A Little World

“Sergeant Falkner,” said the old man, piteously, “you are not a father, or you would not speak like that.”

“Ain’t I, by Jove, sir!” cried the sergeant, heartily; “I’ve got ten already, and goodness knows how many more to come. I’ve had butcher-and-baker on-the-brain any time this ten years, sir; let alone boots. But I beg your pardon, Sir Francis; I won’t say another word. Here, you, Screwby, go and sit in that chair,” and he pointed to the one farthest from the door. Then, walking across with the man, he to a certain extent seemed to seat him in the chair, the great hulking rascal being like so much plastic clay in his hands.

The next moment Sergeant Falkner was at the low window, which he threw open, and stepped out upon the balcony, but in an instant he came back – very hastily back – into the room, and hurried to the door, which he opened, to take the key from the outside and carefully lock it from within – the key being afterwards placed in his pocket.

A few seconds more, and, to the surprise of Sir Francis and Clayton, he was again in the balcony, where he uttered a low cough.

There was a pause of a few moments, when he stooped over, and leaning down, spoke to some one beneath.

Apparently satisfied, he re-entered the room, closed the window, unlocked the door, and began to walk up and down thoughtfully, tapping his teeth the while with the end of his pencil.

“For what are we waiting, sergeant?” said Sir Francis, anxiously.

“Cab, sir,” said the officer, curtly; “and here it is. After you, gentlemen!”

As he spoke, there was the sound of wheels grating against the kerb below; and a few minutes after the party was rattling through the streets, but only to stop before long at a quiet-looking office.

Springing out, the sergeant signed to a policeman, who seemed to be there by accident, but all the same was ready to take his place by the cab-door, adding nothing to the ease and comfort of Mr John Screwby, who was quite as fidgety when, after a few minutes, the sergeant returned, gave a few instructions to the driver, and they were once more rattling through the gas-lit streets.

“Rather a tight fit, gentlemen,” said the sergeant, “four in one of these cabs; but it won’t be for long.”

In effect, sooner than Clayton anticipated, the cab stopped and the sergeant again sprang out.

“Now, gentlemen,” he said, “perhaps you’ll have the goodness to follow at a little distance. It’s two streets off yet; but in this extremely pleasant and salubrious region, we don’t want to make any fuss. My dear friend Mr John Screwby and I will go on together, so as to show the way. You need not be afraid,” he whispered to Clayton. “Keep tight hold of the old gentleman’s arm, and bring him along quickly. There’s plenty of help close at hand.”

Clayton nodded, and then, as he drew the baronet’s arm through his own, he hastily glanced round to see once more the thronging types of misery and vice that he had encountered on his previous visits: there were the same hulking ruffians, short of hair, sallow of face, and low of brow – own brothers in aspect of the gentleman who had turned informer; there, too, were the same slatternly women, old and young; children who never seemed to have been young; and at nearly every corner the gin-palace in full levée, its courtiers thronging in and out as the doors swung to and fro.

Harry read this at a glance, and then followed the sergeant through the crowded streets, attracting as little notice as was possible; but from time to time the young man could see that some ruffianly head or another was turned to gaze after Screwby and his companion; intelligent nods and winks, too, were passed from one observer to another, and once Harry heard the whispered words —

“What’s up?”

No one seemed to care, though, to follow figures that were evidently well-known, and so great was the attention bestowed upon them, that little, so far as he could see, fell to the share of Sir Francis and himself.

They soon reached the shop of Mr D. Wragg, the shutters of which natural history emporium were up, but both side and shop doors were wide open, closing after them, though, by invisible agency, as it appeared, until Harry turned to find that, springing as it were from that invisible region they are said so much to affect when wanted, a couple of policemen were at his elbow, whose duty it had doubtless been to close the portals against the curious crowd, certain to collect as soon as it was bruited abroad that there was “a case on” at the house of “Mr D. Wragg, naturalist.”

Volume Two – Chapter Twenty Six.

Not his Castle

“Hullo! I say! what’s all this here about?” cried a familiar voice, and D. Wragg began to jerk himself fiercely into the shop. “Don’t you make no mistake. What! hullo! eh! I say!” he exclaimed, with a grin of delight taking the place of his surprise; “what! my lovely Jack Screwby! Nabbed at last?”

“No, I ain’t nabbed at last neither, Muster D. Wragg,” sneered the gentleman addressed; “and, as they says to me wunst – well, more ’n wunst, if you like,” he growled, as he caught the sergeant’s eye fixed upon him – “as they says to me, says they, ‘Don’t you be so jolly free with your tongue, ’cos what you says now may be used as evidence agen you.’”

D. Wragg’s features twitched furiously as he turned up the gas, and then, for the first time, he caught sight of Harry Clayton, and jerked violently, to the great delight of Screwby, who stood grinning and rubbing his hands, thoroughly enjoying the discomfiture of his enemy.

“Now, don’t you make no mistake, sir,” exclaimed D. Wragg; “the dog ain’t here this time, and I ain’t seen it, as I’ll take my Bible oath on it. There ain’t neither a bird, nor a hanimal, nor nothink o’ no kind as ain’t mine, and paid for down on the nail; so don’t you make no mistake now, come! You can do as you like, you know; only mind this here – there’s law for me, as well as law for you. You can think as I’ve got the dorg, if you like; only ’spectable houses o’ business ain’t to be entered at all times without things being made square.”

“There! why don’t you take advice when it’s given you, old chap?” said the sergeant. “You know what we’ve come about, though, I dessay?”

