Coulson Kernahan

“ The bright prominent eyes, beautiful as a woman’s, the delicately clear complexion, the straw-coloured hair, the aquiline nose with the strange upward arching of the nostrils, the curious knitting of the brows over the eyes, the full lips that spoke of voluptuousness unscrupulous and cruel, the firm, finely-moulded chin—all these there was no mistaking, in spite of his woman’s dress. As I looked at him the scene in the stuffy smoking carriage on the Southend railway came back to me, and when in his quick, incisive way he asked, “Well, sir, and what have you to say for yourself?” ”

“ You hold Ireland in the thrall of cruel oppression—for cowardice is always cruel—not because of any sisterly feeling for her or love for her people, whom you hate and who hate you with an undying hate, but because you are afraid to let her go free. ”

“ Had it been my intention to abandon my quest I should have no choice but to acquaint New Scotland Yard with what had come to my knowledge. But, as a matter of fact, I was more than ever set on bringing the miscreant, Captain Shannon, to justice—and this not merely for the sake of reward, or because of the craving for adventure which had first urged me to the enterprise, but because of the loathing which I entertained for the monster whom I had with my own eyes seen at his hellish work. ”

“ But if an accidental outbreak like the French Revolution could set rivers of blood running in France, what may we not expect from the Great Revolution which, when it comes—as come it must—will be the result, not of chance, but of long years of systematic propagation of socialistic principles among the masses, which will be the outcome of the most subtly-planned and gigantic scheme for the liberation of mankind which the world has ever known! ”

“ Those who so decide will not be too hard upon me when I confess that, in allowing myself to lose sight of the person who had been in hiding on the hulk, I made, as events proved, a fatal and, but for other circumstances, an irretrievable mistake. That I am but a bungler at the best is, I fear, already only too evident, though I make bold to say that it is not often that I bungle so badly as I did on this occasion. ”

“ If I could satisfy myself by a visit to the hulk that the person who had been concealed there was really a woman, I need trouble myself no further about the vessel and its occupants. But if, on the other hand, I found evidence which went to prove that the supposed Mrs. Hughes was of the male sex, I should have good cause to believe that I had indeed discovered the hiding-place of the redoubtable James Mullen. ”

“ I can to help you, but only on one condition. How heartily my husband and I abhor the acts of those with whom you are associated you must know. Not even to save your life, not even to keep our connection with you from becoming known, not even to save our children from being branded throughout their lives as the relatives of a man who was accused of the blackest murder, would we move hand or foot in any matter which might even in the smallest detail further the infamous scheme in which your associates are engaged. ”

“ My motives for having kept silent would be open to the worst interpretation, and I should be everywhere denounced as an enemy of society whose criminal vanity had made him think himself capable of coping single-handed with the greatest artist in crime of the century, and whose yet more criminal greed and anxiety to secure the entire reward for himself had led him to withhold from the proper authorities information by means of which the capture of the arch-murderer might have been effected and the last dreadful outrage prevented. ”

“ With a howl of hatred more horrible than that of any tiger—for no wild beast is half so hellish in its cruelty as your human tiger—he sprang at me, beating at my face, now with closed fist, now open-handed and with clutching, tearing nails, kicking with his feet, biting and snapping at my hands and throat like a dog, and screaming like a very madman. ”

“ Detectives and policemen, taken as a whole, are by no means the bunglers and boobies that they are made out to be in the pantomimes and in the pages of detective stories. I do not say that they are all born geniuses in the detection of crime, for genius is no commoner among detectives than it is among bakers, bankers, clergymen, novelists, barristers, or cooks. ”

“ Upwards of a dozen of these nests of devilry are moored off the island, and they are the first objects to catch the eye as one looks out from the sea wall.
In view of the fact that the position of Canvey in regard to one of the greatest water highways (68) in the world is like that of a house which lies only a few yards back from a main road, one wonders at first that such a locality should have been selected as the storage place of so vast a quantity of a deadly explosive. ”

“ But, much as I love my craft, and generous and large-hearted as I have always found literary men—at all events, large-brained literary men—to be, I cannot profess much admiration for the fussy folk who seem to imagine that God made our world and the infinite worlds around it, life and death, and the human heart, with its joys and sorrows and hope of immortality, for no other reason than that they should have something to write about. ”

