But Spurge shook his head.
“Not me, guv’nor!” he said resolutely. “I ain’t no opinion o’ consultations with lawyers and policemen—plain clothes or otherwise. They ain’t no mortal good whatever, guv’nor, when it comes to horse sense! ’Cause why? ’Tain’t their fault—it’s the system. They can’t do nothing, start nothing, suggest nothing!—they can only do things in the official, cut-and-dried, red-tape way, Guv’nor—you and me can do better.”
“Well?” asked Copplestone.
“Listen!” continued Spurge. “There ain’t no doubt that that gold was carried off early this morning—must ha’ been between the time I left Jim and sunup, ’cause they’d want to do the job in darkness. Ain’t no reasonable doubt, neither, that the motorcar what they used came here into Norcaster. Now, guv’nor, I ask you—where is it possible they’d make for? Not a railway station, ’cause them boxes ’ud be conspicuous and easy traced when inquiry was made. And yet they’d want to get ’em away—as soon as possible. Very well—what’s the other way o’ getting any stuff out o’ Norcaster? What? Why—that!”
He jerked his thumb in the direction of a patch of grey water which shone dully at the end of the alley and while his thumb jerked his eye winked.
“The river!” he went on. “The river, guv’nor! Don’t this here river, running into the free and bounding ocean six miles away, offer the best chance? What we want to do is to take a look round these here docks and quays and wharves—keeping our eyes open—and our ears as well. Come on with me, guv’nor—I know places all along this riverside where you could hide the Bank of England till it was wanted—so to speak.”
“But the others?” suggested Copplestone. “Hadn’t we better fetch them?”
“No!” retorted Spurge, assertively. “Two on us is enough. You trust to me, guv’nor—I’ll find out something. I know these docks—and all that’s alongside ’em. I’d do the job myself, now—but it’ll be better to have somebody along of me, in case we want a message sending for help or anything of that nature. Come on—and if I don’t find out before noon if there’s any queer craft gone out o’ this since morning—why, then, I ain’t what I believe myself to be.”
Copplestone, who had considerable faith in the poacher’s shrewdness, allowed himself to be led into the lowest part of the town—low in more than one sense of the word. Norcaster itself, as regards its ancient and time-hallowed portions, its church, its castle, its official buildings and highly-respectable houses, stood on the top of a low hill; its docks and wharves and the mean streets which intersected them had been made on a stretch of marshland that lay between the foot of that hill and the river. And down there was the smell of tar and of merchandise, and narrow alleys full of seagoing men and raucous-voiced women, and queer nooks and corners, and ships being laden and ships being stripped of their cargoes and such noise and confusion and inextricable mingling and elbowing that Copplestone thought it was as likely to find a needle in a haystack as to make anything out relating to the quest they were engaged in.
But Zachary Spurge, leading him in and out of the throngs on the wharves, now taking a look into a dock, now inspecting a quay, now stopping to exchange a word or two with taciturn gentlemen who sucked their pipes at the corners of narrow streets, now going into shady-looking public houses by one door and coming out at another, seemed to be remarkably well satisfied with his doings and kept remarking to his companion that they would hear something yet. Nevertheless, by noon they had heard nothing, and Copplestone, who considered casual search of this sort utterly purposeless, announced that he was going to more savoury neighborhoods.
“Give it another turn, guv’nor,” urged Spurge. “Have a bit o’ faith in me, now! You see, guv’nor, I’ve an idea, a theory, as you might term it, of my very own, only time’s too short to go into details, like. Trust me a bit longer, guv’nor—there’s a spot or two down here that I’m fair keen on taking a look at—come on, guv’nor, once more!—this is Scarvell’s Cut.”
He drew his unwilling companion round a corner of the wharf which they were just then patrolling and showed him a narrow creek which, hemmed in by ancient buildings, some of them half-ruinous, sail lofts, and sheds full of odds and ends of merchandise, cut into the land at an irregular angle and was at that moment affording harbourage to a mass of small vessels, just then lying high and dry on the banks from which the tide had retreated. Along the side of this creek there was just as much crowding and confusion as on the wider quays; men were going in and out of the sheds and lofts; men were busy about the sides of the small craft. And again the feeling of uselessness came over Copplestone.
“What’s the good of all this, Spurge!” he exclaimed testily. “You’ll never—”
Spurge suddenly laid a grip on his companion’s elbow and twisted him aside into a narrow entry between the sheds.
“That’s the good!” he answered in an exulting voice. “Look there, guv’nor! Look at that North Sea tug—that one, lying out there! Whose face is, now a-peeping out o’ that hatch? Come, now?”
Copplestone looked in the direction which Spurge indicated. There, lying moored to the wharf, at a point exactly opposite a tumble-down sail loft, was one of those strongly-built tugs which ply between the fishing fleets and the ports. It was an eminently business-looking craft, rakish for its class, and it bore marks of much recent sea usage. But Copplestone gave no more than a passing glance at it—what attracted and fascinated his eyes was the face of a man who had come up from
