“But not to-day,” Clement urged. “He’ll come through to-day or to-night.”
“Ay, and more likely night than day. But how be I to see if he’s a blackened peeper in the dark! I can’t haul a gentleman off a coach to ask the color of his eyes.”
“Well, anyway, do your best.”
“We might bill him and cry him?”
“That’s it! Do that!” Clement saw that that was about the extent of the help he would get in this quarter. “Send the crier to me at the Bowling Green, and I’ll write a bill — Five pounds reward for information!”
The constable’s eyes twinkled. “Now you’re on a line, master,” he said. “Now we’ll do summat, maybe!”
Clement took the hint and bettered the line with a crownpiece, and hastening back to his inn he took seisin of a seat in the coffee room which commanded the main street. Here he wrote out a bill, and bribed a waiter to keep the place for him: and in it he sat patiently, scanning every person who passed. But so many passed that an hour had not elapsed before he held his task hopeless, though he continued to perform it. The constable had undertaken to go round the inns and to set a watch on a side street; and the bill might do something. But his fancy pictured half a dozen by-ways through the town, or the man might avoid the town, or he might go by another route. Altogether it began to seem a hopeless task, his fancied sagacity a silly conceit. But he had undertaken the task, and as he had told his father he could not close all holes. He could only set his snare across the largest and hope for the best.
Presently he heard the crier ring his bell and cry his man. “Oh yes! Oh yes! Oh yes!” and the rest of it, ending with “God save the King!” And that cheered him for a while. That was something. But as hour after hour went by and coaches, carriages, and postchaises stopped and started before the door, and pedestrians passed, and still no Thomas appeared — though half a dozen times he ran out to take a nearer view of some traveller, or to inspect a slumberer in a hay-cart — he began to despair. There were so many chances against him. So many straws floated by, half seen in the current.
But Clement was dogged. He persisted, though hope had almost abandoned him, and it was long after midnight before, sinking with fatigue, he left his post. Even so he was out again by six, but if there was anything of which he was now certain, it was that the villain had gone by in the night. Still he remained, his eyes roving ceaselessly over the passers-by, who were now few, now many, as the current ran fast or slow, as some coach high-laden drew up before the door with a noisy fanfaronade, or some heavy wagon toiled slowly by.
It was in one of these slack intervals, when the street was tolerably empty, that his eyes fell on a man who was loitering on the other side of the way. The man had his hands in his pockets and a straw in his mouth, and he seemed to be a mere idler; but as his eyes met Clement’s he winked. Then, with an almost imperceptible gesture of the head, he lounged away in the direction of the inn yard.
Clement doubted if anything was meant, but grasping at every chance he hurried out and found the man standing in the yard, his hands in his pockets, the straw in his mouth. He was staring at an object, which, to judge from his aspect, could have no possible interest for him — a pump. “Do you want me?” Clement asked.
“Mebbe, mister. Do you see that stable?”
“Well?”
“D’you go in there and I’ll — mebbe I’ll join you.”
But Clement was suspicious. “I am not going out of sight of the street,” he said.
“Lord!” contemptuously. “Your man’s gone these six hours. He’s many a mile on by now! You come into the stable.”
The fellow’s looks did not commend him. He was blear-eyed and under-sized, wearing a mangy rabbit-skin waistcoat, and no coat. He had the air of a postboy run to seed. Still, Clement thought it better to go with him, and in the stable, “Be you the gent that offered five pounds?” the man asked, turning upon him.
“I am.”
“Then fork out, squire. Open your purse, and I’ll open my mouth.”
“If you come with me to the constable — —”
“Not I. I ben’t sharing with no constable. That is flat.”
“Well, what do you know?”
“What you want to know. Howsumdever, if you’ll give me your word you’ll act the gentleman?”
“Who are you, my lad?”
“Ostler at the Barley Sheaf in Malthouse Lane. You’re on? Right. I see, you’re a gentleman. Well, your chap come in ‘bout eleven last night on an empty dray from Chester. He had four sacks of corn with him.”
