The Pursuit.—A Successful Ruse.—The Long Night.—Gray’s Terror.
The little strength that Jacob Gray had left now all at once seemed
completely to have left him, and he trembled so that he could scarcely
stand. Walk on he could not, and yet what was he to do? Did the person
know who he was, or did he only suspect? Was there a remote chance of
escape, or was he fairly in the toils?
As these distressing thoughts passed rapidly through his mind, he heard
the stranger step up to him, and in a moment, a voice said, “A fine
evening, sir.”
Gray stretched out his hand, and held by an iron rail, while he turned
slowly and with pallid features, and his tongue cleaving to the roof of
his mouth with fright, faced the speaker.
He was a man about the middle height, with sharp small grey eyes, which
twinkled upon the terror-stricken Jacob as much as to say, “I am a
cunning, cautious fellow, and you won’t escape me.”
It was full a minute before Gray could command himself sufficiently to
speak, and the stranger during that time had repeated his remark of,—
“A fine evening.”
“Yes—yes, very,” stammered Gray.
“You don’t seem very well, sir,” said the stranger, twinkling his eyes
designedly upon Gray.
“Yes, quite well, thank—I—I haven’t the honour of knowing you. Good
evening—good evening.”
“I may be mistaken,” said the man; “but I think I have seen you
somewhere.”
Gray would have given anything at that moment to say “Where?” but he
lacked the courage, and merely muttered something about it being
unlikely they had ever met, as he was a stranger in London.
The man kept peering at him in a very disagreeable manner, and after a
few moments, he said in a careless tone,—
“Heard of the murder?”
“What murder?” gasped Gray.
“In the Strand—Vaughan’s murder I mean—strange affair, very!”
“No—I know nothing of it,” said Gray.
“Odd, that—the whole town knows of it. It’s crying about the streets,
and what’s the strangest thing of all, nobody seems to know who did it.”
“Indeed?”
“No, the fellow was a complete stranger, and the only man who gives
anything like a description of him, is a fellow whom he knocked down
near Arundel-street.”
“Yes—indeed,” was all Gray could find breath to say, for he expected
each moment that the man would pounce upon him, crying, “You are the
murderer—I have been only amusing myself a little with your fears.”
“It’s odd altogether,” continued the man, “and there’s fifty pounds
reward now offered by Vaughan’s relations for the man, which, together
with what government will give at his conviction, will make a good
round sum.”
“Exactly—yes,” said Gray, quite mechanically, for his senses were in a
complete whirl.
“You see that’s worth looking after,” said the man.
“Yes.—Good evening—good evening,” said Gray, and he tried to pass on.
“Are you going my way?” said the man.
“Which is your way?”
“Oh—why, really I ain’t at all particular, and I’ll walk with you, if I
am not intruding upon you?“
“I am going home,” said Gray.
“Good evening—I live just here.”
“You haven’t lost your way?”
“No—no—this place is quite familiar to me—I have known it long.”
“Oh, I thought you said you were a stranger here.”
Gray changed from pale to red, and from red to pale again, as he
replied,—
“You misunderstood me, sir.”
“Oh, did I? Very likely.”
“Good evening.”
“You had rather walk alone, would you?”
Gray summoned courage to say with tolerable firmness,—
“I would.”
“Certainly—certainly. Mind if you see anybody that looks suspicious,
lay hold of him; it may be the murderer, you know, and it would be a
prime evening’s work for anybody to nab him. He is about your
height—thin and pale, stoops a little, shabbily dressed. Look out—look
out.”
“I—I will. Are you an officer?”
“No, I’m a shoemaker, but I’ve a great fancy for catching thieves and
those kind of people.”
“Curse your fancy,” thought Gray.
“I couldn’t sleep to-night without taking what I call a prowl just to
see if the fates would place in my way the murderer.”
“Oh, indeed!“
“Yes, and I don’t despair yet. Good evening—good evening.”
“Good evening,” replied Gray; and he walked on with a faint hope that
after all the troublesome shoemaker, whom he devoutly wished dead and
buried, did not suspect him sufficiently to annoy him any more with his
following.
