Читать книгу: «Mr American»

1

Inspector Griffin came down to the landing-stage on a raw autumn morning to see the Mauretania berthing. It was part of his job; there was always someone from the detective department on hand when the American liners docked, but for Inspector Griffin it was a pleasure, too. He loved the bustle of the wharf at dawn, and the sight of the huge iron ship edging gently into the quay, the busy little tugs, the squealing whistles, the propellor churning the yellow Mersey into dirty foam; he even enjoyed the bite of the wind and the cold drizzle which was causing his colleague, young Constable Murphy, to hunch his collar round his chin as he stamped his feet on the wet flags. To Murphy it was just another tedious chore; he wiped his nose and glowered at the low clouds over the river.

“Won’t be worth their while takin’ off at Doncaster this afternoon,” he observed glumly, and Inspector Griffin understood. Constable Murphy was a flying enthusiast, like most of the population these days; since M. Blériot had come winging ghost-like out of the Channel mist a few weeks before, the first man to fly from France into England in a crazy contraption that looked like an overgrown kite, the country seemed to have gone flying daft, Inspector Griffin reflected. He didn’t like it; perhaps he was getting old and conservative, but the thought that a man could fly in a few minutes across England’s last line of defence – and from France, of all places – made him uneasy. It wasn’t natural, and it wasn’t safe. And what use would the Royal Navy be, if Frogs and Germans and God knew what other breed of foreigners could soar unscathed over their heads?

“Farman an’ Cody’s goin’ to be at Doncaster,” said Murphy, with relish. “First flyin’ meetin’ on British soil, by gum! Wouldn’t I like to be there? Cody flew from London to Manchester the other day, over the railway tracks, special markers they had on the ground to guide him – an’ they say Farman’s been up six hundred feet, an’ can go higher yet.” He shuddered deliciously and wiped his nose again. “Think of it, sir! Just them tiny machines, an’ –”

Females, football and flying, Griffin reflected irritably, that was all these young fellows thought about. The gangways were down, and the first passengers were picking their way gingerly down to the quay, shepherded by the Mauretania’s stewards, but Murphy, who should have been casting a professional eye over them, was plainly miles away in the sky above Doncaster, performing aerobatics with Cody and Farman and his other heroes.

“Cody’s goin’ to become naturalized British, they reckon,” he went on. “If he lives long enough – there was a crash at Paris t’other day, fellow broke his neck, shocking risks they take –”

“Thought you were more interested in Everton,” said Griffin, vainly trying to stem the flood. “Aren’t they playing Liverpool this afternoon?”

“Gah, they’ll get beat, them,” said Murphy derisively. “Play football, that lot? They dunno what football is – you should have been up in Glasgow the other day, sir, my Saturday off. Glasgow versus Sheffield, that was something. See that McMenemy, an’ Quinn – bloody marvellous! We don’t see nothing like ’em, down here. Now, Quinn, he –”

I was a fool to mention it, thought Griffin, and a bigger fool for being so soft. Any right-minded inspector would have shut up the garrulous Murphy with a look, but he wasn’t a bad lad and Griffin had a liking for him. Irish though – mind you, who wasn’t, in Liverpool these days? Griffin the Welshman had strong views about immigrants and while the Micks were undeniably fellow-Britons there were still a damned sight too many of them about.

“Come on,” he said, “they’re coming ashore,” and the two officers moved off into the long, dingy Customs shed where the officials were waiting with their watchful eyes and pieces of chalk among the mounds of baggage, to deal soft-voiced with the first passengers who were congregating at the tables.

