Henry Dunbar

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"There's scarcely enough wind to puff out a farthing candle," one of the
young men said. "I think we're safe to catch her."

Mr. Carter took a cupful of rum at the instigation of one of his
companions, and prepared himself for the business that lay before him.

Of all the hazardous ventures in which the detective had been engaged,
this was certainly not the least hazardous. He was about to venture on
board a strange vessel, with a captain who bore no good name, and with
men who most likely closely resembled their master; he was about to
trust himself among such fellows as these, in the hope of capturing a
criminal whose chances, if once caught, were so desperate that he would
not be likely to hesitate at any measures by which he might avoid a
capture. But the detective was not unused to encounters where the odds
were against him, and he contemplated the chances of being hurled
overboard in a hand-to-hand struggle with Joseph Wilmot as calmly as if
death by drowning were the legitimate end of a man's existence.

Once, while standing in the prow of the boat, with his face turned
steadily towards that speck in the horizon, Mr. Carter thrust his hand
into the breast-pocket of his coat, where there lurked the newest and
neatest thing in revolvers; but beyond this action, which was almost
involuntary, he made no sign that he was thinking of the danger before
him.

The moon grew brighter and brighter in a cloudless sky, as the
fishing-smack shot through the water, while the steady dip of the oars
seemed to keep time to a wordless tune. In that bright moonlight the
sails of the _Crow_ grew whiter and larger with every dip of the oars
that were carrying the _Pretty Polly_ so lightly over the blue water.

As the boat gained upon the vessel she was following, Mr. Carter told
the two young men his errand, and his authority to capture the runaway.

"I think I may count on your standing by me--eh, my lads?" he asked.

Yes, the young men answered; they would stand by him to the death. Their
spirits seemed to rise with the thought of danger, especially as Mr.
Carter hinted at a possible reward for each of them if they should
assist in the capture of the runaway. They rowed close under the side of
the black and wicked-looking vessel, and then Mr. Carter, standing up in
the boat gave a "Yo-ho! aboard there!" that resounded over the great
expanse of plashing water.

A man with a pipe in his mouth looked over the side.

"Hilloa! what's the row there?" he demanded fiercely.

"I want to see the captain."

"What do you want with him?"

"That's my business."

Another man, with a dingy face, and another pipe in his mouth, looked
over the side, and took his pipe from between his lips, to address the
detective.

"What the ---- do you mean by coming alongside us?" he cried. "Get out
of the way, or we shall run you down."

"Oh, no, you won't, Mr. Spelsand," answered one of the young men from
the boat; "you'll think twice before you turn rusty with us. Don't you
remember the time you tried to get off John Bowman, the clerk that
robbed the Yorkshire Union Assurance Office--don't you remember trying
to get him off clear, and gettin' into trouble yourself about it?"

Mr. Spelsand bawled some order to the man at the helm, and the vessel
veered round suddenly; so suddenly, that had the two young men in the
boat been anything but first-rate watermen, they and Mr. Carter would
have become very intimately acquainted with the briny element around and
about them. But the young men were very good watermen, and they were
also familiar with the manners and customs of Captain Spelsand, of the
_Crow_; so, as the black-looking schooner veered round, the little boat
shot out into the open water, and the two young oarsmen greeted the
captain's manoeuvre with a ringing peal of laughter.

"I'll trouble you to lay-to while I come on board," said the detective,
while the boat bobbed up and down on the water, close alongside of the
schooner. "You've got a gentleman on board--a gentleman whom I've got a
warrant against. It can't much matter to him whether I take him now, or
when he gets to Copenhagen; for take him I surely shall; but it'll
matter a good deal to you, Captain Spelsand, if you resist my
authority."

The captain hesitated for a little, while he gave a few fierce puffs at
his dirty pipe.

"Show us your warrant," he said presently, in a sulky tone.

The detective had started from Scotland Yard in the first instance with
an open warrant for the arrest of the supposed murderer. He handed this
document up to the captain of the _Crow_, and that gentleman, who was by
no means an adept in the unseamanlike accomplishments of reading and
writing, turned it over, and examined it thoughtfully in the vivid
moonlight.

He could see that there were a lot of formidable-looking words and
flourishes in it, and he felt pretty well convinced that it was a
genuine document, and meant mischief.

"You'd better come aboard," he said; "you don't want _me_; that's
certain."

The captain of the _Crow_ said this with an air of sublime resignation;
and in the next minute the detective was scrambling up the side of the
vessel, by the aid of a rope flung out by one of the sailors on board
the _Crow_.