“Oh, but that can’t be the man!” Clement exclaimed, his face falling.
“You listen, mister. He had four sacks of corn with him, and wagoner, he’d bargained to carry him to Manchester. But they had quarrelled, and t’other chucked off his sacks in our yard, and there was pretty nigh a fight. Wagoner he went off and left him cursing, and he offered me a shilling to find him a lift to Manchester first thing i’ the morning. ‘Bout daylight there come in a hay-cart, but driver’d only take the man and not the forage. Howsumdever, he said at last he’d take one sack, and your chap up and asked me would I take care of t’other three till he sent for ‘em. I see he was mighty keen to get on, and I sez, ‘No,’ sez I, ‘but I’ll buy ‘em cheap.’ ‘Right,’ sez he, and surprising little bones about it, and lets me have ‘em cheap! So thinks I, who’s this as chucks away money, and as he climbed up I managed to knock off his tile and see his eye was painted, and he the very spot of your bill! I’d half a mind to stop him, but he was over-weight for me — I’m a little chap — and I let him go.’ He added some details which satisfied Clement that the traveller was really Thomas.
“Did you hear where he was going to in Manchester?”
“Five pound, mister!” The man held out his grimy paw.
Clement did not like the cunning in the bleary eyes, but he had gone so far that he could hardly draw back. He counted out four one-pound notes. “Now then?” he said, showing the fifth, but keeping a firm hold on it.
“The lad that took him is Jerry Stott — of the Apple-Tree Inn in Fennel Street. You go to him, mister. One of these will do it.”
Clement gave him the other note. “He didn’t tell you where he was going?”
“He very particlar did not. But I’m thinking you’ll net him at Jerry’s. Do you take one of Nadin’s boys. He’s a desperate-looking chap. He gave you that punch in the face, I guess?” with interest.
“He did.”
“Ah, well, you marked him. But you get one of Nadin’s boys. You’ll not take him easy.”
CHAPTER XVII
Clement did not let the grass grow under his feet. An hour later he was rattling over the stony pavements and through the crowded streets of the busy town, which had grown in a short hundred years from something little more than a village, to be the second centre of wealth and population, of poverty and crime, within the seas; a centre on which the eye of Government rested with unwinking vigilance, for without a voice in Parliament and with half of its citizens deprived of civic rights — since half were Nonconformists — it was the focus of all the discontent in the country. In Manchester, if anywhere, flourished the agitation against the Test Acts and the movement for Reform. Thence had started the famous Blanketeers, there six years before had taken place the Peterloo massacre. Thence as by the million filaments of some great web was roused or calmed the vast industrial world of Lancashire. The thunder of the power-loom that had created it, the roar of the laden drays that shook it, deafened the wondering stranger, but more formidable and momentous than either, had he known it, was the half-heard murmur of an underworld striving to be free.
Clement had never visited the cotton-town before, and on a more commonplace errand he might have allowed himself to be daunted by a turmoil and bustle as new to him as it was uncongenial. But with his mind set on one thing, he heeded his surroundings only as they threatened to balk his aim, and he had himself driven directly to the Police
Office, over which the notorious Nadin had so lately presided that for most people it still went by his name. Fearless, resolute, and not too scrupulous, the man had through twenty troublous years combated the forces alike of disorder and of liberty; and before London had yet acquired an efficient police, he had gathered round him a body of men equal at least to the Bow Street Runners. He had passed, but his methods survived; and half an hour after Clement had entered the office he issued from it accompanied by a hard-bitten, sharp-eyed man in a tall beaver hat and a long wide-skirted coat.
“The Apple Tree? Oh, the Apple Tree’s on the square,” he informed Clement. “And Jerry Stott? No harm in him, sir, either. He’ll speak when he sees me.”
“You don’t think we need another man?”
“There’s one following. No use to go in a bunch. He’ll watch the front, and we’ll go in by the yard. Got a barker, sir?”
“Yes.”
