The mystery of Angelina Frood
and, following this, we presently came out into the lower part of Blue
Boar-lane and turned our faces towards the river. We had not gone far
when I observed a man approaching whose appearance seemed to be
familiar. Bundy also observed him, for he exclaimed: “Why, that is old
Cobbledick! Out of uniform, too. Very irregular. I shall have to
remonstrate with him. I wonder what he has been up to. Prowling about
the river bank in search of clues, I expect. And he’ll suspect us of
being on the same errand.”
Bundy’s surmise appeared to be correct, for as the sergeant drew
nearer and recognized us, his face took on an expression of shrewd
inquiry. But I noticed with some surprise that his curiosity seemed to
be principally concerned with Thorndyke, at whom he gazed with
something more than common attention. Under the circumstances I should
have passed him with a friendly greeting, but he stopped, and, having
wished me “Good evening,” said: “Could I have a few words with you,
Doctor?” upon which I halted, and Thorndyke and Bundy walked on
slowly. The sergeant looked after them, and, turning his back to them,
drew from his pocket with a mysterious air a small dirty brown bundle,
which he handed to me.
“I wanted you just to have a look at that,” he said.
I opened out the bundle, though I had already tentatively recognized
it. But when it was unrolled it was unmistakable. It was poor
Angelina’s scarf.
“I thought there couldn’t be any doubt about it,” the sergeant said
cheerfully when I had announced the identification. “Your description
was so clear and exact. Well, this gives us a pretty fair kick-off.
You can see that it has been in the water--some time, too. So we know
where to look for the body. The mysterious thing is, though, that
we’ve still got to look for it. It ought to have come up on the shore
days ago. And it hasn’t. There isn’t a longshoreman for miles up and
down that isn’t on the look-out for it. You can see them prowling
along the sea-walls and searching the creeks in their boats. I can’t
think how they can have missed it. The thing is getting serious.”
“Serious?” I repeated.
“Well,” he explained, “there’s no need for me to point out to a
medical gentleman like you that bodies don’t last for ever, especially
in mild weather such as we’ve been having, and in a river where the
shore swarms with rats and shore-crabs. Every day that passes is
making the identification more difficult.”
The horrible suggestions that emerged from his explanation gave me a
sensation of physical sickness. I fidgeted uneasily, but still I
managed to rejoin huskily: “There’s the clothing, you know.”
“So there is,” he agreed; “and very good means of identification in an
ordinary case--accidental drowning, for instance. But this is a
criminal case. I don’t want to have to depend on the clothing.”
“Was the scarf found floating?” I asked, a little anxious to change
the subject to one less gruesome.
“No,” he replied. “It was on the shore by the small creek just below
Blue Boar Pier, under an empty fish-trunk. One of the Customs men from
the watch-house found it. He noticed the trunk lying out on the shore
as he was walking along and went out to see if there was anything in
it. Then, when he found it was empty, he turned it over, and there was
the scarf. He recognized it at once--there’s a list of the articles
stuck up on the watch-house--and kept it to bring to me. But it
happened that I came down here--as I do every day--just after he’d
found it. But I mustn’t keep you here talking, though I’m glad I met
you and got your confirmation about this scarf.”
He smiled benignly and raised his hat, whereupon I wished him “Good
evening” and went on my way with a sigh of relief. He was a pleasant,
genial man, but his matter-of-fact way of looking at this tragedy that
had eaten so deeply into my peace of mind, was to me positively
harrowing. But, of course, he did not understand my position in the
case.
“Well,” said Bundy, when I hurried up, “what’s the news? Old
Cobbledick was looking mighty mysterious. And wasn’t he interested in
us? Why he’s gazing after us still. Has he had a bite? Because if he
hasn’t, I have. Some beastly mosquito.”
“Don’t rub it,” said Thorndyke, as Bundy clapped his hand to his
cheek. “Leave it alone. We’ll put a spot of ammonia or iodine on it
presently.”
“Very well,” replied Bundy, with a grimace expressive of resignation.
“I am in the hands of the Faculty. What sort of fish was it that Isaak
Walton Cobbledick had hooked? Or is it a secret?”
“I don’t think there is any secrecy about it,” said I. “One of the
Customs men has found Mrs. Frood’s scarf,” and I repeated what the
sergeant had told me as to the circumstances.
“It is a gruesome affair,” said Bundy, “this search for these ghastly
relics. Look at those ghouls down on the shore there. I suppose that
is the fish-trunk.”
As he spoke, we came out on the shore to the right of the pier and
halted to survey the rather unlovely prospect. Outside the stunted
sea-wall a level stretch of grey-green grass extended to the spring
high-water mark, beyond which a smooth sheet of mud--now dry and
covered with multitudinous cracks--spread out to the slimy domain of
the ordinary tides. At the edge of the dry mud lay a derelict
fish-trunk around which a group of bare-legged boys had gathered--and
all along the shore, on the faded grass, on the dry mud and wading in
the soft slime, the human water-rats were to be seen, turning over
drift-rubbish, prying under stranded boats or grubbing in the soft
mud. Hard by, on the grass near the sea-wall, an old ship’s long-boat
had been hauled up above tide-marks to a permanent berth and turned
into a habitation by the erection in it of a small house. A short
ladder gave access to it from without and the resident had laid down a
little causeway of flat stones leading to the wall.
