My next step was to set on foot an inquiry into Mullen’s family history and antecedents. I hoped, and in fact believed, that the clue which I held to his identity would in itself enable me to trace him, but at the same time I fully recognised that circumstances might arise which would render that clue useless and throw me back upon such information as could be ascertained apart from it. That I should not be unprepared for such a contingency was very necessary, and I therefore commissioned a private detective named Green, whom I knew to be able and trustworthy, to ferret out for me all that could be discovered of Mullen’s past.
Having wished him good-bye and good luck, I started for Southend, whither I intended journeying in the company of the little talkative man with whom Mullen had had the brush about the fusees. I thought it more than likely that he was a commercial traveller, partly because of the deferential stress and frequency with which he interpolated the word “sir” into any remarks he chanced to make, and partly because of the insinuating politeness with which he addressed Mullen and myself—politeness which seemed to suggest that he had accustomed himself to look upon every one with whom he came into contact as a possible customer, under whose notice he would one day have occasion to bring the excellence of his wares, and with whom, therefore, he was anxious to be on good terms.
That he lived at Southend I knew from an observation he had let fall; and after watching the barrier at Fenchurch Street station for a couple of hours, I saw him enter an empty third-class smoking compartment five minutes before the departure of an evening train. Half-a-crown slipped into the guard’s hand, with a request that he would put me into the same carriage and reserve it, effected the desired result, and when the train moved out of the station the little man and myself had the compartment to ourselves.
I knew from what I had heard of my companion’s remarks on the occasion when I had journeyed to Southend with him that, though talkative and inquisitive, he was also shrewd and observant, as men of his occupation generally are, and as it would be necessary to ask him two or three pertinent questions, I thought it advisable to let the first advance come from him. That he was already eyeing me in order to ascertain whether an overture towards sociability was likely to meet with a welcome, I could see. The result was apparently satisfactory, for after an introductory cough he inquired whether I would like the window up or down.
Always beware on a railway journey, when you wish to be left to the company of your newspaper, of the man who is unduly anxious for your comfort. ’Twere wise to roar him at once into silence, for your gentle answer, instead of turning away wrath, is often too apt to beget it. Speak him civilly, and you deliver yourself bound into his hands; for you have scarce made your bow of acknowledgment, sunk back into your place and taken up your paper again, before his tongue is hammering banalities about the weather at the thick end of the wedge he has inserted.
In the present instance, as the little man sat facing the engine and with the wind blowing directly in his face, whereas I was on the opposite and sheltered side, the window rights were, according to the unwritten laws of the road, entirely at his disposal. But as it suited my purpose to show a friendly front to his advances, I protested with many thanks that I had no choice in the matter, and awaited with composure the inevitable observation about the probability of rain before morning. From the weather and the crops we got to the results of a wet summer to seaside places generally, and thence to Southend. I remarked that I thought of taking a house there, and asked him about the residents.
“Oh, Southend is very much like other places of the sort,” he answered. “It’s got a great many pleasant and a few objectionable folks. There are the local celebrities (eminent nobodies I call them), who, it is true, are very important personages indeed, their importance in Southend being only equalled by their utter insignificance and total extinction outside that locality. And there’s a good sprinkling of gentlemen with ‘sporting’ tendencies. I must tell you, by the bye, that the qualities which constitute a man a sportsman in Southend are decided proclivities towards cards, billiards, and whisky—especially whisky. But take the Southend folk all round they’re the pleasantest of people, and a chummier little place I never knew.”
I made a great show of laughing at the little man’s description, which, as he evidently laid himself out to be a wit, put him in the best of humours with himself and with me, and I then went on to say that I thought he and I had travelled down together on another occasion, and reminded him of the fusee incident.
He replied that he did not recollect me, which was not to be wondered at, for I had sat well back in the darkest corner, and had taken no part in the conversation. “But I remember the man who objected so to the fusee,” he went on with a smile. “He did get excited over it, didn’t he?”
I said that he certainly had done so, and asked with apparent unconcern whether the man in question was a friend.