Mr. Carter was followed by one of the fishermen; and with that stalwart
ally he felt himself equal to any emergency.

"I'll just throw my eye over your place down below," he said, "if you'll
hand me a lantern."

This request was not complied with very willingly; and it was only on a
second production of the warrant that Mr. Carter obtained the loan of a
wretched spluttering wick, glimmering in a dirty little oil-lamp. With
this feeble light he turned his back upon the lovely moonlight, and
stumbled down into a low-ceilinged cabin, darksome and dirty, with
berths which were as black and dingy, and altogether as uninviting as
the shelves made to hold coffins in a noisome underground vault.

There were three men asleep upon these shelves; and Mr. Carter examined
these three sleepers as coolly as if they had indeed been the coffined
inmates of a vault. Amongst them he found a man whose face was turned
towards the cabin-wall, but who wore a blue coat and a traveller's cap
of fur, shaped like a Templar's helmet, and tied down over his ears.

The detective seized this gentleman by the fur collar of his coat and
shook him roughly.

"Come, Mr. Joseph Wilmot," he said; "get up, my man. You've given me a
fine chase for it; but you're nabbed at last."

The man scrambled up out of his berth, and stood in a stooping attitude,
for the cabin was not high enough for him, staring at Mr. Carter.

"What are you talking of, you confounded fool!" he said. "What have I
got to do with Joseph Wilmot?"

The detective had never loosed his hand from the fur collar of his
prisoner's coat. The faces of the two men were opposite to each other,
but only faintly visible in the dim light of the spluttering oil-lamp.
The man in the fur-lined coat showed two rows of wolfish teeth, bared to
the gums in a malicious grin.

"What do you mean by waking me out of sleep?" he asked. "What do you
mean by assaulting and ballyragging me in this way? I'll have it out of
you for this, my fine gentleman. You're a detective officer, are you?--a
knowing card, of course; and you've followed me all the way from
Warwickshire, and traced me, step by step, I suppose, and taken no end
of trouble, eh? Why didn't you look after the gentleman _who stayed at
home_? Why didn't you look after the poor lame gentleman who stayed at
Woodbine Cottage, Lisford, and dressed up his pretty daughter as a
housemaid, and acted a little play to sell you, you precious clever
police-officer in plain clothes. Take me with you, Mr. Detective; stop
me in going abroad to improve my mind and manners by foreign travel, do,
Mr. Detective; and won't I have a fine action against you for false
imprisonment,--that's all?"

There was something in the man's tone of bravado that stamped it
genuine. Mr. Carter gnashed his teeth together in a silent fury. Sold by
that hazel-eyed housemaid with her face tied up! Sent away on a false
trail, while the criminal got off at his leisure! Fooled, duped, and
laughed at after twenty years of hard service! It was too bitter.

"Not Joseph Wilmot!" muttered Mr. Carter; "not Joseph Wilmot!"

"No more than you are, my pippin," answered the traveller, insolently.

The two men were still standing face to face. Something in that insolent
tone, something that brought back the memory of half-forgotten times,
startled the detective. He lifted the lamp suddenly, still looking in
the traveller's face, still muttering in the same half-absent tone, "Not
Joseph Wilmot!" and brought the light on a level with the other man's
eyes.

"No," he cried, with a sudden tone of triumph, "not Joseph Wilmot, but
Stephen Vallance--Blackguard Steeve, the forger--the man who escaped
from Norfolk Island, after murdering one of the gaolers--beating his
brains out with an iron, if I remember right. We've had our eye on you
for a long time, Mr. Vallance; but you've contrived to give us the slip.
Yours is an old case, yours is; but there's a reward to be got for the
taking of you, for all that. So I haven't had my long journey for
nothing."

The detective tried to fasten his other hand on Mr. Vallance's shoulder;
but Stephen Vallance struck down that uplifted hand with a heavy blow of
his fist, and, wresting himself from the detective's grasp, rushed up
the cabin-stairs.

Mr. Carter followed close at his heels.

"Stop that man!" he roared to one of the fishermen; "stop him!"

I suppose the instinct of self-preservation inspired Stephen Vallance to
make that frantic rush, though there was no possible means of escape out
of the vessel, except into the open boat, or the still more open sea. As
he receded from the advancing detective, one of the fishermen sprang
towards him from another part of the deck. Thus hemmed in by the two,
and dazzled, perhaps, by the sudden brilliancy of the moonlight after
the darkness of the place below, he reeled back against an opening in
the side of the vessel, lost his balance, and fell with a heavy plunge
into the water.

