Chapter D: Wragg's Day Out (5)

Sir Francis looked up as the young man entered, to gaze at him in a confused, dazed way, as if he did not quite comprehend the meaning of his coming.

"Was not this rather foolish of you, Sir Francis?" said Harry, gently. "Indeed you are in no condition for going out. I see how it is, though, and I feared it when you put in the advertisement; the very name of the chambers in Regent Street was enough to bring down a host of reward-seekers. Why did you not take my advice, and refer them to the police?"

"I couldn't, Clayton--I couldn't," groaned Sir Francis. "You do not know what I feel, or you would not speak to me as you do. Poor lad!-- poor lad!"

Harry was silent for a few minutes, and then he spoke again.

"It was, of course, a useless quest, sir?"

"I can't tell--I don't know," said Sir Francis, feebly. "I am confused and troubled in the head, Clayton, and I have been trying hard to recollect what it all was, and what I did; but as soon as I grasp anything, it seems to glide from me again."

"Lie down, sir," said Harry, gently, and he passed an arm beneath that of the old man.

"Not yet--not yet--not yet, Clayton. I think I have it now. Yes, that is it--I have it. The man came and said they had found some one by the river-side, and I went half-way with him; and then I suppose I must have fainted, for I can recollect no more, only that I was brought back--or no, I think I must have found my way back by myself. This weakness is a cruel trial just now."

"You must put your strength to the test no more, sir," said Harry, firmly. "Try and believe that I will do all that is possible. Indeed, I will leave no stone unturned."

"I know it, Clayton--I know it!" exclaimed Sir Francis; "and indeed I do try, but this suspense is at times more than I can bear."

At the young man's persuasion, he now went to lie down, giving up in a weary vacant manner the effort to recollect where the man had been about to take him. He tried once to recall the names, till Harry felt a dread of delirium setting in, and it was only by his promising to follow up the clue that had been freshly opened out, that he kept the afflicted father to his couch.

Once more alone, Harry rang for Stiff, who, however, could only repeat what he had before said, and his querist was puzzled as to what should be the next steps taken.

The problem was solved by the waterside man himself, who came, he said, to see if the gentleman was well enough to go now.

"He turned ill in the cab, did he not?" said Clayton.

"Yes, sir; would go in a cab, he would. I don't like 'em--ready to choke yer, they are; but he wouldn't come on a 'bus. 'Fore we'd gone far, he turns as white as his hankychy, and shuts his eyes curus like, and gets all nohow in what he was a saying; but he says, he does, `Take me back, and come agen.' So I brought him back, and now I've comed agen."

"And now, what is your news?" said Harry. "The gentleman has placed it in my hands."

The man looked curiously at him for a few minutes, and then rubbed the bridge of his nose with a rough hand.

"But you see, sir, this is a matter o' offring rewards for some one as is missing, and I've got a mate in this here job. For, you know, as soon as ever there's a notice up o' that sort, my mate and I begins to look out, so as to try if we can't find what's missing, and get what's offered. Now, I ask your parding, sir, but I should like to know who you may be, and what you've got to do with it at all? S'pose I leads you to it, shall we get the ready?"

"You may deal with me precisely as you did with the gentleman you saw before. You know for yourself that he is too ill to leave the house, and he has deputed me to act for him, as I told you."

"True for you, sir--I did see it; and as you seem to be a gent as is all right, let's go."

A cab was brought, and, not without a glance at his unsavoury companion, Harry followed him into the vehicle.

"Hadn't yer better let me ride outside, sir?" said the man, looking at the stuffed and cushioned interior with an aspect of disgust.

"No," said Harry; "I want to know what more you have to say respecting this affair."

The man gave a tug at an imaginary forelock, and then waited apparently to be questioned, while Harry took in his outward appearance at a glance.

