Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  So that Spotto was tired of Mr. Bullwinkle’s secular morals, and began to regard that gentleman, as head and source of his daily round of ill-paid dissimulation, with intense dislike. Mr. Bullwinkle, on his part, either failing to suspect that a thief could also be a liar, or, more probably, not believing that any liar on earth could deceive him, regarded Spotto and his improvement with much complacency. And the fame of the unwitting Spotto expanded among them that reform, harangue, meddle, badger, nag, denounce, worry, and take measures. Here in Mr. Bullwinkle’s hands lay the instrument which was to overthrow this and that, and in their place set up the newer that and the higher this; and great was the glory of Bullwinkle. As for the instrument, he remained internally sulky, though certain mysterious hints from his mentor awakened his curiosity, and even suggested hope of better things to come. For there was to be something new — a fresh regimen. The didactic treatment being complete, they must proceed to the practical. So the month dragged to its end with such hopeful alleviation as this assurance could give it.

  And on the Saturday of the last week Mr. Bull-winkle met Spotto at his front door with a beaming face.

  “I have a pleasant announcement to make to you, Bird,” he said, as he stood in the hall; and Spotto’s hopes rose high. “To-day you begin the second stage of the treatment, which I have not yet described to you. Morally, you are regenerated, of course, and although I have not told you of it, your course of treatment has been anxiously followed by many friends, to whom I have reported it. In particular there is a gentleman who is now waiting in my study to see you, and it is with him that you complete your transformation by a course of severe manual work — digging. He has built a house, and the ground destined for the garden is now a bricky wilderness, which you are to break up and dig into a blooming garden. There will be a sort of high moral significance in the act, for which you will nevertheless be paid, though probably at a lower rate than you have been receiving from me. The gentleman has been greatly struck by the triumph of my views, and—”

  At this moment Mr. Bullwinkle was struck also. As he beamed on his convert, Spotto’s eyes sought the black watch-ribbon, while his outraged soul rose insurgent within him. After this sickening month he was to be set to work — hard digging — for anything somebody might choose to pay! And there was the gold watch, that should have been his a month ago, flaunting before his eyes! Spotto let fly left and right together, the left on Mr. Bullwinkle’s nose, the right on his watchguard. Spotto’s benefactor went over with a crash, and Spotto sprang out at the door and down the street at his hardest, with the gold watch in his pocket at last.

  A “DEAD ‘UN”

  BILLY WILKS was a person most uncommonly conscientious by nature and habit, and by trade a thief. He did not take to that trade by choice; no conscientious person would do it. There were several other things Billy Wilks would have liked better: a sleeping partnership in a large bank, for instance — or, in fact, a sleeping partnership in anything lucrative, — his conscience told him, would have been far preferable. But his finer aspirations were cruelly defeated by his fellowmen, who offered him no bank-partnerships, and refused in any way even to contribute to his bare support, except on conditions of intolerable personal exertion.

  He had made his attempts, too. He had once been a time-keeper on buildings-works — a job which had attracted him by the comparatively passive nature of its duties. Here he had discovered a kindly means of increasing the incomes of late-rising bricklayers, which brought him grateful acknowledgment, by way of weekly percentage, from the beneficiaries. But a misanthropic employer, abetted by a brutal system of law, brought the arrangement to a disastrous end. So that there was no more honest toil for Billy Wilks; but such was his regard for toil in the abstract that he still persevered in it vicariously through Mrs. Wilks, who did what charing she could get, with her husband’s hearty approval. As for himself, he performed his thieving with the most respectable compunction. He never removed an unattended bag from a railway station, an overcoat from a neglected hat-stand, nor an armful of washing from a clothes-line, without sad pangs of commiseration for the despoiled owners; but then, as he always reflected, he had himself to think about.

