The place seemed silent and empty. Hewitt’s footsteps were now plain to hear, and presently he appeared, walking briskly as before. He could not see us, and did not look for us, but made directly for the broken steps. He mounted these, paused on the topmost, and struck a match. It seemed a rather large hall, and I caught a momentary glimpse of bare rafters and plasterless wall. Then the match went out and Hewitt stepped within.
Almost on the instant there came a loud jar, and a noise of falling bricks; and then, in the same instant of time I heard a terrific crash, and saw Hewitt leap out at the front door — leap out, as it seemed, from a cloud of dust and splinters.
I sprang to my feet, but Plummer pulled me down again. “Steady!” he said, “lie low! He isn’t hurt. Wait and see before we show ourselves.”
It seemed that the floor above had fallen on the spot where Hewitt had been standing. He had alighted from his leap on hands and knees, but now stood facing the house, revolver in hand, watching.
There was a moment’s pause, a sound of movement from the upper part of the ruin, another quiet moment, and then a bang and a flash from high on the wall to the right. Hewitt sprang to shelter behind the heavy shore, and another shot followed him, scoring a white line across the thick timber.
Plummer was up, and Styles and I were after him.
“There he is!” cried Plummer, “up on the coping!” I pulled out my own pistol.
“Don’t shoot!” cried Hewitt. “We’ll take him alive!”
Far to the right, on the topmost coping of the front wall, I could see a crouching figure. I saw it rise to its knees, and once more raise an arm to take aim at Hewitt; and then, with a sudden cry, another human figure appeared from behind the coping and sprang upon the first. There was a moment of struggle, and then the rotten coping crumbled, and down, down, came bricks and men together.
I sickened. I can only explain my feeling by saying that never before had I seen anything that seemed so long in falling as those two men. And then with a horrid crash they struck the broken ground, and the pistol fired again with the shock.
We reached them in a dozen strides, and turned them over, limp, oozing, and lifeless. And then we saw that one was Mayes, and the other — Victor Peytral!
We kept no silence now, but Plummer blew his whistle loud and long, and I fired my revolver into the air, chamber after chamber. Styles started off at a run along the path towards the town lights, to fetch what aid he might.
But even then we had doubt if any aid would avail Mayes. He was the under man in the fall, and he had dropped across a little heap of bricks. He now lay unconscious, breathing heavily, with a terrible wound at the back of the head, and Hewitt foretold — and rightly — that when the doctor did come he would find a broken spine. Peytral, on the other hand, though unconscious, showed no sign of injury, and just before the doctor came sighed heavily and turned on his side.
First there came policemen, and then in a little time a hastily dressed surgeon, and after him an ambulance. Mayes was carried off to hospital, but with a good deal of rubbing and a little brandy, Peytral came round well enough to be helped over the Marshes to a cab.
The trap which had been laid for Hewitt was simple, but terribly effective. The floor above the hall — loose and broken everywhere — was supported on rafters, and the rafters were crossed underneath and supported at the centre by a stout beam. The rafters had been sawn through at both ends, and the rotten floor had been piled high with broken brick and stone to a weight of a ton or more. The end of a loose beam had been wedged obliquely under the end of the one timber now supporting the whole weight, so that a pull on the opposite end of this long lever would force away the bricks on which the beam rested and let the whole weight fall. It was the jar of the beam and the fall of the first few loose bricks that had so far warned Hewitt as to enable him to leap from under the floor almost as it fell.
