Kitabı oku: «Cleek of Scotland Yard: Detective Stories», sayfa 3
“Yes, sir, Gawd bless you, sir. Everything, sir, everything.”
“Good lad! Then we’ll be off to them. My holiday is over, Mr. Narkom, and I’m going back into harness again. You want me, I see, and I said I’d come if you did. Give me a few days’ rest in old England, dear friend, and then – out with your riddles and I’m your man again.”
CHAPTER I
“This will be it, I think, sir,” said Lennard, bringing the limousine to a halt at the head of a branching lane, thick set with lime and chestnut trees between whose double wall of green one could catch a distant glimpse of the river, shining golden in the five o’clock light.
“Look! see! There’s the sign post – ‘To the Sleeping Mermaid’ – over to the left there.”
“Anything pinned to it or hanging on it?” Mr. Narkom spoke from the interior of the vehicle without making even the slightest movement toward alighting, merely glancing at a few memoranda scribbled on the back of a card whose reverse bore the words “Taverne Maladosie Quai des Anges, Boulogne,” printed upon it in rather ornate script.
“A bit of rag, a scrap of newspaper, a fowl’s feather – anything? Look sharp!”
“No, sir, not a thing of any sort that I can see from here. Shall I nip over and make sure?”
“Yes. Only don’t give away the fact that you are examining it in case there should be anybody on the lookout. If you find the smallest thing – even a carpet tack – attached to the post, get back into your seat at once and cut off townward as fast as you can make the car travel.”
“Right you are, sir,” said Lennard, and forthwith did as he had been bidden. In less than ninety seconds, however, he was back with word that the post’s surface was as smooth as your hand and not a thing of any sort attached to it from top to bottom.
Narkom fetched a deep breath of relief at this news, tucked the card into his pocket, and got out immediately.
“Hang round the neighbourhood somewhere and keep your ears open in case I should have to give the signal sooner than I anticipate,” he said; then twisted round on his heel, turned into the tree-bordered lane, and bore down in the direction of the river.
When still short, by thirty yards or so, of its flowered and willow-fringed brim, he came upon a quaint little diamond-paned, red-roofed, low-eaved house set far back from the shore, with a garden full of violets and primroses and flaunting crocuses in front of it, and a tangle of blossoming things crowding what once had been a bower-bordered bowling green in the rear.
“Queen Anne, for a ducat!” he commented as he looked at the place and took in every detail from the magpie in the old pointed-topped wicker cage hanging from a nail beside the doorway to the rudely carved figure of a mermaid over the jutting, flower-filled diamond-paned window of the bar parlour with its swinging sashes and its oak-beam sill, shoulder high from the green, sweet-smelling earth.
“How the dickens does he ferret out these places, I wonder? And what fool has put his money into a show like this in these days of advancement and enterprise? Buried away from the line of traffic ashore and shut in by trees from the river. Gad! they can’t do a pound’s worth of business in a month at an out-of-the-way roost like this!”
Certainly, they were not doing much of it that day; for, as he passed through the taproom, he caught a glimpse of the landlady dozing in a deep chair by the window, and of the back of a by-no-means-smartly-dressed barmaid – who might have been stone deaf for all notice she took of his entrance – standing on a stool behind the bar dusting and polishing the woodwork of the shelves. The door of the bar parlour was open, and through it Narkom caught a glimpse of a bent-kneed, stoop-shouldered, doddering old man shuffling about, filling match-boxes, wiping ash trays, and carefully refolding the rumpled newspapers that lay on the centre table. That he was not the proprietor, merely a waiter, the towel over his arm, the shabby old dress coat, the baggy-kneed trousers would have been evidence enough without that added by the humble tasks he was performing.
“Poor devil! And at his age!” said Narkom to himself, as he noted the pale, hopeless-looking, time-worn face and the shuffling, time-bent body; then, moved by a sense of keen pity, he walked into the room and spoke gently to him.
“Tea for two, uncle – at a quarter-past five to the tick if you can manage it,” he said, tossing the old man a shilling. “And say to the landlady that I’d like to have exclusive use of this room for an hour or two, so she can charge the loss to my account if she has to turn any other customers away.”
“Thanky, sir. I’ll attend to it at once, sir,” replied the old fellow, pocketing the coin, and moving briskly away to give the order. In another minute he was back again, laying the cloth and setting out the dishes, while Narkom improved the time of waiting by straying round the room and looking at the old prints and cases of stuffed fishes that hung on the oak-panelled walls.
