"Sar will come quick," said he, "and leave his luggage. The master waits."
He gave me no time for any explanations, but took me by the arm, and, passing from the house by a back door, he went some way down a narrow street, and turned into Piccadilly. There a cab waited for us, and we drove away, but not before one, who stood on the pavement, had made a slight signal to me, and called another cab.
In him I recognised Detective-Inspector King, and I knew that we were followed.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE SHADOW ON THE SEA.
We drove rapidly, passing the Criterion, so into the Strand, and along the Thames Embankment. Thence, we went through Queen Victoria Street, past the Mansion House, and to Fenchurch Street Station, where we took a train for Tilbury.
The journey was accomplished in something under an hour; and when we alighted and got upon the bank of the river, I saw a steam-launch with the man John in the bows of her. I thought it strange that there was no sign of any watchers at this place; but I entered the launch without a word, and we started immediately, going at a great pace towards Sheerness; and reached the Nore after some buffet with the seas in the open. At this point we sighted the tender, and went aboard her, while they hauled up the launch, when we made full speed towards the North Foreland.
It was then quite dark, with a stiff breeze blowing right abaft. The night, a moonless and very black one, favoured us altogether for the run which, I did not doubt, we had to make against some Government vessel that would follow us. But I found to my surprise that the men on the ship knew nothing of the dangerous position in which they were, and worked with a calm disregard to the blackness of the night, and to the hazard of the moment. Black I did not meet, for they put me into a cabin aft, of which I was the sole occupant; and, being ordered by the man John, who was half-drunk and very threatening, to get below, I turned in shortly after coming aboard, and lay down to reckon with the strange probabilities of the hour.
One thing was very evident. Black had made a colossal mistake, from his point of view, in setting foot in England; but the crowning blunder of his life was that fatal act of folly by which he had sought to shield me from the men. How long the Government had been watching for him, or for tidings of me, I could not tell, but it must have been since Roderick had reached New York, and had told all he knew of the ship of mystery and of her owner.