Peytral’s sudden appearance, when we had time to reflect on it, gave us a suspicion as to some at least of the espionage to which Hewitt had been subjected — a suspicion confirmed, later, by Peytral himself after his recovery from the shock of the fall. For fresh news of his enemy had re-awakened all his passion, and since he alone could not find him, he was willing enough to let Hewitt do the tracking down, if only he himself might clutch Mayes’s throat in the end. This explained the “business” that had called him away after the Barbican stronghold had been captured; finding both Hewitt and Plummer somewhat uncommunicative, and himself somewhat “out of it,” he had drawn off, and had followed Hewitt’s every movement, confident that he would be led to his old enemy at last. What I had told him of the cypher message had led him to hunt out Channel Marsh in the afternoon, and to return at midnight. He, of course, regarded the message, as I did myself at the time, as a perfectly genuine instruction from Mayes to Sims, and he came to the rendezvous wholly in ignorance as to what Hewitt was doing, and with no better hope than that he might hear something that would lead him in the direction of Mayes. He had entered the marsh after dark from the upper end, and had lain concealed by the other channel till near midnight; then he had crept to the rear of the ruin and climbed to where an opening seemed to offer a good chance of hearing what might pass in the hall. He had heard Hewitt approach from the front, and the crash that followed. The rest we had seen.
V
Mayes never recovered consciousness, and was dead when we visited the hospital the day after; both skull and spine were badly fractured. And the very last we saw of the Red Triangle was the implement with which it had been impressed, which was found in his pocket.
It was a small triangular prism of what I believe is called soapstone. It was perhaps four inches long, and the face at the end corresponded with the mark that Hewitt had seen on the forehead of Mr. Jacob Mason. It fitted closely in a leather case, in the end of which was a small, square metal box full of the red, greasy pigment with which the mark had been impressed.
It was from Broady Sims that we learnt the exact use and meaning of this implement: though he would not say a word till he had seen with his own eyes Mayes lying dead in the mortuary. Then he gasped his relief and said, “That’s the end of something worse than slavery for me! I’ll turn straight after this.”
Sims’s story was long, and it went over ground that concerns none of Hewitt’s adventures. But what we learned from it was briefly this. It had been Mayes’s way to meet clever criminals as they left gaol after a term of imprisonment. In this manner he had met Sims. He had made great promises, had spoken of great ideas which they could put into execution together, had lent him money, and then at last had “initiated” him, as he called it. He had put him to lie back in a chair and had directed his gaze on the Red Triangle held in the air before him: and then the Triangle had descended gently, and he felt sleepy, till at the cold touch of the thing on his forehead his senses had gone. This was done more than once, and in the end the victim found that Mayes had only to raise the Triangle before him to send him to sleep instantly. Then he found that he must do certain things, whether he wanted or not. And it ended in complete subservience; so that Mayes could set him to perpetrate a robbery and then appropriate the proceeds for himself, for by post-hypnotic suggestion he could force him to bring and hand over every penny. More, the poor wretch was held in constant terror, for he knew that his very life depended on the lift of his master’s hand. He could be sent into lethargy by a gesture and killed in that state. That very thing was done, in fact, as we have seen, in two cases.
Sims was but one of a gang of such criminals, brought to heel and made victims. Their minds and souls, such as they were, had passed into the miscreant’s keeping, and terror reinforced the power of hypnotism. They committed crimes, and when they failed they took the punishment; when they succeeded Mayes took the gains, or at any rate the greater part of them. He went, also, among people who were not yet criminals, and by degrees made them so, to his own profit. The case of Henning, the correspondence clerk, was one that had come
under Hewitt’s eyes. He used his faculty also with great cunning in other ways — as we had seen in the matter of the Admiralty code. And it was even said among the gang that a man he had once hypnotised he could force by suggestion to commit suicide when he became useless or inconvenient.
Sims and the ragged fellow who had decoyed me into Mayes’s den were the only members of the gang whom we could identify after his death, but many others must have shared their relief; and I sincerely hope — though I hardly expect — that they all availed themselves of their liberty to abandon their evil courses. As in fact the two I speak of did, and took to honest work.
