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CHAPTER XXIX
SCARVELL'S CUT

The quiet place was a narrow alley, which opening out of the Market Square in which the car had come to a halt, suddenly twisted away into a labyrinth of ancient buildings that lay between the centre of the town and the river. Not until Spurge had conducted Copplestone quite away from their late companions did he turn and speak; when he spoke his words were accompanied by a glance which suggested mystery as well as confidence.

"Guv'nor!" he said. "What's going to be done?"

"Have you pulled me down here to ask that?" exclaimed Copplestone, a little impatiently. "Good heavens, man, with all these complications arising—the gold gone, the Squire dead—why, there'll have to be a pretty deep consultation, of course. We'd better get back to it."

But Spurge shook his head.

"Not me, guv'nor!" he said resolutely. "I ain't no opinion o' consultations with lawyers and policemen—plain clothes or otherwise. They ain't no mortal good whatever, guv'nor, when it comes to horse sense! 'Cause why? 'Tain't their fault—it's the system. They can't do nothing, start nothing, suggest nothing!—they can only do things in the official, cut-and-dried, red-tape way, Guv'nor—you and me can do better."

"Well?" asked Copplestone.

"Listen!" continued Spurge. "There ain't no doubt that that gold was carried off early this morning—must ha' been between the time I left Jim and sun-up, 'cause they'd want to do the job in darkness. Ain't no reasonable doubt, neither, that the motor-car what they used came here into Norcaster. Now, guv'nor, I ask you—where is it possible they'd make for? Not a railway station, 'cause them boxes 'ud be conspicuous and easy traced when inquiry was made. And yet they'd want to get 'em away—as soon as possible. Very well—what's the other way o' getting any stuff out o' Norcaster? What? Why—that!"

He jerked his thumb in the direction of a patch of grey water which shone dully at the end of the alley and while his thumb jerked his eye winked.

"The river!" he went on. "The river, guv'nor! Don't this here river, running into the free and bounding ocean six miles away, offer the best chance? What we want to do is to take a look round these here docks and quays and wharves—keeping our eyes open—and our ears as well. Come on with me, guv'nor—I know places all along this riverside where you could hide the Bank of England till it was wanted—so to speak."

"But the others?" suggested Copplestone. "Hadn't we better fetch them?"

"No!" retorted Spurge, assertively. "Two on us is enough. You trust to me, guv'nor—I'll find out something. I know these docks—and all that's alongside 'em. I'd do the job myself, now—but it'll be better to have somebody along of me, in case we want a message sending for help or anything of that nature. Come on—and if I don't find out before noon if there's any queer craft gone out o' this since morning—why, then, I ain't what I believe myself to be."

Copplestone, who had considerable faith in the poacher's shrewdness, allowed himself to be led into the lowest part of the town—low in more than one sense of the word. Norcaster itself, as regards its ancient and time-hallowed portions, its church, its castle, its official buildings and highly-respectable houses, stood on the top of a low hill; its docks and wharves and the mean streets which intersected them had been made on a stretch of marshland that lay between the foot of that hill and the river. And down there was the smell of tar and of merchandise, and narrow alleys full of sea-going men and raucous-voiced women, and queer nooks and corners, and ships being laden and ships being stripped of their cargoes and such noise and confusion and inextricable mingling and elbowing that Copplestone thought it was as likely to find a needle in a haystack as to make anything out relating to the quest they were engaged in.

But Zachary Spurge, leading him in and out of the throngs on the wharves, now taking a look into a dock, now inspecting a quay, now stopping to exchange a word or two with taciturn gentlemen who sucked their pipes at the corners of narrow streets, now going into shady-looking public houses by one door and coming out at another, seemed to be remarkably well satisfied with his doings and kept remarking to his companion that they would hear something yet. Nevertheless, by noon they had heard nothing, and Copplestone, who considered casual search of this sort utterly purposeless, announced that he was going to more savoury neighborhoods.

