“I will do nothing of the sort,” I answered, although I had often tried to do it; “and just when we have hit upon a fresh track, uncle! Nip is in the stable. Can I have him? I shall start for Woking Road, this very afternoon. It can do no harm, if it does no good. And I never could sit still, and let it stop just as it is.”
“Very well; and I will telegraph for Tony Tonks to come down by the time that you return. We are bound to let him know of this last turn of the mystery.”
To this I agreed; and as soon as we got back, I saddled the young horse Nip, and rode by way of Walton Bridge to Woking, feeling as I went that I would almost rather know the worst, than live on in this horrible suspense.
Woking Road Station was a very different place from what it is now, and of much less importance. Where a busy town stands now, created by the railway, and mainly peopled by it, there were in those days but a few sad cottages in an expanse of dark furze and lonely commons. Very poor sandy land, and black patches where the gorse had been fired, and one public-house, called of course the Railway Hotel, and large sweeps of young fir-plantations were its chief features then, and the shabby station looked like a trunk pitched from the line.
There were two dirty flies, like watchmen’s boxes, one with the shafts turned up, and the other peopled by a horse, who had been down upon his knees, and was licking the flies off at his leisure. The driver was sitting on a log in the distance, cutting bread and cheese, and sipping something from a tin which appeared to have submitted to the black embrace of bonfires.
Perceiving that this was a crusty old fellow, of true British fibre, and paid by the day, which relieved him from restless anxiety for work, I approached him as nearly as I could in his own vein.
“They don’t seem to be very busy here just now. But I suppose your old nag can go along when he likes. How much do you charge to Shepperton?”
“Shepp’ton, Shepp’ton? Never heard of no such place. Which way do it lie, governor?
“Well, you had better ask,” I said very craftily as I fancied; “some of your mates will be sure to know. Some of them must have been there before now. They can tell you how far it is.”
“None of them at home this afternoon,” the lazy rogue answered, as he took another mouthful; “better ask station-master. Like enough, he knows.”
“He has nothing to do with you. And I want to know what the fare is. Look here, I’ll stand you a pint at the bar, if you will just come up, and find out what it is. Some of your mates must have been as far as that, to take people for the pike-fishing. Shepperton is a great place for that.”
“Very well, come along. But what do you want a cab for, when you’ve got your own horse, and a good ’un too?”
“Stick to your own business,” I answered gruffly; and that tone seemed to have more charm for him, as happens very often with ill-conditioned men; “you are on your legs now, try to keep them moving.”
“Gent wants to know fare to Shepperton;” he shouted through the precincts of the bar into the stable-yard. “Any of you chaps been there lately? Governor gone up to have a snooze.” He illustrated that point with a genial wink.
“Why, Tom been there, not so very long agone,” said a little old man who was washing a double curb under the pump, and twisting out the grime with his thumbnails; “or if it wasn’t Tom, it was Joe – Joe Clipson, so it was. And a long job it were. I had to stop up for him. Thought something must have happened – he were gone such a time.”
“Ah, but perhaps he went with a fishing party,” I said as indifferently as I could; “when people go fishing they won’t be hurried. Come in and have a glass of beer yourself, my friend.”
“Well, no. I never see’d no rods, nor baskets, nor nothing of that sort, so far as I remember. But he did say something about waiting for a boat. Thank’e, sir, thank’e; here’s your good health.”
“How long ago was it? And who went with him?” My hand began to shake a little, do what I would. For I seemed to be on the track at last, where no one was likely to be bribed into lying.
“Well, I don’t know justly, for I worn’t here when he went; and when he come back, he had been to station first, and I were that sleepy that I didn’t care to hearken, nor he to gab much, for that matter; but I know he said something about a young femmel. And how long agone? Why, let me see. Must ’a been about time for sowing scarlet-runners, for I mind my little grand-darter was playing with them, pointing out the speckles, and no two quite alike, a thing as I never took no heed on; and I must a’ been shelling of them for her mother.”
“What time do you generally sow scarlet-runners here? Not, I suppose, till all chance of frost is over.”
