mist, and the fat man was breathing in such a
manner that his sighs might almost have been heard on the banks.
Racksole wanted violently to do something, but there was nothing to do;
he could only sit supine by Hazell’s side in the stern-sheets. Gradually
they began again to overtake the dinghy, whose one-man crew was
evidently tiring. As they came up, hand over fist, the dinghy’s nose
swerved aside, and the tiny craft passed down a water-lane between two
anchored mineral barges, which lay black and deserted about fifty yards
from the Surrey shore. ‘To starboard,’ said Racksole. ‘No, man!’
Hazell replied; ‘we can’t get through there. He’s bound to come out
below; it’s only a feint. I’ll keep our nose straight ahead.’
And they went on, the fat man pounding away, with a face which glistened
even in the thick gloom. It was an empty dinghy which emerged from
between the two barges and went drifting and revolving down towards
Greenwich.
The fat man gasped a word to his comrade, and the Customs boat stopped
dead.
‘’E’s all right,’ said the man in the bows. ‘If it’s ‘im you want, ‘e’s
on one o’ them barges, so you’ve only got to step on and take ‘im orf.’
‘That’s all,’ said a voice out of the depths of the nearest barge, and
it was the voice of Jules, otherwise known as Mr Tom Jackson.
‘’Ear ‘im?’ said the fat man smiling. ‘’E’s a good ‘un, ‘e is. But if I
was you, Mr Hazell, or you, sir, I shouldn’t step on to that barge so
quick as all that.’
They backed the boat under the stem of the nearest barge and gazed
upwards.
‘It’s all right,’ said Racksole to Hazell; ‘I’ve got a revolver. How can
I clamber up there?’
‘Yes, I dare say you’ve got a revolver all right,’ Hazell replied
sharply.
‘But you mustn’t use it. There mustn’t be any noise. We should have the
river police down on us in a twinkling if there was a revolver shot, and
it would be the ruin of me. If an inquiry was held the Commissioners
wouldn’t take any official notice of the fact that my superior officer
had put me on to this job, and I should be requested to leave the
service.’
‘Have no fear on that score,’ said Racksole. ‘I shall, of course, take
all responsibility.’
‘It wouldn’t matter how much responsibility you took,’ Hazell retorted;
‘you wouldn’t put me back into the service, and my career would be at an
end.’
‘But there are other careers,’ said Racksole, who was really anxious to
lame his ex-waiter by means of a judiciously-aimed bullet. ‘There are
other careers.’
‘The Customs is my career,’ said Hazell, ‘so let’s have no shooting.
We’ll wait about a bit; he can’t escape. You can have my skewer if you
like’--and he gave Racksole his searching instrument. ‘And you can do
what you please, provided you do it neatly and don’t make a row over
it.’
For a few moments the four men were passive in the boat, surrounded by
swirling mist, with black water beneath them, and towering above them a
half-loaded barge with a desperate and resourceful man on board.
Suddenly the mist parted and shrivelled away in patches, as though
before the breath of some monster. The sky was visible; it was a clear
sky, and the moon was shining. The transformation was just one of those
meteorological quick-changes which happen most frequently on a great
river.
‘That’s a sight better,’ said the fat man. At the same moment a head
appeared over the edge of the barge. It was Jules’ face--dark, sinister
and leering.
‘Is it Mr Racksole in that boat?’ he inquired calmly; ‘because if so,
let Mr Racksole step up. Mr Racksole has caught me, and he can have me
for the asking. Here I am.’ He stood up to his full height on the barge,
tall against the night sky, and all the occupants of the boat could see
that he held firmly clasped in his right hand a short dagger. ‘Now, Mr
Racksole, you’ve been after me for a long time,’ he continued; ‘here I
am. Why don’t you step up? If you haven’t got the pluck yourself,
persuade someone else to step up in your place ... the same fair
treatment will be accorded to all.’ And Jules laughed a low, penetrating
laugh.
He was in the midst of this laugh when he lurched suddenly forward.
‘What’r’ you doing of aboard my barge? Off you goes!’ It was a boy’s
small shrill voice that sounded in the night. A ragged boy’s small form
had appeared silently behind Jules, and two small arms with a vicious
shove precipitated him into the water. He fell with a fine gurgling
splash. It was at once obvious that swimming was not among Jules’
accomplishments. He floundered wildly and sank. When he reappeared he
was dragged into the Customs boat. Rope was produced, and in a minute or
two the man lay ignominiously bound in the bottom of the boat. With the
aid of a mudlark--a mere barge boy, who probably had no more right on
the barge than Jules himself--Racksole had won his game. For the first
time for several weeks the millionaire experienced a sensation of
equanimity and satisfaction. He leaned over the prostrate form of Jules,
Hazell’s professional skewer in his hand.
‘What are you going to do with him now?’ asked Hazell.
‘We’ll row up to the landing steps in front of the Grand Babylon. He
shall be well lodged at my hotel, I promise him.’
Jules spoke no word.
Before Racksole parted company with the Customs man that night Jules had
been safely transported into the Grand Babylon Hôtel and the two
watermen had received their £10 apiece.
‘You will sleep here?’ said the millionaire to Mr George Hazell. ‘It is
late.’
‘With pleasure,’ said Hazell. The next morning he found a sumptuous
breakfast awaiting him, and in his table-napkin was a Bank of England
note for a hundred pounds. But, though he did not hear of them till much
later, many things had happened before Hazell consumed that sumptuous
breakfast.
