CHAPTER XXVIAFTER THEEXPLOSION

CHAPTER XXVIAFTER THEEXPLOSION

My next recollection was that of opening my eyes to find myself lying at night in my room at Buckingham Street. I made an effort to sit up in bed, but my head had suddenly become curiously heavy—so heavy that the effort to raise it was almost too much for me, and I was glad to fall back upon the pillow, where I lay a moment feeling more faint and feeble than I had ever felt before. Then there glided gently into the room—into my bachelor room—a pleasant-looking young woman in a gray dress with white collar and cuffs.

“What’s happened, nurse?” I said, recognising at once what she was—which was more than could be said of my voice, for it had become so thin and piping that its unfamiliarity startled me.

“Oh, nothing has happened of any consequence,” she replied smilingly, “except thatyou have not been very well. But you’re mending now, and another day or two will see you quite yourself.”

“What’s been the matter with me?” I asked.

“You got a blow on the head by the fall of a chimney,” she replied. “But I can’t let you talk now. Mr. Grant is coming in to sleep here to-night, as I’ve promised to take a turn sitting up with a patient who is very ill. You can ask Mr. Grant to tell you anything you wish to know in the morning, but now you must go to sleep.”

That somethinghadhappened, notwithstanding her assurance to the contrary, I felt sure; but what that something was I did not know, nor did I very much care, for I felt dull and silly, and more than inclined to follow her advice.

This I must in the end have done, for when next I opened my eyes it was broad daylight, and Grant was standing in his shirt sleeves before the looking-glass, shaving. My head was clearer now, and I was able to recall what had taken place up to the moment when I had lost my senses after the explosion at the General Post Office.

“Have they got him, Grant?” I inquired.

He jumped like a “kicking” rifle.

“Good Lord! old man, how you startled me! You’ve made me slash myself horribly. Got whom?” he said.

“Mullen,” I answered.

“Mullen? Oh, then you do know all about it? No, they haven’t. But how are you feeling?”

“Like a boiled owl. How long have I been ill?”

“Three weeks. You got knocked on the head by a chimney-pot or something, and had a touch of concussion of the brain.”

“Was there much damage done?”

“Damage? I believe you. The top of Cheapside pretty near blown away, and the General Post Office half wrecked.”

“How did I get here?”

“In fine state, my boy—on a stretcher. They were taking you to the hospital when I came along—which I did as soon as I heard about the explosion—but I said I knew you, and told them who you were, and had you brought here instead. And a bad time you’ve had of it, I can tell you. But now you mustn’t talk any more.”

“Oh, I’m all right! Tell me, were there many people killed?”

“A good many in the Post Office, but not many outside. You see, being Saturday, most of the places were empty, except for caretakers. And now go to sleep.”

“One more question only. Does any one know I was after Mullen when it happened?”

“No, they thought you were passing by chance. You see I told them who you were, but I couldn’t tell them what had happened, as I didn’t know, and you couldn’t speak for yourself, so I thought I’d better say nothing until you were well enough to tell your own story.”

“And Mullen got clean away?”

“Look here, old man, this won’t do, you know. The doctor said you weren’t to be allowed to talk more than could be helped.”

“Answer me that, then, and I’ll ask no more for the present.”

“Yes, the ruffian got clean away, and no one knows to this day how he did it. Do you?”

“Yes. I saw him do it.”

“The deuce you did! But there, you shall tell me all about it to-morrow. Have a drop of beef-tea and then go to bye-bye.”

Which I did.

My powers of recuperation are great, and a few days saw me comparatively well in body, though by no means easy in mind. Up to this point my search for Captain Shannon had seemed to me a somewhat public-spirited and deserving enterprise. To bring such a scoundrel to justice would be doing a service to the country and to humanity; and in the wild scene of excitement which I knew would follow the news of his arrest I liked to picture myself as receiving the thanks of the community, and in fact being regarded very much as the hero of the hour.

But while I had been lying in my room, idle in body but abnormally active in brain, the matter had presented itself to me in a very different light, and I was by no means sure that, were the facts made public, I should not be looked upon as a knave rather than as a hero. I had to ask myself seriously whether the course I had taken could be justified at all, and whether, by withholding from the authorities the suspicion I entertained about the man with the red beard, and by taking upon myself the responsibility of keeping, unaided, an eye upon his movements,I was not morally answerable for the lives which had been lost in the last terrible outrage he had effected.