“Well, sir, generally about third week in May month. There is a lucky day, I know – birthday of Saint Somebody. Rabbit me if I can tell his name – the chap as took the Devil by the nose and made him holler. Blest if I shouldn’t ’a liked to see that though. Wouldn’t you, Bill? What a spree it must ’a been!”
“I can’t remember anything about those saints. Our parson isn’t one to insist upon them. But the one that did that, was called ‘Dunstan,’ I believe. ‘Dunstan,’ does that sound like it?”
“Why, it is the very ticket!” he exclaimed, with a clink of his pewter on the slate slab, made up to look like marble. “Bill, you know, that’s the day for putting scarlet-runners in?”
“Was it him as was going in a cab, to what you call it?”
“No, no, Bill. You never had no eddication. They used to teach us better in the times gone by. ’Twas three, or four days before his time. Fetch a Prayer-book, miss; and then I’ll prove it.”
The young lady in the bar, who had been looking at us queerly, tossed her head, as if to say – “What fools these men are!” Then she swept the money out of reach, and disappeared. Presently she came back, with an ancient Prayer-book; and my old friend, after spitting on his fingers, turned over the leaves of the calendar, and shouted – “Here it is! I could ’a sworn to it, from Sunday-school. May 19th. St. Dunstan’s Day!”
He put his thumb upon the place, and made a long-abiding mark; and I never shall forget again St. Dunstan’s Day. Those Board schools never teach such useful things as that. And at grammar-school we only kept the best of the Apostles.
“Where is Joe Clipson to be found?” I asked. “Surely he could tell us all about it. I will give a sovereign to know who came in his cab, that night, from Shepperton.”
All who had gathered for that great discussion looked at me with astonishment and fear. And I saw that I had made a wrong move altogether. For nothing shuts up country mouths so sharply, as the hovering in the air of a thing that may prove criminal. At the same time, I saw that deep interest was stirred; and I fancied, very naturally, that it must be in my favour.
“Can’t say when Joe will be at home,” said my old friend. “He have gone to Knapp Hill with a gent, to see the trees. When they gets among they, they never comes back in a hurry. Might be nine o’clock afore he comes home.”
I looked at my watch, and saw that I must start at once, if I meant to be at home in time to meet Tony Tonks. And it struck me, that he would be much more capable of going through with the inquiries here, than I, who had already made a muddle of it, by putting questions too point-blank. So I tried to put on a careless manner.
“Well, we won’t say any more about it now. Only I should like to know what fish they caught; or whether they weighed in at the club with what they bought. If we think it worth while to go on with this, we can send a boy over, to hear Joe’s account. It doesn’t concern any one except ourselves. But we don’t like to be beaten by the silver hook. There is a rare fish at Shepperton, that nobody can catch.”
They looked at me, as if they could not quite accept this turn; and there was much disappointment on the barmaid’s face; for, with a woman’s instinct, she had scented a romance. But without another word, I jumped into the saddle, and was soon upon the furzy commons, full of prickly wonderings.
CHAPTER L.
A POCKETFUL OF MONEY
“We are on the straight road now,” said Tonks, as soon as he had heard my story; “and jigger me if we don’t hunt her down. But luck can give five stone to skill, whether the course be straight or round. I have done all I know; but you beat me in a canter, just by getting the inside turn. But unless I am out of it altogether, you may trust me to fetch up by-and-by. I must find out who that old chap was. It could not be Downy himself, you think. Not likely that she would have gone with him. Well, now you want to hear what I have done; and I think it leads to something.
“I am bound to be terrible leary, you see, for he is uncommon wide-awake. If he had spent all his life in the sharpest stables, he could hardly have been more up to snuff. He never believes a single word a fellow says, until he has been round it to know the reason. I can’t abide that sort of thing myself, for it gives such a lot of trouble on both sides. If he asked you what o’clock it was, and you looked at your watch and told him, he’d place no faith in it, unless he saw the hands; and even then he would doubt whether you had not shifted them, on purpose to mislead him.”
