CAPTAIN HARVEY HALE
Outside the East India Dock Gates lies an area of squalor and
meanness which has no exact parallel in any other part of London. It
is a district of poor, jerry-built streets, wherein every house is
exactly like every other house.
Lyme Street, which lies midway between Silvertown and Canning Town,
was once distinguished by the existence within its narrow length of
five distinct public-houses, all of which did a noisy trade.
Temperance reformers cited Lyme Street as an object lesson and a
terrible example. Visiting social reformers from other lands were led
fearfully to its dingy purlieus, and novelists and playwrights sought,
amidst its foul approaches, the _mise en scène_ for such deeds of
depravity as were necessary to the development of their creations.
Of all the saloons that disgraced a civilised city, The Full Rigged
Ship was the worst, and when this infamous house of the crimp and the
harpy was purchased by The Christian Society and converted into a
Temperance Home for Sailors, there was rejoicing amongst the enemies
of drink.
For fourteen years the directors of “Theyome” (as it was called
locally) fought a desperate fight to establish an attractive oasis in
a desert of sin. All that mortal men could do, they did. There were
lectures on Booze, and lectures on Gardens and how to cultivate them;
there were most innocuous concerts that began with a hymn and ended
with a benediction, and addresses on The Child: What Will He Become?
And in spite of all these counter-attractions to the sinful saloons,
the heavy trade and the bulk of patronage went to The Five Bells and
The Dog Watch and similar alcoholic institutions, where nobody
lectured except on the miserable pay of sailormen, and all concerts
ended in a free-for-all fight which brought out the police reserves.
Eventually the uplift society “farmed” the home to a knowledgeable
ex-purser, who ran it on lines that more nearly approached the
seaman’s ideal, in spite of his bonded undertaking that no
intoxicating liquid should pass the threshold. A club license enabled
him to serve surreptitious drink, and, human nature being what it is,
the whisper, well circulated, that you could get a drop of good stuff
at “Theyome” brought a new patronage, and in the little doorway
through which innocent children had tripped to recite to the dazed
marine, you could take your secret potion from sin-stained hands.
Chief of the new patrons of the establishment was Captain Harvey Hale,
seventy-five by fifty coarse inches of muscle and bone; a red-faced,
fishy-eyed, heavy-jawed skipper, without either ship or ticket, for he
it was who piled the S.S. _Gravalla_ on to the Dame rocks and stood in
thirty-seventy for insurance which the underwriters refused to pay.
It was a grievance which Captain Hale ventilated in moments of
insobriety.
“Twelve months’ hard labour--for what?” he bellowed. “For losing a
ship that was a floating wreck. And me that thought first of my men
and had every boat overhauled before we left Sunderland! And lifebelts
all in good order and everything! ‘Wilfully casting away my ship’! Not
a life lost, mind you, and me the last to go over the side in
accordance with regulations!”
He did not refer to certain earlier exploits that had come before the
court which tried him: of a trial in Calcutta for manslaughter, of a
court of inquiry at Seattle for cargo-broaching, and similar
irregularities which had been investigated in other latitudes.
“Maybe they’ll engage you as a rum-runner,” suggested Taylor, the new
host of The Home.
“Maybe that’s it,” he said, “and I’ll do it!”
He glanced up at the clock.
“Expecting anybody?” asked the other, and Captain Hale looked at his
companion suspiciously.
“Maybe,” he said.
He took a letter from his pocket and read, and was in the act of
replacing it when he changed his mind, and passed it across to Taylor.
Mr. Taylor fixed his glasses and read the typewritten note.
“I can give you a good job with plenty of money, if you’re willing to
take on an unusual task, that will involve you in personal danger.
Will you come out of the Sailors’ Home in Lyme Street at 10.30? My
agent, Mr. Smith, will be waiting for you.”
“What do you make of that?” asked Hale.
“Rum-running,” said the other promptly. “There’s a syndicate in
London that is making a fortune out of shipping booze to the States.”
“Doesn’t sound like rum-running to me, though you may be right. A poor
sailor has got to take what he can get nowadays. Why, I remember the
time when I was offered…”
He was boastfully reminiscent and talkative, till, looking up, he saw
the hands of the clock at the half-hour, and, rising, threw some money
on the table.
“Don’t go following me, Taylor,” he said ominously, and Mr. Taylor,
whose curiosity had been aroused, and who had already made up his mind
that he would judge for himself the character and appearance of Hale’s
visitor, very wisely changed his mind.
There was nobody outside the club when Captain Harvey Hale went on to
the street, but opposite he saw a man walking slowly up and down, and
the red glow of his cigar suggested that he was the promised agent,
for cigars are uncommon, except among American and Scandinavian
seamen. After a moment’s hesitation he crossed the road in the
direction of the stranger, who turned and walked to meet him.
