I GO TO LONDON.
It was a week after this conversation that Captain Black, Dr. Osbart,
and myself entered the 7.30 train from Ramsgate; leaving in the outer
harbour of that still quaint town the screw tender, now disguised, with
the man John and eight of the most turbulent among the crew of the
nameless ship aboard her. We had come without hindrance through the
crowded waters of the Channel; and, styling ourselves a Norwegian
whaler in ballast, had gained the difficult harbour without arousing
suspicion. At the first, Black had thought to leave me on the steamer;
but I, who had an insatiable longing to set foot ashore again, gave him
solemn word that I would not seek to quit him, that I would not in any
way betray him while the truce lasted, and that I would return,
wherever I was, to the tender in the harbour at the end of a week. He
concluded the conditions with the simple words, "I'm a big fool, but
you can come." The others opened their eyes and tapped their foreheads,
for they believed him to be a maniac.
I will not pause to tell you my own thoughts when I set foot on shore
again. So great was my amazement at it all that I went some time
without collecting myself to see that the invisible hand of God, which
had led me all through, was leading me again--even, as I hoped, to the
consummation of it. Fearless in this new thought, I sat in the corner
of the first-class carriage reserved for us in such a state of
exultation and of hope as few men can have known. Before me were the
downs of Kent, the open face of an English landscape, the orchard-bound
homesteads, the verdurous pasture-land. The hedges were bedecked with
their late autumn flowers; the teams and smock-frocked men were going
home to the gabled houses, and the warm-lit cottages. There was odour
of the harvest yet in the air and the distant chiming of bells from the
Gothic tower which rose above the hamlet and the knoll of green. Each
little town we passed cast from its windows bright rays upon the
tremulous twilight; a great bar of fiery redness cut the lower black of
the coming night, showing me in shadow the rising of land towards
Chatham and towards London. Yet it was the peace of the scene that came
to me with the greatest power; the many tokens of home--above all, the
thought "I am in England." I could not help but carry my memory at this
time to the last occasion when, with Roderick and Mary, I had come to
London in the very hope of getting tidings of this man who now sat with
me in a Kent-Coast express. Where were the others then--the girl who
had been as a sister to me, and the man as a brother; how far had the
fear of my death made sad that childish face which had known such
little sadness in its sixteen years of life? It was odd to think that
Mary might be then returned to London, and that I, whom perchance she
thought dead, was near to her, and yet, in a sense, more cut off from
her than in the grave itself. And Black, whom all the Governments were
pursuing so lustily, was at my side smoking a great cigar, apparently
oblivious to all sense of danger or of hazard. Life has many contrasts,
but it never had a stranger than that, I feel sure.
It was after ten o'clock that the ride terminated; and, following Black
and Osbart into a closed carriage that awaited us, I was driven from
the station. I should say that we drove for fifteen minutes or more,
staying at last before a house in a narrow _cul-de-sac_, where we went
upstairs to a suite of rooms reserved for us. After an excellent supper
Osbart left us, but Black took me to a double-bedded room, saying that
he could not let me out of his sight, and that I must share the
sleeping-place with him.
"Boy, if you make one attempt to play me false," said he, "I'll blow
your brains out, though you were my own son."
Then he went to bed at once in a morose and foreboding mood, and I
followed his example quickly.
On the next morning Black quitted the house at an early hour after
breakfast, but he locked the door of the room upon Osbart and myself.
"Not," as he said, "because I can't take your word, but because I don't
want anyone fooling in here." He returned in the evening, at seven
o'clock, and found me as he had left me, reading a later novel of Paul
Bourget's; for Osbart had slept all the afternoon, and was always
complaining when on shore.
The view from the window upon a balcony of lead and the back windows of
near houses was not inviting, and my bond had held me back from all
idle thoughts of eluding him. Life in London under such conditions was
little preferable to life on the ship, and I had no heart to hear
Black's stories of things doing in town; or to examine the many
purchases of miniatures and quaint old jewels, which he had laid on the
dinner-table.
The day following was Thursday. I shall always remember it, for I
regard it as one of the most memorable days in my life. Black went out
as usual early in the morning; his object being, as on the preceding
day, to find out, if he could, what the Admiralty were doing in view of
the robbery of the _Bellonic_; and Osbart, refusing to get up to
breakfast, lay in bed reading the morning papers. We had been left thus
about the space of an hour when there came a telegram for the doctor,
who read it with a fierce exclamation.
"The Captain wants me urgently," said he, "and there's nothing to do
but to leave you here. We are trusting absolutely to you, now; but be
quite sure, if you make half a move to betray us, it will be the last
you will ever make. I may return here in ten minutes. You must put up
with the indignity of being locked in; and, dear boy, don't trouble
yourself to look for sympathy in this place, for the man who owns this
house is one of us, and, if you call out, you'll get a rap on the head
pretty quickly."
