Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  “They’ve been telling you about yesterday,” said Tom, nervously, through the rails. “The fellow took it for granted I was guilty — among other things. Do you?”

  The smart solicitor shook his head, and said they had no time to waste. What he wished to hear was the prisoner’s version of his last interview with Blaydes, from its origin to its end, and the prisoner would please be brief, and speak in a whisper.

  Tom was brevity itself; indeed, he had his story almost suspiciously pat, for he had already made up his mind as to the one fact which he intended to suppress. This was the source of his information as to Blaydes’s latest whereabouts. He owned to no such information at all. The meeting was a chance meeting, that was to be his solitary lie.

  He told it and it passed unchallenged; but when he came to the transaction of the watch, the solicitor’s eyebrows shot to such an involuntary height, that the glib flow froze that instant.

  “Go on, go on.”

  “You don’t believe a word I say!”

  “Nonsense, my good fellow. I believe every word. Come, come, they’re getting impatient. You gave him a receipt — and then?”

  Tom finished with a leaden heart and tongue. To his surprise, however, Mr. Bassett was all smiles when he had done; then he put a few questions; and the lamer the answer, the sprightlier the solicitor’s nod. The latter, in fact, foresaw a defence about as weak as one could be, but a case even more sensational than he had supposed. And sensation happened to be this brisk practitioner’s professional loadstar.

  Proceedings were resumed at two minutes past eleven, when the witness Adcock, recalled, identified a pair of dilapidated shoes, and the mutilated elements of a beaver, as having belonged to the accused. Bassett had no idea what point the prosecution designed to make, but at once he gave a taste of his quality. He pressed the witness, and shook her as to the hat; but to the shoes she stood firm; she had cleaned them oft enough, so she ought to know. Then she cleaned the lodgers’ boots herself? Well, not all; and an adroit question or two revealed the fact that Erichsen had been her pet, and “one it was a pleasure to do for,” against whom she had appeared with profound reluctance. Indeed, she left the box, and rejoined the husband who had brought her there, in tears; and so the defence made a first meretricious point.

  Nor was it the last. Jonathan Butterfield, unlike his relatives, had not been called at the previous examination; but he was now; and his feelings were worked upon in the same deft fashion. As, however, there was no jury to be simultaneously touched, all this was wasted dexterity; but it looked neat in the newspapers; and (what was better, but unintentional) imposed upon poor Tom, and gave him momentary heart.

  Meanwhile the shoes and hat had done real damage; and this evidence was the more deleterious from being new to all. Guilty flight and ultimate capture had been fully dealt with on the previous occasion; but the equally incriminating interim was only now filled in, by the officers who had chased and lost a desperate housebreaker in the small hours of Saturday, but only afterwards connected him with the Hampstead murderer. The connection was established by the beaver hidden but discovered in the empty house, and by the shoes left on either side of the nursery-garden gate. Only two officers appeared; the third was in hospital, and one of the two had a bandaged head.

  The medical evidence had been taken on the Monday morning; so had that of the crafty householder of Kew; yet his powdered head was again in court, and his humorous, sly smile looked as benevolent as ever, only broader and more subtly droll. Tom heard this public benefactor taking snuff in every pause.

  The other new witness was one Richard Vale, who brought a whiff of cognac into the crowded court. His words ran into one another, but his evidence was all too clear. Witness described himself as a very old friend of the deceased. He swore that deceased had frequently told him he went in fear of the prisoner, who had repeatedly threatened him by letter, and to whom, in fact, the deceased owed a sum of money. The letters were now put in. They all related to a worthless cheque for £35 — the sum in question — and without a blush witness explained about the cheque. The cheque-book was an old one of his own; he remembered the deceased telling him he had made use of it in the manner alleged in the letters; but he could not himself describe the incident, as, to the best of his belief, he was intoxicated on that occasion. And the witness stood down, having supplied the motive of revenge to a case strong enough, in all conscience, as it was.

  Bassett hurried to the dock.

  “I suppose you lost that cheque?” he whispered.

  “No; I gave it him back with the receipt.”

  Bassett turned abruptly and stated that the prisoner reserved his defence; a minute later he stood formally committed for trial at the next sessions of the Central Criminal Court.

