Take warning by my dreadful fate,The truth I can't deny;This dreadful crime that I are doneI are condemned to die.
Take warning by my dreadful fate,The truth I can't deny;This dreadful crime that I are doneI are condemned to die.
The singular grammar of the last two lines I never quite understood, not having noticed its like elsewhere; but I put it down as a distinguishing characteristic of the speech of murderers.
I waited till the woman had taken her ballads away, and I had grown uncommonly cold in the legs, and then crept back to bed. But now I had fully awakened myself, and sleep was impossible. Presently I got up again, and looked out over the river. Very black and mysterious it lay, the blacker, it seemed, for the thousand lights that spotted it, craft and shore. No purlmen's fires were to be seen, for work on the colliers was done long ago, but once a shout and now a hail came over the water, faint or loud, far or near; and up the wooden wall I leaned on came the steady sound of the lapping against the piles below. I wondered where Grandfather Nat's boat—our boat—lay now; if the murderer were still rowing in it, and would row and row right away to sea, where my father was, in his ship; or if he would be caught, and make a dying confession with all the "haves" and "ams" replaced by "ares"; or if, indeed, he had already met providential retribution by drowning. In which case I doubted for the safety of the boat, and Grandfather would buy another. And my legs growing cold again, I retreated once more.
I heard the customers being turned into the street, and the shutters going up; and then I got under the bed-clothes, for I recalled the nightmare, and it was not pleasant. It grew rather worse, indeed, for my waking fancy enlarged and embellished it, and I longed to hear the tread of Grandfather Nat ascending the stair. But he was late to-night. I heard Joe the potman, who slept off the premises, shut the door and go off up the street. For a few minutes Grandfather Nat was moving about the bar and the bar-parlour; and then there was silence, save for the noises—the clicks and the creaks—that the old house made of itself.
I waited and waited, sometimes with my head out of the clothes, sometimes with no more than a contrived hole next my ear, listening. Till at last I could wait no longer, for the house seemed alive with stealthy movement, and I shook with the indefinite terror that comes, some night or another, to the most unimaginative child. I thought, at first, of calling to my grandfather, but that would seem babyish; so I said my prayers over again, held my breath, and faced the terrors of the staircase. The boards sang and creaked under my bare feet, and the black about me was full of dim coloured faces. But I pushed the door and drew breath in the honest lamplight of the bar-parlour at last.
Nobody was there, and nobody was in the bar. Could he have gone out? Was I alone in the house, there, where the blood was still on the carpet? But there was a slight noise from behind the stairs, and I turned to look farther.
Behind the bar-parlour and the staircase were two rooms, that projected immediately over the river, with their frames resting on the piles. One was sometimes used as a parlour for the reception of mates and skippers, though such customers were rare; the other held cases, bottles and barrels. To this latter I turned, and mounting the three steps behind the staircase, pushed open the door; and was mightily astonished at what I saw.
There was my grandfather, kneeling, and there was one half of Bill Stagg the purlman, standing waist-deep in the floor. For a moment it was beyond me to guess what he was standing on, seeing that there was nothing below but water; but presently I reasoned that the tide was high, and he must be standing in his boat. He was handing my grandfather some small packages, and he saw me at once and pointed. Grandfather Nat turned sharply, and stared, and for a moment I feared he was angry. Then he grinned, shook his finger at me, and brought it back to his lips with a tap.
"All right—my pardner," he whispered, and Bill Stagg grinned too. The business was short enough, and in a few seconds Bill Stagg, with another grin at me, and something like a wink, ducked below. My grandfather, with noiseless care, put back in place a trap-door—not a square, noticeable thing, but a clump of boards of divers lengths that fell into place with as innocent an aspect as the rest of the floor. This done, he rolled a barrel over the place, and dropped the contents of the packages into a row of buckets that stood near.
"What's that, Grandfather Nat?" I ventured to ask, when all was safely accomplished.
My grandfather grinned once more, and shook his head. "Go on," he said, "I'll tell you in the bar-parlour. May as well now as let ye find out." He blew out the light of his candle and followed me.
"Well," he said, wrapping my cold feet in my nightgown as I sat on his knee. "What brought ye down, Stevy? Did we make a noise?"
I shook my head. "I—I felt lonely," I said.
"Lonely? Well, never mind. An' so ye came to look for me, eh? Well, now, this is another one o' the things as you mustn't talk about, Stevy—a little secret between ourselves, bein' pardners."
"The stuff in the pail, Gran'fa' Nat?"
"The stuff in the pail, an' the hole in the floor. You're sure you won't get talkin', an' get your poor old gran'father in trouble?"
Yes, I was quite sure; though I could not see as yet what there was to cause trouble.
"The stuff Bill Stagg brought, Stevy, is 'bacca. 'Bacca smashed down so hard that a pound ain't bigger than that matchbox. An' I pitch it in the water to swell it out again; see?"
I still failed to understand the method of its arrival. "Did Bill Stagg steal it, gran'father?" I asked.
Grandfather Nat laughed. "No, my boy," he said; "he bought it, an' I buy it. It comes off the Dutch boats. But it comes a deal cheaper takin' it in that way at night-time. There's a big place I'll show you one day, Stevy—big white house just this side o' London Bridge. There's a lot o' gentlemen there as wants to see all the 'bacca that comes in from aboard, an' they take a lot o' trouble over it, and charge too, fearful. So they're very angry if parties—same as you an' me—takes any in without lettin' 'em know, an' payin' 'em the money. An' they can get you locked up."
This seemed a very unjust world that I had come into, in which Grandfather Nat was in danger of such terrible penalties for such innocent transactions—buying a watch, or getting his tobacco cheap. So I said: "I think people are very wicked in this place."
"Ah!" said my grandfather, "I s'pose none of us ain't over good. But there—I've told you about it now, an' that's better than lettin' you wonder, an' p'raps go asking other people questions. So now you know, Stevy. We've got our little secrets between us, an' you've got to keep 'em between us, else—well, you know. Nothing about anything I buy, nor about what I take inthere,"—with a jerk of the thumb—"nor about 'bacca in buckets o' water."
"Nor about the pocket-book, Gran'fa' Nat?"
"Lord no. 'Specially not about that. You see, Stevy, pardners is pardners, an' they must stick together, eh? We'll stick together, won't we?"
I nodded hard and reached for my grandfather's neck.
"Ah, that we will. What others like to think they can; they can't prove nothing, nor it wouldn't be their game. But we're pardners, an' I've told you what—well, what you might ha' found out in a more awkward way. An' it ain't so bad a thing to have a pardner to talk to, neither. I never had one till now—not since your gran'mother died, that you never saw, Stevy; an' that was twenty years ago. I been alone most o' my life—not even a boy, same as it might be you. 'Cause why? When your father was your age, an' older, I was always at sea, an' never saw him, scarcely; same as him an' you now."
And indeed Grandfather Nat and I knew each other better than my father knew either of us. And so we sat for a few minutes talking of ourselves, and once more of the notes in the pocket-book upstairs; till the tramp of the three policemen on the beat stayed in the street without, and we heard one of the three coming down the passage.
He knocked sharply at the bar-parlour door, and Grandfather Nat put me down and opened it.
"Good evenin', Cap'en Kemp," said the policeman. "We knew you was up, seein' a bit o' light." Then he leaned farther in, and in a lower voice, said: "He ain't been exactly identified yet, but it's thought some of our chaps knows 'im. Know if anything's been picked up?"
My heart gave a jump, as probably did my grandfather's. "Picked up?" he repeated. "Why, what? What d'ye mean?"
