ON THE ISLE OF DOGS
As the police boat left Limehouse Pier, a clammy south-easterly breeze
blowing up-stream lifted the fog in clearly defined layers, an effect
very singular to behold. At one moment a great arc-lamp burning above
the Lavender Pond of the Surrey Commercial Dock shot out a yellowish
light across the Thames. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the light
vanished again as a stratum of mist floated before it.
The creaking of the oars sounded muffled and ghostly, and none of the
men in the boat seemed to be inclined to converse. Heading across
stream they made for the unseen promontory of the Isle of Dogs.
Navigation was suspended, and they reached midstream without seeing a
ship’s light. Then came the damp wind again to lift the fog, and ahead
of them they discerned one of the General Steam Navigation Company’s
boats awaiting an opportunity to make her dock at the head of Deptford
Creek. The clamor of an ironworks on the Millwall shore burst loudly
upon their ears, and away astern the lights of the Surrey Dock shone
out once more. Hugging the bank they pursued a southerly course, and
from Limehouse Reach crept down to Greenwich Reach.
Fog closed in upon them, a curtain obscuring both light and sound. When
the breeze came again it had gathered force, and it drove the mist
before it in wreathing banks, and brought to their ears a dull lowing
and to their nostrils a farmyard odor from the cattle pens. Ghostly
flames, leaping and falling, leaping and falling, showed where a
gasworks lay on the Greenwich bank ahead.
Eastward swept the river now, and fresher blew the breeze. As they
rounded the blunt point of the “Isle” the fog banks went swirling past
them astern, and the lights on either shore showed clearly ahead. A
ship’s siren began to roar somewhere behind them. The steamer which
they had passed was about to pursue her course.
Closer in-shore drew the boat, passing a series of wharves, and beyond
these a tract of waste, desolate bank very gloomy in the half light and
apparently boasting no habitation of man. The activities of the
Greenwich bank seemed remote, and the desolation of the Isle of Dogs
very near, touching them intimately with its peculiar gloom.
A light sprang into view some little distance inland, notable because
it shone lonely in an expanse of utter blackness. Kerry broke the long
silence.
“Dougal’s,” he said. “Put us ashore here.”
The police boat was pulled in under a rickety wooden structure, beneath
which the Thames water whispered eerily; and Kerry and Seton
disembarked, mounting a short flight of slimy wooden steps and crossing
a roughly planked place on to a shingly slope. Climbing this, they were
on damp waste ground, pathless and uninviting.
“Dougal’s is being watched,” said Kerry. “I think I told you?”
“Yes,” replied Seton. “But I have formed the opinion that the dope gang
is too clever for the ordinary type of man. Sin Sin Wa is an instance
of what I mean. Neither you nor I doubt that he is a receiver of
drugs—perhaps _the_ receiver; but where is our case? The only real link
connecting him with the West-End habitué is his wife. And she has
conveniently deserted him! We cannot possibly prove that she hasn’t
while he chooses to maintain that she has.”
“H’m,” grunted Kerry, abruptly changing the subject. “I hope I’m not
recognized here.”
“Have you visited the place before?”
“Some years ago. Unless there are any old hands on view tonight, I
don’t think I shall be spotted.”
He wore a heavy and threadbare overcoat, which was several sizes too
large for him, a muffler, and a weed cap—the outfit supplied by Seton
Pasha; and he had a very vivid and unpleasant recollection of his
appearance as viewed in his little pocket-mirror before leaving Seton’s
room. As they proceeded across the muddy wilderness towards the light
which marked the site of Dougal’s, they presented a picture of a
sufficiently villainous pair.
The ground was irregular, and the path wound sinuously about mounds of
rubbish; so that often the guiding light was lost, and they stumbled
blindly among nondescript litter, which apparently represented the
accumulation of centuries. But finally they turned a corner formed by a
stack of rusty scrap iron, and found a long, low building before them.
