He led him to the post of watch, and they both dropped down and crept under the lee of the boat; a better shelter than it had seemed before, being directly contrasted with the blowing wind and the bare night.

“Mr Inspector at home?” whispered Eugene.

“Here I am, sir.”

“And our friend of the perspiring brow is at the far corner there? Good. Anything happened?”

“His daughter has been out, thinking she heard him calling, unless it was a sign to him to keep out of the way. It might have been.”

“It might have been Rule Britannia,” muttered Eugene, “but it wasn’t. Mortimer!”

“Here!” (On the other side of Mr Inspector.)

“Two burglaries now, and a forgery!”

With this indication of his depressed state of mind, Eugene fell silent.

They were all silent for a long while. As it got to be flood-tide, and the water came nearer to them, noises on the river became more frequent, and they listened more. To the turning of steam-paddles, to the clinking of iron chain, to the creaking of blocks, to the measured working of oars, to the occasional violent barking of some passing dog on shipboard, who seemed to scent them lying in their hiding-place. The night was not so dark but that, besides the lights at bows and mastheads gliding to and fro, they could discern some shadowy bulk attached; and now and then a ghostly lighter with a large dark sail, like a warning arm, would start up very near them, pass on, and vanish. At this time of their watch, the water close to them would be often agitated by some impulsion given it from a distance. Often they believed this beat and plash to be the boat they lay in wait for, running in ashore; and again and again they would have started up, but for the immobility with which the informer, well used to the river, kept quiet in his place.

The wind carried away the striking of the great multitude of city church clocks, for those lay to leeward of them; but there were bells to windward that told them of its being One — Two — Three. Without that aid they would have known how the night wore, by the falling of the tide, recorded in the appearance of an ever-widening black wet strip of shore, and the emergence of the paved causeway from the river, foot by foot.

As the time so passed, this slinking business became a more and more precarious one. It would seem as if the man had had some intimation of what was in hand against him, or had taken fright? His movements might have been planned to gain for him, in getting beyond their reach, twelve hours’ advantage? The honest man who had expended the sweat of his brow became uneasy, and began to complain with bitterness of the proneness of mankind to cheat him — him invested with the dignity of Labour!

Their retreat was so chosen that while they could watch the river, they could watch the house. No one had passed in or out, since the daughter thought she heard the father calling. No one could pass in or out without being seen.

“But it will be light at five,” said Mr Inspector, “and then we shall be seen.”

“Look here,” said Riderhood, “what do you say to this? He may have been lurking in and out, and just holding his own betwixt two or three bridges, for hours back.”

“What do you make of that?” said Mr Inspector. Stoical, but contradictory.

“He may be doing so at this present time.”