"Well, there was nothing partic'lar on the body, an' our chaps didn't see the knife. We thought if anybody about 'ad picked up anything, knife or what not, you might 'ear. So there ain't nothing?"
"No," Grandfather Nat answered blankly. "I've seen no knife, nor heard of none."
"All right, Cap'en Kemp—if you do hear of anything, give us the tip. Good night!"
Grandfather Nat looked oddly at me, and I at him. I think we had a feeling that our partnership was sealed. And so with no more words we went to bed.
I had never seen either of the partners in the firm of Viney and Marr: as I may have said already. On the day after the man was stabbed at our side door I saw them both.
That morning the tide was low, and Hole-in-the-Wall Stairs ended in a causeway in the midst of a little flat of gravel and mud. So, since the mud was nowhere dangerous, and there was no deep water to fall into, I was allowed to go down the steps alone and play on the foreshore while Grandfather Nat was busy with his morning's affairs; the two or three watermen lying by the causeway undertaking to keep an eye on me. And there I took my pleasure as I would, now raking in the wet pebbles, and heaving over big stones that often pulled me on to all-fours, now climbing the stairs to peep along the alley, and once or twice running as far as the bar-parlour door to report myself to Grandfather Nat, and inform him of my discoveries.
The little patch of foreshore soon rendered up all its secrets, and its area grew less by reason of the rising tide; so that I turned to other matters of interest. Out in mid-stream a cluster of lighters lay moored, waiting for the turn of the tide. Presently a little tug came puffing and fussing from somewhere alongshore, and after much shoving and hauling and shouting, scuffled off, trailing three of the lighters behind it; from which I conjectured that their loads were needed in a hurry. But the disturbance among the rest of the lighters was not done with when the tug had cleared the three from their midst; for a hawser had got foul of a rudder, and two or three men were at work with poles and hooks, recrimination and forcible words, to get things clear. Though the thing seemed no easy job; and it took my attention for some time.
But presently I tired of it, and climbed the steps to read the bills describing the people who had been found drowned. There were eleven of the bills altogether, fresh and clean; and fragments of innumerable others, older and dirtier, were round about them. Ten men and one woman had been picked up, it would seem, and all within a week or two, as I learned when I had spelled out the dates. I pored at these bills till I had read them through, being horribly fascinated by the personal marks and peculiarities so baldly set forth; the scars, the tattoo marks, the colour of the dead eyes; the clothes and boots and the contents of the pockets—though indeed most of the pockets would seem to have been empty. The woman—they guessed her age at twenty-two—wore one earring; and I entangled myself in conjectures as to what had become of the other.
I was disturbed by a shout from the causeway. I looked and saw Bill Stagg in his boat. "Is your gran'father there?" shouted Bill Stagg. "Tell him they've found his boat."
This was joyful news, and I rushed to carry it. "They've found our boat, Grandfather Nat," I cried. "Bill Stagg says so!"
Grandfather Nat was busy in the bar, and he received the information with calmness. "Ah," he said, "I knew it 'ud turn up somewhere. Bill Stagg there?" And he came out leisurely in his shirt sleeves, and stood at the head of the stairs.
"P'lice galley found your boat, cap'en," Bill Stagg reported. "You'll have to go up to the float for it."
"Right. Know where it was?"
"Up agin Elephant stairs"—Bill Stagg pointed across the river—"turned adrift and jammed among the lighters."
Grandfather Nat nodded serenely. Bill Stagg nodded in reply, shoved off from the causeway and went about his business.
The hawser was still foul among the lighters out in the stream, and a man had pulled over in a boat to help. I had told grandfather of the difficulty, and how long it had baffled the lightermen, and was asking the third of a string of questions about it all, when there was a step behind, and a voice: "Good mornin', Cap'en Nat."
My grandfather turned quickly. "Mr. Viney!" he said. "Well.... Good mornin'."
I turned also, and I was not prepossessed by Mr. Viney. His face—a face no doubt originally pale and pasty, but too long sun-burned to revert to anything but yellow in these later years of shore-life—his yellow face was ever stretched in an uneasy grin, a grin that might mean either propitiation or malice, and remained the same for both. He had the watery eyes and the goatee beard that were not uncommon among seamen, and in total I thought he much resembled one of those same hang-dog fellows that stood at corners and leaned on posts in the neighbourhood, making a mysterious living out of sailors; one of them, that is to say, in a superior suit of clothes that seemed too good for him. I suppose he may have been an inch taller than Grandfather Nat; but in the contrast between them he seemed very small and mean.
He offered his hand with a stealthy gesture, rather as though he were trying to pick my grandfather's waistcoat pocket; so that the old man stared at the hand for a moment, as if to see what he would be at, before he shook it.
"Down in the world again, Cap'en Nat," said Viney, with a shrug.
"Ay, I heard," answered Captain Nat. "I'm very sorry; but there—perhaps you'll be up again soon...."
"I come to ask you about something," Viney proceeded, as they walked away toward the bar-parlour door. "Something you'll tell me, bein' an old shipmate, if you can find out, I'm sure. Can we go into your place? No, there's a woman there."
"Only one as does washin' up an' such. I'll send her upstairs if you like."
"No, out here's best; we'll walk up and down; people get hangin' round doors an' keyholes in a place like that. Here we can see who's near us."
"What, secrets?"
"Ay." Viney gave an ugly twist to his grin. "I know some o' yours—one big un' at any rate, Cap'en Nat, don't I? So I can afford to let you into a little 'un o' mine, seein' I can't help it. Now I'd like to know if you've seen anything of Marr."
"No,—haven't seen him for months. Bolted, they tell me, an'—well you know better'n me, I expect."
"I don't know," Viney replied with emphasis. "I ought to know, but I don't. See here now. Less than a week ago he cleared out, an' then I filed my petition. He might ha' been gone anywhere—bolted. Might be abroad, as would seem most likely. In plain fact he was only coming down in these parts to lie low. See? Round about here a man can lie low an' snug, an' safer than abroad, if he likes. And he had money with him—all we could get together. See?" And Viney frowned and winked, and glanced stealthily over his shoulder.
"Ah," remarked Captain Nat, drily, "I see. An' the creditors——"
"Damn the creditors! See here, Cap'en Nat Kemp. Remember a man called Dan Webb?"
Captain Nat paled a little, and tightened his lips.
"Remember a man called Dan Webb?" Viney repeated, stopping in his walk and facing the other with the uneasy grin unchanged. "A man called Dan Webb, aboard o' theFlorencealong o' you an' me? 'Cause I do, anyhow. That's on'y my little hint—we're good friends altogether, o' course, Cap'en Nat; but you know what it means. Well, Marr had money with him, as I said. He was to come to a quiet anchorage hereabout, got up like a seaman, an' let me know at once."
Captain Nat, his mouth still set tight, nodded, with a grunt.
"Well, he didn't let me know. I heard nothing at all from him, an' it struck me rather of a heap to think that p'raps he'd put the double on me, an' cleared out in good earnest. But yesterday I got news. A blind fiddler chap gave me some sort o' news."
Captain Nat remembered the meeting at the street corner in the evening after the funeral. "Blind George?" he queried.
"Yes, that was all the name he gave me; a regular thick 'un, that blind chap, an' a flow o' language as would curl the sheathing off a ship's bottom. He came the evening before, it seems, but found the place shut up—servant gal took her hook. Well now, he'd done all but see Marr down here at the Blue Gate—he'd seen him as clear as a blind man could, he said, with his ears: an' he came to me to give me the tip an' earn anything I'd give him for it. It amounted to this. It was plain enough Marr had come along here all right, an' pitched on some sort o' quarters; but it was clear he wasn't fit to be trusted alone in such a place at all. For the blind chap found him drunk, an' in tow with as precious a pair o' bully-boys as Blue Gate could show. Not only drunk, neither, but drunk with a slack jaw—drunk an' gabbling, drunk an' talkin' business—mybusiness—an' lettin' out all there was to let,—this an' that an' t'other an' Lord knows what! It was only because of his drunken jabber that the blind man found out who he was."