From a ground-floor window light streamed out upon the fragments of
rubbish strewing the ground, from amid which sickly weeds uprose as if
in defiance of nature’s laws. Seton paused, and:
“What is Dougal’s exactly?” he asked; “a public house?”
“No,” rapped Kerry. “It’s a coffee-shop used by the dockers. You’ll see
when we get inside. The place never closes so far as I know, and if we
made ’em close there would be a dock strike.”
He crossed and pushed open the swing door. As Seton entered at his
heels, a babel of coarse voices struck upon his ears and he found
himself in a superheated atmosphere suggestive of shag, stale spirits,
and imperfectly washed humanity.
Dougal’s proved to be a kind of hut of wood and corrugated iron, not
unlike an army canteen. There were two counters, one at either end, and
two large American stoves. Oil lamps hung from the beams, and the
furniture was made up of trestle tables, rough wooden chairs, and empty
barrels. Coarse, thick curtains covered all the windows but one. The
counter further from the entrance was laden with articles of food, such
as pies, tins of bully-beef, and “saveloys,” while the other was
devoted to liquid refreshment in the form of ginger-beer and cider (or
so the casks were conspicuously labelled), tea, coffee, and cocoa.
The place was uncomfortably crowded; the patrons congregating more
especially around the two stoves. There were men who looked like dock
laborers, seamen, and riverside loafers; lascars, Chinese, Arabs, and
dagoes; and at the “solid” counter there presided a red-armed, brawny
woman, fierce of mien and ready of tongue, while a huge Irishman,
possessing a broken nose and deficient teeth, ruled the “liquid”
department with a rod of iron and a flow of language which shocked even
Kerry. This formidable ruffian, a retired warrior of the ring, was
Dougal, said to be the strongest man from Tower Hill to the River Lea.
As they entered, several of the patrons glanced at them curiously, but
no one seemed to be particularly interested. Kerry wore his cap pulled
well down over his fierce eyes, and had the collar of his topcoat
turned up.
He looked about him, as if expecting to recognize someone; and as they
made their way to Dougal’s counter, a big fellow dressed in the manner
of a dock laborer stepped up to the Chief Inspector and clapped him on
the shoulder.
“Have one with me, Mike,” he said, winking. “The coffee’s good.”
Kerry bent towards him swiftly, and:
“Anybody here, Jervis?” he whispered.
“George Martin is at the bar. I’ve had the tip that he ‘traffics.’
You’ll remember he figured in my last report, sir.”
Kerry nodded, and the trio elbowed their way to the counter. The
pseudo-dock hand was a detective attached to Leman Street, and one who
knew the night birds of East End London as few men outside their own
circles knew them.
“Three coffees, Pat,” he cried, leaning across the shoulder of a heavy,
red-headed fellow who lolled against the counter. “And two lumps of
sugar in each.”
“To hell wid yer sugar!” roared Dougal, grasping three cups deftly in
one hairy hand and filling them from a steaming urn. “There’s no more
sugar tonight.”
“Not any _brown_ sugar?” asked the customer.
“Yez can have one tayspoon of brown, and no more tonight,” cried
Dougal.
He stooped rapidly below the counter, then pushed the three cups of
coffee towards the detective. The latter tossed a shilling down, at
which Dougal glared ferociously.
“’Twas wid sugar ye said!” he roared.
A second shilling followed. Dougal swept both coins into a drawer and
turned to another customer, who was also clamoring for coffee. Securing
their cups with difficulty, for the red-headed man surlily refused to
budge, they retired to a comparatively quiet spot, and Seton tasted the
hot beverage.
“H’m,” he said. “Rum! Good rum, too!”
“It’s a nice position for me,” snapped Kerry. “I _don’t_ think I would
remind you that there’s a police station actually on this blessed
island. If there was a dive like Dougal’s anywhere West it would be
raided as a matter of course. But to shut Dougal’s would be to raise
hell. There are two laws in England, sir; one for Piccadilly and the
other for the Isle of Dogs!” He sipped his coffee with appreciation.
