“Mark me, Mr M^cGovan,” he continued, quite unabashed, “I have in
my possession the only means whereby you can trace and arrest the
murderer. Now just tell me what it is worth, and we may come to a
bargain.”
“What it is worth?” I said, with a grin. “I don’t know that it is
worth anything till I try it.”
“A hundred pounds? Surely they’ll offer that as a reward for such
information as shall lead to the capture of the murderer?”
“I don’t know that they’ll offer a hundred pence,” was my reply.
“Tell me what you know, and if it is of any use I will see that you
are suitably rewarded.”
“Ah, that won’t suit me,” he answered with great decision. “I will
leave you to think over my offer; you know where to find me when you
have made up your mind.”
He was moving off, after making a low and stagey bow, but I got
between him and the door, and brought out a pair of handcuffs.
“I know where to find you now, which is far more convenient,” I
quietly remarked. “You have admitted that you know something of the
murder—I shall detain you on suspicion.”
“What! arrest me? an innocent man; lock me up in prison!” he
exclaimed, in genuine terror. “You cannot—dare not! I know nothing of
the murder; I merely think I can put you in the way of tracing the
man who did it.”
“Do so, then, if you would prove your innocence,” I said, rather
amused at his terror and dismay. “Were you an accomplice?”
“An accomplice! how can you ask such a question?” he tremblingly
answered. “You are taking a mean advantage of me, for I feel sure
that my secret is worth a hundred pounds at least. But I will trust
to your honour, and put it all before you. People will give _you_ all
the credit. Everyone will say ‘M^cGovan is the man that can do it;
we might have known he wouldn’t escape when M^cGovan was after him.’
Nobody will think of me, or hear of me, who have given you the clue.
It’s the way of the world; one man toils, and ploughs, and sows, and
another man reaps the harvest.”
“Ah, nothing pleases me so much as envy, flavoured with a little
spitefulness,” I quietly returned. “It is the most flattering unction
you can lay to a man’s soul.”
“I am not envious,” he dolefully replied, “but it is hard to supply
another with brains.”
“Especially when he has none of his own,” I laughingly retorted.
“Well, come along; bring on your brains—I’m waiting for them.”
“I really believe you are laughing at me in your sleeve,” he
observed, with a half pathetic look. “It is brave to crush the poor
worm under your heel when you know he can’t retaliate.”
“You’re a long worm—six feet at least,” I solemnly answered; “a
long-winded one, too, unfortunately. I must leave you in the cells
for an hour or two——”
“Oh, no! I will speak; I will tell you it all in half a minute,”
he wildly answered. “The murderer is said to have been a sailor—a
short, thick-set fellow, wearing a red neckerchief. I photographed
such a man in the forenoon, and I have the first portrait, which
didn’t please him, though it is like as life.”
“Ah! let me see it. Have you it with you?” I cried, with sudden
interest and great eagerness.
“Now you change your tune,” he reproachfully answered. “I have it
with me, or I should not have given in so easily. I was afraid
you might have me searched, and, finding the photo, think me an
acquaintance or accomplice of the man,” and, with a little more
wearisome talk, he produced the portrait, and slowly put before me
the incidents already recorded.
When he had done I was not greatly elated. The thread which connected
his early customer with the man supposed to have attacked M^cCulloch
was of the slenderest. Then I was disappointed that Turnbull’s story
looked so real. I had fondly hoped he would stumble and prevaricate
enough to allow us to lock him up on suspicion—in other words, that
we should find him to be an accomplice, anxious to save himself at
the expense of a companion in crime. I took the photograph, but
plainly told him that I feared it would be of little use to me.
“Ah, you wish to undervalue it in order to get out of paying me a
good round sum when the man is caught,” he answered, with a knowing
wink. “I haven’t knocked about so much without being able to see
through that dodge,” and away he went, as elated and consequential as
if he had really laid the man by the heels.
When I was alone I had a long study over the notes I had taken during
the interview. The sailor photographed had stated that his ship only
got in the day before, and that he was on his way home, and merely
visiting the race-course in passing. He had not said where he lived
or at what port he had come in, but the general impression left on
Turnbull’s mind was that the port was not far off. Leith or Granton
seemed to me the likeliest places, and I turned to the shipping
lists to have a look at the names of new arrivals. At Leith only one
vessel had come in on that day, The Shannon; and at Granton, though
there were several arrivals, none of them were from long voyages. The
sailor had hinted that he had not been home for eighteen months, and
that to my mind implied a long voyage, or long voyages.