There was a sudden commotion on the deck, a simultaneous shout, as the
men rushed to the side.

"Save him!" cried the detective. "He's got a belt stuffed with diamonds
round his waist!"

Mr. Carter said this at a venture, for he did not know which of the men
had the diamond belt.

One of the fishermen threw off his shoes, and took a header into the
water. The rest of the men stood by breathless, eagerly watching two
heads bobbing up and down among the moonlit waves, two pairs of arms
buffeting with the water. The force of the current drifted the two men
far away from the schooner.

For an interval that seemed a long one, all was uncertainty. The
schooner that had made so little way before seemed now to fly in the
faint night-wind. At last there was a shout, and a head appeared above
the water advancing steadily towards the vessel.

"I've got him!" shouted the voice of the fisherman. "I've got him by the
belt!"

He came nearer to the vessel, striking out vigorously with one arm, and
holding some burden with the other.

When he was close under the side, the captain of the _Crow_ flung out a
rope; but as the fisherman lifted his hand to grasp it, he uttered a
sudden cry, and raised the other hand with a splash out of the water.

"The belt's broke, and he's sunk!" he shouted.

The belt had broken. A little ripple of light flashed briefly in the
moonlight, and fell like a shower of spray from a fountain. Those
glittering drops, that looked like fountain spray, were some of the
diamonds bought by Joseph Wilmot; and Stephen Vallance, alias Blackguard
Steeve, alias Major Vernon, had gone down to the bottom of the sea,
never in this mortal life to rise again.

CHAPTER XLV.

GIVING IT UP.

The _Pretty Polly_ went back to the port of Kingston-upon-Hull in the
grey morning light, carrying Mr. Carter, very cold and very
down-hearted--not to say humiliated--by his failure. To have been
hoodwinked by a girl, whose devotion to the unhappy wretch she called
her father had transformed her into a heroine--to have fallen so easily
into the trap that had been set for him, being all the while profoundly
impressed with the sense of his own cleverness--was, to say the least of
it, depressing to the spirits of a first-class detective.

"And that fellow Vallance, too," mused Mr. Carter, "to think that he
should go and chuck himself into the water just to spite me! There'd
have been some credit in taking him back with me. I might have made a
bit of character out of that. But, no! he goes and tumbles back'ards
into the water, rather than let me have any advantage out of him."

There was nothing for Mr. Carter to do but to go straight back to
Lisford, and try his luck again, with everything against him.

"Let me get back as fast as I may, Joseph Wilmot will have had
eight-and-forty hours' start of me," he thought; "and what can't he do
in that time, if he keeps his wits about him, and don't go wild and
foolish like, as some of 'em do, when they've got such a chance as this.
Anyhow, I'm after him, and it'll go hard with me if he gives me the slip
after all, for my blood's up, and my character's at stake, and I'd think
no more of crossing the Atlantic after him than I'd think of going over
Waterloo Bridge!"

It was a very chill and miserable time of the morning when the _Pretty
Polly_ ground her nose against the granite steps of the quay. It was a
chill and dismal hour of the morning, and Mr. Carter felt sloppy and
dirty and unshaven, as he stepped out of the boat and staggered up the
slimy stairs. He gave the two young fishermen the promised five-pound
note, and left them very well contented with their night's work,
inglorious though it had been.

There were no vehicles to be had at that early hour of the morning, so
Mr. Carter was fain to walk from the quay to the station, where he
expected to find Mr. Tibbles, or to obtain tidings of that gentleman. He
was not disappointed; for, although the station wore its dreariest
aspect, having only just begun to throb with a little spasmodic life, in
the way of an early goods-train, Mr. Carter found his devoted follower
prowling in melancholy loneliness amid a wilderness of empty carriages
and smokeless engines, with the turnip whiteness of his complexion
relieved by a red nose.

Mr. Thomas Tibbles was by no means in the best possible temper in this
chill early morning. He was slapping his long thin arms across his
narrow chest, and performing a kind of amateur double-shuffle with his
long flat feet, when Mr. Carter approached him; and he kept up the same
shuffling and the same slapping while engaged in conversation with his
superior, in a disrespectful if not defiant manner.

