Ravensdene Court Part 20

"A scar on his left cheek," replied Fish. "What begun underneath his beard, as covered most of it, and went up to his cheek-bone. Just an inch or so showing, d'ye understand? 'That's been knife's work!'

thinks I to myself. 'You've had your cheek laid open with a knife, my lad, somewhere and somehow!' Struck me, then, he'd grown a beard to hide it."

"Very likely," a.s.sented Scarterfield. "Well, and what happened? You spoke to this man?"

"I waited and watched," continued Fish. "I'm one as has been trained to use his eyes. Now, I see two or three little things about this man as I remembered about Baxter. There was a way he had of chucking up his chin--there it was! Another of playing with his watch-chain when he talked--it was there! And of slapping his leg with his walking-stick--that was there, too! 'Jim!' I says to my mate, 'if that ain't a man I used to know, I'm a Dutchman!' Which, of course, I ain't. And so, when the three of 'em sets down their gla.s.ses and turns to the door, I jumps up and makes for my man, holding out a hand to him, friendly. And then, of course, come all the surprise!"

"Didn't know you, I suppose?" suggested Scarterfield.

"I tell 'ee what happened," answered Fish.

"'Morning, Mr. Baxter!' says I. 'It's a long time since I had the pleasure o' seeing you, sir!'--and as I say, shoves my hand out, hearty. He turns and gives me a hard, keen look--not taken aback, mind you, but searching-like. 'You're mistaken, my friend,' he says, quiet, but pleasant. 'You're taking me for somebody else.' 'What!' says I, all of a heap. 'Ain't you Mr. Netherfield Baxter, what I used to know at Blyth, away up North?' 'That I'm certainly not,' says he, as cool as the North Pole. 'Then I ax your pardon, sir,' says I, 'and all I can say is that I never see two gentlemen so much alike in all my born days, and hoping no offence.' 'None at all!' says he, as pleasant as might be. 'They say everybody has a double.' And at that he gives me a polite nod, and out he goes with his pals, and I turns back to Shanks.

'Jim!' says I. 'Don't let me ever trust my eyes and ears no more, Jim!' I says. 'I'm a breaking-up, Jim!--that's what it is. Thinking I sees things when I don't.' 'Stow all that!' says Jim, what's a practical sort o' man. 'You was only mistook' says he. 'I've been in that case more than once,' he says. 'Wherever there's a man, there's another somewheres that's as like him as two peas is like each other; let's go home to dinner,' he says. So we went off to the lodgings, and at first I was sure I'd been mistaken. But later, and now--well, I ain't. That there man was Netherfield Baxter!"

"You feel sure of it?" suggested Scarterfield.

"Aye, certain, master!" declared Fish. "I've had time to think it over, and to reckon it all up, and now I'm sure it was him--only he wasn't going to let out that it was. Now, if I'd only chanced on him when he was by himself, what?"

"You'd have got just the same answer," said the detective laconically.

"He didn't want to be known. You saw no more of him in Hull, of course--"

"Yes, I did," answered Fish. "I saw him again that night. And--as regards one of 'em at any rate, in queerish company."

"What was that?" asked Scarterfield.

"Well," replied Fish, "me and Jim Shanks, we went home to dinner--couple o' roast chickens, and a nice bit o' sirloin to follow.

And after that we had a nice comfortable sleep for the rest of the afternoon, and then, after a wash-up and a drop o' tea, we went out to look round the town a bit for an evening's diversion, d'ye see. Not to any partic'lar place, but just strolling round, like, as sailor-men will, being ash.o.r.e and stretching their legs. And it so came about that lateish in the evening we turned into the smoking-room of the Cross Keys, in the Market Place--maybe this here friend o' yours, seeing as he's been in Hull, knows that!"

"I know it, Fish," said I.

"Then you'll know that you goes in at an archway, turns in at your right, and there you are," he said. "Well, Shanks and me, we goes in, casual like, not expecting anything that you wouldn't expect. But we'd no sooner sat us down in that smoking-room and taken an observation that I sees the very man that I'd seen at the Goose and Crane, him that I'd taken for Baxter. There he was, in a corner of the room, and the other smart-dressed man with him, their gla.s.ses in front of 'em, and their cigars in their mouths. And with 'em there was something else that I certainly didn't go for to expect to see in that place."

"What?" asked Scarterfield.

"What I seen plenty of, time and again, in various parts o' this here world, and ain't so mighty fond o' seeing," answered Fish, with a scowl. "A c.h.i.n.k!"

"A--what?" demanded the detective. "A--c.h.i.n.k?"

"He means a Chinaman," I said. "That's it, isn't it, Fish?"

"That's it, guv'nor," a.s.sented Fish. "A yellow-skinned, slit-eyed, thin-fingered Chinee, with a face like a image and a voice like silk--which," he added, scowling more than ever, "is pison that I can't abide, nohow, having seen more than enough of."

I looked at Scarterfield. He had been attentive enough all through the course of our visitor's story, but I saw that his attention had redoubled since the last few words.

"A Chinaman!" he said in a low voice. "With--him!"

"As I say, master, a Chinee, and with that there man, what, when all's said and done, I'm certain was and is Netherfield Baxter," reiterated Fish. "But mind you, and here's the queer part of it, he wasn't no common Chinaman. Not the sort that you'll see by the score down in Limehouse way, or in Liverpool, or in Cardiff--not at all. Lord bless you, this here chap was smarter dressed than t'other two! Swell-made dark clothes, gold-handled umbrella, kid gloves on his blooming hands, and a silk top-hat--a reg'lar dude! But--a c.h.i.n.k!"

"Well?" said Scarterfield, after a pause, during which he seemed to be thinking a good deal. "Anything happen?"

"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 Shields. 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--SHIP 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-fashioned, 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 shirt-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.