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Having raked together from the sodden débris beneath his window some disfigured remains of his poor treasures, Ned Hazell had left the house in the early hours of the morning, in good earnest for ever.
As the two watermen gingerly manoeuvred the boat on the ebbing tide, Hazell explained to the millionaire that the 'Squirm' was one of the most notorious craft on the river. It appeared that when anyone had a nefarious or underhand scheme afoot which necessitated river work Everett's launch was always available for a suitable monetary consideration.
I expect that chap hid in the dinghy when he first caught sight of us, and then slipped his painter as soon as I'd gone. The boat was moving at a rapid pace with the tide. Steering was a matter of luck and instinct more than anything else. Every now and then Hazell, who held the lines, was obliged to jerk the boat's head sharply round to avoid a barge or an anchored vessel.
Her name is Bessie Hazell Sarah Ann Jinks, very likely, but that's what she calls herself, anyway. She married an acrobat two years ago and they started doing quite well. Then he got a cough, had to give up work, the doctors all shook their heads at him, wanted to tell him it was consumption. Bless you, she wouldn't listen to it! She got him down to Bournemouth somehow and they patched him up.
Ned Hazell would be a poet too, and a painter as well, and perhaps a romantic actor; but his father's tastes for his son's future lay in none of these directions, and Ned was for the present in cotton. Now the elder Mr.
The next morning he found a sumptuous breakfast awaiting him, and in his table-napkin was a Bank of England note for a hundred pounds. But, though he did not hear of them till much later, many things had happened before Hazell consumed that sumptuous breakfast.
Hazell was a man of violently convivial habits, and the bonhomie, with which he was accustomed to enliven bar-parlours up till eleven of an evening, was apt to suffer a certain ungenial transformation as he reached his own front door.
'Quite, said Hazell positively: 'I know how to search a vessel. See this, and he handed to Racksole a sort of steel skewer, about two feet long, with a wooden handle. 'That, he said, 'is one of the Customs' aids to searching. 'I suppose it wouldn't do to go on board and carry off the lady? Racksole suggested doubtfully. 'Well, Hazell began, with equal doubtfulness, 'as for that
He, as well as his mate, had received from Theodore Racksole one English sovereign as a kind of preliminary fee, and an English sovereign will do a lot towards silencing the natural sarcastic tendencies and free speech of a Thames waterman. 'There's one thing I noticed, said Racksole suddenly, 'and I forgot to tell you of it, Mr Hazell.
'Now, Hazell, the high official continued, 'Mr Racksole wants you to help in a little private expedition on the river to-night. I will give you a night's leave. I sent for you partly because I thought you would enjoy the affair and partly because I think I can rely on you to regard it as entirely unofficial and not to talk about it. You understand?
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