TRACKING THE BIRD OF PREY
The two lime merchants, with their escort, entered the dominions of Miss
Abbey Potterson, to whom their escort (presenting them and their pretended
business over the half-door of the bar, in a confidential way) preferred his
figurative request that 'a mouthful of fire' might be lighted in Cosy. Always
well disposed to assist the constituted authorities, Miss Abbey bade Bob
Gliddery attend the gentlemen to that retreat, and promptly enliven it with fire
and gaslight. Of this commission the bare-armed Bob, leading the way with a
flaming wisp of paper, so speedily acquitted himself, that Cosy seemed to leap
out of a dark sleep and embrace them warmly, the moment they passed the lintels
of its hospitable door.
'They burn sherry very well here,' said Mr Inspector, as a piece of local
intelligence. 'Perhaps you gentlemen might like a bottle?'
The answer being By all means, Bob Gliddery received his instructions from Mr
Inspector, and departed in a becoming state of alacrity engendered by reverence
for the majesty of the law.
'It's a certain fact,' said Mr Inspector, 'that this man we have received our
information from,' indicating Riderhood with his thumb over his shoulder, 'has
for some time past given the other man a bad name arising out of your lime
barges, and that the other man has been avoided in consequence. I don't say what
it means or proves, but it's a certain fact. I had it first from one of the
opposite sex of my acquaintance,' vaguely indicating Miss Abbey with his thumb
over his shoulder, 'down away at a distance, over yonder.'
Then probably Mr Inspector was not quite unprepared for their visit that
evening? Lightwood hinted.
'Well you see,' said Mr Inspector, 'it was a question of making a move. It's
of no use moving if you don't know what your move is. You had better by far keep
still. In the matter of this lime, I certainly had an idea that it might lie
betwixt the two men; I always had that idea. Still I was forced to wait for a
start, and I wasn't so lucky as to get a start. This man that we have received
our information from, has got a start, and if he don't meet with a check he may
make the running and come in first. There may turn out to be something
considerable for him that comes in second, and I don't mention who may or who
may not try for that place. There's duty to do, and I shall do it, under any
circumstances; to the best of my judgment and ability.'
'Speaking as a shipper of lime--' began Eugene.
'Which no man has a better right to do than yourself, you know,' said Mr
Inspector.
'I hope not,' said Eugene; 'my father having been a shipper of lime before
me, and my grandfather before him--in fact we having been a family immersed to
the crowns of our heads in lime during several generations--I beg to observe
that if this missing lime could be got hold of without any young female relative
of any distinguished gentleman engaged in the lime trade (which I cherish next
to my life) being present, I think it might be a more agreeable proceeding to
the assisting bystanders, that is to say, lime-burners.'
'I also,' said Lightwood, pushing his friend aside with a laugh, 'should much
prefer that.'
'It shall be done, gentlemen, if it can be done conveniently,' said Mr
Inspector, with coolness. 'There is no wish on my part to cause any distress in
that quarter. Indeed, I am sorry for that quarter.'
'There was a boy in that quarter,' remarked Eugene. 'He is still there?'
'No,' said Mr Inspector.' He has quitted those works. He is otherwise
disposed of.'
'Will she be left alone then?' asked Eugene.
'She will be left,' said Mr Inspector, 'alone.'
Bob's reappearance with a steaming jug broke off the conversation. But
although the jug steamed forth a delicious perfume, its contents had not
received that last happy touch which the surpassing finish of the Six Jolly
Fellowship Porters imparted on such momentous occasions. Bob carried in his left
hand one of those iron models of sugar-loaf hats, before mentioned, into which
he emptied the jug, and the pointed end of which he thrust deep down into the
fire, so leaving it for a few moments while he disappeared and reappeared with
three bright drinking-glasses. Placing these on the table and bending over the
fire, meritoriously sensible of the trying nature of his duty, he watched the
wreaths of steam, until at the special instant of projection he caught up the
iron vessel and gave it one delicate twirl, causing it to send forth one gentle
hiss. Then he restored the contents to the jug; held over the steam of the jug,
each of the three bright glasses in succession; finally filled them all, and
with a clear conscience awaited the applause of his fellow-creatures.
It was bestowed (Mr Inspector having proposed as an appropriate sentiment
'The lime trade!') and Bob withdrew to report the commendations of the guests to
Miss Abbey in the bar. It may be here in confidence admitted that, the room
being close shut in his absence, there had not appeared to be the slightest
reason for the elaborate maintenance of this same lime fiction. Only it had been
regarded by Mr Inspector as so uncommonly satisfactory, and so fraught with
mysterious virtues, that neither of his clients had presumed to question it.
Two taps were now heard on the outside of the window. Mr Inspector, hastily
fortifying himself with another glass, strolled out with a noiseless foot and an
unoccupied countenance. As one might go to survey the weather and the general
aspect of the heavenly bodies.