Chapter Twenty-Seven THE CONFESSION OF MR TOM JACKSON
IT happened that the small bedroom occupied by Jules during the years he
was head-waiter at the Grand Babylon had remained empty since his sudden
dismissal by Theodore Racksole. No other head-waiter had been formally
appointed in his place; and, indeed, the absence of one man--even the
unique Jules--could scarcely have been noticed in the enormous staff of
a place like the Grand Babylon. The functions of a head-waiter are
generally more ornamental, spectacular, and morally impressive than
useful, and it was so at the great hotel on the Embankment. Racksole
accordingly had the excellent idea of transporting his prisoner, with as
much secrecy as possible, to this empty bedroom. There proved to be no
difficulty in doing so; Jules showed himself perfectly amenable to a
show of superior force.
Racksole took upstairs with him an old commissionaire who had been
attached to the outdoor service of the hotel for many years--a grey-
haired man, wiry as a terrier and strong as a mastiff. Entering the
bedroom with Jules, whose hands were bound, he told the commissionaire
to remain outside the door.
Jules’ bedroom was quite an ordinary apartment, though perhaps slightly
superior to the usual accommodation provided for servants in the
caravanserais of the West End. It was about fourteen by twelve. It was
furnished with a bedstead, a small wardrobe, a small washstand and
dressing-table, and two chairs. There were two hooks behind the door, a
strip of carpet by the bed, and some cheap ornaments on the iron
mantelpiece. There was also one electric light. The window was a little
square one, high up from the floor, and it looked on the inner
quadrangle.
The room was on the top storey--the eighth--and from it you had a view
sheer to the ground. Twenty feet below ran a narrow cornice about a foot
wide; three feet or so above the window another and wider cornice jutted
out, and above that was the high steep roof of the hotel, though you
could not see it from the window. As Racksole examined the window and
the outlook, he said to himself that Jules could not escape by that
exit, at any rate. He gave a glance up the chimney, and saw that the
flue was far too small to admit a man’s body.
Then he called in the commissionaire, and together they bound Jules
firmly to the bedstead, allowing him, however, to lie down. All the
while the captive never opened his mouth--merely smiled a smile of
disdain. Finally Racksole removed the ornaments, the carpet, the chairs
and the hooks, and wrenched away the switch of the electric light. Then
he and the commissionaire left the room, and Racksole locked the door on
the outside and put the key in his pocket.
‘You will keep watch here,’ he said to the commissionaire, ‘through the
night. You can sit on this chair. Don’t go to sleep. If you hear the
slightest noise in the room blow your cab-whistle; I will arrange to
answer the signal. If there is no noise do nothing whatever. I don’t
want this talked about, you understand. I shall trust you; you can trust
me.’
‘But the servants will see me here when they get up to-morrow,’ said the
commissionaire, with a faint smile, ‘and they will be pretty certain to
ask what I’m doing of up here. What shall I say to ‘em?’
‘You’ve been a soldier, haven’t you?’ asked Racksole.
‘I’ve seen three campaigns, sir,’ was the reply, and, with a gesture of
pardonable pride, the grey-haired fellow pointed to the medals on his
breast.
‘Well, supposing you were on sentry duty and some meddlesome person in
camp asked you what you were doing--what should you say?’
‘I should tell him to clear off or take the consequences, and pretty
quick too.’
‘Do that to-morrow morning, then, if necessary,’ said Racksole, and
departed.
It was then about one o’clock a.m. The millionaire retired to bed--not
his own bed, but a bed on the seventh storey. He did not, however, sleep
very long. Shortly after dawn he was wide awake, and thinking busily
about Jules.
He was, indeed, very curious to know Jules’ story, and he determined, if
the thing could be done at all, by persuasion or otherwise, to extract
it from him. With a man of Theodore Racksole’s temperament there is no
time like the present, and at six o’clock, as the bright morning sun
brought gaiety into the window, he dressed and went upstairs again to
the eighth storey. The commissionaire sat stolid, but alert on his
chair, and, at the sight of his master, rose and saluted.
‘Anything happened?’ Racksole asked.
‘Nothing, sir.’
‘Servants say anything?’
‘Only a dozen or so of ‘em are up yet, sir. One of ‘em asked what I was
playing at, and so I told her I was looking after a bull bitch and a
litter of pups that you was very particular about, sir.’
‘Good,’ said Racksole, as he unlocked the door and entered the room. All
was exactly as he had left it, except that Jules who had been lying on
his back, had somehow turned over and was now lying on his face. He
gazed silently, scowling at the millionaire. Racksole greeted him and
ostentatiously took a revolver from his hip-pocket and laid it on the
dressing-table. Then he seated himself on the dressing-table by the side
of the revolver, his legs dangling an inch or two above the floor.
‘I want to have a talk to you, Jackson,’ he began.
‘You can talk to me as much as you like,’ said Jules. ‘I shan’t
interfere, you may bet on that.’
‘I should like you to answer some questions.’
‘That’s different,’ said Jules. ‘I’m not going to answer any questions
while I’m tied up like this. You may bet on that, too.’
‘It will pay you to be reasonable,’ said Racksole.
‘I’m not going to answer any questions while I’m tied up.’
‘I’ll unfasten your legs, if you like,’ Racksole suggested politely,
‘then you can sit up. It’s no use you pretending you’ve been
uncomfortable, because I know you haven’t. I calculate you’ve been
treated very handsomely, my son. There you are!’ and he loosened the
lower extremities of his prisoner from their bonds. ‘Now I repeat you
may as well be reasonable. You may as well admit that you’ve been fairly
beaten in the game and act accordingly. I was determined to beat you, by
myself, without the police, and I’ve done it.’