This was what Griffin liked. The faces, the clothes, the voices – above all the voices. Many years before, Inspector Griffin had been a strapping young constable in the North-west Mounted Police; it was where his career had begun, and he had never lost his affection for the North American accent – even the harsh nasal Yankee voice which was so often heard in that shed awoke memories for him; he had that vague privileged feeling of kinship that one feels for foreigners in whose country one has lived. Not that Canada was foreign, of course, quite the opposite; neither were Americans, really – he scanned the faces beyond the tables with an interest that was only part-professional, indulging in his habitual speculation. Who were they? Where were they from? What would they be doing in England? How many of them were rascals? One or two, in his experience, but nothing serious this trip, or Delgado in New York would have telegraphed. He’d never met Delgado, and knew him only as a name at the end of cables and occasional official reports – Delgado would know him in the same way. Wonder what he was like? – sounded like an Italian name, maybe. Good policeman, anyway, whatever he was; it was Delgado’s tip that had helped them nail that German forger in Leeds a year ago.

“Do I look as though I am carrying more than half a pint of spirits?” A mountainous lady in an expensive sealskin coat and a mountainous English accent was glaring at a Customs man. “Spirits, indeed! I never heard of such –”

“Perfumes are spirits, madam,” said the Customs man quietly. “Have you any perfume, madam?”

“Of course I have. A normal quantity, and certainly not half a pint –”

“And chocolates, madam? Confections of any kind?”

“Chocolates?”

“Sweets are dutiable, madam. Any American candies, or bonbons –”

“What arrant nonsense!” The lady turned indignantly to the pale young companion at her side. “Have we any sweets, Evelyn? Dangerous, highly contraband sweets whose introduction into England will unbalance the Budget?”

Griffin smiled, but his eyes were elsewhere, running over a small, stout man waiting his turn at the next table, politely allowing a lady to go first, smiling affably and tapping his fingers on the handle of his valise. Three or four bottles of brandy in there for a start, thought Griffin. That was not strictly speaking any of his business, but the stout little man could easily be a sharp. Griffin sauntered closer to listen to the voice.

“… one bottle of bourbon, open, and a half pound of cigars, nothing else, officer.” It was an American voice, sharp and eager, perhaps a little too conciliatory. “Oh, and I have a copy of one of Mr Conan Doyle – I beg your pardon, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels, printed in America. I know that English copyrighted books are liable to confiscation, but I assure you it’s the only one I’ve got.”

“ – an’ anyway, Liverpool’ll win by two clear goals, easy,” Constable Murphy was saying. “Want me to keep an eye on that one, sir?”

Griffin turned away, surveying the other passengers. Rich, influential, upper-class, most of them, as one would expect aboard the Mauretania. Well-fed faces, substantial broadcloths and tweeds on the men, furs on the ladies, fox stoles and sealskins, diamond pins, gold watch-chains, a profusion of expensive rings and brooches – a pickpocket’s paradise, if any of the local dips had had the nerve to invade the area between the quay and Riverside Station, well-policed as it was. About half were American visitors, about half returning Britons; the voices mingled in a babble round the Customs tables. “Anything to declare …? Well, I don’t know how many cigars make a pound, officer.… I have this silk scarf, but it’s a present for my mother, don’t you know … if you’ll open the large trunk, please, sir … but it’s an engagement ring – this is my fiancé – surely you won’t charge on that? … anything to declare, madam?”

All the usual little lies, the half-hearted deceptions, the unnecessary anxieties, thought Griffin. But nothing really to excite his official interest. He noted that the mountainous lady was preparing to erupt as her nervous companion clumsily unbuckled the straps of a suitcase and twitteringly guided and hindered the Customs man as he plunged into the mass of female clothing within.

“One would think one were a criminal, or a passenger to New York!” exclaimed the large lady indignantly, her feather hat quivering with affront. “It is bad enough to have one’s belongings turned out wholesale in front of half the population of America, but in England – really!” Plainly the lady had suffered, on her arrival at New York, at the hands of the minions of “Lucky” Loeb, the Customs Chief, whose private war against smuggling had caused considerable indignation and sundry spluttering letters to the New York Times; Griffin seemed to remember that even a steamship line’s director had had to turn out his pockets. But now the Customs man was delving and bringing forth a large bottle of gin, and the lady was going bright purple and demanding of the shrinking Evelyn how that had got there?

“Serve the old trout right,” observed Murphy coarsely, and Inspector Griffin privately agreed. Nothing much here, though; he glanced again at the little stout man, who was bustling off crying “Thank you, thank you, sir!” to the Customs man, and was preparing to speak to Murphy, when his eye fell on a face at the table beyond.

