by David Pirie
‘We are under the river,’ they said with whispered awe.
‘Quite right,’ said Macandrew, ‘and to prove it …’ He turned and removed the wooden lid from the wall ahead and I could see a tap with a wooden mug beside it. He turned this and water came spilling out, which Macandrew used to fill the mug, raising it to his lips. ‘I always toast my guests in the water of the river.’
Soon it was my turn and I wet my lips in the liquid which was not particularly appetising but not foul either. Evidently Macandrew was able to purify it for I did not like to imagine how such a draft might taste otherwise, containing as it would all manner of noxious things. But there was something strange in knowing the river was above this space, and I hardly wondered the air was a little dank.
On the way back another wonder was in store, for Macandrew opened the waterproof portholed door we had passed earlier which led to a small chamber. All I could see inside was some kind of closed vent on the floor and a large opening in the wall. The children, who knew it well, were again full of excitement. ‘This is the flood chamber,’ he told me, pointing to a large wheel in the wall outside. ‘If you open the vent, it fills with water in twenty minutes or so. I test models of much of the equipment here and sometimes the apparatus itself.’ As soon as we were outside and, the door was sealed, Macandrew turned the wheel and, for just a few seconds, water flooded into the small space. Then he pulled a handle and much to the children’s glee it drained away.
Once we were upstairs again, the children rushed over to look at the magnifying apparatus. While they squealed and laughed and took turns with their parents, Macandrew questioned me about my training and experience. ‘I am sure Edinburgh is all very well in its way,’ he said. ‘But of course the larger teaching hospitals here see a far greater variety of patients, meaning their experience is unrivalled. In the end we cannot escape the fact that London is the empire’s heart. The rest are all outposts.’
It was not a point I had much interest in contesting, especially with a man who had evidently studied biology and engineering rather than medicine. But I could see quite well now that, behind his easy manner, Macandrew was intensely competitive, and I also had to recognise, though it was not very enjoyable to do so, that here was the reason why a man, only a few years my senior, had reached a position of some eminence while I was a struggling junior doctor.
Of course, I was careful not to let the Morlands sense I had any reservations about the visit, and that evening I talked animatedly to Sally about all we had seen. She was not, I had already noticed, as enthusiastic about Macandrew as Martin but I was surprised now to notice a slight anxiousness in her. She kept looking worriedly at her husband, who sat staring gloomily into the fire. I was well aware that he sometimes found work a burden, so I could only conclude he was dreading another week making calendars. Feeling that I was in the way, I thanked them for the outing and retired to bed. But, even as I said goodnight, Martin barely stirred from where he sat.
The start of the following week was, for me, very busy, too busy even to spend much time dwelling on the matter of the sketch in the ‘Hall of Murderers’. One of the partners in the medical practice had sprained an ankle getting out of a cab, while another was suffering from a chest cold. Consequently there was more work for all of us and it was not until Wednesday, when another doctor had agreed to cover some of our patients, that things became a little easier. Even so I did not return to the Morlands till well after nine that evening, having sent word that I had already dined, though in truth I had only managed to take something from a pastry cook’s stall I passed while out on my calls.
I had seen little of the Morlands all week and was looking forward to their company as I took off my coat off so I was, I must confess, a little surprised when the cook appeared to inform me with a slight air of agitation that Mr Morland was not at home. I went straight to the drawing room at once. Sally stood at the fireplace with her back to me.
‘Well, I am sorry to be such an absent guest …’ I began as cheerfully as I could, for I was remembering the low spirits of the previous Sunday night, when she turned and I saw to my astonishment that she was crying.
The sight was so heart-rending that my words died away and I took a pace towards her. But she put up a hand to stop me.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I am sorry to intrude, I will go.’
‘No,’ she said, and her voice was unsure but she had contained her tears. ‘Please, the truth is, Arthur, I have been waiting for you.’
At this I did come forward to face her. It was strange to stand so close to her and she did not look away, though the sadness in her was all too apparent. Of course it brought back memories and I reflected that, though I had been mistaken about someone else not so long before, in Sally there could be no mistake. Her lack of guile, her instinctive kindness were there so visibly before your eyes.
‘You know I would do anything to help you,’ I said. Since there was not and never could be the slightest impropriety in my relationship with Sally, I saw no reason to conceal the fact that I admired her.
She nodded and looked down. ‘I am asking a favour of you, Arthur, and I am not sure I could ask it of anyone else in the world other than my husband, whom it concerns.’
I waited. I could see her lips tremble as she summoned up the courage to tell me.
‘I have not seen him since yesterday morning.’
I was amazed and almost exclaimed aloud, but fortunately realised in time how little help that would be. ‘And you have no idea?’ I said as unemphatically as I could.
‘Why, I have every idea,’ she cried. ‘You think otherwise I could have borne it? But to go to the police is only to get him into further trouble. And I would never be admitted without …’ She was wringing her hands so tightly I thought the fingernails would pierce the skin. I led her to a chair and made her sit down.
‘Sally, we will get him back. You must just tell me where to go.’