To ascertain this point, after he had left him, was a great object to
Gray, as it would afford him an idea how to act, and accordingly after
he had proceeded some distance, he just glanced over his shoulder to
see if the man had gone, and he supposed such was the case, for he
could neither see nor hear him.
Jacob Gray, however was reckoning without his host, for not only did
the troublesome shoemaker, who was the pest of Westminster, from his
love of meddling with the duties of the police, strongly suspect that
he had hit upon the right man, but he determined not to lose sight of
him, and had merely ensconced himself in a door way until Gray should
have got some distance off, when his intention was to follow him very
cautiously till he saw him housed somewhere, when he would bring the
officers upon him, for he did not like exactly to run the risk of
attempting the capture of so desperate a character as a murderer, who
had already taken one man’s life merely because he made an attempt to
capture him.
“Who knows,” thought the shoemaker, “he is a desperate chap, and may be
a great deal stronger than he looks; he might smash me just as he
smashed Vaughan, and that would be no joke, I’ll dog him till I see him
fairly housed, and then be down upon him.”
Cunning, however, as was the troublesome shoemaker he was scarcely a
match for Jacob Gray, when the latter had a little time to collect his
faculties and was not flurried. There were indeed but five persons who
could have succeeded in dogging Jacob Gray without his knowing it; and
although the shoemaker had in his mind concocted the artful scheme of
letting Gray turn a corner, and then running after him, and keeping him
in sight, until he had turned another, he did not know his man, for
that was the very course which Jacob Gray took good care to provide
against by himself popping into a doorway round the first corner he
came to, and waiting patiently to see what came of it.
The result confirmed his suspicions, for he had not been above two
minutes in that doorway, than the shoemaker arrived at the corner at
the top of his speed, and peered around it with what he considered
amazing cleverness and cunning.
The street was a long one, and he felt not a little surprised at
missing Gray in so very sudden a manner.
“Lost him, by ——,” he cried. “He must have gone into some house
here—that’s flat. I’ll get a constable to come with me and will call at
every one. I’d wager my head he’s the man.”
The amateur officer now darted off at a quick rate to procure a real
one, and when he had gone, Jacob Gray emerged from his hiding-place.
He paused a moment in the street, and then with bitter malignity, he
muttered,—
“Beware! I am not a man to be tempted too far.”
He then hastily walked in an opposite direction to that taken by the
shoemaker, although he had no definite idea of where he was going, or
what he meant to do until the morning should afford him a chance of
seeing Learmont. As the excitement of the last half-hour began along
with its danger to wear off, Jacob Gray felt dreadfully fatigued,
notwithstanding he had been much supported by the broken victuals he
had received from poor Maud, and he thought of proceeding to the sheds
of Covent-garden, and lying down to rest himself till morning’s dawn.
The rotten wooden stalls and sheds of Covent-garden-market, at the
period of our tale, were the nightly resort of many who had no other
place in which to lay an aching head and wearied body. There, among
potato-sacks, baskets, vegetable refuse, and all the mass of filth for
which that now handsome market was then so famous, the weary, the
destitute, and the heart-sore would find a temporary solace from their
cares, in the oblivion of sleep.
But not alone were the humble sheds of the market occupied by the sons
and daughters of misfortune and want—a number of the worthless and
abandoned characters who nightly prowl about the theatres had no other
places of refuge; and many a thief and, in some instances, criminals of
a higher grade in the scale of iniquity, were pushed out by the
officers from among the market lodgers, when he happened to be
particularly wanted; and when a housebreaker, or thief of any
description, was compelled by necessity to lodge there, he was
tolerably sure to be particularly wanted, because such a step augured a
state of his finances which was far from enabling him to fee the
officers—a system which although now so very rare, was a hundred years
ago flourishing in all its iniquity and glory.
To the sheds, then, of the market, Jacob Gray resolved to go, but by
many fortuitous accidents, he was doomed not to get there.