Chapter IV

I made up my mind that the Churles Street referred to in the message lay in London. London was the home town evidently of the master of the _Shanghai_, and he would refer to Churles Street—perhaps a well-known place in the dock quarter—just as one might speak of Cromwell Road or Regent Street.

On getting in to Southampton, the first thing I did at the hotel was to consult a Kelly’s directory, and sure enough, there was Churles Street, E.C., the only street of that name, a short street of twenty houses or so with the name J. Robertson against No. 11. The street opened off the West India Dock Road, and two days later, when I had disposed of my private business in London, I took a walk in the East End. The Dock Road is a fascinating place if you are in good health and spirits, and if the day is fine, but there is no fascination about Churles Street, a gloomy, evil looking cul-de-sac, not rowdy, but quiet with the quietude of vice reduced to misery and crouching in a corner.

It was a horrible place.

A thin woman nursing a baby was standing at the door of No. 11. I asked her was anyone of the name of Abbott living there and she glanced me up and down.

“Have you come from his brother?” asked she.

“Yes,” I said, “I’ve come from Captain Richard Abbott.”

She led the way into the passage, opened a door, and showed me into a room where a man, fully dressed, was lying on a bed smoking a pipe and reading a sporting paper.

A typical lounger and ne’er-do-well, unshaved, and with his collar and tie on the chair beside him, this chap gave me pause, I can assure you.

“Well,” he said to the woman, “what’s he want?”

“You’re his brother?” I said.

“Yes,” he replied, “I’m his brother, and who might you be?”

“Met him abroad,” I replied, “and he asked me to call in and see how you were doing.” I was clean cut off from the business I had in mind, some instinct told me to halt right there and show nothing that was in my hand. The man repulsed me.

“Well, you see how I am doing,” replied he, “hasn’t he sent me anything but his kind inquiries?”

“Yes,” I said, “he asked me to give you a sovereign from him.”

I brought out the money and he took it and laid it on the chair by the collar and tie, then he filled his pipe again and we talked. I had taken a chair which the woman had dusted. I talked but I could get nothing much out of him, to ask questions I would have had to explain, and to explain might have meant bringing this unshaven waster on top of me to help him to prosecute his claims. If I did anything further in the matter, I would do it through an agent, but upon my word I felt I had paid any debt I might owe to the master of the _Shanghai_ by the trouble I had taken already and the sovereign I had handed over in his name.

As we talked a pretty little girl of ten or twelve ran into the room; she was dirty and neglected, and as she stood at the end of the bed with her great eyes fixed on me, I could have kicked the loafer lying there, his pipe in his mouth and his sporting paper by his side.

It seemed that he had four children altogether, and as I took my leave and the woman showed me out, I put another sovereign into her hand for the children.

There I was in the West India Dock Road again feeling that I could have kicked myself. It was not so much the trouble I had taken over the business that worried me as the wind up. I’d put into Shanghai, sent cables from Japan, altered my plans, spent no end of money to bring news to that rotten chap, news of a fortune that if secured would certainly be burst on racing and drink.

I said to myself that this came of mixing in other folks’ business and I took an oath never to do it again—I didn’t know I was only at the beginning of things.

Murchison was the agent I determined to employ to finish up the affair. Murchison is less a detective than an inquiry agent, his game is to find out facts relative to people, he lives in Old Serjeants’ Inn, and knowing him to be secrecy itself and not caring to employ my lawyer, I determined to go to him next day and place the matter in his hands, telling him to do what he could with the business, but to keep my name out of it. He need mention nothing about the finding of the message, but he could give it as coming from some unknown source—the message was the main thing, anyhow.

I called at his office next morning. Murchison is a thin old chap, dry as a stick. I told him the whole story and it made no more impression on him than if I’d been telling it to a pump. He made a note or two, and when I had finished, he told me in effect that he wasn’t a District Messenger, but an inquiry agent, and that I had better take the thing to my lawyer. He seemed put out; I had evidently raised his tracking instincts by my story and ended simply by asking him to take a message.

I apologised, told him the truth, that my lawyer was an old-fashioned family solicitor, gone in years, touchy as Lucifer, the last man in London to set hinting of possible fortunes to beggars in slums. “If you won’t do it yourself,” I finished, “tell me of a man who will.”

“I can tell you of plenty,” he replied, “but if you take my advice you will let me make an inquiry into the business before you move further in the matter; there’s more in it than meets the eye and you may be doing injury to other parties by stirring up the mud, for this man you tell me of seems mud.”

“A jolly good name for him,” said I. “Well, go ahead and make your inquiries; it’s only a few pounds more thrown after the rest, and it will be interesting to hear the result.” Then I left him.

A month later I got a letter asking me to call upon him, and I went.

When I took my seat he sent the clerk for the Abbott documents, and the clerk brought a sheaf of all sorts of papers, laid them on the table and went out. Murchison put on his glasses, took a glance through the papers and started his yarn.

Beautifully concise it was, and I’ll give you it almost in his own words.