The Arthur Morrison Mystery

by Arthur Morrison

  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’ the Florence.… The Florence that 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?”

  Chapter 15

  Stephen’s Tale

  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 s
o 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 it ain’t in 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 the Juno in 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 brought Lloyd’s List in 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 the Juno herself. And this was the notice that I read:

  LA GUAIRA, Sep. 1.

  The Juno (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.

  Chapter 16

  Stephen’s Tale

  I cannot remember how I reached Grandfather Nat. I must have climbed the stairs, and I fancy I ran into him on the landing; but I only remember his grim face, oddly grey under the eyes, as he sat on his bed and took the paper in his hand. I do not know even what I said, and I doubt if I knew then; the only words present to my mind were “all crew saved except first mate”; and very likely that was what I said.

  My grandfather drew me between his knees, and I stood with his arm about me and his bowed head against my cheek. I noticed bemusedly that with his hair fresh-brushed the line between the grey and the brown at the back was more distinct than common; and when there was a sudden clatter in the bar below I wondered if Joe had smashed something, or if it were only a tumble of the pewters. So we were for a little; and then Grandfather Nat stood up with a sound between a sigh and a gulp, looking strangely askant at me, as though it surprised him to find I was not crying. For my part I was dimly perplexed to see that neither was he; though the grey was still under his eyes, and his face seemed pinched and older. “Come, Stevy,” he said, and his voice was like a groan; “we’ll have the house shut again.”

  I cannot remember that he spoke to me any more for an hour, except to ask if I would eat any breakfast, which I did with no great loss of appetite; though indeed I was trying very hard to think, hindered by an odd vacancy of mind that made a little machine of me.

  Breakfast done, my grandfather sent Joe for a cab to take us to Blackwall. I was a little surprised at the unaccustomed conveyance, and rather pleased. When we were ready to go, we found Mr. Cripps and two other regular frequenters of the bar waiting outside. I think Mr. Cripps meant to have come forward with some prepared condolence; but he stopped short when he saw my grandfather’s face, and stood back with the others. The four-wheeler was a wretched vehicle, reeking of strong tobacco and stale drink; for half the employment of such cabs as the neighbourhood possessed was to carry drunken sailors, flush of money, who took bottles and pipes with them everywhere.

  Whether it was the jolting of the cab—Wapping streets were paved with cobbles—that shook my faculties into place; whether it was the association of the cab and the journey to Blackwall that reminded me of my mother’s funeral; or whether it was the mere lapse of a little time, I cannot tell. But as we went, the meaning of the morning’s news grew on me, and I realised that my father was actually dead, drowned in the sea, and that I was wholly an orphan; and it struck me with a sense of self-reproach that the fact afflicted me no more than it did. When my mother and my little brother had died I had cried myself sodden and faint; but now, heavy of heart as I was, I felt curiously ashamed that Grandfather Nat should see me tearless. True, I had seen very little of my father, but when he was at home he was always as kind to me as Grandfather Nat himself, and led me about with him everywhere; and last voyage he had brought me a little boomerang, and only laughed when I hove it through a window that cost him three shillings. Thus I pondered blinkingly in the cab; and I set down my calmness to the reflection that my m
other would have him always with her now, and be all the happier in heaven for it; for she always cried when he went to sea.

  So at last we came in sight of the old quay, and had to wait till the bridge should swing behind a sea-beaten ship, with her bulwarks patched with white plank, and the salt crust thick on her spars. I could see across the lock the three little front windows of our house, shut close and dumb; and I could hear the quick chanty from the quay, where the capstan turned:—

  O, I served my time on the Black Ball Line,

  Hurrah for the Black Ball Line!

  From the South Sea north to the sixty-nine,

  Hurrah for the Black Ball Line!

  And somehow with that I cried at last.

  The ship passed in, the bridge shut, and the foul old cab rattled till it stopped before the well-remembered door. The house had been closed since my mother was buried, Grandfather Nat paying the rent and keeping the key on my father’s behalf; and now the door opened with a protesting creak and a shudder, and the air within was close and musty.

  There were two letters on the mat, where they had fallen from the letter-flap, and both were from my father, as was plain from the writing. We carried them into the little parlour, where last we had sat with the funeral party, and my grandfather lifted the blind and flung open the window. Then he sat and put one letter on each knee.

  “Stevy,” he said, and again his voice was like a groan; “look at them postmarks. Ain’t one Belize?”

  Yes, one was Belize, the other La Guaira; and both for my mother.