  It is surprising to consider what a number of things can’ be picked up casually in and about the streets of London by any conscientious seeker who gives his mind to the task; and that, too, with no such great risk. But the pursuit affords a poor living, or scarce one at all. The trifles are not always easy to sell, and there is a sad lack of conscience among them that buy them; they pay in pence more often than in shillings, and in pounds almost never. It had never been Billy Wilks’s fortune to touch gold in transactions with these persons, and, the aid of Mrs. Wilks’s charing notwithstanding, there came a time when things were very tight indeed. It grew plain to Billy Wilks that he must venture a little beyond the comparatively safe limits which he had hitherto observed. Had such a thing been customary in the trade, he would have liked a sleeping partnership in a handsome burglary.

  But active burglars do not give themselves to partnerships of that sort, and Billy Wilks’s prejudice against risk deterred him from enterprise of too great boldness. He sought a middle way; he looked out for a “dead ‘un,” — one which he could have all to himself. A “dead ‘un,” it may be explained, is a furnished house left to take care of itself.

  “Dead ‘uns,” again, are surprisingly common about the suburbs of London, at all sorts of seasons of the year, and particularly in August; but all “dead ‘uns” are not equally convenient to work on, and Billy Wilks was some little time in suiting himself. But when the approved specimen was found, as it was before very long, it was very convenient indeed, and not half an hour’s walk from Billy Wilks’s own home at Hoxton.

  The “dead ‘un” was at Highbury, in fact, the end house of a row, with a railing before it and a garden wall to the side street. A wholly walled garden was opposite, so that observation was to be feared from nowhere but next door — a matter easily provided against. Blinds were down everywhere, and Billy spent a whole day, with judicious intervals of absence, in assuring himself that his “dead ‘un” was absolutely lifeless. Pebbles stealthily pitched at windows were his main test, though he had others.

  It was a “dead ‘un” indeed, and a promising specimen. Not too large to be reasonably manageable, but large enough to promise profit; and the back of this sort of house was apt to be easy working. Billy Wilks left his prey to itself for the night, for he judged it best to get to work in the morning, and not too early; near midday, in fact. For, indeed, a “dead ‘un” is best worked by day if the thing be at all possible. There is no need of artificial light, which may easily be seen through windows; also one can work more quickly and with less noise when all is plain to see, and at the same time a little noise by day is no such serious matter as by night, when the streets are still and the policeman listens. These small matters must ever be kept in mind by the conscientious parlour jumper.

  So that it was next morning, between the police beats in Cator’s Rents, when Billy Wilks set out to tackle his job. He took a roundabout way, avoided spots where he might be recognised, loitered in side turnings, and finally neared the house at about twelve. The traffic of tradesmen’s carts had quieted, leaving a favourable hour. He watched the leisurely policeman walk the length of the road, pause at the end to look about him, and turn the corner; and then Billy Wilks, his eyes all round his head, slunk through the front gate and made for a clump of shrubs that partly blocked the passage to the back garden.

  Down among these shrubs he crouched, and peered back toward the road. His entry had been unobserved, so far as he could tell, but it were well to make certain. So there he stooped and peeped till it was plain that nothing threatened him worse than pins and needles in the legs.

  Thence behind the house his way was screened from all eyes, and at the back he found the most convenient of all back-doors — glazed, with a little square of red glass at each corner; tucked down,
also, by the side of a flight of steps leading to the first floor, so as to be wholly invisible from the next house and garden.

  He pulled out his knife, and, with a final glance about the neat little garden behind him, set to work to cut away the putty that fixed the little square of red glass nearest the lock. He was slow and awkward, and he hacked the woodwork clumsily, for in truth he was trembling as he worked. The moments seemed hours, his little stabs and gashes rang like hammer-strokes, and his hands weakened and quavered more and more. Worse than all, there grew upon him first the fancy and then the o’erpowering conviction that he was not alone; that he was watched from behind: that the watcher was nearing — was close at his back — standing over him. And yet he dared not look round.

  He fumbled a little more, and stopped. He lifted his eyes to the main glass of the door, but it was a patterned ground glass, and reflected nothing at all; nothing of the staring, silent presence that he could feel behind him. And then as he peered he felt a breath — an actual, palpable breath on his neck.

