The set-back I had received, so far from causing me to abandon my search for Mullen, only nerved me to fresh endeavour, though how to go to work I could not for some time determine. To threaten Hughes that I would report him to the authorities unless he made terms for himself by telling me all he knew about his mysterious visitor, was not a course which commended itself to me. I might, as a last resource, and in the event of everything else failing, be compelled to so bold a step, but for the present I felt that the wisest thing I could do would be to trace Quickly’s movements after he had started to shadow the person who had come ashore from the hulk. This would, however, necessitate my leaving Canvey, and in the meantime it was of the highest importance that an eye should be kept upon the “Cuban Queen.”

It was quite within the bounds of possibility that Mullen might yet return, in which case he would probably do so by night. Hence it was at night that I kept my keenest watch upon the hulk, and in order to do this I thought it advisable to leave the inn and install myself in a small furnished cottage, which, by an unexpected stroke of luck, I was able to rent very cheaply. But, as I could not pursue my inquiries in regard to the fate of Quickly and keep an eye at the same time upon the “Cuban Queen,” I decided to send for a friend of mine, named Grant, whom I could trust implicitly.

Grant took the next train to Benfleet—the nearest station to Canvey—on receiving my telegram, and, after hearing my story, assured me of his readiness and willingness to co-operate in the search for Mullen. He promised to keep an unwinking eye upon the “Cuban Queen” while I was away, and to let me know should any suspicious stranger come upon the scene. The matter being thus satisfactorily arranged, I started off to see what I could learn about the ill-fated Quickly.

My theory was that that luckless wight had so clumsily performed the work of shadowing as to bring himself under the notice of the person shadowed, who would then have reason to believe that the secret of his hiding-place was known, at all events to one person. Under such circumstances Mullen would in all probability decide that, in order to insure the return of the secret to his own keeping, Quickly must be despatched to the limbo of the “dead folk” who “tell no tales;” and I felt tolerably certain that, on discovering he was being shadowed, he had led the way to some secluded spot where he or his accomplices had made an end of the shadower.

How I set to work to collect and to sift my evidence I need not here describe in detail, but will sum up briefly the result of my inquiries.

Quickly had reached the station some minutes before the arrival of any other passenger, and in accordance with my instructions had gone at once to the general waiting-room, where he remained until the train started. Some few minutes afterwards a woman carrying a bag had entered the booking-office and taken a third-class single ticket to Stepney. When the train drew up at the platform she had seated herself in an empty carriage near the centre, and Quickly had entered a smoking carriage at the end. When the train reached Stepney she passed through the barrier, followed at some distance by a man answering to the description of Quickly.

The woman had then bought an evening paper from a newsboy, and crossing the road slowly had turned down a by-street which led to the river. The man, after looking in a tobacconist’s window for half a minute, had taken the same turning, but upon the other side of the road.

There I came to a dead stop, for not one jot of evidence as to the subsequent movements of either of the two could I discover, and, reluctant though I am to admit myself beaten, the fact could no longer be disguised that in that direction too I was checkmated.

“Another throw back, Grant,” I said, when I entered the cottage at Canvey after this fresh reverse.

“Well, what are you going to do now?” inquired my friend and collaborator when he had heard my story. “Give it up, as we did the other riddles of our school-boy days?”

“Give it up! What do you take me for? But, hollo! For whom is that letter?” I said, pointing to an envelope which was lying on the table.

“For you. Hardy Muir brought it over. It was sent under cover to him from London.”

“At last!” I said, breaking the seal. “It’s from Green, the detective whom I put on to ferret out Mullen’s past. I told him that if he wanted to write he was to slip the letter into an envelope addressed to Muir at the Hogarth Club in Dover Street. He’s been long enough finding anything out. Let’s hear what he has to say, now he does condescend to write. It is dated from Baxenham, near Yarby. I knew the place well years ago—used to yacht round there as a lad. Nasty coast, too, with some curious currents and very dangerous sands. Here’s his letter.”

“What a rascal,” said Grant, when I had finished this letter. “He ought to say he’s on the make as well as on the track.”

“I don’t think he’s a rascal,” I answered. “I have always found him above board and square. If he is really on Mullen’s heels the temptation to turn his discovery to his own account is pretty strong. Twenty-five thousand pounds, not to speak of the kudos, isn’t made every day, my boy. It’s rather like shaking an apple-tree in order that somebody else may pick up the fruit,—to do the work and then see another man go off with the money-bags. No, I think he’s acted honourably in giving me due notice that he’s going to run the show himself, and in offering to return the ‘exs.’ as he calls them. Many men would have gone on taking the coin while working on their own account.”

“What are you going to do?” queried Grant.

“Run down to Baxenham to-morrow. I don’t suppose I shall get any change out of Green, but I may hear something that will help me to put two and two together in regard to our late visitor on the ‘Cuban Queen.’ As Green has been working on my money and in my service I shan’t feel any qualm of conscience in finding out his wonderful secret—if I can—and of making use of it if I do find it.”