"And this was the day before yesterday?" asked Captain Nat.
"Yes."
Captain Nat shook his head. "If he was like that the day before yesterday," he said, "in tow with such chaps as you say,—well, whatever he had on him ain't on him now. An' it 'ud puzzle a cleverer man than me to find it. You may lay to that."
Viney swore, and stamped a foot, and swore again. "But see," he said, "ain't there a chance? It was in notes, all of it. Them chaps'll be afraid to pass notes. Couldn't most of it be got back on an arrangement to cash the rest? You can find 'em if you try, with all your chances. Come—I'll pay fair for what I get, to you an' all."
"See how you've left it," remarked Captain Nat; and Viney swore again. "This was all done the day before yesterday. Well, you don't hear of it yourself till yesterday, an' now you don't come to me till to-day."
Viney swore once more, and grinned twice as wide in his rage. "Yes," he said, "that was Blind George's doing. I sent him back to see whathecould do, an' ain't seen him since. Like as not he's standing in with the others."
"Ay, that's likely," the old man answered, "very likely. Blind George is as tough a lot as any in Blue Gate, for all he's blind. You'd never ha' heard of it at all if they'd ha' greased him a bit at first. I expect they shut him out, to keep the plant to themselves; an' so he came to you for anything he could pick up. An' now——"
Viney cursed them all, and Blind George and himself together; but most he cursed Marr; and so talking, the two men walked to and fro in the passage.
I could see that Viney was angry, and growing angrier still. But I gave all my attention to the work at the fouled hawser. The man in the boat, working patiently with a boat-hook, succeeded suddenly and without warning, so that he almost pitched headlong into the river. The rope came up from its entanglement with a spring and a splash, flinging some amazing great object up with it, half out of water; and the men gave a cry as this thing lapsed heavily to the surface.
The man in the boat snatched his hook again and reached for the thing as it floated. Somebody threw him a length of line, and with this he made it fast to his boat, and began pulling toward the stairs, towing it. I was puzzled to guess what the object might be. It was no part of the lighter's rudder, for it lay in, rather than on, the water, and it rolled and wallowed, and seemed to tug heavily, so that the boatman had to pull his best. I wondered if he had caught some curious water-creature—a porpoise perhaps, or a seal, such as had been flung ashore in a winter storm at Blackwall a year before.
Viney and Grandfather Nat had turned their steps toward the stairs, and as they neared, my grandfather, lifting his eyes, saw the boatman and his prize, and saw the watermen leaving their boats for the foreshore. With a quick word to Viney he hastened down the stairs; and Viney himself, less interested, followed half way down, and waited.
The boatman brought up alongside the foreshore, and he and another hauled at the tow-rope. The thing in the water came in, rolling and bobbing, growing more hideously distinct as it came; it checked at the mud and stones, turned over, and with another pull lay ashore, staring and grey and streaming: a dead man.
The lips were pulled tight over the teeth, and, the hair being fair, it was the plainer to see that one side of the head and forehead was black and open with a great wound. The limbs lay limp and tumbled, all; but one leg fell aside with so loose a twist that plainly it was broken, and I heard, afterwards, that it was the leg that had caused the difficulty with the hawser.
Grandfather Nat, down at the waterside, had no sooner caught sight of the dead face than with wide eyes he turned to Viney, and shouted the one word "Look!" Then he went and took another view, longer and closer; and straightway came back in six strides to the stairs, whereon Viney was no longer standing, but sitting, his face tallowy and his grin faded.
"See him?" cried Grandfather Nat in a hushed voice. "See him! It's Marr himself, if I know him at all! Come—come and see!"
Viney pulled his arm from the old man's grasp, turned, and crawled up a stair or two. "No," he said faintly, "I—I won't, now—I—they'd know me p'raps, some of them." His breath was short, and he gulped. "Good God," he said presently, "it's him—it's him sure enough. And the clothes he had on.... But ... Cap'en—Cap'en Nat; go an' try his pockets.—Go on. There's a pocket-book—leather pocket-book.... Go on!"
"What's the good?" asked Captain Nat, with a lift of the eyebrows, and the same low voice. "What's the good? I can't fetch it away, with all them witnesses. Go yourself, an' say you're his pardner; you'd have a chance then."
"No—no. I—it ain't good enough. You know 'em; I don't. I'll stand in with you—give you a hundred if it's all there! Square 'em—you know 'em!"
"If they're to be squared you can do it as well as me. There'll be an inquest on this, an' evidence. I ain't going to be asked what I did with the man's pocket-book. No. I don't meddle in this, Mr. Viney. If it ain't good enough for you to get it for yourself, it ain't good enough for me to get it for you."
"Kemp, I'll go you halves—there! Get it, an' there's four hundred for you. Eight hundred an' odd quid, in a pocket-book. Come, that's worth it, ain't it? Eight hundred an' odd quid—in a leather pocket-book! An' I'll go you halves."
Captain Nat started at the words, and stood for a moment, staring. "Eight hundred!" he repeated under his breath. "Eight hundred an' odd quid. In a leather pocket-book. Ah!" And the stare persisted, and grew thoughtful.
"Yes," replied Viney, now a little more himself. "Now you know; and it's worth it, ain't it? Don't waste time—they're turning him over themselves. You can manage all these chaps. Go on!"
"I'll see if anything's there," answered Captain Nat. "More I can't; an' if there's nothing that's an end of it."
He went down to where the men were bending over the body, to disengage the tow-line. He looked again at the drawn face under the gaping forehead, and said something to the men; then he bent and patted the soddened clothes, now here, now there; and at last felt in the breast-pocket.
Meantime Viney stood feverishly on the stairs, watching; fidgeting nervously down a step, and then down another, and then down two more. And so till Captain Nat returned.
The old man shook his head. "Cleaned out," he reported. "Cleaned out, o' course. Hit on the head an' cleaned out, like many a score better men before him, down these parts. Not a thing in the pockets anywhere. Flimped clean."
Viney's eyes were wild. "Nothing at all left?" he said. "Nothing of his own? Not a watch, nor anything?"
"No, not a watch, nor anything."
Viney stood staring at space for some moments, murmuring many oaths. Then he asked suddenly, "Where's this blind chap? Where can I find Blind George?"
Grandfather Nat shook his head. "He's all over the neighbourhood," he answered. "Try the Highway; I can't give you nearer than that."
And with no more counsel to help him, Mr. Viney was fain to depart. He went grinning and cursing up the passage and so toward the bridge, without another word or look. And when I turned to my grandfather I saw him staring fixedly at me, lost in thought, and rubbing his hand up in his hair behind, through the grey and out at the brown on top.