“Know what you’ve come about!” said D. Wragg; “why, of course I do. You’ve come about that there gent’s friend’s dorg, same as they’ve been together about it before, and I helped ’em into getting of it; but you’re in the wrong box this time, so I tell you. But what do you expect you’re going to do?”

“What’s the good of being a fool, Wragg? The game’s up; so you may just as well give in quietly, and not go into a pack of stuff about dogs.”

But D. Wragg protested again that he knew they must be come about some dog or another, till, assuming an injured air, he took out his pipe and lit it, and then stood with folded arms, jerking himself about, and muttering, while, without further ceremony, the police, accompanied in every movement by Sir Francis and Harry Clayton, thoroughly searched the house, beginning with the underground kitchen, and then proceeding upwards, but not until due precautions had been taken to prevent the escape of the inmates.

“This is all very well, sir, you know,” said the sergeant; “but of course we don’t expect to find anything more than a clue of some kind, and I’ve my doubts even about that. Old Wragg does not look so much like a foxy terrier for nothing. Whatever has been done, I don’t give the old chap credit for having bungled it; but, all the same, it seemed the thing to come – not quite regular, you know,” he added, confidentially, “but we’ll risk that.”

Room after room was examined, until the second floor was reached, and here Harry expected to find the abode of Canau. His heart accelerated its beating – perhaps though only with the ascent; but he thought, all the same, that here would Janet be, and perhaps with her Patty Pellet, for he knew how strong was the tie between them.

It proved to be as he anticipated, for Janet and Patty stood by the window, and with them Mrs Winks, who had hurried up-stairs at the first arrival of the visitors, to spare the girls from needless alarm.

“I trust you will not lay this intrusion to my charge,” said Clayton, approaching. “You gave me your word that you knew nothing of my friend’s disappearance, and I believed you.”

“And then to prove your faith, you brought the police here to search our rooms,” said Janet, fiercely, as she turned away.

“Do not be unjust,” said Harry; “information has been given to us that my poor friend was seen to enter this house upon the night of his disappearance, and was not seen to return.”

“Oh, my! good ’evins! what a horrid story!” exclaimed Mrs Winks; “when I was at home all that very night, bad with the tic, same as I am to-night, and no gentleman come here then, as I’ll take my oath on. And me abusin’ the tic all the while as was a blessin’ in disguise, for it’s glad enough I am to be at home this night, my dears. He never come anigh here that Chewsday night though.”

“Yes, he did now; so don’t you make no mistake. Come about a new dog-collar, he did, and took it away with him while you was up-stairs, Mother Winks.”

D. Wragg had spoken these words to the extreme delight of Screwby, who grinned and rubbed his hands down his sides upon hearing this voluntary corroboration of his evidence.

But the sergeant merely shook his head, feeling convinced that the lame gentleman who had jerked his body up-stairs was far too old a stager to commit himself by such an open statement unless he had good reason for so doing.

Meanwhile the master of the house looked on, while the police peered into all sorts of impossible places; passing over things that might perhaps have served as a clue, to stop to examine a scrap of paper or pieces of furniture that could not relate to the matter in hand. Walls were tapped, chimneys examined, cupboards peered into, and the light of bull’s-eye lanthorns was made to startle spiders in many a dark corner.

“This here wall’s hollow!” exclaimed one of the policemen suddenly, as he started upon finding a certain resonant echo to the blows he bestowed at one side of the room.

“Most likely,” said the sergeant, drily, “Why, where are your brains, man? Don’t you see that the staircase is behind?”

The man relieved himself of his hard hat, wiped his forehead, and then resumed his search, till the sergeant declaring himself satisfied so far, a move was made for the upper regions.

“There ain’t nothing up there; so now then,” cried D. Wragg, desperately; “I protest against all this here. You needn’t go up; and don’t you make no mistake; I ain’t agoin’ to stand having my place searched without a warrant. I’ll have it outer some on you for this.”

As he spoke, D. Wragg started to the foot of the attic staircase, and made as if he would have barred the way; but the sergeant laid one firm hand upon his shoulder, and D. Wragg seemed to shrink away from that touch like the leaves of a mimosa. He glided aside, as if in dread lest the hand that touched him should remain there, and his face grew ashy and careworn – abject too in the extreme – until he encountered the triumphant grins of Mr John Screwby, when he roused himself directly, and stared his tormentor full in the face.

“You see, my friend,” said the sergeant, upon whom not one of D. Wragg’s changes of countenance was lost, – “you see, my friend, now that we are up so high, we may as well go up a little higher – save coming again, perhaps.”

D. Wragg muttered uneasily, and glanced right and left, and then the creaking stairs were ascended, when he moved slowly off.

“Stop him there, will you!” cried the sergeant, who saw through the little dealer’s design.

“What d’yer mean? what’s all this?” cried D. Wragg, struggling with the man, who caught the wrist of his coat in a tight grasp. “If you’re going to take a fellow up, take him up; but don’t get playing at fast and loose. Don’t you make no mistake, I ain’t agoin’ to stand this sorter thing. I ain’t got his dorg, as I’ve told you ’arf a dozen times; but some on you shall pay for it, so I tell you.”

D. Wragg’s evasion being stayed, and his small person forced to the front, he was one of those who filled up the landing, close by a couple of doors – one strongly padlocked, and the other cobwebbed and dirty, as if it had not been opened for years.

“Now then, where are the keys of these doors?” said the sergeant.