Scarhaven Keep, J. S. Fletcher [best short books to read .txt] 📗

know as there was something on the crook in this here affair!” he said, almost cheerily. “Well, well⁠—but I ain’t got nothing to do with it. Warrants?⁠—you say? Ah! And what might be the partiklar natur’ o’ them warrants?”

“Murder!” answered the detective. “That’s one charge, anyhow⁠—for one of ’em, at any rate. There’s others.”

“Murder’s enough,” responded the skipper. “Well, of course, nobody can tell a man to be a murderer by merely looking at his mug. Not at all!⁠—nobody! However, this here is how it is. Last night it were⁠—evening, to be c’rect⁠—dark. I was on the edge o’ the fleet, out there off the Dogger. A yacht comes up⁠—smart ’un⁠—very fast sailer⁠—and hails me. Was I going into Norcaster or anywheres about? Being a Northborough tug, this, I wasn’t. Would I go for a consideration⁠—then and there? Whereupon I asked what consideration? Then we bargains. Eventual, we struck it at thirty pounds⁠—cash down, which was paid, prompt. I was to take two men straight and slick into Norcaster, to this here very slip, Scarvell’s Cut, to wait while they put a bit of a cargo on board, and then to run ’em back to the same spot where I took ’em up. Done! They come aboard⁠—the yacht goes off east⁠—I come careenin’ west. That’s all! That part of it anyway.”

“And the men?” suggested the detective. “What sort were they, and where are they?”

“The men, now!” said the skipper. “Ah! Two on ’em⁠—both done up in what you might call deep-sea style. But hadn’t never done no deep sea nor yet any other sort o’ sea work in their mortial days⁠—hands as white and soft as a lady’s. One, an old chap with a dial like a full moon on him⁠—sly old chap, him! T’other a younger man, looked as if he’d something about him⁠—dangerous chap to cross. Where are they? Darned if I know. What I knows, certain, is this⁠—we gets in here about eight o’clock this morning, and makes fast here, and ever since then them two’s been as it were on the fret and the fidge, allers lookin’ out, so to speak, for summun as ain’t come yet. The old chap, he went across into that there sailmaker’s loft an hour ago, and t’other, he followed of him, recent. I ain’t seen ’em since. Try there. And I say?”

“Well?” asked the detective.

“Shall I be wanted?” asked the skipper. “ ’Cause if not, I’m off and away as soon as the tide serves. Ain’t no good me waitin’ here for them chaps if you’re goin’ to take and hang ’em!”

“Got to catch ’em first,” said the detective, with a glance at his two professional companions. “And while we’re not doubting your word at all, we’ll just take a look round your vessel⁠—they might have slipped on board again, you see, while your back was turned.”

But there was no sign of Peter Chatfield, nor of his daughter, nor of the captain of the Pike on that tug, nor anywhere in the sailmaker’s loft and its purlieus. And presently the detectives looked at one another and their leader turned to Sir Cresswell.

“If these people⁠—as seems certain⁠—have escaped into this quarter of the town,” he said, “there’ll have to be a regular hunt for them! I’ve known a man who was badly wanted stow himself away here for weeks. If Chatfield has accomplices down here in the Warren, he can hide himself and whoever’s with him for a long time⁠—successfully. We’ll have to get a lot of men to work.”

“But I say!” exclaimed Gilling. “You don’t mean to tell me that three people⁠—one a woman⁠—could get away through these courts and alleys, packed as they are, without being seen? Come now!”

The detectives smiled indulgently.

“You don’t know these folks,” said one of them, inclining his head towards a squalid street at the end of which they had all gathered. “But they know us. It’s a point of honour with them never to tell the truth to a policeman or a detective. If they saw those three, they’d never admit it to us⁠—until it’s made worth their while.”

“Get it made worth their while, then!” exclaimed Gilling, impatiently.

“All in due course, sir,” said the official voice. “Leave it to us.”

The amateur searchers after the iniquitous recognized the futility of their own endeavours in that moment, and went away to discuss matters amongst themselves, while the detectives proceeded leisurely, after their fashion, into the Warren as if they were out for a quiet constitutional in its salubrious byways. And Sir Cresswell Oliver remarked on the difficulty of knowing exactly what to do once you had red tape on one side and unusual craftiness on the other.

“You think there’s no doubt that gold was removed this morning by Chatfield’s daughter?” he said to Copplestone as they went back to the centre of the town together, Gilling and Vickers having turned aside elsewhere and Spurge gone to the hospital to ask for news of his cousin. “You think she was the woman whose footprints you saw up there at the Reaver’s Glen?”

“Seeing that she’s here in Norcaster and in touch with those two, what else can I think?” replied Copplestone. “It seems to me that they got in touch with her by wireless and that she removed the gold in readiness for her father and Andrius coming in here by that North Sea tug. If we could only find out where she’s put those boxes, or where she got the car from in which she brought it down from the tower⁠—”

“Vickers has already started some inquiries about cars,” said Sir Cresswell. “She must have hired a car somewhere in the town. Certainly, if we could hear of that gold we should be in the way of getting on their track.”

But they heard nothing of gold or of fugitives or of what the police and detectives were doing until the middle of the afternoon. And then Mr. Elkin, the manager of the bank from which Chatfield had withdrawn the