“You’re Captain Hale? I am the man you are expecting. Will you walk
with me?”
Hale glanced at him curiously. There was nothing in the appearance of
the man to suggest that he was engaged in any sinister project.
“Where shall we go?” he grunted.
“Mr. Smith,” who evidently knew the neighbourhood, said tersely:
“Across the railroad, toward North Woolwich.”
It was he who decided the route.
“This place will do,” said the man, and stopped midway between two
light standards. “Hale, you’re broke; you’re just out of prison, and
you look like going back again unless you can find a ship. I’ll be
frank, Captain, and I expect the same from you. You were tried in
Calcutta for killing a young apprentice, and it was suggested in
evidence that you had two hundred pounds from the boy’s stepfather to
finish him. The jury disagreed and you escaped. If you did that for
two hundred, how far would you go for five thousand pounds?”
“To hell--and through,” said Harvey Hale promptly. “Who do you want
killed?”
“My friend, that is a big question, easy enough to ask, but hard to
answer.”
“I’m not going back to prison again if I can help it,” growled the
big man. “That’s not my life. Give me any kind of
job--rum-running----” he paused.
“I’m not interested in rum-running,” he said, and Hale was
momentarily taken aback.
“I don’t care what it is,” he said at last. “Give me a job with five
thousand in it, and there’s nothing I’ll stop at. I mean what I say.
I’ve never gone back on my promise. Look what they did to me over the
sinking of that ship. I could have got the owner twenty years, but I
didn’t blab; and when I went in to see him this morning to get a look
at the money, he threatened to call the police.”
“You went to him this morning to work a little blackmail,” said the
other coolly. “You got a thousand to keep your mouth shut at the
trial, and, like a fool, you handed it over to the lady you called
your wife.”
“If I ever get hold of her----”
“I daresay you’ll treat her rough. But you won’t: she’s skipped to
Canada--I know all about you, Hale; I’ve been studying you for the
past month or two. Now the question is, are you going to work for
me?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Anything and everything. Can you drive a car?”
“There isn’t a car that was ever built----”
“You may be useful in that respect. And here is another point: you
suggested just now that you’d commit murder for five thousand. If
that’s a bluff, I may call it. You’ll get five thousand, and you will
be asked to do things which will mean a sentence of penal servitude if
you’re caught. But it isn’t five thousand that you’re getting, Hale,
if the scheme for which we want you goes through; it is fifty
thousand, and a free transportation to a country where you’ll never be
recognised, and from which you will not be extradited.”
Harvey Hale was sober now.
“Fifty thousand!” he said hoarsely. “You don’t mean that?”
“I mean that and nothing less. Five thousand certain; you can touch
the money at the rate of a thousand a week. And fifty thousand if we
can pull off our big job. Are you game?”
“Is there anything worse than murder?” he asked. “Because, if there
is, I’ll do it!”
“Walk with me,” said the stranger abruptly, and turned his footsteps
toward North Woolwich. “I suppose you know few people in town--few
well-known people, I mean?”
“I know a judge and a lawyer or two,” said Hale bitterly, “but I
don’t know any of the swells.”
“You will probably be brought into contact with a few,” his new
employer continued, “and I will give you the names of some you must
avoid like the plague. Do you know Lord Lowbridge? Of course you
don’t. He is a particularly dangerous man, who had better be left
alone.”
“I’m not likely to meet any lords,” growled the other.
“You never know, but keep out of the sight of him. He is never to know
that you’re employed by me--is that understood? Now here are your
instructions. You will leave the house where you’re staying, buy some
clothes and make yourself presentable, and then take the first train
for Newton Abbot--that is in Devonshire. You will put up at a small
hotel, giving out that you are a sea captain who is thinking of buying
a farm. You will be able to buy a second-hand car in the
neighbourhood.”
“What am I supposed to do with that?” asked Hale.
“You’ll get acquainted with all the roads out of Newton Abbot and
across the moor; work your way to Exeter, and possibly we shall ask
you to purchase a moor cottage, but it is too early to talk of that.
When we want you, you will know.”
He stopped under the light of a street lamp, took something wrapped in
tissue paper from his waistcoat pocket, opened it carefully and
displayed a small, five-pointed star. It was enamelled green, and in
the centre was a golden inscription.
“Keep that,” he said. “Show it to nobody--do you understand? In due
course you will find a very good use for it. One other thing: in
Plymouth there is a branch of a society called The Proud Sons of
Ragousa.”
“I’ve heard about that; lots of seafaring men go in for it. They run a
lottery scheme----” began Hale, but the other interrupted him.
“Join up, either in your own or any other name. If you’re too well
known in Plymouth, go to Penzance and join the lodge there. You will
find plenty of men who will propose you.”
“What’s the idea?” asked Hale, peering down suspiciously into the
man’s face.
“The first idea is that you do as you’re told,” was the sharp answer.