CHAPTER XXXVIII

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ARRESTED.

“Hold on,” said a quick voice, in the dark, and Adrian Gordon stopped short; “I’m coming, too.”

For after a comfortable dinner in Monsieur Carrousel’s best manner he had strolled out, ostensibly to take a walk, really to go as hard as he could to the station and catch the first train for Starr Street.

“There’s no sense in your coming,” he said sharply, and Sir Thomas returned no answer. “And you can’t bring Jacobs. He’ll be a nuisance.”

“I’m coming, all the same,” obstinately; “and I can’t leave Jacobs behind. Carrousel might pour boiling water on him or something. Don’t hurry so! You want to catch the express, not the slow train that goes first. Oh, Gordon!” wretchedly, “don’t you see I must be doing something? You can’t leave me behind to hatch out rot about a cook and a boot-boy.”

“Come on, then,” weakening; and in silence the two trudged through the country lanes on their way to London, detectives, Hester Murray.

“I don’t know why you’re creeping away like this,” said Tommy suddenly, as they neared the country station; “but that’s another reason I came. I’ve a mileage ticket. We can get in without any one seeing us.” And they did, with Jacobs smuggled under the seat.

“There’s the slow train now!” he said, after they had been some ten minutes out of the station. “It stops here to pick up some carriages and gets in five minutes after we do.” They flashed past the rows of lighted windows as he spoke.

“Glad we did not strike it,” said Adrian, for the sake of saying something, for five minutes more or less would make a difference in the night’s work. But they lost it, all the same, for at Paddington a short man in shooting-clothes hailed Gordon loudly from a waiting-room.

“My dear chap!” he cried effusively, “where have you been?”

“How are you?” said Adrian hurriedly. “I’ve been--you heard about Levallion?”

“I forgot,” the man returned awkwardly. “But I wanted to see you. Come here a second,” and he drew the reluctant Adrian into the cloak-room.

“Hang him!” said Tommy, dragging Jacobs after them by his chain. “Now we’ll be all night.”

For he knew well enough who the man was. A certain distinguished general who could not be shaken off till he had said his say.

Sir Thomas stared and fretted at the cloak-room window. Not that he had any business in Starr Street, but it was a comfort to be even following a shadow. All at once he ducked down, rushed across the room to Adrian. “Come on,” he said, in a savage whisper, for he had seen what he never hoped to see on earth. Out of an incoming train had stepped that very man whom he had seen on that rock in the moonlight, whom Jacobs had frightened into unseemly skips and yells. Tall, dark-mustached, leisurely, with a curiously square line of shaven cheek and chin, the man had paused against a lamp-post, as Tommy had seen him against the moon.

“Come on!” he cried, oblivious of the stout general. “I’ve seen him.”

“Who?” blankly.

“How do I know?” white to the lips. “The man we want. Come on.”

But he had no need to urge it. Adrian was out of the cloak-room as fast as he could go. The general, being a sensible man in the main, said nothing. Merely stepped to the door and beheld the vanishing figures of Captain Gordon, a boy, and a dog, running down the empty platform. For, whoever the man had been, he was gone.

At the street corner the two stared every way in the dull gaslight. There were plenty of foot-passengers, and among them the man was lost. Mr. Jacobs stood waving his long white tail, his benevolent white-and-brindle face beaming. Suddenly he put his nose down to the ground and sniffed; then he tugged at his chain.

“Let him go,” said Adrian, for as the dog sniffed the ground his whole look had changed. His ears flattened to his head, his back bristling, he was nearly dragging Tommy off his feet.

“It’s some one the dog has known before,” said Adrian, as they hurried through the streets. “Where did you get him?”

“Found him on the road with a broken rib.”

In and out through the traffic, down by-streets, Jacobs ran. And by a way Adrian had not known existed brought up in Starr Street. He had thought it ten minutes’ walk to the station; by Jacobs’ way it was not five. As the dog would have rushed to Hester Murray’s door and barked the street down, Adrian caught him back.

“Wait,” he muttered. “Come over opposite.”

Tommy picked up the struggling dog and the three, unnoticed, mounted “Mr. Atkinson’s” stairs. There on the blind opposite they saw a shadow, dwarfed, ridiculous, but still the shadow of a man.

“Is that Mrs. Murray’s room?” said Tommy, and Gordon nodded.

“Wait,” he said; “she isn’t there.”

For the man had come to the window, and as he fumbled with the blind it snapped out of his hand and flew up. The next second he dragged it down again, but Tommy had seen him.

“It’s the man I saw on the rock!” he cried, trembling.

“And it’s my man of last night,” grimly. “Some town friend of Hester’s who’d been in the country on an errand she dared not do. So much for you and your cook, Tommy!”

