Henry Dunbar by M. E. Braddon

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CHAPTER XLIII.

ON THE TRACK.

The railway journey between Shorncliffe and Derby was by no means the
most pleasant expedition for a cold spring night, with the darkness
lying like a black shroud on the flat fields, and a melancholy wind
howling over those desolate regions, across which all night-trains seem
to wend their way. I think that flat and darksome land which we look
upon out of the window of a railway carriage in the dead of the night
must be a weird district, conjured into existence by the potent magic of
an enchanter's wand,--a dreary desert transported out of Central Africa,
to make the night-season hideous, and to vanish at cock-crow.

Mr. Carter never travelled without a railway rug and a pocket
brandy-flask; and sustained by these inward and outward fortifications
against the chilling airs of the long night, he established himself in a
corner of the second-class carriage, and made the best of his situation.

Fortunately there was no position of hardship to which the detective was
unaccustomed; indeed, to be rolled up in a railway rug in the corner of
a second-class carriage, was to be on a bed of down as compared with
some of his experiences. He was used to take his night's rest in brief
instalments, and was snoring comfortably three minutes after the guard
had banged-to the door of his carriage.

But he was not permitted to enjoy any prolonged rest. The door was
banged open, and a stentorian voice bawled into his ear that hideous
announcement which is so fatal to the repose of travellers, "Change
here!" &c., &c. The journey from Shorncliffe to Derby seemed almost
entirely to consist of "changing here;" and poor Mr. Carter felt as if
he had passed a long night in being hustled out of one carriage into
another, and off one line of railway on to another, with all those
pauses on draughty platforms which are so refreshing to the worn-out
traveller who works his weary way across country in the dead of the
night.

At last, however, after a journey that seemed interminable by reason of
those short naps, which always confuse the sleeper a estimate of time,
the detective found himself at Derby still in the dead of the night; for
to the railway traveller it is all of night after dark. Here he applied
immediately to the station-master, from whom he got another little note
directed to him by Mr. Tibbles, and very much resembling that which he
had received at Shorncliffe.

"_All right up to Derby_," wrote Sawney Tom. "_Gent in furred coat took
a ticket through to Hull. Have took the same, and go on with him
direct.--Yours to command, T.T._"

Mr. Carter lost no time after perusing this communication. He set to
work at once to find out all about the means of following his assistant
and the lame traveller.

Here he was told that he had a couple of hours to wait for the train
that was to take him on to Normanton, and at Normanton he would have
another hour to wait for the train that was to carry him to Hull.

"Ah, go it, do, while you're about it!" he exclaimed, bitterly, when the
railway official had given him this pleasing intelligence. "Couldn't you
make it a little longer? When your end and aim lies in driving a man
mad, the quicker you drive the better, I should think!"

All this was muttered in an undertone, not intended for the ear of the
railway official. It was only a kind of safety-valve by which the
detective let off his superfluous steam.

"Sawney's got the chance," he thought, as he paced up and down the
platform; "Sawney's got the trump cards this time; and if he's knave
enough to play them against me----But I don't think he'll do that; our
profession's a conservative one, and a traitor would have an uncommon
good chance of being kicked out of it. We should drop him a hint that,
considering the state of his health, we should take it kindly of him if
he would hook it; or send him some polite message of that kind; as the
military swells do when they want to get rid of a pal."

There were plenty of refreshments to be had at Derby, and Mr. Carter
took a steaming cup of coffee and a formidable-looking pile of
sandwiches before retiring to the waiting-room to take what he called "a
stretch." He then engaged the services of a porter, who was to call him
five minutes before the starting of the Normanton train, and was to
receive an illegal douceur for that civility.

In the waiting-room there was a coke fire, very red and hollow, and a
dim lamp. A lady, half buried in shawls, and surrounded by a little
colony of small packages, was sitting close to the fire, and started out
of her sleep to make nervous clutches at her parcels as the detective
entered, being in that semi-conscious state in which the unprotected
female is apt to mistake every traveller for a thief.

Mr. Carter made himself very comfortable on one of the sofas, and snored
on peacefully until the porter came to rouse him, when he sprang up
refreshed to continue his journey.

