“And they took nothing, you say?”
“Nothing, sor. But this mornin’ I got my worst dose. I was trapesing along distreshful an’ moighty sore, in a street just away off the Strand here, when I obsarved the docthor-man that was at the Crystial Palace station a-smilin’ an’ beckonin’ at me from a door.
“‘How are ye now?’ sez he. ‘Well,’ sez I, ‘I’m moighty sore an’ sad bruised,’ sez I. ‘Is that so?’ sez he. ‘Sthep in here.’ So I sthepped in, an’ before I could wink there dhropped a crack on the back av me head that sent me off as unknowledgable as a corrpse. I knew no more for a while, sor, whether half an hour or an hour, an’ thin I got up in a room av the place, marked ‘To Let.’ ’Twas a house full av offices, by the same token, like this. There was a sore bad lump on me head—see ut, sor?—an’ the whole warl’ was shpinnin’ roun’ rampageous. The things out av me pockuts were lyin’ on the flure by me—all barrin’ the key av me room. So that the demons had been through me posseshins again, bad luck to ’em.”
“You are quite sure, are you, that everything was there except the key?” Hewitt asked.
“Certin, sor? Well, I got along to me room, sick an’ sorry enough, an’ doubtsome whether I might get in wid no key. But there was the key in the open door, an’, by this an’ that, all the shtuff in the room—chair, table, bed, an’ all—was shtandin’ on their heads twisty-ways, an’ the bedclothes an’ every thin’ else; such a disgraceful stramash av conglomerated thruck as ye niver dhreamt av. The chist av drawers was lyin’ on uts face, wid all the dhrawers out an’ emptied on the flure. ’Twas as though an arrmy had been lootin’, sor!”
“But still nothing was gone?”
“Nothin’, so far as I investigated, sor. But I didn’t shtay. I came out to spake to the polis, an’ two av them laffed at me—wan afther another!”
“It has certainly been no laughing matter for you. Now, tell me—have you anything in your possession—documents, or valuables, or anything—that any other person, to your knowledge, is anxious to get hold of!”
“I have not, sor—divil a document! As to valuables, thim an’ me is the cowldest av sthrangers.”
“Just call to mind, now, the face of the man who tried to put powder in your drink, and that of the doctor who attended to you in the railway station. Were they at all alike, or was either like anybody you have seen before?”
Leamy puckered his forehead and thought.
“Faith,” he said presently, “they were a bit alike, though one had a beard an’ the udther whiskers only.”
“Neither happened to look like Mr. Hollams, for instance?”
Leamy started. “Begob, but they did! They’d ha’ been mortal like him if they’d been shaved.” Then, after a pause, he suddenly added: “Holy saints! is ut the fam’ly he talked av?”
Hewitt laughed. “Perhaps it is,” he said. “Now, as to the man who sent you with the bag. Was it an old bag?”
“Bran’ cracklin’ new—a brown leather bag.”
“Locked?”
“That I niver thried, sor. It was not my consarn.”
“True. Now, as to this Mr. W. himself.” Hewitt had been rummaging for some few minutes in a portfolio, and finally produced a photograph, and held it before the Irishman’s eye. “Is that like him?” he asked.
“Shure it’s the man himself! Is he a friend av yours, sor?”
“No, he’s not exactly a friend of mine,” Hewitt answered, with a grim chuckle. “I fancy he’s one of that very respectable family you heard about at Mr. Hollams’. Come along with me now to Chelsea, and see if you can point out that house in Gold Street. I’ll send for a cab.”
He made for the outer office, and I went with him.
“What is all this, Hewitt?” I asked. “A gang of thieves with stolen property?”
Hewitt looked in my face and replied: “It’s the Quinton ruby!”
“What! The ruby? Shall you take the case up, then?”
“I shall. It is no longer a speculation.”
“Then do you expect to find it at Hollams’ house in Chelsea?” I asked.
“No, I don’t, because it isn’t there—else why are they trying to get it from this unlucky Irishman? There has been bad faith in Hollams’ gang, I expect, and Hollams has missed the ruby and suspects Leamy of having taken it from the bag.”
