The Arthur Morrison Mystery

by Arthur Morrison

  “‘Ah!’ says Mrs. Bartrip, ‘a damp house suits me wonnerful; allus did.’

  “Well, all was for nothen’. Mrs. Bartrip wouldn’t move for pride, nor for wish to be thote young, nor for damp. So oad Jim waited a month an’ tried her with ghosts.

  “‘Good-mornin’, Mrs. Bartrip,’ says he. ‘I wondered if you mightn’t be ill, seein’ a light in your keepin’ room so late last night.’

  “‘Light in my keepin’ room?’ says the widder. ‘Why, I weren’t up after dark.’

  “‘Indeed, mum? Then it must ha’ been oad Styles agen. I’ve seed him about the garden two or three nights, but I den’t think best to say nothen’, you bein’ a lone woman an’ like as not nervous o’ ghosts; I never guessed he’d ha’ gone indoors.’

  “‘I wouldn’t ha’ guessed it either,’ says the widder.

  “‘But ’tis allus that way with them almshouses,’ says oad Jim. ‘The oad parties do cling to ’em wonnerful.’

  “‘Don’t blame ’em,’ says the widder.

  “‘It’s allus been the way, mum. Allus the way in that row o’ houses. If the property had still been in the family I’d ha’ had it attended to long ago, along with the plaster. But as it is, there’s oad Styles a-walking the house all silent every night.’

  “‘Well, that’s fust-rate,’ says the widder. ‘I allus did like a ghost in the house, specially a silent one. It’s company, an’ it don’t tell no lies.’

  “Anybody but oad Jim would ha’ give up the job after that. But he never give up nothen’ he could hoad on to, an’ fore long he were round at the widder’s again. This time he didn’t try to drive her out. He saw that weren’t to be done, so he split the difference (like a gentleman) an tried to get in without. He never brought up a word o’ what had been said before, ’cept that the widder liked company; an’ as company he recommended hisself very strong, to say nothen’ of protection from ghosts. An’ the end of it was they were married.

  “The parson laughed half an hour by the clock when they went to put up the banns, an’ he congratulated oad Jim Haddock on enterin’ into the ancestrial property at last. As to the weddin’ there never was no sich fanteeg in all these parts. You wouldn’t ha’ believed there was half as many tin pots in Essex. The parson he set ’em a weddin’ breakfast on his own lawn, an’ had all the rest o’ the alms-house people to help eat it. All that day they was squire an’ lady, an’ oad Jim Haddock was such a swell he might ha’ fancied hisself his own great-gran’father ten times back.

  “But next mornin’ he were seen choppin’ firewood very early, which wasn’t like his reg’lar habits. What had been said or done to cause it nobody knew, but ’twas whispered what happened when Madam Haddock showed herself at last.

  “‘Husband,’ says she, sittin’ easy in th’ armchair, ‘I be a decayed oad ’ooman. Wash down that doorstep.’

  “Oad Jim made fare to objeck, but she grabbed the broom that sudden he changed his mind. An’ there began a little crowd by the door to see oad Jim a-cleanin’ a doorstep; an’ the crowd growed an’ growed for half an hour before Mrs. Haddock were quite satisfied with the job.

  “Then says she, sittin’ easy as ever in the arm-chair: ‘I be an oad’ ooman o’ seventy, or mayhap eighty, ten years more or less not matterin’; so I need plenty o’ rest. Peel you them taters for dinner.”

  “She lied the broom across her knee, handy-like, an’ oad Jim went an’ did what she bid. ’Twere guessed as he’d tasted of that broom earlier in the mornin’, ’fore he chopped the firewood. So he peeled the taters an’ putt ’em in the pot, an’ the bacon with ’em like as ordered.

  “Then says she: ‘I be such a worn-out oad ’ooman, an’ this here house be that damp an’ unwholesome I ain’t done no washin’ since fust the banns was putt up. Start up the copper-fire an’ go to washin’ the’ linen.’

