“Ah! let me see it. Have you it with you?” I cried, with sudden interest and great eagerness.
“Now you change your tune,” he reproachfully answered. “I have it with me, or I should not have given in so easily. I was afraid you might have me searched, and, finding the photo, think me an acquaintance or accomplice of the man,” and, with a little more wearisome talk, he produced the portrait, and slowly put before me the incidents already recorded.
When he had done I was not greatly elated. The thread which connected his early customer with the man supposed to have attacked McCulloch was of the slenderest. Then I was disappointed that Turnbull’s story looked so real. I had fondly hoped he would stumble and prevaricate enough to allow us to lock him up on suspicion—in other words, that we should find him to be an accomplice, anxious to save himself at the expense of a companion in crime. I took the photograph, but plainly told him that I feared it would be of little use to me.
“Ah, you wish to undervalue it in order to get out of paying me a good round sum when the man is caught,” he answered, with a knowing wink. “I haven’t knocked about so much without being able to see through that dodge,” and away he went, as elated and consequential as if he had really laid the man by the heels.
When I was alone I had a long study over the notes I had taken during the interview. The sailor photographed had stated that his ship only got in the day before, and that he was on his way home, and merely visiting the race-course in passing. He had not said where he lived or at what port he had come in, but the general impression left on Turnbull’s mind was that the port was not far off. Leith or Granton seemed to me the likeliest places, and I turned to the shipping lists to have a look at the names of new arrivals. At Leith only one vessel had come in on that day, The Shannon; and at Granton, though there were several arrivals, none of them were from long voyages. The sailor had hinted that he had not been home for eighteen months, and that to my mind implied a long voyage, or long voyages.
To Leith accordingly I went, and found The Shannon, her cargo already discharged, and only a few of the men on board. Some had been paid off and some were off for a few days on leave. The man whom I questioned—for the captain had gone home too—seemed to me sullen and suspicious. He did not know if one of the men had gone eastwards to see his wife; if any of them lived in that quarter he had never heard of it, and so on. I was dissatisfied with the answers and the man’s manner, and had he resembled in the slightest degree the portrait in my pocket I should have arrested him on the spot. I thought I would bring out the photograph as a test. Holding it up before him, I said sharply—
“Do you know that man?”
“No, I don’t.” The answer came out almost before he had time to look at the features. It was too prompt. It was a lie. The falsehood told me more than the truth would have done. It not only convinced me that I was at least on the track of the photographed sailor, but roused in my mind for the first time a strong suspicion that he was the knifer of McCulloch. I went from the ship to the shipping agents. I found the clerk who had handed their pay to all the men; and on producing the photograph saw that he recognised it instantly.
“Yes, that was one of them,” he said, “but he was paid off, and has gone home.”
I asked the man’s name, and, on referring to the books, he gave it as Tom Fisher. With some difficulty he got me the man’s address—which was in a town some miles east—and his trouble arose from the fact that no money had been sent to Fisher’s wife for nearly a year.