“Then who is this Mr. W. whose portrait you have in your possession?”
“See here!” Hewitt turned over a small pile of recent newspapers and selected one, pointing at a particular paragraph. “I kept that in my mind, because to me it seemed to be the most likely arrest of the lot,” he said.
It was an evening paper of the previous Thursday, and the paragraph was a very short one, thus:
“The man Wilks, who was arrested at Euston Station yesterday, in connection with the robbery of Lady Quinton’s jewels, has been released, nothing being found to incriminate him.”
“How does that strike you?” asked Hewitt. “Wilks is a man well known to the police—one of the most accomplished burglars in this country, in fact. I have had no dealings with him as yet, but I found means, some time ago, to add his portrait to my little collection, in case I might want it, and today it has been quite useful.”
The thing was plain now. Wilks must have been bringing his booty to town, and calculated on getting out at Chalk Farm and thus eluding the watch which he doubtless felt pretty sure would be kept (by telegraphic instruction) at Euston for suspicious characters arriving from the direction of Radcot. His transaction with Leamy was his only possible expedient to save himself from being hopelessly taken with the swag in his possession. The paragraph told me why Leamy had waited in vain for “Mr. W.” in the cab.
“What shall you do now?” I asked.
“I shall go to the Gold Street house and find out what I can as soon as this cab turns up.”
There seemed a possibility of some excitement in the adventure, so I asked: “Will you want any help?”
Hewitt smiled. “I think I can get through it alone,” he said.
“Then may I come to look on?” I said. “Of course I don’t want to be in your way, and the result of the business, whatever it is, will be to your credit alone. But I am curious.”
“Come, then, by all means. The cab will be a four-wheeler, and there will be plenty of room.”
* * * *
Gold Street was a short street of private houses of very fair size and of a half-vanished pretension to gentility. We drove slowly through, and Leamy had no difficulty in pointing out the house wherein he had been paid five pounds for carrying a bag. At the end the cab turned the corner and stopped, while Hewitt wrote a short note to an official of Scotland Yard.
“Take this note,” he instructed Leamy, “to Scotland Yard in the cab, and then go home. I will pay the cabman now.”
“I will, sor. An’ will I be protected?”
“Oh, yes! Stay at home for the rest of the day, and I expect you’ll be left alone in future. Perhaps I shall have something to tell you in a day or two; if I do, I’ll send. Good-by.”
The cab rolled off, and Hewitt and I strolled back along Gold Street. “I think,” Hewitt said, “we will drop in on Mr. Hollams for a few minutes while we can. In a few hours I expect the police will have him, and his house, too, if they attend promptly to my note.”
“Have you ever seen him?”
“Not to my knowledge, though I may know him by some other name. Wilks I know by sight, though he doesn’t know me.”
“What shall we say?”
“That will depend on circumstances. I may not get my cue till the door opens, or even till later. At worst, I can easily apply for a reference as to Leamy, who, you remember, is looking for work.”
But we were destined not to make Mr. Hollams’ acquaintance, after all. As we approached the house a great uproa
r was heard from the lower part giving on to the area, and suddenly a man, hatless, and with a sleeve of his coat nearly torn away burst through the door and up the area steps, pursued by two others. I had barely time to observe that one of the pursuers carried a revolver, and that both hesitated and retired on seeing that several people were about the street, when Hewitt, gripping my arm and exclaiming: “That’s our man!” started at a run after the fugitive.
We turned the next corner and saw the man thirty yards before us, walking, and pulling up his sleeve at the shoulder, so as to conceal the rent. Plainly he felt safe from further molestation.
“That’s Sim Wilks,” Hewitt explained, as we followed, “the ‘juce of a foine jintleman’ who got Leamy to carry his bag, and the man who knows where the Quinton ruby is, unless I am more than usually mistaken. Don’t stare after him, in case he looks round. Presently, when we get into the busier streets, I shall have a little chat with him.”
But for some time the man kept to the back streets. In time, however, he emerged into the Buckingham Palace Road, and we saw him stop and look at a hat-shop. But after a general look over the window and a glance in at the door he went on.
“Good sign!” observed Hewitt; “got no money with him—makes it easier for us.”
