The Arthur Morrison Mystery

by Arthur Morrison

  Indeed, there seemed to be something about Mr Aaron Weech especially attractive to youth. Nearly all his customers were boys and girls, though not boys and girls who looked likely to pay a great deal in the way of refreshment, much as they took. But he was ever indulgent, and at all times accessible to his young clients. Even on Sunday (though, of course, his shutters were kept rigidly up on the Day of Rest) a particular tap would bring him hot-foot to the door: not to sell coffee, for Mr Weech was no Sabbath-breaker.

  Now he stood at his door, and invited Dicky with nods and becks. Dicky, all wondering, and alert to dodge in case the thing were a mere device to bring him within striking distance, went.

  ‘W’y Dicky Perrott,’ quoth Mr Weech in a tone of genial surprise, ‘I b’lieve you could drink a cup o’ cawfy!’

  Dicky, wondering how Mr Weech had learnt his name, believed he could.

  ‘An’ eat a slice o’ cake too, I’ll be bound,’ Mr Weech added.

  Dicky’s glance leapt. Yes, he could eat a slice of cake too.

  ‘Ah, I knew it,’ said Mr Weech, triumphantly; ‘I can always tell.’ He rubbed Dicky’s cap about his head, and drew him into the shop, at this hour bare of customers. At the innermost compartment they stopped, and Mr Weech, with a gentle pressure on the shoulders, seated Dicky at the table.

  He brought the coffee, and not a single slice of cake, but two. True, it was not cake of Elevation Mission quality, nor was it so good as that shown at the shop in High Street: it was of a browner, dumpier, harder nature, and the currants were gritty and few. But cake it was, and to consider it critically were unworthy. Dicky bolted it with less comfort than he might, for Mr Weech watched him keenly across the table. And, indeed, from some queer cause, he felt an odd impulse to cry. It was the first time that he had ever been given anything, kindly and ungrudgingly.

  He swallowed the last crumb, washed it down with the dregs of his cup, and looked sheepishly across at Mr Weech.

  ‘Goes down awright, don’t it?’ that benefactor remarked. ‘Ah, I like to see you enjoyin’ of yerself. I’m very fond o’ you young ’uns: ’specially clever ’uns like you.’

  Dicky had never been called clever before, so far as he could recollect, and he wondered at it now. Mr Weech, leaning back, contemplated him smilingly for some seconds, and then proceeded. ‘Yus,’ he said, ‘you’re the sort o’ boy as can ’ave cawfy and cake w’enever you want it, you are.’

  Dicky wondered more, and his face said as much. ‘You know,’ Mr Weech pursued, winking again, grinning and nodding. ‘That was a fine watch you found the other day. Y’ought to ’a’ brought it to me.’

  Dicky was alarmed. How did Mr Weech learn about the watch? Perhaps he was a friend of the funny old man who lost it. Dicky half rose, but his affable patron leaned across and pushed him back on the seat. ‘You needn’t be frightened,’ he said. ‘I ain’t goin’ to say nothink to nobody. But I know all about it, mind, an’ I could if I liked. You found the watch, an’ it was a red ’un, on a bit o’ ribbin. Well, then you went and took it ’ome, like a little fool. Wot does yer father do? W’y ’e ups an’ lathers you with ’is belt, an’ ’e keeps the watch ’isself. That’s all you git for yer pains. See—I know all about it.’ And Mr Weech gazed on Dicky Perrott with a fixed grin.

  ‘’Oo toldjer?’ Dicky managed to ask at last.

  ‘Ah!’—this with a great emphasis and a tapping of the forefinger beside the nose—‘I don’t want much tellin’: it ain’t much as goes on ’ereabout I don’t know of. Never mind ’ow. P’raps I got a little bird as w’ispers—p’raps I do it some other way. Any’ow I know. It ain’t no good any boy tryin’ to do somethink unbeknownst to me, mindjer.’

  Mr Weech’s head lay aside, his grin widened, his glance was sidelong, his forefinger pointed from his temple over Dicky’s head, and altogether he looked so very knowing that Dicky shuffled in his seat. By what mysterious means was this new-found friend so well informed? The doubt troubled him, for Dicky knew nothing of Mr Aaron Weech’s conversation, an hour before, with Tommy Rann.

