Captain Shannon

Whether Jeanes, alias Mullen, had noticed any signs of curiosity in regard to his movements on the Professor’s part, and had intentionally misinformed that worthy; whether his suspicions had been aroused by his discovering that he was being shadowed to the hotel; or whether his change of plans was entirely accidental, I had no means of knowing; but that my adversary in the game of chess I was playing had again called “check” just when I had hoped to come out with the triumphant “mate” was not to be denied. The only additional information I succeeded in eliciting from the Professor was that Jeanes had visited the shop some month or so ago and had arranged that any letters sent there for him should be kept till he came for them. He had left half-a-sovereign on account and had called four times, receiving three letters, including that which had been handed to him by the Professor.

As for that precious rascal, I need scarcely say that I placed no reliance whatever upon what he said, and had seriously considered whether the story of his giving Jeanes the letter on the stairs, and then shadowing his customer to the hotel might not be an entire fabrication. I did not for a moment believe that he knew who Jeanes really was, for had he done so he would, I felt sure, have lost no time in securing the reward by handing the fugitive over to the police. But I quite recognised the possibility of his being in Jeanes’s pay, and had seriously asked myself whether the statement that Jeanes would not be having any more letters addressed to the shop, and would not be visiting Stanby again, might not be a ruse to get me out of the way. But that the Professor’s surprise and dismay when he found Jeanes gone from the hotel were genuine, no one who had witnessed them could have doubted, and as the circumstances generally tended to confirm his story, I was forced to the conclusion that he had, in this instance at all events, told the truth.

In that case I should be wasting time by remaining longer at Stanby; so after arranging with the Professor that if Jeanes called again, or if any other letters arrived for him, the word “News” should at once be telegraphed to an address which I gave, I packed my bag and caught the next train to town.

Mullen had called “check” at Stanby, it is true, but I was not without another move, by means of which I hoped eventually to “mate” him, and what that move was, the reader who remembers the contents of the intercepted letters will readily surmise.

In one of those letters the person to whom it was addressed was told that the steam yacht, by means of which he was to escape would be lying just off the boat-builder’s yard where the little yacht was laid up. Any one who did not know from whom the letter was, or under what circumstances it had been written, would not be any the wiser for this piece of information. But to one who knew, as I did, that the writer was the wife of Mr. Stanley Burgoyne, it would not be a difficult thing to ascertain the name of any small yacht of which that gentleman was the owner, and the place where it was likely to be laid up.

Whether Mullen intended to abandon or to carry out the plan he had formed for making his escape by the help of his sister, I had no means of knowing. If he suspected that his letters had been intercepted, he was tolerably sure to abandon the arrangement, or at all events to change the scene of operations. But if he was unaware of the fact that I had taken up the thread which poor Green had dropped, it was possible that he might assume his secret to be safe now Green was satisfactorily disposed of, and might carry out his original plan, in which event he would walk of his own accord into the trap which I was preparing for him. In any case I should be doing right in making inquiries about Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Burgoyne and their yacht, and with this end in view I purchased a copy of the current “Yachting Register.”

Turning to the letter B in the list of owners, I found that Mr. Stanley Scott Burgoyne’s club was the Royal London, and that he had two boats, one a big steam yacht called the “Fiona,” and the other a little five-tonner named the “Odd Trick.” It was no doubt in the former that Mr. and Mrs. Burgoyne had gone to Norway and by means of which Mullen was to fly the country, and it was probably to the latter that Mrs. Burgoyne had referred in her letter.

No one can be led to talk “shop” more readily than your enthusiastic yachtsman, and it did not require much diplomacy on my part to ascertain, by means of a visit to the Royal London Club House in Savile Row—in company with a member—that Mr. Burgoyne’s little cruiser was laid up at Gravesend, in charge of a man named Gunnell.