He was rough and dirty enough to have passed for the veriest vagabond in existence, but all the same he did not seem as if he belonged to that portion of society that has been dubbed "the dangerous classes;" for there was a good open aspect to the brown face, and though the Bardolphian nose told tales of drams taken to keep out the cold river mists, on either side a frank grey eye looked you full in the face; while, greatest test of all, the fellow's palms were hard and horny, and ended by fingers that had been chipped, bent, bruised, and distorted by hard labour.

"Well, sir," said the man, "I ain't got much to tell you; only that, seeing the reward up, my mate and me thought we might as well have it as any one else, so we set to and--"

"You found him?" exclaimed Harry, eagerly.

"Well, sir, that's for you to say when you sees him. My mate generally sees people about these sorter things, but I come to-day; and a fine job I had to get to know where you lived, for I'd forgot the number; but I found out at last from a gal cleaning the door-step close by. It don't do for us, you know, to go to no police--they humbugs a man about so; and I don't know now whether they ain't been down on my mate, 'cos you see we didn't want to say nothing to them till as how you'd been and seen it."

Harry shuddered at that last word "it;" there was something so repellent, though at the same time expressive, in the one tiny syllable _it_ now, not _him_; and again he shuddered as he thought of the ordeal through which he had to go. He roused himself at last, though, to ask a few questions as the cab drove on, the driver making his way over the river to the Surrey side; and, as soon as they were in the comparative silence of the narrow streets, Harry learned that during the past night his companion had been successful in his search, and that what he had sought lay now in a boat-house far down the Thames in the low-lying district where wharf and dock and rickety stairs, or steam-boat pier, alternate with muddy-pile and drain, with bank after bank of slime, over which the water of the swift tide seemed to glide and play, here and there washing it up into a foul frothy scum, compounded of the poisonous refuse daily cast into the mighty stream.

It was a long ride, down deplorable looking streets, where wretched tumble-down tenements, with frowsy aspect and dingy, patchy windows, were dominated by lordly warehouses, with great gallows-like cranes at every floor--floors six, seven, and eight stories from the ground--from whose open doors men stood gazing down as coolly as if they were on _terra firma_, though a moment's giddiness must have precipitated them into the street below.

Harry saw all this as they rode slowly on, in spite of the pre-occupation of his thoughts, as he tried to nerve himself for the task to come. Probably his brain was abnormally excited, and the pictures of the panorama passing the cab-window seemed to force themselves upon him. Now he was apparently interested in the places where the ship-chandlers hung out their wares; the next minute, the gate of a dock, with its scores of labourers waiting for a job, took his attention; or low public-houses and beer-shops, with their lounging knots of customers, half labourer, half sailor, or lighterman, with the inevitable brazen, high-cheeked, muscular woman. A little farther on, and he would be grazing at a clump of masts rising from behind high walls. Then came comparatively decent dwellings with a vast display of green paint, and to the doors brass knockers of the most dazzling lustre. In nearly every parlour-window he saw was a parrot of grey or gaudy hue swinging or climbing about. In front of more than one house were oyster forts with sham cannon; while others again had flagstaff's rigged up with halyards, vane, and pennant, looking down upon the bruised figure-head of a ship which ornamented the neighbour's garden.

Maritime population with maritime tastes, the houses of trading skippers and mates of small vessels. Sea-chests could be seen in baxrows at every turn, along with the big bolster-like bag that forms the orthodox portmanteau for a sailor's kit. Here and there he passed, in full long-shore togs, the dwellers in the sea-savouring houses--passing along the pavement with one eye to windward, and the true nautical roll which told of sea-legs brought ashore.

On still, with the rattling of the wretched cab and its jangling windows seeming to form a tune which repeated itself ever to his ears. The man, from watching his companion, had taken to drumming the top of the door with his hard fingers, blackened and stained with tar, while from time to time he thrust out his head to give some direction or another to the driver, whose eccentric course seemed as if it would never end.

At last, though, the guide seemed to grow excited, giving his orders more frequently, the cab being slowly driven in and out of rugged, tortuous lanes, from one of which it had to back out, so as to give place to a waggon laden with ships' spars and cables. Narrow ways seemed the rule, and down these the cab went jolting, till the driver drew up short at the end of a wretched alley.