It still wanted a minute or so of being a quarter-past five when the old man bore in the tea tray itself and set it upon the waiting table; and, little custom though the place enjoyed, Narkom could not but compliment it upon its promptness and the inviting quality of the viands served.
“You may go,” he said to the waiter, when the man at length bowed low and announced that all was ready; then, after a moment, turning round and finding him still shuffling about, “I say you may go!” he reiterated, a trifle sharply. “No, don’t take the cosy off the teapot – leave it as it is. The gentleman I am expecting has not arrived yet, and – look here! will you have the goodness to let that cosy alone and to clear out when I tell you? By James! if you don’t – Hullo! What the dickens was that?”
“That” was undoubtedly the tingle of a handful of gravel against the panes of the window.
“A sign that the coast is quite clear and that you have not been followed, dear friend,” said a voice – Cleek’s voice – in reply. “Shall we not sit down? I’m famishing.” And as Narkom turned round on his heel – with the certainty that no one had entered the room since the door was closed and he himself before it – the tea cosy was whipped off by a hand that no longer shook, the waiter’s bent figure straightened, his pale, drawn features writhed, blent, settled into placid calmness and – the thing was done!
“By all that’s wonderful – Cleek!” blurted out Narkom, delightedly, and lurched toward him.
“Sh-h-h! Gently, gently, my friend,” he interposed, putting up a warning hand. “It is true Dollops has signalled that there is no one in the vicinity likely to hear, but although the maid is both deaf and dumb, recollect that Mrs. Condiment is neither; and I have no more wish for her to discover my real calling than I ever had.”
“Mrs. Condiment?” repeated Narkom, sinking his voice, and speaking in a tone of agitation and amazement. “You don’t mean to tell me that the old woman you employed as housekeeper when you lived in Clarges Street is here?”
“Certainly; she is the landlady. Her assistant is that same deaf and dumb maid-of-all-work who worked with her at the old house, and is sharing with her a sort of ‘retirement’ here. ‘Captain Burbage’ set the pair of them up in business here two days after his departure from Clarges Street and pays them a monthly wage sufficient to make up for any lack of ‘custom.’ All that they are bound to do is to allow a pensioner of the captain’s – a poor old half-witted ex-waiter called Joseph – to come and go as he will and to gratify a whim for waiting upon people if he chooses to do so. What’s that? No, the ‘captain’ does not live here. He and his henchman, Dollops, are supposed to be out of the country. Mrs. Condiment does not know where he lives – nor will she ever be permitted to do so. You may, some day, perhaps – that is for the future to decide; but not at present, my dear friend; it is too risky.”
“Why risky, old chap? Surely I can come and go in disguise as I did in the old days, Cleek? We managed secret visits all right then, remember.”
“Yes – I know. But things have changed, Mr. Narkom. You may disguise yourself as cleverly as you please, but you can’t disguise the red limousine. It is known and it will be followed; so, until you can get another of a totally different colour and appearance I’ll ring you up each morning at the Yard and we can make our appointments over your private wire. For the present we must take no great risks. In the days that lie behind, dear friend, I had no ‘tracker’ to guard against but Margot, no enemies but her paltry crew to reckon with and to outwit. In these, I have many. They have brains, these new foes; they are rich, they are desperate, they are powerful; and behind them is the implacable hate and the malignant hand of – No matter! You wouldn’t understand.”
“I can make a devilish good guess, then,” rapped in Narkom, a trifle testily, his vanity a little hurt by that final suggestion, and his mind harking back to the brief enlightening conversation between Margot and Count Waldemar that night on the spray-swept deck of the Channel packet. “Behind them is ‘the implacable hate and the malignant hand’ of the King of Mauravania!”
“What utter rubbish!” Cleek’s jeering laughter fairly stung, it was so full of pitying derision. “My friend, have you taken to reading penny novelettes of late? A thief-taker and a monarch! An ex-criminal and a king! I should have given you credit for more common sense.”
“It was the King of Mauravania’s equerry who directed that attempt to kill you by blowing up the house in Clarges Street.”
“Very possibly. But that does not incriminate his royal master. Count Waldemar is not only equerry to King Ulric of Mauravania, but is also nephew to its ex-Prime Minister – the gentleman who is doing fifteen years’ energetic labour for the British Government as a result of that attempt to trap me with his witless ‘Silver Snare.’”