"Hull, Hull!" he muttered to himself. "His game will be to get off to
Rotterdam, or Hamburgh, or St. Petersburg, perhaps; any place that
there's a vessel ready to take him. He'll get on board the first that
sails. It's a good dodge, a very neat dodge, and if Sawney hadn't been
at the station, Mr. Joseph Wilmot would have given us the slip as neatly
as ever a man did yet. But if Mr. Thomas Tibbles is true, we shall nab
him, and bring him home as quiet as ever any little boy was took to
school by his mar and par. If Mr. Tibbles is true,--and as he don't know
too much about the business, and don't know anything about the extra
reward, or the evidence that's turned up at Winchester,--I dare say
Thomas Tibbles will be true. Human nature is a very noble thing," mused
the detective; "but I've always remarked that the tighter you tie human
nature down, the brighter it comes out."

It was morning, and the sun was shining, when the train that carried Mr.
Carter steamed slowly into the great station at Hull--it was morning,
and the sun was shining, and the birds singing, and in the fields about
the smoky town there were herds of sweet-breathing cattle sniffing the
fresh spring air, and labourers plodding to their work, and loaded wains
of odorous hay and dewy garden-stuff were lumbering along the quiet
country roads, and the new-born day had altogether the innocent look
appropriate to its tender youth,--when the detective stepped out on the
platform, calm, self-contained, and resolute, as brisk and business-like
in his manner as any traveller in that train, and with no distinctive
stamp upon him, however slight, that marked him as the hunter of a
murderer.

He looked sharply up and down the platform. No, Mr. Tibbles had not
betrayed him. That gentleman was standing on the platform, watching the
passengers step out of the carriages, and looking more turnip-faced than
usual in the early sunlight. He was chewing nothing with more than
ordinary energy; and Mr. Carter, who was very familiar with the
idiosyncrasies of his assistant, knew from that sign that things had
gone amiss.

"Well," he said, tapping Sawney Tom on the shoulder, "he's given you the
slip? Out with it; I can see by your face that he has."

"Well, he have, then," answered Mr. Tibbles, in an injured tone; "but if
he have, you needn't glare at me like that, for it ain't no fault of
mine. If you ever follered a lame eel--and a lame eel as makes no more
of its lameness than if lameness was a advantage--you'd know what it is
to foller that chap in the furred coat."

The detective hooked his arm through that of his assistant, and led Mr.
Tibbles out of the station by a door which opened on a desolate region
at the back of that building.

"Now then," said Mr. Carter, "tell me all about it, and look sharp."

"Well, I was waitin' in the Shorncliffe ticket-offis, and about five
minutes after two in comes the gent as large as life, and I sees him
take his ticket, and I hears him say Derby, on which I waits till he's
out of the offis, and I takes my own ticket, same place. Down we comes
here with more changes and botheration than ever was; and every time we
changes carriages, which we don't seem to do much else the whole time, I
spots my gentleman, limpin' awful, and lookin' about him
suspicious-like, to see if he was watched. And, of course, he weren't
watched--oh, no; nothin' like it. Of all the innercent young men as ever
was exposed to the temptations of this wicked world, there never was
sech a young innercent as that lawyer's clerk, a carryin' a blue bag,
and a tellin' a promiskruous acquaintance, loud enough for the gent in
the fur coat to hear, that he'd been telegraphed for by his master,
which was down beyond Hull, on electioneerin' business; and a cussin' of
his master promiskruous to the same acquaintance for tele-graphin' for
him to go by sech a train. Well, we come to Derby, and the furry gent,
he takes a ticket on to Hull; and we come to Normanton, and the furry
gent limps about Normanton station, and I sees him comfortable in his
carriage; and we comes to Hull, and I sees him get out on the platform,
and I sees him into a fly, and I hears him give the order, 'Victorier
Hotel,' which by this time it's nigh upon ten o'clock, and dark and
windy. Well, I got up behind the fly, and rides a bit, and walks a bit,
keepin' the fly in sight until we comes to the Victorier; and there
stoops down behind, and watches my gent hobble into the hotel, in awful
pain with that lame leg of his, judgin' the faces he makes; and he walks
into the coffee-room, and I makes bold to foller him; but there never
was sech a young innercent as me, and I sees my party sittin' warmin'
his poor lame leg, and with a carpet-bag, and railway-rug, and sechlike
on the table beside him; and presently he gets up, hobblin' worse than
ever, and goes outside, and I hears him makin' inquiries about the best
way of gettin' on to Edinborough by train; and I sat quiet, not more
than three minutes at most, becos', you see, I didn't want to _look
like_ follerin' him; and in three minutes time, out I goes, makin' as
sure to find him in the bar as I make sure of your bein' close beside me
at this moment; but when I went outside into the hall, and bar and
sechlike, there wasn't a mortal vestige of that man to be seen; but the
waiter, he tells me, as dignified and cool as yer please, that the lame
gentleman has gone out by the door looking towards the water, and has
only gone to have a look at the place, and get a few cigars, and will be
back in ten minutes to a chop which is bein' cooked for him. Well, I
cuts out by the same door, thinkin' my lame friend can't be very far;
but when I gets out on to the quay-side, there ain't a vestige of him;
and though I cut about here, there, and everywhere, lookin' for him,
until I'd nearly walked my legs off in less than half an hour's time, I
didn't see a sign of him, and all I could do was to go back to the
Victorier, and see if he'd gone back before me.

