[CHAPTER XXII--By the Dogger Bank]
Whilst these events were in progress Captain Crouch and Jimmy Burke, in the great seaport town of Hull, were hot upon the scent of Rudolf Stork.
From the railway station they drove straight to the central police station, where they found the inspector in his office. Scotland Yard had telephoned during the night that Stork would probably arrive in Hull early in the morning. Detectives had been dispatched at once to the railway station, but got there too late to arrest the spy, who was probably the only first-class passenger who arrived by the one forty-seven train from King's Cross, who had no other baggage than a small handbag, and who was met by a motor-car in which he went off in the direction of the docks.
The police had made sundry inquiries among the fishing people in the poorer part of the town, and had learnt that the smack "Marigold" had put to sea in the small hours of the morning.
Crouch saw that there was nothing to be done but to continue the pursuit, even into the midst of the shoals and fog-wreaths of the Dogger Bank. He knew well the maxim that it was wise to set a thief to catch a thief, and decided to follow the "Marigold" in another fishing-smack, and not a steamer.
His reasons for this were twofold. In the first place, the Well-bank was extremely shallow water, across which no ocean-going ship could pass. Secondly, as he knew full well, in view of the forthcoming raid, the neighbouring waters were alive with enemy submarines, who were more likely to torpedo a steamer flying the English flag than a comparatively valueless fishing-boat.
Now, the name of Captain Crouch's friends was legion, but for the most part they lived, moved and had their being in seaport towns, and there were not a few in Hull.
One of these was a Grimsby man, with nearly thirty years' experience as a trawler, who was known as Captain Whisker; and it was to his house that Crouch and Jimmy Burke betook themselves, as soon as they had gleaned all available information from the police.
Though it was still exceedingly early in the morning Captain Whisker was up, digging furiously in his garden, with a blackened pipe between his lips. He was a man the very opposite of Crouch. Crouch was small and wizened; Whisker broad, florid and colossal. He could not have been less than six feet five in height, and his chest measurement was exceeded only by the girth of his waist. He was clean-shaven, but his eyebrows were so extremely large and bushy that they resembled a kind of superior moustache, and made his surname of "Whisker" seem singularly appropriate.
"Why, Crouch!" he exclaimed, driving his garden fork into the ground and coming forward with outstretched hand. "The last man on earth I ever thought to see! It must be five years, at least, since you and I were shipmates; and that was on the West Coast, when I took you down from Sierra Leone to Banana Point, when you were bound for the Aruwimi, to look for a lost explorer who, you said, was a good two inches taller than I."