by Ellen Wood
Every conceivable article, displayed or not displayed for sale, did Roland’s vivid imagination picture as having possibly been needed by Arthur, from “candied rock” at a sweet-stuff mart to a stomach-pump at the doctor’s. Some, serving behind the counters, thought him mad; others that he might have designs upon the till; all threatened to give him into custody. In the excited state of Roland’s mind it was not to be expected that he could tell a quiet, coherent tale. When Hamish Channing went later, with his courteous explanation and calm bearing, though his inward anxiety was quite as great as Roland’s, it was a different thing altogether, and he was received with the utmost consideration. Threats and denial availed not with Roland; day by day, as each day came round, the shops had him again. In, he was, like a man that stood head downwards and had no mind left; begging them to try and recall every soul who might have gone in to make purchases that night. But the shops could not help him. And, as the days went on, and nothing came of it, Roland began to lay the fault on the police.
“I never heard of such a thing,” he was saying this morning as he sat tilting on the high barrel, and wiping his hot face after his run; which might have been one of twelve miles, or so, comprising Scotland Yard, and in and out of every shop in the Strand and Fleet Street, and round all the docks and back again. “Six days since he was missing, and no earthly news of him discovered yet! Not as much as a scrap of a clue! Where’s the use of a country’s having its police at all, unless they can do better than that?”
He spoke in an injured tone; one that he would have liked to make angrily passionate. Roland’s only audience was a solitary stout policeman, with a prominent, buttoned-up chest and red face, who stood with his back against the side of the mantle-piece, reading a newspaper.
“We have not had no clue to work upon, you see, Mr. Yorke,” replied the man, who bore the euphonious name of Spitchcock, and was, so to say, on intimate terms with Roland, through being invaded by him so often.
“No skill, you mean, Spitchcock. I know what the English police are; had cause to know it, and the mistakes they make, years ago, long before I went to Port Natal. I could almost say, without being far from the truth, that it was the pig-headed, awful bungling of one of your lot that drove me to Africa.”
“How was that, sir?”
“I’m not going to tell you. Sometimes I wish I had stayed out there; I should have been nearly as well off. What with not getting on, and being picked short up by having my dearest friend murdered and flung over Waterloo Bridge — for that’s what it will turn out to be — things don’t look bright over here. I know this much, Spitchcock: if it had happened in Port Natal, he would have been found ere this — dead or alive.”
“Yes, that must be a nice place, that must, by your description of it, sir,” remarked Spitchcock with disparagement, as he turned his newspaper.
“It was nicer than this is just now, at any rate,” returned Roland. “I never heard at Port Natal of a gentleman being pounced upon and murdered as he walked quietly along the public street at half-past eight o’clock in the evening. Such a villainous thing didn’t happen when I was there.”
“You’ve got to hear it of London yet, Mr. Yorke.”
“Now don’t you be pig-headed, Spitchcock. What else, do you suppose, could have happened to him? I can’t say he was actually murdered in the open Strand: but I do say he must have been drawn into one of the alleys, or some other miserable place, with a pitch-plaster on his mouth, or chloroform to his nose, and there done for. Who is to know that he did not open his pocket-book in the train, coming up, and some thief caught sight of the notes, and dodged him? Come, Spitchcock?”
“He’d be safe enough in the Strand,” remarked the man.
“Oh, would he, though!” fiercely rejoined Roland, panting with emotion and heat. “Who is to know, then, but he had to dive into some bad places where the thieves live to do an errand for old Galloway, perhaps pay away one of his notes — and went out at once to do it? Do you mean to say that’s unlikely?”
“No, that’s not unlikely. If he had to do anything of the sort that took him into the thieves’ alleys, that’s how he might have come to grief,” avowed Mr. Spitchcock. “Many a one gets put out of the way during a year, and no bones is made over it.”
Roland jumped up with force so startling that he nearly upset the barrel. “That’s how it must have been, Spitchcock! What can I do in it? I never cared for any one in the world as I cared for him, and never shall. Except — except somebody else — and that’s nothing to anybody.”