  “I’ll see you down below,” said Bassett, nodding airily to trembling Tom; but the latter pulled himself together on his blessed release from the public gaze; and the subsequent interview, in the bowels of the police-office, was business-like on both sides.

  “When are the sessions?” asked Tom. —

  “They begin next Monday. No time to be lost!”

  “Five days more. Well, it’s better than waiting. be you won’t give me my benefactor’s name?”

  “I am pledged not to reveal it to a soul.”

  “Do I know him?”

  “No.”

  “Does he know me?”

  “No.”

  “Yet he thinks me innocent! God bless him! — God bless him! He must be an eccentric man, though, to help the helpless like that?”

  “Somewhat,” said the solicitor, so dryly that Tom winced.

  “You think I haven’t the ghost of a chance?”

  “I never said so. Nor do I think it. But you made a mistake in destroying that cheque.”

  “He destroyed it when I gave it him back.”

  “There would have been less possible motive with the cheque in your possession; you could have taken proceedings on that alone.”

  “Ay, but I meant to take them with my own hands!”

  Tom would have recalled the words next instant. He saw even the hardened and alert police-court attorney shrink away as he said them. Bassett took a handful of silver from his pocket, counted a sovereign’s-worth, and handed it to Tom.

  “There,” said he coldly, “I had that for you with my instructions, and you will need it at Newgate if you want to be comfortable. Use it freely. See you there to-morrow.” And he was gone with repulsion ill-concealed. Half-way to his office in Clipstone Street, he overhauled Daintree crossing Portland Place.

  “Well? well?” cried Daintree. “I didn’t want to be seen waiting for you; but what do you make of it?”

  “You’ll be throwing your money away — that’s a guilty man.”

  “You think so?”

  “Think?” said Bassett. “Why, he’s as good as confessed to me already! But that doesn’t matter; if you still wish it I’ll do my best.”

  “I do wish it, sir,” replied Daintree, sternly. “Either the best you ever did in your life, or nothing more. Which do you say, sir?”

  “Oh, I’ll do all I know; that I promise you,” said the solicitor. “I was thinking of you entirely. Why, the case fits me like a coat of paint!”

  CHAPTER XIV

  OLD NEWGATE

  TOM ERICHSEN was committed for trial about four in the afternoon, by which hour the High Street of Marylebone was thronged by would-be witnesses of his removal in the prison van. But a recent experience, when a posse of police had to accompany the van with drawn staves, had taught the officers a lesson; and their prisoner was spirited away by the side entrance and a hackney coach, while the crowd were watching the gateway for that live man’s hearse. The coach started westward down Paddington Street, but was on its course in a couple of minutes, without a solitary follower.

  The two police-officers congratulated themselves and each other, but never took an eye off Tom, though they had him handcuffed and held by one ar
m. Tom, however, paid no heed to them. It was the third of May. The sun was as high as at a winter’s noon; it blazed in the bright shop-windows; it rimmed the cobble-stones with tiny bands of gold; for there had been a heavy shower during the day, that had purged the London air, and cleansed and sweetened the whole of London town. Tom looked out wistfully, and inhaled all he could, but it was not to be borne beyond a minute. The beautiful streets, full of happy people, were as a knife twisted round in his heart; he buried his face in his manacled hands, and could look no more.

  By half-past four they were at Newgate.

  Tom stepped through the sunlight into a forbidding vestibule — a very porch of despair — where a dimly burning lamp avowed eternal gloom. Here the newcomer was entered in a book, relieved of his handcuffs, and forthwith led through humid passages and nail-studded doors into the black heart of this horrible place.

  In one corridor a large cell was being swabbed out as they passed. A horrid intuition chilled Tom’s blood.

  “Whose cell is that?”

  “Nobody’s now.”

  “It was Greenacre’s! I had forgotten him; did he — die game?”

  “Game? Not he; like a cur.”

  Tom set his chattering teeth; but suddenly his eyes blinked: they were out again in the sun, in a yard some fifteen paces long, and half as broad as its length. A parallelogram of brilliant blue sky smiled cruelly overhead, cut on all sides by the high dark walls, and showing from the wet flags as the mouth of a well seen from its base.