"Give it another turn, guv'nor," urged Spurge. "Have a bit o' faith in me, now! You see, guv'nor, I've an idea, a theory, as you might term it, of my very own, only time's too short to go into details, like. Trust me a bit longer, guv'nor—there's a spot or two down here that I'm fair keen on taking a look at—come on, guv'nor, once more!—this is Scarvell's Cut."

He drew his unwilling companion round a corner of the wharf which they were just then patrolling and showed him a narrow creek which, hemmed in by ancient buildings, some of them half-ruinous, sail-lofts, and sheds full of odds and ends of merchandise, cut into the land at an irregular angle and was at that moment affording harbourage to a mass of small vessels, just then lying high and dry on the banks from which the tide had retreated. Along the side of this creek there was just as much crowding and confusion as on the wider quays; men were going in and out of the sheds and lofts; men were busy about the sides of the small craft. And again the feeling of uselessness came over Copplestone.

"What's the good of all this, Spurge!" he exclaimed testily. "You'll never—"

Spurge suddenly laid a grip on his companion's elbow and twisted him aside into a narrow entry between the sheds.

"That's the good!" he answered in an exulting voice. "Look there, guv'nor! Look at that North Sea tug—that one, lying out there! Whose face is, now a-peeping out o' that hatch? Come, now?"

Copplestone looked in the direction which Spurge indicated. There, lying moored to the wharf, at a point exactly opposite a tumble-down sail-loft, was one of those strongly-built tugs which ply between the fishing fleets and the ports. It was an eminently business-looking craft, rakish for its class, and it bore marks of much recent sea usage. But Copplestone gave no more than a passing glance at it—what attracted and fascinated his eyes was the face of a man who had come up from her depths and was looking out of a hatchway on the top deck—looking expectantly at the sail-loft. There was grime and oil on that face, and the neck which supported the unkempt head rose out of a rough jersey, but Copplestone recognized his man smartly enough. In spite of the attempt to look like a tug deck-hand there was no mistaking the skipper of the Pike.

"Good heavens!" he muttered, as he stared across the crowded quay. "Andrius!"

"Right you are, guv'nor," whispered Spurge. "It's that very same, and no mistake! And now you'll perhaps see how I put things together, like. No doubt those folk as sent Sir Cresswell that message did see the Pike going east last evening—just so, but there wasn't no reason, considering what that chap and his lot had at stake why they shouldn't put him and one or two more, very likely, on one of the many tugs that's to be met with out there off the fishing grounds. What I conclude they did, guv'nor, was to charter one o' them tugs and run her in here. And I expect they've got the stuff on board her, now, and when the tide comes up, out they'll go, and be off into the free and open again, to pick the Pike up somewhere 'twixt here and the Dogger Bank. Ah!—smart 'uns they are, no doubt. But—we've got 'em!"

"Not yet," said Copplestone. "What are we to do. Better go back and get help, eh?"

He was keenly watching Andrius, and as the skipper of the Pike suddenly moved, he drew Spurge further into the alley.

"He's coming out of that hatchway!" whispered Copplestone. "If he comes ashore he'll see us, and then—"

"No matter, guv'nor," said Spurge reassuringly. "They can't get out o' Scarvell's Cut into the river till the tide serves. Yes, that's Cap'n Andrius right enough—and he's coming ashore."

Andrius had by that time drawn himself out of the hatchway and now revealed himself in the jersey, the thick leg-wear, and short sea-boots of an oceangoing man. Copplestone's recollection of him as he showed himself on board the Pike was of a very smartly attired, rather dandified person—only some deep scheme, he knew, would have caused him to assume this disguise, and he watched him with interest as he rolled ashore and disappeared within the lower story of the sail-loft. Spurge, too, watched with all his eyes, and he turned to Copplestone with a gleam of excitement.

"Guv'nor!" he said. "We've trapped 'em beautiful! I know that place—I've worked in there in my time. I know a way into it, from the back—we'll get in that way and see what's being done. 'Tain't worked no longer, that sail-loft—it's all falling to pieces. But first—help!"

