Mr. Chivers wiped the perspiration from his face in testimony of his exertions. Dirty little streams were rolling down his forehead and trickling upon his poor faded cheeks. He mopped up these evidences of his fatigue with a red cotton handkerchief, and gave a deprecatory sigh.
“If there’s anybody to lay blame on, it ain’t me,” he said mildly. “I said all along you ought to have had help. A man as is on his own ground, and knows his own ground, is more than a match for one cove, however hard he may work.”
The detective turned fiercely upon his meek dependent.
“Who’s blaming you?” he cried impatiently. “I wouldn’t cry out before I was hurt, if I were you.”
They had reached the railway station by this time.
“How long is it since you missed him?” asked Mr. Grimstone of the penitent Chivers.
“Three-quarters of a hour, or it may be a hour,” Tom added doubtfully.
“I dare say it is an hour,” muttered the detective.
He walked straight to one of the chief officials, and asked what trains had left within the last hour.
“Two—both market trains: one eastward, Selby way; the other for Penistone, and the intervening stations.”
The detective looked at the timetable, running his thumbnail along the names of the stations.
“That train will reach Penistone in time to catch the Liverpool train, won’t it?” he asked.
“Just about.”
“What time did it go?”
“The Penistone train?”
“Yes.”
“About half an hour ago; at 2:30.”
The clocks had struck three as Mr. Grimstone made his way to the station.
“Half an hour ago,” muttered the detective. “He’d have had ample time to catch the train after giving Chivers the slip.”
He questioned the guards and porters as to whether any of them had seen a man answering to the description of the “Softy”: a white-faced, humpbacked fellow, in corduroys and a fustian jacket; and even penetrated into the ticket-clerk’s office to ask the same question.
No; none of them had seen Mr. Stephen Hargraves. Two or three of them recognized him by the detective’s description, and asked if it was one of the stablemen from Mellish Park that the gentleman was inquiring after. Mr. Grimstone rather evaded any direct answer to this question. Secrecy was, as we know, the principle upon which he conducted his affairs.
“He may have contrived to give ’em all the slip,” he said confidentially to his faithful but dispirited ally. “He may have got off without any of ’em seeing him. He’s got the money about him, I’m all but certain of that; and his game is to get off to Liverpool. His inquiries after the trains yesterday proves that. Now I might telegraph, and have him stopped at Liverpool—supposing him to have given us all the slip, and gone off there—if I like to let others into the game; but I don’t. I’ll play to win or lose; but I’ll play single-handed. He may try another dodge, and get off Hull way by the canal-boats that the market-people use, and then slip across to Hamburg, or something of that sort; but that ain’t likely—these fellows always go one way. It seems as if the minute a man has taken another man’s life, or forged his name, or embezzled his money, his ideas get fixed in one groove, and never can soar higher than Liverpool and the American packet.”
Mr. Chivers listened respectfully to his patron’s communications. He was very well pleased to see the serenity of his employer’s mind gradually returning.
“Now, I’ll tell you what, Tom,” said Mr. Grimstone. “If this chap has given us the slip, why he’s given us the slip, and he’s got a start of us, which we shan’t be able to pick up till half-past ten o’clock tonight, when there’s a train that’ll take us to Liverpool. If he hasn’t given us the slip, there’s only one way he can leave Doncaster, and that’s by this station; so you stay here patient and quiet till you see me, or hear from me. If he is in Doncaster, I’m jiggered if I don’t find him.”
With which powerful asseveration Mr. Grimstone walked away, leaving his scout to keep watch for the possible coming of the “Softy.”
XXXIX
Talbot Bulstrode Makes Atonement for the Past
John Mellish and Talbot Bulstrode walked to and fro upon the lawn before the drawing-room windows on that afternoon on which the detective and his underling lost sight of Stephen Hargraves. It was a dreary time, this period of watching and waiting, of uncertainty and apprehension; and poor John Mellish chafed bitterly under the burden which he had to bear.
Now that his friend’s common sense had come to his relief, and that a few plain outspoken sentences had dispersed the terrible cloud of mystery; now that he himself was fully assured of his wife’s innocence, he had no patience with the stupid country people who held themselves aloof from the woman he loved. He wanted to go out and do battle for his slandered wife; to hurl back every base suspicion into the faces that had scowled upon his idolized Aurora. How could they dare, these foul-minded slanderers, to harbour one base thought against the purest, the most perfect of women? Mr. Mellish of course quite forgot that he, the rightful defender of all this perfection, had suffered his mind to be for a time obscured beneath the black shadow of that vile suspicion.
He hated the old friends of his youth for their base avoidance of him; the servants of his household for a half-doubtful, half-solemn expression of face, which