By the side of the bills stuck at the corner of Hole-in-the-Wall Stairs—the bills that had so fascinated Stephen—a new one appeared, with the heading "Body Found." It particularised the personal marks and description of the unhappy Marr; his "fresh complexion," his brown hair, his serge suit and his anklejacks. The bill might have stood on every wall in London till it rotted, and never have given a soul who knew him a hint to guess the body his: except Viney, who knew the fact already. And the body might have been buried unidentified ere Viney would have shown himself in the business, were it not for the interference of Mr. Cripps. For industry of an unprofitable kind was a piece of Mr. Cripps's nature; and, moreover, he was so regular a visitor at the mortuary as to have grown an old friend of the keeper. His persistent prying among the ghastly liers-in-state, at first on plea of identifying a friend—a contingency likely enough, since his long-shore acquaintance was wide—and later under the name of friendly calls, was an indulgence that had helped him to consideration as a news-monger, and twice had raised him to the elevation of witness at an inquest; a distinction very gratifying to his simple vanity. He entertained high hopes of being called witness in the case of the man stabbed at the side door of the Hole in the Wall; and was scarce seen at Captain Nat's all the next day, preferring to frequent the mortuary. So it happened that he saw the other corpse that was carried thence from Hole-in-the-Wall Stairs.
"There y'are," said the mortuary-keeper. "There's a fresh 'un, just in from the river, unknown.Youdunno 'im either, I expect."
But Mr. Cripps was quite sure that he did. Curious and eager, he walked up between the two dead men, his grimy little body being all that divided them in this their grisly reunion. "Idoknow 'im," he insisted, thoughtfully. "Leastways I've seen 'im somewheres, I'm sure." The little man gazed at the dreadful head, and then at the rafters: then shut his eyes with a squeeze that drove his nose into amazing lumps and wrinkles; then looked at the head again, and squeezed his eyelids together once more; and at last started back, his eyes rivalling his very nose itself for prominence. "Why!" he gasped, "it is! It is, s'elp me!... It's Mr. Marr, as is pardners with Mr. Viney! I on'y see 'im once in my life, but I'll swear it's 'im!... Lord, what a phenomenal go!"
And with that Mr. Cripps rushed off incontinent to spread the news wherever anybody would listen. He told the police, he told the loafers, he told Captain Nat and everybody in his bar; he told the watermen at the stairs, he shouted it to the purlmen in their boats, and he wriggled into conversation with perfect strangers to tell them too. So that it came to pass that Viney, being called upon by the coroner's officer, was fain to swallow his reluctance and come forward at the inquest.
That was held at the Hole in the Wall twenty-four hours after the body had been hauled ashore. The two inquests were held together, in fact, Marr's and that of the broken-nosed man, stabbed in the passage. Two inquests, or even three, in a day, made no uncommon event in those parts, where perhaps a dozen might be held in a week, mostly ending with the same doubtful verdict—Found Drowned. But here one of the inquiries related to an open and witnessed murder, and that fact gave some touch of added interest to the proceedings.
Accordingly a drifting group hung about the doors of the Hole in the Wall at the appointed time,—just such an idle, changing group as had hung there all the evening after the man had been stabbed; and in the midst stood Blind George with his fiddle, his vacant white eye rolling upward, his mouth full of noisy ribaldry, and his fiddle playing punctuation and chorus to all he said or sang. He turned his ear at the sound of many footsteps leaving the door near him.
"There they go!" he sang out; "there they go, twelve on 'em!" And indeed it was the jury going off to view the bodies. "There they go, twelve good men an' true, an' bloomin' proud they are to fancy it! Got a copper for Blind George, gentlemen? Not a brown for pore George?... Not them; not a brass farden among the 'ole dam good an' lawful lot.... Ahoy! ain't Gubbins there,—the good an' lawful pork-butcher as 'ad to pay forty bob for shovin' a lump o' fat under the scales? Tell the crowner to mind 'is pockets!"
The idlers laughed, and one flung a copper, which Blind George snatched almost before it had fallen. "Ha! ha!" he cried, "there's a toff somewhere near, I can tell by the sound of his money! Here goes for a stave!" And straightway be broke into:—
O they call me Hanging Johnny,With my hang, boys, hang!
O they call me Hanging Johnny,With my hang, boys, hang!
The mortuary stood at no great distance and soon the jury were back in the club-room over the bar, and at work on the first case. The police had had some difficulty as to identification of the stabbed man. The difficulty arose not only because there were no relations in the neighbourhood to feel the loss, but as much because the persons able to make the identification kept the most distant possible terms with the police, and withheld information from them as a matter of principle. Albeit a reluctant ruffian was laid hold of who was induced sulkily to admit that he had known the deceased to speak to, and lodged near him in Blue Gate; that the deceased was called Bob Kipps; that he was quite lately come into the neighbourhood; and that he had no particular occupation, as far as witness knew. It needed some pressure to extract the information that Kipps, during the short time he was in Blue Gate, chiefly consorted with one Dan Ogle, and that witness had seen nothing of Ogle that day, nor the day before.
There was also a woman called to identify—a woman more reluctant than the man; a woman of coarse features, dull eyes, tousled hair, and thick voice, sluttish with rusty finery. Name, Margaret Flynn; though at the back of the little crowd that had squeezed into the court she was called Musky Mag. It was said there, too, that Mag, in no degree one of the fainting sort, had nevertheless swooned when taken into the mortuary—gone clean off with a flop; true, she explained it, afterward, by saying that she had only expected to see one body, but found herself brought face to face with two; and of course there was the other there—Marr's. But it was held no such odds between one corpse and two that an outer-and-outer like Mag should go on the faint over it. This was reasonable enough, for the crowd. But not for a woman who had sat to drink with three men, and in a short hour or so had fallen over the battered corpse of one of them, in the dark of her room; who had been forced, now, to view the rent body of a second, and in doing it to meet once again the other, resurrected, bruised, sodden and horrible; and who knew that all was the work of the last of the three, and that man in peril of the rope: the man, too, of all the world, in her eye....
Her evidence, given with plain anxiety and a nervous unsteadiness of the mouth, added nothing to the tale. The man was Bob Kipps; he was a stranger till lately—came, she had heard tell, from Shoreditch or Hoxton; saw him last a day or two ago: knew nothing of his death beyond what she had heard; did not know where Dan Ogle was (this very vehemently, with much shaking of the head); had not seen him with deceased—but here the police inspector handed the coroner a scribbled note, and the coroner having read it and passed it back, said no more. Musky Mag stood aside; while the inspector tore the note into small pieces and put the pieces in his pocket.
Nathaniel Kemp, landlord of the house, told the story of the murder as he saw it, and of his chase of the murderer. Did not know deceased, and should be unable to identify the murderer if he met him again, having seen no more than his figure in the dark.
All this time Mr. Cripps had been standing, in eager trepidation, foremost among the little crowd, nodding and lifting his hand anxiously, strenuous to catch the coroner's officer's attention at the dismissal of each witness, and fearful lest his offer of evidence, made a dozen times before the coroner came, should be forgotten. Now at last the coroner's officer condescended to notice him, and being beckoned, Mr. Cripps swaggered forward, his greasy widewake crushed under his arm, and his face radiant with delighted importance. He bowed to the coroner, kissed the book with a flourish, and glanced round the court to judge how much of the due impression was yet visible.
The coroner signified that he was ready to hear whatever Mr. Cripps knew of this matter.
Mr. Cripps "threw a chest," stuck an arm akimbo, and raised the other with an oratorical sweep so large that his small voice, when it came, seemed all the smaller. "Hi was in the bar, sir," he piped, "the bar, sir, of this 'ouse, bein' long acquainted with an' much respectin' Cap'en Kemp, an' in the 'abit of visitin' 'ere in the intervals of the pursoot of my hart. Hem! Hi was in the bar, sir, when my attention was attracted by a sudden noise be'hind, or as I may say, in the rear of, the bar-parlour. Hi was able to distinguish, gentlemen of the jury, what might be called, in a common way o' speakin', a bump or a bang, sich as would be occasioned by an unknown murderer criminally shoving his un'appy victim's 'ed agin the back-door of a public-'ouse. Hi was able to distinguish it, sir, from a 'uman cry which follered: a 'uman cry, or as it might be, a holler, sich as would be occasioned by the un'appy victim 'avin' 'is 'ed shoved agin the back-door aforesaid. Genelmen, I 'esitated not a moment. I rushed forward."
