He got up instantly, and with long, silent steps made his way down the aisle also. The figure wheeled the corner and disappeared; he himself ran on tip-toe and was in time to see him turning away from the holy-water basin by the door. But he came so quickly after him that the door was still vibrating as he put his hand upon it. He came out more cautiously through the little entrance, and stood on the steps in time to see the young man moving off, not five yards away, in the direction of Victoria Street. But here something stopped him.

Coming straight up the pavement outside the Art and Book Company depot was a newsboy at the trot, yelling something as he came, with a poster flapping from one arm and a bundle of papers under the other. The priest could not catch what he said, but he saw the young man suddenly stop and then turn off sharply towards the boy, and he saw him, after fumbling in his pocket, produce a halfpenny and a paper pa.s.s into his hands.

There then he stood, motionless on the pavement, the sheet spread before him flapping a little in the gusty night wind.

"Paper, sir!" yelled the boy, pausing in the road. "'Orrible--"

The priest nodded; but he was not thinking much about the paper, and produced his halfpenny. The paper was put into his hand, but he paid no attention to it. He was still watching the motionless figure on the pavement. About three minutes pa.s.sed. Then the young man suddenly and dexterously folded the paper, folded it again and slipped it into his pocket. Then he set off walking and a moment later had vanished round the corner into Victoria Street.

The priest thought no more of the paper as he went back through the Cathedral, wondering again over what he had seen....

But the common-room was empty when he got to it, and presently he spread the paper before him on the table and leaned over it to see what the excitement was about. There was no doubt as to what the news was--there were headlines occupying nearly a third of a column; but it appeared to him unimportant as general news: he had never heard of the people before. It seemed that a wealthy peer who lived in the North of England, who had only recently been married for the second time, had been killed in a motor smash together with his eldest son. The chauffeur had escaped with a fractured thigh. The peer's name was Lord Talgarth.

CHAPTER VII

(I)

On the morning of the twenty-fourth a curious little incident happened--I dug the facts out of the police news--in a small public-house on the outskirts of South London. Obviously it is no more than the sheerest coincidence. Four men were drinking a friendly gla.s.s of beer together on their way back to work from breakfast. Their ecclesiastical zeal seems to have been peculiarly strong, for they distinctly stated that they were celebrating Christmas on that date, and I deduce from that statement that beer-drinking was comparatively infrequent with them.

However, as they were about to part, there entered to them a fifth, travel-stained and tired, who sat down and demanded some stronger form of stimulant. The new-comer was known to these four, for his name was given, and his domicile was mentioned as Hackney Wick. He was a small man, very active and very silent and rather pale; and he seems to have had something of a mysterious reputation even among his friends and to be considered a dangerous man to cross.

He made no mystery, however, as to where he had come from, nor whither he was going. He had come from Kent, he said, and humorously added that he had been hop-picking, and was going to join his wife and the family circle for the festival of Christmas. He remarked that his wife had written to him to say she had lodgers.

The four men naturally stayed a little to hear all this news and to celebrate Christmas once more, but they presently were forced to tear themselves away. It was as the first man was leaving (his foreman appears to have been of a tyrannical disposition) that the little incident happened.

"Why," he said, "Bill" (three out of the five companions seemed to have been usually called "Bill"), "Bill, your boots are in a mess."

The Bill in question made caustic remarks. He observed that it would be remarkable if they were not in such weather. But the other persisted that this was not mud, and a general inspection was made. This resulted in the opinion of the majority being formed that Bill had trodden in some blood. Bill himself was one of the majority, though he attempted in vain to think of any explanation. Two men, however, declared that in their opinion it was only red earth. (A certain obscurity appears in the evidence at this point, owing to the common use of a certain expletive in the mouth of the British working-man.) There was a hot discussion on the subject, and the Bill whose boots were under argument seems to have been the only man to keep his head. He argued very sensibly that if the stains were those of blood, then he must have stepped in some--perhaps in the gutter of a slaughter-house; and if it was not blood, then it must be something else he had trodden in. It was urged upon him that it was best washed off, and he seems finally to have taken the advice, though without enthusiasm.

