The sailors’ wives often drew one half the men’s pay, but she had not applied for it during that time, and was supposed to have changed her address.
“I didn’t say anything of it to Fisher,” said the clerk in conclusion, “and he seemed quite elated at having so much money to draw. It’s a kittle thing interfering between a man and his wife, and it might have alarmed him needlessly. If there’s anything wrong he’s best to find it out himself.”
I left the shipping office, and took the first train for the town in which Fisher had his home. If he was to be found anywhere, I thought it would be there—and especially so if he turned out to be innocent. It is a quiet country place in which everyone knows his neighbours, and I had no difficulty in finding the house. But it was occupied by an old woman, who said she had been in it for nearly a year. I asked for Mrs Fisher, the sailor’s wife.
“Oh, she was a bad lot,” was the blunt rejoinder. “She sellt a’ her things, bit by bit, and gaed awa’ in the end withoot paying her rent and other debts.”
“Where did she go to, do you know?”
“Oh, dear kens. She was a drunken hussy, and thought hersel’ bonny. Some say that she went awa’ wi’ a baker-man they ca’ McCulloch, and was aboot Leith for a while, but maybe it’s no true. He used to hae a great wark wi’ her.”
“And her husband—has he never been here?”
“Never since I cam’; but I heard that McCulloch was stabbed at the races by a sailor and I wadna wonder if that sailor turned oot to be Fisher himsel’.”
I thought the old woman the most acute I had met for a while; we always do when we find a person’s thoughts and opinions tallying with our own. I left the house and pursued my inquiries elsewhere. I found no one who had seen Fisher near the town, or in it; but at length there was mentioned to me the name of a man who had been at the races, and had there seen Fisher and spoken to him. This man I found out, but he was not nearly so communicative to me as he had been to others. He admitted that he had seen Fisher and spoken to him, but couldn’t remember what they had talked of. He knew McCulloch also, and had seen him at the races, too, but in a drunken condition, and not fit for conversation. Questioned more closely, he admitted that Fisher was an old friend of his, and that the last thing in the world he would wish for would be to do Fisher any injury by what he should say. He had heard of the stabbing of McCulloch, and did not wonder at it, the man was so quarrelsome, but he had no idea who had done it. Fisher might have done it, or anybody else—he knew nothing about it, as he was out of the place two hours at least before the attack was made.
I could read the man as plainly as if he had spoken all he knew. There was the same reticence which the sailor had shown on board The Shannon, and it probably arose from the same cause—a desire to screen and save a friend. I got back to Leith, and found with some relief that no vessel of importance had left during the two days; I then tried Granton with the same result. “Glasgow” then rose promptly in my mind, and I drove to both the Edinburgh railway stations to make inquiries. At neither had any person resembling the photograph been seen, but a telegram to one of the stations a mile or two from the city elicited the news that a man in sailor’s dress had taken a third class ticket thence to Glasgow. He had driven out to that station in a cab, and the cab had come from the direction of Edinburgh. I telegraphed to Glasgow, and followed my message by the first train. When I got to that city I found my work nearly all done for me. Fisher had been traced to an American liner, in which he had shipped under the name of George Fullerton.