  “So she began with him an’ so she went on, till poor oad Jim Haddock wished he’d never been born a genelman at all. She sat all day in the easy-chair an’ never let go the broom, ’cept she made him sweep with it. He scrubbed an’ cooked an’ washed an’ mended an’ got nothin’ by it but chin-music an’ broomstick, turn about. An’ that weren’t all nayther. He had to work outdoor as well as in. She druv him out with his eggs an’ fowls, an’ she saw she got the money too, every farden; an’ ’tween whiles she found him odd jobs round about, an’ drawed his wages herself. Poor oad Jim was clean broke down, an’ hardly mentioned his ancestrial family once in a week.

  “One day the beadle’s wife falls ill, an’ the rector sends round for Mrs. Haddock to go an’ sweep out the church. So she turns to oad Jim an’ says: ‘There be a job o’ sweepin’ up to church; get along quick an’ do it while I sit in this here unhealthy house an’ keep out the ghosts. An’ mind I don’t get no complaints from parson about it when I go up for the money in the evenin’.’

  “Well, he comes up to the church quiet an’ humble, an’ meets the parson in the porch, an’ when the parson sees him, broom an’ all, he laughs nigh as much as he did before the wed-din’. ‘’Pon my soul, ’tis too bad of her,’ says the parson, ‘but I dunno as you don’t deserve it. ’Twouldn’t be much of an admiral they’d make o’ you!’

  “Oad Jim went in an’ he started sweepin’ humble an’ quiet enough. But his heart were pretty bitter in him, an’ the parson’s words den’t help it. So he went on a-sweepin’ till he came opposite oad Jerry Haddock’s monument, an’ there were oad Jerry, his great-gran’father ten times over, as had caused all the trouble, smilin’ down at him, blind an’ contempshus. That roused oad Jim at last.

  “‘I dussen’t strike my wife,’ he says, ‘an’ the parson be a man o’ scorn an’ wrath. But you can’t hit me back,’ he says. An’ with that he swings round the broom an ketches oad Jerry Haddock sich a lift under the ear that the head flied clean down the chancel, an’ they found it in the font next christenin’ day!”

  A LUCIFO MATCH

  First published in The Strand Magazine, Jan 1909

  Persons with a choice of several names are not common outside the peerage; but some of them—wholly unconnected with any peer—are to be discovered in London crowds, though discovery is not what they are there for. Crowds, in fact, attract them, from the circumstances that whatever the number of individuals in a crowd there are sure to be several times that number of pockets, mostly with something in them; and a pickpocket who has once been convicted finds a change of name a wise precaution. So we arrive at Johnson.

  It chanced that Johnson stood in quite a small crowd—perhaps of twenty—that stared at a shop-window in Oxford Street. He had only been Johnson for a week, poor fellow, since emerging from some months’ retirement, and as yet the name did not sit easily. He had to keep it continually in mind, lest in some unforeseen emergency he might call himself Jones, or Barker, or Jenkinson, any one of which was dangerous, and had been discarded in its turn for that reason; always after just such another holiday as that he had lately disenjoyed.

  Johnson was a mild person—not at all the sort of man whom one might suppose to be a pickpocket—which was fortunate, of course, for Johnson. He was a meek, rather timid body, whose tastes would have been domestic if he had been a family man; and he would have been a family man if it were not for the expense. He was temperate, thrifty, and inoffensive; he shrank with horror from the idea of anything violent, such as burglary or work; he had no vices, no particular abilities, and only one small talent: he could pick a pocket very well indeed. Altogether, Johnson was an unusually virtuous thief.

  He stood in a small crowd in Oxford Street, as I have said, and while the small crowd stared at the shop window because of some new idea of the shopkeeper’s, Johnson considered pockets according to ideas of his own; having a natural human perference for the easiest pocket in the most sumptuous habiliment. He felt himself much drawn toward a man in an “immensikoff”—a fur-lined overcoat—which w
as quite the most magnificent garment in the crowd. The large side-pocket of the “immensikoff” gaped invitingly, and, though outside overcoat-pockets were barren vessels as a rule, this was so very easy that it were wasting a chance not to try it. So Johnson placed himself against the pocket and tried, with unexpected success.

  For indeed, at the bottom of that pocket reposed a purse—not at all what one might expect to find there. In an instant that purse was transferred to the outside pocket, so closely adjacent, of Johnson’s light overcoat; and then Johnson paused for a moment, ostentatiously scratching his cheek with the guilty hand, and staring with rapt eyes at the window; till he judged it expedient to edge gently away and evaporate from the little crowd.