Now I saw the hope in her eyes. ‘You must not blame him, he has had such worries. We had hoped, but …’ The tears welled up but she collected herself again. ‘Sometimes when he is so cast down and can see no way out, when he is in a black mood, he wishes only to escape in this way. Once before he was there a whole night, but never two. I cannot bear to wait and worry about what might happen to him.’
It was not easy, but gradually I had the story. Sally Morland was sure that her husband was in an opium den in the dockland south of the river and, though she could not name it, she believed she could describe its precise location. It was in a small alley not far from the long and rather forbidding street known as Shad Thames, an area, one social reformer described as ‘the most out-of-the-world and low-lived corner of London’, that was mainly notable for its warehouses and its crime. The alley was almost at the eastern extremity of Shad Thames, near Gainsford Street. Fortunately she had made Martin tell her this after the first occasion, precisely because she dreaded it might happen again. But now, after hours and hours of waiting, poor Sally Morland hardly knew which was more unendurable: the fear that her husband was still there, and had been for a night and a day, or that something even worse had befallen him.
At first she was utterly determined to come with me and, for all my protests, I believe she would have insisted, except that upstairs Will woke up from a dream and cried out for his mother. Here was my opportunity: I told her she must go to her son and meanwhile promised her faithfully I would set out to try to find Martin in the place she described.
I took a hansom across the river, discharged the driver near Curlew Street, which was more respectable, and then walked without any problems a little way up to the warehouses of Shad Thames. I had been told the place I sought lay well past Butler’s Wharf towards Landell’s Wharf and that the alley lay between a shop and a tavern called the Lord Lovat. As I moved further east I had two frights, the first when three men came out of a slop house and stopped, staring at me and whispering among themselves, obviously debating whet
her to come after me. I doubled my pace.
But there was worse to come on Shad Thames itself. I was walking in the darkest part of the road between two gas lamps when suddenly a shape reared up from a doorway to my right and a hand clamped my arm. The old man had a crutch but his hand gripped like a vice. ‘You have pennies for me, sir,’ he muttered.
I was fumbling for a coin but his grip only tightened. There was a movement behind him and suddenly I saw other shapes as the glimpse of a blade flashed in the dismal light. My fear gave me strength and I managed to snatch back my arm and I ran. Fortunately nobody followed.
At last I reached the ale house, which was doing noisy business, and a few people sat drunkenly on the corner beside it. A sign on the side of the tavern pointed up the alley and read ‘Reheboth Chapel’. To this day I have never discovered exactly where or what the chapel was and sometimes wonder if it ever existed, except as a false reassurance of virtue in such a dismal place.
The alley was short but also very narrow, and soon I recognised the steps Sally had described, leading down under the light of a flickering oil lamp to a strange little maze of a building. Of course there was no sign. Years later when I used the den in a story, I called it the Bar of Gold but this was a romance for it was hardly the kind of establishment that boasted a proper title. The sailors and everyone else referred to it as Ah Sing’s or Sing’s, after a Chinese who had started it, but nobody of that name was connected to it now.
I ventured down the steps and, through the half-open door, into the darkness and silence. I was trying to take some comfort from Sally’s insistence that gentlemen from the more fashionable regions of the city had been known to make the pilgrimage here for a pipe. But in truth it was not easy to imagine, for the interior now was absolutely pitch black.
I called out with no result. Was there no one here at all? Then I heard a noise and a light became visible somewhere below me, an oil lamp which threw my own flickering shadow on the exposed wood and plaster behind me. I could hear the slosh of water from somewhere below and supposed there must be a way down to the river at the bottom of the place.
A figure shuffled up a flight of stairs. The lamp drew closer, at last reaching my level, and I glimpsed the face above it.
Of course I expected the face to be foreign, even Oriental, for Sally had indicated as much, but it was English and belonged to a small lean woman in a cotton gown which hung awkwardly over her sharp shoulders. Her skin was pale and tightly drawn.
‘You come for pipe, sir, you can,’ she said. ‘But my man is na here, he back soon.’ She spoke with an accent I have never heard before or since, an odd mixture of cockney and Chinese, for it turned out her husband was the Oriental and she had spent years in the East.
I took out some money and her eyes fairly gleamed. ‘I do not wish a pipe,’ I said, handing her a coin, ‘but I am in search of a friend who may be here.’
She took the coin eagerly. ‘A sailor, sir?’
‘No, a gentleman. English.’ She was about to shake her head but I caught just a glimpse of something else in her eyes and at once I felt a flash of hope. Of course they would hardly wish to lose a good customer so easily. Quickly I gave her another coin. ‘Please, it is very important. You will get a little more if I find him.’
I could see at once that I had been right for she fingered the coin and deliberated.
‘Business very bad. Few ships come, but we had a party of gentlemen last night, sir. All have left but one. And he is wanting another pipe soon. That is money in the bank for us.’
‘Show me,’ I said, taking out the largest coin I dared and holding it up.
That was enough. She led me along the dark, dusty passage, bearing her lamp high, until we ascended a few steps at the end of the corridor. Below I heard again a splash of water and saw another corridor running off to the right. I was only just starting to have some idea what a warren the place was as she opened a door.