Mr. Cripps paused so long to give the statement effect that the coroner lost patience. "Yes," he said, "you rushed forward. Do you mean you jumped over the bar?"
For a moment Mr. Cripps's countenance fell; truly it would have been more imposing to have jumped over the bar. But he was on his oath, and he must do his best with the facts. "No, sir," he explained, a little tamely, "not over the bar, but reether the opposite way, so to speak, towards the door. I rushed forward, genelmen, in a sort of rearwards direction, through the door, an' round into the alley. Immediate as I turned the corner, genelmen, I be'eld with my own eyes the unknown murderer; I see 'im a-risin' from over 'is un'appy victim, an' I see as the criminal tragedy had transpired. I—I rushed forward."
The sensation he looked for being slow in coming, another rush seemed expedient; but it fell flat as the first, and Mr. Cripps struggled on, desperately conscious that he had nothing else to say.
"I rushed forward, sir; seein' which the miscreant absconded—absconded, no doubt with—with the proceeds; an' seein' Cap'en Kemp abscondin' after him, I turned an' be'eld the un'appy victim—the corpse now in custody, sir—a-layin' in the bar-parlour, 'elpless an'—an' decimated.... I—rushed forward."
It was sad to see how little the coroner was impressed; there was even something in his face not unlike a smile; and Mr. Cripps was at the end of his resources. But if he could have seen the face of Musky Mag, in the little crowd behind him, he might have been consoled. She alone, of all who heard, had followed his rhetoric with an agony of attention, word by word: even as she had followed the earlier evidence. Now her strained face was the easier merely by contrast with itself when Mr. Cripps was in full cry; and a moment later it was tenser than ever.
"Yes, yes, Mr. Cripps," the coroner said; "no doubt you were very active, but we don't seem to have increased the evidence. You say you saw the man who stabbed the deceased in the passage. Did you know him at all? Ever see him before?"
Here, mayhap, was some chance of an effect after all. Mr. Cripps could scarce have distinguished the murderer from one of the posts in the alley; but he said, with all the significance he could give the words: "Well, sir, I won't go so far as to swear to 'is name, sir; no, sir, not to 'isname, certainly not." And therewith he made his sensation at last, bringing upon himself the twenty-four eyes of the jury all together.
The coroner looked up sharply. "Oh," he said, "you know him by sight then? Does he belong to the neighbourhood?"
Now it was not Mr. Cripps who had said he knew the murderer by sight, but the coroner. Far be it from him, thought the aspirant for fame, to contradict the coroner, and so baulk himself of the credit thus thrust upon him. So he answered with the same cautious significance and a succession of portentous nods. "Your judgment, sir, is correct; quite correct."
"Come then, this is important. You would be able to recognise him again, of course?"
There was no retreat—Mr. Cripps was in for it. It was an unforeseen consequence of the quibble, but since plunge he must he plunged neck and crop. "I'd know 'im anywhere," he said triumphantly.
There was an odd sound in the crowd behind, and a fall. Captain Nat strode across, and the crowd wondered; for Musky Mag had fainted again.
The landlord lifted her, and carried her to the stairs. When the door had closed behind them, and the coroner's officer had shouted the little crowd into silence, the inquest took a short course to its end.
Mr. Cripps, in the height of his consequence, began to feel serious misgivings as to the issue of his stumble beyond the verities; and the coroner's next words were a relief.
"I think that will be enough, Mr. Cripps," the coroner said; "no doubt the police will be glad of your assistance." And with that he gave the jury the little summing up that the case needed. There was the medical evidence, and the evidence of the stabbing, and that evidence pointed to an unmistakable conclusion. Nobody was in custody, nor had the murderer been positively identified, and such evidence as there was in this respect was for the consideration of the police. He thought the jury would have no difficulty in arriving at a verdict. The jury had none; and the verdict was Murder by some Person or Persons unknown.
The other inquest gave even less trouble. Mr. Henry Viney, shipowner, had seen the body, and identified it as that of his partner Lewis Marr. Marr had suddenly disappeared a week ago, and an examination of his accounts showed serious defalcations, in consequence of which witness had filed his petition in bankruptcy. Whether or not Marr had taken money with him witness could not say, as deceased had entire charge of the accounts; but it seemed more likely that embezzlement had been going on for some time past, and Marr had fled when detection could no longer be averted. This might account for his dressing, and presumably seeking work, as a sailor.
The divisional surgeon of police had examined the body, and found a large wound on the head, fully sufficient to have caused death, inflicted either by some heavy, blunt instrument, or by a fall from a height on a hard substance. One thigh was fractured, and there were other wounds and contusions, but these, as well as the broken thigh, were clearly caused after death. The blow on the head might have been caused by an accident on the riverside, or it might have been inflicted wilfully by an assailant.
Then there was the evidence of the man who had found the body foul of a rudder and a hawser, and of the police who had found nothing on the body. And there was no more evidence at all. The coroner having sympathised deeply with Mr. Viney, gave the jury the proper lead, and the jury with perfect propriety returned the open verdict that the doctor's evidence and the coroner's lead suggested. The case, except for the circumstances of Marr's flight, was like a hundred others inquired upon thereabout in the course of a few weeks, and in an hour it was in a fair way to be forgotten, even by the little crowd that clumped downstairs to try both cases all over again in the bar of the Hole in the Wall.
To the coroner, the jury, and the little crowd, these were two inquests with nothing to connect them but the accident of time and the convenience of the Hole in the Wall club-room. But Blind George, standing in the street with his fiddle, and getting the news from the club-room in scraps between song and patter, knew more and guessed better.
I found it a busy morning at the Hole in the Wall, that of the two inquests. I perceived that, by some occult understanding, business in one department was suspended; the pale man idled without, and nobody came into the little compartment to exhibit valuables. Grandfather Nat had a deal to do in making ready the club-room over the bar, and then in attending the inquests. And it turned out that Mrs. Grimes had settled on this day in particular to perform a vast number of extra feats of housewifery in the upper floors. Notwithstanding the disturbance of this additional work, Mrs. Grimes was most amazingly amiable, even to me; but she was so persistent in requiring, first the key of one place, then of another, next of a chest of drawers, and again of a cupboard, that at last my grandfather distractedly gave her the whole bunch, and told her not to bother him any more. The bunch held all she could require—indeed I think it comprised every key my grandfather had, except that of his cash-box—and she went away with it amiable still, notwithstanding the hastiness of his expressions; so that I was amazed to find Mrs. Grimes so meek, and wondered vaguely and childishly if it were because she felt ill, and expected to die shortly.
Mr. Cripps was in the bar as soon as the doors were open, in a wonderful state of effervescence. He was to make a great figure at the inquest, it appeared, and the pride and glory of it kept him nervously on the strut, till the coroner came, and Mr. Cripps mounted to the club-room with the jury. He was got up for his part as completely as circumstances would allow; grease was in his hair, his hat stood at an angle, and his face exhibited an unfamiliar polish, occasioned by a towel.
For my own part, I sat in the bar-parlour and amused myself as I might. Blind George was singing in the street, and now and again I could hear the guffaw that signalised some sally that had touched his audience. Above, things were quiet enough for some while, and then my grandfather came heavily downstairs carrying a woman who had fainted. I had not noticed the woman among the people who went up, but now Grandfather Nat brought her through the bar, and into the parlour; and as she lay on the floor just as the stabbed man had lain, I recognised her face also; for she was the coarse-faced woman who had stopped my grandfather near Blue Gate with vague and timid questions, when we were on our way from the London Dock.