Here the guide dismounted.

"Can't get no furrer with cabs here, sir," he said; "we must walk the rest on it."

Harry told the driver to wait; and then, in a troubled state of mind, he followed his conductor in and out by wharf and crazy waterside shed, where paths were wet and muddy, and the few people seen looked poverty-stricken and repulsive. Tall walls heaved upward to shut out the light and air from the low, damp dwellings. A few yards farther and there was the din of iron as rivets were driven cherry-red into the plates of some huge metallic sea-ark. And again a little farther, and they were where corn ran in teeming golden cascades out of shoots to lighter or granary. Farther still, and the rap, rap, incessant rap, of the caulkers' hammers were heard as they drove in the tarry oakum between the seams of the wooden vessels.

Iron-workers, black and grimy, painters, carpenters, rope-makers, all were busy here. Steam hissed and roared and shrieked, as it escaped from some torturing engine in white wreaths, like the ghost of dead water hurrying to its heaven of clouds far above the grimy earth. All forced itself upon Harry Clayton's brain, as he followed his conductor to where there were loose stones and mud beneath his feet, the black rushing river on his left hand, and on his right slimy piles, black and green and brown, with the bolts protruding, and iron rings hanging from their sides, all eaten and worn away.

There was a channel leading to some dock close by, and foul water was babbling noisily down through a pair of sluice-falls, and this too struck him painfully as the plashing fell upon his ear.

All passed away, though, but the one shudder-engendering idea of that which he had come to see; for a rough harsh voice, proceeding from another amphibious muddy being, said:--

"You've found some one, then?"

"Ay!" was the response from Harry Clayton's conductor; and making to the right, the young man found himself beside a low, wet, half-rotten shed.

Volume 3, Chapter V.

WHAT THE SHED HELD.

Harry Clayton felt his breath come thick and fast as he caught sight of the low place by his side. It was a boat-house evidently, and was roughly built of the hole-filled planks torn from the side of some ship taken to the breaker's yard. The door was secured with a large rusty padlock, and the amphibious-looking man, now introduced as "my mate," had evidently been doing duty as a sentry, seated upon a post, and smoking a long clay pipe, troubled not in the slightest degree that within a few feet, dripping, soddened, battered by contact with pier and pile, lay the nameless dead, separated from him only by that badly-hung door facing the river, and through whose rifts and cracks and treenail-holes the interior could easily have been viewed.

The strongest of nerve might have shuddered as the man who had been keeping guard noisily unfastened the padlock, drew it from the staple, and was about to throw open the door of the hovel, when Harry abruptly arrested him.

"Are you sure that this answers to the description given?" he said, hoarsely.

"Sure on it! Oh yes, sir; that's right enough. You needn't go in without you like: you may take our word for it. But as soon as you're saddersfied, we must go and tell the perlice, or else there'll be a rumpus. They won't like it as it is, and'll be wanting to go in for the reward; but we looks to you, sir, as a genleman, to make all that right."

"I'll see justice done you," said Harry, still hesitating.

"Thanky, sir! You see, about them police, there's the inquiss, and the doctor, and the jury, and all of them to see it; but you may take our word for it as it's all right: it's him, sure enough."

"How--how do you suppose it happened?--by accident?"

"Well, sir," said the first man, "it don't look very accidental when a poor chap's got two knife-holes in his chest, and a cut across the head enough to do for any man. You may call it a accident if you like, but accidents don't turn a chap's pockets inside out, and take his watch and ring."

Harry glanced again shudderingly at the door. Should he go in, or should he stay? It was cruel work, but he had promised the father, and the duty must be performed. He could not help dreading to gaze upon the fair frank face that he knew of old; and as he thought, he recalled it, with its insolent smile of triumph, when they parted at the station. And now, barbarously mutilated, sullied with mud and water, perhaps it would be so changed as to be beyond the power of recognition.