“Such a rogue should be knocked on the head,” said my uncle; “and I wish I had the doing of it.”
“It makes everybody hate him, although his manner is not rough. He never seems to think it worth his while to take offence at people. But they would rather have that, than what he does. Old Pots is popular compared to him; because Pots hates his enemies. But this man goes on as if they were not worth hating. And that has made me doubt sometimes why he has done this; and sometimes whether he has done it at all.”
“If he has not done it, it can only be the Devil,” my uncle broke in with some anger; “I am not superstitious, but the Devil might be vexed by Professor Fairthorn’s kick-me-jigs, and run off with his daughter, just to dig him in the ribs. By George, I never thought of that before!”
“And I hope you won’t think of it again,” I said, in great haste that the idea might not go into his mind, for it would be hard work to get it out again; “I should hope you know better, Uncle Corny! Would the Devil think of paying such a price as Phil Moggs gets, and hire a four-wheeler to Woking Road Station?”
“You are right, Kit. He will have full value for his money; and he never could have stood the smoke I made. He gets too much of that at home. But Tonks says now that he doubts if Bulwrag did it. What are we coming to? Are we all to start again, as if we had never spent twopence over it? Tonks has been with him a deal too much. When two fellows get together so, they can’t smell one another.”
“I judge just the same as if I never saw him. He isn’t one to get over a fellow with his looks, nor his manner neither. Mr. Orchardson, you are quite wrong there. I go by observation, and nothing else.”
“And what has come of your observations?” My uncle still despised Mr. Tonks, and he hated to be told that he was wrong, especially when I heard it.
“A good deal,” said Tonks, leaning back in his chair and collecting his ideas; “a good deal, if you place confidence in me; without which I act for nobody. I don’t pretend to be any wonder. But when I take a man’s money, I am true to him. I have plenty of other jobs I can take to. Throw me over, if you choose, and have done it.”
“No, Tony Tonks, we will not do that. I believe that you are doing all you know; and I am a reasonable man. Now tell us all that you have to tell.”
“Well, there isn’t very much, but it may come to something more, especially with what you have just found out. The worst of it is that he is getting shy of me, and I dare not say things as I did. I told him that I wanted to run down, to take stock of Henderson’s place down here, and I asked him if he knew the neighbourhood, and whether we should take a trap and run down together. If I could get him to that, I might pick up a lot of things, in a careless and casual way, you know. But he was much too fly for any game of that sort; and it almost seemed to me as if he smelled a rat. Then I got on to him about the scientific codgers, thinking to lead up to the old Professor and the cruise he is going on about the bottom of the sea, and the place for laying cables, and a lot of things like that. But that wouldn’t serve; and so I tried another lay. We were talking of old Pots, and I said, ‘Oh, by-the-bye, was it true that the old fool was sweet upon some girl, some girl with a lot of money, who pitched him over?’ And he said, ‘What a joke! I should like to hear of that. Tell us the story, Bowles, if you know it.’ Bowles is the name he knows me by, you see; for it would not do for me to turn up as Tonks.
“In fact I got no hold upon him, as I thought I should have done; for he knows how to make people useful and no more; and I saw that he would drop me as soon as he had learned all the little useful things I know at cards and pool. Of course I was not swell enough for him to introduce me to his ‘family circle,’ as the ladies call it. And as for getting him to take a drop too much, and then working him skilfully, as can be done with most fellows, – well, I am pretty tough, but if I took the water and he the brandy, I believe I should be drunk before he was. His head is too big for any barrel to upset it.
“I was pretty near despairing, I can tell you, Mr. Orchardson, though I never have been beaten yet, and don’t want to begin it; when a little bit of accident, the merest casual accident, put me further forward than a month of work might do. You may be pretty sure, without my saying, that my appearance is not distinguished enough – although I have gone arm in arm with bigger nobs than he is, and real gentlemen some of them – but not swell enough to be seen in Downy Bulwrag’s company, in Piccadilly, or the Park, or high and mighty places. No no, not for Joe, as the poet quotes it.