  He strolled easily to the next turning, turned up it with quicker steps, and so into a quieter cross street. Here he paused, plunged his hand into his side-pocket, and—found it empty.

  His chin fell, and he stood amazed. There was no doubt of it—this was the pocket into which he had dropped the purse, and now there was nothing there. He felt in the opposite pocket—needlessly, for he clearly remembered working with his right hand, and with his right side-pocket against the left pocket of the “immensikoff.” There was nothing now in either of his side-pockets, though he raked them through with anxious fingers. And then everything inside him bounced at the sudden touch of a hand on his shoulder. He shrank and turned, and found himself confronted by the man in the fur-lined coat.

  The man was grinning at him with sardonic politeness, and Johnson did not like him at all. He was tall and broad and dark, while Johnson was small and narrow and pale. The stranger’s black moustache was waxed into long spikes, which pointed toward the outer edges of the flat brim of a very tall hat, and gave a touch of the unearthly to his grin; and in his hand he extended toward Johnson a metal box—Johnson’s own tobacco-box, in truth, which he now remembered to have left in that same side coat-pocket.

  “How de do?” said the sardonic stranger. “Were you feeling in your pocket for this?”

  Johnson’s panic impulse was to deny his tobacco-box utterly, but the stranger’s black eyes were piercing his very brain, and he felt it useless. He took the box that was forced on him, and gasped unintelligible acknowledgments. He meant to say that he was extremely obliged, and didn’t know he had dropped it; but he never remembered what he did say.

  “I believe some sneaking thief picked your pocket,” said the stranger, his grin growing fiercer. “Open it and see if anything’s missing.”

  Johnson began a mumble that it was all right and of no consequence and didn’t matter, but the eyes and the satanic grin compelled him, and he sprang the lid. Instantly there arose from within a gigantic creature with horns, which ran across his hand on horrid clawed legs and made for his sleeve. Johnson squeaked like a rat, and flung box and insect to the ground together. He had a feminine horror of crawling things, and had never seen a stag-beetle before.

  The stranger snatched the box as it fell, and, brushing roughly against Johnson, skilfully scooped up the insect from the pavement.

  “What?” he said. “Do you mean to say it wasn’t yours at all! And yet you wanted to take it? Is there anything else in those pockets of yours that doesn’t belong to you? Show me!”

  “No, sir! Nothing at all, sir, upon my solemn davy!” wailed Johnson in terror. For the eyes and the grin were fiercer than ever. “Nothing at all, sir!” protested Johnson, pulling out the pocket-linings. And there, as the right-hand pocket came inside out, emerged the stranger’s purse!

  “Liar!” cried the dark man. “Thief! That is my purse!”

  He snatched it away and opened it, while Johnson stood helpless in amazement, with his pockets protruding on each side.

  “See!” pursued the stranger, thrusting the open purse under his nose. “My purse, with my money in it! What about that?”

  Instinct brought a jumbled defence to Johnson’s lips. “Quite a mistake—wouldn’t think of such a thing, being a gentleman himself. Accident that might happen to anybody—a lot of trouble in the family lately”—and so on.

  “What’s your name?” snapped the stranger.

  It disconcerted Johnson more than anything else to see that this fiendish person was grinning more than ever, while his unavoidable eyes seemed to divine more about Johnson than even Johnson ever knew. “What’s your name?” he demanded.

  “Jones!” spluttered the thief, in a panic. “Barker!—no, Jenkinson—I mean Johnson!”

  “Oh, I see,” the stranger replied; and now his moustache and his grin chased each other to the very tips of his ears. “I see; Jones, alias Barker, alias Jenkinson, and at present Johnson. Last conviction under the name Jenkinson, eh?”

  “’Twasn’t exactly a conviction, sir, I assure you,” protested the sweating pickpocket. “The judge’s mistake entirely—quite a misunderstanding; and the commonest watch you ever see; not worth a bob!”

  “And what did you get? A year?”

  “No, sir—nothing of the kind. It’s a wicked slander, sir, when anybody says it was a year. Not a day more than nine months, I give you my solemn word!”

