Fearfully, the men in brown stared at one another. Then they recalled their purpose. They looked down and added their own curses to the dreadful torrent. The boy was gone!
Smith, choked, deafened and despairing, had let go his hold. Eight feet he’d thumped to the bottom of the shaft. Then, his force not spent, he’d slipped, squealing, down a hole of formidable steepness—a vent that led, God knew where!
Had Smith been brought up to the Church, he’d have had a prayer off pat—for he traveled at speed on what he was sure was his last journey. (But, if he’d been brought up to the Church, he’d most likely not have been falling down a ventilator in Newgate Jail!)
“Gawd!” he panted. “Watch out—for ’ere comes Smith!”
Then—from some seven feet above the floor, between the pulpit and the open pews of the prison chapel—shot out a dusty, dirty bundle of commotion that howled as it fell, picked itself up—and bolted directly for the door.
Smith was back in jail.
The chapel was empty; but outside its door was a regular hubbub. The last sermon had just been preached over Dick Mulrone. He was on his way to the hangman’s cart. All of his friends, all of his admirers, all of his well-wishers had come to watch him—and now crowded the passages for a last pat on the back and a last sad wave.
The crowd was tremendous—more than enough to engulf the scurrying Smith. On all fours, he went among skirts and legs that were like a trampling forest.
“Got to get out! Got to get out!” he muttered—and butted and bit his way along. He came to a corner at the head of some stairs and was momentarily free—
“Smut!” shrieked a voice. “It’s Smut!”
His sisters! Come to attend his trial; but had been first dragged by Lord Tom to see the last of the hero of Hounslow Heath. (“Give him a good send-off, m’dears. He’d have done as much for me.”)
“Got to get out!” panted Smith, still on his hands and knees and glaring up at his family as though he was their faithful mongrel hound.
“Oh, Smut!” cried Miss Fanny. “You’ll be took and ironed for this!”
“Quick!” whispered Miss Bridget, handsome in her Tuesday best. “Under my skirt, child! Pop underneath—and not a sound!”
Miss Bridget tipped her great hoop so’s her skirt rose like a monstrous black bell about to chime against the strongly pantalooned clappers which were her legs. Smith looked briefly at his elder sister—and grinned. He darted forward and Miss Bridget dropped her skirts.
So began Smith’s escape from Newgate Jail, not at all as he’d dreamed—nor certainly as had been planned for him—but rather a quiet, muffled exit through the great gate itself.
True, there were alarms on the way, and some discomforts. Smith found it hard to keep out of the way of Miss Bridget’s feet—else she found it hard to prevent herself booting her felonious brother as if for his sins.
Miss Fanny also gave cause for alarm by asking aloud if “little Smut was all right in his flannel nest?” till Miss Bridget was heard to declare aloud: “You are a foolish cow, Fan! Hold your tongue, for pity’s sake!”
Then Lord Tom joined them (Smith would have known those sturdy feet anywhere) and Miss Fanny couldn’t resist whispering: “We’ve got him safe and sound! You’ll never guess where, Lord Tom! Not in a thousand years!”
But it seemed Miss Fanny ogled and stared and giggled so much at her sister’s heaving skirt that Lord Tom guessed directly, but had the good sense to hold his peace and bid Miss Fanny to do likewise.
Then, at last, they were outside and beginning to walk away.
“Look! Look!” shrieked Miss Fanny, suddenly. “Oh, Brid! Look!”
She pointed. Miss Bridget paled. Lord Tom looked alarmed.
In the thick snow behind Miss Bridget were not only her own footprints, but the unmistakable hop and scamper marks of an extra pair of feet!
“We’ll walk behind you, Brid,” said Miss Fanny; and for the rest of that extraordinary journey, Miss Bridget had two of the most particular and devoted followers a lady could have wished for. They followed in all of her four footprints with a caution and respect most exemplary!
By the time they got to Turnmill Street it was hard on ten o’clock.
“Home, child!” whispered Miss Bridget—and raised her skirt a trifle to step across the familiar door of the Red Lion Tavern.
As she did so, there was a faint shouting and roaring that seemed to be coming from a long way off.
“What was that, Lord Tom?”
The highwayman sighed. “From Tyburn, m’dear. They’ve just nubbed grand Dick Mulrone! I’m the only one left, Fanny. When will it be my turn?”