A man was stepping forward to take his place at the table, pausing momentarily to make way for two pretty, giggling American girls who were gathering up their cases; they had succeeded in wheedling more than their allowance of perfume past a grey-haired and indulgent official, and were tripping off to find a porter. One of them shot a quick, appraising glance at the man who was stepping aside, received a grave touch of the hat-brim in return, and whispered, tittering to her companion; she was what Murphy would have called a peach, a lissom little blonde whose bobbing curls and tight-skirted bottom drew an approving sigh from the constable as he watched her clicking off on her high heels, showing a tantalising glimpse of silken ankle; a nudge from Griffin brought him back to earth.

“That one at the far table. All right, turn this way and tell me about him.”

Murphy glanced at the man for a couple of seconds and turned obediently to face Griffin; he only slightly resented his superior’s habit of playing classroom games by way of instruction in police routine.

“American,” he said confidently, “thirty to thirty-five, not more. Six foot one, maybe two, between twelve an’ thirteen stone, well built on the lean side, black moustache, no whiskers, could do with a haircut, thin features, sunburned, wearing a bowler, brown, an’ a tweed cape, dark suit, no rings, plain pin, watch-chain as might be gold but might just as easy be brass, not carryin’ a stick, but with a big green valise –”

“Yes, yes, boy,” said Griffin. “But what about him? Turn and have another look.”

Murphy shrugged and glanced round at the man, who was watching the Customs official go through his valise; he looked ordinary enough to Murphy; not quite so well-dressed as most of the passengers, perhaps, a trifle more – bohemian was the word that might have occurred to Murphy if he had known it, but it would have been wide of the mark. Quiet-looking chap, very attentive to what the Customs man said, nodding seriously and thanking the official as he restrapped the valise and turned his attention to the battered trunk which lay beside the table. Murphy frowned and shrugged again.

“That’s all, sir; don’t see anything out o’ the way. He’s no crook, that’s certain; not so – well, smooth as most, but otherwise …” He shook his head. “Quiet chap, I’d say; you know, a bit soft-like, in his manner – for a Yankee, any roads.”

The Customs man was bending over the trunk, chalk in hand, and the American was stooping beside him, apparently reassuring him about the contents. Griffin strained his ears, and felt a slight thrill of satisfaction when the passenger spoke. All he said was: “No, no I don’t believe I have any of those. Guess I’d know if I did, all right. Thank you, thanks very much.”

The voice fitted, Griffin thought. That soft, husky drawl, so different from the nasal rasp of the Eastern seaboard; it was a voice from the Plains, the kind he remembered from the Saskatchewan prairie. North Central United States, then, or thereabouts; it was an accent which Griffin, with his sympathetic Welsh ear, could have listened to all day; a voice from out yonder.

“Have I missed anything, sir?” Murphy was wondering.

Just about everything that matters, thought Griffin, but since he couldn’t blame Murphy for failing to recognize something he had never seen before, all he said was: “No, boy, you had him summed up nice for description. He isn’t sunburned, though; he’s weather-beaten. There’s a difference. Tell you what, Constable Murphy – that little stout chap who went through a minute since. See if he gets on the London train, will you? If he doesn’t, get his address.”

He was not particularly interested in the little stout man, but he wanted to study this other one at leisure. Not that there was anything really remarkable about him, but he was out of the run of the normal transatlantic traffic. A Westerner, and not a townsman, either. Griffin studied the tall, rangy figure in its slightly incongruous cape and new bowler; good features, behind the black moustache that turned down slightly at the corners of the mouth, quite a fine face, like a scholar’s, even, thought Griffin, although this patently wasn’t a scholar. Soft-like, Murphy had thought, and Griffin could excuse him for the mistake; there was a gentleness, almost a diffidence, about the face and the man’s whole bearing, as though he were ready to apologise for being there. But he wasn’t soft; oh no, thought Griffin, you’re not soft – but nobody will realize it until the moment when they wish they hadn’t misjudged you.

