CHAPTER IX
ODD JOB MAN
Although I was eighteen years of age, fancied myself, I believe, no little, and was about to enter on life as a full-fledged articled clerk, with a tailed coat and top-hat, I still regarded my sister Keziah with awe, as being head and autocrat of our family, and when Cherry flung out this exciting proposition, I turned on her as a small boy might turn on a stern head-master of whom a holiday is suddenly craved. And inwardly I quaked, for Keziah’s always stern face grew dark with something closely resembling horror.
“London!” she exclaimed. “Him? And whatever for, mister? The very idea!”
“There are reasons, ma’am,” answered Cherry. “I won’t say State reasons, though they are almost of that nature. But—reasons! Police reasons, if you like.”
“I don’t want Ben mixing up with police,” snapped Keziah, tartly. “I don’t mind his going about a bit with you—you’re in plain clothes, and look something like a gentleman, and you seem a very decent young fellow. But if it comes to uniforms”
“Ben will not associate with uniforms, ma’am,” interrupted Cherry. “He’ll just go with me on a quiet little trip, to-morrow morning, and I’ll deliver him to you again, safe and sound, on Sunday evening. I want him!”
“And for what, pray?” demanded Keziah. “Let’s be knowing that!”
“Well, if you will have it, he may be useful to me in tracing that uncle of yours, Mr. Joseph Krevin,” replied Cherry. “He might—identify him. Let him come! The sooner Mr. Krevin’s little mystery is cleared up, the better—for everybody, you included, ma’am,” he added, with a significant look. “And—it won’t cost you anything.”
“Let me go, Keziah!” I pleaded.
“Oh, you’ll be ready enough to go, my lad, I’ll warrant!” exclaimed Keziah satirically. “You’d be off this instant, no doubt! But if you’re strong enough to go trapesing about London you’re strong enough to start lawyering at Mr. Philbricks—that’ll be a deal better than running after good-for-naughts like Joseph Krevin. And you give one such short notice!” she went on, turning to Cherry. “How do you think I can get him ready to go voyaging all that way by to-morrow morning?”
“That way!—sixty miles!” said Cherry. “Lord save us, ma’am!—he isn’t going to the North Pole! Ready?—what is there to do to make him ready? Nothing, I should think!”
“That’s all you know!” retorted Keziah. “I shall have to get out his best clothes, and air them—he’s never had ’em on since his illness. And it’s past ten o’clock—and you’d better go away, and let me get to work.”
“Meet me at the station at a quarter-to-nine, Ben,” said Cherry, making for the door. “I’ll take every care of him, Miss Heckitt—and good-night!”
Keziah made no reply beyond a mumbled phrase or two—she was already opening and shutting the drawers of a great press wherein she kept our best garments in camphor and lavender. Presently she had my Sunday suit and clean linen on a clothes horse before the fire—and next morning when she hurried me off to the station as spick and span as if I had been going to a wedding. I verily believe that she was secretly delighted that she had turned me out looking as important as the occasion demanded.
“And mind you don’t get lost in those London streets!” she called to me as I opened the garden gate. “And if you do see your Uncle Joseph”
But there, for once in her life, Keziah failed for words, and after shaking her head dismally, waved her hand, went in, and shut the door. And it was not out of ingratitude that I immediately put her out of my mind, which, to tell the truth, was seething with anticipations of adventure.
There was not much adventure to start with. Cherry had an armful of newspapers when I met him at the station, and he occupied himself during most of our two hours’ journey in reading them, passing one after the other over to me as he finished each. Every paper was full of our affair—and to my astonishment I saw that the theft of the Kang-he vase was already reported. There was, to be sure, not so much about that, but there was a plenitude of stuff about the murder of Cousins, and its peculiarly grisly character, and no end of speculation and surmise. I remarked to Cherry that I had had no idea that we were all being so much written about, and he laughed.
“It’s those inside the game who see least of it, Ben,” said he. “The outsiders, the spectators, see most! This is a bit of fat for all these newspaper fellows—yards of good copy it gives ’em! And see how they theorise and speculate and suggest about it!—well, it all helps. The Press is a valuable adjunct to the police, and I’ve known cases in which an astute young reporter did better work than a trained detective. And that reminds me, my lad, that when we get to London Bridge, two friends of mine, belonging to the Department, are to meet me, and I shall want a bit of private talk with them—but that won’t take long.”
