Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  This place was reached by way of an innocent-looking door, with a very respectable electric bell, at the end of a little court of newly built offices and shops. If you were known, the door instantly opened to your ring; if you were not, you might ring the battery down without effect. That was because the door-keeper sat on a pair of steps within, with his eye near the fanlight. Snorkey Timms was no stranger, and with no more delay than sufficed for the silent opening and closing of the door, and a careful groping through a long passage, he emerged into the light and noise of the gaming-room. Mr. Marks was there as usual, with a cigar in his mouth, his hat at the back of his head, and his eyes on the cards he was shuffling and dealing on the table before him. An eager little crowd was clubbed thickly round the other three sides of the table, the rear rank climbing on the backs of the ranks before them, every man with his hand thrust out to its fullest reach, following the fortunes of his stake where it lay on the chalked diagram, and eager to snatch at the winnings that came so sparsely.

  Snorkey staked a shilling, partly because he was always ready to gamble, and partly because, in view of the possible events of the night, it was not “the game” to make himself conspicuous by a change in his usual habit on this particular evening. The shilling went into Mr. Marks’s heap, followed quickly by another, and two more, and some others after that.

  “Banker’s ‘avin’ all the luck again,” remarked a friend to Snorkey. “Turns up the card with the most agin it every time, an’ ‘e’s halved stakes eight times since I come in.”

  Snorkey tried a double chance with two shillings, and lost them in successive turns.

  “No good — it’s givin’ ‘im yer money tonight,” remarked the friend. “There’s a chap over here’s bin puttin’ down half quids an’ quids, and never savin’ a stake. Marks’s luck’s in tonight.”

  As a fact, the banker’s luck always is in at faro, but to-night it was favoring him so well that even the punters noticed it; and punters at faro must either be blind in general to the banker’s luck or take it as a matter of course. As his loose silver dwindled and Mr. Marks’s heap of money rose, Snorkey grew the more resolved on his project for the night, and more and more persuaded that his claim on the Marks estate was a justifiable and, indeed, almost a legal one.

  He stayed about the faro-table till near eleven, and then sauntered quietly out. It was scarce more than five minutes’ walk to the house by Houndsditch, and the street, the warehouse, and the alley behind were all quiet and dark. But there was a light in a top window in the house to the left of Marks’s, and, as Snorkey had the whole night before him for his adventure, he waited and took a turn about the streets to kill time.

  When he returned it was nearer twelve than eleven and the lodger in the next house was in bed. Snorkey wasted no more time, but hurried into the paved alley and scaled the wall.

  Mr. Marks’s back yard was an uncomfortable place to traverse by night, short as the distance was; for unseen boxes and cases met the shins and knuckles of the explorer, and, while the quietest possible progress involved some amount of noise, there was always the danger of knocking over something with a thunderous clatter.

  Snorkey was cautious and slow, for there was no need to hurry. He reached the wall of the house and stood to listen. It was a still night — too still for such an enterprise as Snorkey’s; small sounds were very clear. But then if every burglar refused to work except in perfect conditions, the whole industry would come to a standstill.

  There was no sound to cause uneasiness. There was the tread of a policeman, of course, but that was reassuring. It is a pleasant sound in the ear of a burglar, audible for an enormous distance, giving him confidence; when he cannot hear it he is never sure that the policeman isn’t watching him. This friendly sound came from Houndsditch harmoniously beating time for the now subdued hum of London. The sky was clear and cloudless above, though dark; and a few stars looked down on Snorkey’s experiment and winked encouragingly.

  It is not easy to set one rough packing-case firmly on another, on a dark night, without noise; and when you have done it, even with a little noise, it is still more difficult to climb on the top case without a great deal more noise still, and more than a chance of a clamorous tumble. But these difficulties were surmounted, and once the window was reached, that offered no difficulties at all. For Snorkey had brought his tools. First, a catch-’em-alive-oh paper, doubled inward, so as to go safely in the pocket. This, being carefully opened out, was spread over the pane nearest the sash fastening and smacked in the middle with the flat hand. The pane was abolished, and came away in a hundred fragments, all sticking to the paper, and all quiet. Then it needed but the insertion of a hand to open the catch, and the window was conquered.

