Strong in his conviction that the story of Hazel Rath was largely the product of an hysterical imagination, Merrington dismissed it from his mind and devoted all his energies to the search for Nepcote. The task looked a difficult one, but Merrington did not despair of accomplishing it before the day came round for the adjourned hearing of the charge against the girl. He knew that it was a difficult matter for a wanted man to remain uncaptured in a civilized community for any length of time if the pursuit was determined enough, and in this instance the military police were assisting the criminal authorities.
Merrington's own plans for Nepcote's capture were based on the belief that he had not the means to get away from London unless the Heredith necklace was still in his possession. As that seemed likely enough, Nepcote's description was circulated among the pawn-brokers and jewellers, with a request that anyone offering the necklace should be detained until a policeman could be called in. He also had Nepcote's former haunts watched in case the young man endeavoured to approach any of his friends or acquaintances for a loan. Having taken these steps in the hope of starving Nepcote into surrender if he was not caught in the meantime, Merrington next directed the resources at his command to putting London through a fine-tooth comb, as he expressed it, in the effort to get hold of his man.
But it was to chance that he owed his first indication of Nepcote's movements since his disappearance. He was dictating official correspondence in his private room at Scotland Yard three days after his visit to Lewes, when a subordinate officer entered to say that a man had called who wished to see somebody in authority. It was Merrington's custom to interview callers who visited Scotland Yard on mysterious errands which they refused to disclose in the outer office. The information he received from such sources more than compensated for the occasional intrusion of criminals with grudges or bores with public grievances.
The man who followed the janitor into the room was neither the one nor the other, but a weazened white-faced Londoner, with a shrewd eye and the false, cringing smile of a small shopkeeper. He explained in the strident vernacular of the Cockney that his name was Henry Hobbs--"Enery Obbs" was his own version of it--and he kept a pawnbroker's shop in the Caledonian Road. It was his intention to have called at Scotland Yard earlier, he explained, but his arrangements had been upset by a domestic event in his own household.
"They've kep' me runnin' about ever since it happened," he added, bestowing a wink of subtle meaning upon the pretty typist who had been taking Merrington's correspondence. "The ladies--bless their 'earts--always make a fuss over a little one."
"When it is legitimate," Merrington gruffly corrected. "Miss Benson," he said, turning to the typist, who sat in a state of suspended animation over the typewriter at the word where he had left off dictating, "you can leave me for a little while and come back later. Now my man," he went on, as the door closed behind her, "I've no time to waste discussing babies. Tell me the object of your visit."
The little man stood his ground with the imperturbable assurance of the Cockney.
"We thought of calling it Victory 'Aig. Victory, because our London lads seem likely to finish off the war in double-quick time, and 'Aig after our commander, good old Duggie 'Aig, whose name is every bit good enough for my baby. What do you think? Don't get your 'air off, guv'nor," Mr. Hobbs hastily protested, in some alarm at the expression of Merrington's face, "I'm coming to it fast enough, but my head is so full of this here kiddy that I hardly know whether I'm standing on my 'ead or my 'eels. It's like this 'ere: a few days ago there was a young man come into my shop to pawn his weskit. I lent him arf-a-crown on it and he goes away. But, yesterday afternoon he comes back to pawn, a little pencil-case, on which I lends him a shilling. Now, I shouldn't be surprised if this young man wasn't the young man we was warned to look out for as likely to offer a pearl necklace."
"What makes you think so?"
"By the description. I didn't notice him much at first, but I did the second time, perhaps because I'd just been reading over the 'andbill before he come in. He looks a bit the worse for wear since it was drawn up--hadn't been shaved and seemed down on his luck--but I should say it was the same man, even to the bits of grey on the temples. Bin a bit of a dandy and a gentleman before he run to seed, I should say."
"What makes you think that?" asked Merrington, who had scant belief in the theory that gentility has a hallmark of its own.
"Not his white hands--they're nothing to go by. It was his clothes. I was a tailor in Windmill Street before I went in for pawnbroking, and I know. This chap's suit hadn't been 'acked out in the City or in one of those places in Cheapside where they put notices in the window to say that the foreman cutter is the only man in the street who gets twelve quid a week. They hadn't come from Crouch End, neither. They was first-class West End garments. It's the same with clothes as it is with thoroughbred hosses and women--you can always tell them, no matter how they've come down in the world. And it's like that with boots too. This chap's boots hadn't been cleaned for days, but they were boots, and not holes to put your feet into, like most people wear."