"How are we to get that?" asked Copplestone, eagerly.

"I'll go it," replied Spurge. "I know a man just aback of here that'll run up to the town with a message—chap that can be trusted, sure and faithful. 'Bide here five minutes, sir—I'll send a message to Mr. Vickers—this chap'll know him and'll find him. He can come down with the rest—and the police, too, if he likes. Keep your eyes skinned, guv'nor."

He twisted away like an eel into the crowd of workers and idlers, and left Copplestone at the entrance to the alley, watching. And he had not been so left more than a couple of minutes when a woman slipped past the mouth of the alley, swiftly, quietly, looking neither to right nor left, of whose veiled head and face he caught one glance. And in that glance he recognized her—Addie Chatfield!

But in the moment of that glance Copplestone also recognized something vastly more important. Here was the explanation of the mystery of the early-morning doings at the old tower. The footprints of a woman who wore fashionable and elegant boots? Addie Chatfield, of course! Was she not old Peter's daughter, a chip of the old block, even though a feminine chip? And did not he and Gilling know that she had been mixed up with Peter at the Bristol affair? Great Scott!—why, of course. Addie was an accomplice in all these things!

If Copplestone had the least shadow of doubt remaining in his mind as to this conclusion, it was utterly dissipated when, peering cautiously round the corner of his hiding-place, he saw Addie disappear within the old sail-loft into which Andrius had betaken himself. Of course, she had gone to join her fellow-conspirators. He began to fume and fret, cursing himself for allowing Spurge to bring him down there alone—if only they had had Gilling and Vickers with them, armed as they were—

"All right, guv'nor!" Spurge suddenly whispered at his shoulder. "They'll be here in a quarter of an hour—I telephoned to 'em."

"Do you know what?" exclaimed Copplestone, excitedly. "Old Chatfield's daughter's gone in there, where Andrius went. Just now!"

"What—the play-actress!" said Spurge. "You don't say, guv'nor? Ha!—that explains everything—that's the missing link! Ha! But we'll soon know what they're after, Mr. Copplestone. Follow me—quiet as a mouse."

Once more submitting to be led, Copplestone followed his queer guide along the alley.

CHAPTER XXX
THE GREENGROCER'S CART

Spurge led Copplestone a little way up the narrow alley from the mouth of which they had observed the recent proceedings, suddenly turned off into a still narrower passage, and emerged at the rear of an ancient building of wood and stones which looked as if a stout shove or a strong wind would bring it down in dust and ruin.

"Back o' that old sail-loft what looks out on this cut," he whispered, glancing over his shoulder at Copplestone. "Now, guv'nor, we're going in here. As I said before, I've worked in this place—did a spell here when I was once lying low for a month or two. I know every inch of it, and if that lot are under this roof I know where they'll be."

"They'll show fight, you know," remarked Copplestone.

"Well, but ain't we got something to show fight with, too?" answered Spurge, with a knowing wink. "I've got my revolver handy, what Mr. Vickers give me, and I reckon you can handle yours. However, it ain't come to no revolver yet. What I want is to see and hear, guv'nor—follow me."

He had opened a ramshackle door in the rear of the premises as he spoke and he now beckoned his companion to follow him down a passage which evidently led to the front. There was no more than a dim light within, but Copplestone could see that the whole place was falling to pieces. And it was all wrapped in a dead silence. Away out on the quay was the rattle of chains, the creaking of a windlass, the voices of men and shrill laughter of women, but in there no sound existed. And Spurge suddenly stopped his stealthy creeping forward and looked at Copplestone suspiciously.

"Queer, ain't it?" he whispered. "I don't hear a voice, nor yet the ghost of one! You'd think that if they was in here they'd be talking. But we'll soon see."