“Oh!” said Narkom, considerably crestfallen; then grasped at yet another straw with sudden, breathless eagerness. “But even then the head of the Mauravanian Government must have had some reason for wishing to ‘wipe you out,’” he added, earnestly. “There could be no question of avenging an uncle’s overthrow at that time. Cleek!” – his voice running thin and eager, his hand shutting suddenly upon his famous ally’s arm – “Cleek, trust me! Won’t you? Can’t you? As God hears me, old chap, I’ll respect it. Who are you? What are you, man?”
“Cleek,” he made answer, calmly drawing out a chair and taking his seat at the table. “Cleek of Scotland Yard; Cleek of the Forty Faces – which you will. Who should know that better than you whose helping hand has made me what I am?”
“Yes, but before, Cleek? What were you, who were you, in the days before?”
“The Vanishing Cracksman – a dog who would have gone on, no doubt, to a dog’s end but for your kind hand and the dear eyes of Ailsa Lorne. Now give me my tea – I’m famishing – and after that we’ll talk of this new riddle that needs unriddling for the honour of the Yard. Yes, thanks, two lumps, and just a mere dash of milk. Gad! It’s good to be back in England, dear friend; it’s good, it’s good!”
CHAPTER II
“Five men, eh?” said Cleek, glancing up at Mr. Narkom, who for two or three minutes past had been giving him a sketchy outline of the case in hand. “A goodish many that. And all inside of the past six weeks, you say? No wonder the papers have been hammering the Yard, if, as you suggest, they were not accidental deaths. Sure they are not?”
“As sure as I am that I’m speaking to you at this minute. I had my doubts in the beginning – there seemed so little to connect the separate tragedies – but when case after case followed with exactly, or nearly exactly, the same details in every instance, one simply had to suspect foul play.”
“Naturally. Even a donkey must know that there’s food about if he smells thistles. Begin at the beginning, please. How did the affair start? When and where?”
“In the neighbourhood of Hampstead Heath at two o’clock in the morning. The constable on duty in the district came upon a man clad only in pajamas lying face downward under the wall surrounding a corner house – still warm but as dead as Queen Anne.”
“In his pajamas, eh?” said Cleek, reaching for a fresh slice of toast. “Pretty clear evidence that that poor beggar’s trouble, whatever it was, must have overtaken him in bed and that that bed was either in the vicinity of the spot where he was found, or else the man had been carried in a closed vehicle to the place where the constable discovered him. A chap can’t walk far in that kind of a get-up without attracting attention. And the body was warm, you say, when found. Hum-m! Any vehicle seen or heard in the vicinity of the spot just previously?”
“Not the ghost of one. The night was very still, and the constable must have heard if either cab, auto, carriage, or dray had passed in any direction whatsoever. He is positive that none did. Naturally, he thought, as you suggested just now, that the man must have come from some house in the neighbourhood. Investigation, however, proved that he did not – in short, that nobody could be found who had ever seen him before. Indeed, it is hardly likely that he could have been sleeping in any of the surrounding houses, for the neighbourhood is a very good one, and the man had the appearance of being a person of the labouring class.”
“Any marks on the clothing or body?”
“Not one – beyond a tattooed heart on the left forearm, which caused the coroner to come to the conclusion later that the man had at some time been either a soldier or a sailor.”
“Why?”
“The tattooing was evidently of foreign origin, he said, from the skilful manner in which it had been performed and the brilliant colour of the pigments used. Beyond that, the body bore no blemish. The man had not been stabbed, he had not been shot, and a post-mortem examination of the viscera proved conclusively that he had not been poisoned. Neither had he been strangled, etherized, drowned, or bludgeoned, for the brain was in no way injured and the lungs were in a healthy condition. It was noticed, however, that the passages of the throat and nose were unduly red, and that there was a slightly distended condition of the bowels. This latter, however, was set down by the physicians as the natural condition following enteric, from which it was positive that the man had recently suffered. They attributed the slightly inflamed condition of the nasal passage and throat to his having either swallowed or snuffed up something – camphor or something of that sort – to allay the progress of the enteric, although even by analysis they were unable to discover a trace of camphor or indeed of any foreign substance whatsoever. The body was held in the public mortuary for several days awaiting identification, but nobody came forward to claim it; so it was eventually buried in the usual way and a verdict of ‘Found Dead’ entered in the archives against the number given to it. The matter had excited but little comment on the part of the public or the newspapers, and would never have been recalled but for the astonishing fact that just two nights after the burial a second man was found under precisely similar circumstances – only that this second man was clad in boots, undervest, and trousers. He was found in a sort of gulley (down which, from the marks on the side, he had evidently fallen), behind some furze bushes at a far and little frequented part of the heath. An autopsy established the fact that this man had died in a precisely similar manner to the first, but, what was more startling, that he had evidently pre-deceased that first victim by several days; for, when found, decomposition had already set in.”
