Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  There was something piteous now in my grandfather’s hard, grave face. “Don’t go, grandfather,” I pleaded, with my arm at his neck, “don’t go, Grandfather Nat! You’re not — not going to die, are you?”

  “That’s as God wills, my boy. We must all die some day.”

  I think he was near breaking down here; but at the moment a voice called up the stairs.

  “Are you coming?” said the voice. “Time’s nearly up!” And it frightened me more than I can say to know this second voice at last for Viney’s.

  But my grandfather was firm again at once. “Yes,” he cried, “I’m coming!...No more to do, Stevy — snivelling’s no good.” And then Grandfather Nat put his hands clumsily together, and shut his eyes like a little child. “God bless an’ save this boy, whatever happens. Amen,” said Grandfather Nat.

  Then he rose, and took from the cash-box the watch that the broken-nosed man had sold. “There’s that, too,” he said musingly. “I dunno why I kep’ it so long.” And with that he shut the cash-box, and strode across to the landing. He looked back at me for a moment, but said nothing; and then descended the stairs.

  Bewildered and miserably frightened, I followed him. I could neither reason nor cry out, and I had an agonised hope that I was not really awake, and that this was just such a nightmare as had afflicted me on the night of the murder at our door. I crouched on the lower stairs, and listened...

  “Yes, I’ve got it,” said my grandfather, answering an eager question. “There it is. Look at that — count the notes.”

  I heard a hasty scrabbling of paper.

  “Right?” asked my grandfather.

  “Quite right,” Viney answered; and there was exultation in his voice.

  “Pack ‘em up — put ‘em safe in your pocket. Quite safe? There’s the watch, too; I paid for that.”

  “Oh, the watch? Well, all right, I don’t mind having that too, since you’re pressing...You might ha’ saved a deal of trouble, yours an’ mine too, if you’d done all this before.”

  “Yes, you’re right; but I clear up all now. You’ve got the notes all quite safe, have you?”

  “All safe.” There was the sound of a slap on a breast-pocket.

  “And the watch?”

  “Ay; and the watch.”

  “Good!”

  I heard a bounce and a gasp of terror; and then my grandfather’s voice again. “Come! Come, Viney! We’ll be quits to the end. We’re bad men both, an’ we’ll go to the police together. Bring your papers, Viney! Tell ‘em about the Florence an’ Dan Webb, an’ I’ll tell ‘em about the Juno an’ my boy! I’ve got my witnesses — an’ I’ll find more — a dozen to your one! Come, Viney! I’ll have justice done now, on both of us!”

  I could stay no longer. Viney was struggling desperately, reasoning, entreating. I pushed open the staircase door, but neither seemed to note me. My grandfather had Viney by arm and collar, and was shaking him, face downward.

  “I’ll go halves, Kemp — I’ll go halves,” Viney gasped hoarsely. “Divide how you like — but don’t, don’t be a fool! Take five hundred! Think o’ the boy!”

  “I’ve thought of the boy, an’ I’ve thought of his father! God’ll mind the boy you’ve made an orphan! Come!”

  My grandfather flung wide the door, and tumbled Viney up the steps into the court. The little table with the lamp on it rocked from a kick, and I saved it by sheer instinct, for I was sick with terror.

  I followed into the court, and saw my grandfather now nearly at the street corner, hustling and dragging his prisoner. “Dan! Dan!” Viney was crying, struggling wildly. “Dan! I’ve got it! Draw him off me, Dan! Go for the kid an’ draw him off! Go for the kid on the stairs!”

  And I could see a man come groping between the wall and the posts, a hand feeling from one post to the next, and the stick in the other hand scraping the wall. I ran out to the farther side of the alley.

  Viney’s shout distracted my grandfather’s attention, and I saw him looking anxiously back. With that Viney took his chance, and flung himself desperately round the end post. His collar went with a rip, and he ran. For a moment my grandfather stood irresolute, and I ran toward him. “I am safe here,” I cried. “Come away, grandfather!”

  But when he saw me clear of the groping man, he turned and dashed after Viney; while from the bar-parlour I heard a curse and a crash of broken glass. I vaguely wondered if Viney’s confederate were smashing windows in the partition; and then I ran my hardest after Grandfather Nat.

