Post Haste by R. M. Ballantyne (black male authors TXT) 📗

It is a mere truism to state that many a chain of grave and far-reaching events is set in motion by some insignificant trifle. The touching of a trigger by a child explodes a gun which extinguishes a valuable life, and perhaps throws a whole neighbourhood into difficulties. The lighting of a match may cause a conflagration which shall “bring down” an extensive firm, some of whose dependants, in the retail trade, will go down along with it, and cause widespreading distress, if not ruin, among a whole army of greengrocers, buttermen, and other small fry.

The howling of a bad baby was the comparatively insignificant event which set going a certain number of wheels, whose teeth worked into the cogs which revolved in connection with our tale.

The howling referred to awoke a certain contractor near Pimlico with a start, and caused him to rise off what is popularly known as the “wrong side.” Being an angry man, the contractor called the baby bad names, and would have whipped it had it been his own. Going to his office before breakfast with the effects of the howl strong upon him, he met a humble labourer there with a surly “Well, what do you want?”

The labourer wanted work. The contractor had no work to give him. The labourer pleaded that his wife and children were starving. The contractor didn’t care a pinch of snuff for his wife or children, and bade him be off. The labourer urged that the times were very hard, and he would be thankful for any sort of job, no matter how small. He endeavoured to work on the contractor’s feelings by referring to the premature death, by starvation, of his pet parrot, which had been for years in the family, and a marvellous speaker, having been taught by his mate Bill. The said Bill was also out of work, and waiting for him outside. He too would be thankful for a job—anything would do, and they would be willing to work for next to nothing. The contractor still professed utter indifference to the labourer’s woes, but the incident of the parrot had evidently touched a cord which could not be affected by human suffering. After a few minutes’ consideration he said there was a small job—a pump at the corner of a certain street not far off had to be taken down, to make way for contemplated alterations. It was not necessary to take it down just then, but as the labourers were so hard up for a job they were at liberty to undertake that one.

Thus two wheels were set in motion, and the result was that the old pump at the corner of Purr Street was uprooted and laid low by these labourers, one of whom looked into the lower end of the pump and said “Hallo!”

His companion Bill echoed the “Hallo!” and added “What’s up?”

“W’y, if there ain’t somethink queer inside of the old pump,” said the labourer, going down on both knees in order to look more earnestly into it. “I do b’lieve it’s letters. Some double-extra stoopids ’ave bin an’ posted ’em in the pump.”

He pulled out handfuls of letters as he spoke, some of which, from their appearance, must have lain there for years, while others were quite fresh!

A passing letter-carrier took charge of these letters, and conveyed them to the Post-Office, where the machinery of the department was set in motion on them. They were examined, faced, sorted, and distributed. Among them was the letter which George Aspel had committed to the care of Tottie Bones at the time of his first arrival in London, and thus it came to pass that the energies of Sir James Clubley, Baronet, were roused into action.

“Dear me! how strange!” said Sir James to himself, on reading the letter. “This unaccountable silence is explained at last. Poor fellow, I have judged him hastily. Come! I’ll go find him out.”

But this resolve was more easily made than carried into effect. At the hotel from which the letter had been dated nothing was known of the missing youth except that he had departed long long ago, leaving as his future address the name of a bird-stuffer, which name had unfortunately been mislaid—not lost. Oh no—only mislaid! On further inquiry, however, there was a certain undersized, plain-looking, and rather despised chamber-maid who retained a lively and grateful recollection of Mr Aspel, in consequence of his having given her an unexpectedly large tip at parting, coupled with a few slight but kindly made inquiries as to her welfare, which seemed to imply that he regarded her as a human being. She remembered distinctly his telling her one evening that if any one should call for him in his absence he was to be found at the residence of a lady in Cat Street, Pimlico, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember the number, though she thought it must have been number nine, for she remembered having connected it in her mind with the well-known lives of a cat.

“Cat Street! Strange name—very!” said Sir James. “Are you sure it was Cat Street?”

“Well, I ain’t quite sure, sir,” replied the little plain one, with an inquiring frown at the chandelier, “but I know it ’ad somethink to do with cats. P’r’aps it was Mew Street; but I’m quite sure it was Pimlico.”

“And the lady’s name?”

“Well, sir, I ain’t sure of that neither. It was somethink queer, I know, but then there’s a-many queer names in London—ain’t, there, sir?”

Sir James admitted that there were, and advised her to reflect on a few of them.

The little plain one did reflect—with the aid of the chandelier—and came to the sudden conviction that the lady’s name had to do with flowers. “Not roses—no, nor yet violets,” she said, with an air of intense mental application, for the maiden’s memory was largely dependent on association of ideas; “it might ’ave been marigolds, though it don’t seem likely. Stay, was it water—?—Oh! it was lilies! Yes, I ’ave it now: Miss Lilies-somethink.”

“Think again, now,” said the Baronet, “everything depends on the ‘something,’ for Miss Lilies is not so extravagantly queer as you seem to think her name was.”

“That’s true, sir,” said the perplexed maid, with a last appealing gaze at the chandelier, and beginning with the first letter of the alphabet—Miss Lilies A— Lilies B— Lilies C—, etcetera, until she came to K. “That’s it now. I ’ave it almost. It ’ad to do with lots of lilies, I’m quite sure—quantities, it must ’ave been.”

On Sir James suggesting that quantities did not begin with a K the little plain one’s feelings were slightly hurt, and she declined to go any further into the question. Sir James was therefore obliged to rest content with what he had learned, and continued his search in Pimlico. There he spent several hours in playing, with small shopkeepers and policemen, a game somewhat analogous to that which is usually commenced with the words “Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral?” The result was that eventually he reached Number 9 Purr Street, and found himself in the presence of Miss Lillycrop.

That lady, however, damped his rising hopes by saying that she did not know where George Aspel was to be found, and that he had suddenly disappeared—to her intense regret—from the bird-warehouse in which he had held a situation. It belonged to the brothers Blurt, whose address she gave to her visitor.

Little Tottie Bones, who had heard the conversation through the open parlour door, could have told where Aspel was to be found, but the promise made to her father sealed her lips; besides, particular inquiries after any one were so suggestive to her of policemen, and being “took,” that she had a double motive to silence.

Mr Enoch Blurt could throw no light on the subject, but he could, and did, add to Sir James’s increasing knowledge of the youth’s reported dissipation, and sympathised with him strongly in his desire to find out Aspel’s whereabouts. Moreover, he directed him to the General Post-Office, where a youth named Maylands, a letter-sorter—who had formerly been a telegraph message-boy,—and an intimate friend of Aspel, was to be found, and might be able to give some information about him, though he (Mr Blurt) feared not.

Phil Maylands could only say that he had never ceased to make inquiries after his friend, but hitherto without success, and that he meant to continue his inquiries until he should find him.

Sir James Clubley therefore returned in a state of dejection to the sympathetic Miss Lillycrop, who gave him a note of introduction to a detective—the grave man in grey,—a particular friend and ally of her own, with whom she had scraped acquaintance during one of her many pilgrimages of love and mercy among the poor.

To the man in grey Sir James committed his case, and left him to work it out.

Now, the way of a detective is a mysterious way. Far be