  ‘But it’s awright, bless yer,’ Mr Weech went on presently. ‘Nobody’s none the wuss for me knowin’ about ’em.… Well, we was a-talkin’ about the watch, wasn’t we? All you got after sich a lot o’ trouble was a woppin’ with a belt. That was too bad.’ Mr Weech’s voice was piteous and sympathetic. ‘After you a-findin’ sich a nice watch—a red ’un an’ all!—you gits nothink for yerself but a beltin’. Never mind, you’ll do better next time—I’ll take care o’ that. I don’t like to see a clever boy put upon. You go an’ find another, or somethink else—anythink good—an’ then you bring it ’ere.’

  Mr Weech’s friendly sympathy extinguished Dicky’s doubt. ‘I didn’t find it,’ he said, shy but proud. ‘It was a click—I sneaked it.’

  ‘Eh?’ ejaculated Mr Weech, a sudden picture of blank incomprehension. ‘Eh? What? Click? Wot’s a click? Sneaked? Wot’s that? I dunno nothink about no talk o’ that sort, an’ I don’t want to. It’s my belief it means somethink wrong—but I dunno, an’ I don’t want to. ’Ear that? Eh? Don’t let me ’ave no more o’ that, or you’d better not come near me agin. If you find somethink, awright: you come to me an’ I’ll give ye somethink for it, if it’s any good. It ain’t no business of anybody’s where you find it, o’ course, an’ I don’t want to know. But clicks and sneaks—them’s Greek to me, an’ I don’t want to learn ’em. Unnerstand that? Nice talk to respectable people, with yer clicks an’ sneaks!’

  Dicky blushed a little, and felt very guilty without in the least understanding the offence. But Mr Weech’s virtuous indignation subsided as quickly as it had arisen, and he went on as amiably as ever.

  ‘When you find anythink,’ he said, ‘jist like you found that watch, don’t tell nobody, an’ don’t let nobody see it. Bring it ’ere quiet, when there ain’t any p’liceman in the street, an’ come right through to the back o’ the shop, an’ say, “I come to clean the knives.” Unnerstand? “I come to clean the knives.” There ain’t no knives to clean—it’s on’y a way o’ tellin’ me you got somethink without other people knowin’. An’ then I’ll give you somethink for it—money p’raps, or p’raps cake or wot not. Don’t forgit. “I come to clean the knives.” See?’

  Yes, Dicky understood perfectly; and Dicky saw a new world of dazzling delights. Cake—limitless cake, coffee, and the like whenever he might feel moved thereunto; but more than all, money—actual money. Good broad pennies, perhaps whole shillings—perhaps even more still: money to buy bullock’s liver for dinner, or tripe, or what you fancied: saveloys, baked potatoes from the can on cold nights, a little cart to wheel Looey in, a boat from a toy-shop with sails!

  ‘There’s no end o’ things to be found all over the place, an’ a sharp boy like you can find ’em every day. If you don’t find ’em, someone else will; there’s plenty on ’em about on the look-out, an’ you got jist as much right as them. On’y mind!’—Mr Weech was suddenly stern and serious, and his forefinger was raised impressively—‘you know you can’t do anythink without I know, an’ if you say a word—if you say a word,’ his fist came on the table with a bang, ‘somethink’ll happen to you. Somethink bad.’

  Mr Weech rose, and was pleasant again, though business-like. ‘Now, you just go an’ find somethink,’ he said. ‘Look sharp about it, an’ don’t go an’ git in trouble. The cawfy’s a penny, an’ the cake’s a penny—ought prop’ly to be twopence, but say a penny this time. That’s twopence you owe me, an’ you better bring somethink an’ pay it off quick. So go along.’

  This was an unforeseen tag to the entertainment. For the first time in his life Dicky was in debt. It was a little disappointing to find the coffee and cake no gift after all: though, indeed, it now seemed foolish to have supposed they were; for in Dicky Perrott’s world people did not give things away—that were the act of a fool. Thus Dicky, with his hands in his broken pockets, and tho
ught in his small face, whereon still stood the muddy streaks of yesterday’s tears, trudged out of Mr Aaron Weech’s shop-door, and along Meakin Street.

  Now he was beginning the world seriously, and must face the fact. Truly the world had been serious enough for him hitherto, but that he knew not. Now he was of an age when most boys were thieving for themselves, and he owed money like a man. True it was, as Mr Weech had said, that everybody—the whole Jago—was on the look-out for himself. Plainly he must take his share, lest it fall to others. As to the old gentleman’s watch, he had but been beforehand. Through foolish ingenuousness he had lost it, and his father had got it, who could so much more easily steal one for himself; for he was a strong man, and had but to knock over another man at any night-time. Nobody should hear of future clicks but Mr Weech. Each for himself? Come, he must open his eyes.