  Viney had made up the street toward the bridge and Ratcliff Highway, and Captain Nat pursued with shouts of “Stop him!” Breathless and unsteady, I made slow progress with my smaller legs over the rough cobblestones, which twisted my feet all ways as I ran. But I was conscious of a gathering of other cries ahead, and I struggled on, with throbbing head and bursting heart. Plainly there were more shouts as I neared the corner, and a running of more men than two. And when the corner was turned, and the bridge and the lock before me, I saw that the chase was over.

  Three bull’s-eye lanterns were flashing to and fro, pointing their long rays down on the black dock-water, and the policemen who directed them were calling to dockmen on the dark quay, who cried back, and ran, and called again.

  “Man in!” cried one and another, hurrying in from the Highway. “Fell off the lock.” “No, he cut his lucky an’ headered in!” “He didn’t, I tell ye!” “Yes, he did! Why, I see ‘im!”

  I could not see my grandfather; and for a moment my thumping heart stood still and sick with the fear that it was he who was drowning in the dock. Then a policeman swung his lantern across to the opposite side, and in the passing flash Grandfather Nat’s figure stood hard and clear for an instant and no more. He was standing midway on the lock, staring and panting, and leaning on a stanchion.

  With a dozen risks of being knocked into the dock by excited onlookers, I scrambled down to the lock and seized the first stanchion. It creaked and tottered in my hand, but I went forward, gripping at the swaying chain and keeping foothold on the slippery, uneven timbers I knew not how. Sometimes the sagging chain would give till I felt myself pitching headlong, only to be saved by the check of the stanchion against the side of the socket; and once the chain hung so low, where it had slipped through the next stanchion-eye, that I had no choice but to let go, and plunged into the dark for the next upright — it might have been to plunge into space. “Grandfather Nat! Grandfather Nat!”

  I reached him somehow at last, and caught tight at his wrist. He was leaning on the stanchion still, and staring at the dark water. “Here I am, grandfather,” I said, “but I am frightened. Stay with me, please!”

  For a little while he still peered into the gloom. Then he turned and said quietly: “I’ve lost him, Stevy. He went over — here.”

  By the sweep of his hand I saw what had happened, though I could scarce realise the whole matter then and there. As I presently learnt, however, Viney was running full for the bridge, with Captain Nat shouting behind him, when he saw the lanterns of the three policemen barring the bridge as they came on their beat from the Highway. To avoid them he swung aside and made for the lock, with his pursuer hard at his heels. Now a lock of that sort joins in an angle or mitre at the middle, where the two sides meet like a valve, pointing to resist the tide; so that the hazardous path along the top turns off sharply mid-way. Flying headlong, with thought of nothing but the avenger behind him, Viney overran the angle, meeting the low chain full under his knees; and so was gone, with a yell and a splash.

  Grandfather Nat took me by the collar, and turned me round. “We’ll get back, Stevy,” he said. “Go on, I’ll hold you tight.”

  And so in the pitchy dark I went back along the way I had come, walking before my grandfather as I had done when first I saw that lock. The dockmen had flung random life-buoys, and now were groping with drags and hooks. Some judged that the man must have gone under like a stone; others thought it quite likely that a good swimmer might have
got away quietly. And everybody wished to know who the man was, and why he was running.

  To all such questions my grandfather made the same answer. “It was a man I wanted, wanted bad, for the police. You find him, dead or alive, an’ I’ll identify him, an’ say the rest in the proper place; that’s all.” Only once he amplified his answer, and then he said: “You can judge he was as much afraid o’ the police as he was o’ me, or more. Look where he went, when he saw ‘em on the bridge!” And again he repeated: “I’ll say the rest when he’s found, not before; an’ nobody can make me.”

  He was calm and cool enough now, as I could feel as well as hear, for my hand was buried in his, while he pushed his way stolidly through the little crowd. As for myself, I could neither think, nor speak, nor laugh, nor cry, though dizzily conscious of an impulse to do all four at once. I had Grandfather Nat again, and now he would not go away: that I did realise: and I clung with all my might to as much of his hand as I could grip.