"Well, there was his carpet-bag and his railway-rug, just as he'd left
'em, and there was a little table near the fire all laid out snug and
comfortable ready for him; but there was no more vestige of hisself than
there was in the streets where I'd been lookin' for him; and so I went
out again, with the prespiration streamin' down my face, and I walked
that blessed town till over one o'clock this mornin,' lookin' right and
left, and inquirin' at every place where such a gent was likely to try
and hide hisself, and playing up Mag's divarsions, which if it was
divarsions to Mag, was oncommon hard work to me; and then I went back to
the Victorier, and got a night's lodgin'; and the first thing this
mornin' I was on my blessed legs again, and down at the quay inquirin'
about vessels, and there's nothin' likely to sail afore to-night, and
the vessel as is expected to sail to-night is bound for Copenhagen, and
don't carry passengers; but from the looks of her captain, I should say
she'd carry anythink, even to a churchyard full of corpuses, if she was
paid to do it."

"Humph! a sailing-vessel bound for Copenhagen; and the captain's a
villanous-looking fellow, you say?" said the detective, in a thoughtful
tone.

"He's about the villanousest I ever set eyes on," answered Mr. Tibbles.

"Well, Sawney, it's a bad job, certainly; but I've no doubt you've done
your best."

"Yes, I have done my best," the assistant answered, rather indignantly:
"and considerin' the deal of confidence you honoured me with about this
here cove, I don't see as I could have done hanythink more."

"Then the best thing you can do is to keep watch here for the starting
of the up-trains, while I go and keep my eye upon the station at the
other side of the water," said Mr. Carter, "This journey to Hull may
have been just a dodge to throw us off the scent, and our man may try
and double upon us by going back to London. You'll keep all safe here,
Sawney, while I go to the other side of the compass."

Mr. Carter engaged a fly, and made his way to a pier at the end of the
town, whence a boat took him across the Humber to a station on the
Lincolnshire side of the river.

Here he ascertained all particulars about the starting of the trains for
London, and here he kept watch while two or three trains started. Then,
as there was an interval of some hours before the starting of another,
he re-crossed the water, and set to work to look for his man.

First he loitered about the quays a little, taking stock of the idle
vessels, the big steamers that went to London, Antwerp, Rotterdam, and
Hamburg--the little steamers that went short voyages up or down the
river, and carried troops of Sunday idlers to breezy little villages
beside the sea. He found out all about these boats, their destination,
and the hours and days on which they were to start, and made himself
more familiar with the water-traffic of the place in half an hour than
another man could have done in a day. He also made acquaintance with the
vessel that was to sail for Copenhagen--a black sulky-looking boat,
christened very appropriately the _Crow_, with a black sulky-looking
captain, who was lying on a heap of tarpaulin on the deck, smoking a
pipe in his sleep. Mr. Carter stood looking over the quay and
contemplating this man for some moments with a thoughtful stare.

"He looks a bad 'un," the detective muttered, as he walked away; "Sawney
was right enough there."

He went into the town, and walked about, looking at the jewellers' shops
with his accustomed rapid glance--a glance so furtive that it escaped
observation--so full of sharp scrutiny that it took in every detail of
the object looked at. Mr. Carter looked at the jewellers till he came to
one whose proprietor blended the trade of money-lending with his more
aristocratic commerce. Here Mr. Carter stopped, and entered by the
little alley, within whose sombre shadows the citizens of Hull were wont
to skulk, ashamed of the errand that betrayed their impecuniosity. Mr.
Carter visited three pawnbrokers, and wasted a good deal of time before
he made any discovery likely to be of use to him; but at the third
pawnbroker's he found himself on the right track. His manner with these
gentlemen was very simple.

