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.”