The Trail of the Serpent

by Mary Braddon

  It is rather a dull journey at the best of times from Slopperton to Gardenford, and on this dark foggy November morning, of course, duller than usual. It was still dark at half-past six. The station was lighted with gas, and there was a little lamp in the railway carriage, but for which the two travellers would not have seen each other’s faces. Richard looked out of the window for a few minutes, got up a little conversation with his fellow traveller, which soon flagged (for the young man was rather out of spirits at leaving his mother directly after their reconciliation), and then, being sadly at a loss to amuse himself, took out his uncle’s letter to the Gardenford merchant, and looked at the superscription. The letter was not sealed, but he did not take it from the envelope. “If he said any good of me, it’s a great deal more than I deserve,” said Richard to himself; “but I’m young yet, and there’s plenty of time to redeem the past.”

  Time to redeem the past! O poor Richard!

  He twisted the letter about in his hands, lighted another pipe, and smoked till the train arrived at the Gardenford station. Another foggy November day had set in.

  If Richard Marwood had been a close observer of men and manners, he might have been rather puzzled by the conduct of a short, thick-set man, shabbily dressed, who was standing on the platform when he descended from the carriage. The man was evidently waiting for some one to arrive by this train: and as surely that some one had arrived, for the man looked perfectly satisfied when he had scanned, with a glance marvellously rapid, the face of every passenger who alighted. But who this some one was, for whom the man was waiting, it was rather difficult to discover. He did not speak to any one, nor approach any one, nor did he appear to have any particular purpose in being there after that one rapid glance at all the travellers. A very minute observer might certainly have detected in him a slight interest in the movements of Richard Marwood; and when that individual left the station the stranger strolled out after him, and walked a few paces behind him down the back street that led from the station to the town. Presently he came up closer to him, and a few minutes afterwards suddenly and unceremoniously hooked his arm into that of Richard.

  “Mr. Richard Marwood, I think,” he said.

  “I’m not ashamed of my name,” replied Daredevil Dick, “and that is my name. Perhaps you’ll oblige me with yours, since you’re so uncommonly friendly.” And the young man tried to withdraw his arm from that of the stranger; but the stranger was of an affectionate turn of mind, and kept his arm tightly hooked in his.

  “Oh, never mind my name,” he said: “you’ll learn my name fast enough, I dare say. But,” he continued, as he caught a threatening look in Richard’s eye, “if you want to call me anything, why, call me Jinks.”

  “Very well then, Mr. Jinks, since I didn’t come to Gardenford to make your acquaintance, and as now, having made your acquaintance, I can’t say I much care about cultivating it further, why I wish you a very good morning!” As he said this, Richard wrenched his arm from that of the stranger, and strode two or three paces forward.

  Not more than two or three paces though, for the affectionate Mr. Jinks caught him again by the arm, and a friend of Mr. Jinks, who had also been lurking outside the station when the train arrived, happening to cross over from the other side of the street at this very moment, caught hold of his other arm, and poor Daredevil Dick, firmly pinioned by these two new-found friends, looked with a puzzled expression from one to the other.

  “Come, come,” said Mr. Jinks, in a soothing tone, “the best thing you can do is to take it quietly, and come along with me.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Richard. “Here’s a spoke in the wheel of my reform; it’s those cursed Jews,3 I suppose, have got wind of my coming down here. Show us your writ,4 Mr. Jinks, and tell us at whose suit it is, and for what amount? I’ve got a considerable sum about me, and can settle it on the spot.”

  “Oh, you have, have you?” Mr. Jinks was so surprised by this last speech of Richard’s that he was obliged to take off his hat, and rub his hand through his hair before he could recover himself. “Oh!” he continued, staring at Richard, “Oh! you’ve got a considerable sum of money about you, have you? Well, my friend, you’re either very green, or you’re very cheeky; and all I can say is, take care how you commit yourself. I’m not a sheriff’s officer. If you’d done me the honour to reckon up my nose you might have knowed it” (Mr. Jinks’s olfactory organ was a decided snub); “and I ain’t going to arrest you for debt.”