Then the four men departed.

The landlady's evidence was to the same effect. She states that the new-comer, with whose name she had been previously unacquainted, though she knew his face, had remained very tranquilly for an hour or so and had breakfasted off bacon and eggs. He seemed to have plenty of money, she said. He had finally set off, limping a little, in a northward direction.

Now this incident is a very small one. I only mention it because, in reading the evidence later, I found myself reminded of a parallel incident, recorded in a famous historical trial, in which something resembling blood was seen on the hand of the judge. His name was Ayloff, and his date the sixteenth century.

(II)

Mrs. Partington had a surprise--not wholly agreeable--on that Christmas Eve. For at half-past three, just as the London evening was beginning to close in, her husband walked into the kitchen.

She had seen nothing of him for six weeks, and had managed to get on fairly well without him. I am not even now certain whether or no she knows what her husband's occupation is during these absences of his--I think it quite possible that, honestly, she does not--and I have no idea myself. It seemed, however, this time, that he had prospered. He was in quite a good temper, he was tolerably well dressed, and within ten minutes of his arrival he had produced a handful of shillings. Five of these he handed over to her at once for Christmas necessaries, and ten more he entrusted to Maggie with explicit directions as to their expenditure.

While he took off his boots, his wife gave him the news--first, as to the arrival of the Major's little party, and next as to its unhappy dispersion on that very day.

"He will 'ave it as the young man's gone off with the young woman," she observed.

Mr. Partington made a commentatory sound.

"An' 'e's 'arf mad," she added. "'E means mischief if 'e can manage it."

Mr. Partington observed, in his own particular kind of vocabulary, that the Major's intentions were absurd, since the young man would scarcely be such a peculiarly qualified kind of fool as to return. And Mrs.

Partington agreed with him. (In fact, this had been her one comfort all day. For it seemed to her, with her frank and natural ideas, that, on the whole, Frank and Gertie had done the proper thing. She was pleased, too, to think that she had been right in her surmises as to Gertie's att.i.tude to Frank. For, of course, she never doubted for one single instant that the two had eloped together in the ordinary way, though probably without any intentions of matrimony.)

Mr. Partington presently inquired as to where the Major was, and was informed that he was, of course, at the "Queen's Arms." He had been there, in fact, continuously--except for sudden excursions home, to demand whether anything had been heard of the fugitives--since about half-past eleven that morning. It was a situation that needed comfort.

Mrs. Partington added a few comments on the whole situation, and presently put on her bonnet and went out to supplement her Christmas preparations with the extra five shillings, leaving her husband to doze in the Windsor chair, with his pipe depending from his mouth. He had walked up from Kent that morning, he said.

She returned in time to get tea ready, bringing with her various "relishes," and found that the situation had developed slightly since her departure. The Major had made another of his infuriated returns, and had expanded at length to his old friend Mr. Partington, recounting the extraordinary kindness he had always shown to Frank and the confidence he had reposed in him. He had picked him up, it seemed, when the young man had been practically starving, and had been father and comrade to him ever since. And to be repaid in this way! He had succeeded also by his eloquence, Mrs. Partington perceived, in winning her husband's sympathies, and was now gone off again, ostensibly to scour the neighborhood once more, but, more probably, to attempt to drown his grieved and wounded feelings.

Mrs. Partington set her thin lips and said nothing. She noticed also, as she spread the table, a number of bottles set upon the floor, two of them with yellow labels--the result of Maggie's errand--and prepared herself to face a somewhat riotous evening. But Christmas, she reflected for her consolation, comes but once a year.

It was about nine o'clock that the two men and the one woman sat down to supper upstairs. The children had been put to bed in the kitchen as usual, after Jimmie had informed his mother that the clergyman had been round no less than three times since four o'clock to inquire after the vanished lodger. He was a little tearful at being put to bed at such an unusually early hour, as Mr. Parham-Carter, it appeared, had promised him no less than sixpence if he would come round to the clergy-house within five minutes after the lodger's return, and it was obviously impossible to traverse the streets in a single flannel shirt.

