Post Haste Part 27

"Now, Molly," said Bones, with a smile, "I want you to write a letter for me, so get another sheet of paper, if you can; Mr Aspel used up my last one."

A sheet was procured from a neighbouring tobacconist. Mrs Bones always acted as her husband's amanuensis (although he wrote very much better than she did), either because he was lazy, or because he entertained some fear of his handwriting being recognised by his enemies the police!

Squaring her elbows, and with her head very much on one side--almost reposing on the left arm--Mrs Bones produced a series of hieroglyphics which might have been made by a fly half-drowned in ink attempting to recover itself on the paper. The letter ran as follows:--

"Deer bil i am a-goin to doo it on mundy the 15th tother cove wont wurk besides Iv chaningd my mind about him. Don't fale."

"What's the address, Abel?" asked Mrs Bones.

"Willum Stiggs," replied her husband.

"So--i--g--s," said Mrs Bones, writing very slowly, "Rosebud Cottage."

"What!" exclaimed the man fiercely, as he started up.

"Oh, I declare!" said Mrs Bones, with a laugh, "if that place that Tottie's been tellin' us of ain't runnin' in my 'ead. But I've not writ it, Abel, I only said it."

"Well, then, don't say it again," growled Bones, with a suspicious glance at his wife; "write number 6 Little Alley, Birmingham."

"So--numr sx littlaly bringinghum," said Mrs Bones, completing her task with a sigh.

When Bones went out to post this curious epistle, his wife took Tottie on her knee, and, embracing her, rocked to and fro, uttering a moaning sound. The child expressed anxiety, and tried to comfort her.

"Come what's the use o' strivin' against it?" she exclaimed suddenly.

"She's sure to come to know it in the end, and I need advice from some one--if it was even from a child."

Tottie listened with suspense and some anxiety.

"You've often told me, mother, that the best advice comes from G.o.d. So has Miss Lillycrop."

Mrs Bones clasped the child still closer, and uttered a short, fervent cry for help.

"Tottie," she said, "listen--you're old enough to understand, I think.

Your father is a bad man--at least, I won't say he's altogether bad, but--but, he's not good."

Tottie quite understood that, but said that she was fond of him notwithstanding.

"Fond of 'im, child!" cried Mrs Bones, "that's the difficulty. I'm so fond of 'im that I want to save him, but I don't know how."

Hereupon the poor woman explained her difficulties. She had heard her husband murmuring in his sleep something about committing a burglary, and the words Rosebud Cottage had more than once escaped his lips.

"Now, Tottie dear," said Mrs Bones firmly, "when I heard you tell all about that Rosebud Cottage, an' the treasure Miss Stiffinthegills--"

"Stivergill, mother."

"Well, Stivergill. It ain't a pretty name, whichever way you put it.

When I heard of the treasure she's so foolish as to keep on her sideboard, I felt sure that your father had made up his mind to rob Miss Stivergill--with the help of that bad man Bill Stiggs--all the more w'en I see how your father jumped w'en I mentioned Rosebud Cottage. Now, Tottie, we _must_ save your father. If he had only got me to post his letter, I could easily have damaged the address so as no one could read it. As it is, I've writ it so bad that I don't believe there's a man in the Post-Office could make it out. This is the first time, Tottie, that your father has made up his mind to break into a 'ouse, but when he do make up his mind to a thing he's sure to go through with it. He must be stopped, Tottie, somehow--_must_ be stopped--but I don't see how."

Tottie, who was greatly impressed with the anxious determination of her mother, and therefore with the heinous nature of her father's intended sin, gave her entire mind to this subject, and, after talking it over, and looking at it in all lights, came to the conclusion that she could not see her way out of the difficulty at all.

While the two sat gazing on the ground with dejected countenances, a gleam of light seemed to shoot from Tottie's eyes.

"Oh! I've got it!" she cried, looking brightly up. "Peter!"

"What! the boy you met at Rosebud Cottage?" asked Mrs Bones.

"Yes. He's _such_ a nice boy, and you've no idea, mother, what a inventor he is. He could invent anythink, I do believe--if he tried, and I'm sure he'll think of some way to help us."

Mrs Bones was not nearly so hopeful as her daughter in regard to Peter, but as she could think of nothing herself, it was agreed that Tottie should go at once to the Post-Office and inquire after Peter. She did so, and returned crestfallen with the news that Peter was away on a holiday until the following Monday.

"Why, that's the 15th," said Mrs Bones anxiously. "You must see him that day, Tottie dear, though I fear it will be too late. How did you find him out? There must be many Peters among the telegraph-boys."

"To be sure there are, but there are not many Peters who have helped to save a little girl from a fire, you know," said Tottie, with a knowing look. "They knew who I wanted at once, and his other name is such a funny one; it is Pax--"

"What?" exclaimed Mrs Bones, with a sudden look of surprise.

"Pax, mother; Peter Pax."

Whatever Mrs Bones might have replied to this was checked by the entrance of her husband. She cautioned Tottie, in earnest, hurried tones, to say nothing about Rosebud Cottage unless asked, and especially to make no mention whatever of the name of Pax.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

BUSINESS INTERFERED WITH IN A REMARKABLE MANNER.