  Snorkey climbed in, shut the window quietly, and pulled down the blind — a thing that Mr. Marks had neglected. Then he produced some more tools. First, a lantern made of nothing but a little tin box with a stump of candle in it, so that light was only thrown where it was needed, and a puff would quench it.

  Now when the scrap of candle was lit, the first thing revealed to his sight was not at all what Snorkey was looking for. It was, in fact, a heap of shavings on the floor — wet shavings. It was partly under a table which was piled above with cardboard boxes, many of them broken. The boxes seemed damp, too, and when Snorkey approached to examine them he grew aware of a distinct smell of paraffin oil. There was nothing in the boxes, it would seem, but more shavings; and paper — also wet. Snorkey’s eyebrows lifted and his lips pursed. But he saved the whistle for a future occasion.

  He looked about the room. The walls were lined with shelves and stacked with boxes, but there seemed very little in the boxes. Mr. Marks appeared to be stocking a deal of straw and dirty paper. Also shavings, again. But there was one box of hair-brushes which much interested Snorkey. He knew that Marks sold many of these cheap, silver-backed hair-brushes whereof the silver covering behind, thin as paper, was stamped into much highly relieved ornament, with a view to a spurious massiveness of appearance; and he had designed to rip off those silver backs with a jack-knife and roll them up for easier transport. Well, here were the very brushes. But the silver backs had been ripped off already!

  Snorkey dropped the lid on the box and saved up another whistle. Then he went out on the landing (where there were more shavings) and down the narrow stairs almost into another heap of shavings at the bottom. He made straight for the little safe, pulling from his inner coat pocket as he went the “stick,” whose Christian name is James or Jemmy.

  It was an elegant little weapon, with a fine chisel end, and he began by thrusting that chisel end in the crack of the door near the top. There are some of these cheap safes from which you may tear off the outer plate of the door in this very elementary way. This, however, did not seem to be one of them, for the immediate result was nothing but the breaking of a fragment from the point of the “James.”

  Snorkey gazed ruefully at the broken point — for the tool was a borrowed one — and then gave a twist to the cross handle in the middle of the door. The safe was unlocked!

  The door swung open and disclosed account-books and nothing else. At the bottom were two little drawers, which were certainly locked, but came open with bent fronts at the first wrench of the “stick.” They were empty.

  Snorkey looked round the room and shook his head despondently. There was a perfect wealth of common shell boxes and cheap sponges here, but that was not the sort of wealth he had conic for. The room also had its heap of shavings, piled against a stack of shell boxes, and a three-gallon can of paraffin oil stood near it.

  He entered the shop very quietly, for now he might be heard from the street. The stock he disregarded, but tried the till. It contained not so much as a button. Clearly this was not the venture Snorkey had looked for. He shook his head again and returned to the back room. Then he very deliberately pocketed his tools, blew out his candle-light, and sat on the stairs to wait for Mr. Marks. For he had seen things that
made him expect him.

  It was very quiet, and more than a little dull. But presently the humor of the situation so presented itself to Snorkey that the silence was broken by a chuckle, which grew into something rather like a snigger. Mr. Marks would find an unexpected card had turned up, this deal!

  The church clocks began to strike twelve, some near, some far, and presently St. Botolph’s, clanging loud and close. In the midst of the strokes there was a thump at the front door. Startling for the moment, but only a policeman testing the fastenings. His receding tramp was quite clear, now that the clocks had ceased to strike.

  Mr. Marks was very slow, and more than once Snorkey was in danger of falling asleep. He was listening for the stroke of one, and wondering if he might already have missed it by dozing, when at last there came the expected click in the lock, and with extraordinary suddenness Marks was in the shop with the door closed behind him. Plainly he must have been watching his opportunity, and had reached the door and turned the familiar lock swiftly and quietly. And in another moment he was groping in the back room, within two yards of his visitor.

  Snorkey felt for his matches and his lantern; but as he did so a match was struck in the middle of the room, and revealed Marks in the act of lighting a lantern of his own. Snorkey waited till the flame was well established and the lantern closed, and then said cheerfully: “Ah! good mornin’, Mr. Marks!”

  With a bounce and a faint yelp Mr. Marks sprang back against a pile of boxes, livid and gasping, with a terrified whimper in his throat.