  “Oh, very well then,” said Dick; “perhaps you and your affectionate friend, who both seem to be afflicted with rather an over-large allowance of the organ of adhesiveness,5 will be so very obliging as to let me go. I’ll leave you a lock of my hair, as you’ve taken such a wonderful fancy to me.” And with a powerful effort he shook the two strangers off him; but Mr. Jinks caught him again by the arm, and Mr. Jinks’s friend, producing a pair of handcuffs, locked them on Richard’s wrists with railroad rapidity.

  “Now, don’t you try it on,” said Mr. Jinks. “I didn’t want to use these, you know, if you’d have come quietly. I’ve heard you belong to a respectable family, so I thought I wouldn’t ornament you with these here objects of bigotry” (it is to be presumed Mr. Jinks means bijouterie);6 “but it seems there’s no help for it, so come along to the station; we shall catch the eight-thirty train, and be in Slopperton before ten. The inquest won’t come on till to-morrow.”

  Richard looked at his wrists, from his wrists to the faces of the two men, with an utterly hopeless expression of wonder.

  “Am I mad,” he said, “or drunk, or dreaming? What have you put these cursed things upon me for? Why do you want to take me back to Slopperton? What inquest? Who’s dead?”

  Mr. Jinks put his head on one side, and contemplated the prisoner with the eye of a connoisseur.

  “Don’t he come the hinnocent dodge stunnin’?” he said, rather to himself than to his companion, who, by the bye, throughout the affair had never once spoken. “Don’t he do it beautiful? Wouldn’t he be a first-rate actor up at the Wictoria Theayter in London?7 Wouldn’t he be prime in the ‘Suspected One,’ or ‘Gonsalvo the Guiltless?’8 Vy,” said Mr. Jinks, with intense admiration, “he’d be worth his two-pound-ten a week and a clear half benefit every month to any manager as is.”

  As Mr. Jinks made these complimentary remarks, he and his friend walked on. Richard, puzzled, bewildered, and unresisting, walked between them towards the railway station; but presently Mr. Jinks condescended to reply to his prisoner’s questions, in this wise:—

  “You want to know what inquest? Well, a inquest on a gentleman what’s been barbarously murdered. You want to know who’s dead? Why, your uncle is the gent as has been murdered. You want to know why we are going to take you back to Slopperton? Well, because we’ve got a warrant to arrest you upon suspicion of having committed the murder.”

  “My uncle murdered!” cried Richard, with a face that now for the first time since his arrest betrayed anxiety and horror; for throughout his interview with Mr. Jinks he had never once seemed frightened. His manner had expressed only utter bewilderment of mind.

  “Yes, murdered; his throat cut from ear to ear.”

  “It cannot be,” said Richard. “There must be some horrid mistake here. My uncle, Montague Harding, murdered! I bade him good-bye at twelve last night in perfect health.”

  “And this morning he was found murdered in his bed; with the cabinet in his room broken open, and rifled of a pocket-book known to contain upwards of three hundred pounds.”

  “Why, he gave me that pocket-book last night. He gave it to me. I have it here in my breast-pocket.”

  “You’d better keep that story for the coroner,” said Mr. Jinks. “Perhaps he’ll believe it.”

  “I must be mad, I must be mad,” said Richard.

  They had by this time reached the station, and Mr. Jinks having glanced into two or three carriages of the train about to start, selected one of the second-class, and ushered Richard into it.
He seated himself by the young man’s side, while his silent and unobtrusive friend took his place opposite. The guard locked the door, and the train started.

  Mr. Jinks’s quiet friend was exactly one of those people adapted to pass in a crowd. He might have passed in a hundred crowds, and no one of the hundreds of people in any of those hundred crowds would have glanced aside to look at him.

  You could only describe him by negatives. He was neither very tall nor very short, he was neither very stout nor very thin, neither dark nor fair, neither ugly nor handsome; but just such a medium between the two extremities of each as to be utterly commonplace and unnoticeable.

  If you looked at his face for three hours together, you would in those three hours find only one thing in that face that was any way out of the common—that one thing was the expression of the mouth.

  It was a compressed mouth with thin lips, which tightened and drew themselves rigidly together when the man thought—and the man was almost always thinking: and this was not all, for when he thought most deeply the mouth shifted in a palpable degree to the left side of his face. This was the only thing remarkable about the man, except, indeed, that he was dumb but not deaf, having lost the use of his speech during a terrible illness which he had suffered in his youth.