In a little while Wilks approached a small crowd gathered about a woman fiddler. Hewitt touched my arm, and a few quick steps took us past our man and to the opposite side of the crowd. When Wilks emerged, he met us coming in the opposite direction.
“What, Sim!” burst out Hewitt with apparent delight. “I haven’t piped your mug1 for a stretch;2 I thought you’d fell.3 Where’s your cady?”4
Wilks looked astonished and suspicious. “I don’t know you,” he said. “You‘ve made a mistake.”
Hewitt laughed. “I’m glad you don’t know me,” he said. “If you don’t, I’m pretty sure the reelers5 won’t. I think I’ve faked my mug pretty well, and my clobber,6 too. Look here: I’ll stand you a new cady. Strange blokes don’t do that, eh?”
Wilks was still suspicious. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said. Then, after a pause, he added: “Who are you, then?”
Hewitt winked and screwed his face genially aside. “Hooky!” he said. “I’ve had a lucky touch 7and I’m Mr. Smith till I’ve melted the pieces.8 You come and damp it.”
* * * *
“I’m off,” Wilks replied. “Unless you’re pal enough to lend me a quid,” he added, laughing.
“I am that,” responded Hewitt, plunging his hand in his pocket. “I’m flush, my boy, flush, and I’ve been wetting it pretty well today. I feel pretty jolly now, and I shouldn’t wonder if I went home cannon.9 Only a quid? Have two, if you want ’em—or three; there’s plenty more, and you’ll do the same for me some day. Here y’are.”
Hewitt had, of a sudden, assumed the whole appearance, manners, and bearing of a slightly elevated rowdy. Now he pulled his hand from his pocket and extended it, full of silver, with five or six sovereigns interspersed, toward Wilks.
“I’ll have three quid,” Wilks said, with decision, taking the money; “but I’m blowed if I remember you. Who’s your pal?”
Hewitt jerked his hand in my direction, winked, and said, in a low voice: “He’s all right. Having a rest. Can’t stand Manchester,” and winked again.
Wilks laughed and nodded, and I understood from that that Hewitt had very flatteringly given me credit for being “wanted” by the Manchester police.
We lurched into a public house, and drank a very little very bad whisky and water. Wilks still regarded us curiously, and I could see him again and again glancing doubtfully in Hewitt’s face. But the loan of three pounds had largely reassured him. Presently Hewitt said:
“How about our old pal down in Gold Street? Do anything with him now? Seen him lately?”
Wilks looked up at the ceiling and shook his head.
“That’s a good job. It ’ud be awkward if you were about there today, I can tell you.”
“Why?”
“Never mind, so long as you’re not there. I know something, if I have been away. I’m glad I haven’t had any truck with Gold Street lately, that’s all.”
“D’you mean the reelers are on it?”
Hewitt looked cautiously over his shoulder, leaned toward Wilks, and said: “Look here: this is the straight tip. I know this—I got it from the very nark10 that’s given the show away: By six o’clock No. 8 Gold Street will be turned inside out, like an old glove, and everyone in the place will be—” He finished the sentence by crossing his wrists like a handcuffed man. “What’s more,” he went on, “they know all about what’s gone on there lately, and everybody that’s been in or out for the last two moons11 will be wanted particular—and will be found, I’m told.” Hewitt concluded with a confidential frown, a nod, and a wink, and took another mouthful of whisky. Then he added, as an after-thought: “So I’m glad you haven’t been there lately.”
Wilks looked in Hewitt’s face and asked: “Is that straight?”
“Is it?” replied Hewitt with emphasis. “You go and have a look, if you ain’t afraid of being smugged yourself. Only I shan’t go near No. 8 just yet—I know that.”
Wilks fidgeted, finished his drink, and expressed his intention of going. “Very well, if you won’t have another—” replied Hewitt. But he had gone.
“Good!” said Hewitt, moving toward the door; “he has suddenly developed a hurry. I shall keep him in sight, but you had better take a cab and go straight to Euston. Take tickets to the nearest station to Radcot—Kedderby, I think it is—and look up the train arrangements. Don’t show yourself too much, and keep an eye on the entrance. Unless I am mistaken, Wilks will be there pretty soon, and I shall be on his heels. If I am wrong, then you won’t see the end of the fun, that’s all.”