“But he is not at all above allowing me the honour of his society, when I can be of service to him, and no one is likely to say – ‘Who’s that?’ And there is one particular house of his – never mind where, that has nothing to do with it – at which he always likes to have me, and treats me quite as his honoured friend. And there we were on Monday night, tickling the pigeons, as you might say, which is only what they expect of us. He can beat me now in my own inventions, not from any superior skill, but because he is the coolest hand ever seen, and nothing puts him out of tune.
“He had won all along the board that night, and his pockets were full of money; but instead of being up, as a decent fellow would be, he took all his luck in a cold-blooded way, just as if it were nothing to what he deserved. That is never the right way to get any more. You must never do that, Mr. Orchardson.”
“Sir, I never gamble; and I want no lesson.” My uncle spoke severely; he thought it due to me to do so.
“It is too late in life for you to begin,” Tonks proceeded affably; “and your hands are too hard, Mr. Orchardson. But as I was saying, we came down the stairs, and slipped out very quietly. It was one of those little streets off Soho, where a man who knows London like the lines of his own hand may lose himself in half a minute, by one wrong turning. The night was very dark, and all the publics shut up long ago, and not a light was to be seen, except a dull lamp here and there. But we were quite used to this sort of thing, and felt no sort of fear, though we knew that we were passing through a den of robbers; and a man who has a lot of money in his pockets is inclined to fancy somehow that every stranger knows it.
“Suddenly, as we went by a narrow reeking archway, a fellow sprang out of it immediately behind us. Before I could turn, I heard a crash, and there he lay, sent backward by a heavy blow from Bulwrag’s fist. I thought that he was killed, for the blow had been tremendous; such as I have seen, when they meant business in the prize-ring. But luckily for him, the fellow wore a hard-rimmed hat, which lay behind him doubled up, while he rolled over, gasping.
“‘Not much got out of that,’ said Downy, looking at his knuckles; ‘the sooner we slope the better, Bowles; or there will be a rumpus.’
“‘We can’t go, before we see whether you have killed him. You hit him hard enough to kill an ox,’ I answered.
“‘Killed myself more likely. Just look at my hand. The fellow can’t be hurt much. What had he on his hat-front? Don’t pick him up. He’ll be better where he is.’
“But seeing no one up or down the street, I disobeyed him, and drew the stunned man into the shadow of the archway, and set him with his head against the bricks, while Bulwrag showed much more concern about his hat.
“‘Here it is – a metal thing! I shall keep it. Put his hat on again, Bowles; and let him meditate. We don’t want to cut a shine at Bow Street. Let’s be off!’
“I was rising to go, for I hate the police-courts, and the man was evidently coming round, and could do very well without us. But before we could leave him, he stretched out his hand, and said, ‘Captain, Captain, for God’s sake stop a minute. I have got something for you most important. I didn’t go to rob you, but to tell you something.’
“You may be sure that I was pretty wide awake at this; but of course I took care not to show it. And I saw by a shadow on the line of wall that Bulwrag had raised one hand, probably to his lips.
“‘Right!’ said the man, who was on his legs now, but sidled away into a darker place; ‘let the other gent go. I was to tell you by yourself. I daren’t come to your place, but you must come to mine.’
“‘Out with it! I never keep any secrets,’ Bulwrag replied, just to humbug me. ‘Unless it concerns other people, and then – Well perhaps, Bowles, you wouldn’t mind going to your den. Stop, let me speak to you a moment outside.’
“He took me away, while the man stopped there; and I saw that his object was to prevent me from finding out any more about that fellow. I was forced to let him have his way that far, and to play a waiting game with him.
“‘Some bosh or other,’ he whispered roughly; ‘I think I know who the fellow is, and all about it. A gamekeeper’s daughter down in Hampshire – always wanting money. Stop, you may as well take most of this, for fear of my being too soft-hearted. There, leave me five; that’s as much as I can spare. Good-night! Very much obliged. See you to-morrow.’
