GIVING IT UP.
The _Pretty Polly_ went back to the port of Kingston-upon-Hull in the
grey morning light, carrying Mr. Carter, very cold and very
down-hearted—not to say humiliated—by his failure. To have been
hoodwinked by a girl, whose devotion to the unhappy wretch she called
her father had transformed her into a heroine—to have fallen so easily
into the trap that had been set for him, being all the while profoundly
impressed with the sense of his own cleverness—was, to say the least of
it, depressing to the spirits of a first-class detective.
"And that fellow Vallance, too," mused Mr. Carter, "to think that he
should go and chuck himself into the water just to spite me! There'd
have been some credit in taking him back with me. I might have made a
bit of character out of that. But, no! he goes and tumbles back'ards
into the water, rather than let me have any advantage out of him."
There was nothing for Mr. Carter to do but to go straight back to
Lisford, and try his luck again, with everything against him.
"Let me get back as fast as I may, Joseph Wilmot will have had
eight-and-forty hours' start of me," he thought; "and what can't he do
in that time, if he keeps his wits about him, and don't go wild and
foolish like, as some of 'em do, when they've got such a chance as
this. Anyhow, I'm after him, and it'll go hard with me if he gives me
the slip after all, for my blood's up, and my character's at stake, and
I'd think no more of crossing the Atlantic after him than I'd think of
going over Waterloo Bridge!"
It was a very chill and miserable time of the morning when the _Pretty
Polly_ ground her nose against the granite steps of the quay. It was a
chill and dismal hour of the morning, and Mr. Carter felt sloppy and
dirty and unshaven, as he stepped out of the boat and staggered up the
slimy stairs. He gave the two young fishermen the promised five-pound
note, and left them very well contented with their night's work,
inglorious though it had been.
There were no vehicles to be had at that early hour of the morning, so
Mr. Carter was fain to walk from the quay to the station, where he
expected to find Mr. Tibbles, or to obtain tidings of that gentleman.
He was not disappointed; for, although the station wore its dreariest
aspect, having only just begun to throb with a little spasmodic life,
in the way of an early goods-train, Mr. Carter found his devoted
follower prowling in melancholy loneliness amid a wilderness of empty
carriages and smokeless engines, with the turnip whiteness of his
complexion relieved by a red nose.
Mr. Thomas Tibbles was by no means in the best possible temper in this
chill early morning. He was slapping his long thin arms across his
narrow chest, and performing a kind of amateur double-shuffle with his
long flat feet, when Mr. Carter approached him; and he kept up the same
shuffling and the same slapping while engaged in conversation with his
superior, in a disrespectful if not defiant manner.
"A pretty game you've played me," he said, in an injured tone. "You
told me to hang about the station and watch the trains, and you'd come
back in the course of the day—you would—and we'd dine together
comfortable at the Station Hotel; and a deal you come back and dined
together comfortable. Oh, yes! I don't think so; very much indeed,"
exclaimed Mr. Tibbles, vaguely, but with the bitterest derision in his
voice and manner.
"Come, Sawney, don't you go to cut up rough about it," said Mr. Carter,
coaxingly.
"I should like to know who'd go and cut up smooth about it?" answered
the indignant Tibbles. "Why, if you could have a hangel in the
detective business—which luckily you can't, for the wings would cut out
anything as mean as legs, and be the ruin of the purfession—the temper
of that hangel would give way under what I've gone through. Hanging
about this windy station, which the number of criss-cross draughts
cuttin' in from open doors and winders would lead a hignorant person to
believe there was seventeen p'ints of the compass at the very
least—hangin' about to watch train after train, till there ain't
anything goin' in the way of sarce as yen haven't got to stand from the
porters; or sittin' in the coffee-room of the hotel yonder, watchin'
and listenin' for the next train, till bein' there to keep an
appointment with your master is the hollerest of mockeries."
Mr. Carter took his irate subordinate to the coffee-room of the Station
Hotel, where Mr. Tibbles had engaged a bed and taken a few hours' sleep
in the dead interval between the starting of the last train at night
and the first in the morning. The detective ordered a substantial
breakfast, with a couple of glasses of pale brandy, neat, to begin
with; and Mr. Tibbles' equanimity was restored, under the influence of
ham, eggs, mutton-cutlet, a broiled sole, and a quart or so of boiling
coffee.
Mr. Carter told his assistant very briefly that he'd been wasting his
time and trouble on a false track, and that he should give the matter
up. Sawney Tom received this announcement with a great deal of champing
and working of the jaws, and with rather a doubtful expression in his
dull red eyes; but he accepted the payment which his employer offered
him, and agreed to depart for London by the ten o'clock train.
"And whatever I do henceforth in this business, I do single-handed,"
Mr. Carter said to himself, as he turned his back upon his companion.
At five o'clock that afternoon the detective found himself at the
Shorncliffe station, where he hired a fly and drove on post-haste to
Lisford cottage.