He went out jauntily, and I watched him, little thinking that I should
never see him again. When he was gone I sat in the great armchair,
pulling it to the window, and taking up my book. The sensation of being
alone in the centre of London, and unable by my oath to make the
slightest attempt to help myself, was most curious; yet with it all I
could not but think that I had touched the culminating point, and was
near to the ending of it for good or for ill. From the window of my
room I could hear the hum of town, the rumbling of 'buses, and the
subdued roar of London awake. I could even see people in the houses at
the other side of the leads, and it occurred to me, What if I open that
casement and call for help? I had given a pledge, it is true; but
should a pledge bind under such conditions? The sanctity of an oath is
a fine thing for theological subtlety. I had no such subtlety. I knew
that the argument in favour of wrong is pleasing to the mental palate;
and I put it from me, believing that the breaking of my bond would put
me upon the immoral plane of the men to whom it had been given.
I was in the very throes of such a mental struggle when the strange
event of the day happened. I chanced to look up from the book I had
been trying to read, and I saw a remarkable object upon the leads
outside my window. It was the figure of a man with a collapsible neck,
a wonderful neck, which expanded appallingly, and again was withdrawn
into a narrow and herring-like chest. The fellow might have been thirty
years of age; he might have been fifty; there was no hair on his face,
no colour in his hollow cheeks; only a nervous movement of the
bony-fingers, and that awful craning of the collapsible neck. I saw in
a moment that he was looking into my room; and presently, when he had
given me innumerable nods and winks, he took a knife from his pocket,
and opened the catch, stepping into the chamber with the nimble foot of
a goat upon a crag-path. Then he drew a chair up to mine, and, making
more signs and inexplicable motions of the eye, he slapped me upon the
knee, and said--
"In the name of the law!"
This was uttered with such ridiculous levity that I laughed at him.
"Yes," he went on, unmoved, "I take you by surprise; but business, Mr.
Mark Strong," and he became very serious, while his neck went out like
a yard-measure and he cast a quick glance round the room.
"Business," he said, when he had satisfied himself that we were alone,
"and in two words. In the first place I have wired to your friend, Mr.
Roderick Stewart, and I expect him from Portsmouth in a couple of
hours; in the second, your other friend, the doctor, is under lock and
key, on the trifling charge of murder in the Midlands, to begin with.
When we have Captain Black, the little party will be complete."
I looked at him, voiceless from the surprise of it. The magical neck
was absorbed in the chest again, and he went on--
"I needn't tell you who I am; but there's my card. We have six men in
the street outside, and another half dozen watching the leads here. You
will be sensible enough to follow my instructions absolutely. Black, we
know, leaves the country to-night in his steamer--yesterday at
Ramsgate; to-day we do not know where. The probability is that he will
come to fetch you at seven o'clock--I have frightened it all out of the
people down-stairs--if he does, you will go with him. Otherwise, he's
pretty sure to send someone for you, and, as you at the moment are our
sole link between that unmitigated scoundrel and his arrest, I ask you
to risk one step more, and return at any rate as far as the coast, that
we may follow him for the last time. You'll do that for us?"
I looked at his card, whereon was the inscription, "Detective-Inspector
King, Scotland Yard"; and I said at once--
"I shall not only go to the coast, but to his tender, for I've given my
word. What you may do in the meantime is not my affair; but----"
"Yes," he said eagerly, craning his neck again, "'for God's sake keep
your eye on me,' that's what you were going to say. Well, we shall do
it. We owe it to you that we've got any clue to the man, and you're not
likely to lose anything from the Government by what you've done."
"I suppose he's made a sensation?" I asked, in simplicity, and he
looked as a man who has yesterday's news.
"Sensation! There's been no such stir since the French war. There isn't
another subject talked of in any house in Europe--but, read that; and
whatever you do, don't make a sign until we give you the cue. It's not
safe for me to stay here; he may return any minute. I wish you luck of
it; and it's ten thousand in my pocket, any way!"
Detective-Inspector King went as he had come, craning his neck and
passing noiselessly over the leads; but he left me a newspaper, wherein
there was column after column concerning the robbery of the _Bellonic_,
and a dish worthy of all journalistic sensation-mongering. I read this
with avidity; with sharp appetite for the extraordinary hope which had
come so curiously into my life. At last, the police were on the trail
of Captain Black; yet I saw at once that, lacking my help, he would
elude them. It was strange that, after all, I, who had seemed to fail
so hopelessly in my enterprise, should at last bring this giant in
crime to justice. For, if he had not burdened himself with me, he would
then have left in the tender, and, once on the nameless ship, would
have defied the world. But now they watched him; and from the solitude
of my imprisonment I seemed to be lifted in a moment to a joyous state
of expectation and excitement.
It was then about three o'clock in the afternoon. I heard the hour from
a neighbouring church; and I recalled the detective's words, "I have
telegraphed for your friend, Roderick." If his anticipations were
correct, I should see the one man I had the greatest love for within an
hour. Yet, on recollection, I would have had it otherwise. If once I
looked on Mary's face again, I knew that the task would be almost
beyond my strength; and as it happened, it was well I had not this
burden to bear in the last hours of the great struggle. For four
o'clock struck, and five, and no one came; and it was half-past six
when at last a man unlocked the door of my room and entered. He was one
of Black's negroes.
"Sar will come quick," said he, "and leave his luggage. The master
waits."
He gave me no time for any explanations, but took me by the arm, and,
passing from the house by a back door, he went some way down a narrow
street, and turned into Piccadilly. There a cab waited for us, and we
drove away, but not before one, who stood on the pavement, had made a
slight signal to me, and called another cab.
In him I recognised Detective-Inspector King, and I knew that we were
followed.