"I'm a detective officer," he said, "from Scotland Yard, and I have a
warrant for the apprehension of a man who's supposed to be hiding in
Hull. He's known to have a quantity of unset diamonds in his
possession--they're not stolen, mind you, so you needn't be frightened
on that score. I want to know if such a person has been to you to-day?"

"The diamonds are all right?" asked the pawnbroker, rather nervously.

"Quite right. I see the man has been here. I don't want to know anything
about the jewels: they're his own, and it's not them we're after. I want
to know about _him_. He's been here, I see--the question is, what time?"

"Not above half an hour ago. A man in a dark blue coat with a fur
collar----"

"Yes; a man that walks lame."

The pawnbroker shook his head.

"I didn't see that he was lame," he said.

"Ah, you didn't notice; or he might hide it just while he was in here.
He sat down, I suppose?"

"Yes; he was sitting all the time."

"Of course. Thank you; that'll do."

With this Mr. Carter departed, much to the relief of the money-lender.

The detective looked at his watch, and found that it was half-past one.
At half-past three there was a London train to start from the station on
the Lincolnshire side of the water. The other station was safe so long
as Mr. Tibbles remained on the watch there; so for two hours Mr. Carter
was free to look about him. He went down to the quay, and ascertained
that no boat had crossed to the Lincolnshire side of the river within
the last hour. Joseph Wilmot was therefore safe on the Yorkshire side;
but if so, where was he? A man wearing a dark blue coat lined with
sable, and walking very lame, must be a conspicuous object wherever he
went; and yet Mr. Carter, with all the aid of his experience in the
detective line, could find no clue to the whereabouts of the man he
wanted. He spent an hour and a half in walking about the streets, prying
into all manner of dingy little bars and tap-rooms, in narrow back
streets and down by the water-side; and then was fain to go across to
Lincolnshire once more, and watch the departure of the train.

Before crossing the river to do this, he had taken stock of the _Crow_
and her master, and had seen the captain lying in exactly the same
attitude as before, smoking a dirty black pipe in hie sleep.

Mr. Carter made a furtive inspection of every creature who went by the
up-train, and saw that conveyance safely off before he turned to leave
the station. After doing this he lost no time in re-crossing the water
again, and landed on the Yorkshire side of the Humber as the clocks of
Hull were striking four.

He was getting tired by this time, but he was not tired of his work. He
was accustomed to spending his days very much in this manner; he was
used to taking his sleep in railway carriages, and his meals at unusual
hours, whenever and wherever he could get time to take his food. He was
getting what ha called "peckish" now, and was just going to the
coffee-room of the Victoria Hotel with the intention of ordering a steak
and a glass of brandy-and-water--Mr. Carter never took beer, which is a
sleepy beverage, inimical to that perpetual clearness of intellect
necessary to a detective--when he changed his mind, and walked back to
the edge of the quay, to prowl along once more with his hands in his
pockets, looking at the vessels, and to take another inspection of the
deck and captain of the _Crow_.

"I shouldn't wonder if my gentleman's gone and hidden himself down below
the hatchway of that boat," he thought, as he walked slowly along the
quay-side. "I've half a mind to go on board and overhaul her."

CHAPTER XLIV.

CHASING THE "CROW."

Mr. Carter was so familiar with the spot alongside which the _Crow_ lay
at anchor, that he made straight for that part of the quay and looked
down over the side, fully expecting to see the dirty captain still lying
on the tarpaulin, smoking his dirty pipe.

But, to his amazement, he saw a strange vessel where he expected to see
the _Crow_, and in answer to his eager inquiries amongst the idlers on
the quay, and the other idlers on the boats, he was told that the _Crow_
had weighed anchor half an hour ago, and was over yonder.

The men pointed to a dingy speck out seaward as they gave Mr. Carter
this information--a speck which they assured him was neither more nor
less than the _Crow_, bound for Copenhagen.

Mr. Carter asked whether she had been expected to sail so soon.

No, the men told him; she was not expected to have sailed till daybreak
next morning, and there wasn't above two-thirds of her cargo aboard her
yet.

The detective asked if this wasn't rather a queer proceeding.

Yes, the men said, it was queer; but the master of the _Crow_ was a
queer chap altogether, and more than one absconding bankrupt had sailed
for furrin parts in the _Crow_. One of the men opined that the master
had got a swell cove on board to-day, inasmuch as he had seen such a one
hanging about the quay-side ten minutes or so before the _Crow_ sailed.

"Who'll catch her?" cried Mr. Carter; "which of you will catch her for a
couple of sovereigns?"

