TWO PASSENGERS FROM CALAIS.
It was the 9th of November, Lord Mayor's Day, and in London the usual
clammy compound of fog and mist--was there ever a Lord Mayor's Day
without it?--hung like a shroud in the city streets, though it was
powerless to chill the ardor of the vast crowds who waited for the
procession to come by in all its pomp and pageantry.
At Dover the weather was as bad, but in a different way. Leaden clouds
went scudding from horizon to horizon, accentuating the chalky whiteness
of the cliffs, and reflecting their sombre hue on the gray waters. A
cold, raw wind swept through the old town, lashing the sea to
milk-crested waves. It was an ugly day for cross-Channel passages, but
the expectant onlookers sighted the black smoke of the _Calais-Douvres_
fully twenty minutes before she was due. The steamer's outline grew more
distinct. On she came, pitching and rolling, until knots of people could
be seen on the fore-deck.
The majority of the passengers, excepting a few Frenchmen and other
foreigners, were heartily glad to be at home again, after sojourns of
various lengths on the Continent. Two, in particular, could scarcely
restrain their impatience as they looked eagerly landward, though the
social gulf that separated them was as wide as the Channel itself. On
the upper deck, exposed to the buffeting of the wind, stood a short,
portly gentleman in a dark-blue suit and cape-coat; he had a soldierly
carriage, a ruddy complexion, and an iron-gray mustache. Sir Lucius
Chesney was in robust health again, and his liver had ceased to trouble
him. Norway had pulled him together, and a few months of aimless roaming
on the Continent had done the rest. He was anxious to get back to Priory
Court, among his pictures and hot-houses, his horses and cattle, and he
intended to go there after a brief stop in London.
Down below, among the second-class passengers, Mr. Noah Hawker paced to
and fro, gazing meditatively toward the Shakespeare Cliff. Mr. Hawker,
to give him the name by which he was known in Scotland Yard circles, was
a man of fifty, five feet nine in height, and rather stockily built. He
was lantern-jawed and dark-haired, with a coarse, black mustache curled
up at the ends like a pair of buffalo horns, and so strong a beard that
his cheeks were the color of blue ink, though he had shaved only three
hours before. His long frieze overcoat, swinging open, disclosed beneath
a German-made suit of a bad cut and very loud pattern. His soft hat,
crushed in, was perched to one side; a big horseshoe pin and a scarlet
cravat reposed on a limited space of pink shirt-front.
There was about one chance in ten of guessing his calling. He looked
equally like a successful sporting man, an ex-prize fighter, a barman,
a racing tout, a book-maker, or a public house thrower-out. But the most
unprejudiced observer would never have taken him for a gentleman.
It was a thrilling moment when the _Calais-Douvres_, slipping between
the waves, ran close in to the granite pier. She accomplished the feat
safely, and was quickly made fast. The gangway was thrown across, and
there was a mad rush of passengers hurrying to get ashore. A babel of
shouting voices broke loose: "London train ready!" "Here you are, sir!"
"Luggage, sir?" "Extry! extry!"
Sir Lucius Chesney, who was rarely disturbed by anything, showed on
this occasion a fussy solicitude about his trunks and boxes; nor was
he appeased until he had seen them all on a truck, waiting for the
inspection of the customs officers. Mr. Hawker, slouching along the pier
with his ulster collar turned up and his hat well down over his eyes,
observed the military-looking gentleman and then the prominent
white-lettered name on the luggage. He passed on after an instant's
hesitation.
"Sir Lucius Chesney!" he muttered. "It's queer, but I'll swear I've
heard that name before. Now, where could it have been? The bloke's face
ain't familiar--I never ran across him. But the name? Ah, hang me if I
don't think I've got it!"
Mr. Hawker did not get into the London train, though his goal was
the metropolis. He left the pier, and as he walked with apparent
carelessness through the town--he had no luggage--he took an occasional
crafty survey over his shoulder, as a man might do who feared that he
was being shadowed. When the train rattled out of Dover he was in the
public bar of a tavern not far from the Lord Warden Hotel, fortifying
himself with a brandy-and-soda after the rough passage across the
Channel. Meanwhile, Sir Lucius Chesney, seated in a first-class
carriage, was regarding with an ecstatic expression the one piece of
luggage that he had refused to trust to the van. This was a flat leather
case, and it contained something of much greater importance than the
dress-suit for which it was intended.
Dover was honored by Mr. Hawker's presence until three o'clock in the
afternoon, and he took advantage of the intervening couple of hours to
eat a hearty meal and to count his scanty store of money, after which he
dozed on a bench in the restaurant until roused by a waiter. There are
two railway stations in the town, and he chose the inner one. He found
an empty third-class compartment, and his relief was manifest when the
train pulled out. He produced a short briar-root pipe, and stuffed it
with the last shreds of French Caporal tobacco that remained in his
pouch.
"Give me the shag of old England," he said to himself, as he puffed away
with a poor relish and watched the flying sides of the deep railway
cutting. "This is no class--it's cabbage leaf soaked in juice. I wonder
if I ain't a fool to come back! But it can't be helped--there was
nothing to be picked up abroad, after that double stroke of hard luck.