"A pretty game you've played me," he said, in an injured tone. "You told
me to hang about the station and watch the trains, and you'd come back
in the course of the day--you would--and we'd dine together comfortable
at the Station Hotel; and a deal you come back and dined together
comfortable. Oh, yes! I don't think so; very much indeed," exclaimed Mr.
Tibbles, vaguely, but with the bitterest derision in his voice and
manner.

"Come, Sawney, don't you go to cut up rough about it," said Mr. Carter,
coaxingly.

"I should like to know who'd go and cut up smooth about it?" answered
the indignant Tibbles. "Why, if you could have a hangel in the detective
business--which luckily you can't, for the wings would cut out anything
as mean as legs, and be the ruin of the purfession--the temper of that
hangel would give way under what I've gone through. Hanging about this
windy station, which the number of criss-cross draughts cuttin' in from
open doors and winders would lead a hignorant person to believe there
was seventeen p'ints of the compass at the very least--hangin' about to
watch train after train, till there ain't anything goin' in the way of
sarce as yen haven't got to stand from the porters; or sittin' in the
coffee-room of the hotel yonder, watchin' and listenin' for the next
train, till bein' there to keep an appointment with your master is the
hollerest of mockeries."

Mr. Carter took his irate subordinate to the coffee-room of the Station
Hotel, where Mr. Tibbles had engaged a bed and taken a few hours' sleep
in the dead interval between the starting of the last train at night and
the first in the morning. The detective ordered a substantial breakfast,
with a couple of glasses of pale brandy, neat, to begin with; and Mr.
Tibbles' equanimity was restored, under the influence of ham, eggs,
mutton-cutlet, a broiled sole, and a quart or so of boiling coffee.

Mr. Carter told his assistant very briefly that he'd been wasting his
time and trouble on a false track, and that he should give the matter
up. Sawney Tom received this announcement with a great deal of champing
and working of the jaws, and with rather a doubtful expression in his
dull red eyes; but he accepted the payment which his employer offered
him, and agreed to depart for London by the ten o'clock train.

"And whatever I do henceforth in this business, I do single-handed," Mr.
Carter said to himself, as he turned his back upon his companion.

At five o'clock that afternoon the detective found himself at the
Shorncliffe station, where he hired a fly and drove on post-haste to
Lisford cottage.

The neat little habitation of the late naval commander looked pretty
much as Mr. Carter had seen it last, except that in one of the upper
windows there was a bill--a large paper placard--announcing that this
house was to let, furnished; and that all information respecting the
same was to be obtained of Mr. Hogson, grocer, Lisford.

Mr. Carter gave a long whistle.

"The bird's flown," he muttered. "It wasn't likely he'd stop here to be
caught."

The detective rang the bell; once, twice, three times; but there was no
answer to the summons. He ran round the low garden-fence to the back of
the premises, where there was a little wooden gate, padlocked, but so
low that he vaulted over it easily, and went in amongst the budding
currant-bushes, the neat gravel-paths and strawberry-beds, that had been
erst so cherished by the naval commander. Mr. Carter peered in at the
back windows of the house, and through the little casement he saw a
vista of emptiness. He listened, but there was no sound of voices or
footsteps. The blinds were undrawn, and he could see the bare walls of
the rooms, the fireless grates, and that cold bleakness of aspect
peculiar to an untenanted habitation.

He gave a low groan.

"Gone," he muttered; "gone, as neat as ever a man went yet."

He ran back to the fly, and drove to the establishment of Mr. Hogson,
grocer and general dealer--the shop of the village of Lisford.

Here Mr. Carter was informed that the key of "Woodbine Cottage had been
given up on the evening of that very day on which he had seen Joseph
Wilmot sitting in the little parlour.

"Yes, sir, it were the night before the last," Mr. Hogson said; "it were
the night before last as a young woman wrapped up about the face like,
and dressed very plain, got out of a fly at my door; and, says she,
'Would you please take charge of this here key, and be so kind as to
show any one over the cottage as would like to see it, which of course
the commission is understood?--for my master is leaving for some time on
account of having a son just come home from India, which is married and
settled in Devonshire, and my master is going there to see him, not
having seen him this many a long year.' She was a very civil-spoken
young woman, and Woodbine Cottage has been good customers to us, both
with the old tenants and the new; so of course I took the key, willin'
to do any service as lay in my power. And if you'd like to see the
cottage, sir----"

"You're very good," said Mr. Carter, with something like a groan. "No, I
won't see the cottage to-night. What time was it when the fly stopped at
your door?"