  XXIX. — STEPHEN’S TALE

  BUT I was to have neither time to gather my wits nor quiet to assort my emotions: for the full issue of that night was not yet. Even as we were pushing through the little crowd, and even as my grandfather parried question with answer, a new cry arose, and at the sound the crowd began to melt: for it was the cry of “Fire.”

  A single shout at first, and then another, and then a clamour of three together, and a beat of running feet. Men about us started off, and as we rounded the corner, one came running back on his tracks. “Cap’en Kemp, it’s your house!” he cried. “Your house, Cap’en Kemp! The Hole in the Wall! The Hole in the Wall!”

  Then was dire confusion. I was caught in a whirl of running men, and I galloped and stumbled along as I might, dragging dependent from my grandfather’s hand. Somewhere ahead a wavering light danced before my eyes, and there was a sudden outburst of loud cracks, as of a hundred carters’ whips; and then — screams; screams without a doubt. Confusedly my mind went back to Viney’s confederate, groping in at the bar-parlour door. What had he done? Smashed glass? Glass? It must have been the lamp: the lamp on the little table by the door, the lamp I had myself saved but ten minutes earlier!

  Now we were opposite the Hole in the Wall, and the loud cracks were joined with a roar of flame. Out it came gushing at the crevices of doors and shutters, and the corners of doors and shutters shrivelled and curled to let out more, as though that bulging old wooden house were a bursting reservoir of long-pent fire that could be held in no more. And still there were the screams, hoarser and hoarser, from what part within was not to be guessed.

  My grandfather stood me in a doorway, up two steps, and ran toward the court, but that was impassable. With such fearful swiftness had the fire sprung up and over the dry old timber on this side, where it had made its beginning, that already a painted board on the brick wall opposite was black and smoking and glowering red at the edges; and where I stood, across the road, the air was hot and painful to the eyes. Grandfather Nat ran along the front of the house to the main door, but it was blazing and bursting, and he turned and ran into the road, with his arm across his eyes. Then, with a suddenly increased roar, flames burst tenfold in volume and number from all the ground floor, and, where a shutter fell, all within glowed a sheer red furnace. The spirit was caught at last.

  And now I saw a sight that would come again in sleep months afterwards, and set me screaming in my bed. The cries, which had lately died down, sprang out anew amid the roar, nearer and clearer, with a keener agony; and up in the club-room, the room of the inquests — there at a window appeared the Groping Man, a dreadful figure. In no darkness now, but ringed about with bright flame I saw him: the man whose empty, sightless eye-pits I had seen scarce twelve hours before through a hole in a canvas screen. The shade was gone from over the place of the eyes, and down the seared face and among the rags of blistered skin rolled streams of horrible great tears, forced from the raw lids by scorching smoke. His clothes smoked about him as he stood — groping, groping still, he knew not whither; and his mouth opened and closed with sounds scarce human.

  Grandfather Nat roared distractedly for a ladder, called to the man to jump, ran forward twice to the face of the house as though to catch him, and twice came staggering back with his hands over his face, and flying embers singeing his hair and his coat.

  The blind man’s blackened hands came down on the blazing sill, and leapt from the touch. Then came a great crash, with a single second’s dulling of the whole blaze. For an instant the screaming, sightless, weeping face remained, and then was gone for ever. The floor had fallen.

  The flames went up with a redoubled roar, and now I could hold my place no longer for the heat. People were flinging water over the shutters and doors of the houses facing the fire, and from the houses adjoining furniture was being dragged in hot haste. My grandfather came and carried me a few doors farther along the street, and left me with a chandler’s wife, who was out in a shawl and a man’s overcoat over a huddle of flannel petticoats.

  Now the fire engines came, dashing through the narrow lanes with a clamour of hoarse cries, and scattering the crowd this way and that. The Hole in the Wall was past aid, and all the work was given to save its neighbours. For some while I could distinguish my grandfather among the firemen, heaving and hauling, and doing the work of three. The police were grown in numbers now, and they had cleared the street to beyond where I stood, so that I could see well enough; and in every break in the flames, in every changing shadow, I saw again the face of the Groping Man, even as I can see it now as I write.

