I had played my cards sometimes wisely, but more often foolishly, while conducting my search for Captain Shannon, but the wisest and the luckiest deal I made throughout the business was my determination to spare no pains in ascertaining what step the fugitive had taken to cover up his tracks, before I set out to look for a five-ton yawl, painted white, picked out with gold, and bearing the name of the “Odd Trick.”
But for that determination and the discoveries which resulted from it I should in all probability have passed unnoticed the little brown cutter that I saw lying at anchor to the west of Southend as I passed by in the small steam launch which I hired for the purpose of carrying on my investigation. And had I passed that cutter unnoticed Captain Shannon would in all probability have reached America or Australia in safety, and it is more than likely that this narrative would never have been written.
To the comment “And small loss too!” which may rise—and not unreasonably—to the lips of some critics, I can only reply that I undertook my search for Captain Shannon to please myself, and in search of excitement. It is the plain story of the adventures which befell me, and not a literary study, which is here set forth, and I am quite content to have it written down as such, and nothing more. The one thing I can safely assert about it is that it is not a story dealing with the New Woman. If it has any peculiarity at all, it is that it tells of one of the few pieces of mischief which have happened in this world since the days of Eve, concerning which it may, without fear of contradiction, be affirmed that no woman had a hand in it; for, with the exception of the mere mention of Mrs. Stanley Burgoyne—who never once comes upon the scene in person—this is a story without a woman in it.
CHAPTER XXIII
HOW I GOT WEDGED IN A WINDOW, AND LEFT BEHIND
It was some half-mile or so to the west of Southend pier that the little brown cutter referred to in my last chapter was lying, and, as I had seen no other boat up or down the river which in any way corresponded with the description of the boat I was looking for, I at once decided that before extending my researches in other directions round the coast I must satisfy myself that the craft in question was not the “Odd Trick.” In order to do so, and in order also that the person on board, whoever he might be, should not give me the slip, I told my man to anchor the steam launch off the pier-head, where steam launches are often to be seen lying. It did not take long to discover, by the aid of field-glasses, that there were two people on board the cutter, one of whom was evidently a paid hand and the other presumably his employer. That the latter in any way resembled the man for whom I was looking I could not—much as I should have liked to lay that flattering unction to my soul—find justification for thinking—at all events on the evidence of the field-glasses. And as I observed that he invariably went below if any other boat passed close to the cutter, it did not seem worth while to attract his attention, and perhaps arouse his suspicions, by attempting to come to close quarters in order to make a nearer inspection. The fact that he seemed anxious to keep out of sight was in itself curious, although no one who was not watching his movements very narrowly would have noticed it. Somewhat curious too was another circumstance which happened soon after our arrival. A small yacht, with three or four young men on board, dropped anchor about a hundred yards from the brown cutter. She had not been there long before I saw that the cutter was getting under way for a cruise; but that the cruise in question was taken chiefly as an excuse to change her quarters I had reason to suspect, for after sailing a little way out and circling once round a buoy, as if for the look of the thing, she sailed in again and brought up a quarter of a mile further west, at a spot where no other boat was lying.
To any one who had watched this manœuvre as closely as I did it must have seemed a little strange too that the boat was sailed entirely by the man who was evidently the paid skipper, his employer neither taking the tiller nor lending a hand with the sheets. As a rule a yachtsman who yachts for the love of the thing prefers to handle his boat himself, and would not give a “thank you” for a sail in which he plays the part of passenger. Probably I should not have noticed this trifling circumstance had I not learned from Gunnell that “Mr. Cross” was no sailor. I had from the first believed that Cross’s story about his picking up a friend at Sheerness who was to help him with the boat was a fabrication, and that he had in all probability run in to shore as soon as he was out of sight of Gunnell and had secured the services of one of the many watermen who are on the look-out for a job.
Anyhow the circumstances in connection with the brown cutter were sufficiently suspicious to warrant me in making sure that she was not the boat I was in search of, and I decided that a watch must be kept upon her not only by day but also by night. If Mullen were really on board, and had any intention of changing his quarters, the probability was that the flitting would be effected by night. I was ready to go bail for the cutter’s good conduct by day, but if an eye was to be kept upon her by night it was very necessary that I should have some one to share my watch. The two men who constituted my crew I knew nothing of personally, and was not inclined to take into my confidence, so I sent a letter to Grant, who was still on guard over the “Cuban Queen” at Canvey, asking him to come to Southend by the first train next morning and to meet me at the pier-head, whither I would row out to join him in the dinghy.
He turned up true to time, and, as we had the pier-head to ourselves, we sat down where we could not be seen by any one on board the cutter, while Grant related his experiences and I mine. His were soon told, for no “Mrs. Hughes” had come back to break the monotony of existence on the “Cuban Queen,” nor had anything occurred at Canvey which concerned the enterprise in which we were engaged. Then I told my story, after hearing which and my suspicions in regard to the cutter, Grant agreed with me that it was highly desirable an eye should be kept upon her at night as well as by day.
“I’ll tell you what I think will be a good plan,” he said. “I know a man who has a little boat down here which he isn’t using, and I’m sure I can arrange to get the loan of her for a week or two. Suppose I anchor her about as far away on the other side of the brown cutter as your steam launch is on this side. Then I can keep an eye upon the cutter at night, and if by any chance she tried to give us the slip, and made, as I expect she would, for the open sea, she’d have to run almost into your arms to do it. I should of course follow and hail you to give chase as I went by, when you could soon overtake her. If, on the other hand, she goes up the river, it’ll be as easy as driving a cow into a pen, for once in she’ll have us behind her like a cork in the neck of a bottle; and even if she gets a bit of a start at first, a sailing-boat would stand no chance in a race against steam. What do you think of it?”
I replied that I thought it capital, and after we had arranged a means of communication I got into the dinghy to row back to the steam launch, and Grant set off again for Southend to put his plan into effect.