The two friends were awaiting us, evidently by arrangement, just outside the barrier. One was a young man, of about Cherry’s own age; the other was a middle-aged man; both were very ordinary in appearance and might have been anything in the clerk or tradesman way. Instead of looking the alert, keen-faced, sharp-eyed individuals that I had always fancied detectives to be, they seemed to be remarkably apathetic, unemotional, and casual in appearance. And as we walked across to the refreshment-room, towards which all three turned as if it were a matter of course that they should, they talked, somewhat lackadaisically, about the weather, and the eldest man remarked that if we didn’t get rain soon, his kitchen garden at Golders Green was going to be a frost—which eventually he seemed to regard as the last thing in catastrophes. When we got into the refreshment-room, Cherry installed me at a table in a corner, with a glass of port to console me; he and the other two got together at a quiet spot of the bar, and with glasses in hand began to talk. And I, watching them closely, saw then that they were waking up and debating keenly enough whatever it was that Cherry first told them: there was a good deal of stroking of chins, and tapping of fingers, and exchange of nods and winks. Eventually all three seemed to come to some conclusion; the two strangers went away, once more looking unconcerned and apathetic, and Cherry came back to me.
“That’s one bit of business done, Ben!” he said cheerfully. “Now come upstairs to the dining-room and we’ll have some lunch. And then—we’ll get on to our own special business, whatever luck we have with it!”
I was curious enough to know if he had learnt anything from the two men who had just gone away, but too shy to ask him. A few minutes later, however, when we had picked up our knives and forks, he suddenly leaned across the table to me.
“Ben!” he said. “Did you ever hear of your Uncle Joseph being in India?—or anywhere else in the East?”
“No!” I answered promptly. “Never! But then, I never heard anything of Uncle Joseph, till he turned up that morning. Keziah never talked of him, and, as you know, he’d been away from our parts nineteen years or so—never been near us.”
“Um!—well, he’d be somewhere or other,” he remarked. “And I’d very much like to know if that somewhere was in Eastern climes at any period. Curious gentleman altogether, your Uncle Joseph, and I wonder if we shall get any news of him in Old Gravel Lane?”
“Is that where we’re going?” I asked.
“Precisely, Ben—where else?” he answered. “To begin with, at any rate. We’re going to visit the establishment of Crippe, Marine Store dealer. Who Crippe may be we don’t know. Perhaps he’s Krevin—your Uncle Joseph. If he is, Ben, I don’t think we shall find him. If he isn’t, and there’s a Crippe who really is Crippe, then we want to know why Krevin carried Crippe’s cards in his pocket? Perhaps Crippe will tell us; perhaps he won’t. This business, Ben, consists largely of the question-and-answer system. Plenty of questions!—but getting satisfactory answers is the difficulty, and sometimes the very devil!”
We went off across London Bridge after a while, and turning left at the Monument walked by Eastcheap and the Tower into the region of the Docks. I had never been in that part of London before, my two previous excursions to the centre of things having been in the West End, in Keziah’s company, and amongst fashionable surroundings and fine shops, and I thought everything in this hitherto unexplored neighbourhood, very squalid and grimy. But old Gravel Lane was worse than any of its approaches—a narrow, gloomy street leading down to the river between black-walled buildings. It was a paradise now, said Cherry, to what it had been, but I failed to see anything paradisaical about it, and I felt considerable misgiving what at last, on a board obscured by dirt and age we saw the name Crippe.
“Here we are!” said Cherry. “And the gentleman does business on Saturday afternoons, and there, no doubt, he is!”
He pushed aside a half-open door, and there, standing in the middle of a place that was half shed and half shop, badly-lighted, and evil-smelling, we saw a man who wore all the airs of proprietorship. He was a little, sturdy man, with a round paunch and a big head—his paunch was gay with a fancy waistcoat, and his head half-buried in a big, brand-new Panama hat; a just-lighted cigar, half-a-foot long, stuck out of one corner of his clean-shaven lips. As for the rest of him, he had a goatee beard, very stiff and fiery red in hue, and he had shed his coat, and in his shirt sleeves—and with at least two aggressively bright diamond rings glittering on his dirty fingers—was industriously sorting and counting a pile of coarse canvas bags that lay on the floor at his feet. All round him were the things that you find in a marine store dealer’s place of business, in the background in a sort of tank, faced with glass, a young, thin-faced man sat writing at a desk.
Cherry advanced to the shirt-sleeved gentleman with interested politeness.
“Mr. Crippe?” he inquired.
The man finished counting his sacks—those he had in hand, at any rate—before he replied. And his reply was thrown over his shoulder.
“And two’s nine, and two’s eleven, and two’s thirteen,” he said. “Eight dozen, Jenkinson—thirteen as twelve. That’s me!—who are you?”
Cherry took out one of his professional cards, and Mr. Crippe’s hands being free by that time, he deigned to accept it, and, having first balanced a pair of gold-mounted pince-nez on his snub nose, to read it, he turned a sharp eye on both of us, passed me over with a mere glance, and settled on my companion.
“Well?—wha’ d’yer want?” he demanded. “Sharp, now!”
Cherry produced one of Mr. Crippe’s own cards.
“To ask a question about this,” he answered. “Two of your cards were left at a house on the South Coast by a man named Joseph Krevin. Do you know Krevin?”
“Yes! Know Joe Krevin well enough! What about him?”