To Leith accordingly I went, and found The Shannon, her cargo already
discharged, and only a few of the men on board. Some had been paid
off and some were off for a few days on leave. The man whom I
questioned—for the captain had gone home too—seemed to me sullen and
suspicious. He did not know if one of the men had gone eastwards to
see his wife; if any of them lived in that quarter he had never heard
of it, and so on. I was dissatisfied with the answers and the man’s
manner, and had he resembled in the slightest degree the portrait in
my pocket I should have arrested him on the spot. I thought I would
bring out the photograph as a test. Holding it up before him, I said
sharply—
“Do you know that man?”
“No, I don’t.” The answer came out almost before he had time to look
at the features. It was too prompt. It was a lie. The falsehood told
me more than the truth would have done. It not only convinced me that
I was at least on the track of the photographed sailor, but roused in
my mind for the first time a strong suspicion that he was the knifer
of M^cCulloch. I went from the ship to the shipping agents. I found
the clerk who had handed their pay to all the men; and on producing
the photograph saw that he recognised it instantly.
“Yes, that was one of them,” he said, “but he was paid off, and has
gone home.”
I asked the man’s name, and, on referring to the books, he gave it as
Tom Fisher. With some difficulty he got me the man’s address—which
was in a town some miles east—and his trouble arose from the fact
that no money had been sent to Fisher’s wife for nearly a year.
The sailors’ wives often drew one half the men’s pay, but she had not
applied for it during that time, and was supposed to have changed her
address.
“I didn’t say anything of it to Fisher,” said the clerk in
conclusion, “and he seemed quite elated at having so much money to
draw. It’s a kittle thing interfering between a man and his wife, and
it might have alarmed him needlessly. If there’s anything wrong he’s
best to find it out himself.”
I left the shipping office, and took the first train for the town in
which Fisher had his home. If he was to be found anywhere, I thought
it would be there—and especially so if he turned out to be innocent.
It is a quiet country place in which everyone knows his neighbours,
and I had no difficulty in finding the house. But it was occupied by
an old woman, who said she had been in it for nearly a year. I asked
for Mrs Fisher, the sailor’s wife.
“Oh, she was a bad lot,” was the blunt rejoinder. “She sellt a’ her
things, bit by bit, and gaed awa’ in the end withoot paying her rent
and other debts.”
“Where did she go to, do you know?”
“Oh, dear kens. She was a drunken hussy, and thought hersel’ bonny.
Some say that she went awa’ wi’ a baker-man they ca’ M^cCulloch, and
was aboot Leith for a while, but maybe it’s no true. He used to hae a
great wark wi’ her.”
“And her husband—has he never been here?”
“Never since I cam’; but I heard that M^cCulloch was stabbed at the
races by a sailor and I wadna wonder if that sailor turned oot to be
Fisher himsel’.”
I thought the old woman the most acute I had met for a while; we
always do when we find a person’s thoughts and opinions tallying with
our own. I left the house and pursued my inquiries elsewhere. I found
no one who had seen Fisher near the town, or in it; but at length
there was mentioned to me the name of a man who had been at the
races, and had there seen Fisher and spoken to him. This man I found
out, but he was not nearly so communicative to me as he had been to
others. He admitted that he had seen Fisher and spoken to him, but
couldn’t remember what they had talked of. He knew M^cCulloch also,
and had seen him at the races, too, but in a drunken condition, and
not fit for conversation. Questioned more closely, he admitted that
Fisher was an old friend of his, and that the last thing in the world
he would wish for would be to do Fisher any injury by what he should
say. He had heard of the stabbing of M^cCulloch, and did not wonder
at it, the man was so quarrelsome, but he had no idea who had done
it. Fisher might have done it, or anybody else—he knew nothing about
it, as he was out of the place two hours at least before the attack
was made.
I could read the man as plainly as if he had spoken all he knew.
