Grant’s reply was to jump into the cab with the words “London and Tilbury railway. Fast as you can,” and I soon had the satisfaction of seeing him whirled past the man with the red beard, and disappear round the corner which led to the station.
“The man may go by the other line—the Great Eastern,” I said to myself as I followed at a respectful distance, “in which case I must do the same, and shan’t see Grant at the other end, which is awkward, as we haven’t arranged a meeting-place. But I hadn’t time to think of everything, and as the 10.12 will be starting directly it does look as if he was going by that. Ah! he has turned the Tilbury line corner, so it’s all right after all.”
I waited at the door a moment while the red-bearded man was taking his ticket. “Fenchurch—third single,” he said briskly. “Fenchurch—third single,” I repeated as soon as he had passed the barrier, and, hurrying after, was just in time to see him enter a third smoker in the centre of the train. I slipped quietly into a carriage in the rear, and in another couple of minutes we were puffing out of Southend.
Although the man I was shadowing had booked to Fenchurch Street, I thought it wise at every stoppage to keep an eye upon the passengers who left the train; and so we journeyed on, making calls at Westcliff, Leigh, Benfleet, Pitsea Laindon, East Horndon, Upminster and Hornchurch. At the last-named stopping-place a burly farmer, with a body like a bullock, leant half out of the window of my carriage to carry on a conversation with a friend upon the platform, and in doing so blocked my view completely.
“Will you allow me to get a paper, please?” I said, fuming with impatience at not being able to obtain a peep outside, although the train was already moving.
“So I tould ’im I’d give ’im five pun’ ten,” continued the yokel leisurely, but interpolating a surly “Yer can’t get one ’ere,” which he threw at me over his shoulder without turning his head or attempting to withdraw from the window; “I tould ’im I’d give ’im five pun’ ten”—this to the friend who was running along the platform beside the now quickly-moving train—“and he sez, sez he, ‘I’d rather give ’im to yer.’ Ha, ha, ha!”
In despair I thrust my head under his arm just in time to see the man with the red beard disappearing, brown bag and all, through the place where tickets were collected. To get out and follow him was impossible, for the yokel drew in his great shoulders almost at the same moment that I put my head out, and in so doing wedged me into the window like a plug in a cask, and by the time I could extricate myself the train had cleared the station and was spanking along toward London.
CHAPTER XXIV
A PRETTY KETTLE OF FISH!
Here was a pretty kettle of fish! For the first desperate moment wild thoughts of pulling the connecting cord and stopping the train peeped in my brain like the mad faces seen at the windows of an asylum. But as the mad faces vanish at the return of the keeper, so in the next moment wiser counsels prevailed and I was considering the situation with the seriousness which the facts demanded.
And first I had to ask myself what could be the red-bearded passenger’s motive for booking to London, and then suddenly changing his plans and getting out at an unimportant country station? Could it be that he was indeed James Mullen, and that he was at his old tricks of covering up his tracks?