Colonel Thorndyke's Secret

by G. A. Henty

“Well, Gibbons, it happened in this way. My father, you know, was murdered by a man who had a grudge against him, and who is both a highwayman and a house breaker.”

“They don't often go together,” Ingleston said. “The highwaymen generally look down upon the burglars and keep themselves to themselves.”

“I hew they do, Ingleston; but this fellow has been a convict, and is not particular what he turns his hand to. The detectives have been after him for a long time, but have failed, and I determined to take the matter up myself, and ever since I have been up here I have been hunting about in the worst quarters of the town. The people of Bow Street have aided me in every way they could, and I suppose some of these men have seen me go in or out of the place. Of course, when I am going into these bad quarters, I put on a disguise and manage to get in with some of these thieves, and so to try to get news of him through them. Three weeks ago I decided to try Westminster. I was getting on uncommonly well there, principally because I gave a tremendous thrashing to a fellow they call Black Jim. He has been a prize fighter.”

“I know him,” Tring said; “it was the fellow that was kicked out for selling a fight. He was not a bad man with his fists, either; but I expect you astonished him, Mr. Thorndyke.”

“Yes, I knocked him out of time in three rounds. Well, he has been a bully down there, and everyone was very glad he was taken down. After that I got to know several of the worst lot down there. They fancied that I was one of themselves, and several of them made proposals to me to join them, and, of course, I encouraged the idea in hopes of coming upon the man that I was after. Then some fellow in the street recognized me, I suppose, and denounced me to the rest as being one of the runners. I suppose he told them this evening, before I went in.

“The place was a regular thieves' den, which, of course, was why I went there. Naturally they were furious, especially those who had been proposing to me to join them. Anyhow, they had evidently settled among themselves that I was to be put out of the way, and directly I went in I was attacked. I knocked down a few of them, but they jumped on my back, and one of them managed to get a rope round my legs, and down I went with three or four of them, and before I could get up again they had tied and gagged me. Then they held a sort of court. Man after man got up and said that I had been drawing them on to find out what they were up to, and had agreed to join them, of course with the intention of getting them caught in the act, and two got up and said that they knew me as one of the runners. They all agreed that I must be put out of the way.

“I suppose, as the landlord did not want blood spilt in his house, they did not knife me at once; however, they told me that they had decided that as soon as the coast was clear I should be carried down to the river, and chucked in, with an old anchor tied to my neck. I had just a gleam of hope a short time before you came in, for then it had been settled that it was just as well no more should be engaged in the affair than was necessary, and that Black Jim, with two others, whom I had been talking to, and the two men who had told them that I was a runner, should manage it, and the rest were to go off to their homes.

“I had been all the time trying to loosen my ropes, and had got one of my hands nearly free, and I thought that if they waited another half hour I might have got them both free, and been able to make a bit of a fight of it, though I had very little hope of getting my legs free.

“However, I had my eye on the knife of the man who was sitting next to me, and who was one of those who was to stay. I thought that if I had my hands free, I could snatch his knife, settle him, and then cut the ropes from my legs; that done, I could, I think, have managed Black Jim and the others. As for the men who denounced me, they were small men, and I had no fear of them in a fight, unless; as I thought likely enough, they might have pistols. One of them is the fellow whose jaw I broke; I hit him hard, for he had a pistol in his hand.”

“There is no doubt you hit him hard,” Gibbons said dryly. “He looked a better sort than the rest.”