Clambering up a pile of fallen timber which lay in the passage and beckoning Copplestone to follow his example, Spurge looked through a broken slat in the wooden partition into an open shed which fronted the Cut. The shed was empty. Folk were passing to and fro in front of it; the North Sea tug still lay at the wharf beyond; a man who was evidently its skipper sat on a tub on its deck placidly smoking his short pipe—but of Addie Chatfield or of Andrius there was no sign. And the silence in that crumbling, rat-haunted house was deeper than ever.

"Guv'nor!" muttered Spurge, "How long is it since you see—her?"

"Almost as soon as you'd gone," answered Copplestone.

"Ten minutes ago!" sighed Spurge. "Guv'nor—they've done us! They're off! I see it—she must ha' caught sight o' me, nosing round, and she came here and gave the others the office, and they bucked out at the back. The back, Guv'nor! and Lord bless you, at the back o' this shanty there's a perfect rabbit-warren o' places—more by token, they call it the Warren. If they've got in there, why, all the police in Norcaster'll never find 'em—leastways, I mean, to speak truthful, not without a deal o' trouble."

"What about upstairs?" asked Copplestone.

"Upstairs, now?" said Spurge with a doubtful glance at the ramshackle stairway. "Lord, mister!—I don't believe nobody could get up them stairs! No—they've hooked it through the back here, into the Warren. And once in there—"

He ended with an eloquent gesture, and dismounting from his perch made his way along the passage to a door which opened into the shed. Thence he looked out on the quay, and along the crowded maze of Scarvell's Cut.

"Here's some of 'em, anyway, guv'nor," he announced. "I see Mr. Vickers and t'other London gentleman, and the old Admiral, at all events. There they are—getting out of a motor at the end. But go to meet 'em, Mr. Copplestone, while I keep my eye on this here tug and its skipper."

Copplestone elbowed his way through the crowd until he met Sir Cresswell and his two companions. All three were eager and excited: Copplestone could only respond to their inquiries with a gloomy shake of the head.

"We seem to have the devil's own luck!" he growled dismally. "Spurge and I spotted Andrius by sheer accident. He was on a North Sea tug, or trawler, along the quay here. Then Spurge ran off to summon you. While he was away Miss Chatfield appeared—"

"Addie Chatfield!" exclaimed Vickers.

"Exactly. And that of course," continued Copplestone, glancing at Gilling, "that without doubt—in my opinion, anyway—explains those elegant footprints up at the tower. Addie Chatfield, I tell you! She passed me as I was hiding at the entrance to an alley down the Cut here, and she went into an old sail-loft, outside which the tug I spoke of is moored, and into which Andrius had strolled a minute or two previously. But—neither she nor Andrius are there now. They've gone! And Spurge says that at the back of this quay there's a perfect rabbit-warren of courts and alleys, and if—or, rather as they've escaped into that—eh?"

The detectives who had accompanied Sir Cresswell on the interrupted expedition to the old tower and who had now followed him and his companions in a second car and arrived in time to hear Copplestone's story, looked at each other.

"That's right enough—comparatively speaking," said one. "But if they're in the Warren we shall get 'em out. The first thing to do, gentlemen, is to take a look at that tug."

"Exactly!" exclaimed Sir Cresswell. "Just what I was thinking. Let us find out what its people have to say."

The man who smoked his pipe in placid contentment on the deck of the tug looked up in astonishment as the posse of eight crossed the plank which connected him with the quay. Nevertheless he preserved an undaunted front, kept his pipe in his tightly closed lips, and cocked a defiant eye at everybody.

"Skipper o' this craft?" asked the principal detective laconically. "Right? Where are you from, then, and when did you come in here?"

The skipper removed his pipe and spat over the rail. He put the pipe back, folded his arms and glared.

"And what the dickens may that be to do with you?" he inquired. "And who may you be to walk aboard my vessel without leave?"

"None of that, now!" said the detective. "Come on—we're police officers. There's something wrong round here. We've got warrants for two men that we believe to have been on your tug—one of 'em was seen here not so many minutes ago. You'd far better tell us what you know. If you don't tell now, you'll have to tell later. And—I expect you've been paid already. Come on—out with it!"