The neat little habitation of the late naval commander looked pretty
much as Mr. Carter had seen it last, except that in one of the upper
windows there was a bill—a large paper placard—announcing that this
house was to let, furnished; and that all information respecting the
same was to be obtained of Mr. Hogson, grocer, Lisford.
Mr. Carter gave a long whistle.
"The bird's flown," he muttered. "It wasn't likely he'd stop here to be
caught."
The detective rang the bell; once, twice, three times; but there was no
answer to the summons. He ran round the low garden-fence to the back of
the premises, where there was a little wooden gate, padlocked, but so
low that he vaulted over it easily, and went in amongst the budding
currant-bushes, the neat gravel-paths and strawberry-beds, that had
been erst so cherished by the naval commander. Mr. Carter peered in at
the back windows of the house, and through the little casement he saw a
vista of emptiness. He listened, but there was no sound of voices or
footsteps. The blinds were undrawn, and he could see the bare walls of
the rooms, the fireless grates, and that cold bleakness of aspect
peculiar to an untenanted habitation.
He gave a low groan.
"Gone," he muttered; "gone, as neat as ever a man went yet."
He ran back to the fly, and drove to the establishment of Mr. Hogson,
grocer and general dealer—the shop of the village of Lisford.
Here Mr. Carter was informed that the key of "Woodbine Cottage had been
given up on the evening of that very day on which he had seen Joseph
Wilmot sitting in the little parlour.
"Yes, sir, it were the night before the last," Mr. Hogson said; "it
were the night before last as a young woman wrapped up about the face
like, and dressed very plain, got out of a fly at my door; and, says
she, 'Would you please take charge of this here key, and be so kind as
to show any one over the cottage as would like to see it, which of
course the commission is understood?—for my master is leaving for some
time on account of having a son just come home from India, which is
married and settled in Devonshire, and my master is going there to see
him, not having seen him this many a long year.' She was a very
civil-spoken young woman, and Woodbine Cottage has been good customers
to us, both with the old tenants and the new; so of course I took the
key, willin' to do any service as lay in my power. And if you'd like to
see the cottage, sir——"
"You're very good," said Mr. Carter, with something like a groan. "No,
I won't see the cottage to-night. What time was it when the fly stopped
at your door?"
"Between seven and eight."
"Between seven and eight. Just in time to catch the mail from Rugby.
Was it one of the Rose-and-Crown flies, d'ye think?"
"Oh, yes, the fly belonged to Lisford. I'm sure of that, for Tim Baling
was drivin' it and wished me good-night."
Mr. Carter left the Lisford emporium, and ran over to the Rose and
Crown, where he saw the man who had driven him to Shorncliffe station.
This man told the detective that he had been fetched in the evening by
the same young woman who fetched him in the morning, and that he had
driven another gentleman, who walked lame like the first, and had his
head and face wrapped up a deal, not to Shorncliffe station, but to
little Petherington station, six miles on the Rugby side of
Shorncliffe, where the gentleman and the young woman who was with him
got into a second-class carriage in the slow train for Rugby. The
gentleman had said, laughing, that the young woman was his housemaid,
and he was taking her up to town on purpose to be married to her. He
was a very pleasant-spoken gentleman, the flyman added, and paid
uncommon liberal.
"I dare say he did," muttered Mr. Carter.
He gave the man a shilling for his information, and went back to the
fly that had brought him to the station. It was getting on for seven
o'clock by this time, and Joseph Wilmot had had eight-and-forty hours'
start of him. The detective was quite down-hearted now.
He went up to London by the same train which he had every reason to
suppose had carried Joseph Wilmot and his daughter two nights before,
and at the Euston terminus he worked very hard on that night and on the
following day to trace the missing man. But Joseph Wilmot was only a
drop in the great ocean of London life. The train that was supposed to
have brought him to town was a long train, coming through from the
north. Half-a-dozen lame men with half-a-dozen young women for their
companions might have passed unnoticed in the bustle and confusion of
the arrival platform.
Mr. Carter questioned the guards, the ticket-collectors, the porters,
the cabmen; but not one among them gave him the least scrap of
available information. He went to Scotland Yard despairing, and laid
his case before the authorities there.
"There's only one way of having him," he said, "and that's the
diamonds. From what I can make out, he had no money with him, and in
that case he'll be trying to turn some of those diamonds into cash."
The following advertisement appeared in the Supplement to the _Times_
for the next day:
"_To Pawnbrokers and Others.—A liberal reward will be given to any
person affording information that may lead to the apprehension of a
tall man, walking lame, who is known to have a large quantity of unset
diamonds in his possession, and who most likely has attempted to
dispose of the same_."
But this advertisement remained unanswered.
"They're too clever for us, sir," Mr. Carter remarked to one of the
Scotland-Yard officials. "Whoever Joseph Wilmot may have sold those
diamonds to has got a good bargain, you may depend upon it, and means
to stick to it. The pawnbrokers and others think our advertisement a
plant, you may depend upon it"