"You made no effort to detain him?"
"How could I? He didn't offer the necklace, or say anything about jewels, so I had no reason for stopping him. I could see 'e was as nervous as a lady the whole time he was in the shop, so before I gave him a shilling for his pencil I marked it with a cross as something to 'elp the police get on his tracks in case he is the man you're after. When he left I went to my door to see if there was a policeman in sight, but of course there wasn't. I doubt if he'd have got him, though. He was off like a shot as soon as he got the shilling--down a side street and then up another, going towards King's Cross. Here's the pencil-case he pawned. I didn't bring the weskit, but you can 'ave it if it's any good to you."
Merrington glanced carelessly at the little silver pencil-case, and after asking the pawnbroker a few questions he permitted him to depart. Then he touched his bell and sent for Detective Caldew.
Half an hour later Caldew emerged from his chief's room in possession of the pawnbroker's story, with the addition of as much authoritative counsel as the mind of Merrington could suggest for its investigation. Caldew did not relish the task of following up the slender clue. He had not been impressed by the relation of Mr. Hobbs' supposed recognition of Nepcote, although as a detective he was aware that unlikely statements were sometimes followed by important results. But the element of luck entered largely into the elucidation of chance testimony. There were some men in Scotland Yard who could turn a seeming fairy tale into a startling fact, but there were others who failed when the probabilities were stronger. Caldew accounted himself one of these unlucky ones.
But luck was with him that day. At least, it seemed so to him that evening, as he returned to Holborn after a long and trying afternoon spent in the squalid streets and slums of St Pancras and Islington. The goddess of Chance, bestowing her favours with true feminine caprice, had taken it into her wanton head, at the last moment, to accomplish for him the seemingly impossible feat of tracing the pawnbroker's marked shilling, through various dirty hands, to the pocket of the man who had pawned the pencil-case. Whether she would grant him the last favour of all, by enabling him to prove whether this man and Nepcote were identical, was a point Caldew intended to put to the proof that night.
Caldew was in high good humour with himself at such a successful day's work, and he alighted from the tram with the intention of passing a couple of hours pleasantly by treating himself to a little dinner in town before returning to Islington to complete his investigations. He wandered along from New Oxford Street to Charing Cross by way of Soho, scanning the restaurant menus as he passed with the indecisive air of a poor man unused to the privilege of paying high rates for bad food in strange surroundings.
The foreign smells and greasy messes of Old Compton Street repelled his English appetite, and he did not care to mingle with the herds of suburban dwellers who were celebrating the fact that they were alive by making uncouth merriment over three-and-sixpenny tables d'hotes and crude Burgundy and Chianti in the cheap glitter of Wardour Street. As a disciplined husband and father, Caldew's purse did not permit of his going further West for his refection, so when he reached Charing Cross he turned his face in the direction of Fleet Street. He had almost made up his mind in favour of a small English eating-house half-way down the Strand, when he encountered Colwyn.
The private detective was wearing a worn tweed-suit and soft hat, which had the effect of making a considerable alteration in his appearance. He was about to enter the eating-house, but stopped at the sight of Caldew looking in the window, and advanced to shake hands with him.
"Thinking of dining here, Caldew?" he asked.
"Yes," replied Caldew. "It seems a quiet place."
"It certainly has that merit," responded Colwyn, glancing into the empty interior of the little restaurant. "You had better dine with me if you have nothing better to do. I should like to have a talk with you."
Caldew expressed a pleased acquiescence. He had not seen the private detective since he had taken him a copy of Merrington's notes of his interview with Hazel Rath, and he wished to know whether Colwyn had made any fresh discoveries in the Heredith case.
At their entrance, a waiter reclining against the cash desk sprang into supple life, and with a smile of prospective gratitude sped ahead up the staircase, casting backward glances of invitation like a gustatory siren enticing them to a place of bliss. He led them into a room overlooking the Thames Embankment, hung up their hats, took the wine card from the frame of the mirror over the mantelpiece, wrote down the order for the dinner, and disappeared downstairs to get the dishes.
"It seems to me that you've been here before," said Caldew.
"I always come here when I have an expedition in hand," was the response.