All that had remained mysterious in the earlier cases now became clear. In the first, the case of Samuel’s diamonds, Denson had been put into the office where Samuel had found him, by Mayes, with the express design of effecting a diamond robbery. The robbery was effected, and the unhappy Denson formed a plan of making a bolt of it himself with the diamonds. He was, perhaps, what is called a difficult subject in hypnotism — amenable enough to direct influence, but not sufficiently retentive of post-hypnotic suggestion. He hid the jewels and adopted a disguise, but Mayes was watching him better than he supposed. The diamonds were lost, but Denson was found and done to death — probably not in that retreat near Barbican, but at night in some empty street. The diamonds were not found on him, and the body, with the mark of the Triangle still on it, was taken by night to a central spot in London and there left. Mayes probably thought that a notable example like this, so boldly displayed and so conspicuously reported in the Press, would impress his auxiliaries throughout London with the terror that was one of his weapons; for they would well understand the meaning of the Red Triangle, and they would receive a striking illustration of the consequences of rebellion or bad faith. The money and the watch were left in the pockets because they were trifles after the loss of fifteen thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds, and their presence in the pockets made the murder the less easy to understand — which was a point gained. And as to the keys — Mayes knew nothing of where the diamonds were hidden, and so had no use for them. For where could he use them? Denson had left his lodgings, and as to the office, that, he would guess, would be in the hands of the police, on Samuel’s complaint. The immediate result of this affair on the only honest member of Mayes’s circle I have told in the case of Mr. Jacob Mason. He was not yet thoroughly in Mayes’s hands, but he had “dabbled,” as he remorsefully confessed, and Mayes had already found him useful. He was dangerous, and his end came quickly. Another victim who had probably begun innocently enough was Henning, the clerk to Kingsley, Bell and Dalton, and his death in the Penn’s Meadow barn leaves a mystery that never can be positively cleared up. Was it murder or was it suicide by post-hypnotic suggestion? It will be remembered that the fire burst out in the barn after Mayes had left it.
The case of Mr. Telfer was explained clearly enough by Hewitt at the time; but it is an example of the snares that lie open for the most innocent person who allows himself to be made the subject of hypnotic experiments at the hands of persons with whom, and with whose objects, he is not thoroughly acquainted. And it must be remembered that at this time there are persons advertising to teach the practice of hypnotism to anybody who will pay; to anybody who may use the terrible power as he pleases. More, the danger is so great that it has led two eminent men of science to issue a public protest and warning, with an urgent plea that the practice of hypnotism be restricted by law at least as closely as that of vivisection.
As to what would have happened if Plummer and I had yielded to Mayes’s threats so far as to undergo the “initiation” he proposed, at the time we were helpless in his hands — of that I have little doubt. I cannot suppose that he would have wasted much time over me, once I had fallen lethargic. When Hewitt burst in he would have found me lying dead, with the Red Triangle on my forehead. It would have saved Mayes a lot of noise and struggle, at least.
But I often wonder whether or not there was anything in his reference to the place beyond the sea, where he would make me a great man if I did as he wished. Was it his design, having accumulated sufficient wealth, to return and take his natural place among the enlightened rulers of Hayti? He would not have been so much worse than some of the others.
The Novels
The London Docks, c.1845 — Morrison’s father George was an engine fitter at the London Docks. George died in 1871 of tuberculosis, leaving behind his wife Jane and three children, including Arthur.
A map of the London Docks in 1831
A CHILD OF THE JAGO
This best-selling novel by Morrison was published in 1896 by Methuen and the story is based in the Jago, a fictional version of the deeply deprived area in London called the Old Nichol. The Old Nichol was a slum district between Shoreditch High Street and Bethnal Green Road in the East End of London with over 700 poor quality houses on twenty narrow streets. Morrison’s portrayal of the area in his novel was described by the newspaper St James’s Gazette as a story told “with considerable power” and a “clever avoidance of tall talk and word painting.” (2 December 1896). However, the article goes on to point out that the novel is the second version of the tale, in effect a fictional version of an account of the area of Old Nichol Street by the local vicar, the Reverend Osborne Jay. Rev. Jay’s book was entitled Life in Darkest London and some incidents in Morrison’s book, albeit elaborated for the sake of dramatic tension, are identical. For example, the true life incident in which the Rev Jay flings a drink of beer in a man’s face is directly transferred to the novel, even the character throwing the beer being a man of the church. Thus, says the St James’s Gazette, a “cold and colourless” description of an event is given “warmth and vitality” by Morrison. A Child of the Jago was written with the blessing and encouragement of Rev. Jay and was not an example plagiarism. In addition, Morrison conducted his own meticulous research into the Nichol, observing, interviewing and taking notes as he mingled with and met the local populace; his preparation for writing the story was painstaking, which is probably why he was clearly offended when accused by contemporary commentators of having painted too lurid and unfair a portrait of the area and its people, and so he defended his novel with vigour.
