The Grand Babylon Hotel - Arnold Bennett (surface ebook reader .TXT) 📗

“Depends on what you call a lark,” said Hazell; “it’s not much of a lark tearing down midstream like this in a fog. You never know when you mayn’t be in kingdom come with all these barges knocking around. I expect that chap hid in the dinghy when he first caught sight of us, and then slipped his painter as soon as I’d gone.”

The boat was moving at a rapid pace with the tide. Steering was a matter of luck and instinct more than anything else. Every now and then Hazell, who held the lines, was obliged to jerk the boat’s head sharply round to avoid a barge or an anchored vessel. It seemed to Racksole that vessels were anchored all over the stream. He looked about him anxiously, but for a long time he could see nothing but mist and vague nautical forms. Then suddenly he said, quietly enough, “We’re on the right road; I can see him ahead. We’re gaining on him.” In another minute the dinghy was plainly visible, not twenty yards away, and the sculler⁠—sculling frantically now⁠—was unmistakably Jules⁠—Jules in a light tweed suit and a bowler hat.

“You were right,” Hazell said; “this is a lark. I believe I’m getting quite excited. It’s more exciting than playing the trombone in an orchestra. I’ll run him down, eh?⁠—and then we can drag the chap in from the water.”

Racksole nodded, but at that moment a barge, with her red sails set, stood out of the fog clean across the bows of the Customs boat, which narrowly escaped instant destruction. When they got clear, and the usual interchange of calm, nonchalant swearing was over, the dinghy was barely to be discerned in the mist, and the fat man was breathing in such a manner that his sighs might almost have been heard on the banks. Racksole wanted violently to do something, but there was nothing to do; he could only sit supine by Hazell’s side in the stern-sheets. Gradually they began again to overtake the dinghy, whose one-man crew was evidently tiring. As they came up, hand over fist, the dinghy’s nose swerved aside, and the tiny craft passed down a water-lane between two anchored mineral barges, which lay black and deserted about fifty yards from the Surrey shore. “To starboard,” said Racksole. “No, man!”

Hazell replied; “we can’t get through there. He’s bound to come out below; it’s only a feint. I’ll keep our nose straight ahead.”

And they went on, the fat man pounding away, with a face which glistened even in the thick gloom. It was an empty dinghy which emerged from between the two barges and went drifting and revolving down towards Greenwich.

The fat man gasped a word to his comrade, and the Customs boat stopped dead.

“ ’E’s all right,” said the man in the bows. “If it’s ’im you want, ’e’s on one o’ them barges, so you’ve only got to step on and take ’im orf.”

“That’s all,” said a voice out of the depths of the nearest barge, and it was the voice of Jules, otherwise known as Mr. Tom Jackson.

“ ’Ear ’im?” said the fat man smiling. “ ’E’s a good ’un, ’e is. But if I was you, Mr. Hazell, or you, sir, I shouldn’t step on to that barge so quick as all that.”

They backed the boat under the stem of the nearest barge and gazed upwards.

“It’s all right,” said Racksole to Hazell; “I’ve got a revolver. How can I clamber up there?”

“Yes, I dare say you’ve got a revolver all right,” Hazell replied sharply.

“But you mustn’t use it. There mustn’t be any noise. We should have the river police down on us in a twinkling if there was a revolver shot, and it would be the ruin of me. If an inquiry was held the Commissioners wouldn’t take any official notice of the fact that my superior officer had put me on to this job, and I should be requested to leave the service.”

“Have no fear on that score,” said Racksole. “I shall, of course, take all responsibility.”

“It wouldn’t matter how much responsibility you took,” Hazell retorted; “you wouldn’t put me back into the service, and my career would be at an end.”

“But there are other careers,” said Racksole, who was really anxious to lame his ex-waiter by means of a judiciously-aimed bullet. “There are other careers.”

“The Customs is my career,” said Hazell, “so let’s have no shooting. We’ll wait about a bit; he can’t escape. You can have my skewer if you like”⁠—and he gave Racksole his searching instrument. “And you can do what you please, provided you do it neatly and don’t make a row over it.”

For a few moments the four men were passive in the boat, surrounded by swirling mist, with black water beneath them, and towering above them a half-loaded barge with a desperate and resourceful man on board. Suddenly the mist parted and shrivelled away in patches, as though before the breath of some monster. The sky was visible; it was a clear sky, and the moon was shining. The transformation was just one of those meteorological quick-changes which happen most frequently on a great river.

“That’s a sight better,” said the fat man. At the same moment a head appeared over the edge of the barge. It was Jules’ face⁠—dark, sinister and leering.

“Is it Mr. Racksole in that boat?” he inquired calmly; “because if so, let Mr. Racksole step up. Mr. Racksole has caught me, and he can have me for the asking. Here I am.” He stood up to his full height on the barge, tall against the night sky, and all the occupants of the boat could see that he held firmly clasped in his right hand a short dagger. “Now, Mr. Racksole, you’ve been after me for a long time,” he continued; “here I am. Why don’t you step up? If you haven’t got the pluck yourself, persuade someone else to step up in your place⁠ ⁠… the same fair treatment will be accorded to all.”