The stench assaulted me at once. The fumes that wafted out of the room smelt like treacle melted with glue over an open fire and then flavoured with singeing horse hair. The one source of light was a glowing fire, but the woman held up the lamp and soon I was able to make out the interior. It was only about fourteen feet long and not much wider. There was a small table and three chairs, a few gaudy prints on the walls and a mantelshelf of Chinese ornaments.
But these were mere details for the only thing that really struck you was the bed. This was so large that there was but a yard or so of space between it and the fireplace, and it was covered not by a counterpane but by a huge breadth of fine Chinese matting with a long bolster, making enough room for three people to lie on it in a kind of horrible comfort.
That was the number before me now. The nearest was certainly foreign with thick matted hair, but his face was turned away so I could not make out much of him except that I felt sure he was a seaman. Past him lay a pale figure, tossing even as I watched, and as he showed his face to me I saw it was Martin, his eyes starting to blink in the light.
At once I turned to the woman. ‘This is the man, give me the light, I will wake him and we will be gone.’ I was already beginning to appreciate my luck in dealing with her, rather than her husband, and had no wish to wait for the man’s return. She started to protest but I handed her the coin and took the light and she muttered something and scuttled out.
Quickly I brought the light so it shone full into Martin Morland’s face. ‘Martin,’ I called. ‘Martin, we must go from here.’
He blinked more and stared. Now I saw he was covered in perspiration and he seemed frightened of me. ‘Who’s there?’ he muttered, obviously imagining he was in a dream.
‘It is Arthur. Arthur Doyle. I have come to take you home.’
‘Arthur?’ he said in wonder, and I could see he was coming awake. I seized my advantage and put the light down on the table, placing my hand under his and urging him to get up. He took a few moments but then he seemed to understand and started to do so, rubbing his eyes as he looked at me.
‘Is it very late?’ he muttered. ‘Is Sally worried?’
‘It is not merely late,’ I said. ‘You have been here a day and a night. It is Wednesday.’
I could see a wave of fear wash over him at that. He was properly awake, but now I could hear something on the floor below us. Steps. ‘Come, man, we must go now.’ I whispered. ‘This moment.’
Fortunately the other, nearest, sleeper was still utterly stupefied as Morland staggered to his feet. ‘Wednesday? How can it be Wednesday? I had taken some ale with a few people I met, we decided to come here. Oh, Arthur, for God’s sake tell me it is not Wednesday.’
‘We will have time to discuss it, but now we must go.’ And I took him by the hand and pulled him to the door.
We opened it and, fortunately as it turned out, found ourselves in total darkness. I had quite forgotten to take the light but there was no time for it now. I heard a voice somewhere below, a thick guttural voice raised in anger and another voice, the woman’s, protesting.
‘Follow me,’ I said, gripping Morland’s hand and moving as quietly as I could down the few steps. To my great relief the conversation came not from this level but down the stairs from where the woman had first appeared. I knew the light would have attracted attention at once and was glad to be rid of it. Our only hope now was to get out without being heard.
Gripping his hand with my left and using my right to grope my way back in the direction of the door, we made a little progress. I remembered the corridor was straight, and some way ahead I could make out shards of light which I took to come from the doorway to the steps leading up to the alley. Below me somewhere I heard the sound of coins flung down and suddenly there were voices again, only louder. The first was the man’s I had heard before, and now I realised it was Oriental. ‘Why we only waited for him to take a few pipes more. Why did you not call me?’
The woman’s came back shrill, but she was interrupted by a new voice, one I liked even l
ess. It was hardly more than a whisper with a touch of the West Country, yet there was a power about it. ‘Come, the box is warm. And two’s good.’
Then I heard footsteps on the stairs.
There was no time to grope our way now – I was sure I could make out the light of the alley ahead. I pulled Morland along behind me even as I saw someone carrying a lamp coming rapidly up the staircase. In itself that told me where the door was and I reached it, pulled it open and faced the steps. ‘Now run,’ I said.
I held on to him as fast as I could as we stumbled up those steps. Morland nearly fell twice and I could hear him gasping. Thank heaven they were not so steep and we reached the top, but there was shouting behind and I felt no safer.
I pulled him on down the alley and soon we were by the Lord Lovat. Fortunately there was light and quite a number of people were milling about here. Some were seamen but there was also a group of workers from the warehouses, who must have just come off their shift, and who looked at us curiously. I was glad of their curiosity for I doubted even our charming hosts at Sing’s would take on both of us in full view of all of them. So I risked a glance back.
Sure enough two men stood in the alley, having mounted the top of the steps that led up from the den. They stared in our direction but did not look as though they meant to follow. One was Chinese with a pigtail, old but strong. The other, no doubt the owner of the West Country voice, unnerved me more. He was a large man, with big limbs, and yet his face was small, active and intelligent in a way that reminded me of a gargoyle on a church I had once visited in Southsea. And now that face was staring directly at me, not with menace, which I might have preferred, but with a small smile, the smile of a man who pats you on the back and sticks a blade between your shoulders. As I watched, he said something and turned away and I saw a mark on his neck which was long, red and ugly, a rope burn presumably for I had seen similar marks among sailors. And then the two of them went back down the steps.