The Inspector smiled. How long ago was it now? – twenty-four years, nearly twenty-five since the day that sometimes came back to him in bad dreams. The tangled clearing at Duck Lake, the reek of powder smoke and the crash of firing, the shrill yells of the Metis sharpshooters and the whooping of Big Bear’s Crees as they closed in through the woods on the battered circle of red coats among the carts and slaughtered horses. The Army Colt jumping in his fist as he fired over the shelter of his saddle, and then the scorching pain in his left arm, and himself pawing at the feathered arrow in his blood-soaked sleeve, crying great tears of pain, until the man next to him had crawled across to snap the shaft off short and thrust the arrow-head agonisingly through Griffin’s arm and out the other side. He remembered the man’s face; the same wide-spaced grey eyes, the lean features and straight jaw under the broad-brimmed hat, and the soft, almost apologetic voice: “Easy does it, Mountie. Just lie there, head down – okay?” Why, he might have been this fellow’s father, for looks. MacPherson, his name had been, a big, gangling scout in buckskin – but then, there had been hundreds like him, all through that campaign; tall, quiet men who said little, and that to the point, courteous in manner, pensive, rather lonely men.

And the wounded bewildered young constable in the red tunic was now Inspector Lloyd Griffin, of the Liverpool force, dressed in authority and drab overcoat, heavier about the jowls and waist, and instead of the trees and war-whoops by Duck Lake there was the echoing Customs shed and the respectable passengers and staff going about their business quietly and orderly in the civilised centre of England’s second city, and it was no buckskin man but a soberly-dressed American who was nodding to the Customs man and looking about for a porter.

Griffin sauntered closer and cast an eye at the label on the battered trunk. It read “M.J. Franklin, Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool, England.” Well, he hadn’t expected to see the name MacPherson, anyhow. Just because this boy was from the same stable, so to speak, of the same breed and the same neck of the woods, give or take a thousand miles or so, meant nothing. Inspector Griffin shook himself almost irritably. That was all long ago, and things had changed; this was the twentieth century, and the wild days were well gone now, except in the memories of old hands like himself. But for a moment there, the sight of that … that type, working on his Celtic imagination, had taken him back. Well, of course, men didn’t change, even if times did. And this one still seemed out of place, somehow, in grimy old Liverpool. In quiet old England, come to that.

He watched M. J. Franklin trying to catch a porter’s eye and not succeeding. No, decidedly he wasn’t a city-dweller. A farmer, perhaps? No, that wasn’t right. A surveyor, then, or an engineer. Most probably something like that, with his sundowner complexion. And what was he doing in England? Any one of a thousand perfectly ordinary things – Inspector Griffin chided himself to remember that men came and went with startling speed from the ends of the earth nowadays, on all sorts of errands; the old conventions that tied a man to his place were going, and it was becoming one world indeed. Bloody Frogs flying the Channel, for example.

“He got on the London train, second class, his name’s Kruger, and he travels for a New Jersey typewriter manufacturer.” Constable Murphy was back, reporting with every sign of self-satisfaction. “An’ he’ll be staying at Peterson’s Hotel, Baker Street.”

“Very good, Constable Murphy,” said Griffin, and since it would never do for Murphy to think he was impressed, he added: “And the little Yankee charmer with the blonde curls, then? Where was she going?”

“Maidstone, to visit her aunt,” said Murphy, grinning. “Well, she was having trouble finding a seat, and a policeman’s meant to be helpful, isn’t he?”

“She must be uncommon helpless if she can’t find a seat on a train that’s never half-full,” said Griffin drily. He was still observing Mr Franklin’s unavailing attempts to summon a porter. On impulse the Inspector whistled, short and sharp, half a dozen porters looked round, and a jerk of his head directed their attention to Franklin’s trunk. In a moment it was on a barrow and being rolled out of the shed; Franklin, who had heard the whistle, raised an acknowledging finger to the Inspector.

