Being curious to know what course they were pursuing, I made it my business within the next few days to scrape an acquaintance with one of the ticket-collectors at Euston. After propitiating him in the usual way by a judicious application of “palm-oil,” I ventured to put the question whether he had at any time noticed a short, dark, lame man on the platform where the Irish mail started.
A broad grin came over the fellow’s face in reply.
“What, are they on that lay still!” he said, derisively. “I knew you was after something, but I shouldn’t have took you for a detective.”
I assured him that I was not a detective, and asked him to explain, whereupon he told me that immediately after the publication of the portrait of Captain Shannon, instructions had been sent to all railway stations that a keen look-out was to be kept for a short, dark, lame man, whether clean-shaven or bearded, and that if a person in any way resembling James Mullen (whose portrait was placed in the hands of every ticket-collector), was noticed, the police should instantly be communicated with.
“Why, if you was to know, sir,” said the collector, “’ow many short, dark, respectable gents, what ’appens to be lame, have been took up lately on suspicion, you’d larf, you would. It’s bad enough to be lame at hany time, but when you’re going to be harrested for a hanarchist as well, it makes your life a perfect misery, it do.”
CHAPTER VII
MY FIRST MEETING WITH JAMES MULLEN
And now it is high time that I told the reader something more about the circumstances under which I had seen James Mullen, and why I was so positive that he and the man in whose company I had travelled down to Southend were one and the same person.
Firstly, it must be remembered that I sat opposite to my travelling companion for more than an hour, during which time I had watched him narrowly; and secondly, that there are some faces which, once seen, one never forgets. Such a face was the face of the man I had seen on that eventful journey. His eyes were bright, prominent, and had heavy lids. His complexion was clear and pale, and his nose was well shaped, though a little too pronouncedly aquiline. The nostrils were very unusual, being thin and pinched, but arching upward so curiously that one might almost fancy a part of the dilatable cuticle on each side had been cut away. The finely-moulded chin was like the upper lip and cheek, clean-shaven, and the lips were full and voluptuous. Thick but fine and straight, straw-coloured hair was carefully brushed over a well-formed forehead, and the face, taken altogether, was decidedly distinguished, if not aristocratic, in the firmness of outline and the shaping of the features.
After the train had started, Mullen sank back into his seat and appeared to be thinking intently. I noticed that his eyes were never still a moment, but darted restlessly from object to object in a way which seemed to indicate great brain excitability. That he was excitable was clear from his vehement outburst about the fusee; but almost the next minute he had, so to speak, made amends for his apparent rudeness by explaining that he was peculiarly sensitive to smell, and had an especial dislike to fusees.
Nevertheless the sudden change in the expression of his face at the moment of the outbreak was remarkable. The previously smooth and unpuckered brows gathered themselves together into two diagonal wrinkles that met above the nose, which had in the meantime become beak-like, and the effect recalled in some curious way a bird of prey. He was soon all smiles again; but once or twice throughout the journey, when his thoughts were presumably unpleasant, I caught the same expression, and it was the fact of my seeing in the photograph this same unmistakable expression on the face of a man who was apparently a different person which had set me fumbling with such uncertain hand among the dog’s-eared pages of the past. The eyes, the hawk-like wrinkling of the brows, and the nose and nostrils were of course the same, but the addition of the beard, the evident swarthiness of the skin, and darkening of the hair led to my failing at first to connect the portrait with my fellow-passenger to Southend. But the missing link was no sooner found and the connection established than I felt that the identity of Mullen with the man I had seen in the train admitted of no uncertainty, especially as, after examining under a powerful lens, the photograph which the informer had given to the police, I satisfied myself that the beard was false.