Domestic fiction; Fathers and sons -- Fiction; Hertfordshire (England) -- Fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction
The police for some time past had been very busy on the track of
Mountjoy Scarborough, but had not hitherto succeeded in obtaining any
information. Such activity as had been displayed cannot be procured
without expense, and it had been understood in this case that old Mr.
Scarborough had refused to furnish the means. Something he had supplied
at first, but had latterly declined even to subscribe to a fund. He was
not at all desirous, he said, that his son should be brought back to the
world, particularly as he had made it evident by his disappearance that
he was anxious to keep out of the way. "Why should I pay the fellows?
It's no business of mine," he had said to his son. And from that moment
he had declined to do more than make up the first subscription which had
been suggested to him. But the police had been kept very busy, and it
was known that the funds had been supplied chiefly by Mr. Tyrrwhit. He
was a resolute and persistent man, and was determined to "run down"
Mountjoy Scarborough, as he called it, if money would enable him to do
so. It was he who had appealed to the squire for assistance in this
object, and to him the squire had expressed his opinion that, as his son
did not seem anxious to be brought back, he should not interfere in the
matter.
"Well, Prodgers, what news have you to-day?" asked Augustus.
"There is a man a-wandering about down in Skye, just here and there,
with nothing in particular to say for himself."
"What sort of a looking fellow is he?"
"Well, he's light, and don't come up to the captain's marks; but there's
no knowing what disguises a fellow will put on. I don't think he's got
the captain's legs, and a man can't change his legs."
"Captain Scarborough would not remain loitering about in Skye where he
would be known by half the autumn tourists who saw him."
"That's just what I was saying to Wilkinson," said Prodgers. "Wilkinson
seems to think that a man may be anybody as long as nobody knows who he
is. 'That ain't the captain,' said I."
"I'm afraid he's got out of England," said the captain's brother.
"There's no place where he can be run down like New York, or Paris, or
Melbourne, and it's them they mostly go to. We've wired 'em all three,
and a dozen other ports of the kind. We catches 'em mostly if they go
abroad; but when they remains at home they're uncommon troublesome.
There was a man wandering about in County Donegal. We call Ireland at
home, because we've so much to do with their police since the Land
League came up; but this chap was only an artist who couldn't pay his
bill. What do you think about it, Mr. Annesley?" said the policeman,
turning short round upon Harry, and addressing him a question. Why
should the policeman even have known his name?
"Who? I? I don't think about it at all. I have no means of thinking
about it."
"Because you have been so busy down there at the Yard, I thought that,
as you was asking so many questions, you was, perhaps, interested in the
matter."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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