“Much obliged to you, sir,” he said, and strode off after his trunk, valise in hand, open cape flapping. Griffin watched the rangy figure out of sight, and sighed. So much for his romantic imagination, he decided. Still …

“Duck out o’ water,” said Murphy carelessly, following his chief’s glance.

“Yes,” said Inspector Griffin, turning away. “Yes, constable, you’re probably right.”

Once outside the Customs shed, Mr Franklin paused to examine the railway timetable board; there were, he saw, five companies competing to carry him to London on Monday. After some deliberation, he decided on the London and North-western, which undertook to convey him to Euston in something over four hours, via Crewe and Rugby, for 29 shillings first-class. Just under six dollars, in fact. It was the fastest train, not that that could matter to a man who had not taken the special vestibuled boat-train for Atlantic passengers which was even now pulling out of Riverside Station with a shrilling of steam.

His porter was waiting at the cab rank, and on his inquiring whether the gentleman wished to travel by taxi or horse cab, Mr Franklin fixed him with a thoughtful grey eye and asked what the fare might be.

“Cab’s a shillin’ a mile, taxi’s sixpence a half-mile an’ twopence every sixth of a mile after that,” replied the porter.

“And how far is the Adelphi Hotel?” asked Mr Franklin.

This innocent question caused some consternation among the taxi-men and cab drivers; some thought it would be about a mile, if not slightly more, but there was a school of thought that held it was a bare mile by the shortest route. No one knew for certain, and finally the porter, a practical man who wanted to get back to the Customs shed for another client, settled the matter by spitting and declaring emphatically:

“It’ll cost you a shillin’, anyways.”

Mr Franklin nodded judiciously, indicated a horse-cab, and then paid the porter. He seemed to be having some difficulty with the massive British copper coins, to which he was plainly unaccustomed, and the tiny silver “doll’s-eye” threepence which he eventually bestowed; the porter sighed and reflected that this was a damned queer Yank; most of them scattered their money like water.

This was not lost on the cabby, who mentally abandoned the notion of suggesting that he take his passenger by way of Rodney Street – which would have added at least sixpence to the fare – there to gaze on Number 62, the birthplace of the late Mr Gladstone. Americans, in his experience, loved to see the sights, and would exclaim at the Grand Old Man’s childhood home and add as much as a shilling to the tip. An even better bet was the house in Brunswick Street where Nathaniel Hawthorne had kept his office as U.S. Consul in the middle of the previous century, but somehow, the cabby reflected morosely, this particular American didn’t look as though he’d be interested in the author of Tanglewood and The Scarlet Letter either.

The cab drew out of the quayside gates and up the long pier to the main street at the top, where the electric trams clanged and rumbled and a slow-moving stream of traffic, most of it horse-drawn, but with the occasional motor here and there, slowed the cab to a walk. The cabby noted that his fare was sitting forward, surveying the scene with the air of a man who is intent on drinking everything in, but giving no sign of whether he found it pleasing or otherwise. For the cabby’s money, central Liverpool was not an inspiring sight in any weather, with its bustling pavements and dirty over-crowded streets, and he was genuinely startled when after some little distance his passenger called out sharply to him to hold on. He was staring intently down the street which they were crossing, a long, grimy thoroughfare of chandlers” shops and warehouses; he was smiling, the wondering cabby noticed, in a strange, faraway fashion, as though seeing something that wasn’t there at all. He was humming, too, gently under his breath, as he surveyed the long seedy stretch of ugly buildings and cobbles on which the rain was beginning to fall.

“You want to go down there, sir?” the cabby inquired. “Takes us oot o’ the road to the Adelphi, like.”

“No,” said Mr Franklin. “Just looking.” He nodded at the street-sign, a plaque fixed high on the corner building. “Paradise Street.” And then to the cabby’s astonishment he laughed and sat back, quoting to himself in an absent-minded way:

As I was walking down Paradise Street,

Way-hay, blow the man down.

Thirty miles out from Liverpool town,

Gimme some time to blow the man down.

