Devlin the BarberFarjeon, B. L. (Benjamin Leopold)
General
Devlin the Barber
Farjeon, B. L. (Benjamin Leopold)
Detective and mystery stories; English fiction -- 19th century
Carton set his teeth in great agitation. "If he is! if he is!" he
said; but he could say no more.
Bill Foster was back.
"There's a train to Folkestone," he cried, "the South-Eastern line, at
11.47. You can catch it easily. If there's no boat handy from
Folkestone to Boulogne, you'll be able to hire one there. The steamers
take two hours going across. You can get there in four. Train arrives
at Folkestone at 1.27. By six o'clock you can be in Boulogne. Jump
into my trap, gentlemen."
We jumped in, and were driven to the station. His information was
correct. I gave him thirty shillings, and he departed in high glee.
Then we took tickets for Folkestone, and arrived there at a quarter to
two.
There was no steamer going, but with little difficulty we arranged to
get across. The passage took longer than four hours--it took six. At
nine o'clock at night we were in Boulogne.
I cannot speak an intelligible sentence in French. Carton was too
agitated to take the direction of affairs.
"Do you know where we can stop?" I asked of Devlin. "Have you ever
been here before?"
"My dear sir," said Devlin, "I have travelled all over the world, and
I know Boulogne by heart. There's a little out-of-the-way hotel, the
Hôtel de Poilly, in Rue de l'Amiral Bruix, that will suit us as though
it were built for us."
"Let us get there at once," I said.
He called a fly, and in a very short time we entered the courtyard of
the Hotel de Poilly. There we made arrangements with the jolly,
comfortable-looking landlady, and then I looked at Carton, and he
looked at me. The helplessness of our situation struck us both
forcibly.
"Who is in command?" asked Devlin suddenly.
"You," I replied, as by an inspiration.
"Good," said Devlin. "I accept the office. From this moment you are
under my orders. Remain you here; I go to reconnoitre."
"You will return?" I said.
"My dear sir," said Devlin airily, "it is too late now to doubt my
integrity. I will return."
"For God's sake," said Carton, when Devlin was gone, "who is this man
who seems to divine everything, to know everything, and whom nothing
disturbs? Sometimes when he looks at me I feel that he is exercising
over me a terrible fascination."
"I cannot answer you," I said. "Be satisfied with the knowledge that
it is through him we have so far succeeded, and that, in my belief, it
will be through him that the murderer will be tracked down. The world
is full of mysteries, and that man is not the least of them."
It wanted an hour to midnight when Devlin returned. In his inscrutable
face I read no sign of success or failure; but the first words he
spoke afforded me infinite relief.
"I have seen him," he said. "Let us go out and talk. Walls have ears."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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