  The knife fell clattering, and with a gasp of agony he wrenched himself round and sank against the angle of the steps. A light breeze stirred the shrubs and the trees, but the garden stood empty and quiet as ever. It was fancy — mere nervous panic. He had been terrified by a breath of wind.

  He wiped his face with his sleeve and reached for the knife. He was a little ashamed, but vastly more relieved. Nevertheless, when he set to work again, it was with his left side close against the door, and his back to the wall of the steps.

  Now his hand was steadier, and soon he lifted out the little pane between knife-blade and thumb, and laid it gently on the ground. Was the key left in the lock? Yes, that precaution, invaluable to the housebreaker, had been taken. The key turned easily enough, and nothing was left but a bolt — at the bottom. Some lucky chance — a breakage, or the neglect of a servant — had left the top bolt unfastened, and so Billy Wilks was spared the further agony of cutting out a pane at the upper corner. As for the bottom bolt, that gave no serious trouble. In the same pocket with a screwdriver and another tool or two, Billy had brought a james — a thing which only the flippant layman calls a jemmy — and with a hand and arm thrust well through the opening where the red glass had been, and the james in the hand, the bolt was easily tapped back and the door opened.

  It was with a catch of the breath in the throat that Billy Wilks took a final survey of the garden and passed within the house. All was quiet. He closed the door behind him and stood, listening. The house was so still that tiny sounds were clear — the drip of water in a far cistern, and a little creeping click that might have been cockroaches in a near corner or a mouse high up in the building. No clock ticked; that meant that the place must have been untenanted for a week at least. This was a thing that Billy Wilks had thought of, lying awake the night before.

  Right and left lay kitchen and scullery; before him rose a flight of stairs; and as he tiptoed up these he saw that most of the room doors stood open. Now that he was alone in the quiet house, safe from external observation, he was easier and more confident; and yet, though it might have cost him a little more trouble, he could almost have wished that those doors had been shut. They were so uncommonly like great staring eyes; and when he banished that image it was only to make way for the fancy that the doors moved: moved by inches at the hands of invisible spies.

  It even needed some resolution to force himself through the doorway that stood before him on the first landing. The room was the drawing-room, he judged, and most of the furniture was covered with drab wrappers. Venetian blinds were down at the windows, and he went across and peeped into the street. All was quiet there; a man went by on a bicycle, and an errand-boy dawdled past with a basket on his arm and his eyes on a penny novel. For some strange reason the sight of the bicyclist and the errand-boy calmed and heartened Billy Wilks, and he turned to set about his business with no more delay.

  There was an ormolu clock on the mantelpiece, but he preferred to take his first chance with more easily portable things. He pulled the wrappers from the furniture, and so uncovered a little glass show-table, with silver knick-knacks in it. A very gentle application of the james laid this open and splintered, and in four minutes the silver toys lay snug in his pockets. He might have felt a little remorseful at breaking this pretty furniture were it not for the reflection that people who would leave such a house unguarded must surely be insured against burglary. Moreover, he had himself to think about; and in view of that insurance he felt a moral — almost a legal — right to do as he pleased.

  So he prized open the lid of a little escritoire without considering the polish, and began to open its inner drawers in the same way. He knew that there were often secret places in such things as this, as he stooped to peer into the cabinet-work; and with that his very soul sprang up to his eyes and ears at a sound behind him: a gasp.

  At the door by his elbow stood a man, open-mouthed and staring; and Billy Wilks squealed and sprang like a frenzied rat. The iron james beat down into the staring face, and again and again. The man went over, and the iron beat into head and face as he went — the iron of itself, driven by some unseen power, and taking Billy Wilks’s arm with it, as things happen in a nightmare. For Billy was nothing but a man in a devilish dream, with a staring, gurgling face just before his own, drabbling and spattering red under the iron.