That had been Tracy’s song, Tracy the Irishman who had been a sailor. And there was Paradise Street itself, come on all unexpected, and nothing like the picture the song had conjured up when Tracy sang it, far from the sea. What had he imagined? Waving palms, blue water, sandy shores – and here were the cold grey stones of Liverpool’s sailortown. Very unexpected – but then England was sure to be full of unexpected, unimagined things. He became aware that the cabby, twisted round on his box, was viewing him with some concern; Mr Franklin nodded and gestured him to drive on.

A funny monkey, the driver decided; American interest in things English was, he knew from experience, liable to be eccentric, but Paradise Street …? Was this bloke one of those who might be enthused by a view of St George’s Hall, that startling showpiece of Liverpudlian architecture which they would see towards the end of their journey? Or if he didn’t care for mock Graeco-Roman temples five hundred feet long, would he respond to some useful information on the subject of the Walker Fine Art Gallery, with its striking sketch by Tintoretto and its portrait of Margaret de Valois, possibly by Holbein but more probably school of J. Clouet? The cabby, who had done his homework carefully for the benefit of tourists, stole another look at his fare’s impassive bronzed face and decided regretfully that he wouldn’t. Putting all hope of a substantial tip out of his head, he drove on to the Adelphi Hotel.

Here, he was rewarded with his shilling fare and another carefully-selected silver threepence, and Mr Franklin was escorted by porters into the luxurious marble and red plush interior of the lobby. He paused to survey the elegant little staircase leading to the main lounge, the mixed throng of affluent transit guests and local, no-nonsense business men in sober suits and watch-chains, the quiet efficiency of the Adelphi’s numerous hall staff – and was surveyed in his turn by the Irish head porter, who was as great an expert in his way as Inspector Griffin. No stick, no gloves, well-worn boots, and a decidedly colonial look to his clothing, the porter thought; his first question’ll be the price of a room.

“How much do you charge,” asked Mr Franklin quietly, “for a single room?”

“Four shillings and upwards, sir,” replied the porter. “That’s eighty cents in your own money,” and he favoured Mr Franklin with an avuncular smile, being one who had relatives in Philadelphia himself. “Just off the boat, sir? You’ll be ready for a bite of breakfast, then. In the coffee-room, sir; the gentlemen’s cloak-room is to your right. And the name, sir? Frank-lin, very good. Of –?”

“Ah … United States.”

“First-rate, sir. The boy will take up your luggage. You’ll be staying … two nights, sir. I see. Now, when you’ve breakfasted, if there’s any assistance I can give, you just inquire at my desk. Not at all, sir.” And as Mr Franklin hesitated, as though wondering whether to reach into his waistcoat pocket for another threepence, the porter generously solved the problem for him by turning to attend to an angular English lady, changing in that instant from a warm and genial father-figure into the respectfully impersonal butler to whom her ladyship was accustomed.

Mr Franklin left his cape and hat in the cloak-room, warily examined the array of flacons of lavender water, Hammam’s Bouquet, Mennen’s toilet powder, and Eno’s Fruit Salts laid out for exterior and internal refreshment, and compromised by washing his hands. He should have stayed over in New York, at the Belmont or the Clarendon, to get the feel of these places, but the city had been bursting at the seams for the Hudson-Fulton festivities celebrating the three hundredth anniversary of the former’s discovery of Manhattan, and the hundredth of the latter’s steam navigation; consequently, there had been no rooms to be had. Besides, he had had a vague desire to come fresh to England from where he had been; an odd ambition which he would have had difficulty in defining.

He ate an excellent breakfast in the cosy coffee-room, sitting at a little window table and watching the constant stream of traffic and pedestrians in the street outside. He deliberately ate slowly, conscious of a mounting feeling of excitement – which he found strange in himself, for he was not normally an excitable man. Then he returned to the lobby, and questioned the attentive porter.

“Guide books to London and East Anglia, sir? Sure, now I can get those for you. And a large-scale map of the county of Norfolk?” The porter’s eyebrows rose a fraction. “You’ll want the ordnance survey – yes, I dare say I can get that, too. It may take an hour or so, but if you’re going out … you are, for a look at the town. Capital, sir.”