Grandfather Nat roared up the little staircase for Mrs. Grimes, and presently she descended, amiable still; till she saw the coarse woman, and was asked to help her. She looked on the woman with something of surprise and something of confusion; but carried it off at once with a toss of the head, a high phrase or so—"likes of 'er—respectable woman"—and a quick retreat upstairs.
I believe my grandfather would have brought her down again by main force, but the woman on the floor stirred, and began scrambling up, even before she knew where she was. She held the shelf, and looked dully about her, with a hoarse "Beg pardon, sir, beg pardon." Then she went across toward the door, which stood ajar, stared stupidly, with a look of some dawning alarm, and said again, "Beg pardon, sir—I bin queer"; and with that was gone into the passage.
It was not long after her departure ere the business above was over, and the people came tramping and talking down into the bar, filling it close, and giving Joe the potman all the work he could do. The coroner came down by our private stairs into the bar-parlour, ushered with great respect by my grandfather; and at his heels, taking occasion by a desperately extemporised conversation with Grandfather Nat, came Mr. Cripps.
There had never been an inquest at the Hole in the Wall before, and my grandfather had been at some exercise of mind as to the proper entertainment of the coroner. He had decided, after consideration, that the gentleman could scarce be offended at the offer of a little lunch, and to that end he had made ready with a cold fowl and a bottle of claret, which Mrs. Grimes would presently be putting on the table. The coroner was not offended, but he would take no lunch; he was very pleasantly obliged by the invitation, but his lunch had been already ordered at some distance; and so he shook hands with Grandfather Nat and went his way. A circumstance that had no small effect on my history.
For it seemed to Mr. Cripps, who saw the coroner go, that by dexterous management the vacant place at our dinner-table (for what the coroner would call lunch we called dinner) might fall to himself. It had happened once or twice before, on special occasions, that he had been allowed to share a meal with Captain Nat, and now that he was brushed and oiled for company, and had publicly distinguished himself at an inquest, he was persuaded that the occasion was special beyond precedent, and he set about to improve it with an assiduity and an innocent cunning that were very transparent indeed. So he was affectionately admiring with me, deferentially loquacious with my grandfather, and very friendly with Joe the potman and Mrs. Grimes. It was a busy morning, he observed, and he would be glad to do anything to help.
At that time the houses on Wapping Wall were not encumbered with dust-bins, since the river was found a more convenient receptacle for rubbish. Slops were flung out of a back window, and kitchen refuse went the same way, or was taken to the river stairs and turned out, either into the water or on the foreshore, as the tide might chance. Mrs. Grimes carried about with her in her dustings and sweepings an old coal-scuttle, which held hearth-bushes, shovels, ashes, cinders, potato-peelings, and the like; and at the end of her work, when the brushes and shovels had been put away, she carried the coal-scuttle, sometimes to the nearest window, but more often to the river stairs, and flung what remained into the Thames.
Just as Mr. Cripps was at his busiest and politest, Mrs. Grimes appeared with the old coal-scuttle, piled uncommonly high with ashes and dust and half-burned pipe-lights. She set it down by the door, gave my grandfather his keys, and turned to prepare the table. Instantly Mr. Cripps, watchful in service, pounced on the scuttle.
"I'll pitch this 'ere away for you, mum," he said, "while you're seein' to Cap'en Kemp's dinner"; and straightway started for the stairs.
Mrs. Grimes's back was turned at the moment, and this gave Mr. Cripps the start of a yard or two; but she flung round and after him like a maniac; so that both Grandfather Nat and I stared in amazement.
"Give me that scuttle!" she cried, snatching at the hinder handle. "Mind your own business, an' leave my things alone!"
Mr. Cripps was amazed also, and he stuttered, "I—I—I—on'y—on'y——"
"Drop it, you fool!" the woman hissed, so suddenly savage that Mr. Cripps did drop it, with a start that sent him backward against a post; and the consequence was appalling.
Mr. Cripps was carrying the coal-scuttle by its top handle, and Mrs. Grimes, reaching after it, had seized that at the back; so that when Mr. Cripps let go, everything in the scuttle shot out on the paving-stones; first, of course, the ashes and the pipe-lights; then on the top of them, crowning the heap—Grandfather Nat's cash-box!
I suppose my grandfather must have recovered from his astonishment first, for the next thing I remember is that he had Mrs. Grimes back in the bar-parlour, held fast by the arm, while he carried his cash-box in the disengaged hand. Mr. Cripps followed, bewildered but curious; and my grandfather, pushing his prisoner into a far corner, turned and locked the door.
Mrs. Grimes, who had been crimson, was now white; but more, it seemed to me, with fury than with fear. My grandfather took the key from his watchguard and opened the box, holding it where the contents were visible to none but himself. He gave no more than a quick glance within, and re-locked it; from which I judged—and judged aright—that the pocket-book was safe.
"There's witnesses enough here," said my grandfather,—for Joe the potman was now staring in from the bar—"to give you a good dose o' gaol, mum. 'Stead o' which I pay your full week's money and send you packin'!" He pulled out some silver from his pocket. "Grateful or not to me don't matter, but I hope you'll be honest where you go next, for your own sake."
"Grateful! Honest!" Mrs. Grimes gasped, shaking with passion. "'Ear 'im talk! Honest! Take me to the station now, and bring that box an' show 'em inside it! Go on!"
I felt more than a little alarmed at this challenge, having regard to the history of the pocket-book; and I remembered the night when we first examined it, the creaking door, and the soft sounds on the stairs. But Grandfather Nat was wholly undisturbed; he counted over the money calmly, and pushed it across the little table.
"There it is, mum," he said, "an' there's your bonnet an' shawl in the corner. There's nothing else o' yours in the place, I believe, so there's no need for you to go out o' my sight till you go out of it altogether. That you'd better do quick. I'll lay the dinner myself."
Mrs. Grimes swept up the money and began fixing her bonnet on her head and tying the strings under her chin, with savage jerks and a great play of elbow; her lips screwing nervously, and her eyes blazing with spite.
"Ho yus!" she broke out—though her rage was choking her—as she snatched her shawl. "Ho yus! A nice pusson, Cap'en Nat Kemp, to talk about honesty an' gratefulness—a nice pusson! A nice teacher for young master 'opeful, I must say, an' 'opin' 'e'll do ye credit! It ain't the last you'll see o' me, Captain Nat Kemp!... Get out o' my way, you old lickspittle!"
Mr. Cripps got out of it with something like a bound, and Mrs. Grimes was gone with a flounce and a slam of the door.
Scold as she was, and furious as she was, I was conscious that something in my grandfather's scowl had kept her speech within bounds, and shortened her clamour; for few cared to face Captain Nat's anger. But with the slam of the door the scowl broke, and he laughed.
"Come," he said, "that's well over, an' I owe you a turn, Mr. Cripps, though you weren't intending it. Stop an' have a bit of dinner. And if you'd like something on account to buy the board for the sign—or say two boards if you like—we'll see about it after dinner."
It will be perceived that Grandfather Nat had no reason to regret the keeping of his cash-box key on his watchguard. For had it been with the rest, in Mrs. Grimes's hands, she need never have troubled to smuggle out the box among the ashes, since the pocket-book was no such awkward article, and would have gone in her pocket. Mrs. Grimes had taken her best chance and failed. The disorders caused by the inquests had left her unobserved, the keys were in her hands, and the cash-box was left in the cupboard upstairs; but the sedulous Mr. Cripps had been her destruction.