Him I accordingly visited, under the pretext of wanting to buy a yacht, and after some conversation I remarked casually—

“By-the-bye, I think you have my friend Mr. Stanley Burgoyne’s five-tonner, the ‘Odd Trick,’ laid up here, haven’t you?”

“I did have, sir,” was the reply, “but Mr. Burgoyne he telegraphed that I was to let his brother-in-law, Mr. Cross, have the boat out. That there’s the telegram wot you see slipped in behind the olm’nack.”

For the second time in the course of this curious enterprise the information I was in need of seemed to come in search of me instead of my having to go in search of it. I had felt when I started out to pursue my inquiries about Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Burgoyne, by interviewing the waterman Gunnell, that it was quite possible I might learn something of importance, but I had not expected to strike the trail red-hot, and so soon, for “Cross,” as the reader may perhaps remember, was the name by which Mullen was known to his family. “Mullen” had been used only in connection with the conspiracy.

Lest the man should see by my face how important was the information he had let drop, I stooped as if to flick a splash of mud from my trousers-leg before replying.

“Ah, yes,” I said at length, straightening myself and bending forward indolently to look at the telegram, which I read aloud.

“Of course,” I went on, “I had quite forgotten Mr. Cross telling me, when I saw him last, that he was going to ask his brother-in-law to lend him the ‘Odd Trick,’ for a cruise. Whom has he got on board?”

“No one, sir. Mr. Cross was sailing her himself; said he was only going as far as Sheerness, where he expected a friend to join him who would help him to handle her.”

“He’s a good sailor, isn’t he?”

“No, sir, that’s just what he isn’t, and that’s why I wanted him to let me go with him until his friend turned up. But, bless you, sir, he got that huffy there wasn’t no holdin’ him. And him a very pleasant-mannered gentleman in the usual way, and free with his money too.”

Our conversation was interrupted at this point by the entrance of another waterman with the key of the shed where a boat that was for sale was laid up. The craft in question was a pretty little cutter, named the “Pastime,” and I of course made a great pretence of inspecting her narrowly, and was careful to put the usual questions about her draught, breadth of beam, findings, and the like, which would be expected from any intending purchaser.

“Isn’t she rather like the ‘Odd Trick’?” I said casually, being desirous of getting a description of that vessel without appearing to be unduly inquisitive.

“Lor’ bless you no, sir!” answered the honest Gunnell. “She’s about the same siz right enough, but the ‘Pastime’ is cutter-rigged and the ‘Odd Trick’ ’s a yawl. Besides, the ‘Pastime’ is painted chocolate, and the ‘Odd Trick’ is white, picked out gold.”

This was just the information I required, so after telling Gunnell that I would let him know my decision when I had seen another boat which was in the market, I slipped half-a-sovereign into his hand, as “conscience money,” for taking up his time when I had no intention of becoming a purchaser, and bade him “Good-day, and thank you.”

The result of my inquiries, though by no means unsatisfactory, had, I must confess, put me somewhat out of my reckoning. I had all along been of opinion that Mullen’s hiding-place was on water, as the reader is aware, but I had not supposed he would be so rash as to trust himself on a vessel which, if his connection with the Burgoynes should reach the ears of the police, would be almost the first object of their inquiries. I could only account for his doing so by presuming that he was convinced that the secret of his relationship to Mr. and Mrs. Burgoyne—being known only to them and to him—could not by any means come to light, and that, taking one thing with another, he considered it safer to make use of Burgoyne’s boat than to run the risk of purchasing or hiring what he wanted from a stranger. Or it might be that as no fresh outrages had occurred for some time the vigilance of the police had become somewhat relaxed, and that Mullen—knowing it to be so, and that the hue and cry had subsided—felt that his own precautions might be proportionately lessened.

