Chapter VIII: Identified

Early on the following day Thornton Carey paid another visit to the police authorities, with whom he had already been in communication. As much to their surprise as his own, and their mutual congratulation, he was enabled to lay the case before them with all the detail, explanation, and certainty acquired by the perusal of Mr. Dunn's letter. With the exception of certain inquiries which he had made during his brief absence at Liverpool and his interview with certain magnates of Scotland-yard on the previous day, Thornton Carey had, so far, worked up this case without professional assistance; but he now asked for such assistance in the practical form of a warrant for the arrest of Mr. Dunn.

There was no difficulty about the granting of the warrant, but Carey was advised that it would be much better to have it carried into effect at Liverpool, the scene of the murder, and whither it was evident Mr. Dunn was about to transfer himself within a very few days. To this advice Thornton Carey deferred perhaps a little unwillingly; he had a mortal dread that his prey might escape him, that the cunning which had availed the murderer so far might be put forth in a final effort, which would elude all their vigilance. But a little professional reasoning tranquillised his mind on this subject. It would be totally impossible for Mr. Dunn to escape the vigilance of the police at the port of Liverpool; and if he should leave his present lodgings without the knowledge of Thornton Carey and Mrs. Jenkins, the fault would be theirs. The gaoler of the prison to which he would be inevitably transferred before long would not have him in surer watch and ward than the quiet-looking, business-like, and unsuspicious lady and gentleman occupying the dining-room floor. With this assurance, and instructions that he was to communicate with a certain person to whom he was introduced, and who was desired to hold himself at the applicant's disposal, Thornton Carey returned home just in time to see Mr. Dunn, in his usual neat attire and with his accustomed deliberation of step, turn into Piccadilly with the air of a gentleman who had nothing whatever on his mind but the procuring of air and exercise.

Two days, which both Thornton Carey and Mrs. Jenkins found exceedingly tedious and hard to dispose of, elapsed, and on the morning of the third, Mrs. Watts, who had made great friends with her lady lodger of the dining-room floor, came to inform her that she was really about to lose Mr. Dunn at last.

Yes, it was just like her luck. He was going for good, and the quietest and most accommodating of lodgers would be known no more in Queen-street, Mayfair.

Indeed, Mrs. Jenkins sympathised. It was rather sudden, wasn't it? Had Mr. Dunn had any bad news from home, or had he completed all his business in London?

That Mrs. Watts could not tell her. He had seemed exceedingly put out over some American papers that had come in a great batch from somewheres in the City, and he had told her that he was very much disappointed that his employers did not require him to remain for another year in England. Mrs. Watts did not know much of Americans, but she had noticed that Mr. Dunn was the only one who had ever acknowledged that he liked England better than his own country; if it was his own country, which she could not say; perhaps he had gone out there young.

But Mrs. Jenkins was obliged to ask Mrs. Watts to excuse her for cutting short their interview--on that morning her brother was going out on business, and she must see him before he left the house. After he had gone she would return and resume their talk; so in the fewest possible words Thornton Carey was rapidly informed that the time had come. Mr. Dunn was going to Liverpool by the twelve-o'clock train.

Thornton Carey needed no details; he had merely to transmit that fact to the person with whom he had been put in communication on the previous day.

At noon that day the train for Liverpool started with its accustomed punctuality, and without the slightest indication that it conveyed any passenger more interesting or important than its ordinary freight.

Mr. Dunn occupied a corner-seat in a first-class carriage, and was profoundly unconscious of the presence in the next compartment of the remarkably quiet lady and gentleman who had been of late his fellow lodgers. He was looking ill and much preoccupied; he duly wrapped himself up, settled himself in his seat, and strewed the adjoining division with miscellaneous literature, but it lay there untouched, and Mr. Dunn's fidgetiness was such that it might not unreasonably have provoked the remonstrances of the stout elderly gentleman, with light fluffy whiskers and remarkably unexpressive eyes, who sat opposite to him, and read newspapers one after another, with engrossing interest and undeviating steadiness, for fully two-thirds of the journey.

But the stout gentleman took absolutely no notice whatever of his companion's movements, which alternated between excessive restlessness, in which he would throw off his wraps, pull the window up and down, and gape audibly, and extreme moody depression, in which he sat back, his chin dropped upon his breast, and his eyes fixed upon the flying landscape, and evidently totally unconscious of the objects passing before them.

It was remarkable that, though the train was rather crowded, Mr. Dunn and the elderly gentleman, with so insatiable an appetite for details, had this particular first-class compartment to themselves all the way, with the trifling exception hereafter to be noted. There might almost have been an understanding between the railway people and the elderly gentleman--perhaps there was, perhaps also he saw and remarked Mr. Dunn's moves more clearly than he appeared to see and remark them; for when Mr. Dunn (they were then three-quarters of an hour from Liverpool) took a crumpled packet of letters out of his pocket, though the elderly gentleman interposed a newspaper directly between his own face and that of Mr. Dunn's, he slid his hand gently into the pocket of his heavy overcoat, and at the same moment handled something metallic which lay within it.

