WHERE THE TRACKS LED TO.
IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAP. II.
The very next day the office porter at Thurles & Company—I never heard who the ‘Company’ was—received orders to go to Bristol on some errand for the firm, and wait for a packet, which he was to bring back with him. Thurles & Company had two out-of-door porters or messengers; but this was the man who attended to the head-clerk’s room, to the counting-house, and, of course, on Mr Thurles. He went, and I suppose his employers had written to the Bristol people asking them to keep the man down there for a while, as he was gone a very long time. In his absence, another person had to be appointed to perform his duties; and I may as well say at once that I was the temporary porter, and that the regular party had been purposely sent away to make room for me. Dressed in plain brown livery, with brass buttons, wearing a false pair of whiskers—I shaved quite close in those days—with collar and tie as much unlike my usual style as could be, without anything like a caricature, I was not easily to be recognised, even if—as was hardly probable—some of the clerks had ever seen and known Sergeant Holdrey of the metropolitan police. There were not many clerks at Thurles & Company’s, so on the first day of my taking office I knew them all.
My inexperience in my duties occasioned me, and others too, some inconvenience at first, and would have been much worse but for a little assistance I derived from a clerk who observed it—a young fellow named Picknell. I had noticed him when I first went in, and did not like his looks. He was short and thin, very dark-complexioned like a gipsy, with eyes that you couldn’t fix, and couldn’t say whether they were watching you or not; and I never could make up my mind from first to last as to whether he had or had not a cast in his eye. However, he took compassion on me, and told me several things which were useful, and from the first seemed to take an interest in me. Well, on this day I could do but little. I kept my eyes open; noticed the manner and style of the clerks, and of the porters as well. These latter had not been suspected; but they were none the less likely to have been in the job, and of course I noticed thoroughly the window and its position as regarded the safe.
Mr Thurles had said the robbery must have been committed by some one whose appearance was familiar to the people in the neighbourhood, as he would certainly be noticed; but after seeing the premises, I did not agree with him. The entry was made in just the way a regular ‘tradesman’ would have done it; but this was no guide, if the place had been prepared for him.
I went home to think over the matter and to decide what my first move should be. I was going round a crescent which lay in my road home, when I was startled by seeing two figures cross the farther end, and, as they passed under the light of a lamp, I could have sworn that one was my Winny; the other was a man I could not recognise. I laughed at the fancy, however, as it was impossible that my girl should be there; and I had turned down a street which led to my place, when, by a sudden change of mind, I turned sharply round and went in the direction where I had seen these persons. But just there the crescent joined a large and busy thoroughfare, in which it was easy to lose any one; at anyrate, I could see nothing of them, although I walked first on one side and then the other for several minutes. Once I thought I saw a couple resembling them enter a shop, and I hurried up, only to find, when close to them, that these were not in the least like the persons I thought I had seen.
This incident disturbed me more than I could account for, and do what I would, I could not help thinking of it all the way home; and as I put my key in the door, my heart fluttered in such a way as it had never done with more serious business. It was an immense relief to me to find Winny there and my tea waiting for me as usual.
‘What has been troubling you, father?’ she said, as I took off my hat and coat. ‘You look harassed.’
‘Well, I am a little harassed, Winny. I don’t like being taken from home again.’ I had determined to say nothing about the crescent incident, of which I began to feel a trifle ashamed.
I made up my mind to have a nice enjoyable Christmas, for the business of Thurles & Company was not of the kind to demand my running about without rest, and, in honest truth, I did not see how I was to begin anywhere, so a day’s consideration would not hurt it.