There was the same reticence which the sailor had shown on board The
Shannon, and it probably arose from the same cause—a desire to screen
and save a friend. I got back to Leith, and found with some relief
that no vessel of importance had left during the two days; I then
tried Granton with the same result. “Glasgow” then rose promptly in
my mind, and I drove to both the Edinburgh railway stations to make
inquiries. At neither had any person resembling the photograph been
seen, but a telegram to one of the stations a mile or two from the
city elicited the news that a man in sailor’s dress had taken a third
class ticket thence to Glasgow. He had driven out to that station
in a cab, and the cab had come from the direction of Edinburgh. I
telegraphed to Glasgow, and followed my message by the first train.
When I got to that city I found my work nearly all done for me.
Fisher had been traced to an American liner, in which he had shipped
under the name of George Fullerton.
Strange fatality! George Fullerton was the name of the man who had
seen him at the races, and so clumsily tried to screen him from
me. The vessel in which he had shipped was gone—it had sailed the
night before—but there was a chance of it stopping at Liverpool.
I telegraphed thither and took the night mail, in case the vessel
should touch, but the weather had proved too stormy, and she held
on her course. Being so far on the way, and now perfectly sure of
my man, I did not dream of turning back, but took passage for New
York in a fast liner, which would easily have outstripped that in
which the fugitive had got the start, but for one or two unforeseen
accidents on the way, which added three days to the length of the
passage. When we landed, the vessel in which “George Fullerton” had
sailed was in the harbour, and my man gone. He was described to me by
one of the sailors as depressed and sullen, but singularly free with
his money. He had been taken on at the last moment in place of a man
who had failed to appear, and so, instead of working his passage, had
received full pay. On landing he had treated several of his mates
liberally, and had seemed bent on nothing but getting rid of his
money.
“I believe I could find him for you,” said the man at last, and I
readily accepted the offer.
We made our way to a tavern near the harbour much frequented by
seamen, and there, sitting alone with some drink before him, I
found the counter-part of the spoilt photograph. I should have
easily recognised him in a crowd, but with a foolhardiness almost
incredible, he wore the fatal red neckerchief, which proved to be of
silk, not cotton.
I said nothing to my conductor beyond ordering for him a drink at the
bar, and then went up and took a seat opposite the red necktie.
“You’re a Scotchman, I think?” I said to him at last.
“So are you,” he said, a little startled.
“Yes. Long since you left the old country?”
“Long enough,” he growled, “and it’ll be longer or I go back.”
“Nonsense, man,” I said, without a smile. “I’m going back by the
first ship. Suppose you go back with me?”
“Never!”
The word was accompanied by a deep oath, but I was busy with my hand
in my pocket, which came out as he made a gulp at the drink before
him, and brought up the barrel of a pistol levelled straight at his
eyes.
“Hands up! Tom Fisher,” I shouted as he staggered back, and the
bystanders came crowding round. “I believe that’s the custom of this
country, or the right thing to say when two are likely to play at one
game. I’ve come all the way from Edinburgh to arrest you for stabbing
Colin M^cCulloch. My name is M^cGovan, and I’ve the warrant in my
pocket.”
He gave in in the most sheepish and stupefied manner imaginable, and
some one was obliging enough to snap my handcuffs on his wrists. I
took him away in a _coupé_, and had him locked up till I should get
the necessary papers filled up for his conveyance across the Atlantic.
On the passage home we got quite friendly, and he told me the whole
story of the attack. He had met George Fullerton, and been told by
him of his wife’s faithlessness and flight, coupled with M^cCulloch’s
name. He was quite frenzied, and went off at once to look for
M^cCulloch, whom Fullerton had seen not long before in the town. He
met him at last by chance, and stabbed him twice, meaning to kill him.
When he came to be tried, which was two months later, on account
of the state of his victim, he pleaded “Not guilty” by advice, and
M^cCulloch was called as a witness, when, to the astonishment of all,
M^cCulloch declared most positively that he could not remember who
stabbed him, but that he had a strong impression that the assailant
was _not_ the man at the bar.
None looked more astonished than the prisoner, but a moment later he
recovered himself and rose to his feet.
“He’s telling a lie! I did stab him. I’m guilty, and I’m not sorry.
He led away my wife, and she’s now on the streets. Ask him if it’s
not true? That’s all I’ve to say.”
M^cCulloch, when questioned, made some shuffling answers, and was
finally ordered out of the box. Then Fisher, in consideration of the
peculiar circumstances of the case, and his having been already two
months in prison, was sentenced to a month’s imprisonment.
I saw him after his release. He was searching for his wife, and had
come to me to get my assistance, but we only found her grave.