14
IF EVER A MAN COULD TELL, to the nearest five minutes, how long it would take a particular coach, leaving a particular part of the Town and going north, to come to the edge of the Finchley Common, that man was Lord Tom. Not your fat rumbling trundler nor your light-slung gig, passing northward through the Town, was capable of keeping Lord Tom waiting upon his wild and lonely hunting ground. He knew their paces as well as his own and boasted famously that his prizes came, so to speak, by prompt appointment.
Indeed, it was said in the trade that Lord Tom might have made a better living by employing his genius in Town and auctioning his judgment for others to ride out for the “stand and deliver.”
Not that he didn’t ride well and shoot well, but it was sometimes said, by those who’d accompanied him, that his nature was too bold for so secret an undertaking and he was inclined to show courage when there was no call for it.
“Given the size of the coach—as you’ve described it—given this weather, given the crowds for Dick Mulrone this day, given the starting from Vine Street—your Mister Mansfield will take luncheon at the Queen’s Head in Lamb’s Conduit Fields and come upon the Common at half after four o’clock. ’Tis certain, Smut. Sure as we’re in this cellar. Sure as my name’s Lord Tom. At half after four. And at five—” He paused, his finger raised, like he was hailing a chair.
“At five, Lord Tom?”
“We’ll have him!”
Miss Fanny looked at her friend admiringly, but Smith was yet doubtful.
“Ye-es, Lord Tom . . . if someone else don’t have him first!” Lord Tom sighed and scratched his cheek—then examined the hand he’d employed.
“D’you mean our two friends in brown?”
Smith shivered—and nodded.
Said Miss Fanny: “Lord Tom’ll see them off, Smut. You’ll see!”
And Lord Tom, with a mighty scowl, agreed.
“I’ll blow blue daylight through ’em, Smut! There’s never a man yet who’s dared come ’tween Lord Tom and his lawful prize. You’ll see ’em scamper, my lad!”
“And then—our dockiment, at last!”
“The document!” suddenly exclaimed Miss Bridget, bitterly. All this while, during the making and testing of the plan, she’d kept a resentful quiet; but now she could no more hold her peace.
“How I hate and despise it! For it’s brought an old man to his death and made murderers of nought but common thieves. And now—and now it’s turned our own poor mite, what has never sinned deeper than a passing pocket, into a dwarfish toby! To take such a child on to the murdering Common for to rob a blind man! Oh, for shame—shame—shame!”
Lord Tom chewed his lip and shook his head. He stood up with a clatter of ironware and began to pace the cellar.
“What would you have me do, Miss Bridget? In your own very hearing—not an hour ago—in this very residence I’ve a-pleaded with him; I’ve a-begged him; I’ve a-warned him and I’ve a-supplicated with him not to come. But that lad’s determined. Nothing anyone can say will shake him. He’s iron, Miss Bridget. He’s steel. He’s rock. He’s a fixture, ma’am!”
Smith—who felt as far from any of these things as was imaginable—nodded vigorously.
Since he’d left the dreadful jail in the vinegary, rustling blackness of his sister’s skirt, with her legs coming and goi
ng like engines of destruction, he’d thought of nothing but Mr. Mansfield with the fatal document on his way to Prickler’s Hill. To say that nothing would have stopped Smith wasn’t quite true. A knife in the ribs would have stopped him; likewise, a ball in the chest. But Lord Tom’s warnings and Miss Bridget’s respectable anger stood but a small chance against the furious urgings of his own heart and head.
Miss Fanny—to do her justice—must have seen this right from the start, for she never opposed her “sweet Smut,” but agreed “our dockiment must come first.” Miss Bridget upbraided her, sneered at her, called her an “avaricious slut.” But Miss Fanny only looked forgiving as her sister railed and put her arm round Smith’s shoulders and declared: “If his heart’s in it, Brid dear, ’tis wicked to thwart him!”
So Miss Bridget turned the full force of her tongue upon Lord Tom, who was somewhat shaken by it; for he had, maybe, more prideful feelings than Miss Fanny. So the highwayman was driven to defend himself, and feel that he had to restore himself in the eyes of Miss Fanny and Smith.