"Between seven and eight."

"Between seven and eight. Just in time to catch the mail from Rugby. Was
it one of the Rose-and-Crown flies, d'ye think?"

"Oh, yes, the fly belonged to Lisford. I'm sure of that, for Tim Baling
was drivin' it and wished me good-night."

Mr. Carter left the Lisford emporium, and ran over to the Rose and
Crown, where he saw the man who had driven him to Shorncliffe station.
This man told the detective that he had been fetched in the evening by
the same young woman who fetched him in the morning, and that he had
driven another gentleman, who walked lame like the first, and had his
head and face wrapped up a deal, not to Shorncliffe station, but to
little Petherington station, six miles on the Rugby side of Shorncliffe,
where the gentleman and the young woman who was with him got into a
second-class carriage in the slow train for Rugby. The gentleman had
said, laughing, that the young woman was his housemaid, and he was
taking her up to town on purpose to be married to her. He was a very
pleasant-spoken gentleman, the flyman added, and paid uncommon liberal.

"I dare say he did," muttered Mr. Carter.

He gave the man a shilling for his information, and went back to the fly
that had brought him to the station. It was getting on for seven o'clock
by this time, and Joseph Wilmot had had eight-and-forty hours' start of
him. The detective was quite down-hearted now.

He went up to London by the same train which he had every reason to
suppose had carried Joseph Wilmot and his daughter two nights before,
and at the Euston terminus he worked very hard on that night and on the
following day to trace the missing man. But Joseph Wilmot was only a
drop in the great ocean of London life. The train that was supposed to
have brought him to town was a long train, coming through from the
north. Half-a-dozen lame men with half-a-dozen young women for their
companions might have passed unnoticed in the bustle and confusion of
the arrival platform.

Mr. Carter questioned the guards, the ticket-collectors, the porters,
the cabmen; but not one among them gave him the least scrap of available
information. He went to Scotland Yard despairing, and laid his case
before the authorities there.

"There's only one way of having him," he said, "and that's the diamonds.
From what I can make out, he had no money with him, and in that case
he'll be trying to turn some of those diamonds into cash."

The following advertisement appeared in the Supplement to the _Times_
for the next day:

"_To Pawnbrokers and Others.--A liberal reward will be given to any
person affording information that may lead to the apprehension of a tall
man, walking lame, who is known to have a large quantity of unset
diamonds in his possession, and who most likely has attempted to dispose
of the same_."

But this advertisement remained unanswered.

"They're too clever for us, sir," Mr. Carter remarked to one of the
Scotland-Yard officials. "Whoever Joseph Wilmot may have sold those
diamonds to has got a good bargain, you may depend upon it, and means to
stick to it. The pawnbrokers and others think our advertisement a plant,
you may depend upon it"

CHAPTER XLVI.

CLEMENT'S STORY.--BEFORE THE DAWN.

"I went back to my mother's house a broken and a disappointed man. I had
solved the mystery of Margaret's conduct, and at the same time had set a
barrier between myself and the woman I loved.

"Was there any hope that she would ever be my wife? Reason told me that
there was none. In her eyes I must henceforth appear the man who had
voluntarily set himself to work to discover her father's guilt, and
track him to the gallows.

"_Could_ she ever again love me with this knowledge in her mind? Could
she ever again look me in the face, and smile at me, remembering this?
The very sound of my name must in future be hateful to her.

"I knew the strength of my noble girl's love for her reprobate father. I
had seen the force of that affection tested by so many cruel trials. I
had witnessed my poor girl's passionate grief at Joseph Wilmot's
supposed death: and I had seen all the intensity of her anguish when the
secret of his existence, which was at the same time the secret of his
guilt, became known to her.

"'She renounced me then, rather than renounce that guilty wretch,' I
thought; 'she will hate me now that I have been the means of bringing
his most hideous crime to light.'

"Yes, the crime was hideous--almost unparalleled in horror. The
treachery which had lured the victim to his death seemed almost less
horrible than the diabolical art which had fixed upon the name of the
murdered man the black stigma of a suspected crime.

"But I knew too well that, in all the blackness of his guilt, Margaret
Wilmot would cling to her father as truly, as tenderly, as she had clung
to him in those early days when the suspicion of his worthlessness had
been only a dark shadow for ever brooding between the man and his only
child. I knew this, and I had no hope that she would ever forgive me for
my part in the weaving of that strange chain of evidence which made the
condemnation of Joseph Wilmot.

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