“‘Fraid so. Well, don’t use it — show it if you like. Law’s law, and a live dog’s worth more than its hide. Ay, that’s Chetham’s. Queer old place, and — sharp’s the word, here we are,” as they turned off Long Mill Gate, and entered the yard of an old-fashioned house, over the door of which hung the sign of an apple-tree. The place was quiet, in comparison with the street they had left, and “Here’s Jerry,” the officer added, as they espied a young fellow, who in a corner of the enclosure was striving to raise to his shoulder a truss of hay. He ceased his efforts when he saw them.
“We want a word with you,” said the officer.
The man eyed them with dismay. “I never thout ‘at he’d come to thee,” he said.
“The chap you brought in this morning?”
“Ay, sure.”
“Happen yes and happen no,” the policeman replied. “What’s it all about?”
“If he says I took his eauts he be a leear. I wurna wi’ the sack, not to say alone ‘at is, not five minutes, and yo’ may look at t’ sack and see all’s theer as ever was! Never a handfu’ missing, tho’ the chap he cursed and swore an’ took on, the mout ha’ been eauts o’ gowd! He’s a leear iv he says I tetched ‘em, but I never thout he’d t’ brass to come to thee.”
“Why not, lad?”
“‘Cause i’ the end he let up and steared at t’ sack leek a steck pig, and then he fell a shriking ‘i worse shap than ever, and away he goes as iv a dog had bit him and down t’ Long Gate hell for leather!”
“Which way? I see. Did he take the oats?”
“Not he, nor t’ bag. An after mekking setch a din about his eauts! I war no wi’ ‘em five minutes.”
The officer declined to commit himself. “Let us see them,” he said.
Jerry led them to a tumble-down, black and white building at the rear of the yard, with lattice work in its crazy windows and an old date over the door. They followed him up a ladder and into a loft, where were a frowsy bed or two, some old pack-saddles, and two or three stools made out of casks sawn in two. On the floor in one place lay a heap of oats trampled this way and that, and beside the heap an empty sack. The officer picked up the sack, shook it and examined it.
“What do you make of it?” Clement asked.
“I don’t know what to make of it. Here, you, Jerry, fetch me a corn measure!” And when he had thus rid them of the lad, “He may be carrying out orders and telling a flash tale to put us off. Or he may be telling the truth, and in that case it looks as if someone had been a mite brighter than your man and cleared his stuff.”
“But where is it?”
“Ah! Just so, I’d like to know,” shaking his head. “Yes, Jerry, measure it back into the sack. How much is there?”
The lad began to gather up the oats and replace them in the bag, while the two men looked on, perplexed and undecided. Suddenly Clement stooped — a scrap of cord, doubtless the cord which had tied the neck of the sack, had caught his eye. He picked it up, looked at it, then, with a word, he handed it to the officer. “I think that settles it,” he said, his eyes shining. There was a tiny twist of straw-plait, like a rosette, knotted about the cord and still adhering to it.
Nadin’s man looked at the plait and for a moment did not understand. Then his face cleared. “By Joseph! You’re right, sir!” he exclaimed, and slapped his thigh. “And sharp, sharp too. You’d ought to be one of us! That settles it, it’s the backtrack we’ve to look to, but I’ll take no chances.” And turning to the lad and addressing him in his harshest voice, “See here, in an hour we shall know if you’ve told us the truth. If you’ve not it will be the New Bailey and a pair of iron garters for you. So if you’ve aught to add, out with it! It’s your last chance, Jerry Stott.”
But the lad protested that he’d told all the truth. It had happened just as he had told them.
The officer turned to Clement. “I think he’s on the square,” he said, “but I’ll have him watched.” And he led the way down the ladder. When they reached the street, he stepped out smartly, making nothing of the crowd and bustle, the lumbering drays and over-hanging cranes through which they had to thread their way. “We’ll catch the Altringham stage at the Cross if we’re sharp,” he said. “It’ll be quicker than getting out a po’chay and a lot cheaper.”