Mr. Dunn pored over these letters with an absorbed attention, which could not have been greater had he been in absolute solitude. He compared their dates, he counted them, he carefully rearranged them, each in its respective former position in the packet, and when he had read and re-read them, he tied them up again and replaced them in an inner pocket.

During all this time his companion kept his hand upon the something metallic in the pocket of his rough greatcoat, and when Mr. Dunn, apparently yielding to a momentary temptation to tear up the letters and strew them by the roadside, made a slight motion towards letting down the window next him, he almost instantly withdrew his hand, the barrier of the newspaper was withdrawn for a second, and the usually inexpressive face of the elderly gentleman was set in a very stern purpose indeed.

Nothing came, however, of the temptation. Mr. Dunn replaced the letters; his companion reinterposed the barrier; and the train glided smoothly on but another quarter of an hour, during which Mr. Dunn subsided from his restless into his depressed alternative, and occasionally took out a photographic likeness of a woman, at which he gazed moodily.

Just as the train was running into Lime-street station its speed slackened, it stopped in an instant, and a man stepped with wonderful swiftness into the compartment hitherto occupied only by Mr. Dunn and the persistent reader.

Mr. Dunn slipped the photograph at which he was looking into his breast-pocket, and glanced round surprised, but the elderly gentleman, with a satisfied wink at the new arrival, stuffed his newspaper under the back of the cushion, and bending over and approaching Mr. Dunn, laid his hand on his shoulder.

Mr. Dunn started up, or rather attempted to do so, but found himself held firmly in his seat by a grasp apparently gentle, but wholly irresistible, while his companion informed him, in the briefest of phrases, that he was arrested on the charge of murder, and had better not say anything lest it should be used to his disadvantage. Pale, speechless, and bewildered, the trapped criminal stared at the police-officer, who made a sign to his assistant, who, with businesslike imperturbability and the deftness of long practice, slipped a pair of handcuffs on Mr. Dunn's wrists.

In another minute the train had stopped, and the police-officer, considerately arranging Mr. Dunn's wraps so as to disguise the fact that he was a prisoner, stepped out with his charge upon the platform, closely followed by his assistant.

Thornton Carey and Mrs. Jenkins retained their seats until the three, whose movements they were watching, had passed the door of the compartment in which they were. Then they immediately left the carriage and followed.

Among the persons assembled on the arrival platform at Lime-street was a respectable-looking woman, who carried a large basket, with that air of inseparability habitual to females of her class. She was probably there by appointment with somebody, for she had taken her seat on a bench and waited with the inevitable basket on her knees for the arrival of the train.

As Mr. Dunn passed down the platform in the custody of his two travelling companions, the elderly gentleman slackened his pace for a moment when they came alongside the bench where this woman sat, and laid his hand, as if accidentally and in passing, upon the cover of her basket. She gave him a quick look; but on the prisoner she conferred a prolonged stare, of which, however, the wretched man was wholly unconscious. A few persons only came between Mr. Dunn and his companions and Thornton Carey and Mrs. Jenkins, who walked up to the woman arm-in-arm. Thornton Carey addressed her:

'Have you seen him?'

'I have, sir.'

'Is it he?'

'It is, sir; I could swear to the Methodist preacher that talked to the poor gentleman and to me in the Birkenhead ferry anywhere in the world!'

They took him to the police-office. He went quietly, in absolute silence, only looking from time to time at the men who walked one on each side of him with a confused and helpless stare.

Thornton Carey, Mrs. Jenkins, and the woman, whose evidence Thornton Carey had skilfully hunted up during his short stay in Liverpool, exercising the ingenuity which subsequently won him many warm congratulations from Mr. Dunn's travelling companion, and whose evidence was the last link in the chain of identification which convicted Mr. Dunn of the crime committed by Trenton Warren, had reached the police-court some minutes in advance. The prisoner recognised his inoffensive fellow lodgers of the dining-room floor in Queen-street, Mayfair, with an irrepressible start, and spoke for the first time. 'Who are they?' he asked.

Thornton Carey replied: 'I am Thornton Carey, whose benefactor Mr. Griswold was; and this woman,' drawing forward Mrs. Jenkins, 'is your brother's widow--your brother whose blood is on your head. We represent your victims!'

The usual formalities were quickly accomplished; and when the prisoner was searched, it appeared that he would have done wisely had he yielded to that momentary temptation which had moved him to tear the letters which he had read in the train and to scatter them in fragments from the carriage window; for the letters in question were those written by Helen Griswold to her husband, and the photograph was that which the murdered man had carried in his pocket-book, and the murderer had robbed him of both.

'On the whole,' as Mr. Dunn's travelling companion remarked to Thornton Carey, as they walked away from the police-court together, 'it isn't often one has the handling of a case that fits together so satisfactorily; in this there isn't a loop-hole.'