Jervis looked about him cautiously, and:
“That’s George—the red-headed hooligan against the counter,” he said.
“He’s been liquoring up pretty freely, and I shouldn’t be surprised to
find that he’s got a job on tonight. He has a skiff beached below here,
and I think he’s waiting for the tide.”
“Good!” rapped Kerry. “Where can we find a boat?”
“Well,” Jervis smiled. “There are several lying there if you didn’t
come in an R.P. boat.”
“We did. But I’ll dismiss it. We want a small boat.”
“Very good, sir. We shall have to pinch one!”
“That doesn’t matter,” declared Kerry glancing at Seton with a sudden
twinkle discernible in his steely eyes. “What do you say, sir?”
“I agree with you entirely,” replied Seton quietly. “We must find a
boat, and lie off somewhere to watch for George. He should be worth
following.”
“We’ll be moving, then,” said the Leman Street detective. “It will be
high tide in an hour.”
They finished their coffee as quickly as possible; the stuff was not
far below boiling-point. Then Jervis returned the cups to the counter.
“Good night, Pat!” he cried, and rejoined Seton and Kerry.
As they came out into the desolation of the scrap heaps, the last
traces of fog had disappeared and a steady breeze came up the river,
fresh and salty from the Nore. Jervis led them in a north-easterly
direction, threading a way through pyramids of rubbish, until with the
wind in their teeth they came out upon the river bank at a point where
the shore shelved steeply downwards. A number of boats lay on the
shingle.
“We’re pretty well opposite Greenwich Marshes,” said Jervis. “You can
just see one of the big gasometers. The end boat is George’s.”
“Have you searched it?” rapped Kerry, placing a fresh piece of
chewing-gum between his teeth.
“I have, sir. Oh, he’s too wise for that!”
“I propose,” said Seton briskly, “that we borrow one of the other boats
and pull down stream to where that short pier juts out. We can hide
behind it and watch for our man. I take it he’ll be bound up-stream,
and the tide will help us to follow him quietly.”
“Right,” said Kerry. “We’ll take the small dinghy. It’s big enough.”
He turned to Jervis.
“Nip across to the wooden stairs,” he directed, “and tell Inspector
White to stand by, but to keep out of sight. If we’ve started before
you return, go back and join him.”
“Very good, sir.”
Jervis turned and disappeared into the mazes of rubbish, as Seton and
Kerry grasped the boat and ran it down into the rising tide. Kerry
boarding, Seton thrust it out into the river and climbed in over the
stern.
“Phew! The current drags like a tow-boat!” said Kerry.
They were being drawn rapidly up-stream. But as Kerry seized the oars
and began to pull steadily, this progress was checked. He could make
little actual headway, however.
“The tide races round this bend like fury,” he said. “Bear on the oars,
sir.”
Seton thereupon came to Kerry’s assistance, and gradually the dinghy
crept upon its course, until, below the little pier, they found a
sheltered spot, where it was possible to run in and lie hidden. As they
won this haven:
“Quiet!” said Seton. “Don’t move the oars. Look! We were only just in
time!”
Immediately above them, where the boats were beached, a man was coming
down the slope, carrying a hurricane lantern. As Kerry and Seton
watched, the man raised the lantern and swung it to and fro.
“Watch!” whispered Seton. “He’s signalling to the Greenwich bank!”
Kerry’s teeth snapped savagely together, and he chewed but made no
reply, until:
“There it is!” he said rapidly. “On the marshes!”
A speck of light in the darkness it showed, a distant moving lantern on
the curtain of the night. Although few would have credited Kerry with
the virtue, he was a man of cultured imagination, and it seemed to him,
as it seemed to Seton Pasha, that the dim light symbolized the life of
the missing woman, of the woman who hovered between the gay world from
which tragically she had vanished and some Chinese hell upon whose
brink she hovered. Neither of the watchers was thinking of the crime
and the criminal, of Sir Lucien Pyne or Kazmah, but of Mrs. Monte
Irvin, mysterious victim of a mysterious tragedy. “Oh, Dan! ye must
find her! ye must find her! Puir weak hairt—dinna ye ken how she is
suffering!” Clairvoyantly, to Kerry’s ears was borne an echo of his
wife’s words.