Caldew wondered whether his companion's expedition was connected with the Heredith mystery, but before he could frame the question the waiter returned with a bottle of wine, and shortly afterwards the dinner appeared. It was not until the meal was concluded that Colwyn broached the subject which was uppermost in his guest's thoughts by asking him if he had met with any success in his search for Nepcote.
"We are still looking for him," was Caldew's guarded reply, as he accepted a cigar from his companion's case.
"In Islington, for instance?" The light Colwyn held to his own cigar revealed the smile on his lips.
Caldew was so surprised at this shrewd guess that his match slipped from his fingers.
"What makes you think we are looking for Nepcote in Islington?" he demanded.
"I am not unacquainted with the ingenious methods of Scotland Yard," was the reply. "I can see Merrington working it out with a scale map of London to help him. He is convinced that Nepcote is still in London without a penny in his pockets. Merrington asks himself what Nepcote is likely to do in such circumstances? Borrow from his friends or attempt to cash a cheque? We will guard against that by watching his clubs and his bank. Raise funds on the necklace--if he has it? Merrington knows how to stop that by warning the pawn-brokers and jewellers. When he has done so he has the satisfaction of feeling that his man is cut off from supplies, wandering penniless in stony-hearted London, as helpless as a babe in the wood. Where will he hide? He is a West End man, knowing little of London outside of Piccadilly, so the chances are that he will not get very far, and that his wanderings will end in surrender or starvation. But Scotland Yard cannot wait for him to surrender, and Merrington, with an imagination stimulated by the necessity of finding him, decides in favour of Islington--the so-called Merry Islington of obsequious London chroniclers, though, so far as my personal observation goes, its inhabitants are merry only when in liquor. Islington is congested, Islington contains criminals, and Islington is an ideal hiding-place. Therefore, says Merrington, let us seek our man there."
"Oh, come, Mr. Colwyn, you don't put me off like that. Somebody must have told you that I was out there to-day."
"I saw you myself. As a matter of fact, I have been looking for Nepcote in that part of London--in an area between Farringdon Street and Euston."
"Why there in particular? London is a wide field."
"I have endeavoured to narrow it by considering the possibilities. The suburbs are unsafe, and so is the West End; the City affords no shelter for a fugitive. There remain the poorer congested areas, the docks, and the East End. But that does not help us very much, because there is still a vast field left. What narrowed it considerably for me is my strong belief, taking all the circumstances into consideration, that Nepcote has not got very far from where we last saw him. What finally determined me to select Islington as a starting point for my search was that strange law of human gravitation which impels a fugitive to seek a criminal quarter for shelter. A hunted man seems to develop a keen scent for those who, like himself, are outside the law. Islington, as you are aware, has a large percentage of criminals in its population. At any rate, I am looking for Nepcote in Islington."
"Although I could pick flaws in your theory, I am bound to say that you are right," said Caldew. "Nepcote is hiding in Islington. At least, we think so," he cautiously added.
"Good! How did you find out?"
Caldew gave his companion particulars of the pawnbroker's visit to Scotland Yard that morning.
"I have been looking for Mr. Hobbs' marked shilling in the small shops between King's Cross and Upper Street all the afternoon," he said. "I traced it quite by accident after I had decided to give up the attempt. One of the uniformed men at the Angel happened to tell me, as a joke, about a coffeestall keeper who had gone to him in a fury that morning about a chance customer, who, in his own words, had diddled him for a bob overnight. He showed the policeman a shilling he had taken from the man, and was under the impression that it was a bad one because it was marked with a cross. The policeman put the coin in his pocket and gave the man another one to get rid of him. I obtained the shilling from him, and went to see the coffeestall keeper. His description of the man who passed it resembled Nepcote, and he added the information that the customer, after changing the shilling for a cup of coffee, had asked him where he could get a bed. The coffeestall keeper directed him to a cheap lodging-house near the Angel. I went to his lodging-house, and ascertained that a man answering to the description had slept there last night, and on leaving this morning said that he would return there for a bed to-night. I have a policeman watching the place, and I am going out there shortly to see this chap--if he comes back. Do you care to go with me?"
"I'll go with pleasure," said Colwyn, who had listened to this story with close attention.
"Then we'd better be getting along. But, I say, don't mention this to Merrington if anything goes wrong and I don't pull it off. The old man has his knife into me over this case, and my life wouldn't be worth living if Nepcote slipped through our fingers again. I want to try and surprise him, and let him see that there are other men at Scotland Yard besides himself."