“Mr. Noah seems to be at home,” observed Bundy, as we approached the
little amphibious residence to inspect it. He pointed to a thin wisp
of smoke that issued from the iron chimney; and, almost as he spoke,
the door opened and an old man came out into the open stern-sheets of
the boat with a steaming tin pannikin in his hand. His appearance
fitted his residence to a nicety; for whereas the latter appeared to
have been constructed chiefly from driftwood and wreckage, his costume
suggested a collection of assorted marine salvage, with a leaning
towards oil-skin.
“Mr. Noah” cast a malevolent glance at the searchers; then, having
fortified himself with a pull at the pannikin, he turned a filmy blue
eye on us.
“Good evening,” said Thorndyke. “There seems to be a lot of business
doing here,” and he indicated the fish-trunk and the eager searchers.
The old man grunted contemptuously. “Parcel of fules,” said he,
“a-busyin’ theirselves with what don’t concern ’em, and lookin’ in the
wrong place at that.”
“Still,” said Bundy, “they have found something here.”
“Yes,” the old man admitted, “they have. And that’s why they ain’t
goin’ to find anything more.” He refreshed himself with a drink
of--presumably--tea, and continued: “But the things is a-beginning to
come up. It’s about time she come up. But she won’t come up here.”
“Where do you suppose she will come up?” asked Bundy.
The old man regarded him with a cunning leer. “Never you mind where
she’ll come up,” said he. “It ain’t no consarn o’ yourn.”
“But how do you know where she’ll come up?” Bundy persisted.
“I knows,” the old scarecrow replied conclusively, “becos I do. Becos
I gets my livin’ along-shore, and it’s my business for to know.”
Having made this pronouncement, Mr. Noah looked inquiringly into the
pannikin, emptied it at a draught, and, turning abruptly, retired into
the ark, shutting the door after him with a care suited to its evident
physical infirmity.
“I wonder if he really does know,” said Bundy, as we walked away past
the Customs watch-house.
“We can fairly take it that he doesn’t,” said Thorndyke, “seeing that
the matter is beyond human calculation. But I have no doubt that he
knows the places where bodies and other floating objects are most
commonly washed ashore, and we may assume that he is proposing to
devote his probably extensive leisure to the exploration of those
places. It wouldn’t be amiss to put the sergeant in communication with
him.”
“Probably the sergeant knows him,” said I, “but I will mention the
matter the next time I see him.”
At the top of Blue Boar-lane Bundy halted and held out his hand to
Thorndyke. “This is the parting of the ways,” said he.
“Oh, no, it isn’t,” replied Thorndyke. “You’ve got to have your
mosquito-bite treated. Never neglect an insect-bite, especially on the
face.”
“As a matter of fact,” said I, “you have got to come and have dinner
with us. We can’t let you break up the party in this way.”
“It’s very nice of you to ask me,” he began, hesitatingly, a little
shy, as I guessed, of intruding on me and my visitor; but I cut him
short, and, hooking my arm through his, led him off, an obviously
willing captive. And if his presence hindered me from discussing with
Thorndyke the problem that had occasioned his visit, that was of no
consequence, since we should have the following day to ourselves; and
he certainly contributed not a little to the cheerfulness of the
proceedings. Indeed, I seemed to find in his high spirits something a
little pathetic; a suggestion that the company of two live men--one of
them a man of outstanding intellect--was an unusual treat, and that
his life with old Japp and the predatory females might be a trifle
dull. He took to Thorndyke amazingly, treating him with a sort of
respectful cheekiness, like a schoolboy dining with a favourite
head-master; while Thorndyke, fully appreciative of his irresponsible
gaiety, developed a quiet humour and playfulness which rather took me
by surprise. The solemn farce of the diagnosis and treatment of the
mosquito bite was an instance; when Thorndyke, having seated the
patient in the surgery chair and invested him with a large towel,
covered the table with an assortment of preposterous instruments and
bottles of reagents, and proceeded gravely to examine the bite through
a lens until Bundy was as nervous as a cat, and then to apply the
remedy with meticulous precision on the point of a fine sable brush.
It was a pleasant evening, pervaded by a sense of frivolous gaiety
that was felt gratefully by the two elder revellers and was even
viewed indulgently by Mrs. Dunk. As to Bundy, his high spirits flowed
unceasingly--but, I may add, with faultless good manners--and when, at
length, he took his departure, he shook our hands with a warmth which,
again, I found slightly pathetic.
“I _have_ had a jolly evening!” he exclaimed, looking at me with a
queer sort of wistfulness. “It has been a red-letter day”; and with
this he turned abruptly and walked away.
We watched him from the threshold, bustling jauntily along the
pavement; and as I looked at him, there came unbidden to my mind the
recollection of that other figure that I had watched from this same
threshold, walking away in the fading light--walking into the fog that
was to swallow her up and hide her from my sight for ever.
From these gloomy reflections I was recalled by Thorndyke’s voice.
“A nice youngster, that, Strangeways. Gay and sprightly, but not in
the least shallow. I often think that there was a great deal of wisdom
in that observation of Spencer’s, that happy people are the greatest
benefactors to mankind. Your friend, Bundy, has helped me to renew my
youth; and who could have done one a greater service?”
CHAPTER XI.
THE MAN WITH THE MOLE
When I had seen my guest off by the last train on Saturday night, I