The trail of the serpent
They had by this time reached the station, and Mr. Jinks having glanced
into two or three carriages of the train about to start, selected one
of the second-class, and ushered Richard into it. He seated himself by
the young man’s side, while his silent and unobtrusive friend took his
place opposite. The guard locked the door, and the train started.
Mr. Jinks’s quiet friend was exactly one of those people adapted to
pass in a crowd. He might have passed in a hundred crowds, and no one
of the hundreds of people in any of those hundred crowds would have
glanced aside to look at him.
You could only describe him by negatives. He was neither very tall nor
very short, he was neither very stout nor very thin, neither dark nor
fair, neither ugly nor handsome; but just such a medium between the two
extremities of each as to be utterly commonplace and unnoticeable.
If you looked at his face for three hours together, you would in those
three hours find only one thing in that face that was any way out of
the common--that one thing was the expression of the mouth.
It was a compressed mouth with thin lips, which tightened and drew
themselves rigidly together when the man thought--and the man was
almost always thinking: and this was not all, for when he thought most
deeply the mouth shifted in a palpable degree to the left side of his
face. This was the only thing remarkable about the man, except, indeed,
that he was dumb but not deaf, having lost the use of his speech during
a terrible illness which he had suffered in his youth.
Throughout Richard’s arrest he had watched the proceedings with
unswerving intensity, and he now sat opposite the prisoner, thinking
deeply, with his compressed lips drawn on one side.
The dumb man was a mere scrub, one of the very lowest of the police
force, a sort of outsider and _employé_ of Mr. Jinks, the
Gardenford detective; but he was useful, quiet, and steady, and above
all, as his patrons said, he was to be relied on, because he could not
talk.
He could talk though, in his own way, and he began to talk presently
in his own way to Mr. Jinks; he began to talk with his fingers with a
rapidity which seemed marvellous. The fingers were more active than
clean, and made rather a dirty alphabet.
“Oh, hang it,” said Mr. Jinks, after watching him for a moment, “you
must do it a little slower, if you want me to understand. I am not an
electric telegraph.”
The scrub nodded, and began again with his fingers, very slowly.
This time Richard too watched him; for Richard knew this dumb alphabet.
He had talked whole reams of nonsense with it, in days gone by, to a
pretty girl at a boarding-school, between whom and himself there had
existed a platonic attachment, to say nothing of a high wall and broken
glass bottles.
Richard watched the dirty alphabet.
First, two grimy fingers laid flat upon the dirty palm, N. Next, the
tip of the grimy forefinger of the right hand upon the tip of the
grimy third finger of the left hand, O; the next letter is T, and the
man snaps his fingers--the word is finished, NOT. Not what? Richard
found himself wondering with an intense eagerness, which, even in the
bewildered state of his mind, surprised him.
The dumb man began another word--
G--U--I--L--
Mr. Jinks cut him short.
“Not guilty? Not fiddlesticks! What do _you_ know about it, I
should like to know? Where did you get your experience? Where did you
get your sharp practice? What school have you been formed in, I wonder,
that you can come out so positive with your opinion; and what’s the
value you put your opinion at, I wonder? I should be glad to hear what
you’d take for your opinion.”
Mr. Jinks uttered the whole of this speech with the most intense
sarcasm; for Mr. Jinks was a distinguished detective, and prided
himself highly on his acumen; and was therefore very indignant that his
sub and scrub should dare to express an opinion.
“My uncle murdered!” said Richard; “my good, kind, generous-hearted
uncle! Murdered in cold blood! Oh, it is too horrible!”
The scrub’s mouth was very much on one side as Richard muttered this,
half to himself.
“And I am suspected of the murder?”
“Well, you see,” said Mr. Jinks, “there’s two or three things tell
pretty strong against you. Why were you in such a hurry this morning to
cut and run to Gardenford?”
“My uncle had recommended me to a merchant’s office in that town: see,
here is the letter of introduction--read it.”
“No, it ain’t my place,” said Mr. Jinks. “The letter’s not sealed, I
see, but _I_ mustn’t read it, or if I do, I stand the chance of
gettin’ snubbed and lectured for goin’ beyond my dooty: howsumdever,
you can show it to the coroner. I’m sure I should be very glad to see
you clear yourself, for I’ve heard you belong to one of our good old
county families, and it ain’t quite the thing to hang such as you.”
Poor Richard! His reckless words of the night before came back to him:
“I wonder they don’t hang such fellows as I am.”
“And now,” says Jinks, “as I should like to make all things
comfortable, if you’re willing to come along quietly with me and my
friend here, why, I’ll move those bracelets, because they are not quite
so ornamental as they’re sometimes useful; and as I’m going to light my
pipe, why, if you like to blow a cloud, too, you can.”
With this Mr. Jinks unlocked and removed the handcuffs, and produced
his pipe and tobacco. Richard did the same, and took from his pocket a
match-box in which there was only one match.
“That’s awkward,” said Jinks, “for I haven’t a light about me.”
They filled the two pipes, and lighted the one match.
Now, all this time Richard had held his uncle’s letter of introduction
in his hand, and when there was some little difficulty in lighting the
tobacco from the expiring lucifer, he, without a moment’s thought,
held the letter over the flickering flame, and from the burning paper
lighted his pipe.
