A week of anxiety, with the breaks in it of interviews with Sergeant
Parkins, who had very little to communicate; but still that little was
cogent.
He had been down to Hakemouth, and by careful inquiry had tracked the
missing pair to Plymouth, where he had missed them. But, after the
fashion of a huntsman, he made long casts round and picked up the clue
at Exeter, where a porter remembered them from what sounded like an
altercation in a second-class compartment, where a dark young lady was
in tears, and the "gent" who was with her said something to her sharply
in a foreign tongue. Pressed as to what it was like, he said it sounded
as if the gent said "Taisey."
There the sergeant had lost the clue; but he had learned enough to
satisfy himself that the fugitives had been making for London, unless
they had branched off at Bristol, which was hardly likely.
"Come up to London," said Leslie. "Well, that is what we surmised
before we applied to you."
"Exactly, sir; but I have nearly made your surmise a certainty."
"Yes, nearly," said Leslie bitterly.
"We must have time, sir. A hunter does not secure his game by rushing
at it. He stalks it."
"Yes," said Uncle Luke in assent, "and of course you must be certain.
This is not a criminal matter."
"No, sir, of course not," said the sergeant dryly, and with a meaning in
his tone which the others did not detect.
"If you are successful in finding their whereabouts, mind that your task
ends there. You will give us due notice, and we will see to the rest."
"Certainly, sir; and I have men on the look out. The bottle of hay is
being pretty well tossed over, and some day I hope to see the shine of
the needle among the puzzling dry strands. Good morning."
"Is that man a humbug, sir, or in earnest?"
"Earnest," replied Uncle Luke. "He proved that before."
If the occupants of the hotel room, which seemed to Leslie like a
prison, could have read Sergeant Parkins' mind as he went away, they
would have thought him in deadly earnest.
"Not a criminal case, gentlemen, eh?" he said to himself. "If it is as
I think, it is very criminal indeed, and Mr Pradelle will find it so
before he is much older. I haven't forgotten the night on Hakemouth
Pier, and that poor boy's death, and I shan't feel very happy till I've
squared accounts with him, for if he was not the starter of all that
trouble I am no judge of men."
Volume 3, Chapter XVII.