  “All right, Mr. Marks! Don’t jump! It’s only me! Quite a old friend!” And Snorkey lifted the lantern and held it by the side of his face, whereon flickered something vastly like a grin.

  “Vat d’you — d’you vant?” gasped Marks, panting with the shock. “Vat d’you vant?”

  “Want to give meself up,” answered Snorkey crisply. “Burglary — breakin’ an’ enterin’; — I’m a ‘orrid criminal. I broke in.”

  Marks gulped twice before he got a word out. “You broke in?” he repeated.

  “Burglariously busted your back window, an’ been waitin’ ‘ere about an hour an’ a ‘alf to confess. I’ve repented.”

  “You — you — vat?”

  “I’ve repented. Anybody would as didn’t come for shavings. If I’d wanted shavings I’d ha’ made a good stroke o’ business to-night; shavings or waste paper, or paraffin. Not wantin’ ‘em, I’ve repented. Lock me up.”

  Mr. Marks clapped his hand distractedly to the side of his head. “You go — go avay!” he said.

  Snorkey shook his head, put down the lantern, and sat on the edge of the table. “Couldn’t think of it,” he said. “Couldn’t think o’ goin’ away now, after all the wickedness I’ve committed. My conscience wouldn’t stand it. You fetch the p’lice an’ ‘ave me punished proper.”

  Mr. Marks looked up and down the room and towards the shop and up the stairs, thoughtfully. The shock of surprise was passing, like me; anyhow, it seems a bit ‘ard this time, to be succeeded by a desperate perplexity. “All right,” he said at length. “I don’t vant to punish you. You can go.”

  “No, no,” Snorkey replied cordially. “Don’t you let your feelin’s get worked on, Mr. Marks. You dunno what a ‘orrid chap I’ve bin. O’ course, I’ve repented now, but that was only ‘cos of the shavings. You can’t rightly count a repentance ‘cos of shavings — not by the proper rules.”

  “Go along,” answered Marks, with a furtive lowering of voice. “I tell you I von’t say noddin’ about it. Ve understand each other.”

  Snorkey shook his head. “I doubt it, Mr. Marks,” he sighed. “It ain’t easy for a gent like you to understand a thorough wrong ‘un like me; anyhow, it seems a bit ‘ard this time. You don’t mean to say you forgive me — goin’ to take mercy on me?”

  “Yes. Go on.”

  “Mr. Marks, you’re a nobleman. I’m willin’ enough. I can be took mercy on, on very reasonable terms. My little — er — commission, as you might say, for bein’ forgiven, ought to be about fifty quid, I should say, this time.”

  “Vat?”

  “Fifty quid, I said. You see, it wants rather a lot o’ forgiveness for a burglary as wicked as this. The drawers in your safe’s all bent anyhow, an’ your first-floor back window’s quite shockin’.”

  “You’ve got a fine cheek,” snarled Mr. Marks, by this time much recovered. “Vy you expect me to pay anyting? You’re lucky not to be took up!”

  “What I said meself!” replied Snorkey. “Fetch the p’lice. Or I’ll go an’ fetch ‘em if you like.”

  “No, no! But fifty quid’s ridic’luth! Besides, I got no money here!”

  “All right; I’ll wait here for it till the mornin’. It’s warmer ‘ere than out in the cold unfeelin’ streets.”

  “No, no! You must go! Now, come, be reathonable, Mr. Thnorkey. I’ll see you to-morrow an’ make it all right. Tholemn vord I vill!”

  Snorkey winked, and shook his head inexorably. “You don’t understand the wicked feelin’s of a ‘ardened criminal, Mr. Marks. D’ye know, I’m sunk that low I wouldn’t take your word for it! I wouldn’t! Shockin’, ain’t it?”

  “But fifty’s out o’ reathon! It’th abthurd!”

  “Well, beat me down, Mr. Marks. Offer me forty.”

  “No, no — ridic’luth. I’ve got a quid vid me; p’r’aps thirty bob.”

  “Ridic’lous, too, ain’t it? Why, I’ve broke the point of a tool as is worth as much as that. And if I ‘adn’t turned up, the place might ‘a’ bin afire! It might, the dangerous way things like paraffin is left about! It might ‘a’ broke out any minute if it ‘adn’t bin for me.”

  “I’ll give ye five quid, come!”

