The Pretty Polly went back to the port of Kingston-upon-Hull in the grey morning light, carrying Mr. Carter, very cold and very down-hearted — not to say humiliated — by his failure. To have been hoodwinked by a girl, whose devotion to the unhappy wretch she called her father had transformed her into a heroine — to have fallen so easily into the trap that had been set for him, being all the while profoundly impressed with the sense of his own cleverness — was, to say the least of it, depressing to the spirits of a first-class detective.

“And that fellow Vallance, too,” mused Mr. Carter, “to think that he should go and chuck himself into the water just to spite me! There’d have been some credit in taking him back with me. I might have made a bit of character out of that. But, no! he goes and tumbles back’ards into the water, rather than let me have any advantage out of him.”

There was nothing for Mr. Carter to do but to go straight back to Lisford, and try his luck again, with everything against him.

“Let me get back as fast as I may, Joseph Wilmot will have had eight-and-forty hours’ start of me,” he thought; “and what can’t he do in that time, if he keeps his wits about him, and don’t go wild and foolish like, as some of ’em do, when they’ve got such a chance as this. Anyhow, I’m after him, and it’ll go hard with me if he gives me the slip after all, for my blood’s up, and my character’s at stake, and I’d think no more of crossing the Atlantic after him than I’d think of going over Waterloo Bridge!”

It was a very chill and miserable time of the morning when the Pretty Polly ground her nose against the granite steps of the quay. It was a chill and dismal hour of the morning, and Mr. Carter felt sloppy and dirty and unshaven, as he stepped out of the boat and staggered up the slimy stairs. He gave the two young fishermen the promised five-pound note, and left them very well contented with their night’s work, inglorious though it had been.

There were no vehicles to be had at that early hour of the morning, so Mr. Carter was fain to walk from the quay to the station, where he expected to find Mr. Tibbles, or to obtain tidings of that gentleman. He was not disappointed; for, although the station wore its dreariest aspect, having only just begun to throb with a little spasmodic life, in the way of an early goods-train, Mr. Carter found his devoted follower prowling in melancholy loneliness amid a wilderness of empty carriages and smokeless engines, with the turnip whiteness of his complexion relieved by a red nose.

Mr. Thomas Tibbles was by no means in the best possible temper in this chill early morning. He was slapping his long thin arms across his narrow chest, and performing a kind of amateur double-shuffle with his long flat feet, when Mr. Carter approached him; and he kept up the same shuffling and the same slapping while engaged in conversation with his superior, in a disrespectful if not defiant manner.

“A pretty game you’ve played me,” he said, in an injured tone. “You told me to hang about the station and watch the trains, and you’d come back in the course of the day — you would — and we’d dine together comfortable at the Station Hotel; and a deal you come back and dined together comfortable. Oh, yes! I don’t think so; very much indeed,” exclaimed Mr. Tibbles, vaguely, but with the bitterest derision in his voice and manner.

“Come, Sawney, don’t you go to cut up rough about it,” said Mr. Carter, coaxingly.

“I should like to know who’d go and cut up smooth about it?” answered the indignant Tibbles. “Why, if you could have a hangel in the detective business — which luckily you can’t, for the wings would cut out anything as mean as legs, and be the ruin of the purfession — the temper of that hangel would give way under what I’ve gone through. Hanging about this windy station, which the number of criss-cross draughts cuttin’ in from open doors and winders would lead a hignorant person to believe there was seventeen p’ints of the compass at the very least — hangin’ about to watch train after train, till there ain’t anything goin’ in the way of sarce as yen haven’t got to stand from the porters; or sittin’ in the coffee-room of the hotel yonder, watchin’ and listenin’ for the next train, till bein’ there to keep an appointment with your master is the hollerest of mockeries.”

Mr. Carter took his irate subordinate to the coffee-room of the Station Hotel, where Mr. Tibbles had engaged a bed and taken a few hours’ sleep in the dead interval between the starting of the last train at night and the first in the morning. The detective ordered a substantial breakfast, with a couple of glasses of pale brandy, neat, to begin with; and Mr. Tibbles’ equanimity was restored, under the influence of ham, eggs, mutton-cutlet, a broiled sole, and a quart or so of boiling coffee.

Mr. Carter told his assistant very briefly that he’d been wasting his time and trouble on a false track, and that he should give the matter up. Sawney Tom received this announcement with a great deal of champing and working of the jaws, and with rather a doubtful expression in his dull red eyes; but he accepted the payment which his employer offered him, and agreed to depart for London by the ten o’clock train.

“And whatever I do henceforth in this business, I do single-handed,” Mr. Carter said to himself, as he turned his back upon his companion.

At five o’clock that afternoon the detective found himself at the Shorncliffe station, where he hired a fly and drove on post-haste to Lisford cottage.

The neat little habitation of the late naval commander looked pretty much as Mr. Carter had seen it last, except that in............