Knowing, as I did, how long was Mullen’s arm and how merciless his vengeance, I could not help thinking that had he been aware of my connection with the two men I have mentioned, and of my intentions towards himself, he would before this have made an attempt to bestow upon me some such unmistakable mark of his personal attention as he had bestowed upon them. That no such attempt had been made argued--so at least I tried to persuade myself--that I had been lucky enough to escape his notice and the honour of being entered upon his black list. To have got out at Hornchurch and denounced the red-bearded man as Captain Shannon, when I had no shred of actual evidence in support of my statement, and when it was more than possible he might be some one else, would not only render me ridiculous, but would mean trumping my own card by making known to the real Captain Shannon, as well as to the public generally, the enterprise upon which I was engaged. All things considered, the incident which had prevented me from seeing the man I was shadowing leave the train at Hornchurch until it was too late to follow him was not an unmixed evil, for it was possible that had I been compelled to act upon the spur of the moment I might have adopted a course which I should afterwards have reason to regret. While I had been coming to this conclusion the train had been trundling along towards the next station, and was already slowing off for a stoppage. If I were to take action I must do so immediately, and for the moment I found it difficult to decide whether it would be best to go on to London or to get out and make my way back to Hornchurch, in order to pursue inquiries about the red-bearded man and his movements. If he were, as I suspected, James Mullen, the chances were that he had got out at Hornchurch, not because he had any business there, but to put a possible pursuer at fault. In that case he would go on to London--which was in all probability his destination--by a later train, or it was possible that he might seek other means of reaching town than by the line on which he had set out. And then, all in a moment, I recollected what I ought to have recollected at first,--that Hornchurch is but a half an hour’s walk from Romford, where there is a station on the Great Eastern railway. Might it not be, I asked myself, that Mullen, knowing this, had got out at Hornchurch in order that he might walk to Romford, and thence continue his journey to town by another line? Such a manœuvre as this was just what one might expect from him, and I promptly decided to act upon the assumption that he had done so. At Fenchurch Street I joined Grant, and told him in a few hurried words what had happened, and what were my suspicions.