The skipper, whose gnarled countenance had undergone several changes during this address, smote one red fist on top of the other.

"Darned if I don't know as there was something on the crook in this here affair!" he said, almost cheerily. "Well, well—but I ain't got nothing to do with it. Warrants?—you say? Ah! And what might be the partiklar' natur' o' them warrants?"

"Murder!" answered the detective. "That's one charge, anyhow—for one of 'em, at any rate. There's others."

"Murder's enough," responded the skipper. "Well, of course, nobody can tell a man to be a murderer by merely looking at his mug. Not at all!—nobody! However, this here is how it is. Last night it were—evening, to be c'rect—dark. I was on the edge o' the fleet, out there off the Dogger. A yacht comes up—smart 'un—very fast sailer—and hails me. Was I going into Norcaster or anywheres about? Being a Northborough tug, this, I wasn't. Would I go for a consideration—then and there? Whereupon I asked what consideration? Then we bargains. Eventual, we struck it at thirty pounds—cash down, which was paid, prompt. I was to take two men straight and slick into Norcaster, to this here very slip, Scarvell's Cut, to wait while they put a bit of a cargo on board, and then to run 'em back to the same spot where I took 'em up. Done! they come aboard—the yacht goes off east—I come careenin' west. That's all! That part of it anyway."

"And the men?" suggested the detective. "What sort were they, and where are they?"

"The men, now!" said the skipper. "Ah! Two on 'em—both done up in what you might call deep-sea-style. But hadn't never done no deep-sea nor yet any other sort o' sea work in their mortial days—hands as white and soft as a lady's. One, an old chap with a dial like a full moon on him—sly old chap, him! T'other a younger man, looked as if he'd something about him—dangerous chap to cross. Where are they? Darned if I know. What I knows, certain, is this—we gets in here about eight o'clock this morning, and makes fast here, and ever since then them two's been as it were on the fret and the fidge, allers lookin' out, so to speak, for summun as ain't come yet. The old chap, he went across into that there sail-maker's loft an hour ago, and t'other, he followed of him, recent. I ain't seen 'em since. Try there. And I say?"

"Well?" asked the detective.

"Shall I be wanted?" asked the skipper. "'Cause if not, I'm off and away as soon as the tide serves. Ain't no good me waitin' here for them chaps if you're goin' to take and hang 'em!"

"Got to catch 'em first," said the detective, with a glance at his two professional companions. "And while we're not doubting your word at all, we'll just take a look round your vessel—they might have slipped on board again, you see, while your back was turned."

But there was no sign of Peter Chatfield, nor of his daughter, nor of the captain of the Pike on that tug, nor anywhere in the sailmaker's loft and its purlieus. And presently the detectives looked at one another and their leader turned to Sir Cresswell.

"If these people—as seems certain—have escaped into this quarter of the town," he said, "there'll have to be a regular hunt for them! I've known a man who was badly wanted stow himself away here for weeks. If Chatfield has accomplices down here in the Warren, he can hide himself and whoever's with him for a long time—successfully. We'll have to get a lot of men to work."

"But I say!" exclaimed Gilling. "You don't mean to tell me that three people—one a woman—could get away through these courts and alleys, packed as they are, without being seen? Come now!"

The detectives smiled indulgently.

"You don't know these folks," said one of them, inclining his head towards a squalid street at the end of which they had all gathered. "But they know us. It's a point of honour with them never to tell the truth to a policeman or a detective. If they saw those three, they'd never admit it to us—until it's made worth their while."

"Get it made worth their while, then!" exclaimed Gilling, impatiently.

"All in due course, sir," said the official voice. "Leave it to us."

The amateur searchers after the iniquitous recognized the futility of their own endeavours in that moment, and went away to discuss matters amongst themselves, while the detectives proceeded leisurely, after their fashion, into the Warren as if they were out for a quiet constitutional in its salubrious byways. And Sir Cresswell Oliver remarked on the difficulty of knowing exactly what to do once you had red-tape on one side and unusual craftiness on the other.