Next morning I was up betimes to catch an early train to town and thence to Yarby, where I arrived late in the afternoon. Baxenham is a little village on the coast, some five miles distant, and the shortest way there from Yarby is by a footpath across the fields.

A lovelier walk I have seldom had. The sunset was glorious, so glorious that for a while I sat like one rapt, dreaming myself back into the days of my childhood, and forgetful of everything but the beauty that lay before me.

I remembered the fair-haired little boy who day after day, as the afternoon was waning, would climb the stairs which led to a tiny garret under the roof. There was only one window in this garret, a window which faced the west and was cut in the roof itself. Looking down, one saw the red tiles running away so steeply beneath that the little boy could never glance at them without a catching of breath, and without fancying what it would be like to find oneself slipping down, down the steep descent until one reached that awful place—the world’s edge, it seemed to him—where the roof ended in a sheer and terrible abyss.

But it was to see the sunset that the little boy would climb the stairs each day, and as he dreamed himself out into that sunset it seemed a part of himself—not merely a thing at which to look.

It seemed to draw him to itself and into itself. It seemed to him as if, as he gazed, two little doors opened somewhere in his breast and his soul flew out like a white bird into the distant west. He knew that his body was still standing by the window, but he himself was away there among the purple and crimson and gold. He was walking yonder sunlit shining shore that bent round to form a bay for a golden sea. He was climbing yonder range of mountain peaks—peaks which, though built of unsubstantial cloud, were more beautiful than any show-place of the tourist’s seeking—peaks upon whose shining summit the soul might stand and look out upon the infinite—peaks which might be climbed by the fancy of those whose fortune it might never be to see an Alpine height. And when the purple and crimson had faded into citron, and the citron into gray; when the gold had paled to silver and darkened to lead; and the bird had fluttered back like a frightened thing to his breast—then the little boy would creep downstairs again, dry-eyed, but sad at heart with a strange sense of loneliness and loss.

As I sat there watching the last of the sunset, that little boy seemed to look out at me with desolate reproachful eyes, asking what the man had to give the boy in exchange for his dreams. Then a bat flew by, so closely that I felt the cold fanning of its wings upon my face, so suddenly that I drew back with a start and awoke to real life again.

Evening was already closing in. An hour ago the setting sun had looked out over the horizon’s edge and flooded the stretch of meadow-land—now so gloomy and gray—with a burst of luminous gold which tipped every grass-blade and daisy-head with liquid fire. Now on the same horizon’s edge the gusty night-rack was gathering. The glory and the glamour were gone, and darkness was already abroad. A wind which struck a chill to the heart moaned eerily over the meadows, and white mists blotted out bush and tree.

If I was to reach Baxenham before nightfall I had no time to lose; so, with a sigh for the vanished sunset and my vanished dreams, I rose to continue my walk.

Another field and a thickly-wooded plantation, and then, as I turned a bend where the path wound round among the trees, I found myself upon the sea-beach along which my path lay. In front, about a couple of miles away, I could see the church tower of Baxenham, over which red Mars burned large and lurid among a score of tiny stars that quivered near him, like arrow-heads shot wide of the mark; and low in the south the slender moon was like a finger laid to command silence on the lip of night. The beauty of the scene so possessed me that I stood still an instant with face turned seaward and bared head, and then—almost at my feet—I saw lying in the water a dark body that stirred and rocked, and stretched forth swaying arms like a creature at play. For one moment I thought it was alive, that it was some strange sea-beast come ashore, which was now seeking to regain its native element, but in the next I knew it for the body of a man, lying face downward and evidently dead.

There is horror enough in the silent and stone-cold stillness of death, but to see death put on the semblance of life, to see dead arms reach and the dead body stir and sway, as they did that night, when the incoming tide seemed to mock at death and to sport, cruel and cat-like, with its victim, is surely more horrible still.

With hands scarcely warmer than his I drew the dead man up upon the sands and turned him upon his back that I might see his face. It was the face of Green, the inquiry agent, and in his hand he held a small green bottle, which was lashed to his wrist by a handkerchief worked with his own initials, “J. B. G.” “Suicide!” I whispered to myself as I stooped to untie the handkerchief and bend back the unresisting fingers. The bottle was short and stumpy, with a wide mouth and a glass stopper secured by a string, and was labelled “Lavender Salts.” I cut the string and, drawing out the stopper, held the thing to my nose. “It is lavender salts,” I said, “or has been, for it’s light enough to be empty. No, there’s something inside it still. Let’s see what it is,” and with that I turned the bottle mouth downward over my open palm. A slip of neatly-folded paper fell out, which I hastily opened. Four words were printed upon it in rude capitals—“By order.—Captain Shannon.”