'This is becoming grim, Mortimer,' said Eugene, in a low voice. 'I don't like
this.'
'Nor I' said Lightwood. 'Shall we go?'
'Being here, let us stay. You ought to see it out, and I won't leave you.
Besides, that lonely girl with the dark hair runs in my head. It was little more
than a glimpse we had of her that last time, and yet I almost see her waiting by
the fire to-night. Do you feel like a dark combination of traitor and pickpocket
when you think of that girl?'
'Rather,' returned Lightwood. 'Do you?'
'Very much so.'
Their escort strolled back again, and reported. Divested of its various
lime-lights and shadows, his report went to the effect that Gaffer was away in
his boat, supposed to be on his old look-out; that he had been expected last
high-water; that having missed it for some reason or other, he was not,
according to his usual habits at night, to be counted on before next high-water,
or it might be an hour or so later; that his daughter, surveyed through the
window, would seem to be so expecting him, for the supper was not cooking, but
set out ready to be cooked; that it would be high- water at about one, and that
it was now barely ten; that there was nothing to be done but watch and wait;
that the informer was keeping watch at the instant of that present reporting,
but that two heads were better than one (especially when the second was Mr
Inspector's); and that the reporter meant to share the watch. And forasmuch as
crouching under the lee of a hauled-up boat on a night when it blew cold and
strong, and when the weather was varied with blasts of hail at times, might be
wearisome to amateurs, the reporter closed with the recommendation that the two
gentlemen should remain, for a while at any rate, in their present quarters,
which were weather-tight and warm.
They were not inclined to dispute this recommendation, but they wanted to
know where they could join the watchers when so disposed. Rather than trust to a
verbal description of the place, which might mislead, Eugene (with a less
weighty sense of personal trouble on him than he usually had) would go out with
Mr Inspector, note the spot, and come back.
On the shelving bank of the river, among the slimy stones of a causeway--not
the special causeway of the Six Jolly Fellowships, which had a landing-place of
its own, but another, a little removed, and very near to the old windmill which
was the denounced man's dwelling-place--were a few boats; some, moored and
already beginning to float; others, hauled up above the reach of the tide. Under
one of these latter, Eugene's companion disappeared. And when Eugene had
observed its position with reference to the other boats, and had made sure that
he could not miss it, he turned his eyes upon the building where, as he had been
told, the lonely girl with the dark hair sat by the fire.
He could see the light of the fire shining through the window. Perhaps it
drew him on to look in. Perhaps he had come out with the express intention. That
part of the bank having rank grass growing on it, there was no difficulty in
getting close, without any noise of footsteps: it was but to scramble up a
ragged face of pretty hard mud some three or four feet high and come upon the
grass and to the window. He came to the window by that means.
She had no other light than the light of the fire. The unkindled lamp stood
on the table. She sat on the ground, looking at the brazier, with her face
leaning on her hand. There was a kind of film or flicker on her face, which at
first he took to be the fitful firelight; but, on a second look, he saw that she
was weeping. A sad and solitary spectacle, as shown him by the rising and the
falling of the fire.
It was a little window of but four pieces of glass, and was not curtained; he
chose it because the larger window near it was. It showed him the room, and the
bills upon the wall respecting the drowned people starting out and receding by
turns. But he glanced slightly at them, though he looked long and steadily at
her. A deep rich piece of colour, with the brown flush of her cheek and the
shining lustre of her hair, though sad and solitary, weeping by the rising and
the falling of the fire.
She started up. He had been so very still that he felt sure it was not he who
had disturbed her, so merely withdrew from the window and stood near it in the
shadow of the wall. She opened the door, and said in an alarmed tone, 'Father,
was that you calling me?' And again, 'Father!' And once again, after listening,
'Father! I thought I heard you call me twice before!'
No response. As she re-entered at the door, he dropped over the bank and made
his way back, among the ooze and near the hiding- place, to Mortimer Lightwood:
to whom he told what he had seen of the girl, and how this was becoming very
grim indeed.
'If the real man feels as guilty as I do,' said Eugene, 'he is remarkably
uncomfortable.'
'Influence of secrecy,' suggested Lightwood.
'I am not at all obliged to it for making me Guy Fawkes in the vault and a
Sneak in the area both at once,' said Eugene. 'Give me some more of that stuff.'
Lightwood helped him to some more of that stuff, but it had been cooling, and
didn't answer now.
'Pooh,' said Eugene, spitting it out among the ashes. 'Tastes like the wash
of the river.'
'Are you so familiar with the flavour of the wash of the river?'
'I seem to be to-night. I feel as if I had been half drowned, and swallowing
a gallon of it.'
