It was at a little past nine in the evening that I next saw Hewitt. He came into my rooms in an incongruous get-up. He wore corduroy trousers, a very dirty striped jersey, a particularly greasy old jacket, and a twisted neckcloth; but over all was an excellent overcoat, and on his head a tall hat of high polish.

“Brought to me by Kerrett,” he said, in explanation of the hat and overcoat. “He’s been waiting with them for a long time in a court by Milford Lane. A good hat and overcoat will cover anything, and I preferred to enter this building in my own character. I’ve been wearing that this afternoon,” and he pulled out of his pocket an old peaked cap with ear-pieces tied over the top.

“You mustn’t bring your best clothes,” he went on, “or you’ll spoil them scrambling about boats and groping in ditches. I have done my ditch-groping for the day, and I’m going to change. You had best be putting on older things while I get into newer.”

“What sort of place is this Channel Marsh?” I asked.

“Well, I should think there must be a great many better places to spend a night in. It must be the dreariest, wettest flat within many miles of London, and I should like to see the portrait of the man who had the idea of building a house there. For a house there is, or rather the ruins of it — deserted for years, and half carried away by rats and people who wanted slates and firewood and water pipes.”

“Is that the place where you intend waiting to-night?”

“It is. I haven’t examined it nearly so closely as I should like, for fear of raising a scare. Channel Marsh is almost an island, with a narrow neck of an entrance at each end. A foot-track runs the whole length, and a person in the ruined house can easily see anybody entering the Marsh from either end. For that reason I reconnoitred from a boat — the boat you will go in to-night. I think it is the very dirtiest old tub I ever saw, so that it suited my rig out. I discovered it at a wharf some little way down the river, and I paid a shilling for the hire of it. Channel Marsh is banked a bit on one side, and I crept up under cover of the bank. I learned very little, beyond the general lie of the land, because I was so mighty cautious. I judged it better to be content with half an examination, rather than drive away the game. And even as it is I’ve an idea I have been seen. I lay up among some reeds till dark, but after that I am sure there was somebody on the Marsh — and skulking, too, like me. So after waiting and scouting for a little I gave it up and paddled quietly back.”

“But look here, Hewitt,” I said, “this seems a bit mad. Why go and risk yourself as you talk of doing? You believe Mayes will be there, at the ruin, or will come there at twelve. Very well, then, why can’t the police send enough men to surround the place and capture him for certain?”

Hewitt smiled and shook his head. “My dear Brett,” he said, “you haven’t seen the place, and I have. It will be hard enough job for you and Plummer to get near the spot unobserved, guided by a man who knows every inch. A trampling crowd of policemen would have as much chance as a herd of elephants, and on such light nights as we are having now they would be seen a mile off. And who knows what scouts he may have out? No, as I say, it will be a great piece of luck if you get through unobserved as it is, and even now I’m not perfectly certain that I couldn’t do best alone. However, arrangements are made now, and you are coming, three of you.”

“Then what are the arrangements?” I asked.

“Just these. You are to leave here first. Make the best of your way to Mile End Gate, where an old inn stands in the middle of the road. Go to the corner of the turning opposite this, at the south side of the road. At eleven o’clock a four-wheeler will drive up, with Plummer and one of his men in it. The man is one who knows all the geography of Channel Marsh, and he also knows exactly where to find the boat I used to-day. You will drive to a little way beyond Bow Bridge, and then Plummer’s man will lead you to the boat. You had better scull and leave the others to look out. They will know what to do. You will pull along to a place where you can watch till you see me coming on to the Marsh by the path. As soon as you see me you will slip quietly along to a place the policeman will show you, close to the ruin, and watch again. That’s all. I don’t know whether or not you think it worth while to take a pistol. I certainly shall; but then I’m most likely to want it. Plummer will have one.”

I thought it well worth while, and I took my regulation “Webley”— a relic of my old Volunteer captaincy. Then, by way of the underground railway, I gained the neighbourhood of Mile End, and interested myself about its back streets till the time approached to look for Plummer’s cab.

Plummer was more than punctual — indeed, he was two or three minutes before his time. The cab drew near the kerb and scarcely stopped, so quickly did I scramble in.

“Good,” said Plummer; “we’re well ahead of time. Mr. Hewitt quite right?”

“Yes,” I said. “I left him so an hour and a half ago at his office.” And we sat silent while the cab rattled and rumbled over the stony road to Bow Bridge, and the shopkeepers on the way put up their shutters and extinguished their lights.

Bow Bridge was reached and passed, and presently we stopped the cab and alighted. Here Styles, Plummer’s man, took the lead, and a little way farther along the road we turned into a dark and muddy lane on the left. We floundered through this for some hundred and fifty yards or so, and then suddenly drew in at an opening on the right. Here we stood for a few moments while our guide groped his way down toward the muddy water we could smell, rather than see, a little way before us.

There were a few broken steps and a broad black thing which was the boat. We got into it as silently as we could manage, and cast off. It was a clumsy, broad-beamed, leaky old conveyance, and that it was as dirty as Hewitt had described it I could feel as I groped for the sculls and got them out. The night was light and dark by turns — changing with the clouds. We shipped the rudder, and Styles steered, or I should probably have run ashore more than once, for the banks were not always distinct, and the channel was narrow and dark. We passed the black forms of several factories with tall chimneys, and then drew out among the Marshes, flat and grey, with wisps of mist lying here and there. So we went in silence for a while, till at last we drew in against the bank on the left and laid hold by a post at a landing-place.

“This is the Channel Marsh,” whispered Styles, as we climbed cautiously ashore. “We can’t see the house very well from here, but there’s where Mr. Hewitt will come through.”

Looking over the top of the low bank, we could discern a path which traversed the length of the marsh, entering it by a broken gate at a neck of land which we must have passed on our way. Here we crouched and waited. We had heard the half-hour struck on some distant clock soon after entering the boat, and now we waited anxiously for the three-quarters. So long did the time seem to my excited perceptions that I had quite decided that the clock must have stopped, or, at any rate, did not chime quarters, when at last the strokes came, distant and plaintive, over the misty flats.

“A quarter of an hour,” Plummer remarked. “He won’t be a minute late, nor a minute too early, from what I know of him. How long will it take him from that gate to the ruin?”

“Eight or nine minutes, good,” Styles answered.