And yet he knew that it must be done--that it was impossible for him to take the men's judgment, which must needs be of the most partial character.

There was nothing else for it, then, but to go, and he motioned to the man to throw open the door.

"I don't know as I'd go, sir, if I was you," said the man who had been his guide. "Give it up, sir, and take our word for it. We're used to this sorter thing; but it ain't pleasant to look at I wouldn't go in, sir, if I was you."

The man became so importunate at last, on seeing Harry's firmness, that the latter grew angry, for he had now nerved himself for his task; and without waiting to hear more, he muttered the two words, "Poor Lionel!" threw back the door, and strode in.

Almost as soon as he had crossed the threshold the door swung to behind him, leaving the place in semi-obscurity, for it was only illumined by the faint pencils of light that streamed in through the treenail-holes of the old planks,

But there was light enough to show Harry that he was standing in a place whose floor was of muddy shingle stones, with a plank laid down the centre, worn and furrowed by the long coursing to and fro upon it of the iron keel of some boat. A few broken oars and a small skiff's mast were leaned against the side in company with a boathook and a rude pole. Upon a peg hard by was a coil of rope and a grapnel; and again, in other parts, coils of rope and four-fluked, sharp-pointed grapnels, which made the visitor shudder as he thought of their purpose. Pieces of old iron, fragments of chain, scraps of rope, a ragged old ship's fender, and some pieces of drift wood, muddy, sodden, and jagged with old red water-corroded nails, were all that remained to take his attention, as his eyes wandered round the place, studiously avoiding and leaving to the last that which he had expressly come to see.

Oars, boathook, mast, cordage, they were all there, but where was the boat's sail? It was not in the boat--that he had seen when outside with the men.

Harry Clayton felt as if his mind were divided, and one portion were set in array against the other, questioning and responding, for the response was plain enough, and he knew that answer, though he had not seen that sail--could not see it now.

As he stood gazing upon the faint rays streaming down from between two loose tiles, falling here straight, there aslant, but all to cross and form a curious network of light with the rays pouring in from the side, he told himself that he was a coward; but the defensive part of his intelligence whispered in return, had this been the body of a stranger lying at his feet he could have calmly and sadly gazed upon the dead. But it was the dread of looking upon his friend--upon the man whom of late, but for a hard battle with self, he could have struck down as an enemy--to look upon him cut off in the flower of his youth, and by some dreadful death, in the midst of a wild freak, perhaps of dissipation.

Clayton paused, and he repeated these words--

"Had it been the body of a stranger!"

Then, as if a flash of light had illumined the meaning of those words, he started. "Had it been the body of a stranger!" Why, after all, might it not be the earthly clay of some one unknown. It would be horrible still; but if he could bear back the tidings to that stricken old man that Lionel might still be living--that this was not he--how he could fervently say, "Thank Heaven!"

He stepped forward to where an old patched sail lay covering something in a pool of mud and water. The sailcloth was stained and dabbled with the mud; and a strange sense of shrinking seized upon Clayton as he stooped to lift one end.

He knew which to lift, for through the bare old cloth the human form could plainly be distinguished. It was not much to do to raise that cloth at the end for a brief moment. He could recognise Lionel in an instant; and nerving himself once more, he stooped hastily, raised the covering, and dropped it again, to mutter--nay, to exclaim loudly, with a fervour of tone that bespoke the intensity of the speaker's feelings--"Thank God!"

Harry turned hastily away, and forced open the door to admit the light of day, and to confront the bearer of the tidings and his mate; for his glance had been but a momentary one. He had stood at the back, as he raised the sail, and in that moment's glance he had seen no horrors-- none of the distortions left sometimes by a fearful death; he had seen but one thing, and that was--

The man's hair was black!

Volume 3, Chapter VI.

RIVER-SIDE HOPES.

Harry Clayton hurriedly made his way back to the chambers, where he found Sir Francis hastily walking up and down the room.