“But this here’s altogether another guess sort of thing,” remonstrated Mr. Spitchcock. “Them cases don’t get found out through the party not being inquired for: his friends, if he’s got any, thinks he’s, may be, gone off on the spree, abroad or somewhere, and never asks after him. This is different.”
He spoke in a cool calm kind of way. It produced no effect on Roland. The fresh theory had been started, and that was enough. So many conjectures had been hazarded and rejected in their hopelessness during the past few days, that to catch hold of another was to Roland something like a spring of water would have been, had he come upon one during his travels in the arid deserts of Africa. Ordering Spitchcock to propound this view to the first of his superiors that should look in, Roland went speeding on his course again to seek an interview with Hamish Channing.
Making a detour first of all down Wellington Street: for, to go by Waterloo Bridge without inquiring whether anything had “turned up,” was beyond Roland. Perhaps it was because Arthur seemed to have disappeared within the radius of what might be called its vicinity, taken in conjunction with its assumed ill-reputation — as a convenient medium over which dead cats and the like might be pitched into the safe, all-concealing river — that induced Roland Yorke to suspect the spot. It haunted his thoughts awake, his dreams asleep. One whole night he had sat on its parapet, watching the water below, watching the solitary passengers above. The police had got to know him now and what he wanted; and if they laughed at him behind his back, were civil to him before his face.
Onward pressed Roland, his head first in eagerness, his long legs skimming after. How many wayfarers and apple-stalls he had knocked over (so to say, walked through) since the search began, he would have had some difficulty to reckon up. As to bringing him to account for damages, that was simply impracticable. Before the capsized individual could understand what had happened to him, or the bewildered apple-woman so much as looked at her fallen wares, Roland was out of sight and hearing. A young shoe-black at the corner had got to think the gentleman, pressing onwards everlastingly up and down the street, never turning aside from his course, might be the Wandering Jew; and would cease brushing to gaze up at Roland whenever he passed.
Look at him now, reader. The tall, fine, well-dressed young fellow, his pale face anxious with not-attempted-to-be-concealed care, his arms swaying, the silk-lined breasts of his superfine frock-coat thrown back, as he strides on resolutely down Wellington Street! Neither to the right nor the left looks he: his eyes are cast forth over the people’s heads, towards the bridge and the river that it spans, as if staring for the information he is going to seek. One great feature in Roland was his hopefulness. Each time he started for Waterloo Bridge, or Scotland Yard, or Hamish Channing’s, or Mr. Greatorex’s, or any other place where news might possibly be awaiting him, renewed hope was to the full as buoyant in his heart as it had been that memorable day when he had anchored in the beautiful harbour off Port Natal, and gazed on the fair shore with all its charming scenery that seemed to Roland as a very paradise. Bright with hope as his heart had been then, so was it now in the intermittent intervals. So was it at this moment as he bore on, down Wellington Street.
“Well,” said he to the toll-keeper. “Anything turned up?”
“Not a bit on’t,” responded the man. “Nor likely to.”
Roland went through, perched himself on the parapet, and took his fill of gazing at the river. Now on this
side the bridge, now leaping over to that. A steamer passed, a rowing-boat or two; but Arthur Channing was not in them. Roland looked to the mud on the sides, he threw his gaze forwards and backwards, up and down, round and about. In vain. All features were very much the same that they had been from the day of his first search: certainly, returning to him no signs of Arthur. And down went hope again, as completely as the pears had gone, earlier in the day, at a corner stall. Despair had possession of him now.
“You say that no suspicious character went on to the bridge that night, so far as you can recollect,” resumed Roland in the gloomiest tone, when he had walked lingeringly back to the man at the gate. Lingeringly, because some kind of clue seemed to lie with that bridge and he was always loth to quit it. If he did not suspect Arthur might be lying buried underneath the stone pavement, it seemed something like it.
“I didn’t say so,” interrupted the gate-keeper, in rather a surly tone. “What I said was, as there warn’t nothing suspicious chucked over that night.”
“You can’t tell. You might not hear.”
“Well, I haven’t got no time to jabber with you to-day.”
