Waylaid by Wireless/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
CHALLENGED!
When they had quite vanished, Preston shrugged himself up and tried to consider his situation coolly. Mrs. Varris's action toward him that morning made him fairly sure that the Ely police, at least, would not press their suspicions of him further. So he told himself that he was no worse off now than he had expected to be when he started to amuse himself for the summer alone in England. But, since starting, he had gained more than he was willing to let go again without a struggle.
After their eight days together upon the Britannia he was aware, of course, that he had made himself far more than a mere travelling acquaintance to both Ethel Varris and her mother; and he was fully conscious that Ethel had become to him, even in that short time, far more than a mere friend. It thrilled him hotly to appreciate more fully, now, how her unwavering trust in him that morning against all appearances proved her frank friendship for him beyond question.
He could not lose that again, he cried to himself. He looked defiantly down the track which had taken her away from him; but, even if there were another train, he knew he could not follow. He laughed hopelessly at the queer complications of comedy and tragedy in his adventurous position. Why, he could not even rejoin Mr. Dunneston, now, without a more adequate explanation of himself than he could furnish.
He looked up the track. A train, bound for Warwick, puffed into view. Making a sudden determination, he wired hastily to Ely for them to send his luggage after him, and took the train for Warwick. And for twenty days, then, he toured the interior of England alone, avoiding the cathedral towns as carefully as he had kept to them before. So, for twenty days, he saw no more either of Mrs. Varris and her daughter or of Mr. Dunneston. But late in August, as the travellers were working their ways slowly to the ports to take ship back to America, Preston found them all at Plymouth.
The very next morning after his arrival the Englishman entered the breakfast-room of his same hotel upon the Hoe.
To Americans, Plymouth is the place where the first Pilgrims put in with the Mayflower, and where they last prayed and provisioned before setting sail for the New England of the West. But to the English it had been the stronghold and the principal port of their southwest coast for hundreds of years before. They fortified it first in the fourteenth century; and the great, frowning citadel of 1670 still stands and covers the most prominent point on the shore. But the forts of to-day are not conspicuous. They girdle the harbor behind low, outlying banks, built to conceal the mighty, modern mortars and the great disappearing rifles which succeed the old tiers of threatening guns as guardians of Plymouth.
The whole city rises irregularly upon the three points reaching out into the sound and stretches four thousand yards from the Cattewater to the Devonport dockyards. But Plymouth proper holds to the little peninsula directly opposite the entrance of the sound to the sea; and the heart of this peninsula is the Hoe.
Sloping steeply from the sea-front, the Hoe has been smoothed and made into a high, rounded mound, half park and half promenade. It commands a full view of the sound and looks directly over the breakwater at the entrance, toward the Eddystone light, fourteen miles out to sea.
So before the Hoe there pass in daily review the naval and mercantile fleets of Southwest Britain. Back and forth, as they pass in and out of the Hamoaze and the Devonport docks, steam the battle-ships, cruisers, scout-ships, destroyers, and all the attendant ships of the Plymouth division of the channel fleets. And merchant steamers from the West Indies, the Americas, Australia, the Cape, the Baltic, and the Mediterranean, constantly call and clear through the waters before the Hoe.
The Englishman entered the big, high-ceilinged breakfast-room of the hotel which overlooks this busy water-front, with the sense of complete satisfaction which can be attained only by a Briton who has finished his hereditary task.
His ancestral duty was done. He had visited in turn all of the twenty odd cathedrals in England which were standing when his acquisitive ancestor made his first penitential tour. He had the prosperous appearance of one who has entered upon his inheritance.
It was so late in the morning that the room was deserted, save for three or four tardy ones who sat lonely over their mid-morning meal at separate windows.
The Englishman glanced over these critically and was selecting a solitary table for himself, when young Preston lowered the newspaper which had hid him and prevented him from seeing the other.
"Why, Mr. Dunneston!" he cried in surprise.
"I say—Mr. Preston!" the Briton returned, with the same surprise, but with more cautious pleasure.
"Well?" the American began, almost impatiently, sitting back as the Englishman seated himself on the other side of the table and automatically ordered his morning sole, mutton-chop, and "bit of greens, you know." "Well, Mr. Dunneston, I certainly have missed you."