“‘You had better mind what you are about,’ I said; ‘he owes you a grudge, and you are in a slummy part, you know. I’ll come with you, if you like, and wait outside.’
“‘You had better not wait at all. I am apt to mistake people, as you have seen already?’
“This was a threat; and as such I took it, walking off with a dignity which must have vexed him. However, as soon as I was round the corner, I slipped a pair of rubber socks, that I always carry with me, over my boots, and put myself on duty in other ways; so that if he met me in the shadow, or even ten yards from a lamp, he would have little chance of knowing me. And in less than two minutes I was back again; not in the archway, of course, but at a place from which I could make out part of what was going on there. For I knew that there was something up quite out of the common way with him. Now how did I know that? Can either of you tell me?”
“Why, of course, by his knocking that fellow down,” my uncle replied sagaciously; “that was a bit of by-play, I suppose.”
“Not it. That was all done, bone fiddles – as we say. I knew it by the pile of cash he gave me to hold for him. Oh, he is a deep file, and all there at any moment. He had clearly formed a low opinion of your humble servant, and thought that I should bolt with all the rhino, and be seen no more. And it could be no trifle that made him risk the sum of five and forty pounds.”
“Forty-five pounds!” I exclaimed; “how strange! Why that was the very sum” – But here I stopped, for I did not wish to go into that question with him.
“Yes, forty-five pounds, when I came to count it. I could not tell how much it was, at the moment; but I felt that it was a tidy lump of cash, and I jumped at his motive in handing it to me. But he reckoned altogether without his host there. Well, when I came back, there they were, still at it. I could not hear a word of what they said, for I was forced to keep my distance. But I guessed that the skunk would take him somewhere, for what he had said beforehand, and then my wits would come into play. And sure enough he did, for in about two minutes they both came out, and looked up and down the street, to make sure that they were not followed. Seeing no one, they set off, at a good quick step, and I took the right style to be after them.
“They turned so many corners, and went through so many alleys, that no other man in the world could have kept them in sight, as I did, without blundering on them. We passed through many places I knew nothing of; but at last I stowed them in a quiet little den, not very far from Drury Lane. Here the fellow went down a steep narrow staircase, and knocked at a door that was like a cellar-flap. Downy stopped outside; which I thought was very wise of him, while the other went in, and for some time disappeared. But Downy came back to the entrance for fresh air, or perhaps to be certain that he was not watched. And I gave myself up for lost; but most luckily an empty truck or barrow stood against the wall, and I just slipped under it in time. I could have touched him with my hand, but the place was very dark; and he went back without twigging me.
“I have had many narrow shaves, but none to beat that. He would have killed me with a blow, and in a hole like that, I should soon have been under the flagstones. I had no time to be in a funk till it was over; but then I began to shiver horribly, and my nerves were not fit to be trusted any more.
“I knew this; and thinking of it made them worse, for I have a wife and seven children to look after. All I cared for now was to get away, for I had run the chap to earth, and could put my hand upon him.
“There was no chance of overhearing any of their talk, even if they had any; and if they once discovered me, even though I might escape, there would be no chance of learning more. I could find the hole again, for I had seen ‘Coke Yard’ daubed with a tar-brush on a patch of whitewash, and wherever I have once been I can always go again. So when Bulwrag turned back towards the door, I made ready to slip round the corner.
“But before I could do so, I heard the door creak, and the fellow with the broken hat came out again. I heard him say – ‘Now, you’ll believe me, Captain. I’d be glad of the price of a new hat, afore you go.’ What it was he gave to Downy, I could hardly see, but it looked like a packet of papers, or letters, or something done up in paper. Downy gave him something, and he said – ‘That all? Ain’t much for such news;’ and then Downy gave him more. ‘Daren’t come to your place. You come here,’ he says, ‘if you want any more – say next Saturday night; ask for Migwell Bengoose, and say Cluck.’ That was the name so far as I could catch it. But I was bound to be off, for Bulwrag was coming. And you may depend upon it that I did not stop to chat with him.”