The Wharf By The Docks Part 4

At the door a cab was waiting. The driver spoke to him the moment he stepped out on the pavement. Evidently he took him for Dudley, his late fare.

"The lady's got out an' gone off, sir. I hollered after her, but she wouldn't wait. Oh, beg pardon, sir," and the man touched his hat, perceiving his mistake; "I took you for the gentleman I brought here with the lady."

"Oh, he'll be down in a minute or two," answered Max.

And then he thought he would wait and see what new developments the disappearance of the lady would lead to. He was getting sick with alarm about his friend. These instances of the blood-stained clothes, the possible journey to Liverpool, and the flight of the mysterious lady, were so suspicious, taken in conjunction with each other, that Max found it impossible to rest until he knew more. He walked a little way along the pavement, and then returned slowly in the middle of the road. He had done this for the third time when Dudley dashed out of the house with rapid steps, and had reached the step of the hansom before he discovered that the vehicle was empty.

An exclamation of dismay escaped his lips, and to the cabman's statement of the lady's disappearance he replied by asking sharply in which direction she had gone. On receiving the information he wanted, he gave the man his fare, and walked rapidly away in the direction the cabman had indicated.

Max followed.

Every moment increased his belief that some appalling circ.u.mstance had occurred by which Dudley's mind had for the time lost its balance. Every word, look and movement on the part of his friend betrayed the fact. Now he was evidently setting off in feverish haste in pursuit of this woman whom he had left in the cab; and Max, who believed that his friend was on the brink of an attack of the insanity which old Mr. Wedmore feared, resolved to dog his footsteps, and not to let his friend go out of his sight until the latter got safely back to his chambers.

Dudley went at a great pace into Holborn, and then he stopped. The traffic had dwindled down to an occasional hansom and to a thin line of foot-pa.s.sengers on the pavements. He looked to right, to left, and then he turned suddenly and came face to face with Max.

"h.e.l.lo!" cried he. "Where are you going to? Where are you putting up?"

"At the Arundel," answered Max, taken aback, and stammering a little.

Dudley had recovered his usual tones.

"Come to my club," said he. "We can get some supper there and have that pipe."

"But how about Liverpool and the friend you had to see off?" asked Max.

Dudley hesitated ever so slightly.

"Oh, he's given me the slip," he answered, in a tone which sounded careless enough. "Gone off without waiting for me. So my conscience is free on his score."

Max said nothing for a moment. Then he thought himself justified in setting a trap for his friend.

"Who is he?" asked he. "Anybody I know?"

"No," replied Dudley. "A man I met in the country, who showed me a good deal of kindness. From Yorks.h.i.+re. Man named Browning. Very good fellow, but erratic. Said he'd wait for me in the cab, and disappeared before I could come down. Had an idea I should make him lose his train, I suppose. Well, never mind him. Come along."

Max went with him in silence. Dudley had not only got back his usual spirits, but seemed to be in a mood of loquacity and liveliness unusual with him. When they got to the club, he ordered oysters and a bottle of champagne, and drank much more freely than was his custom.

It was Max, the ne'er-do-weel, the extravagant one, who drank little and did the listening. Dudley had cast off altogether the gravity and taciturnity which sometimes got him looked upon as a bit of a prig, and chatted and told his friend stories, with a tone and manner of irresponsible gayety which became him ill.

And Max, who was usually the talker, listened as badly as the other told his stories. For all the time he was weighed down with the fear, so strong that it seemed to amount to absolute knowledge, of some horrible danger hanging over his friend.

Abruptly, before he made the expected comment on the last of Dudley's stories, Max rose from his chair and said he must go home.

"I'll see you as far as your diggings first," said he. "It's not much out of way, you know."

At these words Dudley's high spirits suddenly left him, and the furtive look came again into his face.

"Oh," said he, "oh, very well. And on the way I can tell you the whole story of the accident that I saw at Charing Cross, this evening, just before I met you."

So they went out together, and Dudley, as he had suggested, gave his friend a long and extremely circ.u.mstantial account of the way in which the wheel went over the woman, and of the difficulty he and the policeman had experienced in getting her from between the wheels of the van by which she had been crushed.

Max heard him in silence, but did not believe a word. Whatever had reduced Dudley to the plight in which he had returned to his chambers, Max was convinced that it differed in some important details from the version of the affair which he chose to give.

"We won't talk any more about it," he went on, without seeming to remark his friend's silence. "It's a thing I want to forget. It has quite upset me for a time; you could see that yourself when you met me. I--I don't know quite what to do to get the thing out of my mind. I think I shall run down to Datton with you, and see what that will do. What do you think?"

Now, although he had drunk more wine than usual, Dudley knew perfectly well what he was saying, and Max stared at him in astonishment.

"What?" he exclaimed. "After what you told me? About my father?"

"Oh, yes, yes. But I can explain everything. I can, and I will,"

returned Dudley, quickly. "I have not been myself lately. I have had certain business worries. But they are all settled now, and I feel more like myself than I have done for weeks."

Max stopped short and stared at his friend by the light of a gas-lamp.

"Well, you don't look it," said he, shortly.

Dudley laughed loudly, but rather uneasily.

"Don't you think I could give an explanation which would satisfy your father, if I wished?" he asked, with a sudden relapse into gravity.

"I'm hanged if I know," retorted Max, energetically. "You haven't given any explanation which would satisfy _me_."

Dudley stared into his face for a few seconds inquiringly, and then quietly hooked his arm and led him along the Strand.

"You don't want to be satisfied, old chap," said he, in a low voice.

"You know me."

Again Max was deeply touched. This was a sudden and unexpected peep under the surface of deception into the real heart of his old chum. He replied only by a slight twitching of the arm Dudley had taken.

They walked on at a quicker pace, and ran up the stairs to the door of Dudley's rooms in silence.

Dudley went first into the sitting-room and turned up the gas. It did not escape Max that he shot a hurried glance around the room, taking in every corner, as he entered. Talking all the time about the cold and the fog, Dudley went into the adjoining room, and Max saw him pull aside the bed-curtains and look behind them.

Then Max, not wis.h.i.+ng to play the spy on his friend, turned his back; and as he did so he caught sight of the railway ticket which had fallen to the floor from Dudley's pocket before they went out.

Max picked it up, and noted that it was the return half of a first-cla.s.s return ticket from Fenchurch Street to Limehouse, and that it was dated that very day.

He had scarcely noted this, mechanically rather than with any set purpose, when he was startled to find Dudley at his elbow.

Max turned round quickly, but Dudley's eyes were fixed upon the railway ticket.

"You dropped this when you--" began Max, handing it to his friend.

It was not until then, when Dudley took the ticket from him and tossed it into the fireplace with a careless nod, that it flashed into the mind of Max that the incident had some significance.

What on earth had Dudley been doing at Limehouse? His parents had had property there, certainly, many years ago. But not a square foot of the grimy, slimy, auriferous Thames-side land, not a brick or a beam of the warehouses and sheds which had been theirs in the old days, had descended to Dudley. Owing to the fraudulent action of Edward Jacobs, all had had to go.