CHAPTER XXVJAMES MULLEN AND I MEET AT LAST
As the cab which I had chartered rattled up the approach to the Great Eastern terminus at Liverpool Street, I had to admit to myself that the probability of my falling in again with the red-bearded man scarcely justified me in feeling so sanguine as I did.
I am not in the general way given to “presentiments,” but on this occasion I felt almost childishly confident about the result of my operations. Though I told myself, over and over again, that there is nothing so hope-destroying to an active mind as compulsory inaction, and that it was only because I had something definite with which to occupy myself that I felt so hopeful, not all my philosophy could persuade me that I should fail in bringing the enterprise to a successful termination.
Curiously enough, presentiment was for once justified of her assurance, and at the expense ofphilosophy, for as the clocks were chiming eight, and evening was beginning to close in, whom should I see step out upon the platform from a Romford train but my gentleman of the red beard and brown bag.
He gave up his ticket and walked out of the station into Liverpool Street, crossed the road and went up New Broad Street and so to the Bank. Then he went into a tobacconist’s, whence he emerged puffing a big cigar, and proceeded up Cheapside until he reached Foster Lane, down which he turned. Here I had to be more cautious, for on Saturday night the side streets of the City are deserted. Even in the great thoroughfares, where during the five preceding days blows have rained thick and fast, with scarce a moment’s interval, upon the ringing anvils of traffic, there is a perceptible lull, but in the side streets there is absolute silence.
When I saw the man with the red beard and brown bag turn down Foster Lane, which, as every Londoner knows, is a narrow side street at the back of the General Post Office, I felt that it was indeed a happy thought which had prevented me from changing my shoes when Ireceived Grant’s summons in the morning. Had I been wearing my ordinary lace-ups I should have been in a dilemma, for they are not easy to remove in a hurry, and in that deserted place the echo of my following footsteps, had I been thus shod, could not have failed to reach the ear of the man I was shadowing. To have followed him boldly would have aroused his suspicions, whereas if I remained far enough behind to avoid running this risk, I incurred the greater risk of losing sight of him altogether.
But for the purposes of shadowing, nothing could be better than the gutta-percha-soled shoes which I was wearing; and by keeping well in the shadow, and only flitting from doorway to doorway at such times as I judged it safe to make a move, I hoped to keep an eye upon Redbeard unseen.
The result justified my anticipations, for when he reached the back of the General Post Office he stopped and looked hastily up and down the street, as if to make sure that he was unobserved. Not a soul was in sight, and I need scarcely say that I made of myself a very wafer, and was clinging like a postage stamp to the door against which I had squared myself.
Evidently reassured, he put down his bag, opened it, and lifted out something that, from the stiff movement of his arms, appeared to be heavy. This he placed upon the ground, and so gingerly that I distinctly heard him sigh as he drew his hands away. Then he stood erect, puffed fiercely at his cigar until it kindled and glowed like a live coal, took it from his lips, turned the lighted end round to look at it, and stooped with it in his hand over the thing upon the ground. I saw an answering spark shine out, flicker for a moment and die away, and heard Redbeard mutter “Damnation! Hell!” through his teeth. The next instant I heard the spurt that told of the striking of a lucifer match, and saw him stoop again over the thing on the ground. A little point of light, which grew in size and brightness, shone out as I stood looking on half paralysed with horror. That he had fired the fuse of an infernal machine I had no doubt, and for one moment my limbs absolutely refused to move. I tried to call out, but gave utterance only to a silly inarticulate noise that was more like a bleat than a cry, and was formed neither by my lips nor tongue, but seemed to come from the back ofmy throat. The sound reached the ears of the man with the bag, however, for he came to an erect posture in an instant, looked quickly to right and to left, and then walked briskly away in the opposite direction.
And then the night-stillness was broken by the most terrible cry I have ever heard—a cry so terrible and unearthly that it seemed to make the blood in my veins run cold, although I knew that it was from my own lips and no other that the cry had fallen.
That cry broke the spell that bound me. Even while it was ringing in my ears I leapt out like a tiger athirst for blood, and, heedless of the hissing fuse, which burnt the faster and brighter for the wind which I made as I rushed by it, I was after him, every drop of blood in my body boiling with fury, every muscle and tendon of my fingers twitching to grip the miscreant’s throat.
Had he been as fleet of foot as a greyhound he should not have escaped me then; and though he had thrown the bag away, and was now running for dear life, I was upon him before he was half-way down Noble Street. When he heard my steps he stopped and faced roundsuddenly, and as he did so I struck him with my clenched fist full under the jaw, and with all my strength. Shall I ever feel such savage joy as thrilled me then as I heard his teeth snap together like the snap of the teeth of an iron rat-trap, and felt the warm rush of his blood upon my hand? He went down like a pole-axed ox, but in the next second had staggered to his knees and thence to his feet. His hand was fumbling at a side-pocket, whence I saw the butt-end of a revolver protruding, but before he could get at it I had him by the throat again, where my blow had knocked the false red beard awry, and I promise you that my grip was none of the gentlest. Nor, for the matter of that, was my language, for—though I am by habit nice of speech and not given to oaths—words, which I have never used before nor since, bubbled up in my throat and would out, though a whole bench of listening bishops were by.
“You bloody monster!” I cried, and the words seemed to make iron of the muscles of my arm, and granite of every bone in my fist as I struck him again and again in the face with all my strength. “You hell miscreantand devil. By God in heaven I’ll pound the damned life out of you!”
And then the solid ground seemed to stagger and sway beneath me, and from the neighbourhood of the General Post Office came a sudden blaze of light in which I saw a tall chimney crook inward at the middle, as a leg is bent at the knee, and then snap in two like a sugar-stick. There was a low rumble, a roar like the discharge of artillery, followed by the strangest ripping, rending din as of the sudden tearing asunder of innumerable sheets of metal. I was conscious of the falling of masonry, of a choking limy dust, and then a red darkness closed in upon me with a crash, and I remember no more.