"The bodies have been removed to 'The Lobster Smack Inn,' Hole Haven, Canvey Island, to await identification."
In my present mood, action of some sort was imperative, and as a cab was passing, I hailed it, and calling out "Fenchurch Street Station—fast as you can," jumped in.
At Fenchurch I took the first train to Benfleet, ferrying over the creek which at high tide separates Canvey from the mainland, and making my way across the island to the "Lobster Smack" at Hole Haven, where I asked to be allowed to see the bodies.
They were lying in an outhouse, side by side, each figure decently covered by a cloth. The first to be exposed I recognised without surprise, and at a glance, as that of the hapless Parker. He was dressed just as he had been when I last saw him, and with the handcuffs still on his wrists.
The second body was, to the best of my belief, that of his late associate, Smudgy. I could not swear to the features, for Smudgy had been stationed at the top of the staircase while I was in the opium den, and I had kept too close an eye upon the Dumpling, and the man who had remained with him in the room, to pay much attention to what was going on outside. Unless I was very much mistaken, however, the shabby greeny-fawn dust coat and the frayed shepherds' plaid trousers were the same which I had seen upon one of the two men who had remained on guard at the head of the stairs, and had afterwards been despatched, in company with Parker, to cut off my retreat at the back of the house. When I had last seen him, he had been in full flight across the moon-lit space of waste land, and in a direction away from the river. Whether he was dead or alive when he got into the water, or how he came to be there at all, I had no means of knowing, and could only conjecture that, finding he had been duped, and fearing the Dumpling's anger on hearing of my escape, Smudgy had returned to the river in search of myself and Parker, and had been accidentally drowned. The third body was next uncovered. Apparently the corpse, in its passage down the river, had been caught by the screw of a passing steamer, and so cut and crushed as to be unrecognisable. The bones of all the limbs were twisted and broken, the body beaten almost into a pulp, and the whole of the face sliced off, as if by a stroke of the steamer's swiftly revolving screw.
Then, for the first and, I hope, last time in my life, I fainted—fainted from sheer horror, for around the otherwise naked body was a leather belt from which a ragged inch of what had once been trousering still clung. Looking more closely, I saw that it was of blue silk, with tiny zigzagged threads of silver interwoven. Not many hours ago I had seen a man who, to my positive knowledge, always wore a leather belt (he had at one time been a sailor) around his waist. He had then been clad in Chinese trousering of the identical pattern—blue silk with a tiny zigzagged thread of interwoven silver. That man was my unhappy friend, Robert Grant, and, looking again at the body, I saw that some sort of yellow dye had recently been used to stain the face and hands and neck.
CHAPTER X.
I TURN BURGLAR.
As I had now decided to devote myself to finding the man known as the Dumpling, and to the clearing up of the mystery of my friend's death and of the opium den, the first question to be asked (it was the question I put to myself as I walked away from the inn) was, "Did the Dumpling really believe me to be Grant?" If that were so, it was possible that Grant had to the last successfully maintained his disguise, and had met his death accidentally while shadowing the fugitives, who had probably made their escape by way of the water. Or it was possible that, without suspecting the supposed Chinaman to be Grant, something may have happened after my departure to arouse the Dumpling's suspicions in regard to Grant's good faith, in which case short work would no doubt be made of the intruder.
What was more likely, for instance, than that, hearing the uproar downstairs, after I had locked myself in the kitchen, and fearing that I was being murdered, Grant had rushed down to my assistance, and so betrayed himself? In which case, the Dumpling would have made no bones about knocking him on the head, or otherwise despatching him and throwing the body into the river. But, apart from the question whether my friend had met his death by accident or by intention, the facts seemed to justify me in assuming that the Dumpling had really believed me to be Grant, the detective. The reader will remember that, after I had locked myself in the kitchen, the Dumpling had called out, "Don't say you haven't killed your man! He mustn't leave the place alive. It's Robert Grant, the detective. I had word that he'd tracked us, and meant trying to get in here to-night."