As for that artist, he attained his dinner, and a few shillings under the name of advance; and so was well pleased with his morning's work.
A policeman brought my grandfather a bill, which was stuck against the bar window with gelatines; and just such another bill was posted on the wall at the head of Hole-in-the-Wall Stairs, above the smaller bills that advertised the found bodies. This new bill was six times the size of those below; it was headed "Murder" in grim black capitals, and it set forth an offer of fifty pounds reward for information which should lead to the apprehension of the murderer of Robert Kipps.
The offer gave Grandfather Nat occasion for much solemn banter of Mr. Cripps; banter which seemed to cause Mr. Cripps a curious uneasiness, and time and again stopped his eloquence in full flood. He had been at the pains to cut from newspapers such reports of the inquest as were printed; and though they sadly disappointed him by their brevity, and all but two personally affronted him by disregarding his evidence and himself altogether, still he made great play with the exceptional two, in the bar. But he was quick to drop the subject when Captain Nat urged him in pursuit of the reward.
"Come," my grandfather would say, "you're neglecting your fortune, you know. There's fifty pound waitin' for you to pick up, if you'd only go an' collar that murderer. An' you'd know him anywhere." Whereupon Mr.
Cripps would look a little frightened, and subside.
I did not learn till later how the little painter's vanity had pushed him over bounds at the inquest, so far that he committed himself to an absolute recognition of the murderer. The fact alarmed him not a little, on his return to calmness, and my grandfather, who understood his indiscretion as well as himself, and enjoyed its consequences, in his own grim way, amused himself at one vacant moment and another by setting Mr. Cripps's alarm astir again.
"You're throwing away your luck," he would say, perhaps, "seein' you know him so well by sight. If you're too well-off to bother about fifty pound, give some of us poor 'uns a run for it, an' put us on to him. I wish I'd been able to see him so clear." For in truth Grandfather Nat well knew that nobody had had so near a chance of seeing the murderer's face as himself; and that Mr. Cripps, at the top of the passage—perhaps even round the corner—had no chance at all.
It was because of Mr. Cripps's indiscretion, in fact—this I learned later still—that the police were put off the track of the real criminal. For after due reflection on the direful complications whereinto his lapse promised to fling him, that distinguished witness, as I have already hinted, fell into a sad funk. So, though he needs must hold to the tale that he knew the man by sight, and could recognise him again, he resolved that come what might, he would identify nobody, and so keep clear of further entanglements. Now the police suspicions fell shrewdly on Dan Ogle, a notorious ruffian of the neighbourhood. He had been much in company of the murdered man of late, and now was suddenly gone from his accustomed haunts. Moreover, there was the plain agitation of the woman he consorted with, Musky Mag, at the inquest: she had fainted, indeed, when Mr. Cripps had been so positive about identifying the murderer. These things were nothing of evidence, it was true; for that they must depend on the witness who saw the fellow's face, knew him by sight, and could identify him. But when they came to this witness with their inquiries and suggestions the thing went overboard at a breath. Was the assassin a tall man? Not at all—rather short, in fact. Was he a heavy-framed, bony fellow? On the contrary, he was fat rather than bony. Did Mr. Cripps ever happen to have seen a man called Dan Ogle, and was this man at all like him? Mr. Cripps had been familiar with Dan Ogle's appearance from his youth up (this was true, for the painter's acquaintance was wide and diverse) but the man who killed Bob Kipps was as unlike him as it was possible for any creature on two legs to be. Then, would Mr. Cripps, if the thing came to trial, swear that the man he saw was not Dan Ogle? Mr. Cripps was most fervently and desperately ready and anxious to swear that it was not, and could not by any possibility be Dan Ogle, or anybody like him.
This brought the police inquiries to a fault; even had their suspicions been stronger and better supported, it would have been useless to arrest Dan Ogle, supposing they could find him; for this, the sole possible witness to identity, would swear him innocent. So they turned their inquiries to fresh quarters, looking among the waterside population across the river—since it was plain that the murderer had rowed over—for recent immigrants from Wapping. For a little while Mr. Cripps was vexed and disquieted with invitations to go with a plain-clothes policeman and "take a quiet look" at some doubtful characters; but of course with no result, beyond the welcome one of an occasional free drink ordered as an excuse for waiting at bars and tavern-corners; and in time these attentions ceased, for the police were reduced to waiting for evidence to turn up; and Mr. Cripps breathed freely once more. While Dan Ogle remained undisturbed, and justice was balked for a while; for it turned out in the end that when the police suspected Dan Ogle they were right, and when they went to other conjectures they were wrong.
All this was ahead of my knowledge at the moment, however, as, indeed, it is somewhat ahead of my story; and for the while I did no more than wonder to see Mr. Cripps abashed at an encouragement to earn fifty pounds; for he seemed not a penny richer than before, and still impetrated odd coppers on account of the signboard of promise.
Once or twice we saw Mr. Viney, and on each occasion he borrowed money off Grandfather Nat. The police were about the house a good deal at this time, because of the murder, or I think he might have come oftener. The first time he came I heard him telling my grandfather that he had got hold of Blind George, that Blind George had told him a good deal about the missing money, and that with his help he hoped for a chance of saving some of it. He added, mysteriously, that it had been "nearer hereabouts than you might think, at one time"; a piece of news that my grandfather received with a proper appearance of surprise. But was it safe to confide in Blind George? Viney swore for answer, and said that the rascal had stipulated for such a handsome share that it would pay him to play square.
On the last of these visits I again overheard some scraps of their talk, and this time it was angrier. I judged that Viney wanted more money than my grandfather was disposed to give him. They were together in the back room where the boxes and bottles were—the room into which I had seen Bill Stagg's head and shoulders thrust by way of the trap-door. My grandfather's voice was low, and from time to time he seemed to be begging Viney to lower his; so that I wondered to find Grandfather Nat so mild, since in the bar he never twice told a man to lower his voice, but if once were not enough, flung him into the street. And withal Viney paid no heed, but talked as he would, so that I could catch his phrases again and again.
"Let them hush as is afraid—I ain't," he said. And again: "O, am I? Not me.... It's little enough for me, if it does; not the rope, anyway." And later, "Yes, the rope, Cap'en Kemp, as you know well enough; the rope at Newgate Gaol.... Dan Webb, aboard o' theFlorence.... TheFlorencethat was piled up on the Little Dingoes in broad day.... As you was ordered o' course, but that don't matter.... That's what I want now, an' no less. Think it lucky I offer to pay back when I get—... Well, be sensible—... I'm friendly enough.... Very well."
Presently my grandfather, blacker than common about brow and eyes, but a shade paler in the cheek, came into the bar-parlour and opened the trade cash-box—not the one that Mrs. Grimes had hidden among the cinders, but a smaller one used for gold and silver. He counted out a number of sovereigns—twenty, I believe—put the box away, and returned to the back room. And in a few minutes, with little more talk, Mr. Viney was gone.
Grandfather Nat came into the bar-parlour again, and his face cleared when he saw me, as it always would, no matter how he had been ruffled. He stood looking in my face for a little, but with the expression of one whose mind is engaged elsewhere. Then he rubbed his hand on my head, and said abstractedly, and rather to himself, I fancied, than to me: "Never mind, Stevy; we got it back beforehand, forty times over." A remark that I thought over afterward, in bed, with the reflection that forty times twenty was eight hundred.
But Mr. Viney's talk in the back room brought most oddly into my mind, in a way hard to account for, the first question I put to my grandfather after my arrival at the Hole in the Wall: "Did you ever kill a man, Grandfather Nat?"