  “You’re consigned to Chapel Yard,” said Tom’s guide, “and this is it. I’m just looking for a wardsman, and then I’m done with ‘ee. Ah, here he comes!”

  A great, gross being, with an irregular walk and a face of solidified beer, tacked towards them as the turnkey spoke.

  “Now, wot’s all this?” inquired a voice to scale. “Wot for are you a-bringin’ noo boys here for? Recepshun ward’s the place for them; they’ve got no business ‘ere.”

  “Well, them’s the orders, and this is a special case. It’s Erichsen!”

  The wardsman opened his half-shut eyes, and blinked incredulity.

  “Gerrout!” said he. “That kid? Pitch us another.”

  “It’s right,” said the turnkey. “Committed this afternoon.”

  “Well, I’m darned: you wouldn’t think it of ‘im, now would yer?” asked the fuddled connoisseur, half-sobered by surprise. A slow, dim admiration glimmered in the clouded face like a rush-light in a yellow fog. “Why, Master Erichsen,” he continued, “I’m proud to have ye in my ward. We know all about you ‘ere, and this is a proud day for Number Twelve. I’ll do my best to make ye at home.”

  “An’ it all rests with he,” whispered the turnkey, taking his leave. “Pay you his dues, and you’ll do well.”

  Tom had already glanced down the yard, and noted two prisoners playing pitch-and-toss at the far end; another sitting on a wet flag, back to wall, knees up, chin down, an abject picture; and a third, in tatters, drawing near, open-mouthed. He now turned abruptly to the wardsman.

  “What’s this about dues?”

  “On’y a little weekly trifle for the pore wardsman; nothing to hurt, Master Erichsen—”

  “I double it if I don’t hear that name again!”

  The man stared. “You are a noo boy, no error!” cried he. “It’s very clear you don’t know Noogit, let alone Chapel Yard, where all the best men comes to, like yourself. Why, they’ll give you the ‘artiest welcome ever you ‘ad; you’ve done it big, sir, that you ‘ave; and you that young! Come away to Number Ten, I’ll introduce ye, and ye’ll see. Number Ten’s where they’ve all got to, as you can ‘ear for yourself.” Along the yard were, indeed, three open doors, and through the farthest of these came oaths and laughter, snatches of song, the ring of money and the rattle of dice.

  Tom clutched the wardsman’s sleeve.

  “Didn’t you understand? I don’t want them to know who I am — I double your dues if they don’t.”

  “But know they must; they’ll soon find it out.”

  “It’s half-a-crown a day until they do! Here’s the first shilling, and the rest to-night.”

  “Well, as you like. It’ll be ‘alf-arcrown a week for use of knives, forks, kittles an’ saucep’ns.”

  “Here it is.”

  “Thank’ee, master. I never forgit the blokes wot pays in advance. I sha’n’t forgit Thomas Erichsen!” Tom was blazing. The man with the open mouth was within three yards of them. He rolled his light-blue eyes, and laughed high up in his head as Tom pointed to him in his rage.

  “Oh, ‘e don’t count,” said the wardsman. “‘E’s stark starin’ mad.”

  “What! you keep madmen here as well?”

  “All sorts — mad — bad — glad an’ sad. See that poor devil against the wall! Now come and I’ll show you Number Twelve.”

  The ward was a fair-sized room, with mats hung round the walls, for the prisoners’ beds at night. One such mat was in use thus early, whereon a human lump lay snorting in a drunken sleep beneath a couple of rugs; otherwise the ward was empty. Tom noticed the vestiges of a gaming-board chalked upon the deal table, and at the other end a pile of newspapers, in which, no doubt, his fortunes had been daily followed. After Clerkenwell, where the separate system even then obtained, Newgate was a revelation, or rather a succession of them, with the most amazing yet to come.