“The traffic!” he whispered. “If we lose George Martin tonight we
deserve to lose the case!”
“I agree, Chief Inspector,” said Seton quietly.
The grating sound made by a boat thrust out from a shingle beach came
to their ears above the whispering of the tide. A ghostly figure in the
dim light, George Martin clambered into his craft and took to the oars.
“If he’s for the Greenwich bank,” said Seton grimly, “he has a stiff
task.”
But for the Greenwich bank the boat was headed; and pulling mightily
against the current, the man struck out into mid-stream. They watched
him for some time, silently, noting how he fought against the tide,
sturdily heading for the point at which the signal had shown. Then:
“What do you suggest?” asked Seton. “He may follow the Surrey bank
up-stream.”
“I suggest,” said Kerry, “that we drift. Once in Limehouse Reach we’ll
hear him. There are no pleasure parties punting about that stretch.”
“Let us pull out, then. I propose that we wait for him at some
convenient point between the West India Dock and Limehouse Basin.”
“Good,” rapped Kerry, thrusting the boat out into the fierce current.
“You may have spent a long time in the East, sir, but you’re fairly
wise on the geography of the lower Thames.”
Gripped in the strongly running tide they were borne smoothly
up-stream, using the oars merely for the purpose of steering. The
gloomy mystery of the London river claimed them and imposed silence
upon them, until familiar landmarks told of the northern bend of the
Thames, and the light above the Lavender Pond shone out upon the
unctuously moving water.
Each pulling a scull they headed in for the left bank.
“There’s a wharf ahead,” said Seton, looking back over his shoulder.
“If we put in beside it we can wait there unobserved.”
“Good enough,” said Kerry.
They bent to the oars, stealing stroke by stroke out of the grip of the
tide, and presently came to a tiny pool above the wharf structure,
where it was possible to lie undisturbed by the eager current.
Those limitations which are common to all humanity and that guile which
is peculiar to the Chinese veiled the fact from their ken that the
deserted wharf, in whose shelter they lay, was at once the roof and the
gateway of Sin Sin Wa’s receiving office!
As the boat drew in to the bank, a Chinese boy who was standing on the
wharf retired into the shadows. From a spot visible down-stream but
invisible to the men in the boat, he signalled constantly with a
hurricane lantern.
Three men from New Scotland Yard were watching the house of Sin Sin Wa,
and Sin Sin Wa had given no sign of animation since, some hours
earlier, he had extinguished his bedroom light. Yet George, drifting
noiselessly up-stream, received a signal to the effect “police” while
Seton Pasha and Chief Inspector Kerry lay below the biggest dope cache
in London. Seton sometimes swore under his breath. Kerry chewed
incessantly. But George never came.
At that eerie hour of the night when all things living, from the lowest
to the highest, nor excepting Mother Earth herself, grow chilled, when
all Nature’s perishable handiwork feels the touch of death—a wild,
sudden cry rang out, a wailing, sorrowful cry, that seemed to come from
nowhere, from everywhere, from the bank, from the stream; that rose and
fell and died sobbing into the hushed whisper of the tide.
Seton’s hand fastened like a vise on to Kerry’s shoulder, and:
“Merciful God!” he whispered; “what was it? _Who_ was it?”
“If it wasn’t a spirit it was a woman,” replied Kerry hoarsely; “and a
woman very near to her end.”
“Kerry!”—Seton Pasha had dropped all formality—“Kerry—if it calls for
all the men that Scotland Yard can muster, we must search every
building, down to the smallest rathole in the floor, on this bank—and
do it by dawn!”
“We’ll do it,” rapped Kerry.
PART FOURTH
THE EYE OF SIN SIN WA