“Hum-m-m! I see!” said Cleek, arching his brows and stirring his tea rather slowly. “A clear case of what Paddy would term ‘the second fellow being the first one.’ Go on, please. What next?”
“Oh, a perfect fever of excitement, of course; for it now became evident that a crime had been committed in both instances; and the Press made a great to-do over it. Within the course of the next fortnight it was positively frothing, throwing panic into the public mind by the wholesale, and whipping up people’s fears like a madman stirring a salad; for, by that time a third body had been found – under some furze bushes, upward of half a mile distant from where the second had been discovered. Like the first body, this one was wearing night clothes; but it was in an even more advanced state of decomposition than the second, showing that the man must have died long before either of them!”
“Oho!” said Cleek, with a strong rising inflection. “What a blundering idiot! Our assassin is evidently a raw hand at the game, Mr. Narkom, and not, as I had begun to fancy, either a professional or the appointed agent of some secret society following a process of extermination against certain marked men. Neither the secret agent nor the professional bandit would be guilty of the extreme folly of operating several times in the same locality, be assured; and here is this muddling amateur letting himself be lulled into a feeling of security by the failure of anybody to discover the bodies of the first victims, and then going at it again in the same place and the same way. For it is fair to assume, I daresay, that the fourth man was discovered under precisely similar circumstances to the first.”
“Not exactly – very like them, but not exactly like them, Cleek. As a matter of fact, he was alive when found. I didn’t credit the report when I first heard it (a newspaper man brought it to me), and sent Petrie to investigate the truth of it.”
“Why didn’t you believe the report?”
“Because it seemed so wildly improbable. And, besides, they had hatched up so many yarns, those newspaper reporters, since the affair began. According to this fellow, a tramp, crossing the heath in quest of a place to sleep, had been frightened half out of his wits by hearing a voice which he described as being like the voice of some one strangling, calling out in the darkness, ‘Sapphires! Sapphires!’ and a few moments later, when, as the reporter said, the tramp told him, he was scuttling away in a panic, he came suddenly upon the figure of a man who was dancing round and round like a whirling dervish, with his mouth wide open, his tongue hanging out, and the forefinger of each hand stuck in his nostril as if – ”
“What’s that? What’s that?” Cleek’s voice flicked in like the crack of a whip. “Good God! Dancing round in circles? His mouth open? His tongue hanging out? His fingers thrust into his nostrils? Was that what you said?”
“Yes. Why? Do you see anything promising in that fact, Cleek? It seems to excite you.”
“Never mind about that. Stick to the subject. Was that report found to be correct, then?”
“In a measure, yes. Only, of course, one had to take the tramp’s assertion that the man had been calling out ‘Sapphires’ upon faith, for when discovered and conveyed to the hospital, he was in a comatose condition and beyond making any sound at all. He died, without recovering consciousness, about twenty minutes after Petrie’s arrival; and, although the doctors performed a post-mortem immediately after the breath had left his body, there was not a trace of anything to be found that differed in the slightest from the other cases. Heart, brain, liver, lungs – all were in a healthy condition, and beyond the reddened throat and the signs of recent enteric there was nothing abnormal.”
“But his lips – his lips, Mr. Narkom? Was there a smear of earth upon them? Was he lying on his face when found? Were his fingers clenched in the grass? Did it look as if he had been biting the soil?”
“Yes,” replied Narkom. “As a matter of fact there was both earth and grass in the mouth. The doctors removed it carefully, examined it under the microscope, even subjected it to chemical test in the hope of discovering some foreign substance mixed with the mass, but failed utterly to discover a single trace.”
“Of course, of course! It would be gone like a breath, gone like a passing cloud if it were that.”
“If it were what? Cleek, my dear fellow! Good Lord! you don’t mean to tell me you’ve got a clue?”