'Influence of locality,' suggested Lightwood.
'You are mighty learned to-night, you and your influences,' returned Eugene.
'How long shall we stay here?'
'How long do you think?'
'If I could choose, I should say a minute,' replied Eugene, 'for the Jolly
Fellowship Porters are not the jolliest dogs I have known. But I suppose we are
best here until they turn us out with the other suspicious characters, at
midnight.'
Thereupon he stirred the fire, and sat down on one side of it. It struck
eleven, and he made believe to compose himself patiently. But gradually he took
the fidgets in one leg, and then in the other leg, and then in one arm, and then
in the other arm, and then in his chin, and then in his back, and then in his
forehead, and then in his hair, and then in his nose; and then he stretched
himself recumbent on two chairs, and groaned; and then he started up.
'Invisible insects of diabolical activity swarm in this place. I am tickled
and twitched all over. Mentally, I have now committed a burglary under the
meanest circumstances, and the myrmidons of justice are at my heels.'
'I am quite as bad,' said Lightwood, sitting up facing him, with a tumbled
head; after going through some wonderful evolutions, in which his head had been
the lowest part of him. 'This restlessness began with me, long ago. All the time
you were out, I felt like Gulliver with the Lilliputians firing upon him.'
'It won't do, Mortimer. We must get into the air; we must join our dear
friend and brother, Riderhood. And let us tranquillize ourselves by making a
compact. Next time (with a view to our peace of mind) we'll commit the crime,
instead of taking the criminal. You swear it?'
'Certainly.'
'Sworn! Let Tippins look to it. Her life's in danger.'
Mortimer rang the bell to pay the score, and Bob appeared to transact that
business with him: whom Eugene, in his careless extravagance, asked if he would
like a situation in the lime-trade?
'Thankee sir, no sir,' said Bob. 'I've a good sitiwation here, sir.'
'If you change your mind at any time,' returned Eugene, 'come to me at my
works, and you'll always find an opening in the lime- kiln.'
'Thankee sir,' said Bob.
'This is my partner,' said Eugene, 'who keeps the books and attends to the
wages. A fair day's wages for a fair day's work is ever my partner's motto.'
'And a very good 'un it is, gentlemen,' said Bob, receiving his fee, and
drawing a bow out of his head with his right hand, very much as he would have
drawn a pint of beer out of the beer engine.
'Eugene,' Mortimer apostrophized him, laughing quite heartily when they were
alone again, 'how CAN you be so ridiculous?'
'I am in a ridiculous humour,' quoth Eugene; 'I am a ridiculous fellow.
Everything is ridiculous. Come along!'
It passed into Mortimer Lightwood's mind that a change of some sort, best
expressed perhaps as an intensification of all that was wildest and most
negligent and reckless in his friend, had come upon him in the last half-hour or
so. Thoroughly used to him as he was, he found something new and strained in him
that was for the moment perplexing. This passed into his mind, and passed out
again; but he remembered it afterwards.
'There's where she sits, you see,' said Eugene, when they were standing under
the bank, roared and riven at by the wind. 'There's the light of her fire.'
'I'll take a peep through the window,' said Mortimer.
'No, don't!' Eugene caught him by the arm. 'Best, not make a show of her.
Come to our honest friend.'
He led him to the post of watch, and they both dropped down and crept under
the lee of the boat; a better shelter than it had seemed before, being directly
contrasted with the blowing wind and the bare night.
'Mr Inspector at home?' whispered Eugene.
'Here I am, sir.'
'And our friend of the perspiring brow is at the far corner there? Good.
Anything happened?'
'His daughter has been out, thinking she heard him calling, unless it was a
sign to him to keep out of the way. It might have been.'
'It might have been Rule Britannia,' muttered Eugene, 'but it wasn't.
Mortimer!'
'Here!' (On the other side of Mr Inspector.)
'Two burglaries now, and a forgery!'
With this indication of his depressed state of mind, Eugene fell silent.
They were all silent for a long while. As it got to be flood-tide, and the
water came nearer to them, noises on the river became more frequent, and they
listened more. To the turning of steam- paddles, to the clinking of iron chain,
to the creaking of blocks, to the measured working of oars, to the occasional
violent barking of some passing dog on shipboard, who seemed to scent them lying
in their hiding-place. The night was not so dark but that, besides the lights at
bows and mastheads gliding to and fro, they could discern some shadowy bulk
attached; and now and then a ghostly lighter with a large dark sail, like a
warning arm, would start up very near them, pass on, and vanish. At this time of
their watch, the water close to them would be often agitated by some impulsion
given it from a distance. Often they believed this beat and plash to be the boat
they lay in wait for, running in ashore; and again and again they would have
started up, but for the immobility with which the informer, well used to the
river, kept quiet in his place.