"You think there's no doubt that gold was removed this morning by Chatfield's daughter?" he said to Copplestone as they went back to the centre of the town together, Gilling and Vickers having turned aside elsewhere and Spurge gone to the hospital to ask for news of his cousin. "You think she was the woman whose footprints you saw up there at the Beaver's Glen?"

"Seeing that she's here in Norcaster and in touch with those two, what else can I think?" replied Copplestone. "It seems to me that they got in touch with her by wireless and that she removed the gold in readiness for her father and Andrius coming in here by that North Sea tug. If we could only find out where she's put those boxes, or where she got the car from in which she brought it down from the tower—"

"Vickers has already started some inquiries about cars," said Sir Cresswell. "She must have hired a car somewhere in the town. Certainly, if we could hear of that gold we should be in the way of getting on their track."

But they heard nothing of gold or of fugitives or of what the police and detectives were doing until the middle of the afternoon. And then Mr. Elkin, the manager of the bank from which Chatfield had withdrawn the estate and the private balance, came hurrying to the "Angel" and to Mrs. Greyle, his usually rubicund face pale with emotion, his hand waving a scrap of crumpled paper. Mrs. Greyle and Audrey were at that moment in consultation with Sir Cresswell Oliver and Copplestone—the bank manager burst in on them without ceremony.

"I say, I say!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Will you believe it!—the gold's come back! It's all safe—every penny. Bless me!—I scarcely know whether I'm dreaming or not. But—we've got it!"

"What's all this?" demanded Sir Cresswell. "You've got—that gold?"

"Less than an hour ago," replied the bank manager, dropping into a chair and slapping his hand on his knees in his excitement, "a man who turned out to be a greengrocer came with his cart to the bank and said he'd been sent with nine boxes for delivery to us. Asked who had sent him he replied that early this morning a lady whom he didn't know had asked him to put the boxes in his shed until she called for them—she brought them in a motor-car. This afternoon she called again at two o'clock, paid him for the storage and for what he was to do, and instructed him to put the boxes on his cart and bring them to us. Which," continued Mr. Elkin, gleefully rubbing his hands together, "he did! With—this! And that, my dear ladies and good gentlemen, is the most extraordinary document which, in all my forty years' experience of banking matters, I have ever seen!"

He laid a dirty, crumpled half-sheet of cheap note-paper on the table at which they were all sitting, and Copplestone, bending over it, read aloud what was there written.

"MR. ELKIN—Please place the contents of the nine cases sent herewith to the credit of the Greyle Estate.

"PETER CHATFIELD, Agent."

Amidst a chorus of exclamations Sir Cresswell asked a sharp question.

"Is that really Chatfield's signature?"

"Oh, undoubtedly!" replied Mr. Elkin. "Not a doubt of it. Of course, as soon as I saw it, I closely questioned the greengrocer. But he knew nothing. He said the lady was what he called wrapped up about her face—veiled, of course—on both her visits, and that as soon as she'd seen him set off with his load of boxes she disappeared. He lives, this greengrocer, on the edge of the town—I've got his address. But I'm sure he knows no more."

"And the cases have been examined?" asked Copplestone.

"Every one, my dear sir," answered the bank manager with a satisfied smirk. "Every penny is there! Glorious!"

"This is most extraordinary!" said Sir Cresswell. "What on earth does it all mean? If we could only trace that woman from the greengrocer's place—"

But nothing came of an attempt to carry out this proposal, and no news arrived from the police, and the evening had grown far advanced, and Mrs. Greyle and Audrey, with Sir Cresswell, Mr. Petherton and Vickers, Copplestone, and Gilling, were all in a private parlour together at a late hour, when the door suddenly opened and a woman entered, who threw back a heavy veil and revealed herself as Addie Chatfield.