  VII

  There was no chance all along Meakin Street. The chandlers and the keepers of cook-shops knew their neighbourhood too well to leave articles unguarded. Soon Dicky reached Shoreditch High Street. There things were a little more favourable. There were shops, as he well remembered, where goods were sometimes exhibited at the doors and outside the windows; but today there seemed to be no chance of the sort. As for the people, he was too short to try pockets, and indeed the High Street rarely gave passage to a more unpromising lot. Moreover, from robbery from the person he knew he must abstain, except for such uncommon opportunities as that of the Bishop’s watch, for some years yet.

  He hung about the doors and windows of shop after shop, hoping for a temporary absence of the shop-keeper, which might leave something snatchable. But he hoped in vain. From most shops he was driven away, for the Shoreditch trader is not slow to judge the purpose of a loitering boy. So he passed nearly two hours: when at last he saw his chance. It came in an advantageous part of High Street, not far from the ‘Posties,’ though on the opposite side of the way. A nurse-girl had left a perambulator at a shop door, while she bought inside, and on the perambulator lay loose a little skin rug, from under which a little fat leg stuck and waved aloft. Dicky set his back to the shop, and sidled to within reach of the perambulator. But it chanced that at this moment the nurse-girl stepped to the door, and she made a snatch at his arm as he lifted the rug. This he dropped at once, and was swinging leisurely away (for he despised the chase of any nurse-girl) when a man took him suddenly by the shoulder. Quick as a weasel, Dicky ducked under the man’s arm, pulled his shoulder clear, dropped forward and rested an instant on the tips of his fingers to avoid the catch of the other hand, and shot out into the road. The man tried to follow, but Dicky ran under the belly of a standing horse, under the head of another that trotted, across the fore-platform of a tramcar—behind the driver’s back—and so over to the ‘Posties.’

  He slouched into the Jago, disappointed. As he crossed Edge Lane, he was surprised to perceive a stranger—a toff, indeed—who walked slowly along, looking up right and left at the grimy habitations about him. He wore a tall hat, and his clothes were black, and of a pattern that Dicky remembered to have seen at the Elevation Mission. They were, in fact, the clothes of a clergyman. For himself, he was tall and soundly built, with a certain square muscularity of face, and of age about thirty-five. He had ventured into the Jago because the police were in possession, Dicky thought; and wondered in what plight he would leave, had he come at another time. But losing view of the stranger, and making his way along Old Jago Street, Dicky perceived that indeed the police were gone, and that the Jago was free.

  He climbed the broken stairs and pushed into the first-floor back, hopeful, though more doubtful, of dinner. There was none. His mother, tied about the neck with rags, lay across the bed nursing the damage of yesterday, and commiserating herself. A yard from her lay Looey, sick and ailing in a new way, but disregarded. Dicky moved to lift her, but at that she cried the more, and he was fain to let her lie. She rolled her head from side to side, and raised her thin little hand vaguely toward it, with feverishly working fingers. Dicky felt her head and she screamed again. There was a lump at the side, a hard, sharp lump; got from the stones of the roadway yesterday. And there was a curious quality, a rather fearful quality, in the little wails: uneasily suggestive of the screams of Sally Green’s victims.

  Father was out, prowling. There was nothing eatable in the cupboard, and there seemed nothing at home worth staying for. He took another look at Looey, but refrained from touching her, and went out.

  The opposite door on the landing was wide open, and he could hear nobody in the room. He had never seen this door open before, and now he ventured on a peep: for the tenants of the front room were strangers, late arrivals, and interlopers. Their name was Roper. Roper was a pale cabinet-maker, fallen on evil times and out of work. He had a pale wife, disliked because of her neatly-kept clothes, her exceeding use of soap and water, her aloofness from gossip. She had a deadly pale baby; also there was a pale hunchbacked boy of near Dicky’s age. Collectively the Ropers were disliked as strangers: because they furnished their own room, and in an obnoxiously complete style; because Roper did not drink, nor brawl, nor beat his wife, nor do anything all day but look for work; because all these things were a matter of scandalous arrogance, impudently subversive of Jago custom and precedent. Mrs Perrott was bad enough, but such people as these!…

  Dicky had never before seen quite such a room as this. Everything was so clean: the floor, the windows, the bed-clothes. Also there was a strip of old carpet on the floor. There were two perfectly sound chairs; and two pink glass vases on the mantel-piece; and a clock. Nobody was in the room, and Dicky took a step farther. The clock attracted him again. It was a small, cheap, nickel-plated, cylindrical thing, of American make, and it reminded him at once of the Bishop’s watch. It was not gold, certainly, but it was a good deal bigger, and it could go—it was going. Dicky stepped back and glanced at the landing. Then he darted into the room, whipped the clock under the breast of the big jacket, and went for the stairs.