"I say, three weeks, is it not, since I've seen you?" the Englishman returned cordially.
"A little over," the American corrected. "But they seem to have gone well with you, at least!"
"Oh, rather! But I say, so—so they have not gone well with you, Mr. Preston?"
"Oh—they have gone, at any rate," the American evaded. "But you, Mr. Dunneston, you have completed your course at last?"
"Quite. I finished at Exeter two days back."
"And you have satisfied them?"
"Them? The barristers, you mean? Well, rather! But do you know," he continued with recollected indignation, "after I had finished with every blessed cathedral standing in England, and my barristers had wired me the complete satisfaction of the court and that I was properly entered into the entail, I say, do you know, that grubby cousin of mine—the baronet one I believe I mentioned once—"
"Yes," Preston urged on, "I remember. The one with the—title, not the gout!"
"Quite he! Well, the bobry fellow jolly well ran through his own money more than two hundred years ago, you know; and he's done nothing but try after mine ever since. And I say, do you know, he claims to have discovered that our ancestor with the beastly conscience who started all this, went to worship in some church or other in Scotland which is nothing more now than a blessed rooky cairn; and, fancy, the fellow is trying to oblige me to relinquish my claim, or pray on that Scotch stone pile! And I say," he grieved righteously, "fancy, can you, one waiting in Scotland at this season for the rain to stop for a service!"
The American laughed in sympathy.
"Ah! And you, Mr. Preston," the Englishman asked again with reciprocal concern, "how have you been, I say; and what are you about now?"
"I came down here from Tavistock yesterday, Mr. Dunneston," the American replied, "thinking I could get a cabin for home; but I can't say exactly what I am about, now."
"What? From Tavistock—yesterday?" the Englishman inquired carefully.
"Yes; why?" Preston asked.
"Oh, nothing much, probably," the Briton put him off. "But tell me, what did you mean by not knowing what you're about now?"
"I meant I couldn't buy a berth in even a freight steamer for New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, or even for Canada, out of Plymouth for the next two weeks."
"Not within the fortnight?" the Englishman repeated, with disappointment. "Why, you know, after getting final word from my barristers and having the property right again, I more than half fancied I might go to America myself. Really, that was quite half my notion, too, in coming down here. And there is nothing for America within the fortnight?"
"You can sail for Rio de Janeiro at twelve o'clock to-night in the Bahia, the Brazilian mail steamer, which is loading down there now, if you want to, Mr. Dunneston," the American replied. "She has a cabin or two left. I spent yesterday afternoon with the shipping agents of all the lines trying to get a booking, and then looked over the shipping itself, and I found this chance for Rio Janeiro. But for any place in either America north of that, absolutely nothing."
"Have you tried Southampton, then?"
"No; but I shall next week if nothing more turns up here. You can nearly always pick up a released cabin at the last moment there."
"Yes. Quite so." The Englishman dismissed the matter. He looked absently down at the ships in the sound and then, recollecting himself, turned back to his young companion.
"Oh, I say, Mr. Preston," he recalled. "I quite forgot for a moment, but where are your American friends, Mrs. Varris and the really delightful Miss—Varris, was it not? They have not sailed for America already, I hope?"
Preston leaned over and applied himself suddenly to his cold chop, which he had neglected entirely after the Englishman had come. But he did not succeed in hiding the quick coloring of his face.
"They have not sailed yet, I believe," he said.
"Excellent! Then we shall see them soon!"
"I don't believe so."
"Ah, why not?" the Englishman exclaimed. "Where are they, Mr. Preston?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know, Mr. Preston?" He was frankly puzzled now. "I say—I—I beg your pardon—but—I say, astonishingly fine girl that, you know, Mr. Preston; and you know, I understood when I last saw you all at Ely that you were to travel together a bit, and I rather more than fancied that—but you haven't had a misunderstanding, surely, I hope?"
"Oh, no further one after Ely, Mr. Dunneston," the American answered. "I merely left them in Lincolnshire the same morning after you saw us. I have not seen them since."