“If I kept this turnstile, I should make it my business to mark all suspicious night characters that went through; and watch them.”
“Oh, would you! And how ‘ud you know which was the suspicious ones? Come! They don’t always carry their bad marks on their backs, they don’t; some on ’em don’t look no different from you.”
Roland bit his lips to keep down a retort. All in Arthur’s interests. Upon giving the man, on a recent visit, what the latter had called “sauce,” his migration on and off the bridge had been threatened with a summary stoppage. So he was careful.
“Well, I’ve just had a clue given me by the police. And I don’t hold the smallest doubt now that he was put out of the way. And this is the likeliest place for him to have been brought to. I don’t think it would take much skill, after he was chloroformed to death, to shoot him over, out of a Hansom cab. Brought up upon the pavement, level with the parapet, he’d go as easily over, if propelled, as I should if I jumped it.” The toll-keeper answered by a growl and some sharp words. Truth to say, he felt personally aggrieved at his bridge being subjected to these scandalizing suspicions, and resented them accordingly. Roland did not wait. He went off in search of Hamish, and ere he had left the bridge behind out of sight, hope began again to spring up within him. So buoyant is the human heart in general, and Roland’s in particular. Not — let it always be understood — the hope that Arthur would be found uninjured, only some news of him that might serve to solve the mystery.
Shooting out of a Hansom cab (not dead, after the manner of a picture just drawn, but alive) came a gentleman, just as Roland was passing it. The cab had whirled round the corner of Wellington Street, probably on its way from the station, and pulled up at a shop in the Strand. It was Sir Vincent Yorke. Roland stopped; seized his hand in his impulsive manner, and began entering upon the story of Arthur Channing’s disappearance without the smallest preliminary greeting of any kind. Every moment Roland could spare from running, he spent in talking. He talked to Mrs. Jones, he talked to Henry William Ollivera, he talked to Hurst and Jenner, he would have talked to the moon. Mr. Brown had been obliged to forbid him the office, unless he could come to it to work. In his rapid, excited manner, he poured forth the story, circumstance after circumstance, in Sir Vincent’s ear, that gentleman feeling slightly bewildered, and not best pleased at the unexpected arrest.
“Oh — ah — I dare say he’ll turn up all right,” minced Sir Vincent. “A fella’s not obliged to acquaint his friends with his movements. Just got up to town? — ah — yes — just for a day or two. Good day. Hope you’ll find him.”
“You don’t understand who it is, Vincent,” spoke Roland, resenting the want of interest; which, to say the best of it, was but lukewarm. “It is William Yorke’s brother-in-law, Annabel’s brother, and the dearest friend I’ve ever had in life. I’ve told you of Arthur Channing before. He has the best and bravest heart living; he is the truest man and gentleman the world ever produced.”
“Ah — yes — good day! I’m in a hurry.”
Sir Vincent made his escape into the shop. Roland went on to Hamish Channing’s office. Hamish could not neglect his work, however Roland might abandon his.
But Hamish would have liked to do it. In good truth, this most unaccountable disappearance of his brother was rendering him in a measure unfit for its duties. He might almost as well have devoted his whole time just now to the interests of the search, for his thoughts were with it always, and his interruptions were many. To him the police carried reports; it was on him Roland Yorke rattled in half a dozen times in the course of the day, upsetting all order and quiet, and business too, by the commotion he raised. To see Roland burst in, breath gone, hair awry, face white, chest heaving with emotion, was nothing at all extraordinary; but Hamish did wish, as the doors swung back after Roland once more, on this morning, that he would not burst in quite so often. Perhaps Roland was a little more excited than usual, from the full belief that he had at length got hold of the right clue.
“It’s all out, Hamish,” he panted. “Arthur’s as good as found. He went out of the hotel to do some errand for Galloway; it took him into those bad, desperate, pick-pocketing places where the police dare hardly go themselves, and that’s where it must have been done.”
Hamish laid down his pen. The colour deserted his face, a faintness stole over his heart.
“How has it been discovered, Roland?” he inquired, in a hushed tone.