“Perhaps – perhaps – don’t worry me!” he made answer testily; then rose and walked over to the window and stood there alone, pinching his chin between his thumb and forefinger and staring fixedly at things beyond. After a time, however:
“Yes, it could be that – assuredly it could be that,” he said in a low-sunk voice, as if answering a query. “But in England – in this far land. In Malay, yes; in Ceylon, certainly. And sapphires, too – sapphires! Hum-m-m! They mine them there. One man had travelled in foreign parts and been tattooed by natives. So that the selfsame country – Just so! Of course! Of course! But who? But how? And in England?”
His voice dropped off. He stood for a minute or so in absolute silence, drumming noiselessly with his finger tips upon the window-sill, then turned abruptly and spoke to Mr. Narkom.
“Go on with the story, please,” he said. “There was a fifth man, I believe. When and how did his end come?”
“Like the others, for the most part, but with one startling difference: instead of being undressed, nothing had been removed but his collar and boots. He was killed on the night I started with Dollops for the Continent in quest of you; and his was the second body that was not actually found on the heath. Like the first man, he was found under the wall which surrounds Lemmingham House.”
“Lemmingham House? What’s that – a hotel or a private residence?”
“A private residence, owned and occupied by Mr. James Barrington-Edwards.”
“Any relation to that Captain Barrington-Edwards who was cashiered from the army some twenty years ago for ‘conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman’?”
“The same man!”
“Oho! the same man, eh?” Cleek’s tone was full of sudden interest. “Stop a bit! Let me put my thinking box into operation. Captain Barrington-Edwards – hum-m-m! That little military unpleasantness happened out in Ceylon, did it not? The gentleman had a fancy for conjuring tricks, I believe; even went so far as to study them firsthand under the tutelage of native fakirs, and was subsequently caught cheating at cards. That’s the man, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Narkom, “that’s the man. I’ll have something startling to tell you in connection with him presently, but not in connection with that card-cheating scandal. He always swore that he was innocent of that. In fact, that it was a put-up job by one of the other officers for the sake of ruining him.”
“Yes, I know – they all say that. It’s the only thing they can say.”
“Still, I always believed him, Cleek. He’s been a pretty straightforward man in all my dealings with him, and I’ve had several. Besides which, he is highly respected these days. Then, too, there’s the fact that the fellow he said put up the job against him for the sake of blackening him in the eyes of his sweetheart, eventually married the girl, so it does look rather fishy. However, although it ruined Barrington-Edwards for the time being, and embittered him so that he never married, he certainly had the satisfaction of knowing that the fellow who had caused this trouble turned out an absolute rotter, spent all his wife’s money and brought her down to absolute beggary, whereas, if she’d stuck to Barrington-Edwards she’d have been a wealthy woman indeed, to-day. He’s worth half a million at the least calculation.”
“How’s that? Somebody die and leave him a fortune?”
“No. He had a little of his own. Speculated, while he was in the East, in precious stones and land which he had reason to believe likely to produce them; succeeded beyond his wildest hopes, and is to-day head of the firm of Barrington-Edwards, Morpeth & Firmin, the biggest dealers in precious stones that Hatton Garden can boast of.”
“Oho!” said Cleek. “I see! I see!” and screwed round on his heel and looked out of the window again. Then, after a moment: “And Mr. Barrington-Edwards lives in the neighbourhood of Hampstead Heath, does he?” he asked quite calmly. “Alone?”
“No. With his nephew and heir, young Mr. Archer Blaine, a dead sister’s only child. As a matter of fact, it was Mr. Archer Blaine himself who discovered the body of the fifth victim. Coming home at a quarter to one from a visit to an old college friend, he found the man lying stone dead in the shadow of the wall surrounding Lemmingham House, and, of course, lost no time in dashing indoors for a police whistle and summoning the constable on point duty in the district. The body was at once given in charge of a hastily summoned detachment from the Yard and conveyed to the Hampstead mortuary, where it still lies awaiting identification.”
“Been photographed?”
“Not as yet. Of course it will be – as were the other four – prior to the time of burial should nobody turn up to claim it. But in this instance we have great hopes that identification will take place on the strength of a marked peculiarity. The man is web-footed and – ”
“The man is what?” rapped in Cleek excitedly.