The repeated multiplication of twenty by forty sent me to sleep that night, and I woke with that arithmetical exercise still running in my head. A candle was alight in the room—ours was one of several houses in Wapping Wall without gas—and I peeped sleepily over the bed-clothes. Grandfather Nat was sitting with the cash-box on his knees, and the pocket-book open in his hand. He may just have been counting the notes over again, or not; but now he was staring moodily at the photograph that lay with them. Once or twice he turned his eyes aside, and then back again to the picture, as though searching his memory for some old face; then I thought he would toss it away as something valueless; but when his glance fell on the fireless grate he returned the card to its place and locked the box.
When the cash-box was put away in the little cupboard at his bed-head, he came across and looked down at me. At first I shut my eyes, but peeped. I found him looking on me with a troubled and thoughtful face; so that presently I sat up with a jump and asked him what he was thinking about.
"Fox's sleep, Stevy?" he said, with his hand under my chin. "Well, boy, I was thinking about you. I was thinking it's a good job your father's coming home soon, Stevy; though I don't like parting with you."
Parting with me? I did not understand. Wouldn't father be going away again soon?
"Well, I dunno, Stevy, I dunno. I've been thinking a lot just lately, that's a fact. This place is good enough for me, but it ain't a good place to bring up a boy like you in; not to make him the man I want you to be, Stevy. Somehow it didn't strike me that way at first, though it ought to ha' done. It ought to ha' done, seein' it struck strangers—an' not particular moral strangers at that."
He was thinking of Blind George and Mrs. Grimes. Though at the moment I wondered if his talk with Mr. Viney had set him doubting.
"No, Stevy," he resumed, "it ain't giving you a proper chance, keeping you here. You can't get lavender water out o' the bilge, an' this part's the bilge of all London. I want you to be a better man than me, Stevy."
I could not imagine anybody being a better man than Grandfather Nat, and the prospect of leaving him oppressed me dismally. And where was I to go? I remembered the terrible group of aunts at my mother's funeral, and a shadowy fear that I might be transferred to one of those virtuous females—perhaps to Aunt Martha—put a weight on my heart. "Don't send me away, Gran'fa Nat!" I pleaded, with something pulling at the corners of my mouth; "I haven't been a bad boy yet, have I?"
He caught me up and sat me on his fore-arm, so that my face almost touched his, and I could see my little white reflection in his eyes. "You're the best boy in England, Stevy," he said, and kissed me affectionately. "The best boy in the world. An' I wouldn't let go o' you for a minute but for your own good. But see now, Stevy, see; as to goin' away, now. You'll have to go to school, my boy, won't you? An' the best school we can manage—a gentleman's school; boardin' school, you know. Well, that'll mean goin' away, won't it? An' then it wouldn't do for you to go to a school like that, not from here, you know—which you'll understand when you get there, among the others. My boy—my boy an' your father's—has got to be as good a gentleman as any of 'em, an' not looked down on because o' comin' from a Wapping public like this, an' sent by a rough old chap like me. See?"
I thought very hard over this view of things, which was difficult to understand. Who should look down on me because of Grandfather Nat, of whom I was so fond and so proud? Grandfather Nat, who had sailed ships all over the world, had seen storms and icebergs and wrecks, and who was treated with so much deference by everybody who came to the Hole in the Wall? Then I thought again of the aunts at the funeral, and remembered how they had tilted their chins at him; and I wondered, with forebodings, if people at a boarding school were like those aunts.
"So I've been thinking, Stevy, I've been thinking," my grandfather went on, after a pause. "Now, there's the wharf on the Cop. The work's gettin' more, and Grimes is gettin' older. But you don't know about the wharf. Grimes is the man that manages there for me; he's Mrs. Grimes's brother-in-law, an' when his brother died he recommended the widder to me, an' that's how she came: an' now she's gone; but that's neither here nor there. Years ago Grimes himself an' a boy was enough for all the work there was; now there's three men reg'lar, an' work for more. Most o' the lime comes off the barges there for the new gas-works, an' more every week. Now there's business there, an' a respectable business—too much for Grimes. An' if your father'll take on a shore job—an' it's a hard life, the sea—here it is. He can have a share—have the lot if he likes—for your sake, Stevy; an' it'll build up into a good thing. Grimes'll be all right—we can always find a job for him. An' you can go an' live with your father somewhere respectable an' convenient; not such a place as Wapping, an' not such people. An' you can go to school from there, like any other young gentleman. We'll see about it when your father comes home."
"But shan't I ever see you, Gran'fa' Nat?"
"See me, my boy? Ay, that you will—if you don't grow too proud—that you will, an' great times we'll have, you an' your father an' me, all ashore together, in the holidays, won't we? An' I'll take care of your own little fortune—the notes—till you're old enough to have it. I've been thinking about that, too." Here he stood me on my bed and playfully pushed me back and forward by the shoulders. "I've been thinking about that, an' if it was lyin' loose in the street I'd be puzzled clean to say who'd really lost it, what with one thing an' another. But itain'tin the street, an' it's yours, with no puzzle about it. But there—lie down, Stevy, an' go to sleep. Your old grandfather's holdin' forth worse'n a parson, eh? Comes o' bein' a lonely man an' havin' nobody to talk to, except myself, till you come. Lie down an' don't bother yourself. We must wait till your father comes home. We'll keep watch for theJunoin the List,—she ought to ha' been reported at Barbadoes before this. An' we must run down to Blackwall, too, an' see if there's any letters from him. So go to sleep now, Stevy—we'll settle it all—we'll settle it all when your father comes home!"
So I lay and dozed, with words to send me to sleep instead of figures: till they made a tune and seemed to dance to it. "When father comes home: when father comes home: we'll settle it all, when father comes home!" And presently, in some unaccountable way, Mr. Cripps came into the dance with his "Up to their r'yals, up to their r'yals: the wessels is deep in, up to their r'yals!" and so I fell asleep wholly.
In the morning I was astir early, and watching the boats and the shipping from the bedroom window ere my grandfather had ceased his alarming snore. It was half an hour later, and Grandfather Nat was busy with his razor on the upper lip that my cheeks so well remembered, when we heard Joe the potman at the street door. Whereat I took the keys and ran down to let him in; a feat which I accomplished by aid of a pair of steps, much tugging at heavy bolts, and a supreme wrench at the big key.
Joe broughtLloyd's Listin with him every morning from the early newsagent's in Cable Street. I took the familiar journal at once, and dived into the midst of its quaint narrow columns, crowded with italics, in hope of news from Barbadoes. For I wished to find for myself, and run upstairs, with a child's importance, to tell Grandfather Nat. But there was no news from Barbadoes—that is, there was no news of my father's ship. The name Barbadoes stood boldly enough, with reports below it, of arrivals and sailings, and one of an empty boat washed ashore; but that was all. So I sat where I was, content to wait, and to tell Grandfather Nat presently, offhand from over my paper, like a politician in the bar, that there was no news. Thus, cutting the leaves with a table-knife, my mind on my father's voyage, it occurred to me that I could not spell La Guaira, the name of the port his ship was last reported from; and I turned the paper to look for it. The name was there, with only one message attached, and while I was slowly conning the letters over for the third time, I was suddenly aware of a familiar word beneath—the name of theJunoherself. And this was the notice that I read:
La Guaira, Sep. 1.TheJuno(brig) of London, Beecher, from this for Barbadoes, foundered N of Margarita. Total loss. All crew saved except first mate. Master and crew landed Margarita.
La Guaira, Sep. 1.
TheJuno(brig) of London, Beecher, from this for Barbadoes, foundered N of Margarita. Total loss. All crew saved except first mate. Master and crew landed Margarita.