"I don't think you have much to fear from Merrington," said Colwyn, laughing outright. "He is in a chastened mood at present. But you can rely on my discretion, and I hope you will get your man."
"I believe I shall," returned Caldew in a confident tone. "Shall we make a start?"
Colwyn paid the bill, and they set out through the darkened streets, upon which a light autumn fog was descending. The Kingsway underground tramway carried them to the Angel, where they got off. Caldew threaded his way through the unwashed population of that centre, and turned into a side street where a swarm of draggle-tailed women were chaffering for decaying greens heaped on costers' stalls in the middle of the road. He turned again into a narrower street running off this street market, and stopped when he got to the end of it. He nudged his companion, and pointed to a sign of "Good Beds," visible beneath a flare in a doorway opposite.
"That's the place," he said.
A policeman came up to them, looming out of the fog as suddenly as a spectre, and nodded to Caldew.
"Nothing doing," he briefly announced. "I've watched the place ever since, but he hasn't been in."
"All right," said Caldew. "You can leave it to me now. I shan't need you any longer. Good night!"
"Good night, and good night to you, Mr. Colwyn," the policeman responded, turning with a smile to the private detective. "I didn't recognize you at first because of the fog. I didn't know you were in this job."
"And I hope that you won't mention it, now that you do know," interposed Caldew hastily.
"Not me. I'm not one of the talking sort." The policeman nodded again in a friendly fashion, and disappeared down the side street.
The two detectives stood there, watching, screened from passing observation in the deep doorway of an empty shop. The flare which swung in the doorway opposite permitted them to take stock of everybody who entered the lodging-house in quest of a bed. By its light they could even decipher beneath the large sign of "Good Beds, Eightpence," a smaller sign which added, "Or Two Persons, a Shilling," which, by its careful wording, seemed to hint that those entranced in Love's young dream might seek the seclusion of the bowers within unhindered by awkward questions of conventional morality, and, by its triumphant vindication of the time-worn sentiment that love conquers all, tended to reassure democracy that the difference between West End hotels and Islington lodging-houses was one of price only.
But the visitors to the lodging-house that night suggested thraldom to less romantic tyrants than Cupid. Drink, disease and want were the masters of the ill-favoured men who shambled within at intervals, thrusting the price of a bed through a pigeon-hole at the entrance, receiving a dirty ticket in exchange. These transactions, and the faces of the frowzy lodgers were clearly visible to the watchers across the road, but none of the men resembled Nepcote. Shortly after ten o'clock raindrops began to fall sluggishly through the fog, and, as if that were the signal for closing, the figure of a man appeared in the lodging-house doorway and proceeded to extinguish the flare.
"We had better go over," Caldew said.
They walked across the oozing road, and he accosted the man in the doorway.
"You're closing early to-night," he observed.
The man desisted from his occupation to stare at them. He was an ill-favoured specimen of an immortal soul, with a bloated face, a pendulous stomach, and a week's growth of beard on his dirty chin. A short black pipe was thrust upside down in his mouth, and his attire consisted of a shirt open at the neck, a pair of trousers upheld by no visible support, and a pair of old slippers. Apparently satisfied from his prolonged inspection of the two visitors that they were not in search of lodgings, he replied in a surly tone:
"What the hell's that to do with you? If you let us know when you're coming we'll keep open all night--I don't think."
Caldew pushed past him without deigning to parley, and opened a door adjoining the entrance pigeon-hole. A man was seated at the table within, reckoning the night's takings by the light of a candle. It was strange to see one so near the grave counting coppers with such avid greed. His withered old face was long and yellow, and the prominent cheekbones and fallen cheeks gave it a coffinlike shape. His sunken little eyes were almost lost to view beneath bushy overhanging eyebrows, and from his shrunken mouth a single black tusk protruded upward, as though bent on reaching the tip of a long sharp nose. He started up from his accounts in fright as the door was flung open, and thrust a hand in a drawer near him, perhaps in quest of a weapon. Then he recognized Caldew, and smiled the propitiatory smile of one who had reason to fear the forces of authority.
"That chap you're after didn't turn up to-night," he mumbled.
"You're closing very early. He may come yet."
"Tain't no use if 'e do. 'E won't get in. All my reg'lars is in, and I ain't going to waste light waiting for a chance eightpence. P'r'aps you'd like to see the room where he slep' last night?"