“ In an instant the restless, hurrying human streams that ebb and flow ceaselessly in the narrow channel of Fleet Street—like contending rivers running between lofty banks—had surged up in a huge wave around him. In the next a policeman, pushing back the crowd with his right hand and his left, had forced a way to the man’s side, inquiring gruffly, “Now then, what’s up? And where?”
“Murder! The editor’s just been stabbed in his room by Captain Shannon or one of his agents. Don’t let any one out. The assassin may not have had time to get away,” was the rejoinder. ”

“ Hence it is my habit every now and then to put away from me all that is connected with books and the making of books, and to seek only to live my life, and to possess my own soul and this wonderful world about us. ”

“ You and Hughes, once locked securely in the cabin, and a fuse put to the dynamite, I ought by now to have been half a mile off in the dinghy, and on my way to join my sister at Gravesend. We should have slipped off quietly in the confusion of the explosion, for no one would know that it didn’t occur, as explosions have occurred before, through the carelessness of the man in charge. And you and Hughes, the only two people who could set matters right, would have gone to join the dead men, who tell no tales. ”

“ FOR THE SECOND TIME “But when you had satisfied yourself that there was a man in hiding on the ‘Cuban Queen,’” says the reader, “and when you had every reason for suspecting that man to be Mullen, why not at once arrest him? Why go to work like Tom Sawyer in ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ who, when he wished to rescue Jim the nigger from the woodshed, must needs make a seven days’ job of it, and dig the poor wretch out, when it would have been an easy matter to abstract the key and let him out through the door?” ”

“ The first is that the members know well that the greatest enemy with which they have to contend—the last country to be convinced of the righteousness of their cause—will be England, that prince-ridden, priest-ridden, peer-ridden nation of flunkeys and enemies of freedom which shed the blood of her own children in America rather than grant them their rightful independence, and now seeks in a similar way to keep Ireland, India, Canada, and Australia under her cruel heel. ”

“ But we—ah God! was ever so unreasonable a people?—we do not simper and dance to the fiddling of this dummy king who is not even of our own choosing, for we are ungracious enough to remember that we have in our midst men of older lineage and nobler blood than he. ”

“ Not for the first time in my life—not for the first time in this enterprise—I acted as only one could act who was possessed by some spirit of mischief for his own undoing. Even to myself the impulse which comes over me at times to play the fool—to say or do at the critical moment the one word or thing which ought to be left unsaid or undone, is altogether unaccountable. ”

“ But what a man it is, Hughes! Such geniality, such urbanity, such a flow of spirits, (290) such a fund of information, and, above all, such manners!”
Hughes, who had probably never seen Mullen in this vein before, looked first at him and then at me in astonishment.
“Stow your jaw!” I said shortly. “If you’re going to pay me for the job, pay me and let me go!”
“Certainly, certainly, my dear fellow,” replied Mullen, smiling. “Yes, you and I have a little account to settle, haven’t we? I’ll pay you, by all means. I always do pay my debts, and with interest. First, about the hulk.” ”

“ But I’m not a detective, and I don’t concern myself one way or the other with your doings, legal or illegal. What I came here to find out is purely a private family affair, and has nothing in the world to do with you or your betting business. A man I know has disappeared, and his family are anxious to get news of him. I’ve got an idea that he is in Stanby, and that he is having letters addressed to your care under an assumed name. Now look here. You’ve got it in your power to spoil my game, I admit; and I’ve got it in my power to give the police a hint that might be inconvenient to you. ”

“ Well I can’t tell you my purpose in this business just now, except to say that if you knew it you’d be with me heart and soul, and that if my surmise is right the person we have just seen dressed like a woman isn’t a woman at all but a man. He isn’t going to Hole Haven, for he’s just turned down the path that leads to the ferry at Benfleet. It looks as if he meant catching the nine o’clock train for London from Southend. ”

“ Knowing, as I did, how uncontrollable was the feeling of the populace in regard to the outrage, I could not disguise from myself that a man who made such a confession as I had to make, would—should he be recognised in the streets—run a very good chance of being mobbed, if not lynched.
An infuriated mob is not given to make nice distinctions, and so long as it has a scapegoat on which to wreak vengeance it does not wait to inquire too particularly into the question of the scapegoat’s innocence or guilt. ”

“ And you know too the familiar bungler who is always boasting about his astuteness, unless, as occasionally happens (but only in the pages of a detective novel, for in real life our friends are more ready to record our failures than our successes) , he has some applauding Boswell—a human note of exclamation—who passes his life in ecstasies of admiring wonder at his friend’s marvellous penetration. ”

