I sat on with Backhouse, drinking Smith's, and the beer did its work of lessening my nervousness by degrees. Backhouse then returned to his graft in the churchyard, and I to his home – where the coppers were now roaming about the garden, each in a world of his own – and the wife let me pick up the baby. Little Harry cried as soon as I did so, and I wondered whether I would be out with him for ever, having missed his first hours. He was small, as Dad had feared, and this was on account of him coming early, but that didn't bother me. To my mind the trouble with most babies was that they were a sight too big. I watched his hands; you'd think that somebody had paired and polished his nails, they were so dainty.
I slept a little in the afternoon, patrolled the village come nightfall in the soft rain with my cap pulled low, keeping on the kee-vee, and feeling a confounded twit, before returning to the Fortune with Backhouse. That night, I hardly slept again, what with the worry of all, the night-time movements of the many Backhouse children, the baby refusing to settle, and the coming and going of the police guards, who changed shifts in the small hours.
At four in the morning I dressed and walked back to 16A. Opening the front door, I whispered 'Sampson? Hopkins?' For I was now of a mind that they might have reached an accommodation, and remained together. If so, would they bother travelling hundreds of miles to settle my hash? And as for their confederate, Mike… I was not quite so vexed about him. I had him down as a man for a nasty assault, but killing was not his line.
The thing was the left-luggage ticket though. They would come for the ticket, which I would not be able to hand over.
Feeling like a burglar in my own home, I put on my good suit, collected up the Swan pen that Dad had given me, some of the blank papers I'd had from the Chief, and the book I'd lifted in Calais: Paris and its Environs. In the low gaslight, I opened a page haphazardly: 'The stranger visiting Paris for the first time, and anxious that his first impression of the city should be as striking as possible, cannot do better than a walk from the Louvre to the Place de la Concorde.' I closed the book and looked at the gold lettering on the cover. It was like a souvenir from a dream.
I stepped out of the house, locking the door behind me, and rode the Humber through the blue darkness to the station. There was nobody at the barrier. A long black coal train was rolling through, and when it had passed, I saw the Night Station Manager across the way on Platform Five, holding his black top hat in his hands like a mourner at a funeral. He turned away as I made for the Police Office.
Inside, I turned up the gas, lit the stove, put the kettle on to boil. I fished out some carbons from the drawer of Shillito's desk, took up the Swan pen and, beginning 'Special Report' and 'Persons Wanted', set about my account of the roundhouse robbery and the flight to Paris.
I had brought along Paris and its Environs so as to get the spellings of some of the French words right, but after the best part of an hour I was still describing events in the roundhouse. Knowing the young Company man who'd come along with us only as 'Tim', I did my best to describe his looks, with a funny feeling of digging the man's grave as I went about it. Did I want them to see him run-in? Yes and no. I'd liked him in a way, and he hadn't seemed a violent sort.
I had a second hesitation as I came to recall just what Sampson had said in the roundhouse about the killing of the Camerons. The Chief wanted Sampson charged with their murder, should he ever be found. This was because Sampson had shot at the Chief and made him lie down between the tracks. It was one thing to keep back Lund's confession, but it would be another again to lie in writing about what I'd heard, with the words repeated on the carbon beneath… And then stand to it all in court.
Roberts, the Clerk, had it wrong. Sampson had said 'I enjoyed that business', meaning he enjoyed hearing of it or reading of it – at least so I believed, and I would write my account accordingly, letting people make what they would of his words. But in fact I wrote nothing. Instead, I sat back and thought again of all the crimes of Sampson, beginning with the ones I suspected him of (he had somehow caused the hotel man, Mariner, to make away with himself; he had very likely killed the two detectives at Victoria), and then running on to the ones I was witness to, which included railway trespass at the lowest, attempted murder of the Chief Inspector at the highest. But you could not swing for attempt. Why should that concern me either way? Was my goal the execution of Valentine Sampson? It would have been nearer the mark to say that my goal was the saving of Lund, but unfortunately the two could not go together.I stood up and made another pot of tea. I looked at what I now knew to be the armoury cupboard, tried the door – locked, of course. I wandered over to the mantel, looking at the photograph of the Grimsby Dock Police Football team of 1905. Did every man in that team suffer the same vexation as me over police work? You would not have thought it from their faces. I went back to the desk and picked up Paris and its Environs. On the second page, I read 'A Railway Map of France will be found at the end of the book', and I turned to the map, where the English Channel was put down as 'La Manche'. The lines shown extended a good way beyond France, and the sea routes to England from Belgium and Holland were also drawn in. As I looked at the map with an idea dawning, a mighty noise rose within the Police Office, the sound of a wind or a great wave rolling into shore.
I stepped through the outer door as the sound rose to its highest pitch, and there, ten feet away and leaking steam, stood the engine that had brought in the fish special from Hull. Four doors opened along the three carriages, and half a dozen unimportant people walked away to fade into the city of York. After a space, another passenger climbed down in a Homburg hat and Norfolk jacket; he placed a portmanteau on the ground as another man approached him. The gentry in from Hull was Sampson, and he was being met by Mike. Of Hopkins there was no sign, and that was because Sampson had put his lights out.
Mike stood before Sampson; I was looking at Mike's wide back. He was up to his old tricks: blocking… although he didn't know that he was standing between me and his governor. At the very moment that I stepped back towards the Police Office, Mike turned aside, great head dipped low under his low, wide cap, and Sampson was looking directly at me, revolver in hand.
He advanced upon me, gun in one hand, portmanteau in the other. A long article, half muffled in rags rested on top of the portmanteau. Beyond him, at the far end of the train, the fish boxes were down, but not attended to on the platform, which was quite deserted. The engine was now retreating beside the train it had brought in a moment before; it would be coupled at the opposite end presently. An engine going backwards… It was a crazy spectacle, like time itself in reverse.
Sampson, still walking forwards, said: 'You know what I've come looking for, little Allan.' 'The left-luggage ticket?' I said, sounding as if I was trying to be helpful, and so sounding daft. He continued to advance. He had travelled to Hull by steamer, crossing the North Sea, and missing the Channel ports. 'Hopkins said you had it. Whether he put you up to it, I don't know. But he came at me with a fucking cutter in his hand…' His voice went high as he said those final words. Even now, he couldn't credit it. But of course… the knife had been meant only to put the wind up me. I was backing towards the door of the Police Office. 'Where's Miles?' I said, for some reason. Sampson shook his head. 'Gone case, little Allan,' he said. I thought of the tracks running below the window of the hotel room in Paris, the word 'Vins' painted on the wall of that great French hole. Sampson said: 'One hour I sat there looking down, little Allan… Waiting for a train to roll over him… Waited in vain, too.' 'Well, it was late on,' I said. My back was against the door of the Police Office. Sampson was shaking his head once more. 'Long time to wait for nothing to happen,' he said. 'Oh, I don't know,' I said. 'I reckon it's about average.' 'Hopkins told me you were a copper, in which case the ticket may be out of your hands, resting in a box marked "Evidence". Or then again, little Allan, you might just have held on to it, knowing you'd touch for a fortune just by taking a trip to London… And do you know something, little Allan? I'm having difficulty trying to decide which of those two actions would be the most cuntish?'