Caldew nodded, and the lodging-house keeper, calling in the man they had seen closing the door, directed him to show the gentlemen the single room. The man lit a candle, and took the detectives upstairs to the top of the house. He opened the door of a very small and filthy room, with sloping ceiling and a broken window. A piece of dirty rag which had been hung across the window flapped noisily as the rain beat through the hole. The man held up the candle to enable the visitors to see the apartment to the greatest advantage.
"We charge tuppence more for this bedroom because it's a single doss," he said, not without a touch of pride in his tone.
"And well worth the money," remarked Caldew.
"Look here, Mr. ---- Funnysides, I didn't bring you up here to listen to no sarcastical remarks," retorted the man, with the sudden fury of a heavy drinker. "If you've seen enough, you'd better clear out. I want to get to bed."
"You had better behave yourself if you don't want to get into trouble," counselled Caldew.
"So you're a rozzer, are you? D--d if I didn't think so soon as I clapped eyes on you. But you've got nothing against me, so I don't care a snap of my fingers for you. You'd better hurry up."
Caldew took no further notice of him, but joined Colwyn in examining the room. They found nothing giving any indication of its last tenant. The only articles in the room were a bed, a broken chair, and a beam of wood shoved diagonally against one of the walls, which threatened to fall in on the first windy night and bury the wretched bed and its occupant. After a brief search they turned away and went downstairs. The door was immediately slammed behind them, and the turning of the lock and the rattling of a chain told them that the place was closed for the night.
Pulling up his coat collar in an effort to shield himself from the persistence of the rain, Caldew expressed his disappointment at the failure of the night's expedition in a bitter jibe at his bad luck. At first he thought he would wait a little longer on the watch, then he changed his mind as he glanced at the unpromising night, and decided that it wasn't worth while. He lived in Edgeware Road, so he shook hands with Colwyn and set out for the Underground at King's Cross.
Colwyn returned to the Angel to look for a taxi-cab. The fog was lifting, and crowds were emerging from the cinemas and a music-hall with the fatigued look of people who have paid in vain to be entertained. Outside the music-hall some taxi-cabs were waiting for the more opulent patrons of refined vaudeville who had been drawn within by the rare promise of an intellectual baboon, reputed to have the brains of a statesman, which shared the honours of "the top of the bill" with two charming sisters from a West End show. The drivers of the taxi-cabs said they were engaged, and uncivilly refused to drive the detective to Ludgate Circus.
A Bermondsey omnibus came plunging through the fog, scattering the filth of the road on the hurrying pleasure-goers, and stopped at the corner to add to its grievous load of damp humanity. Those already in the darkened interior sat stiffly motionless, like corpses in a mortuary wagon, as the new-comers scrambled in, scattering mud and water over them, feeling for the overhead straps. Colwyn did not attempt to enter. Even a Smithfield tram-car would be better than the interior of a 'bus on a wet night.
An ancient four-wheeler went past, crawling dejectedly homeward. The driver checked his gaunt horse at the sight of Colwyn standing on the kerb-stone, and raised an interrogative whip. He added a vocal appeal for hire based on the incredible assumption that a man must live, which he proclaimed with a whip elevated to the sodden heavens, calling on a God, invisible in the fog, to bear witness that he hadn't turned a wheel that night. The phrasing of the appeal helped Colwyn to recall that it was the same cabman who had accosted Philip Heredith and himself on the night they had motored to the moat-house.
He engaged the cab and entered the dark interior. The whip which had been uplifted in pious aspiration fell in benedictory thanks on the bare ribs of the horse. The equipage jolted over the Angel crossing into the squalid precincts of St. John's Street. In a short time the overpowering smell of slaughtered beasts announced the proximity of Smithfield. The cab turned down Charterhouse Street towards Farringdon Market, and a little later pulled up under the archway at Ludgate Circus.
"I leaves it to you, sir," said the cabman, in a husky whisper. His expectant palm closed rigidly on the silver coins, and his whip fell on the lean sides of his horse with a crack like a pistol shot as he wheeled round, leaving the detective standing in the road.
The fog had almost cleared away, but the unlighted streets were plunged in deep gloom, through which groups of late wayfarers passed dimly and melted vaguely, like ghosts in the darkness of eternity. As Colwyn was about to enter the corridor leading to his chambers, a man brushed past him in the doorway. There was something about the figure which struck the detective as familiar, and he walked quickly after him. By the light of the departing cab he saw his face. It was Nepcote.