Perhaps, too, the ease with which he had hitherto eluded pursuit had tended to make him careless, over-confident, and inclined to underrate the abilities of English detectives. But, whatever his reason, the fact remained that if Gunnell’s story was to be believed—and I saw no cause to doubt it—Mullen had contrived to get possession of the “Odd Trick” by means of a telegram which, though purporting to come from the owner of the boat, Mr. Burgoyne, had in reality been despatched by Mullen himself.

That he was the sender of the telegram was evident from some inquiries which I afterwards made at Scarborough. These inquiries I need not here enter upon in detail, but I may mention that I was able by a little diplomacy to get a photograph of the original draft (it is not generally known that the first drafts of telegrams are retained for a considerable time by the postal authorities) and so became possessed of a piece of evidence which might one day prove valuable—a specimen of what was in all probability Mullen’s own handwriting.

But as a matter of fact I had good cause, quite apart from the inquiries which I instituted at Scarborough, to feel satisfied that the telegram had been sent by Mullen, or by his instigation, and not by Burgoyne, as I knew by the date of the letter which Mrs. Burgoyne had sent to Mullen—the letter which I had intercepted—that her husband was in Bergen upon the very day on which the telegram from Scarborough had been despatched.

My next business I decided must be to find the present whereabouts of the “Odd Trick,” but before setting out to do so I had a point of some importance to consider. Every one who has studied criminology knows that each individual criminal has certain methods which are repeated with very little variation in consecutive crimes. The circumstances may so vary as to cause the features of the crime to have a different aspect from the feature of any previous crime, but the methods pursued are generally the same.

The criminal classes are almost invariably creatures of habit. The fact that a certain method—be it adopted for the purpose of committing a crime, concealing a crime, or of effecting the criminal’s escape—has proved successful in the past is to them the strongest possible reason for again adopting the same method. They associate that method in their thoughts with what they call their luck, and shrink from having to depart from it. Hence the detective-psychologist should be quick to get what I may—with no sinister meaning in regard to after events—be allowed to call the “hang” of the criminal’s mind, and to discover the methods which, though varying circumstances may necessitate their being worked out in varying ways, are common to most of his crimes. The detective who can do this has his antagonist at a disadvantage. He is like the hunter who knows that the hare will double, or that this or that quarry will try to set the hounds at fault and seek to destroy the scent by taking to the water. And just as the hunter’s acquaintance with the tricks of the quarry assists him to anticipate and to forestall the poor beast’s efforts to escape, so the detective who has taken a criminal’s measure, and discovered the methods upon which he works, can often turn the very means which are intended to effect an escape into means to effect a capture.

I need not point out to the observant reader that Mullen’s one anxiety in all his movements was to cover up his traces. He could be daring and even reckless at times, as witness this fact of his having gone away in a boat, which, should his connection with Mrs. Burgoyne leak out, would, as I have already said, be the very first object of inquiry. It would seem, in fact, as if, so long as he had satisfied himself that he had left no “spoor” behind, he preferred adopting a bold course to a timid one, as for instance when he openly proclaimed the murder of Green to be the handiwork of Captain Shannon by leaving a declaration to that effect folded up in a bottle which was attached to the body.

How he had accomplished that particular crime I did not know, but I had the best of reasons for knowing that he had left no sign of himself behind. Carefulness in covering up his traces was indeed the key-word to his criminal code, and perhaps was the secret of the success with which he had hitherto carried out his designs. Given any fresh move on his part, and some cunning scheme for obliterating the trail he had left behind—for cutting the connecting cord between the past and the present—might be looked for as surely and inevitably as night may be looked for after day.

I had—more by luck than by subtlety—traced Mullen to the boatyard at Gravesend, but there I lost sight of him completely. He had taken the “Odd Trick” away with him the same evening, I was told, and had gone down the river, but what had become of him afterwards there was not the slightest evidence to show. To go down the river in search of him seemed the natural and only course, but I was beginning by this time to get some insight into my adversary’s methods, and felt that before asking myself, “Where has Mullen gone?” I should seriously consider the question, “What method has he adopted for covering up his traces?”