This is by no means the first piece of fiction to focus on one of the notorious London “rookeries” or highly disreputable and desperately poor districts. Famously, Charles Dickens had written vividly about poverty in London, and when Morrison was writing his novel it was in the aftermath of a huge swell of interest in the state of the East End following the notorious Whitechapel murders of late 1888. By the 1890’s, public interest in these deprived districts was still intense, as despite the efforts of social action groups and charities to raise standards, the violence, insanitary conditions, perceived immorality and searing poverty still prevailed in some areas. The term “Slummers” was coined to describe not only well heeled visitors to deprived districts in London who did so for pleasure, but sometimes to those who descended on them with well intentioned but rather patronising ambitions to morally and socially reform the residents. The Old Jago of Morrison’s novel was indeed swept away in a redevelopment by London County Council, and replaced with the Boundary Estate right at the end of the nineteenth century, the first council housing estate in Britain. Perhaps Morrison’s work and that of other authors, helped propel the changes and gain the public interest for poor people in the capital and elsewhere.
The story opens with a vivid and brutal description of the Old Jago and its inhabitants, likening the people who survived there to large rats lurking in the shadows of the streets. The scene is immediately set of a population of almost sub-human people, made this way by their environment and the ensuing poverty. Women fighting (shocking to the respectable Victorian reader), the habitual carrying of weapons, vile insanitary conditions, sleeping in the street and doorways, children old and streetwise before their time and constant violence of all kinds are the order of the day. In the midst of this chaos lives eight year
old Dicky Perrott, who is from a family financed haphazardly by petty crime. His mother is ground down by poverty and worry and his baby brother is sickly and unclean. However, Dicky is an engaging child; we feel sorry for him because of his circumstances – he is so undernourished he looks like a five year old rather than an eight year old – and yet we can be heartened by his resilience and cheerfulness, and his generosity – hungry though he is, he saves a filthy crust of bread to take home to his baby brother rather than eat it himself. The message is that the Perrott family have something about them – father was once in a trade and mother was respectably born – but poverty and the “demon drink” have dragged them into the Jago quagmire. Thus Morrison shows us that such a fate could happen to anyone that is only one wage packet away from destitution.
Dicky has a stroke of good fortune when he manages to steal the gold watch of a Bishop at a celebration of a philanthropic society in the Jago, but instead of his father praising his skill, he is beaten for taking on too risky a theft or “click”; his mother urges Dicky to keep on the straight and narrow and this contrast is a familiar theme in the story — the conflict between respectability, as offered by society in general and the do-gooding of the middle classes who persist in the idea that such lowly people must be compelled to reform. Father Sturt (a fictionalised portrait of the Rev. Jay) takes young Dicky under his tutelage and directs him into a respectable job in a shop, but a previous contact of Dicky’s wants him back in the criminal world as he is a gifted young thief, and in order to secure this, makes sure that Dicky’s father is arrested and sent to prison for a crime that he himself committed. Thus Dicky has to steal more and more; he is now the man of the house and must support his downtrodden mother. The seeds are sown for Dicky’s complete initiation into Jago life; his father murders the man who betrayed him and is hanged. Dicky is now brutalised and immersed in the criminal fraternity and resolves to make it his career. Between this point and his eighteenth year – his age at the end of the story – can Dicky either rise to the top of the pecking order in the Jago criminal classes, or turn his life around and be the respectable citizen his mother once beseeched him to be?
Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison Page 72