"In Lincolnshire?" The Englishman's bewilderment increased steadily. "Just after you left Ely?"
"Yes."
"But I say, I understood—that is, they told us in Ely, and you gave us to understand, too, that you were to keep on with them."
"Well, I did not."
"And you say you have not seen them since?"
"No."
"Nor heard from them?"
The American brought himself up and gazed across wonderingly at his companion.
"No; since you wish to know, I have not heard from them, Mr. Dunneston," he said.
"A pardon, Mr. Preston! Ah! A pardon, please!" the Englishman apologized at once. "I say, I did not intend to pry into personals, really," he protested. "And really, you know," he continued, "if you see how I meant it, it was not personal after all," he argued.
"Not personal?"
"No," the Englishman replied easily, "because, I say, it was rather the public, or certainly the police, understanding of it, wasn't it, that you were to travel with Mrs. and Miss Varris and keep on with them? That was how I had it, at least."
"The public—the police understanding, Mr. Dunneston?" The American was now the questioner, bewildered in his turn.
"Precisely, Mr. Preston." The Dunneston descendant twisted the air earnestly where the ancestral mustache used to be. "Wasn't that the understanding which freed you at Ely and let you keep on without—without even surveillance from the police? For you most certainly must recall that she assured us you were not a chance acquaintance, as they said at first, but had come over with them and met them at Ely purposely to travel a bit together, and that therefore you couldn't be the one robbing them. Surely you see that was all that cleared you!"
"Of course."
"But you did not travel with them at all, after leaving Ely?" the Briton inquired again, almost outraged. "You merely went with them away from our local authorities and then—you separated?"
"Yes."
"But you continued in England?"
"Oh—that's obvious, isn't it, Mr. Dunneston?" the American answered impatiently.
"But you did not continue about the cathedral towns?"
"No." The American smiled in spite of himself as he saw the Englishman frankly staring at him in slowly comprehending scrutiny and pondering over this puzzle.
"I sa-ay!" the Briton began cautiously, as he watched his clean-cut young companion carefully. "I say, no offence, Mr. Preston, or—"
"Or no inference! I understand. Go on, Mr. Dunneston!" The American regained a little of his old spirit as he saw the Englishman heavily marshal the fragments of his perplexity together.
"Exactly, Mr. Preston!" the Briton nodded. "I shan't ask you where you have been; but—but ah, just how coincidental have you continued to be, I might put it, Mr. Preston, with the—ah, remainder of the series of robberies in England these past three weeks? They started, you know, and kept to the cathedral towns till you left us at Ely. They left the cathedral towns then, but began at once at Warwick, and since have continued about the towns in as clear a series as before—the last reported from Tavistock only yesterday."
"What, Mr. Dunneston?" The American started out of his chair, going pale in his surprise. "A robbery at Tavistock was reported yesterday? I haven't seen it in the papers!"
"The police appear to have held the report for a time," the Englishman explained, taking a paper from his pocket. "Only the later edition this morning gave it out."
"So that was why you asked a moment ago if I had just come down from Tavistock?" the American inquired. "And that set you to wondering, to put it mildly, how close I have been to the rest of those robberies between Warwick and Tavistock during these weeks since you've seen me?"
The Englishman evidently considered it unnecessary to answer.
"Well, Mr. Dunneston," the American volunteered, "you can see for yourself that, at least, I am not jailed yet!"
"But if you do not wish to be, Mr. Preston—"
The Englishman checked himself cautiously, as though examining his impulse, and then leaned forward again in a burst of confidence and friendship which surprised the American quite as much as it pleased him.
"But if you do not wish to be," he repeated, "I would not let any one else, who knew of the circumstances at Ely, know that you did not continue with your friends about the cathedral towns. Most especially now that you are here at Plymouth trying to return home."
"Thank you, Mr. Dunneston!" the American acknowledged. "But why especially now that I am at Plymouth?" he asked curiously.
"Because, sir, the police are expecting and looking for Mr. Manling here at Plymouth now."
"Manling? The cathedral thief, the—the extraordinarily coincidental one with me?"