  Floor went upon floor, till at last the poor old shell fell in a heap amid a roar of shouts and a last leap of fire, leaving the brick wall of the next house cracking and black and smoking, and tagged with specks of dying flame. And then at last my grandfather, black and scorched, came and sat by me on a step, and put the breast of his coat about me.

  And that was the end of the Hole in the Wall: the end of its landlord’s doubts and embarrassments and dangers, and the beginning of another chapter in his history — his history and mine.

  XXX. — STEPHEN’S TALE

  LITTLE remains to say; for with the smoking sticks of the Hole in the Wall the tale of my early days burns itself out.

  Viney’s body was either never found or never identified. Whether it was discovered by some person who flung it adrift after possessing himself of the notes and watch: whether it was held unto dissolution by mud, or chains, or waterside gear: or whether indeed, as was scarce possible, it escaped with the life in it, to walk the world in some place that knew it not, I, at any rate, cannot tell. The fate of his confederate, at least, was no matter of doubt. He must have been driven to the bar by the fire he had raised, and there, bewildered and helpless, and cut off from the way he had come, even if he could find it, he must have scrambled desperately till he found the one open exit — the club-room stairs.

  But of these enough. Faint by contrast with the vivid scenes of the night, divers disconnected impressions of the next morning remain with me: all the fainter for the sleep that clutched at my eyelids, spite of my anxious resolution to see all to the very end. Of a coarse, draggled woman of streaming face and exceeding bitter cry, who sat inconsolable while men raked the ruins for a thing unrecognisable when it was found. Of the pale man, who came staring and choking, and paler than ever, gasping piteously of his long and honest service, and sitting down on the curb at last, to meditate on my grandfather’s promise that he should not want, if he would work. And of Mr. Cripps, at first blank and speechless, and then mighty loquacious in the matter of insurance. For works of art would be included, of course, up to twenty pounds apiece; at which amount of proceeds — with a discount to Captain Kemp — he would cheerfully undertake to replace the lot, and throw the signboard in.

  Mrs. Grimes was heard of, though not seen; but this was later. She was long understood to have some bitter grievance against the police, whom she charged with plots and conspiracies to defeat the ends o
f justice; and I think she ended with a savage assault on a plain-clothes’ constable’s very large whiskers, and twenty-one days’ imprisonment.

  The Hole in the Wall was rebuilt in brick, with another name, as I think you may see it still; or could, till lately. There was also another landlord. For Captain Nat Kemp turned to enlarging and improving his wharf, and he bought lighters, and Wapping saw him no more. As for me, I went to school at last.

  THE END

  The Short Story Collections

  The offices of the London School Board on the Victoria Embankment, 1872, demolished in 1929 — in 1879 Morrison began working as an office boy in the Architect’s Department.

  THE SHADOWS AROUND US

  AUTHENTIC TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL

  This was Morrison’s first published book, available from 1891. The short preface is written seemingly in all seriousness and claims that the stories are verifiable and even scientifically proven; so definite is the claim that Morrison in later years was to step back from his words — perhaps he had overplayed the joke.

  There are fifteen stories in the volume and the reader will encounter every marker of a Victorian or Gothic “spooky” story that they could wish to find. Coffins, corpses, mystery footsteps, the appearance of a beloved brother that was in fact many miles away at the time, possession, out of the body experiences and Germanic settings will all be familiar to a fan of the genre. Interestingly, Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published only six years later, confirming the interest in paranormal stories set on the European mainland. The story about a poltergeist is set in the exotically sounding Leignitz Castle and in other stories numerous locations are used and referred to around the world.

  These tales do not have the qualities of a writer of paranormal stories of the calibre of M. R. James, whose tales are longer, more leisurely and develop tension to a terrifying conclusion. In presenting the tales as quasi-factual, Morrison restricted what he could do with them and that is perhaps why he has used a style that has more in common with reportage than high Gothic fiction. Nevertheless, the stories are entertaining and pleasant examples of a nineteenth century interest in tales of the supernatural.