HEN news first reached me that a distinguished M.P. had been set upon and robbed by a well-dressed highwayman on the main stream of the Thames, just below Cliveden Woods, I confess I was more than half inclined, on the first blush of it, to treat the whole affair as a cock-and-bull story.
I had been High Constable of the county for fifteen years, and as my own place at Bray slopes down with its lawn to the river's edge, I know perfectly well how crowded is this part of the Thames with punts and rowing-boats during the whole summer season. Moreover, the particular spot chosen for the extraordinary attempt seemed so very unlikely. Cliveden Reach is the most frequented stretch of water on the whole river; hundreds of holiday-makers pour down from London every day to Taplow or Maidenhead, so that the channel is alive with scullers and steam launches, for some five miles up stream, till a late hour in the evening. I pooh-poohed the policeman who first told me the tale.
"Nonsense," I said; "the gentleman must have been dining at some riverside hotel, perhaps with casual or undesirable acquaintances, and, having had his pocket picked by them, or been diddled out of his money, he has invented this extremely improbable story to allay his wife's well-grounded suspicions." For, I am sorry to say, one cannot be High Constable of a riverside county for fifteen years and yet retain a childlike trust in the perfect goodness of human nature.
But when the Right Honourable Edward Symington himself, the respected member for the Plympton Boroughs, appeared before me and told his tale, I confess I was staggered.
Mr. Symington was not the sort of man, I took it, to be the victim of a delusion; nor did he look particularly gullible. Tall, thick-set, stoutly built, a typical hard-headed English squire, a good rider to hounds, a Conservative country member, he had the solidity and credibility which we always attribute to the honest, straightforward, unimaginative .
He told his story with perfect frankness. He had been out on the river with a party of intimate friends, and had dined—he did not attempt to deny the fact of dining—at that well-conducted house, the Ferry Inn at Cookham. After dinner, about nine at night, on a fine early summer evening, he started in a Canadian canoe for Maidenhead. He was accustomed to manage a boat, and was a good sculler and paddler. Where the stream divides, he took the inner channel, under the Cliveden Woods; and there, just behind the island, he was surprised, as he passed, to see another canoe glide rapidly out in the gloom, and a man accost him threateningly.
"Fork out whatever you have in your purse! Quick; hand it over, this minute, or I shoot you!"
"What sort of man?" I asked, eyeing my informant hard.
Symington answered like a truthful person.
"I could hardly make out, as it was growing dusk, but he seemed to me tall with much black hair about his face—beard, moustache, and whiskers."
"Armed?"
"Yes, certainly; armed with a revolver. He pointed it full at me and cried, 'No hesitation, or I fire!' He was bland, but peremptory."
"He dared not have fired," I said; "he would have aroused the neighbourhood."
"I'm not so sure of that; it is lonely behind the islands, and the hour was late. I passed only one other boat all the way from Cookham. The river is crowded, I admit. Colonel, till eight or half-past, but as soon as it grows dark, not a soul is left on it."
"And you gave him your purse?"
"Well, it was cowardly of me, I own; but what would you have? He was covering me with his revolver—I was quite unarmed; and remember, too, in a Canadian canoe, which is not the sort of place one would choose for a tussle. The least thing upsets one. Besides, I don't swim; it's the sole manly accomplishment I never acquired, having been brought up inland, far away from any river. When I went up to Oxford, I was either too old or too ashamed to learn, and I have never learned, so the rogue had me at his mercy."
"How much money did your purse contain?"
"Oh, nothing to speak of; about seven pounds. But that's not what I mind. It's the principle of the thing—that a pirate should be permitted to go about unchecked on the upper Thames with 'Your money or your life!' in this nineteenth century."
I paused and reflected.
"Things of the sort will crop up," I said, "in spite of all the pains one may take to prevent them. But nothing like this shall crop up again, I promise you. I will have the river properly patrolled and guarded."