"Precisely," the Englishman nodded. "The remarkable American thief who has followed his richer countrymen and women about England this summer, robbing them so audaciously."
"I had heard that the police had given him that name for convenience' sake."
"Rather," the Briton corrected, leaning forward in his almost admiring interest, "he gave himself that name. He has been growing more bold and more simple, too, with every robbery. At Ely, you recall, his series of hauls had already given him an identity with the police," he continued with the return of his old impersonal manner. "But not content with that, Mr. Preston, clearly he has busied himself with building up a personality.
"And he has chosen to create a fortunate one. For he is always simple, subtle—safe. As he has never bungled nor betrayed himself, so he has never injured any one personally. A month ago, you know, he even took to returning the more personal and intimate things he took in his hauls."
"Yes; I know," the American nodded. "He began by returning some things to the Varrises."
The Briton looked up quickly.
"I saw it in the papers, of course," Preston explained.
"Ah! Quite so! So of course you know the rest, but still let me say how I admire his audacity in sometimes even enclosing his apologies whenever he considered he had made an unfortunate haul. But these have been few. For as he has never disturbed any one who would not give him a good haul, I must say he seems never to have robbed any one whom his visit might even embarrass—more than temporarily. And always, Mr. Preston, with what advanced audacity! Really, I can scarcely tell you how I appreciated the way he went into the snorer at Stratford-on-Avon two days after the haul at Warwick. Fancy the fellow entering the room and calmly helping himself to everything under the pillow and, when the man in the bed woke up, I say, think of Mr. Manling telling him that he had been rapping on the door for half an hour, and was finally forced to come in to stop the fellow from snoring, so he could sleep a bit. Why, they say—he had the fellow so apologetic for his bally snoring that he never suspected till morning that he was robbed at all. And then at Windermere where the American bounder he was robbing a bit stopped him from going through his clothes so that he had to take the garments and all with him. I say, rather rich that, the way Manling left them at the tailor's to be pressed and to be returned in the morning with the note to the bally bounder to really keep his clothes more decent."
The American watched his companion silently, not yet certain of his purpose, yet feeling somewhat more than vaguely that he, himself, was being excused, if not positively commended.
"The Hibernia relayed the message to us. An American, they say, six feet, tanned, dark hair and eyes, gray clothes"
"I fancy even our police must appreciate that," the Briton continued reflectively. "Certainly they must be more lenient with him, when they catch him, for the consistent care he has taken to avoid personal injuries. But really, I say, Mr. Preston," the Briton leaned over earnestly and confided in a lower tone, "I must admit that I admire the chap so for his audacity and cleverness that I'd give him more than a chance to get clear from them, if he can. That's why I've told you what I just have, Mr. Preston," he whispered.
"You mean about the police?" Preston inquired.
"Yes; that they think he's here at Plymouth, trying to get back to America."
"But you have not said what makes them think that."
"They have observed how, at first, the crimes kept to the cathedral towns. Then they left the cathedral cities, but still kept to the courses always crowded by rich Americans. But now even the most popular places are being deserted. The Americans are making for the ports; the robberies follow them. From Tavistock Mr. Manling would probably make for Plymouth, for the travellers gathered here waiting for the ships for the States."
"But the police can only suppose this, Mr. Dunneston?" the American inquired. "They have no direct indication at all of this—Mr. Manling?"
"Precisely, Mr. Preston. Still, I believe that the special officer whom I passed in the hall a moment ago, Mr. Preston," the Englishman confided, "has already picked out his man from the circumstantial evidence of the continued coincidences against him. However, as the officer must appreciate that he can prove nothing directly if he arrests him now, I think he must be merely watching his man, hoping he will chance a last and bolder haul by which the police can catch him before he sails."
"In other words, you believe, Mr. Dunneston," the young American returned, impatient with the other's indirectness, "that he is here watching me and waiting for me to try some 'last and bolder' thing so they can catch me at it. He believes that I am Manling?"
"I said to you a moment back, Mr. Preston," the Englishman replied guardedly, "that Mr. Manling—whoever he is—has so caught me with his coolness and audacity that I'd more than half help him to get clear, if I could. So I shall warn you, since you ask it, that I believe this officer surely suspects you of being the man."