Mr Franklin thanked him, and set off to tour the city on foot, content to walk at random, watching and listening, standing on street corners to observe the passing crowds, trying to accustom his ear to the strange, soft mumbling accent of the Liverpudlians, observing the magisterial police on traffic duty, spending five minutes listening to an altercation between a stout woman and a street trader, riding on an electric tram and on the famous overhead railway, and generally presenting the appearance of an interested wanderer absorbing the sights and sounds around him.

He lunched in a public house off soup and sandwiches, washed down by a pint of heavy dark beer which he found rather cloyingly sweet, spent another couple of hours in apparently aimless strolling, and returned to the Adelphi as dusk was falling. There he dined, and after calculating that the five shillings, or one dollar, which the dinner cost, still left him with a comfortable balance from the ten dollars which, the Mauretania’s purser had assured him, was all that a first-class traveller need spend per day in England, retired to his room.

Here the guide books which the porter had obtained were waiting for him, but he ignored them in favour of the large ordnance survey map of Norfolk, which he spread out on the bed and began to examine with close attention. For half an hour he pored over it, the dark face intent as he traced over the fine print and symbols denoting such detailed items as railway cuttings, plantations, marshes, forest paths, churches with spires (and with towers), historic sites, and the like, and the quaint, pastoral place-names, Attleborough, Sheringham, Swaffham, Methwold, and Castle Lancing.

Mr Franklin smiled, and lay down on the bed, and for another half-hour he was quite still, stretched out, hands behind his head, the dark grey eyes staring up at the ceiling, the gentle mouth beneath the black moustache slightly open. An onlooker would have thought he was asleep, but presently he came swiftly to his feet, and went purposefully to the work of undressing and preparing himself for bed.

He unpacked his few toilet articles from his valise, took off his jacket, removed the money-belt round his waist and methodically counted its contents – one hundred and ninety-eight gold sovereigns, which was a considerable sum, even for a transatlantic passenger, and had caused the American Express clerk in New York to purse his lips doubtfully when Mr Franklin, changing his dollars, had insisted on carrying so much on his person. If Inspector Griffin, or the Irish head porter, had been privileged to peep into Mr Franklin’s room they, too, might have been mildly surprised. But they would not have thought anything particularly out of the way until the moment when Mr Franklin, having stood for several minutes contemplating his battered trunk where it stood against the wall, gave way apparently to a sudden impulse, and unbuckled the straps which secured it. Even then there was nothing strange in his behaviour, or in the way he paused, glancing round the room with its homely fittings, the shaded light, the marble wash-stand with its bowl and ewer, the floral wallpaper and patterned carpet, the little notice informing guests of mealtimes and fire precautions; nor even in the way he meditatively touched the linen pillow and embroidered bed-spread, like a man reassuring himself of his surroundings, before he turned to the trunk again and threw back the lid.

At that point they might have taken notice, for the contents of Mr Franklin’s trunk were, to say the least, slightly unusual for a guest in a Liverpool hotel. Not that there was anything about them to excite Inspector Griffin’s professional attention; there was no contraband, no illicit goods, nothing to which, in those easygoing days, even a law officer could have taken exception, although he might have made a mental note that Mr Franklin was a man of unusual background and, possibly, behaviour.

The principal object in the trunk, taking up most of its space, was a saddle – but the kind of saddle that would have made an English hunting squire rub his eyes and exclaim with disgust. It was what the Mexicans call a charro saddle, heavily ornamented and studded with metal-work, very high both before and behind, and therefore a sure recipe (in the eyes of the English squire) for a broken pelvis if its owner were unwise enough to use it over hedges. There was also a blanket, of Indian pattern, neatly folded, and a heavy canvas slicker, or cape; a very worn and stained wideawake hat, a pair of heavy leather gauntlets, a pair of battered boots in sore need of repair, a large drinking mug of cheap metal, and several packets of papers done up in oil-skin.