  Throughout Richard’s arrest he had watched the proceedings with unswerving intensity, and he now sat opposite the prisoner, thinking deeply, with his compressed lips drawn on one side.

  The dumb man was a mere scrub,9 one of the very lowest of the police force, a sort of outsider and employé of Mr. Jinks, the Gardenford detective; but he was useful, quiet, and steady, and above all, as his patrons said, he was to be relied on, because he could not talk.

  He could talk though, in his own way, and he began to talk presently in his own way to Mr. Jinks; he began to talk with his fingers with a rapidity which seemed marvellous. The fingers were more active than clean, and made rather a dirty alphabet.

  “Oh, hang it,” said Mr. Jinks, after watching him for a moment, “you must do it a little slower, if you want me to understand. I am not an electric telegraph.”

  The scrub nodded, and began again with his fingers, very slowly.

  This time Richard too watched him; for Richard knew this dumb alphabet. He had talked whole reams of nonsense with it, in days gone by, to a pretty girl at a boarding-school, between whom and himself there had existed a platonic attachment, to say nothing of a high wall and broken glass bottles.

  Richard watched the dirty alphabet.

  First, two grimy fingers laid flat upon the dirty palm, N. Next, the tip of the grimy forefinger of the right hand upon the tip of the grimy third finger of the left hand, O; the next letter is T, and the man snaps his fingers—the word is finished, NOT. Not what? Richard found himself wondering with an intense eagerness, which, even in the bewildered state of his mind, surprised him.

  The dumb man began another word—

  G—U—I—L—

  Mr. Jinks cut him short.

  “Not guilty? Not fiddlesticks! What do you know about it, I should like to know? Where did you get your experience? Where did you get your sharp practice? What school have you been formed in, I wonder, that you can come out so positive with your opinion; and what’s the value you put your opinion at, I wonder? I should be glad to hear what you’d take for your opinion.”

  Mr. Jinks uttered the whole of this speech with the most intense sarcasm; for Mr. Jinks was a distinguished detective, and prided himself highly on his acumen; and was therefore very indignant that his sub and scrub should dare to express an opinion.

  “My uncle murdered!” said Richard; “my good, kind, generous-hearted uncle! Murdered in cold blood! Oh, it is too horrible!”

  The scrub’s mouth was very much on one side as Richard muttered this, half to himself.

  “And I am suspected of the murder?”

  “Well, you see,” said Mr. Jinks, “there’s two or three things tell pretty strong against you. Why were you in such a hurry this morning to cut and run to Gardenford?

  “My uncle had recommended me to a merchant’s office in that town: see, here is the letter of introduction—read it.”

  “No, it ain’t my place,” said Mr. Jinks. “The letter’s not sealed, I see, but I mustn’t read it, or if I do, I stand the chance of gettin’ snubbed and lectured for goin’ beyond my dooty: howsumdever, you can show it to the coroner. I’m sure I should be very glad to see you clear yourself, for I’ve heard you belong to one of our good old county families, and it ain’t quite the thing to hang such as you.”

  Poor Richard! His reckless words of the night before came back to him: “I wonder they don’t hang such fellows as I am.”

  “And now,” says Jinks, “as I should like to make all things comfortable, if you’re willing to come along quietly with me and my friend here, why, I’ll move those bracelets, because they are not quite so ornamental as they’re sometimes useful; and as I’m going to light my pipe, why, if you like to blow a cloud, too, you can.”

  With this Mr. Jinks unlocked and removed the handcuffs, and produced his pipe and tobacco. Richard did the same, and took from his pocket a match-box in which there was only one match.

  “That’s awkward,” said Jinks, “for I haven’t a light about me.”

  They filled the two pipes, and lighted the one match.

  Now, all this time Richard had held his uncle’s letter of introduction in his hand, and when there was some little difficulty in lighting the tobacco from the expiring lucifer, he, without a moment’s thought, held the letter over the flickering flame, and from the burning paper lighted his pipe.

  In a moment he remembered what he had done.

  The letter of introduction! the one piece of evidence in his favour! He threw the blazing paper on the ground and stamped on it, but in vain. In spite of all his efforts a few black ashes alone remained.