And there's no place like London! I'll be all right if I dodge the
ferrets at Victoria. For the last ten years they've only known me
clean-shaven or with a heavy beard, and this mustache and the rig will
puzzle them a bit. Yes, I ought to pass for a foreign gent come across
to back horses."
The truth about Mr. Noah Hawkins, though it may shock the reader, must
be told in plain words. He was a professional burglar; none of your
petty, clumsy craftsmen that get lagged for smashing a shopkeeper's
till, but a follower to some extent in the footsteps of the masterful
Charles Peace. During the previous February he had come out of
Dartmoor--it was his third term of penal servitude--with a period of
police supervision to undergo. For the space of four months he regularly
reported himself, and then, in company with a pal of even higher
professional standing than himself, he suddenly disappeared from London.
A well-planned piece of work, cleverly performed, made it advantageous
to the couple to go abroad. It was a question of money, not dread of
discovery and arrest; they had covered their tracks well, and they
believed that no suspicion could fall upon them. They were not prepared
for the ill-luck that awaited them on the Continent. Their fruit of hope
turned to ashes of despair, or very nearly so. They realized but a
fraction of the sum they had expected, and Hawker lost his share of even
that through the treachery of his pal, who departed by night from the
German town where they were stopping. So Hawker started for home, and
he had landed at Dover with, two sovereigns and a few silver coins. He
still believed that the police were ignorant of the business that had
taken him abroad; the worst that he feared was getting into trouble for
failing to report himself.
"There isn't much danger if I'm sharp," he thought, as the Kentish
landscape, the Garden of England, sped by him in the gathering dusk;
"and I won't touch a crib of any sort till I've tried those other two
lays. It's more than doubtful about the papers--I forget what was in
them. And they may be gone by this time. But, leaving that out, I've got
a pretty sure thing up my sleeve. What happened in Germany put me on the
track--but for that I wouldn't have suspected. I'll make somebody fork
over to a stiff tune, and serve him d---- right. It's the first time I
was caught napping."
The endless chimney-pots and glowing lights of the great city gladdened
Hawker's heart, and a whiff from the murky Thames bade him welcome home.
He gave up his ticket at Grosvenor road, and when the train pulled into
Victoria he walked boldly through the immense station. He loved London
with a thoroughbred cockney's passion, and he exulted in the sights and
sounds around him.
Hawker spent his last coppers for a packet of tobacco, and broke one of
his sovereigns to get a drink. He speedily lost himself in the crowds of
Victoria street, satisfied that he had not been recognized or followed.
He went on foot to Charing Cross, and climbed to the top of a brown and
yellow bus. Three-quarters of an hour later he got off in Kentish Town
and made his way to a squalid and narrow thoroughfare in the vicinity of
Peckwater street. He stopped before a house in the middle of a dirty and
monotonous row, and looked at it reminiscently. He had lodged there five
years back, previous to his third conviction, and here he had been
arrested. He had not returned since, for on his release from Dartmoor he
went to live near his pal, who was then planning the lay that had ended
so disastrously.
He pulled the bell and waited anxiously. A stout, slatternly woman
appeared, and uttered a sharp exclamation at sight of her visitor. She
would have closed the door in his face, but Hawker quickly thrust a leg
inside.
"None o' that," he growled. "Don't you know me, missus?"
"It ain't likely I'd furgit _you_, Noah Hawker! What d'ye want?"
"A lodging, Mrs. Miggs," he replied. "Is my old room to let?" he added
eagerly.
"It's been empty a week, but what's that to you? I won't 'ave no
jail-bird in my 'ouse. I'm a respectable woman, an' I won't be disgraced
again by the likes of you."
"Come, stow that! Can't you see I'm a foreign gent from abroad? The
police ain't after me--take my word for it. I've come back here because
you always made me snug and comfortable. I'll have the room, and if you
want to see the color of my money--"
He produced a half-sovereign, and a relenting effect was immediately
visible. A brief parley ensued, which ended in Mrs. Miggs pocketing the
money and inviting Mr. Hawker to enter. A moment after the door had
closed a rather shabby man strolled by the house and made a mental note
of the number.
Presently a light gleamed from the window of the first floor back, which
overlooked, at a distance of six feet, a high, blank wall. Noah Hawker
put the candle on a shelf, locked the door noiselessly, and glanced
about the well-remembered room, with its dirty paper, frayed carpet and
scanty furniture. A little later, after listening to make sure that he
was not being spied upon, he blew out the candle and opened the window.
He fumbled for a minute, then closed the window and drew down the blind.
When he relighted the candle he held in one hand a packet wrapped in a
piece of mildewed leather.
Seating himself in a rickety chair he lighted his pipe and opened the
packet, which contained several papers in a good state of preservation.
He read them carefully and thoughtfully, and the task occupied him for
half an hour or more.
"Whew! It's a heap better than I counted on--I didn't have the time to
examine them right before," he muttered. "There may be a tidy little
fortune in it. I'll make something out of this, or my name ain't Noah
Hawker. The old chap is out of the running, to start with, so I must
hunt up the others. And that won't be easy, perhaps."