The boy turned and let himself into the bathing-machine. Moscrop produced a silk handkerchief and wiped his brow. Good Lord! What a lather he was getting himself into! It was utterly ridiculous. What did it matter whom the boy looked like? He was no more than a link in the present chain of circumstances. He could resemble anyone from Charles Peace to Mr. Gladstone himself and it would not matter a jot. Once he had made contact with the fair provider of the towel he ceased to be of any importance.
But when some ten minutes later the youth descended from the machine, carrying his roll of bathing garments, paid the attendant and crunched away across the stones, it was not to rendezvous with anyone on the beach. Instead he mounted the nearest steps to the Esplanade and headed away in the direction of the West Pier. There was nothing for it but to set off in pursuit. Laden as he was with his bag of optical instruments and scarcely recovered from his exertions in covering the same route from the reverse direction, Moscrop found the pace damnably fast. The boy was short of stature-though probably not for his age-and would soon have been indistinguishable in the press of promenaders ahead, were it not for the red blazer he wore, matched by a brilliant silk boater-ribbon.
By the pier entrance, where the crowd was thickest, he lost him. At another time it would have given him boundless pleasure to edge his way into the throng, regardless of whether he were joining a group buying brandy-balls or those trying to listen to the band. Today he skirted the crowd, anxiously seeking his quarry. Then-what relief! — he spotted the strip of red across the road. But-consternation! — the boy was paying for the hire of a bicycle. Moscrop had not used the two-wheel mode of transport in the whole of his life.
He did the only thing possible: crossed the King’s Road and ran to the cab-stand. Already the boy was aloft and in process of achieving sufficient momentum, with the assistant’s support, to sustain his own balance. The bathing things were in a convenient basket attached to the saddle. He passed the cab-stand at a wobble, but in independent motion. Moscrop took off his bowler and beat it against his thigh in exasperation. There was not a cab within hail.
It was five minutes at least before a growler drew up and disgorged its passenger. Five minutes! A bicyclist could be halfway to Kemp Town in that time. He mounted the carriage steps before he was aware that a second passenger, a Pekinese dog, had still to descend. He almost threw it into its owner’s arms and ordered the cabman to drive away.
Progress along the King’s Road was desperately slow. Nobody wanted to hurry; the drive along the front was an opportunity to be seen, not to raise dust. So the cab went at little faster than the pace of the goat-chaises carrying parties of small children between the piers. There was nothing to be gained from urging the cabman to go faster; the volume of traffic made that impossible unless you had your own horse or bicycle.
The quite charming views to left and right, the elegant Regency facades and the splendidly green sea, were lost on Moscrop. He was craning to look past the cabman at any snatch of red in prospect and being deceived by parasols and toy balloons all the way to the Chain Pier. There he ordered the cab to halt. He had seen a rack with some half-dozen bicycles against the wall of a building adjoining the pier entrance. One machine was being pushed into position there by a boy no taller than the front wheel. There was a basket attached to the saddle. Moscrop gave the cabman his shilling and cut across the road.
‘This bicycle,’ he demanded of the boy. ‘Who returned it to you?’
‘It’s from up the West Pier, guv. This ‘ere’s as far as you can go for a tanner. Gent ‘ired it up there and brought it in ‘ere. I just collect ’em and stable ’em. Quite a few geezers ride up ‘ere regular for lunch at Mutton’s or the Aquarium. Some of ’em try riding back after. Rare sight that is, if they’ve had a jug or two of four-ale.’
‘The person who hired it,’ persisted Moscrop. ‘Would you recall whether he was a young man not much older than yourself and wearing a red blazer?’
The boy scratched his chin. ‘Can’t say as I can recall anything.’
Moscrop put his hand in his pocket.
‘Now that I put me mind to it,’ said the boy resourcefully, ‘‘e was wearing a blazer. And it were red all right.’
Moscrop thrust a sixpence between their faces. It flashed in the sunlight. ‘Which way did this young man go?’
‘Up there, guv. The Aquarium, I reckon. Ah, much obliged to you.’
The Aquarium! He was more accustomed to studying life beside the sea than in it, but he did not hesitate. He was across the road, past the terrace garden and up to the turnstile under the Aquarium clocktower before the bicycle boy had put the sixpence in his pocket.
CHAPTER 3
Admission to the aquarium was a shilling. Half a crown spent in two minutes! Indulging one’s curiosity was an expensive pastime. He hoped the information he had bought at the bicycle-stand was reliable. Even if it were, the finding of the youth would not be easy. The forecourt at the foot of the granite steps he was descending was like an hotel foyer, thick with visitors noisily debating whether they would first take lunch, see the exhibits or listen to the conservatory orchestra. He paused midway down, scrutinising the shaded areas under the red-brick arches and behind the terracotta columns. The only red coats in view belonged to members of the militia. He moved on and down and crossed the pavement to the entrance-hall.
This too was crowded, but less noisy. It was furnished as a reading-room, with long tables. Visitors had come there in dozens and gone to the London newspapers like men overboard to lifebelts. However well a landlady prepared breakfast, it was not the same without The Morning Post.
The current editions of Brighton’s seventeen daily and weekly papers, liberally arranged along the eighty-foot length of the hall, were not much in demand. The single exception was The Fashionable Visitors’ List. For every one studying that journal, three or four waited to replace him. Suitably, it was mounted under glass on an elongated lectern. At another table, the latest telegrams were dissected by a small colony of holiday-makers from the London Stock Exchange.
Moscrop stood in uncertainty, trying to make the same decision that provoked such discussion outside. Should he turn left and enter the restaurant or go forward into the main aquarium? He was already satisfied that the boy was not in the reading-room. It was fair to presume that if he was in the building at all he had come there to meet someone. Perhaps he had already met them outside and gone into the restaurant. If he had, he should be there for a considerable while; long enough to make it safe to search the corridors housing the tanks. He stepped forward decisively.