"For, of course, you are sure of it yourself now?" Preston demanded.
"At Ely, I confess, I feared it of you, Mr. Preston," the Briton replied. "But to-day at Plymouth I cannot help almost—hoping it, sir!"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, Mr. Preston," the Englishman leaned toward his young companion earnestly, the Briton's love of a sporting proposition lighting his gray eyes, "that Mr. Manling has since shown himself so delightfully diverting and clever and audacious, and he has invariably operated with such careful choice and consideration and has shown himself so decidedly exceptional and—exclusive a pilferer, that it—it would be rather a rare experience to tell, wouldn't it, that I'd actually been travelling about with him? Of course, I realize jolly well that I should go out this moment and tell what I know to that chap in the hall who's watching you in the King's name. But, I say, Mr. Preston, if you have additional audacity to actually attempt to-night and carry off a last, bold haul under the very noses of these police chaps, you can be sure they'll get no help from me. You shall sail Scot free, as far as I can help you! Ah—wait, Mr. Preston!" he protested hastily, as he watched the American's expression. "I was not saying you were Mr. Manling. I was merely saying if you were and—"
"Of course you weren't saying that, Mr. Dunneston!" The American arose grimly. He turned away and stood looking down the Hoe to the busy shipping in the harbor; and, as he stood there, at last a smile began to part his lips again. The Englishman sat gazing at him wonderingly, watching the inevitable turn to humor which things took with the American. Preston swung back to his companion.
"I know that you meant that in the kindest possible way, Mr. Dunneston," he mocked, smiling. "According to your nature, you have to believe that I am Mr. Manling and have been spending the summer in England robbing travellers to divert myself. Being forced, hereditarily, to believe that, why, you were really most generous in your offer to me a moment ago—and I mistook it!"
He turned back to the water-front below them and pointed out to it and the sound beyond.
"Look, Mr. Dunneston," he cried suddenly. "Tell me what do you think of when you see Plymouth Sound?"
"Why, only of Drake and the Armada, of course," the Englishman replied patiently. "Surely you know that Effingham brought his fleet here to wait for it; and here upon the Hoe, directly before us, Drake was playing at bowls when they brought him the news that the Spanish were sighted. Surely one thinks of nothing else to compare with that when he thinks of Plymouth!"
"I'm afraid, Mr. Dunneston, there's a whole nation over there," young Preston pointed across the sea, "that thinks of Plymouth primarily as the port the Mayflower sailed from to help start the United States, three centuries ago.
"Up to that time, I guess, your people and mine, Mr. Dunneston, were probably pretty much the same—even as to their sense of humor. But now—it's funny, isn't it, how much difference just three centuries and the Atlantic Ocean make—to the sense of humor!"
He was turning away after that, when a boy came in from the hotel office and handed him a note.
"What's this?" Preston cried, with a hot surge of his blood. He recognized upon the envelope the writing which had graven itself upon his mind from the note delivered to his room the morning at Ely.
"Dear Mr. Preston,"—he read the few lines hurriedly,—"mother and I are stopping for a few days here at the Tudor in Plymouth. We have just heard that you are at the Grand.
"Both of us have been very much disturbed over the consequences to you—past and impending—of our most unfortunate trouble at Ely. Mother has asked me to write to ask you to come and see us before we leave. It will truly give us both much pleasure, as well as relieve us from the discomfort we have felt over the misunderstanding at Ely, if you will give us an opportunity to correct it before we sail for home.
"We shall be in after nine this evening, when we hope you can and will come.
"Very sincerely,
"Ethel Davis Varris."
"Ah! Good news, I hope?" the Englishman ventured, as his young companion finished.
"Yes; oh—that is, just a line from two people whose ancestors also left in that little ship we were speaking of a moment ago—the Mayflower, you know—and who have since then been accumulating our American ways of considering—oh, thefts and things."
"Ah!" the Englishman comprehended astoundingly. "Ah—and you will not require a fourth for bridge to-night, Mr. Preston?"
"No; for we won't play bridge to-night, Mr. Dunneston!" the young American laughed happily. "That is, I hope we won't!"