The wind carried away the striking of the great multitude of city church
clocks, for those lay to leeward of them; but there were bells to windward that
told them of its being One--Two--Three. Without that aid they would have known
how the night wore, by the falling of the tide, recorded in the appearance of an
ever- widening black wet strip of shore, and the emergence of the paved causeway
from the river, foot by foot.
As the time so passed, this slinking business became a more and more
precarious one. It would seem as if the man had had some intimation of what was
in hand against him, or had taken fright? His movements might have been planned
to gain for him, in getting beyond their reach, twelve hours' advantage? The
honest man who had expended the sweat of his brow became uneasy, and began to
complain with bitterness of the proneness of mankind to cheat him--him invested
with the dignity of Labour!
Their retreat was so chosen that while they could watch the river, they could
watch the house. No one had passed in or out, since the daughter thought she
heard the father calling. No one could pass in or out without being seen.
'But it will be light at five,' said Mr Inspector, 'and then WE shall be
seen.'
'Look here,' said Riderhood, 'what do you say to this? He may have been
lurking in and out, and just holding his own betwixt two or three bridges, for
hours back.'
'What do you make of that?' said Mr Inspector. Stoical, but contradictory.
'He may be doing so at this present time.'
'What do you make of that?' said Mr Inspector.
'My boat's among them boats here at the cause'ay.'
'And what do you make of your boat?' said Mr Inspector.
'What if I put off in her and take a look round? I know his ways, and the
likely nooks he favours. I know where he'd be at such a time of the tide, and
where he'd be at such another time. Ain't I been his pardner? None of you need
show. None of you need stir. I can shove her off without help; and as to me
being seen, I'm about at all times.'
'You might have given a worse opinion,' said Mr Inspector, after brief
consideration. 'Try it.'
'Stop a bit. Let's work it out. If I want you, I'll drop round under the
Fellowships and tip you a whistle.'
'If I might so far presume as to offer a suggestion to my honourable and
gallant friend, whose knowledge of naval matters far be it from me to impeach,'
Eugene struck in with great deliberation, 'it would be, that to tip a whistle is
to advertise mystery and invite speculation. My honourable and gallant friend
will, I trust, excuse me, as an independent member, for throwing out a remark
which I feel to be due to this house and the country.'
'Was that the T'other Governor, or Lawyer Lightwood?' asked Riderhood. For,
they spoke as they crouched or lay, without seeing one another's faces.
'In reply to the question put by my honourable and gallant friend,' said
Eugene, who was lying on his back with his hat on his face, as an attitude
highly expressive of watchfulness, 'I can have no hesitation in replying (it not
being inconsistent with the public service) that those accents were the accents
of the T'other Governor.'
'You've tolerable good eyes, ain't you, Governor? You've all tolerable good
eyes, ain't you?' demanded the informer.
All.
'Then if I row up under the Fellowship and lay there, no need to whistle.
You'll make out that there's a speck of something or another there, and you'll
know it's me, and you'll come down that cause'ay to me. Understood all?'
Understood all.
'Off she goes then!'
In a moment, with the wind cutting keenly at him sideways, he was staggering
down to his boat; in a few moments he was clear, and creeping up the river under
their own shore.
Eugene had raised himself on his elbow to look into the darkness after him.
'I wish the boat of my honourable and gallant friend,' he murmured, lying down
again and speaking into his hat, 'may be endowed with philanthropy enough to
turn bottom-upward and extinguish him!--Mortimer.'
'My honourable friend.'
'Three burglaries, two forgeries, and a midnight assassination.' Yet in spite
of having those weights on his conscience, Eugene was somewhat enlivened by the
late slight change in the circumstances of affairs. So were his two companions.
Its being a change was everything. The suspense seemed to have taken a new
lease, and to have begun afresh from a recent date. There was something
additional to look for. They were all three more sharply on the alert, and less
deadened by the miserable influences of the place and time.
More than an hour had passed, and they were even dozing, when one of the
three--each said it was he, and he had NOT dozed-- made out Riderhood in his
boat at the spot agreed on. They sprang up, came out from their shelter, and
went down to him. When he saw them coming, he dropped alongside the causeway; so
that they, standing on the causeway, could speak with him in whispers, under the
shadowy mass of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters fast asleep.
'Blest if I can make it out!' said he, staring at them.
'Make what out? Have you seen him?'
'No.'
'What HAVE you seen?' asked Lightwood. For, he was staring at them in the
strangest way.
'I've seen his boat.'
'Not empty?'
'Yes, empty. And what's more,--adrift. And what's more,--with one scull gone.
And what's more,--with t'other scull jammed in the thowels and broke short off.
And what's more,--the boat's drove tight by the tide 'atwixt two tiers of
barges. And what's more,--he's in luck again, by George if he ain't!'
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