Boycotted Part 30

"Fancy tracked him here rough crossing--will wire again shortly."

Then having satisfied myself that none of the steamer pa.s.sengers could possibly have caught an earlier train, and determined not to lose the train this time, I took a ticket for Londonderry, and ensconced myself a good quarter of an hour before the appointed hour in a corner of a carriage commanding a good view of the booking-office door.

As the minutes sped by, and no sign of my man, I began to grow nervous.

After all he might be staying in Belfast, or, having got wind of my pursuit, might be escaping in some other direction. It was not a comfortable reflection, not did it add to my comfort that among the pa.s.sengers who crowded into my carriage, and helped to keep out my view of the booking-office door, was the gloomy, detective-looking individual whose demeanour had so disconcerted me during the first stage of this disastrous journey.

He eyed me as suspiciously as ever from behind his everlasting newspaper, and under his scrutiny I hardly dared persevere in my own look-out. I made a pretext of buying a newspaper in order to keep near the door. To my dismay the whistle suddenly sounded as I was counting my change, and the train began to move off. At the same moment a figure, carrying in one hand a portmanteau and in the other a hat-box, rushed frantically into the station, and made a blind clash at the very door where I stood. I shrunk back in a panic to my distant corner, with my heart literally in my mouth. There was a brief struggle on the doorstep; the hat-box flew in, and the door was actually opened to admit the owner, when a couple of porters laid violent hands upon him and dragged him off the train.

It was not I who had been left behind this time, but Michael McCrane; and while he and his portmanteau remained disconsolate in Belfast, I and his hat-box were being whirled in the direction of Londonderry in the company of a person who, whatever he may have thought of McCrane, without doubt considered me a fugitive!

It was a trying position, and I was as much at sea as I had been during the agitated hours of the terrible night, I tried to appear calm, and took refuge behind my newspaper in order to collect my ideas and interpose a screen between myself and the critical stare of my fellow- pa.s.senger. Alas! it was avoiding Scylla only to fall into Charybdis.

The first words which met my eyes were:--

"Bank Robbery in London.--

"A robbery was perpetrated in ---'s bank on Wednesday night, under circ.u.mstances which point to one of the cas.h.i.+ers as the culprit. The manager's box, containing a considerable amount of loose cash, was found broken open, and it is supposed the thief has also made away with a considerable sum in notes and securities. The cas.h.i.+er in question has disappeared and is supposed to have absconded to the north. He is dark complexioned, pale, mysterious in his manners, and aged 26. When last seen wore a tall hat, gloves, and a grey office suit."

Instinctively I pulled off my gloves and deposited my hat in the rack overhead, and tried to appear engrossed in another portion of the paper.

But I could not refrain from darting a look at my fellow-traveller. To my horror I perceived that the paper he was reading was the same as the one I had; and that the page between which and myself his eyes were uncomfortably oscillating was the very page on which the fatal paragraph appeared.

_I_ was dark, _I_ was pale (after my voyage), and who should say my manners were not mysterious?

In imagination I stood already in the box of the Old Bailey and heard myself sentenced to the treadmill, and was unable to offer the slightest explanation in palliation of my mysterious conduct.

In such agreeable reveries I pa.s.sed the first hour of the journey; when, to my unfeigned relief, on reaching Antrim my fellow-traveller quitted the carriage. No doubt his object was a sinister one, and when I saw him speak to the constable at the station, I had no doubt in my own mind that my liberty was not worth five minutes' purchase. But even so, anything seemed better than his basilisk eye in the corner of the carriage.

I hastily prepared my defence and resolved on a dignified refusal to criminate myself under any provocation. What were they doing? To my horror, the "detective," the constable, the guard, and the station- master all advanced on my carriage.

"In there?" said the official.

My late fellow-traveller nodded. The station-master opened the door and entered the carriage. I was in the act of opening my lips to say--

"I surrender myself--there is no occasion for violence," when the station-master laid his hand on the hat-box.

"It's labelled to C--," he said; "take it along, guard, and put it out there. He's sure to come on by the next train. Right away there!"

Next moment we were off. What did it all mean? I was not under arrest!

n.o.body had noticed me; but McCrane's hat-box had engaged the attention of four public officials.

"Free and easy way of doing things on this line," said an Englishman in the carriage; "quite the regular thing for a man and his luggage to go by different trains. Always turns up right in the end. Are you going to Derry, sir?" he added addressing me.

"No," said I, hastily. "I'm getting out at the next station."

"What--at --" and he p.r.o.nounced the name something like "Tobacco."

"Yes," I said, pining for liberty, no matter the name it was called by.