“Is he in your employ?”
“No! Not in what you’d call a regular way, anyhow. He does a bit on commission—no salary. Job now and then. Carries my business cards, to be sure, and drops one where he sees a chance of doing a bit.”
“Have you seen him lately, Mr. Crippe?”
“Not for a fortnight or three weeks—no!”
“Can you give me his private address?”
“Can’t! Don’t know it. Don’t know anything about Joe Krevin’s private affairs. And what do you want him for?”
“He’s missing,” replied Cherry, diplomatically. “This young man is his nephew. His family want to trace him. And as we found your card in a house where he’d been”
“Aye, well, I can’t help you!” interrupted Mr. Crippe, waving the be-diamonded fingers. “No notion whatever where he hangs out. Only comes in here, casual-like, now and again.”
Cherry glanced at the glass-fronted tank: he, like myself, had noticed that the clerk was listening for all he was worth. “Perhaps your assistant” he began.
“They might know at Zetterquist’s,” said the clerk. “That was his house of call round here—in St. George Street. Try the saloon parlour.”
We bade Mr. Crippe a good-afternoon; Mr. Crippe bade us nothing, and turned again to his canvas bags. We went out into the dismal street.
“Well, you see, Ben, we got some information, after all!” remarked Cherry, cheerfully. “We know more about Uncle Joseph now than we did five minutes ago. Uncle Joseph occasionally does a bit of business with and for Mr. Crippe. And if Mr. Crippe doesn’t know where Uncle Joseph pitches his little tent, perhaps Zetterquist’s do. Quite satisfactory, so far. And now for Zetterquist’s.”
He led me up Old Gravel Lane and round a corner into another more pretentious but still gloomy and squalid street. We had to look about a bit there, but eventually we found what we wanted. Zetterquist and Vanderpant turned out to be an old-fashioned wine and spirits vaults; there was a part where they seemed to do wholesale business, another where there were public bars, and yet a third evidently reserved for superior customers. And into this we turned and found our way to a quaint old parlour, the walls of which were chiefly decorated with pictures and engravings of sailing ships, models of the same, and odds and ends that, judging from their character and appearance, had doubtless been brought there from far-off places. There were a few customers in the dark corners of this room, and as most of them wore blue serge suits, had deeply tanned complexions, and obviously preferred rum to any other liquor, I set them down as sea-faring parties from the neighbouring docks. Also there was in that room, which had a highly-seasoned atmosphere of spirits, lemons, and strong tobacco, a little bar in one corner, and behind it an elderly, highly-respectable person in an alpaca coat, who was industriously polishing glasses and seemed uncommonly surprised to see us. But he listened politely to Cherry’s prefatory remarks, and was evidently quite interested in the professional card which he presented. He was interested, too, in me when he heard that I was Mr. Joseph Krevin’s nephew.
“Yes, we know Mr. Krevin here,” he said. “The fact is, he’s a sort of traveller for our firm—on commission, you understand. Picks up an order here and there, and sends it on—I fancy he does that sort of thing for various other firms—not in our line, you know; other lines. General commission agent—that’s his line of business. But he’s not been in here, and we haven’t heard anything of him, lately. Two or three weeks, I should say.”
“What I particularly want is his private address,” observed Cherry. “Can you give it?”
“I can!” replied the man behind the bar. “I shouldn’t give it, you know, to anybody, but as you’re what you are, and as he’s missing, I will. It’s 241 Calthorpe Street—that’s off Gray’s Inn Road.”
Cherry remarked that he knew Calthorpe Street well enough, and after thanking our informant we left Zetterquist’s and the company of sea-captains, and went away—to find an omnibus going towards Bloomsbury.
“Easy enough to strike Calthorpe Street, Ben,” remarked Cherry. “A well-known lodging house street, that! But I doubt if we shall strike Uncle Joseph. However, we now know an extra bit more about him. Sort of odd-job man, he is. And odd-job men meet queer company, and get mixed up in queer things.”
He was right in prophesying that we shouldn’t strike Uncle Joseph. 241 Calthorpe Street, proved to be a dismal, shabby sort of house, and the landlady who opened the door to us was equally shabby and even more dismal. No, Mr. Krevin wasn’t at home, and what’s more hadn’t been at home since last Monday morning, and she didn’t know when he would be at home, for he was given to being away many days at a time, sometimes. No, he hadn’t lived there very long—some few months only—and she believed he’d just come from foreign parts when he came there. Yes, we could look at his room if we liked—it didn’t matter—nothing seemed to matter, to her.
We went up to Uncle Joseph’s room: a bed-sitting room, more comfortable than the exterior of the house would have led one to suppose. And in the moment of our entrance, Cherry’s keen eyes struck on something. There was an addressed envelope that had come through the post lying on the table, and he picked it up with a sharp exclamation.
“Look at this, Ben!” he said. “See? The post-mark! Middlebourne!”