  Half way down he met the pale hunchback ascending. Left at home alone, he had been standing in the front doorway. He saw Dicky’s haste, saw also the suspicious bulge under his jacket, and straightway seized Dicky’s arm. ‘Where ’a’ you bin?’ he asked sharply. ‘Bin in our room? What you got there?’

  ‘Nothin’ o’ yours, ’ump. Git out o’ that!’ Dicky pushed him aside. ‘If you don’t le’ go I’ll corpse ye!’

  But one arm and hand was occupied with the bulge, and the other was for the moment unequal to the work of driving off the assailant. The two children wrangled and struggled downstairs, through the doorway and into the street: the hunchback weak, but infuriate, buffeting, biting and whimpering; Dicky infuriate too, but alert for a chance to break away and run. So they scrambled together across the street, Dicky dragging away from the house at every step; and just at the corner of Luck Row, getting his fore-arm across the other’s face, he back-heeled him, and the little hunchback fell heavily, and lay breathless and sobbing, while Dicky scampered through Luck Row and round the corner into Meakin Street.

  Mr Weech was busier now, for there were customers. But Dicky and his bulge he saw ere they were well over the threshold.

  ‘Ah yus, Dicky,’ he said, coming to meet him. ‘I was expectin’ you. Come in—

  In the swe-e-et by an’ by,

  We shall meet on that beautiful shaw-er!

  Come in ’ere.’ And still humming his hymn, he led Dicky into the shop parlour.

  Here Dicky produced the clock, which Mr Weech surveyed with no great approval. ‘You’ll ’ave to try an’ do better than this, you know,’ he said. ‘But any’ow ’ere it is, sich as it is. It about clears auf wot you owe, I reckon. Want some dinner?’

  This was a fact, and Dicky admitted it.

  ‘Awright—

  In the swe-e-e-t by an’ by,—

  come out an’ set down. I’ll bring you somethink ’ot.’

 
; This proved to be a very salt bloater, a cup of the usual muddy coffee, tasting of burnt toast, and a bit of bread: afterwards supplemented by a slice of cake. This to Dicky was a banquet. Moreover, there was the adult dignity of taking your dinner in a coffee-shop, which Dicky supported indomitably now that he began to feel at ease in Mr Weech’s: leaning back in his seat, swinging his feet, and looking about at the walls with the grocers’ almanacks hanging thereto, and the Sunday School Anniversary bills of past date, gathered from afar to signalise the elevated morals of the establishment.

  ‘Done?’ queried Mr Weech in his ear. ‘Awright, don’t ’ang about ’ere then. Bloater’s a penny, bread a ’a’peny, cawfy a penny, cake a penny. You’ll owe thrippence a’peny now.’

  VIII

  When Dicky Perrott and the small hunchback were hauling and struggling across the street, Old Fisher came down from the top-floor back, wherein he dwelt with his son Bob, Bob’s wife and two sisters, and five children: an apartment in no way so clean as the united efforts of ten people might be expected to have made it. Old Fisher, on whose grimy face the wrinkles were deposits of mud, stopped at the open door on the first floor, and, as Dicky had done, he took a peep. Perplexed at the monstrous absence of dirt, and encouraged by the stillness, Old Fisher also ventured within. Nobody was in charge, and Old Fisher, mentally pricing the pink glass vases at threepence, made for a small chest in the corner of the room, and lifted the lid. Within lay many of Roper’s tools, from among which he had that morning taken such as he might want on an emergent call to work, to carry as he tramped Curtain Road. Clearly these were the most valuable things in the place; and, slipping a few small articles into his pockets, Old Fisher took a good double handful of the larger, and tramped upstairs with them. Presently he returned with Bob’s missis, and together they started with more. As they emerged, however, there on the landing stood the little hunchback, sobbing and smearing his face with his sleeve. At sight of this new pillage he burst into sharp wails, standing impotent on the landing, his streaming eyes following the man and woman ascending before him. Old Fisher, behind, stumped the stairs with a clumsy affectation of absent-mindedness; the woman, in front, looked down, merely indifferent. Scarce were they vanished above, however, when the little hunchback heard his father and mother on the lower stairs.