“ It must be remembered that in England we have had for more than half a century a Queen who does not forget that during that time a complete revolution has taken place in many previously existing beliefs and systems, a Queen who knows that England will never tolerate another George IV., who recognises that what was patiently borne sixty, forty, and twenty years ago, will not be endured for a moment to-day, and has wisely avoided everything which can put royalty on its trial or the temper of the people to the test. ”

“ Ireland is no mere pendant to England, like Anglesea or the Isle of Wight; she is a separate and different country, scarcely smaller in size, complete in herself, and peopled by a nation of different creed, different temperament, and different race. ”

“ But Ireland, graceless, thankless, stubborn Ireland, is not one whit more loyal after receiving this royal boon, for she knows that you rule over her by the coward’s right—the right of the strong to oppress and make subject the weak. ”

“ My powers of recuperation are great, and a few days saw me comparatively well in body, though by no means easy in mind. Up to this point my search for Captain Shannon had seemed to me a somewhat public-spirited and deserving enterprise. To bring such a scoundrel to justice would be doing a service to the country and to humanity; and in the wild scene of excitement which I knew would follow the news of his arrest I liked to picture myself as receiving the thanks of the community, and in fact being regarded very much as the hero of the hour. ”

“ Not often in my life have I experienced so bitter a disappointment. I had hoped great things of this visit to the “Cuban Queen;” but though I searched every part of the hulk, including the hold, which, as there happened at that moment to be no dynamite on board, was not secured, I found no evidence as to the sex of Hughes’ visitor. To describe the fruitless search in detail is unnecessary. Whoever “Mrs. Hughes” might be, she had evidently taken pains to insure that every trace of her presence should be removed. ”

“ They have against them the most gigantic and far-reaching organisation which has been formed within the history of man,—an organisation, the wealth and power of which are practically unlimited,—which counts among its members statesmen in every Court in Europe; statesmen who, although they hold the highest offices of trust in their country’s councils, are secretly working in connection with the Federation,—an organisation which has spies and eyes in every place, and will spare neither man, woman, nor child in the terrible vengeance which will be visited upon its enemies. ”

“ I am the one and only soul in this world—where, young as he is, he feels himself an outcast—who understands him. And everything depends upon his associations. He might be a good man or he might be criminal. ”

“ If Mullen had a small yacht lying off the town, and lived on board, as men with the yachting craze sometimes do, the only person who need know anything about his movements would be the paid hand, or skipper, and it would be comparatively easy to find a suitable man who was not given to gossip, and to engage him under some explanation which would effectually prevent his entertaining any suspicion as to his employer’s identity.
Before commencing my search for Mullen, I thought it advisable to look up an old friend of mine, Hardy Muir, a painter, who lives a mile or two out of Southend. ”

“ Even in the great thoroughfares, where during the five preceding days blows have rained thick and fast, with scarce a moment’s interval, upon the ringing anvils of traffic, there is a perceptible lull, but in the side streets there is absolute silence.
When I saw the man with the red beard and brown bag turn down Foster Lane, which, as every Londoner knows, is a narrow side street at the back of the General Post Office, I felt that it was indeed a happy thought which had prevented me from changing my shoes when I (221) received Grant’s summons in the morning. ”

“ In the first place, I had to recognise that in intrusting the task to Quickly I had one or two very ugly possibilities to face. Though a sensible fellow enough for ordinary purposes, he was hardly the sort of man one would select for so delicate a piece of work as that of shadowing a suspect. He might prove himself sufficiently clever to carry it through successfully, but it was much more likely that he would fail, and it was even conceivable that he might so bungle it as to attract the attention of Mullen, and thus to frighten away the very bird for whom I was spreading a net. ”

“ I said, looking round approvingly after I had seated myself. “If one doesn’t mind a lonely life (it is lonely I suppose?) , one might do worse than turn hulk-keeper.”
Hughes grunted by way of reply, but whether this was to be taken as signifying acquiescence or dissent I was unable to say, his face being at the moment hidden in a corner locker, whence he presently emerged with a bottle of Old Tom and a glass. ”

“ As a matter of fact, literature is to life what a dog’s tail is to his body—a very valuable appendage; but the dog must wag the tail, not the tail the dog, as some of these gentry would have us to believe. ”

“ When the man in hiding on the “Cuban Queen” lifted his head and looked me in the face, I knew at once that I was in the presence, if not of James Mullen, at all events of the person with whom I had travelled to Southend on the occasion when he had objected so forcibly to the striking of a fusee. ”