Mr Franklin, squatting in front of the trunk in his long underwear – he had discarded his newly-bought nightshirt on the first day of his voyage – handled each item in turn, very carefully, running his long fingers over their surfaces, caressingly almost as a man will handle old things which are familiar friends. He spun the big rowels on the spurred boots and put them back, smiling a little, rapped his knuckle on the mug, balanced the packets of papers in his hands, and restored them to their places. There were half a dozen books in the trunk; he leafed through them slowly – Old Mortality, Oliver Twist, Humphrey Clinker, Baedeker’s Guide to England, the 1897 edition; the poetical works of Wordsworth, George Borrow’s Lavengro, Huckleberry Finn, the complete works of Shakespeare.

He read the fly-leaf on the Shakespeare, although he knew the inscription off by heart, the spidery writing in faded ink: “To Luke Franklin, in the earnest hope that he may find profit, pleasure, and peace of mind in its pages, from his affectionate father”. The signature was “Jno. Franklin, 1858”. His grandfather’s gift to his own father; he could hear the old man’s voice reading from it – Luke Franklin had loved best of all to recite Falstaff’s part, chuckling over the grosser jests, rolling Shakespeare’s rich periods over his tongue … “when I was of thy years I was not an eagle’s talon in the waist; I could have crept me into any alderman’s thumb ring.” He had wondered what an alderman was, and Luke Franklin had told him, on a soft and starry summer night when they camped on the road to El Paso; he had been just a boy then, lying staring into the fire, listening while his father explained that it was a corruption of “eolderman”, an old English word – “it’s the same as elder, an elder man, an alderman, who is a kind of city councilman back in England. They still have them there.” His father had resumed his reading aloud, and the boy had gone to sleep, to awake in the pearly dawn, beside a dead fire, with his father still croaking away through the Battle of Shrewsbury, oblivious of time and place, lost in the magic of the play.

Mr Franklin sighed. Shakespeare and he had travelled some long roads since then, into some strange places. There had been the time in the silver camp when he had read Othello to a group of amusement-starved miners, and old Davis, his partner, had burst out: “Why, that damnfool nigger! Couldn’t he have asked around? Couldn’t he see they were makin’ a jackass out of him?” Or the night in Hole-in-the-Wall when he had lent the book to Cassidy, the last man on earth who might have been expected to appreciate the Swan of Avon, but he had studied away at it, the broad, beefy face frowning as he spelled out the words, and Franklin had caught the whispered mutter: “Before these eyes take themselves to slumber, I’ll do good service, or lie in the ground for it, aye, or go to death. But I’ll pay it as valorously as I may. That will I surely do.” Yes, Cassidy might never have heard of Harfleur or the Salic Law, but he could understand that kind of talk, all right. Wonder where he was now? Where were any of them, for that matter?

Well, he was here, in Liverpool, Lancashire County, England, quarter of the way round the world from Hole-in-the-Wall, or El Paso, or the Tonopah diggings, or the Nebraska farm that he could barely remember. Already it seemed far away, that other world, in mind as well as distance. Only the instinct of the wanderer, whose home and effects travelled with him, whose whole being could be contained in one old trunk, had prompted him to hold on to all these relics – not the books, but the trail gear. Why hadn’t he abandoned it? Habit? Sentiment, perhaps? Insurance? Mr Franklin had to admit that he did not know.

He replaced the books, paused, and then reached under the saddle and drew out the belt with its scabbards and the two. 44 Remingtons; he unsheathed them and weighed them in his hand, one after the other, the light catching the long slim silver barrels. Like the Shakespeare, they had belonged to his father; like the Shakespeare, they were rather old and out of date; but again, he told himself, like the Shakespeare they would probably outlast most modern innovations. He rolled the cylinders, listening to the soft oily clicks of the mechanism; then he frowned, broke open the chambers, and carefully shook the little brass shells out into his palm. Loaded pistols in Liverpool were as incongruous as … as Shakespeare in Hole-in-the-Wall.

Dropping the cartridges into an old cloth, he knotted it and stowed it under the saddle with the empty pistols. Then he closed the trunk, buckled its straps securely, looked round the room again, rolled into bed, and turned out the light.