It was quite possible that, had I gone to the authoritiesbeforethe event and informed them of my unsupported suspicion, I should have been laughed at for my pains. But were I to come forwardafterthe event and admit that before the outrage occurred, and while yet there was time to prevent it, I had suspected the man with the brown bag to be James Mullen, and yet had withheld my suspicions from the police, I might be looked upon as less of a fool than a scoundrel.

My motives for having kept silent would be open to the worst interpretation, and I should be everywhere denounced as an enemy of society whose criminal vanity had made him think himself capable of coping single-handed with the greatest artist in crime of the century, and whose yet more criminal greed and anxiety to secure the entire reward for himself had led him to withhold from the proper authorities information by means of which the capture of the arch-murderer might have been effected and the last dreadful outrage prevented.

Knowing, as I did, how uncontrollable was the feeling of the populace in regard to the outrage, I could not disguise from myself that a man who made such a confession as I had to make, would—should he be recognised in the streets—run a very good chance of being mobbed, if not lynched.

An infuriated mob is not given to make nice distinctions, and so long as it has a scapegoat on which to wreak vengeance it does not wait to inquire too particularly into the question of the scapegoat’s innocence or guilt.

Let the object of its wrath be not forthcoming, and let some evil or foolish person raise the cry that this or that luckless passer-by is the offender’s relative or friend, or even that he has been seen coming from the offender’s house, or is of the same nationality, and in nine cases out of ten the mob will “go” for the luckless wighten masse.

I have made a study of that wild beast which we call “a mob”—the one wild beast which civilisation has given us in exchange for the many she has driven away—and knowing something of the creature and its habits, I must confess that I would rather fall into the jaws of thewild beast of the jungle, than into the clutches of the wilder beast of the city and the slum.

One day—one not very distant day—that wild beast will turn and rend its keepers, and when once the thing has tasted human blood it will not be beaten back into its lair with its thirst for blood unglutted.

To be mobbed or lynched in a noble cause and in support of a great principle is not without its compensations, but there is no glory in being subjected to physical violence and personal insult as a scoundrel and a knave.

Worse, however, than the possibility of being mobbed was the certainty of being held up in many quarters as an object for public odium and private scorn, and the more I thought about it the less inclined did I feel to face the consequences of confessing the part which I had played in the recent tragedy. It was upon my own responsibility, I argued, that I had entered upon the enterprise, and so long as I kept within the law it was to myself only that I was responsible for the way in which that enterprise was carried on. That I had failed meant nothing more than that what had happened to those whose business and whose duty it was to havesucceeded, had happened also to me; and, after all, I left things no worse than they were when I took the matter up.

Had it been my intention to abandon my quest I should have no choice but to acquaint New Scotland Yard with what had come to my knowledge. But, as a matter of fact, I was more than ever set on bringing the miscreant, Captain Shannon, to justice—and this not merely for the sake of reward, or because of the craving for adventure which had first urged me to the enterprise, but because of the loathing which I entertained for the monster whom I had with my own eyes seen at his hellish work. Hence I was justified, I told myself, in keeping my information to myself, and the more so for the fact that, were I to say all I knew, the particulars would no doubt be made public, and in this way reach the ears of Captain Shannon, thus defeating the very end for which I had made my confession.

Into the questions whether the decision to which I came was right or wrong, and whether the arguments, with which I sought to square my decision with my conscience and my sense of duty, were founded on self-interest and inclination rather than on reason, I will not here enter.

When that decision was once made, I gave no further thought to the rights or wrongs of the matter, but dismissing every such consideration from my mind I concentrated all my energies upon the task of finding Captain Shannon.

And first, I decided to pay a visit to Southend to see if the little brown cutter was still there, and if not, to discover what had become of it.

As one walks down the High Street from the station, the pier lies directly in front, running out a mile and a quarter to sea on its myriad slender feet like a giant centipede. To the right are the shady shrubberies and sunny grass-crowned cliffs of New Southend, and to the left, with lips stooped to the water’s edge, the Old Town straggles away seaward, a long line of picturesque irregular buildings—some cheerful red, others warm yellow, and a few cool gray—reminding one not a little of some quaint French or Belgian port blinking in the morning sunshine.

