2 by accident or on purpose.
Theodore Racksole had no satisfactory means of identifying the
steam launch which carried away Mr Tom Jackson. The sky had
clouded over soon after midnight, and there was also a slight mist,
and he had only been able to make out that it was a low craft,
about sixty feet long, probably painted black. He had personally
kept a watch all through the night on vessels going upstream, and
during the next morning he had a man to take his place who
warned him whenever a steam launch went towards Westminster.
At noon, after his conversation with Prince Aribert, he went down
the river in a hired row-boat as far as the Custom House, and
poked about everywhere, in search of any vessel which could by
any possibility be the one he was in search of.
But he found nothing. He was, therefore, tolerably sure that the
mysterious launch lay somewhere below the Custom House. At the
Custom House stairs, he landed, and asked for a very high official
- an official inferior only to a Commissioner - whom he had
entertained once in New York, and who had met him in London on
business at Lloyd's. In the large but dingy office of this great man a
long conversation took place - a conversation in which Racksole
had to exercise a certain amount of persuasive power, and which
ultimately ended in the high official ringing his bell.
'Desire Mr Hazell - room No. 332 - to speak to me,' said the
official to the boy who answered the summons, and then, turning
to Racksole: 'I need hardly repeat, my dear Mr Racksole, that this
is strictly unofficial.
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