  “The devil must have possessed me,” he exclaimed. “I have burnt my uncle’s letter.”

  “Well,” says Mr. Jinks, “I’ve seen many dodges in my time, and I’ve seen a many knowing cards; but if that isn’t the neatest dodge, and if you ain’t the knowingest card I ever did see, blow me.”

  “I tell you that letter was in my uncle’s hand; written to his friend, the merchant at Gardenford; and in it he mentions having given me the very money you say has been stolen from his cabinet.”

  “Oh, the letter was all that, was it? And you’ve lighted your pipe with it. You’d better tell that little story before the coroner. It will be so very conwincing to the jury.”

  The scrub, with his mouth very much to the left, spells out again the two words, “Not guilty!”

  “Oh,” says Mr. Jinks, “you mean to stick to your opinion, do you, now you’ve formed it? Upon my word, you’re too clever for a country-town practice; I wonder they don’t send for you up at Scotland Yard; with your talents, you’d be at the top of the tree in no time, I’ve no doubt.”

  During the journey, the thick November fog had been gradually clearing away, and at this very moment the sun broke out with a bright and sudden light that shone full upon the threadbare coat-sleeve of Daredevil Dick.

  “Not guilty!” cried Mr. Jinks, with sudden energy. “Not guilty! Why, look here! I’m blest if his coat-sleeve isn’t covered with blood!”

  Yes, on the shabby worn-out coat the sunlight revealed dark and ghastly stains; and, stamped and branded by those hideous marks as a villain and a murderer, Richard Marwood re-entered his native town.

  CHAPTER V

  THE HEALING WATERS

  The Sloshy is not a beautiful river, unless indeed mud is beautiful, for it is very muddy. The Sloshy is a disagreeable kind of compromise between a river and a canal. It is like a canal which (after the manner of the mythic frog that wanted to be an ox)1 had seen a river, and swelled itself to bursting in imitation thereof. It has quite a knack of swelling and bursting, this Sloshy; it overflows its banks and swallows up a house or two, or takes a
n impromptu snack off a few outbuildings, once or twice a year. It is inimical to children, and has been known to suck into its muddy bosom the hopes of divers families; and has afterwards gone down to the distant sea, flaunting on its breast Billy’s straw hat or Johnny’s pinafore, as a flag of triumph for having done a little amateur business for the gentleman on the pale horse.2

  It has been a soft pillow of rest, too, this muddy breast of the Sloshy; and weary heads have been known to sleep more soundly in that loathsome, dark, and slimy bed than on couches of down.

  Oh, keep us ever from even whispering to our own hearts that our best chance of peaceful slumber might be in such a bed!

  An ugly, dark, and dangerous river—a river that is always telling you of trouble, and anguish, and weariness of spirit—a river that to some poor impressionable mortal creatures, who are apt to be saddened by a cloud or brightened by a sunbeam, is not healthy to look upon.

  I wonder what that woman thinks of the river? A badly-dressed woman carrying a baby, who walks with a slow and restless step up and down by one of its banks, on the afternoon of the day on which the murder of Mr. Montague Harding took place.

  It is a very solitary spot she has chosen, on the furthest outskirts of the town of Slopperton; and the town of Slopperton being at best a very ugly town, is ugliest at the outskirts, which consist of two or three straggling manufactories, a great gaunt gaol—the stoniest of stone jugs—and a straggling fringe of shabby houses, some new and only half-built, others ancient and half fallen to decay, which hang all round Slopperton like the rags that fringe the edges of a dirty garment.

  The woman’s baby is fretful, and it may be that the damp foggy atmosphere on the banks of the Sloshy is scarcely calculated to engender either high spirits or amiable temper in the bosom of infant or adult. The woman hushes it impatiently to her breast, and looks down at the little puny features with a strange unmotherly glance. Poor wretch! Perhaps she scarcely thinks of that little load as a mother is apt to think of her child. She may remember it only as a shame, a burden, and a grief. She has been pretty; a bright country beauty, perhaps, a year ago; but she is a faded, careworn-looking creature now, with a pale face, and hollow circles round her eyes. She has played the only game a woman has to play, and lost the only stake a woman has to lose.