Part 20 (2/2)
”Nothing happened, master--what should happen?” replied Fish. ”Them here were in their corner, and Jim Shanks and me, we was in ours. They were busied talking amongst themselves--of course, we heard nothing.
And at last all three went out.”
”Did the man you take to be Baxter look at you?” asked Scarterfield.
”Never showed a sign of it!” declared Fish. ”Him and t'other pa.s.sed us on their way to the door, but he took no notice.”
”See him again anywhere?” inquired Scarterfield.
”No, I didn't” replied Fish. ”I left Hull early next morning, and went to see relatives o' mine at South s.h.i.+elds. Only came home a day or two since, and happening to pa.s.s the time o' day with widow Ormthwaite this morning, I told her what I've told you. Then she told me that you was inquiring about Baxter, guv'nor--so I comes along here to see you.
What might you be wanting with my gentleman, now?”
Scarterfield told Fish enough to satisfy and quieten him; and presently the man went away, having first told us that he would be at home for another month. When he had gone Scarterfield turned to me.
”There!” he said. ”What d'you think of that, Mr. Middlebrook?”
”What do you think of it?” I suggested.
”I think that Netherfield Baxter is alive and active and up to something,” he answered. ”And I'd give a good deal to know who that Chinaman is who was with him. But there's ways of finding out a lot now that I've heard all this, Mr. Middlebrook!--I'm off to Hull. Come with me!”
Until that instant such an idea had never entered my head. But I made up my mind there and then.
”I will!” said I. ”We'll see this through, Scarterfield. Get a time-table.”
CHAPTER XV
MR. JALLANBY--s.h.i.+P BROKER
There were reasons, other than the suddenly excited desire to follow this business out to whatever end it might come at, which induced me to consent to the detective's suggestion that I should go to Hull with him. As I had said to Solomon Fish, I knew Hull--well enough. In my very youthful days I had spent an annual holiday there, with relatives, and I had vivid recollections of the place.
Already, in those days, they had begun to pull Hull to pieces, laying out fine new streets and open s.p.a.ces where there had been old-fas.h.i.+oned, narrow alleys and not a little in the slum way. But then, as happily now, there was still the old Hull of the ancient High Street, and the Market Place, and the Land of Green Ginger, and the older docks, wharves, and quays; it had been amongst these survivals of antiquity, and in the great church of Holy Trinity and its scarcely less notable sister of St. Mary in Lowgate that I had loved to wander as a boy--there was a peculiar smell of the sea in Hull, and an atmosphere of seafaring life that I have never met with elsewhere, neither in Wapping nor in Bristol, in Southhampton nor in Liverpool; one felt in Hull that one was already half-way to Bergen or Stockholm or Riga--there was something of North Europe about you as soon as you crossed the bridge at the top of Whitefriargate and plunged into masts and funnels, stacks of fragrant pine, and sheds bursting with foreign merchandise. And I had a sudden itching and half-sentimental desire to see the old seaport again, and once more catch up its appeal and its charm.
”Yes, I'll certainly go with you, Scarterfield!” I repeated. ”In for a penny, in for a pound, they say. I wonder, though, what we are in for!
You think, really, we're on the track of Netherfield Baxter?”
”Haven't a doubt of it!” a.s.serted Scarterfield, as he turned over the pages of the railway guide. ”That man who's just gone was right--that was Baxter he saw. With who knows what of mystery and crime and all sorts of things behind him!”
”Including the murder of one of the Quicks?” I suggested.
”Including some knowledge of it, anyway,” he said. ”It's a clue, Mr.
Middlebrook, and I'm on it. As this man was in Hull, there'll be news of him to be picked up there--very likely in plenty.”
”Very well,” said I. ”I'm with you. Now let's be off.”
Going southward by way of Newcastle and York, we got to Hull that night, late--too late to do more than eat our suppers and go to bed at the Station Hotel. And we took things leisurely next morning, breakfasting late and strolling through the older part of the town before, as noon drew near, we approached the Goose and Crane. We had an object in selecting time and place. Fish had told us that the man whom he had seen in company with our particular quarry, the supposed Baxter, had come into the queer old inn in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves and without his hat--he was therefore probably some neighbouring shop or store-keeper, and in the habit of turning into the ancient hostelry for a drink about noon. Such a man--that man--Scarterfield hoped to encounter. Out of him, if he met him, he could hope to get some news.
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