Not that Miss Bridget’s tempest could ever have sunk Lord Tom in Smith’s bright eyes, for the boy held the green-cloaked robber in the deepest admiration and respect. Which respect, agreeably enough, was treasured up by Lord Tom as a bright warm day to remember in the winter of his life. With energy and dignity, he painted such a picture of his trade that only the coldest of hearts could have scorned.
“Gallantry, ma’am—there’s gallantry on the Common! And fierce beauty and soaring adventure!”
The highwayman’s eyes sparkled and he brushed the back of his hand across his cheek, as if he could feel the wild night upon it. Then he went on to relate exploits that he’d told of many times before—but never so handsomely. And he spoke of other famous gentlemen who’d once waited, hid and pounced where he now waited, hid and pounced: Duval (“Hanged!” snapped Miss Bridget), Turpin (“Hanged!”), Captain Robinson (“Hanged!”).
“Yes, ma’am, they paid for their joys. They’re dead and gone . . . and so’ve a great many other folk. ’Tis the common penalty for living. But it’s not the quiet, mewing, moaning bed-perishings that haunt the Common of a moony night. No, ma’am! When we ride out, we ride with the great ghostly company of the nubbed! Many a time I’ve heard, ‘Lord Tom, Lord Tom—I’m a-watching you, friend,’ in Turpin’s own voice!”
Then Lord Tom, with dreamy grandeur, told of these dead men’s doings in the days of their lives—and then back to his own (to draw a parallel)—then back again . . . till it was hard to tell who’d done what: Duval, Robinson, Turpin—or Lord Tom.
In spite of herself, Miss Bridget’s heart beat a little faster . . . for she was but three and twenty and Miss Fanny’s and Smith’s sister, when all was said and done.
Smith’s heart, also, was beating faster—but from a strong anxiety that Lord Tom’s eloquence was dangerously delaying them, and that they’d be too late upon the Common. For the first time in his life, he wished Lord Tom had had fewer adventures—and hadn’t remembered them so well!
“By tonight, we’ll have our dockiment safe and sound,” he heard Miss Fanny murmur. “And Smut’ll read it to us . . . with new tallows and we three sat at the table . . . for all the world, Brid, like reading a psalm from the Scriptures.”
The document: with a start, Smith remembered it. Not that he’d ever forgotten it, but its importance now seemed changed. If, by destroying the document, he could have destroyed Mr. Black and his friends, he’d have done so. The document was now not so much a means of his going up in the world, but a way of preventing his going down.
“Well, Smut, me comrade-in-arms of this day! Are we fit and ready?” exclaimed Lord Tom at last, staring at a fine French watch that had been the subject of his last told adventure. “Five minutes to make your adieus, Smut—then it’s the Common for the pair of us!”
Thankfully, and with mounting excitement, Smith left his seat and stationed himself beside the tremendous highwayman, when Miss Bridget, somewhat desperately, protested: “But he’ll freeze to death! He cannot go so ill-dressed!”
There was a further delay, while an ancient cloak was found to cover Smith’s bedraggled finery and a queer hat, that Miss Fanny had once toyed with, to cover his tangled and matted head.
He had a certain shabby splendor—and even Miss Bridget gazed at him with surprise and a reluctant admiration as he began to mount the stairs. Smith, caught up in the romantic spirit, felt himself full of the gallantest dreams. He turned, waved and cried: “Adieu, dear ladies! Wish me—”
He stopped. There was a loud knock on the door.
“Gawd!” muttered Smith. “It’s for me!”
He bolted back into the cellar, his cloak flapping like ruined wings, and hid behind the curtain. Lord Tom stood, grandly guarding his small friend’s sanctuary, and the two sisters rose together.
“Come in!”
There entered a small, wizened man with eager eyes, carrying a bundle. He peered down into the body of the cellar and grinned and nodded to the company. It was Mr. Jones’s assistant come, not for Smith, but with Dick Mulrone’s fine suit. To be altered for Mr. Jones’s father. “There’s a good son for you!”
He threw the bundle on the table and said Mr. Jones himself would be calling to describe his father’s figure and shape: tomorrow. Today he was tired out. The crowds! The shouting! Fairly frayed him!