And oh! such skies! such cloud-pomp and pageantry, and, above all, such sunrises and sunsets! Such dance and sparkle of moving water when the tide is in, and, more beautiful still,when the tide is out, such play of light and shadow, such wonderful wealth of colour on the marshy flats—here a patch of royal purple or opalescent green, there a rose-gray or pearly-pink, with little shining pools changing from blue to silver and silver to blue with the passing of every cloud.

Southend is a pretty spot at any time, but after a month spent on a sick bed in a stuffy London side-street, the view from the pier-hill seemed to me exceptionally beautiful.

As I stood there drinking my fill of the sweet, strong, brackish air, and basking in the sunshine, I was conscious of being scrutinised quietly but very keenly by a man who was lounging near the Royal Hotel.

There was nothing in his appearance or dress—white flannel trousers and shirt, cricketing blazer and straw hat—to distinguish him from the hundreds of holiday makers in like attire who are to be seen in and about Southend during the season, but I recognised him at once, and with some alarm, as one of the cleverest officers of the detective force, and one, moreover, who had been specially told off to effect the capture of Mullen.

In detective stories, as in pantomimes—no doubt for the same reason—the policeman is too often held up to scorn and ridicule as an incompetent bungler who is more dangerous to the hearts of susceptible servant girls than to law-breakers, and more given to deeds of prowess in connection with the contents of the pantry than in protecting the lives or properties of her Majesty’s subjects. The hero of the detective story is very often a brilliant amateur, of whom the police are secretly jealous, notwithstanding the fact that whenever they have a difficult case they come, hat in hand, to seek his assistance. This, after a little light banter for the benefit of the Boswell who is to chronicle his marvellous doings—and in the course of which, by-the-bye, the fact that the police are about to arrest the wrong man is not unfrequently elicited—he condescends to give, the understanding between him and them being that he shall do the work and they take the credit.

Why the amateur detective should be the victim of a modesty which is not always characteristic of the amateur in other professions does not transpire, but the arrangement is extremely convenient to the policeman and to the author,the latter probably adopting it lest inquisitive readers should ask why, if there are such brilliant amateur detectives as authors would have us to believe, we never hear of them in real life.

Now I should be the last man in the world to cheapen the work of my fellow-craftsmen. I hold that there is no more unmistakable mark of a mean mind than is evinced in the desire to extol oneself at the expense of others, but none the less I must enter my protest against what I cannot but consider an unwarrantable imputation upon a very deserving body of men.

Detectives and policemen, taken as a whole, are by no means the bunglers and boobies that they are made out to be in the pantomimes and in the pages of detective stories. I do not say that they are all born geniuses in the detection of crime, for genius is no commoner among detectives than it is among bakers, bankers, clergymen, novelists, barristers, or cooks. But what I do say is that the rank and file of them are painstaking and intelligent men, who do their duty to the public conscientiously and efficiently; and to dub them all duffers, becausenow and then a detective is caught napping, is as unjust as to pronounce all clergymen fools because a silly sermon is sometimes preached from a pulpit.

I had managed to get ahead of the police in the investigation I was conducting, not because of the shining abilities with which I was endowed, for as the reader knows I had bungled matters sadly on more than one occasion, but because Fate had thrown a clue in my way at the start. But I have never underrated the acuteness and astuteness of the representatives of the Criminal Department from New Scotland Yard, and it did not greatly surprise me to find, when I commenced operations again at Southend, that though the little brown cutter was still lying off the same spot, she was being closely watched by men whom I knew to be detectives.

Whether they had discovered the relationship between Mullen and the owner of the “Odd Trick,” and in following up the clue had traced the boat to Southend, or whether they were in possession of information unknown to me which led them to believe the fugitive had been hiding in the neighbourhood, I could not say; but that they were there to effect the capture of Mullen,should he return to the cutter, I made no doubt.

Mullen, however, was apparently too wary a bird to come back to the nest until he had satisfied himself that no net had been spread there to catch him, for that he had got wind of what was going on at Southend seemed probable from the fact that he never put in an appearance there again. Nor would it have profited me personally if he had, for in that case I could scarcely hope to forestall the police in the matter of his arrest.

Under the circumstances it would be mere waste of time to stay in Southend, and the question I had now to ask myself was, “Where, then, is he likely to be?”

As crime begets crime, so question begets question, and “Where, then, is he likely to be?” had scarcely come to the birth before it was itself in travail with, “Why not on the ‘Cuban Queen’?”

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