  “After a dozen previous convictions?”

  “No sir—that’s another slander; anybody as told you that is trying to take my character away. There wasn’t more than seven, sir, or eight at the very most. It’s ’ard to be scandalized like that, sir!”

  “Shocking!” The stranger had slipped his purse away and now had his hand on Johnson’s shoulder, with finger and thumb taking a good nip of his coat-collar. “Only seven or eight convictions! Poor chap; you shall have another at once. Come along!”

  “No, indeed, sir—let me alone! On my solemn davy, sir, it was all a mistake. I dunno how the purse got there!” And it surprised Johnson to find himself offering an excuse with such a deal of truth in it.

  The stranger’s grin relaxed a little, and his voice grew more business-like. “Very well,” he said. “Come with me for an hour and I won’t charge you. But don’t you displease me, my virtuous friend!” The grin flickered up again. “Don’t you displease me, or you’ll go back to as long a dose of gaol as I can get for you, mind that! You shall buy your release on my terms. Come along; but first stuff those pockets in again.”

  Johnson obeyed, and walked by the side of his persecutor in a maze of sickening bewilderment. Could he be really awake? The whole thing was uncommonly like a hideous nightmare, down to the very beetle. He had the most distinct recollection of his shock of surprise at finding his coat-pockets empty; yet he had put the purse there, and there it proved to be after all. The thing was the more like a dream, because his efforts to remember made it all seem like something that had occurred a long time ago. And he would doubtless have believed it a nightmare and made some desperate effort to wake himself, were it not for the fact that the gloating stranger most palpably had him by the arm as they walked through the back streets, and now and again put a question of such a pungent and penetrating nature that demanded all Johnson’s waking wits to meet it. Such wits as Johnson had were barely sufficient for the needs of his trade, and now they were oppressed by a feeling that he was being “got at” in some unfathomable manner; for indeed the satanic stranger chuckled gaily to himself as the torment went on.

  Their way led through numerous back streets, which Johnson was too disconcerted to recognize, even if he knew them; and at last they stopped before a very blank and secret-looking door in a tall building that had no more than two other openings in it, and those windows, small and high.

  The stranger opened the door with a latchkey, never looking at the key, but always at Johnson, with that embarrassing grin unaltered, unless it were now a little less fierce and a little more whimsical. The door revealed nothing but a dark passage, into which Johnson was pushed without ceremony. The place smelt damp, and on the whole strikingly like a cell in a police-station; a fact which gave the prisoner’s terr
ors a more definite turn. The door closed behind them and left them wholly in the dark; and Johnson, seized by the arm, was thrust stumbling and staggering along the passage till he emerged on a spot only a degree less obscure, where nothing was discernible but some vast construction of square beams that vanished into blackness above. Here the stranger paused, and groping in the gloom among the beams, flung open another door.

  “Get in there,” he said, “and sit down. I shan’t want you for an hour. You can go to sleep if you like.”

  Johnson obediently stumbled into the dark opening, and the door slammed behind him with a bang and a sharp click. It was black—blacker than ever, but at least he was alone for a space, and might collect his faculties. He reached about him, and had no difficulty in finding the walls of his prison, for in fact they were scarce a yard apart in any direction. It seemed that he was in a wooden cupboard, with a ledge for seat. He sat on the ledge and wondered.

  Imprisonment was not wholly a novelty, though this was certainly the darkest cell he had ever inhabited, and the smallest. There was to be an hour’s respite, it seemed, but he was mighty uneasy as to what would happen at the end of the hour. He thought again of that horrible beetle, and the clothes tingled on his skin at the recollection, till he began to rub himself all over. Heavens! if there were more of them in this place! He jumped to his feet, shook himself and stamped, and then bethought him of his match-box. He found it and split it, stooped for it hurriedly, butted his head into one side of the cupboard and his opposite end into another, and came to the floor in a heap.

  “Now then, keep quiet in there!”

  The voice was a strange one—certainly not that of the dark man—and it came from—where? Nowhere about him, but apparently from somewhere above, though even of this he was not certain. Surely there was no possibility that he could be watched in this unspeakable darkness. He groped painfully, found a match, groped again and found the box to strike it on.