  The wardsman opened a cupboard, invited Tom to have a glass of beer, and drank three glasses with him. The whole place stank of beer; its stains were on everything; there seemed to be an unlimited supply. Tom took his glass, and soon saw that he was being treated with a view to business. He was offered a flock-bed, instead of the mat, at an extra half-crown a week. This he declined; whereupon the wardsman, now fast returning to intoxication, offered to draw up his brief for a pound. He professed an unrivalled experience; was the recognised brief-drawer for the yard, under sanction of the governor himself; and had drawn up twenty-three last sessions, of which more than half led to acquittals. The boys reckoned him worth a waggon-load of lawyers any day in the week; he would do his very best for a pound.

  Tom looked at the great sot sprawling over the table, and shook his head with a civil word.

  “Fifteen bob, then.”

  “Thank you, no.”

  “Well, I don’t want to be ‘ard on a gent on trial for his life. Say ‘alf a couter!”

  “No, thanks; the fact is—”

  “Oh, if you’re that ‘ard up, let’s make it five and be done with it.”

  Five shillings happened to be his regulation price.

  “No,” said Tom. “The fact is a solicitor is engaging counsel—”

  “Then why the hell couldn’t you say so at first?” roared the other, in a drunken fury. “But lemme tell you five couters wouldn’t draw the brief as’d save your neck; no, nor yet five ‘underd; nor all the lousy lawyers in the country. An’ I’ll trouble you for twopence for that glass o’ beer!”

  Tom threw the coppers on the table and went out, followed by his own name hurled after him in loud derision; but the wardsman’s articulation was no longer intelligible, and the brute himself stopped where he was, and lay down upon the one bed in the room, which was his own.

  This man was himself a prisoner, under sentence of two years for criminal conspiracy. Newgate contained no wretch more mercenary or more debauched. Yet the regulations of the time set such a one in authority, countenanced his iniquitous emoluments, and allowed him to spend them upon unlimited beer!

  The madman was still wandering in the yard, crooning to himself in a high falsetto. His blue eye, happy and vacant as the clear evening sky, fixed Tom as he emerged, and set him envying the man who came to Newgate but left his wits outside. The pitch-and-toss pair had disappeared; in Number Ten the sounds of revelry were louder and more continuous than before; but that dejected figure, with the bent knees and the fallen chin, still sat outside in the damp. Tom’s compassion was aroused. He approached, a
nd found a stripling with a white, damp skin, bony wrists, and fleshless knees.

  “You oughtn’t to be sitting out here,” said Tom. “Why not get up and go inside?”

  “Why should I?” rejoined the youth, raising eyes deep-sunken in a mass of skin and bone.

  “Because if you don’t you may catch your death.”

  “All the better! That’s my lay. I’m cold an’ wet, but it’s no use goin’ in there; there ain’t no fire when you do. I want to go straight to hell.”

  Tom shuddered, but stooped down.

  “Come, come,” said he; “I’ll give you an arm.”

  “You’re a rum cove,” replied the other, looking carelessly up; “but I bet you ain’t kissed this ‘ere clink afore, or you wouldn’t say that! Nice spot, ain’t it? But this is a sight better than the Middle Yard. I’ve bin ‘ere afore, you see; this makes the fourth time; thank Gawd it’ll be the larst!”

  He suffered Tom to help him to his feet, the shrunken shadow of a man, dressed, however, very respectably, in black clothes eloquently loose. On Tom’s arm he was promptly seized with a fit of coughing that sounded as if his bag of bones must split asunder; but he mastered it, wiped his hollow eyes with prominent knuckles, and said: “That’s better! One or two more like that’ll do my business.” Tom’s gorge rose to hear him; yet he understood the feeling. It had come to himself in the soaking, inhospitable fields; only now, with the shadow of death lengthening hourly towards him, he knew how little he had ever wished to die.

  “You ought to be in the infirmary,” he said; “it’s a scandal to find you here.”

  “No it ain’t!” coughed the youth. “It’s my own doings; Macmurdo ain’t to blame. I on’y come in larst night, and dodged ‘im on ‘is round this mornin’, ‘cause I wanted to be with my old pals; and roast me if they ‘aven’t served me out by winnin’ my last chinker!”

  Tom wanted to lend him a little. The other refused, but with a gleaming eye. Presently he said he felt stronger, and would take Tom’s advice. So he quitted his arm and went into Number Ten.