The men shook their heads. The _Crow_ had got too much of a start, they
said, considering that the wind was in her favour.

"But there's a chance that the wind may change after dark," returned the
detective. "Come, my men, don't hang back. Who'll catch the _Crow_
yonder for a fiver, come? Who'll catch her for a fi'-pound note?"

"I will," cried a burly young fellow in a scarlet guernsey, and shiny
boots that came nearly to his waist; "me and my mate will do it, won't
us, Jim?"

Jim was another burly young fellow in a blue guernsey, a fisherman, part
owner of a little bit of a smack with a brown mainsail. The two stalwart
young fishermen ran along the quay, and one of them dropped down into a
boat that was chained to an angle in the quay-side, where there was a
flight of slimy stone steps leading down to the water. The other young
man ran off to get some of the boat's tackle and a couple of shaggy
overcoats.

"We'd best take something to eat and drink, sir," the young man said, as
he came running back with these things; "we may be out all night, if we
try to catch yon vessel."

Mr. Carter gave the man a sovereign, and told him to get what he thought
proper.

"You'd best have something to cover you besides what you've got on,
sir," the fisherman said; "you'll find it rare and cold on 't water
after dark."

Mr. Carter assented to this proposition, and hurried off to buy himself
a railway rug; he had left his own at the railway station in Sawney
Tom's custody. He bought one at a shop near the quay, and was back to
the steps in ten minutes.

The fisherman in the blue guernsey was in the boat, which was a
stout-built craft in her way. The fisherman in the scarlet guernsey made
his appearance in less than five minutes, carrying a great stone bottle,
with a tin drinking-cup tied to the neck of it, and a rush basket filled
with some kind of provision. The stone bottle and the basket were
speedily stowed away in the bottom of the boat, and Mr. Carter was
invited to descend and take the seat pointed out to him.

"Can you steer, sir?" one of the men asked.

Yes, Mr. Carter was able to steer. There was very little that he had not
learned more or less in twenty years' knocking about the world.

He took the rudder when they had pushed out into the open water, the two
young men dipped their oars, and away the boat shot out towards that
seaward horizon on which only the keenest eyes could discover the black
speck that represented the _Crow_.

"If it should be a sell, after all," thought Mr. Carter; "and yet that's
not likely. If he wanted to double on me and get back to London, he'd
have gone by one of the trains we've watched; if he wanted to lie-by and
hide himself in the town, he wouldn't have disposed of any of his
diamonds yet awhile--and then, on the other hand, why should the _Crow_
have sailed before she'd got the whole of her cargo on board? Anyhow, I
think I have been wise to risk it, and follow the _Crow_. If this is a
wild-goose chase, I've been in wilder than this before to-day, and have
caught my man."

The little fishing smack behaved bravely when she got out to sea; but
even with the help of the oars, stoutly plied by the two young men, they
gained no way upon the _Crow_, for the black speck grew fainter and
fainter upon the horizon-line, and at last dropped down behind it
altogether.

"We shall never catch her," one of the men said, helping himself to a
cupful of spirit out of the stone-bottle, in a sudden access of
despondency. "We shall no more catch t' _Crow_ than we shall catch t'
day before yesterday, unless t' wind changes."

"I doubt t' wind will change after dark," answered the other young man,
who had applied himself oftener than his companion to the stone-bottle,
and took a more hopeful view of things. "I doubt but we shall have a
change come dark."

He was looking out to windward as he spoke. He took the rudder out of
Mr. Carter's hands presently, and that gentleman rolled himself in his
new railway rug, and lay down in the bottom of the boat, with one of the
men's overcoats for a blanket and the other for a pillow, and, hushed by
the monotonous plashing of the water against the keel of the boat, fell
into a pleasant slumber, whose blissfulness was only marred by the
gridiron-like sensation of the hard boards upon which he was lying.

He awoke from this slumber to hear that the wind had changed, and that
the _Pretty Polly_--the boat belonging to the two fishermen was called
the _Pretty Polly_--was gaining on the _Crow_.

"We shall be alongside of her in an hour," one of the men said.

Mr. Carter shook off the drowsy influence of his long sleep, and
scrambled to his feet. It was bright moonlight, and the little boat left
a trail of tremulous silver in her wake as she cut through the water.
Far away upon the horizon there was a faint speck of shimmering white,
to which one of the young men pointed with his brawny finger It was the
dirty mainsail of the _Crow_ bleached into silver whiteness under the
light of the moon.

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