In a moment he remembered what he had done.
The letter of introduction! the one piece of evidence in his favour! He
threw the blazing paper on the ground and stamped on it, but in vain.
In spite of all his efforts a few black ashes alone remained.
“The devil must have possessed me,” he exclaimed. “I have burnt my
uncle’s letter.”
“Well,” says Mr. Jinks, “I’ve seen many dodges in my time, and I’ve
seen a many knowing cards; but if that isn’t the neatest dodge, and if
you ain’t the knowingest card I ever did see, blow me.”
“I tell you that letter was in my uncle’s hand; written to his friend,
the merchant at Gardenford; and in it he mentions having given me the
very money you say has been stolen from his cabinet.”
“Oh, the letter was all that, was it? And you’ve lighted your pipe with
it. You’d better tell that little story before the coroner. It will be
so very conwincing to the jury.”
The scrub, with his mouth very much to the left, spells out again the
two words, “Not guilty!”
“Oh,” says Mr. Jinks, “you mean to stick to your opinion, do you, now
you’ve formed it? Upon my word, you’re too clever for a country-town
practice; I wonder they don’t send for you up at Scotland Yard; with
your talents, you’d be at the top of the tree in no time, I’ve no
doubt.”
During the journey, the thick November fog had been gradually clearing
away, and at this very moment the sun broke out with a bright and
sudden light that shone full upon the threadbare coat-sleeve of
Daredevil Dick.
“Not guilty!” cried Mr. Jinks, with sudden energy. “Not guilty! Why,
look here! I’m blest if his coat-sleeve isn’t covered with blood!”
Yes, on the shabby worn-out coat the sunlight revealed dark and ghastly
stains; and, stamped and branded by those hideous marks as a villain
and a murderer, Richard Marwood re-entered his native town.
CHAPTER V.
THE HEALING WATERS.
THE Sloshy is not a beautiful river, unless indeed mud is beautiful,
for it is very muddy. The Sloshy is a disagreeable kind of compromise
between a river and a canal. It is like a canal which (after the
manner of the mythic frog that wanted to be an ox) had seen a river,
and swelled itself to bursting in imitation thereof. It has quite a
knack of swelling and bursting, this Sloshy; it overflows its banks
and swallows up a house or two, or takes an impromptu snack off a few
outbuildings, once or twice a year. It is inimical to children, and has
been known to suck into its muddy bosom the hopes of divers families;
and has afterwards gone down to the distant sea, flaunting on its
breast Billy’s straw hat or Johnny’s pinafore, as a flag of triumph for
having done a little amateur business for the gentleman on the pale
horse.
It has been a soft pillow of rest, too, this muddy breast of the
Sloshy; and weary heads have been known to sleep more soundly in that
loathsome, dark, and slimy bed than on couches of down.
Oh, keep us ever from even whispering to our own hearts that our best
chance of peaceful slumber might be in such a bed!
An ugly, dark, and dangerous river--a river that is always telling you
of trouble, and anguish, and weariness of spirit--a river that to some
poor impressionable mortal creatures, who are apt to be saddened by a
cloud or brightened by a sunbeam, is not healthy to look upon.
I wonder what that woman thinks of the river? A badly-dressed woman
carrying a baby, who walks with a slow and restless step up and down by
one of its banks, on the afternoon of the day on which the murder of
Mr. Montague Harding took place.
It is a very solitary spot she has chosen, on the furthest outskirts
of the town of Slopperton; and the town of Slopperton being at best a
very ugly town, is ugliest at the outskirts, which consist of two or
three straggling manufactories, a great gaunt gaol--the stoniest of
stone jugs--and a straggling fringe of shabby houses, some new and only
half-built, others ancient and half fallen to decay, which hang all
round Slopperton like the rags that fringe the edges of a dirty garment.
The woman’s baby is fretful, and it may be that the damp foggy
atmosphere on the banks of the Sloshy is scarcely calculated to
engender either high spirits or amiable temper in the bosom of infant
or adult. The woman hushes it impatiently to her breast, and looks down
at the little puny features with a strange unmotherly glance. Poor
wretch! Perhaps she scarcely thinks of that little load as a mother
is apt to think of her child. She may remember it only as a shame, a
burden, and a grief. She has been pretty; a bright country beauty,
perhaps, a year ago; but she is a faded, careworn-looking creature now,
with a pale face, and hollow circles round her eyes. She has played the
only game a woman has to play, and lost the only stake a woman has to
lose.
“I wonder whether he will come, or whether I must wear out my heart
through another long long day.--Hush, hush! As if my trouble was not
bad enough without your crying.”
This is an appeal to the fretful baby; but that young gentleman is
engaged at fisticuffs with his cap, and has just destroyed a handful of
its tattered border.
There is on this dingy bank of the Sloshy a little dingy public-house,
very old-fashioned, though surrounded by newly-begun houses. It is
a little, one-sided, pitiful place, ornamented with the cheering
announcements of “Our noted Old Tom at 4_d_. per quartern;” and
“This is the only place for the real Mountain Dew.” It is a wretched
place, which has never seen better days, and never hopes to see better
days. The men who frequent it are a few stragglers from a factory near,
and the colliers whose barges are moored in the neighbourhood. These
shamble in on dark afternoons, and play at all-fours, or cribbage,