CHAPTER XXIV.THE DERBY.
It was a bright, sunny day. The Clapham Road was thronged with every make of vehicles known to London streets. There were open trucks, with kitchen chairs for seats, omnibuses, covered with advertisements, hansoms, with hampers on top; drays, vans and carryalls. In the moving line were coaches, with ringing horns and jangling harnesses, while costermongers’ carts could be seen everywhere. And every vehicle had its load of passengers, from the four-horse coach to the costermonger’s cart, the latter often carrying six men and being drawn by one poor little donkey.
To watch this procession, thousands of people thronged the two sidewalks and filled the windows of the houses.
It is a jolly, roistering crowd that goes to the Derby, as Frank was not long in discovering. All along the line parties were singing popular songs; some were playing cards on small tables placed in their vans; some were beating time on their knees, and some were dancing up and down the limited confines of their wagons.
By making an effort for it, Frank had succeeded in obtaining a splendid seat upon one of the coaches. The professor was at his side, trying to look glum and disconsolate, as if he did not approve of such things at all.
“Hi, there, sir!” bawled a ragged urchin, who had been racing along beside the coach, occasionally turning handsprings and cartwheels; “your whiskers are sunstroked, sir.”
“The insolent young rascal!” growled the professor, whose fiery-red beard was a continual source of mingled pride and chagrin to him.
“’Ope you’ll pick a winner, sir,” cried another bare-legged ragamuffin. “You might throw us your moldy coppers, sir.”
“Nice boy,” smiled the professor, as he fished around in his pocket and brought forth a nickel, which he tossed to the second boy.
In the procession the costermongers were the most prominent. They could be readily distinguished by their dress. They all wore a white and blue dotted handkerchief, and long-tailed coats covered with huge pearl buttons. Some of them wore trousers slashed at the bottom on the outer seam, Mexican style.
The costers all seemed in a decidedly jovial mood. Some of them were accompanied by wives or sweethearts. Their sweethearts banged their hair after a fashion that distinguished them, and nearly all wore a broad silver chain and a most amazing bonnet slanting down in front over the hair and eyes, and shooting up at the back to tower high in the air. These bonnets were covered with ribbons, velvet and dyed feathers.
The costers seemed to feel that they owned the road, although they remained quite jovial if not crowded, and they often stood up in their carts to call to people on the coaches, addressing everybody in a most familiar manner.
After nearly two hours of steady driving, the coach on which Frank and the professor rode began to draw away from the suburbs of handsome villas. Parks were seen, and villages were passed through.
In every village carts could be seen standing in front of the public houses, in which the occupants of the carts were sometimes drinking. Sometimes they were stretching their limbs by dancing on the village green, men and girls together, shouting and laughing.
It was a decidedly noisy and good-natured crowd, and, above all, a remarkably thirsty crowd. Some of the carts carried kegs of ale, and the occupants of those carts seemed continually drinking from their pewter mugs.
“Dreadful! dreadful!” muttered Professor Scotch. “I never beheld anything like this before. It seems as if every one was bent on a debauch.”
“It’s the way at the Derby, professor,” laughed Frank. “By Jove! it’s a sight worth seeing. I am glad we did not miss the Derby.”
At last they came to fields; passed between the high stone walls of some vast estate; passed hundreds of children in uniform ranged behind a hedge and cheering wildly, just as if they were not orphans who lived in the great dismal building in the background; passed from the level road to the hills and the downs, where the white dust arose in clouds and shut out the view like a fog, through which came the creaking of wheels, the cracking of whips and the occasional blast of a horn.
Then they arrived at a place where it seemed that an army had encamped. Every dust-covered hedge was lined with horses and donkeys, while others were picketed at the end of ropes that allowed them to graze.
Through this mass of horses they seemed to pass for miles before the racetrack was reached. On all sides were rows upon rows of carts, hansom cabs and omnibuses, all abandoned for the time.
And then, at last, Frank beheld the highest grandstand in the world, crowded with people, who had already obtained favorable positions to watch the races.
The track was reached. From the top of the coach Frank beheld a spectacle such as he had never before witnessed. Before him was a valley which was thronging with human beings and covered with what seemed to be unnumbered circuses. Everywhere were booths and tents, making long, irregular avenues. Everywhere were flags and canvas pictures, crowds of people moving in black blocks, swaying, pushing, shoving.
And there was no admission fee to the races, unless one sought a seat on the grandstand!
The coaches faced the grandstand from the opposite side of the track, packed closely together, and forming a barrier three rows deep, seemingly locked and entangled beyond all possibility of ever getting away again.
On the top of nearly every coach ladies and gentlemen were lunching, chatting, laughing and making merry.
The sight made Frank hungry, and, as they had not brought a lunch, he proposed to the professor that they should leave the coach and find something to eat.
“Never!” cried the little man, in terror. “It would be impossible to find our way back here again.”
“Then I shall go alone.”
In vain the professor forbade it. Frank leaped down, laughing, and quickly disappeared in the throng.
It did not take him long to find a place where he could obtain sandwiches and other things, and he satisfied his hunger, after which he carried a lunch to the professor.
Scotch was hungry enough, and glad to get the lunch, but he begged Frank not to go away again.
“I came here to see the sights, professor, and I am not going to tie myself to the top of a coach. Will you come?”