  Down went the face and down, till the infuriate iron beat it into the floor, and the remaining eye was blotted out and its stare was wholly gone, and the iron would lift no more. Billy Wilks, puling hysterically, rolled from off his victim and reached for the door-handle to pull himself up.

  As he rose slowly to his feet, so the cloud of nightmare began to fall from his senses, slower still. He knew he had been struggling, fighting to the death, and not dreaming; but it was with some unearthly thing, some hobgoblin without a name; the Watcher unseen — the Presence that lurked behind the open door.

  But there it lay now, a heap of tumbled, muddy clothes; and the face that had set him mad with terror — that staring head, was battered wide and shapeless and bloody. Billy Wilks’s faculties were clearing fast. He reached out tentatively with his foot and pushed at the leg that lay uppermost. It slid limply off the other and lay like an empty rag. Billy Wilks leaned with his shoulder against the door’s edge and laid his head against the door. He took three great heaving breaths and broke into a shaking fit of tears.

  The thing was real: present. He had killed a man. The poor, hammered, smashed object at his feet had been a living, reasonable man a few minutes back, a better man than himself. And now —

  Billy Wilks had never even knocked a man down before. He was no fighter. He could never have supposed that a man was killed so easily. Indeed, even now, with the evidence of his waking senses before him, he could scarce realise that he had done it. In a little while his sobs subsided, and he found himself still leaning against the door edge and staring dully into space beyond the landing.

  He shuddered and lifted his head; and before he could look about him there came, like a hurricane to blow him along, the impulse of self-preservation. He stumbled over the prostrate figure, across the landing and down the stairs. The back door, which he had shut, stood open. He ran toward it, but stopped short on the mat. The open world was worse than the shut house.

  To escape, he must first think. A gardener’s wheelbarrow stood near the door, with rakes and hoes in it. This was the explanation then. The jobbing gardener’s half-day was due that afternoon, and the man had called to leave his tools on his way home to dinner. Doubtless he had tried the door — perhaps noticed the missing pane. Clearly the door should have been locked again. Oh, if the door had only been locked!

  Billy Wilks closed it now, but still did not lock it. He went slowly upstairs again to the drawing-room. He found himself wondering, in a vague way, why he was not afraid to go back there, as he would have expected. But, indeed, that now seemed to be the one room in the house he dared en
ter. To pass another of those doors — open and staring, or ajar and peeping — no. He stepped hurriedly over the dead man and peered once more between the sheets of a blind.

  All was well; there was no curious knot of people staring at the house, no policeman in the front garden, as he had half expected to see. There had been no great noise, then — he had been wondering if there had been any noise. He recrossed the room, bending double again. That was because of the looking-glass over the mantelpiece.

  There was a little blood on his hands — not much. He wiped it off carefully on the dead man’s clothes. There was none on his own things, but he wiped his boots long and thoroughly on the thick carpet, in case he might have stepped heedlessly. So far instinct carried him, helped by a mere shadow of thought. And then he sat in a chair and wept again — more wildly and freely than before, rolling his head on his hands in anguish.

  For now the panic, the numbness, the spurring of instinct were gone, and the sense of his crime fell on him like an avalanche. The man’s wife and children were waiting for him — wondering why he was late at dinner. And here was the husband and father, beaten out of the shape of man, with not a feature they could know again. The murderer beat his hands on his head as he thought of it. He — he himself had made what lay before him of the face that the wife would kiss no more; had driven the life from the knee that the children would never climb again; from the hands that never more could feed them. This thing, this woe of orphan and widow, was what he had made of an honest man, a better man than himself.

  Himself. Yes, he saw himself now for what he was; coward, thief, vermin. All his elaborate excuses to himself, all his conscientious scruples — mere fraud over fraud. He had never been honest even to himself, from his mother’s knee. And here he stood at last, at the gallows foot. For it was that — that and no less; and the sooner the better. For to live and endure the agonies of the hunt, to live in this remorse, and to be tracked down, nearer and nearer till the end: that were to make the gallows loom the blacker when he came to it, as come he must.