“I want you at once to go and choose one the size and shape of your own,” Will said to his companion. “When [pg 308]you see one, set the man to work to weave a false bottom to it. I want it to lodge so as to leave a recess four or five inches deep. Have it made with two handles, so that it can be lifted in and out. How long would he be doing it, do you think?”
“About an hour and a half, I should say.”
“Very well; order the man to send it round to the George, wrapped up in paper, to the address of Mr. Earnshaw. When you have done this, come back here. We cannot go into the street together; our singular resemblance would at once be noticed.”
“Now,” Will said to the pedlar when he returned, “meet me on the road a hundred yards from where it turns down to Porchester; bring a stock of goods with you, and I will put them in my basket. Of course you will bring your pass, and the clothes you now have on in a bundle. I will change there; as far as I have seen it is very seldom that anyone passes that way.”
Will then went for a walk, and when it became quite dark he took off his wig and whiskers and went into the town again. Here he bought a long rope, very slender, but still strong enough to support a man’s weight, and a grapnel which folded up flat when not in use. Then he went to the George, having wrapped a muffler round his face as if he were suffering with toothache. His basket was standing in the hall.
“I shall not return this evening,” he said, “so I will pay my bill.”
Then, having bought a suit of ready-made sailor’s clothes, with hat complete, he put them into his basket, hired a vehicle, and drove to Fairham. In the morning at nine [pg 309]o’clock he walked along the main road towards Cosham till he reached the turning to Porchester, went down it a couple of hundred yards, and sat on a grassy bank till he saw the pedlar approaching.
“It is a foggy morning,” the huckster said when he came up.
“So much the better. I hope it will last over to-morrow, and then they won’t be able to signal the news of the prisoner’s escape. It is only in clear weather that the semaphores can be made out from hill to hill.”
The goods were changed from the pedlar’s basket to the one Will had brought.