  “Can’t be done at the price. My conscience won’t allow it; it’s a special good conscience, is mine! It comes a lot dearer than that.”

  “But yen I’ve got no more, vat can I do?”

  “Just now you ‘adn’t got no more than thirty bob; now it’s growed to five quid. If I stop ‘ere you’ll be a millionaire by the mornin’, Mr. Marks, Exquire, an’ all through me. I’ll stop.”

  “No, no; be a thport, Mr. Thnorkey, an’ give a man a chance. Vat’ll you take — reathonable?”

  “Ah, you see it’s growed a bit more a’ready. I said it would. You’d better let me stop, for your own sake. But if you’d really rather not, why, I think I can make a better guess at what you’ve got on you than you can yourself. If you’ve got five quid, an’ a bit more, on ye it means you ‘aven’t took your winnin’s home from the club yet. You always change the silver afore you come away, I know. I guess twenty quid. If there’s more — why, you can keep it for your honesty. But that’s my charge — ab-so!”

  Time was going, and as a fact the sum in Mr. Mark’s pockets was well above his tormentor’s estimate. He thought for a moment, looked into Snorkey’s eyes with a gaze of agonized reproach, turned his back, and counted out the money in gold. Then he turned again with a sigh and paid it over.

  “He seemed quite out o’ temper payin’ over that little bit,” Snorkey said, long afterward, relating the adventure. “Quite rusty ‘e was. ‘Adn’t got what you might call a sense of ‘umor, I s’pose. Some people ain’t. But I told ‘im very cheerful to be careful about strikin’ matches an’ such, with all them com — combustious things about, an’ I come away.

  “I come down the street, an’ turned into Houndsditch, an’ there what should I see but a fire-alarm post. You know where it is — just at the corner. Well, you know, I felt a bit nervous about Mr. Marks. It was a dangerous kind o’ place for anybody to be about in with a light, an’ somehow I ‘ad a ‘orrid sort o’ presentiment that the ‘ouse might catch afire after all. You know the way one o’ them presentiments gets ‘old of you, sometimes. Well, this ‘ere one ‘o mine was that strong that I took my chance with the alarm. I smashed the glass, an’ I tugged the ‘andle till I very near tugged it out, an’ then I ran ‘orne fast, ‘cos it was late.


  “An’ the most re-markable co-in-cidence about the ‘ole thing was — when the fire-engines got round there, there was a fire! There was, on my solemn davy! Wasn’t it wonderful? An’ Mr. Marks got in sich a muddle explainin’ ‘ow the accident ‘appened that they gave him two years hard!”

  THE COPPER CHARM

  OF the relics of Cunning Murrell, the wise man of Essex, I have seen many, and I own some — his books of conjuration and geomancy, scores of his written horoscopes; and of his actual implements of magic I have seen the famous glass by which he, or anybody else, was enabled to see through a brick wall. This amazing instrument gained him vast consideration and authority among the unlearned of Essex up to and beyond the middle of the nineteenth century, but matter-of-fact examination, at a time when Cunning Murrell was altogether too dead to prevent it, robbed the wonder of all its mystery. For indeed, it was nothing but a simple arrangement of the mirrors in a wooden case, such as a schoolboy might make for himself with a little patience and the ruins of a shaving-glass. But it served its turn well, and it was by this and other such aids that Murrell became, and remained to his life’s end, something like absolute sovereign of all Essex outside the great houses.

  But there was another instrument, or talk of it at least, of far stranger purport. There was talk of it still, twenty years and more after its reputed possessor was gathered to his fathers and his twenty-one children in Hadleigh churchyard. This was said to be nothing less than a strange disc of dull copper, by aid whereof Cunning Murrell could distinguish the true man from the liar. For the liar might stare at it till his eyes were sore, yet never could he see in it anything but its mere material self — a round plate of common dull copper; while it was the peculiar virtue of an honest man’s eyes to perceive on the dim surface something — something of which only Cunning Murrell had the secret; something which the gazer must declare to him as proof and test of his truth. But of what that something was’ nobody could tell a word; for indeed it would seem that nobody had ever seen it. And yet belief in its existence was wide as Essex; though there has been a suspicion that the whole report was the invention of that squinting humorist, Dan Fisk. For he had a deal to do with the only tale of the charm I know.