“Web-footed,” repeated Narkom. “The several toes are attached one to the other by a thin membrane, after the manner of a duck’s feet; and on the left foot there is a peculiar horny protuberance like – ”
“Like a rudimentary sixth toe!” interrupted Cleek, fairly flinging the eager query at him. “It is, eh? Well, by the Eternal! I once knew a fellow – years ago, in the Far East – whose feet were malformed like that; and if by any possibility – Stop a bit! A word more. Is that man a big fellow – broad shouldered, muscular, and about forty or forty-five years of age?”
“You’ve described him to a T, dear chap. There is, however, a certain other peculiarity which you have not mentioned, though that, of course, maybe a recent acquirement. The palm of the right hand – ”
“Wait a bit! Wait a bit!” interposed Cleek, a trifle irritably. He had swung away from the window and was now walking up and down the room with short nervous steps, his chin pinched up between his thumb and forefinger, his brows knotted, and his eyes fixed upon the floor.
“Saffragam – Jaffna – Trincomalee! In all three of them – in all three!” he said, putting his running thoughts into muttered words. “And now a dead man sticks his fingers in his nostrils and talks of sapphires. Sapphires, eh? And the Saffragam district stuck thick with them as spangles on a Nautch girl’s veil. The Bareva for a ducat! The Bareva Reef or I’m a Dutchman! And Barrington-Edwards was in that with the rest. So was Peabody; so was Miles; and so, too, were Lieutenant Edgburn and the Spaniard, Juan Alvarez. Eight of them, b’gad – eight! And I was ass enough to forget, idiot enough not to catch the connection until I heard again of Jim Peabody’s web foot! But wait! Stop – there should be another marked foot if this is indeed a clue to the riddle, and so – ”
He stopped short in his restless pacing and faced round on Mr. Narkom.
“Tell me something,” he said in a sharp staccato. “The four other dead men – did any among them have an injured foot – the left or the right, I forget which – from which all toes but the big one had been torn off by a crocodile’s bite, so that in life the fellow must have limped a little when he walked? Did any of the dead men bear a mark like that?”
“No,” said Narkom. “The feet of all the others were normal in every particular.”
“Hum-m-m! That’s a bit of a setback. And I am either on the wrong track or Alvarez is still alive. What’s that? Oh, it doesn’t matter; a mere fancy of mine, that’s all. Now let us get back to our mutton, please. You were going to tell me something about the right hand of the man with the web foot. What was it?”
“The palm bore certain curious hieroglyphics traced upon it in bright purple.”
“Hieroglyphics, eh? That doesn’t look quite so promising,” said Cleek in a disappointed tone. “It is quite possible that there may be more than one web-footed man in the world, so of course – Hum-m-m! What were these hieroglyphics, Mr. Narkom? Can you describe them?”
“I can do better, my dear chap,” replied the superintendent, dipping into an inner pocket and bringing forth a brown leather case. “I took an accurate tracing of them from the dead hand this morning, and – there you are. That’s what’s on his palm, Cleek, close to the base of the forefinger running diagonally across it.”
Cleek took the slip of tracing paper and carried it to the window, for the twilight was deepening and the room was filling with shadows. In the middle of the thin, transparent sheet was traced this:
He turned it up and down, he held it to the light and studied it for a moment or two in perplexed silence, then of a sudden he faced round, and Narkom could see that his eyes were shining and that the curious one-sided smile, peculiar unto him, was looping up his cheek.
“My friend,” he said, answering the eager query in the superintendent’s look, “this is yet another vindication of Poe’s theory that things least hidden are best hidden, and that the most complex mysteries are those which are based on the simplest principles. With your permission, I’ll keep this” – tucking the tracing into his pocket – “and afterward I will go to the mortuary and inspect the original. Meantime, I will go so far as to tell you that I know the motive for these murders, I know the means, and if you will give me forty-eight hours to solve the riddle, at the end of that time I’ll know the man. I will even go farther and tell you the names of the victims; and all on the evidence of your neat little tracing. The web-footed man was one, James Peabody, a farrier, at one time attached to the Blue Cavalry at Trincomalee, Ceylon. Another was Joseph Miles, an Irishman, bitten early with the ‘wanderlust’ which takes men everywhere, and in making rolling stones of them, suffers them to gather no moss. Still another – and probably, from the tattoo mark on his arm, the first victim found – was Thomas Hart, ablebodied seaman, formerly in service on the P & O line; the remaining two were Alexander McCurdy, a Scotchman, and T. Jenkins Quegg, a Yankee. The latter, however, was a naturalized Englishman, and both were privates in her late Majesty’s army and honourably discharged.”