“Spitchcock did it. You know the fellow, — red face, fat enough for two. I was with him just now; and in consequence of what he said, it’s the conclusion I have come to.”
Naturally, Hamish pressed for details. Upon Roland’s supplying them, with accuracy as faithful as his state of mind allowed, Hamish knew not whether to be most relieved or vexed. Roland had neither wish nor thought to deceive; and his positive assertion was made only in accordance with the belief he had worked himself into. To find that the present “clue,” as Roland called it, turned out to be a supposititious one of that impulsive gentleman’s mind, on a par with the theory that he entertained in regard to Waterloo Bridge, was a relief undoubtedly to Hamish; but, nevertheless, he would have preferred Roland’s keeping the whole to himself.
“I wish you’d not take up these fancies, Roland,” he said, as severely as his sweet nature ever allowed him to speak. “It is so useless to bring me unnecessary alarms.”
“You may take my word for it that’s how it will turn out to have been, Hamish.”
“No. Had Mr. Galloway charged him with any commission to unsafe parts that night — or to safe ones, either — he would have written up since to tell me.”
“Oh, would he, though!” cried Roland, wiping his hot brow. “You don’t know Galloway as I do, Hamish. He’s just likely to have given such a commission (if he had it to give) and to think no more about it. Somebody ought to go to Helstonleigh.”
Hamish made no reply to this. He was busy with his papers.
“Will you go, Hamish?”
“To Helstonleigh? Certainly not. There is not the slightest necessity for it. I am quite certain that Mr. Galloway holds no clue that he has not imparted.”
“Then, if nobody goes down, I will go,” said Roland, his eyes lighting with earnestness, his cheeks flushing. “I never thought to show myself in Helstonleigh again until fortune had altered with me; but I’d despise myself if I could let my own feelings of shame stand in old Arthur’s light”
“Don’t do anything of the kind,” advised Hamish. “Believe me, Roland, it is altogether an ideal notion you have taken up. Your impulsive nature deceives you.”
“I shall go, Hamish. I am not obliged to carry your consent with me.”
“I should not give it,” said Hamish, slightly laughing, but speaking in an unmistakably firm accent.
He was interrupted by a hac
king cough. As Roland watched him, waiting until it should cease, watched the hectic colour it left behind it, a sudden recollection came over him of one who used to cough in much the same way before he died.
“I say, old fellow, you’ve caught cold,” he said.
“No, I think not.”
“I’d get rid of that cough, Hamish. It makes me think of Joe Jenkins. Don’t be offended: I’m not comparing you together. He was the thinnest and poorest lamp-post going, a miserable reed in the hands of Mrs. J.; and you are bright, handsome, fastidious Hamish Channing. But you cough alike.”
With the last words Roland went dashing out. When he had a purpose in view, head and heels were alike impetuous, and perhaps no earthly power, unless it had been the appearance of Arthur, could have arrested him in the end he had in view — that of starting for Helstonleigh.
CHAPTER XXX.
A new Idea for Mr. Ollivera.
THE Reverend Henry William Ollivera sat in his room at a late breakfast; he had been called abroad to a sick parishioner just as he was about to sit down to it at nine in the morning. With his usual abandonment of self, he hastened away, swallowing a thimbleful of coffee without milk or sugar, and carrying with him a crust of bread. It was nearly one when he came back again, having taken a morning service for a friend, and this was his real breakfast. Mrs. Jones, who cared for the comforts of the people about her in her tart way, had sent up what she called buttered eggs, a slice of ham, and a hot roll. The table-cloth was beautifully white; the coffee-pot looked as good as silver.
But, tempting as the meal really was, hungry as Mr. Ollivera might be supposed to be, he was letting it get cold before him. A newspaper lay on the stand near, but he did not unfold it. The strangely eager light in his eyes was very conspicuous as he sat, seeing nothing, lost in a reverie; the fevered hands were still. Some months had elapsed now since his wild anxiety, to unfold the mystery enshrouding his brother’s death, had set-in afresh, through the disclosure of Mr. Willett; a burning, restless anxiety, that never seemed wholly to quit his mind, by night or by day.