His mother dismissed it all as nonsense. She told him that Frankie was not coming back at all--that he wasn't a good young man, and had run away without paying mother her rent. This made the situation worse than ever, as Jimmie protested violently against this shattering of his ideal, and his mother had to a.s.sume a good deal of sternness to cover up her own tenderness of feeling. But she, too--though she considered the flight of the two perfectly usual--was conscious of a very slight sense of disappointment herself that it should have been this particular young man who had done it.

Then she went upstairs again to supper.

(III)

The famous archway that gives entrance to the district of Hackney Wick seems, especially on a rainy night, directly designed by the Great Eastern Railway as a vantage ground for observant loafers with a desire to know every soul that enters or leaves Hackney Wick. It is, of course, possible to, enter Hackney Wick by other ways--it may be approached by the marshes, and there is, I think, another way round about half a mile to the east, under the railway. But those ways have nothing whatever to do with people coming from London proper. You arrive at Victoria Park Station; you turn immediately to the right and follow the pavement down, with the park on your left, until you come to the archway where the road unites with that coming from Homerton. One is absolutely safe, therefore, a.s.suming that one has not to deal with watchful criminals, in standing under the arch with the cert.i.tude that sooner or later, if you wait long enough, the man whom you expect to enter Hackney Wick will pa.s.s within ten yards of you.

Mr. Parham-Carter, of course, knew this perfectly well, and had, finally, communicated the fact to the other two quite early in the afternoon. An elaborate system of watches, therefore, had been arranged, by which one of the three had been on guard continuously since three o'clock. It was Jack who had had the privilege (if he had but known it) of observing Mr. Partington himself returning home to his family for Christmas, and it was d.i.c.k, who came on guard about five, who had seen the Major--or, rather, what was to him merely a shabby and excited man--leave and then return to the "Queen's Arms" during his hour's watch.

After the amazing and shocking news, however, of the accident to Lord Talgarth and Archie, the precautions had been doubled. It was the clergyman who had first bought an evening paper soon after five o'clock, and within five minutes the other two knew it also.

It is of no good to try to describe the effect it had on their minds, beyond saying that it made all three of them absolutely resolute that Frank should by no possible means escape them. The full dramatic situation of it all they scarcely appreciated, though it soaked more and more into them gradually as they waited--two of them in the Men's Club just round the corner, and the third, shivering and stamping, under the arch. (An unemployed man, known to the clergyman, had been set as an additional sentry on the steps of the Men's Club, whose duty it would be, the moment the signal was given from the arch that Frank was coming, to call the other two instantly from inside. Further, the clergyman--as has been related--had been round three times since four o'clock to Turner Road, and had taken Jimmie into his pay.)

The situation was really rather startling, even to the imperturbable d.i.c.k. This pleasant young man, to whom he had begun to feel very strangely tender during the last month or two, now tramping London streets (or driving a van), in his miserable old clothes described to him by the clergyman, or working at the jam factory, was actually no one else at this moment but the new Lord Talgarth--with all that that implied. Merefield was his, the big house in Berkeley Square was his; the moor in Scotland.... It was an entire reversal of the whole thing: it was as a change of trumps in whist: everything had altered its value....

Well, he had plenty of time, both before he came off guard at seven and after he had joined the clergyman in the Men's Club, to sort out the facts and their consequences.

About half-past ten the three held a consultation under the archway, while trains rumbled overhead. They attracted very little attention here: the archway is dark and wide; they were m.u.f.fled to the eyes; and there usually is a fringe of people standing under shelter here on rainy evenings. They leaned back against the wall and talked.

They had taken further steps since they had last met. Mr. Parham-Carter had been round to the jam factory, and had returned with the news that the van had come back under the charge of only one of the drivers, and that the other one, who was called Gregory (whom Mr. Parham-Carter was inquiring after), would certainly be dismissed in consequence. He had taken the address of the driver, who was now off duty--somewhere in Homerton--with the intention of going to see him next morning if Frank had not appeared.

There were two points they were discussing now. First, should the police be informed? Secondly, was it probable that Frank would have heard the news, and, if so, was it conceivable that he had gone straight off somewhere in consequence--to his lawyers, or even to Merefield itself?