“Aren’t you going to do anything?” impatiently.

Adrian gave a short laugh. Hester Murray, in her trailing black, was going up her own steps.

“Now I am!” he said. “I was waiting for her. You stay here, and if she comes out see where she goes. I’m going to take a cab and drive like blazes for Allington’s detective--who pooh-poohed the idea of her--and a search-warrant. If that cloak’s in her house, I think we have your man and woman.”

For it had suddenly come over him that at the time of Levallion’s death Mrs. Murray had not known about Maurice Davidge, or that she could have any claim on Levallion. Living here, so near the station, it would have been simple enough for her to go down by the seven-o’clock train and back by the midnight. Her alibi would be secure; her landlady would only think she had dined out. She need not get out at Levallion’s station, even; two miles farther on there was a siding where every train stopped for water. Through the fields from there it would not be half a mile to the castle. She knew the house well enough to pass out and in unseen.

Tommy, craning out of the window, saw him vanish down the street. And then his heart leaped. The man was coming out of the house opposite with a bundle under his arm. As the door opened the boy’s head disappeared just in time. He made for the door and got tangled up with Jacobs; picked himself up and ran into the street, forgetting all about Mrs. Murray. The man was just disappearing round the corner in the very opposite direction from the one Adrian had taken. But there was no time to wait for reenforcements. He was certain that bundle was the cloak that Adrian wanted. Helter-skelter, boy and dog tore along. Lost the man, saw him again as he crossed the Paddington Road with a bundle under his arm, ran into a man with an umbrella who wasted profanity on them, and pulled up. The man had vanished. Tommy pressed Jacobs’ nose to the pavement.

“Hi, fetch him, good dog!” he muttered, knowing quite well he was asking almost an impossibility of the dog in a place where so many people walked. But Jacobs whined, ran back a little, sniffed, and was off, Tommy running beside him.

Across the Paddington Road, into dark by-streets, to the vile slums by St. Mary’s Hospital, the dog led him. Into an open door and up-stairs in a filthy, greasy tenement-house; up and up to the very garret. The place was pitch-dark, sickening; the stairs riddled with rat-holes. Jacobs stopped pulling at his chain and gave a low growl. In the quiet it sounded loud enough to wake the dead.

Tommy clutched his jaws frantically.

“Quiet!” he said, through his teeth. On his hands and knees he crawled till he could crawl no farther. A reeking, moldy wall enclosed the landing, and the very silence of death was round him.

He knew perfectly that it was in houses like this that men were murdered, but he never moved to grope his way to the stairs again. The dog panted in his arms, stiffening fiercely. Suddenly there came a footstep, in his very ear where he crouched against the wall. A man was moving softly on the other side of the partition, and before he could think a door opened back on him, almost crushing him, and if it had been forward it would have taken more than Jacobs to save Tommy Annesley. A man came out, without any bundle, stood while he closed and locked the door. A candle was burning inside, and the light of it shone on him as he deliberately pushed the door to. The next instant, in the pitch-dark, Jacobs sprang, silent as death, and well-nigh as strong.

Down the rickety stairs the two flew, like some horrible dream. Twice Jacobs lost his hold, and got it again. In any other house the people would have swarmed out of every room, but in Bethnal Court lived human wolves, in by day and out by night. With a wild spring the man reached the open door into the court, slipped with a crash on the slimy stones outside; Tommy, tearing down, flew head over heels over him; Jacobs--but the boy knew no more.

And Adrian Gordon stood at that minute in Starr Street, knowing not which way to turn. Tommy and Jacobs were gone, Heaven knew where--and Hester Murray’s rooms held no one. She was gone, and he knew she would never come back again. Gone in the clothes she wore, taking her child with her, thinking only of bare life. Warned, somehow, for if she had ever owned that cloak she had taken it with her.

“Better give it up, sir,” said the detective--whom he had lost everything by waiting to get; “they’ve given you the slip.”

Gordon stared at him as if he did not see him.

“We’ve got to find the boy,” he said. “There was a man in there; he must have followed him.”

But though all night long the two walked the streets, haunted police-stations, asked questions, they found not a single trace of Tommy and Mr. Jacobs.

At sunrise Gordon stood alone on a street corner, for the much-tried detective had struck. He had lost Tommy, had lost Hester and probably that cloak whose useless shred he held in his hands; had probably let slip in his stupidity the only chance he had ever had of saving Ravenel. He shivered in the morning air. For there was a girl in Valehampton Jail who had borne enough. How was she to bear this?

A policeman in plain clothes tapped his shoulder; another, as by a miracle, sprang up in front of him.

He was arrested as accessory before the fact to the murder of Lord Levallion.

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