Hewitt hurried after Wilks, and I took the cab and did as he wished. There was an hour and a few minutes, I found, to wait for the next train, and that time I occupied as best I might, keeping a sharp lookout across the quadrangle. Barely five minutes before the train was to leave, and just as I was beginning to think about the time of the next, a cab dashed up and Hewitt alighted. He hurried in, found me, and drew me aside into a recess, just as another cab arrived.
“Here he is,” Hewitt said. “I followed him as far as Euston Road and then got my cabby to spurt up and pass him. He had had his mustache shaved off, and I feared you mightn’t recognize him, and so let him see you.”
From our retreat we could see Wilks hurry into the booking-office. We watched him through to the platform and followed. He wasted no time, but made the best of his way to a third-class carriage at the extreme fore end of the train.
“We have three minutes,” Hewitt said, “and everything depends on his not seeing us get into this train. Take this cap. Fortunately, we’re both in tweed suits.”
He had bought a couple of tweed cricket caps, and these we assumed, sending our “bowler” hats to the cloak-room. Hewitt also put on a pair of blue spectacles, and then walked boldly up the platform and entered a first-class carriage. I followed close on his heels, in such a manner that a person looking from the fore end of the train would be able to see but very little of me.
“So far so good,” said Hewitt, when we were seated and the train began to move off. “I must keep a lookout at each station, in case our friend goes off unexpectedly.”
“I waited some time,” I said; “where did you both go to?”
“First he went and bought that hat he is wearing. Then he walked some distance, dodging the main thoroughfares and keeping to the back streets in a way that made following difficult, till he came to a little tailor’s shop. There he entered and came out in a quarter of an hour with his coat mended. This was in a street in Westminster. Presently he worked his way up to Tothill Street, and there he plunged into a barber’s shop. I took a cautious peep at the window, saw two o
r three other customers also waiting, and took the opportunity to rush over to a ‘notion’ shop and buy these blue spectacles, and to a hatter’s for these caps—of which I regret to observe that yours is too big. He was rather a long while in the barber’s, and finally came out, as you saw him, with no mustache. This was a good indication. It made it plainer than ever that he had believed my warning as to the police descent on the house in Gold Street and its frequenters; which was right and proper, for what I told him was quite true. The rest you know. He cabbed to the station, and so did I.”
“And now perhaps,” I said, “after giving me the character of a thief wanted by the Manchester police, forcibly depriving me of my hat in exchange for this all-too-large cap, and rushing me off out of London without any definite idea of when I’m coming back, perhaps you’ll tell me what we’re after?”
Hewitt laughed. “You wanted to join in, you know,” he said, “and you must take your luck as it comes. As a matter of fact there is scarcely anything in my profession so uninteresting and so difficult as this watching and following business. Often it lasts for weeks. When we alight, we shall have to follow Wilks again, under the most difficult possible conditions, in the country. There it is often quite impossible to follow a man unobserved. It is only because it is the only way that I am undertaking it now. As to what we’re after, you know that as well as I—the Quinton ruby. Wilks has hidden it, and without his help it would be impossible to find it. We are following him so that he will find it for us.”
“He must have hidden it, I suppose, to avoid sharing with Hollams?”
“Of course, and availed himself of the fact of Leamy having carried the bag to direct Hollams’s suspicion to him. Hollams found out by his repeated searches of Leamy and his lodgings, that this was wrong, and this morning evidently tried to persuade the ruby out of Wilks’ possession with a revolver. We saw the upshot of that.”
Kedderby Station was about forty miles out. At each intermediate stopping station Hewitt watched earnestly, but Wilks remained in the train. “What I fear,” Hewitt observed, “is that at Kedderby he may take a fly. To stalk a man on foot in the country is difficult enough; but you can’t follow one vehicle in another without being spotted. But if he’s so smart as I think, he won’t do it. A man traveling in a fly is noticed and remembered in these places.”
The Arthur Morrison Mystery Page 31