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.”