At the next station I got out. It was a little wayside place without even a village that I could see to justify its claim to a station at all. n.o.body else got out; and as soon as the train had gone, I was left to explain my presence to what appeared to be the entire population of the district, to wit, a station-master, a porter, and a constable who carried a carbine. I invented some frivolous excuse; asked if there wasn't a famous waterfall somewhere near; and on being told that the locality boasted of no such attraction, feigned to be dismayed; and was forced to resign myself to wait three hours for the next train.

It was at least a good thing to be in solitude for a short time to collect my scattered wits. McCrane was bound for C--, and would probably come in the _next_ train, which, by the way, was the last.

That was all I had a clear idea about. There was a telegraph office at the station, and I thought I might as well report progress to my manager.

"On the trail. Expect news from C--. Wire me there, post-office, if necessary."

The station-master (who, as usual, was postmaster too) received this message from my hands, and the remainder of the population--I mean the porter and the constable--who were with him at the time read it over his shoulder. They all three looked hard at me, and the station-master said "Tenpence!" in a tone which made my blood curdle. I was doomed to be suspected wherever I went! What did they take me for now?

I decided to take a walk and inspect the country round. It annoyed me to find that the constable with his carbine thought well to take a walk too, and keep me well in view.

I tried to dodge him, but he was too smart for me; and when finally to avoid him I took shelter in a wayside inn, he seated himself on the bench outside and smoked till I was ready to come out.

I discovered a few more inhabitants, but it added nothing to my comfort.

They, too, stared at me and followed me about, until finally I ran back to the station and cried out in my heart for the four o'clock train.

About five o'clock it strolled up. I got in anywhere, without even troubling to look for Michael McCrane. If he should appear at C--, well and good, I would arrest him; if not, I would go home. For the present, at least, I would dismiss him from my mind and try to sleep.

I did try, but that was all. We pa.s.sed station after station. Some we halted at, as it appeared, by accident; some we went past, and then, on second thoughts, pulled up and backed into. At last, as we ran through one of these places I fancied I detected in the gloaming the name C-- painted up.

"Is that C--?" I asked of a fellow-traveller.

"It is so! You should have gone in the back of the train if you wanted to stop there."

Missed again! I grew desperate. The train was crawling along at a foot's pace; my fellow-traveller was not a formidable one. I opened the door and jumped out on to the line.

I was uninjured, and C-- was not a mile away. If I ran I might still be there to meet the back of the train and Michael McCrane.

But as I began to run a grating sound behind me warned me that the train had suddenly pulled up, and a shout proclaimed that I was being pursued.

Half a dozen pa.s.sengers and the guard--none of them pressed for time-- joined in the hue and cry.

What it was all about I cannot imagine; all I know is that that evening, in the meadows near C--, a wretched c.o.c.kney, in a battered chimney-pot hat, and carrying an umbrella, was wantonly run to earth by a handful of natives, and that an hour later the same unhappy person was clapped in the village lock-up for the night as a suspicious character! It had all been tending to this. Fate had marked me for her own, and run me down at last. Perhaps I _was_ a criminal after all, and did not know it. At any rate, I was too fatigued to care much what happened. I "reserved my defence," as they say in the police courts, and resigned myself to spend the night as comfortably as possible in the comparative seclusion of a small apartment which, whatever may have been its defects, compared most favourably with the cabin in which I had lain the night before.

It was about ten o'clock next morning before I had an opportunity of talking my case over with the inspector, and suggesting to him he had better let me go. He, good fellow, at once fell in with my wishes, after hearing my statement, and in his anxiety to efface any unpleasant impressions, I suppose, proposed an adjournment to the "Hotel" to drink "siccess to the ould counthree."

The proposed toast was not sufficiently relevant to the business I had on hand to allure me, so I made my excuses and hastened to the telegraph office to ascertain whether they had any message for me there.

They had. It was from my manager, as I expected; but the contents were astounding--

"Return at once. Robber captured here. Keep down expenses."

It would be hard to say which of these three important sentences struck me as the most cruel. I think the last.

I was standing in the street, staring blankly at the missive, when I was startled beyond measure by feeling a hand on my shoulder, and a voice p.r.o.nouncing my name--

"Samuels!"

It was Michael McCrane. But not the Michael McCrane I knew in the City, or the one I had seen going below on board the steamer. He wore a frock-coat and light trousers, lavender gloves, and a hat--glorious product of that identical box--in which you might see your own face. A rose was in his b.u.t.ton-hole, his hair was brushed, his collar was white, and his chin was absolutely smooth.

"Whatever are you doing here?" he asked.