Then he went—and left behind a gloomy silence. If ever four souls and a cellar were haunted by the lack of a ghost, they were gathered now. A coat, a waistcoat and a pair of breeches: that was all there was of Dick Mulrone. No breath nor whisper of a ghost came into the Red Lion’s cellar to quicken the four sad hearts, or stir the pitiful heap of clothing. The gallantest robber of the Hounslow Heath was as dead as mutton; not able, even, to haunt his own breeches.
Lord Tom bowed his head. Miss Fanny wept. Said Miss Bridget: “Take care of him, Lord Tom. For my heart chills. Watch over little Smut.”
“I’ll guard him, ma’am. With me very life I do assure you—while he’s with Lord Tom, no danger will offer. I—I promise you, ma’am. Come, lad—away!”
With the best will in the world Lord Tom tried to be in good spirits on the way to Finchley Common; but the sadness lingered, and he kept falling into a silence as heavy as the glum sky. And Smith, whose dearest dream and brightest hope had come to pass—to be riding out on the snaffling lay with his hero, Lord Tom—was as melancholy as sin.
Sitting on the front of the highwayman’s saddle he turned round, from time to time, and saw Lord Tom’s great, bristling face, dark under his hat, much troubled . . .
So they rode on, this weirdly romantic, fantastic pair—the infant jailbird and the glowering highwayman—through the thick snow towards the famous place where Lord Tom and all of his hanged ghosts waited, hid—and pounced.
15
THE SNOW, which had held off for some three hours, began again in earnest at about four o’clock as the light was perishing from the sky and there came up to Bob’s Inn on the steep of Highgate Hill, a most weary horse bearing a full-sized man and an undersized boy.
“Is this the place, Lord Tom?”
“The very same.”
Bob’s Inn, a pleasant, newly built structure with three parlors and rooms for seven gentlemen (three double and one single), sat about fifty yards northward from the top of Highgate Hill and commanded a spacious view of the southern fingers of Finchley Common, from which it was distant by about half a steep mile. Thus from the snug windows, not a curricle, gig or coach could venture on to the Common without being interestedly viewed. For the further entertainment of his customers, Mr. Bob had provided a strong spy-glass (at sixpence a half-hour) and certain information that might be of service. Mr. Bob’s customers were high tobies to a man.
“Knew ’em all!” was Mr. Bob’s proud boast as he stood by the cheerful fire of an evening. “Duval—Turpin—Robinson . . . many’s the time they’ve sat about this very snug, drinking and laughing—a
nd popping to the windows for a nifty look!” (This, notwithstanding the glum fact that Duval had been hanged eighty years before and Bob looked no more than forty.) “Yes, indeed! Knew ’em all!”
He welcomed Lord Tom and grinned affectionately at Smith, whom he recognized as a “brisk, bright and prosperous apprentice to the Trade.” He made a place for the highwayman and his apprentice by the fire and dispatched an evil-eyed potboy for “jars of the best.”
“Nothing coming, nothing going,” he murmured, jerking his head to the windows that commanded the best view of the Common. “Not our sort of weather, eh, Lord Tom? Many’s the time—ah, many’s the time—great Duval himself would curse the snow for muffling his pickings! Aye, and a-warming his backside where you’re a-warming yours, friend!”
Lord Tom was handsomely thawing himself out—and fizzing and drizzling into the hearth. His caped coat, whited like a sepulchre, was now beginning to patch through the covering of snow into a wet green—like a lawn after winter. Likewise, Smith, buffeted and stung by the whirling snow, bruised beyond belief by the dreadful horse, began to come to himself and crack and thaw and ease himself into a furtive smile.
“There’s a coach due, Bob, within—” (Lord Tom drew out his French watch which the landlord eyed merrily and murmured, “Ah! we remember that one, eh?”) “—within this half-hour. From Town toward Barnet.”
“You know best, friend. You got a reputation. But it surprises me: yes, indeed. Must be powerful business to draw an equipage across this murderous white nothingness!”
“It is, Bob. It surely is.”
He winked at Smith—then raised his fingers warningly to his lips as the potboy returned with the ale.
Not fifty yards to the west of Bob’s stood another inn—an ancient, tottery, smoky building, the speaking likeness of Smith’s Red Lion. This was The Wrestlers. It seemed that Lord Tom had a little brief business there. He charged Smith to wait for him and not to stir from Mr. Bob’s parlor: under no circumstances.
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