“I did have, sir,” was the reply, “but Mr. Burgoyne he telegraphed that I was to let his brother-in-law, Mr. Cross, have the boat out. That there’s the telegram wot you see slipped in behind the olm’nack.”
For the second time in the course of this curious enterprise the information I was in need of seemed to come in search of me instead of my having to go in search of it. I had felt when I started out to pursue my inquiries about Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Burgoyne, by interviewing the waterman Gunnell, that it was quite possible I might learn something of importance, but I had not expected to strike the trail red-hot, and so soon, for “Cross,” as the reader may perhaps remember, was the name by which Mullen was known to his family. “Mullen” had been used only in connection with the conspiracy.
Lest the man should see by my face how important was the information he had let drop, I stooped as if to flick a splash of mud from my trousers-leg before replying.
“Ah, yes,” I said at length, straightening myself and bending forward indolently to look at the telegram, which I read aloud.
“To Gunnell, Gravesend.—Get ‘Odd Trick’ ready and afloat. Mr. Cross will come for her.—Burgoyne.
“Windsor Hotel, Scarborough.”
“Of course,” I went on, “I had quite forgotten Mr. Cross telling me, when I saw him last, that he was going to ask his brother-in-law to lend him the ‘Odd Trick,’ for a cruise. Whom has he got on board?”
“No one, sir. Mr. Cross was sailing her himself; said he was only going as far as Sheerness, where he expected a friend to join him who would help him to handle her.”
“He’s a good sailor, isn’t he?”
“No, sir, that’s just what he isn’t, and that’s why I wanted him to let me go with him until his friend turned up. But, bless you, sir, he got that huffy there wasn’t no holdin’ him. And him a very pleasant-mannered gentleman in the usual way, and free with his money too.”