"Ah! you are back!" he said, impatiently. "I fell asleep for quite two hours, and then I should have come after you, only the address the man gave had quite glided from my memory. It seems, Clayton, as if my head were so full of this one trouble that it will hold nothing else. But what news?"

"None, sir," said Harry, quietly. "It was, thank Heaven, a mistake."

"I don't know, Clayton--I don't know. This suspense is almost more agonising than the knowledge that my poor boy had really been found dead. I feel, at times, that I cannot bear it much longer. You saw this--this--"

"Yes, sir; I saw the body of some poor creature lying in a boat-shed; but it was not the one we seek."

"Are you sure? You were not mistaken? You really did look to make sure?"

Harry smiled faintly, as he thought of his irresolution, and the way in which he had held back; and then he answered, calmly--

"Yes, Sir Francis; I made perfectly sure."

It was pitiful to see the old man's trouble--the constant agitation, the anxious gaze, the nervous restless motion of his hands--as he turned over some communication--some letter professing to give information respecting a young man in some far-off part of England or Wales--every despatch exciting hopes that were soon found to be perfectly baseless.

At length, after much persuasion, Sir Francis agreed to lie down, on the condition that Clayton would stay, ready to answer any communication that might arrive.

"You know, my dear boy, these things always will arrive when we are absent," he said, pitifully.

"Trust me, Sir Francis," was the reply. "I am indeed doing everything possible to lead to a discovery."

The old man did not trust himself to speak; but wringing Harry's hand, he despairingly left the room.

In the meantime, Harry's sudden departure from before the boat-shed, far down on the muddy banks of the Thames, had not been allowed to pass uncanvassed by the two rough men, the seekers for such ghastly waifs and strays.

"Suv'rin," said the one who had acted as guide, in answer to a query,

"Air you sure as there worn't two?"

"I am," said the other, with a wave of his pipe-stem. "Why, if there'd been two, wouldn't you have heard 'em chink when he stuffed 'em in my hand?" said Sam, not at all relying upon the known integrity of his character for refutation of this sideways charge that he had kept back portion of the reward. "There's what he give me," he continued, holding out a sovereign in his horny palm; "and we'll get it changed as soon as you like."

"Yes," said the other, speaking indistinctly, on account of the pipe between his lips; "we'll get it changed afore we go on to the station."

As he spoke, he carefully chained and padlocked the door of the shed, smoking coolly enough the while.

"I ain't seen anything else up--no notice, nor nothing," said Sam; "and we mustn't wait no longer before givin' information, or there'll be a row."

"No, there ain't nothing up," said the other, pocketing his key, and removing his pipe to expectorate. "I've been looking, and there's ony a bill up about a woman. He was precious pertickler. Why wouldn't this one do? All they wanted was some one to give a decent Christun buryin' to; and this here poor chap would ha' done as well as any other one, to ease their minds with."

"But you see he's got black hair, and on the bill it says fair curly hair," said Sam. "I was half afeard it wouldn't do."

"Yah! what does the colour of the hair matter?" grumbled the other. "I mean to say its reg'larly swindlin' us out of two 'undred pound. He'd ha' done as well as any other; and they might have 'ad their inkwist, and sat on him, and sworn to him, and said he was found drowned; and there'd ha' been a comfortable feelin', and they needn't ha' troubled themselves no more."

"Well, let's go and give notice; and then we'll change this here, and have a wet--eh, lad?"

"Ah! may as well," said the other, removing his pipe to draw an anticipatory hand across his mouth. "Let's see--tall and fair--curly hair--eh, Sam? Well, perhaps something may turn up yet time enough for us. That 'ere would have done safe enough if his hair had been right colour. Better luck next time--eh, lad?"

"Ah! dessay," said Sam, forcing the sovereign right to the bottom of his pocket. "Two 'undred pound reward! We ought to have had it old man; but who knows but what something mayn't turn up yet?"

Volume 3, Chapter VII.