Grant took the next train to Benfleet—the nearest station to Canvey—on receiving my telegram, and, after hearing my story, assured me of his readiness and willingness to co-operate in the search for Mullen. He promised to keep an unwinking eye upon the “Cuban Queen” while I was away, and to let me know should any suspicious stranger come upon the scene. The matter being thus satisfactorily arranged, I started off to see what I could learn about the ill-fated Quickly.
My theory was that that luckless wight had so clumsily performed the work of shadowing as to bring himself under the notice of the person shadowed, who would then have reason to believe that the secret of his hiding-place was known, at all events to one person. Under such circumstances Mullen would in all probability decide that, in order to insure the return of the secret to his own keeping, Quickly must be despatched to the limbo of the “dead folk” who “tell no tales;” and I felt tolerably certain that, on discovering he was being shadowed, he had led the way to some secluded spot where he or his accomplices had made an end of the shadower.
How I set to work to collect and to sift my evidence I need not here describe in detail, but will sum up briefly the result of my inquiries.
Quickly had reached the station some minutes before the arrival of any other passenger, and in accordance with my instructions had gone at once to the general waiting-room, where he remained until the train started. Some few minutes afterwards a woman carrying a bag had entered the booking-office and taken a third-class single ticket to Stepney. When the train drew up at the platform she had seated herself in an empty carriage near the centre, and Quickly had entered a smoking carriage at the end. When the train reached Stepney she passed through the barrier, followed at some distance by a man answering to the description of Quickly.
The woman had then bought an evening paper from a newsboy, and crossing the road slowly had turned down a by-street which led to the river. The man, after looking in a tobacconist’s window for half a minute, had taken the same turning, but upon the other side of the road.
There I came to a dead stop, for not one jot of evidence as to the subsequent movements of either of the two could I discover, and, reluctant though I am to admit myself beaten, the fact could no longer be disguised that in that direction too I was checkmated.
“Another throw back, Grant,” I said, when I entered the cottage at Canvey after this fresh reverse.
“Well, what are you going to do now?” inquired my friend and collaborator when he had heard my story. “Give it up, as we did the other riddles of our school-boy days?”
“Give it up! What do you take me for? But, hollo! For whom is that letter?” I said, pointing to an envelope which was lying on the table.
“For you. Hardy Muir brought it over. It was sent under cover to him from London.”