But the little man could not be induced to abandon his place of safety on the top of the coach, and so Frank wandered away alone.
He visited the merry-go-rounds, the chutes, the shooting-galleries, the swings, the boxing-booths, and then he came to where the bookmakers were standing in couples, dressed as nearly alike as possible, shouting themselves hoarse and red in the face.
As Frank stood listening to the man who was bawling huskily from the nearest stand, he felt a touch on the arm, and an insinuating voice said in his ear:
“I ’opes as ’ow you’re not thinkin’ of putting your good money with that gent, young sir. ’E’s not to be trusted. You might as well throw your good money hinto the wide, wide sea, sir. Now, sir, hit’s myself, ’Arry ’Awkins, of Deptford, wot can tell you ’ow to lay your stuff as to pick the winner. The gents wot patronize me get quids for hevery bob they put hup. I don’t waste my toime ’anging ’round pubs, but I’m hup hevery mornin’ on these downs a-watching the ’orses, hand I know what I tells yer is straight. You can trust ’Arry ’Awkins, of Deptford, hevery time.”
A smooth-faced fellow, in Scotch plaid and a bright red necktie, smiled into the boy’s face in a most enticing manner.
It was a tout, who was trying to sell tips on the races, and Frank immediately remembered that the fellow had been a passenger in a little coster’s cart that had hung close by him all the way from the Surrey side.
“I have no intention of betting on the races,” declared the boy; “so you are wasting your time with me.”
Mr. ’Awkins regarded him with a look of profound admiration.
“I see, sir,” he said, with a broad wink. “You knows too much to throw away your good stuff, sir. Hi take hit you’re from Hamerica, sir?”
“Didn’t I tell you that you were wasting your time,” came rather sharply from Frank. “You can’t work the riffle with me, my man.”
“Beggin’ yer pardon, sir; beggin’ yer pardon! You ’ave made a mistake in me, sir! I ham not that kind. You ’ave a bright face——”
Frank laughed.
“My dear fellow, you can’t catch a Yankee lad with taffy. I have no money to throw away. Look for some other sucker.”
Then he wheeled about sharply and moved away.
A clown on stilts strode along and stepped over Frank’s shoulder. In a little open space a man was allowing anybody to break stones on his chest with a sledge hammer. There were minstrels of all nationalities, who were singing songs. Yellow-haired girls on stilts found their way about, and sang to the people on the coaches. Beggars were there, and hungry men fought in the dirt for the chicken bones that fell from a plate; exhausted boys and drunken men, who were sleeping under the very feet of the crowd.
And then, in the midst of the crowd, Frank felt something thrust into his hand. It was a slip of paper, and something was written on it. He looked at the writing, and this is what he read:
“You are marked. You are followed. Return to your coach. You are in deadly danger here. Beware of the man with the death-cold hand. It is the grip of doom.”
Frank looked around swiftly, catching a glimpse of ’Arry ’Awkins in the swaying crowd. The hot blood leaped to the boy’s face.
“So it is that fellow who is following me,” he thought. “I might have known it.”
Quickly thrusting the warning note into his pocket, he started to force his way through the crowd toward Mr. ’Awkins.
Then there was a sudden commotion, a swaying and shouting, and Frank found himself crowded and hustled. In the midst of all this commotion something cold and clammy, like the hand of a dead man, fastened on his wrist. It gave him a shock. He tried to twist away, but the fingers were like iron bands. Something told him that he was in truth in great danger.
Then ’Arry ’Awkins came beating his way through the mob that hemmed the boy in, caught the lad by the collar, struck out and smote somebody in the face, and yanked Frank away.
Breathless, bewildered, at a loss to understand it, Frank allowed the man from Deptford to force a road through the mob and pull him after.
The swaying mass dissolved in a moment, and it seemed that nothing unusual had occurred; but a boy stood looking at his wrist, where there were fingerprints that sunk deep into the flesh.
The grip of doom! What did it mean? Frank asked himself the question. He had not seen the owner of that death-cold hand, but the icy touch had sent a shudder to his heart.
“Hexcuse me, sir,” said Mr. ’Awkins; “but I saw as ’ow you was being ’ustled and I gave you a ’and. ’Ave you lost your purse?”
“I never carry a purse in such places.”
“Which is wise of you, young sir. I feared as ’ow you ’ad lost your purse.”
And then, before the boy could say more, the man from Deptford slipped away and was quickly lost in the crowd.
Frank moved toward the coaches, wondering over what had happened. He understood that it could not be a joke, as it was not probable he would be singled out as the victim for such a jest in that great gathering. If not a joke, then there was surely some deep significance in it all.
And why had ’Arry ’Awkins rushed to his assistance? Had the tout struck the owner of that dead-cold hand?
Frank felt in his pocket, and found the warning note. Marked and followed! In deadly danger! Why was he marked and followed? and why was he in deadly danger?
It was all darkly mysterious, and the boy’s curiosity was aroused, as well as his anger.
Of a sudden, as he drew near the coaches, he started and uttered an exclamation of great amazement.
“Am I dreaming?”
Passing close at hand was a young and beautiful girl, clinging to the arm of a much over-dressed youth. Frank believed he recognized the girl at a glance, but it did not seem possible. He stared at her, and then became convinced that he had made no mistake. With a second exclamation, he started forward, his hand outstretched, his hat lifted.
“Inza Burrage!”