Then it struck me. I had been a fool to believe that Fordyce Jukes would think of following me himself, knowing that I would instantly have recognized him. He must have some accomplice – and here he was, the man in the boat, grimly biding his time; the man, perhaps, who had tapped me on the shoulder outside the Diorama; and the man who had pushed past me under the Egyptian portals at Abney Cemetery. No longer invisible; no longer shadow- hidden: he was here, in full daylight, though still out of reach. But sweet relief washed over me on seeing him; for now, I hoped, I could begin to turn the tables.
‘What’s that you say?’ Le Grice was reaching back for me to hand him his coat.
‘I said nothing. Here.’
I threw his coat at him, and then turned again to look back at our pursuer. If I could lure him from the safety of his boat onto dry land, then I might contrive an opportunity to confront him. I pulled on my coat, feeling the reassuring weight of the pocket-pistols I always carried with me. Then I gave one more look astern, to fix in my mind the distant figure of the watcher.
He was exceptionally tall, with broad shoulders – even broader, perhaps, than Le Grice’s; clean shaven, as far as I could tell, though his upturned coat collar might conceal whiskers; and his large ungloved hands gripped the oars purposefully as he contended with the current to maintain his stationary position. But the more I scrutinized him, the more anxious I became. A formidable opponent, doubtless; but I am also a big man, and was confident that I could give a good account of myself, if it came to it. Why, then, this anxiety? What was it about this bobbing figure that discomfited me?
We gained the street, and proceeded to Le Grice’s Club, the United Service. Le Grice had been kicking around for some years with no fixed prospect in view; but being a soldier’s son, the opening of hostilities in the East earlier in the year, and the despatch of the expeditionary force to the Crimea, had suddenly stirred him to buy into the Guards, though he had yet to take up his duties. He talked excitedly of his impending military career. Like everyone at that time, his head was full of the great events in the Russian campaign, especially of the Light Brigade’s heroic charge at Balaclava, soon to be so memorably evoked in Mr Tennyson’s great ode.* For my part, I was happy to let him talk on, for my mind was occupied with our friend from the river. I had expected to catch sight of him by now, but, to my surprise, no one appeared to be following us.
We reached the steps of the Club, crowded with arriving members, without incident. Luncheon was excellent in every respect. Le Grice, in fine form, called for a second bottle of champagne, and then another; but I wished to stay alert, thinking still of our pursuer, and so let him have the lion’s share. After an hour or so had passed, it became apparent that my companion was in no fit state to row back with me; and so, after putting him into a hansom, I returned to the river alone.
Stopping every few yards to make sure I was not being tracked, I finally arrived at Hungerford Steps, retrieved the skiff, and prepared to row back. My head was racing. Where was he? I set off, turning my head from time to time, expecting he would be there, but I could see nothing. Arriving at Temple Pier, I stood up to moor the craft, lost my balance, and fell back into the river. As I sat there, in two feet of cold stinking water, the amused object of attention of a number of passers-by on the embankment above, I saw the dark figure of the solitary rower. Once more he had stopped his craft mid-stream, laid back his oars, and sat looking straight ahead with ominous concentration. Again, no features were discernible, simply this alarming attitude of acute attentiveness.
Cursing under my breath, I slopped and splashed my way back to Temple-street. At each corner I stopped and looked back, to see if the mysterious rower had disembarked his craft and was following me, but there was no sign of him. Unable to bear the water in my boots any longer, I tore them off in frustrated fury and walked the last few yards to the stair-case of my chambers in just my stockinged feet.
And so it was, with my sodden stockings muffling the sound of my footsteps on the stairs, that I came upon Fordyce Jukes bending down at my door, preparing to slip something underneath it.
He screamed like a stuck pig as, throwing my dripping boots on the stairs, I grabbed him by his miserable neck, and hurled him to the floor.
Holding him still by the scruff, like the cur he was, I unlocked the door, and kicked him inside.
He cowered in the corner, his hand across his face.
‘Mr Glapthorn! Mr Glapthorn!’ he whimpered. ‘Whatever is the matter? It is me, your neighbour Fordyce Jukes. Do you not know me?’
‘Know you?’ I snarled back. ‘Oh yes, I know you. I know you very well for the villain you are.’
He leaned back a little into the corner, letting his hand drop away from his face to reveal a look of genuine alarm. I had him now.
‘Villain? What can you mean? What villainy have I done to you?’
I advanced towards him, as he frantically forced himself back yet further into the corner, the heels of his boots scraping noisily on the boards, in a futile attempt to escape the beating that I was now preparing to administer. But something held me back.
‘Well, let us see now,’ said I. ‘Perhaps this will serve as an instance.’
I turned away from him and went back to the door, picked up the paper he had been pushing under it when I had arrived unnoticed behind him, and began to read it.
It was written in a highly distinctive hand; but it was the distinctiveness of the professional scribe, the practised hand of a solicitor’s clerk. It bore no resemblance at all to either of the notes that Bella and I had received. And the message it contained? An invitation for Mr Edward Glapthorn to join Mr Fordyce Jukes, and a few other friends, at a dinner to celebrate his birthday, at the Albion Tavern, on Saturday evening, 12th November.
I stood in silent befuddlement.
What on earth could be happening? I had caught the rogue red-handed, or so I had thought; and now – this! Was it some kind of diabolical variation on his usual game to throw me off the scent? And then, as I considered the matter, the clearer became the possibility that I might have been mistaken – dangerously mistaken – about the identity of the blackmailer. But if not Jukes, then who was it?
My stomach knotted as the threatening figure of the solitary rower rose up before my mind’s eye. The anxiety that I had earlier experienced returned; but the truth had not yet begun to form itself, and I could not see what I should have seen, when I had tried to force the blackmail note to give up the identity of its author.
Still Jukes cowered in the corner, but he had seen my discomposure on reading the invitation, and his attitude
