"I don't know," said Foyle. "A newcomer on the river would attract attention. These water-men know each other. There's only one way that I can see in which he would avoid being talked about. He is a watchman."
"You're right, sir," agreed the other emphatically. "This is a matter where Wrington of the Thames
Division will be able to help us. Hope we can find him at Wapping. Shall I ring through?"
"There's no hurry for a minute or two," said Foyle. "Let's get the hang of the thing right. There's probably some hundreds of barges below Tower Bridge. It will be as well to keep a close eye on the docks and shipping offices. You see, he asserts his innocence."
"H'm," commented Green, with an intonation that meant much. "He says, too, that there are reasons why he shouldn't be questioned."
"Well, we shall see. There had better be an all-station message about the docks. Send two or three men down to Tilbury to watch outgoing boats there. We shan't need any other men from here. Wrington's staff know the river, and will get on best with them. I don't want to leave here until Blake lets us know more about the woman who left the advertisement. That gives us another possible clue."
It was some time before Wrington, the divisional detective-inspector at the head of the detective staff of the Thames Division, could be found, for like other branches of the C.I.D. he and his men did their work systematically, and usually left their office at nine o'clock only to return at six. At length, however, he was found at a wharfinger's office, where there had arisen some question of a missing case of condensed milk. Within half an hour he was at Scotland Yard.
A tall man with tired grey eyes, about the corners of which were tiny wrinkles, with a weather-beaten face and grey moustache, he aimed to look something like a riverside tradesman. There was a meekness in
his manner and speech that deceived people who did not know his reputation. He spoke five languages fluently, and two more indifferently. Along the banks of the thirty-five-mile stretch of river for which he was responsible he had waged incessant warfare on thieves and receivers for thirty years, till now practically all serious crime had disappeared.
He it was who, a dozen years before, had fought hand to hand with a naked and greased river thief armed with a knife, in a swaying boat under Blackfriars Bridge; he, too, solved the mystery of a man found dead in the Thames who had been identified by a woman as her husband—a dare-devil adventurer and unscrupulous blackmailer, who was declared by a doctor and a coroner's jury to have been murdered. Step by step he had traced it all out, from the moment when a seaman on a vessel moored at one of the wharves had taken a fancy to bathe, and being unable to swim had fastened a line round his waist and jumped overboard. He had neglected to make the end on board properly fast and was swept away by the current. The rope had twirled round him, and as the body swelled became fixed. A blow on the head from the propeller of a tug completed a maze of circumstantial evidence which might have served as an excuse to most men for giving up the problem. Yet Wrington had solved it, and the record, which had never seen the light of publicity, was hidden in the archives of the service.