The modest estimate which Mrs Bones had formed of her penmanship turned out to be erroneous, and her opinion that there was not a man in the Post-Office able to read it was ill-founded. She was evidently ignorant of the powers and intelligence of the Blind Division.

To make this more plain we will follow the letter. You and I, reader, will post ourselves, as it were, and pa.s.s through the General Post-Office unstamped. At a few minutes to six p.m. the mouth is wide enough to admit us bodily. Mr Bones has just put in his epistle and walked away with the air of a man who feels that he has committed himself, and is "in for it." He might have posted it at an office or a pillar nearer home, but he has an idea, founded no doubt on experience, that people, especially policemen, are apt to watch his movements and prefers a longish walk to the General.

There! we take a header and descend with the cataract into the basket.

On emerging in the great sorting-room, somehow, we catch sight of the Bones epistle at once. There is no mistaking it. We should know its dirty appearance and awry folding--not to mention bad writing--among ten thousand. Having been turned with its stamp in the right direction at the facing-tables and pa.s.sed under the stamping-machines without notice, it comes at last to one of the sorters, and effectually, though briefly, stops him. His rapid distributive hand comes to a dead pause. He looks hard at the letter, frowns, turns it upside down, turns his head a little on one side, can make nothing of it, puts it on one side, and continues his work.

But at the Blind Division, to which it is speedily conveyed, our letter proves a mere trifle. It is nothing to the hieroglyphics which sometimes come under the observation of the blind officers. One of these officers gazes at it shrewdly for a few seconds. "William Stiggs, I think," he says, appealing to a comrade. "Yes," replies the comrade, "number six little lady--no--aly--oh, Little Alley, Bring--Bringing--ah, Birmingham!"

Just so--the thing is made out almost as quickly as though it had been written in copperplate, and the letter, redirected in red ink, finds its way into the Birmingham mail-bag.

So far so good, but there is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip, and other elements were more successful than bad writing in preventing Mr William Stiggs from receiving that letter.

When the mail-bag containing it was put into the Travelling Post-Office van, Mr Bright pa.s.sed in after it. Our energetic sorter was in charge of the van that night, and went to work at once. The letters to be dropped at the early stages of the journey had to be commenced even before the starting of the train. The letter did not turn up at first.

The officials, of whom there were six in the van, had littered their sorting-table and arranged many of the letters, and the limited mail was flying north at full speed before the Bones epistle found its appropriate pigeon-hole--for it must be understood that the vans of the Travelling Post-Office--the T.P.O., as it is familiarly called by its friends--are fitted up on one side with a long narrow table, above which are numerous pigeon-holes, arranged somewhat like those of the sorting-tables in the non-travelling Post-Offices. There is a suggestive difference, however, in the former. Their edges are padded to prevent the sorters' knuckles and noses from being damaged in the event of violent jolting. The sides and ends of the vans are padded all round to minimise their injuries in the event of an accident. Beyond this padding, however, there are no luxuries--no couches or chairs; only a few things like bicycle saddles attached to the tables, astride which the sorters sit in front of their respective pigeon-holes. On the other side of the van are the pegs on which to hang the mail-bags, a lamp and wax for sealing the same, and the apparatus for lowering and lifting the net which catches the bags.

Everything connected with railways must needs be uncommonly strong, as the weight of materials, coupled with high speed, subjects all the parts of a carriage to extremely violent shocks. Hence the bag-catching affair is a powerful iron frame with rope netting, the moving of which, although aided by a pulley and heavy weight, tries the strength of a strong man.

Nimbly worked the sorters, as they swept by town and field, village, tunnel, bridge, and meadow,--for time may not be wasted when s.p.a.ce between towns is being diminished at the rate of forty or fifty miles an hour, and chaos has to be reduced to order. The registered-letter clerk sat in one corner in front of a set of special pigeon-holes, with a sliding cover, which could be pulled over all like a blind and locked if the clerk should have occasion to quit his post for a moment. While some were sorting, others were bagging and sealing the letters.

Presently the junior sorter, whose special duty it is to manipulate the net, became aware that a bag-exchanging station drew near. His eyes might have a.s.sured him of this, but officers of the Travelling Post-Office become so expert with their ears as to know stations by the peculiarity of the respective sounds connected with them--caused, it might be, by the noise of tunnels, cuttings, bridges, or even slighter influences.

Going quietly to the apparatus above referred to, the junior sorter looked out at the window and lowered the net, which, instead of lying flat against the van, now projected upwards of three feet from it. As he did so something flashed about his feet. He leaped aside and gave a shout. Fearful live creatures were sometimes sent by post, he knew, and serpents had been known before that to take an airing in Post-Office vans as well as in the great sorting-room of St. Martin's-le-Grand! A snake had only a short time before been observed at large on the floor of one of the night mail sorting carriages on the London and North-Western Railway, which, after a good deal of confusion and interruption to the work, was killed. This flashed into his mind, but the moment was critical, and the junior sorter had no time to indulge in private little weaknesses. Duty required prompt action.