They caught the stage, and alighted in Altringham before five. A walk of as many minutes brought them to the Barley Sheaf, a wagoner’s house at the corner of a lane in the poorest part of the town. The ostler, from whom Clement had so lately parted, stood leaning against a post at the entrance to the yard, his hands still in his pockets and the straw still in his mouth. When he saw them a grin broke up his ugly face. “He’ve been here,” he cried, “but,” triumphantly, “I’ve routed him, mister! I sent him all ways!”
The officer did not respond. “Why, the devil, didn’t you seize him?” he growled.
“What, me? And him double my size? And a desperate villain? ‘Deed, I’d to save my skin, mister, and only yon lad and a couple of childer in the yard when he come. I see him first, sneaking a look round this yere post, and thinks I, it’ll be a knife in the back or a punch in the face for me if he’s heard I’ve rapped. So, first’s better than last, thinks I, and seeing as he hung back I up to him bold as brass, but with one eye on the lad too, and sez I, ‘Can you read?’ sez I. He looked at me’s if he’d have my blood, but there was the lad and the childer a-staring, so ‘Ay, I can,’ says he, ‘and can read you, you thieving villain!’ ‘Well, if you can read, read that,’ sez I, and pointed to a bill as was posted on the gate. ‘I can’t,’ sez he, ‘and, happen you can tell me what ’tis all about.’ He looks, and he sees ’tis the bill about he, and painting him to the life. Anyways, he turns the color o’ whey and he gives me a look as if he’d cut out my inwards, but he sees it’s no good, for there was the lad and the childer, and he slinks off. Ay, I routed him, I did, little as I be, mister!”
“Right!” said Nadin’s man. “And now do you show us the sack as you changed for his.”
The man’s face fell amazingly, but Clement noted that he looked surprised rather than frightened. “Eh?” he exclaimed. “Lord, now, who told you, mister? He didn’t know.”
“Never mind who told us. We know, and that’s enough. There was a twist o’ plait round the cord?”
“There were.”
“You said nothing about it before. But out with it now, and do you take care, my lad.”
“Well, who axed me? Exchange is no robbery and I ain’t afeard. ’Twas just this way. He sold me three sacks, ‘s I told you, squire, and I was hauling ‘em off to stable when ‘Not that one!’ says he sharp. So then I look at t’ one he was so set on keeping, and when his back was turned I hefted it sly-like, and it seemed to me a good bit heavier than t’ others. Then I spied the bit o’ plait about the cord, and thinks I, being no fule, ’tis a mark. And when he went in for a squib o’ cordial wi’ Jerry Stott I shifted t’ mark to another sack and loaded up, and off he goes and he none the wiser, and no harm done. Exchange is no robbery and you can’t do nowt to me for that.”
“I don’t know,” said the officer darkly. “Let us see the sack.”
“You’re not agoing — —”
“Do you hear? Jump, unless you want to get into trouble. You show us that sack, and be quick about it, my lad.”
Grumbling, but not daring to refuse, the old man led the way into the stables, and there in an empty stall the three sacks stood upright. “Which is the one you filched?” asked the man from Manchester.
Reluctantly the ostler pointed it out. “Then you get me a horse-cloth.”
“You’re not going — well, a wilful man must have his way. Will that serve you? But if my oats is spilled and spiled — —”
Nadin’s man paid no heed to his remonstrance, but in a trice cut the cord that tied the sack’s mouth, tipped it on its side, and let the grain pour out in a golden stream. A golden stream it proved to be, for in a twinkling something sparkled amid the corn, and here and there a sovereign glittered. To Clement and the officer who had read the riddle, this was no great surprise, though they viewed it with smiling satisfaction. But the old man, stuck dumb by the sight of the treasure that had been for a time in his power, turned a dirty white. He stood gazing at the vision of wealth, greed in his eyes, his hands working convulsively; and presently in a choked voice, “O, Lord! O, Lord!” he muttered. “You’ll not take t’ all! You’ll not take t’ all! . It were mine. I bought it.”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 648