Iron-workers, black and grimy, painters, carpenters, rope-makers, all were busy here. Steam hissed and roared and shrieked, as it escaped from some torturing engine in white wreaths, like the ghost of dead water hurrying to its heaven of clouds far above the grimy earth. All forced itself upon Harry Clayton’s brain, as he followed his conductor to where there were loose stones and mud beneath his feet, the black rushing river on his left hand, and on his right slimy piles, black and green and brown, with the bolts protruding, and iron rings hanging from their sides, all eaten and worn away.
There was a channel leading to some dock close by, and foul water was babbling noisily down through a pair of sluice-falls, and this too struck him painfully as the plashing fell upon his ear.
All passed away, though, but the one shudder-engendering idea of that which he had come to see; for a rough harsh voice, proceeding from another amphibious muddy being, said: —
“You’ve found some one, then?”
“Ay!” was the response from Harry Clayton’s conductor; and making to the right, the young man found himself beside a low, wet, half-rotten shed.
Volume Three – Chapter Five.
What the Shed Held
Harry Clayton felt his breath come thick and fast as he caught sight of the low place by his side. It was a boat-house evidently, and was roughly built of the hole-filled planks torn from the side of some ship taken to the breaker’s yard. The door was secured with a large rusty padlock, and the amphibious-looking man, now introduced as “my mate,” had evidently been doing duty as a sentry, seated upon a post, and smoking a long clay pipe, troubled not in the slightest degree that within a few feet, dripping, soddened, battered by contact with pier and pile, lay the nameless dead, separated from him only by that badly-hung door facing the river, and through whose rifts and cracks and treenail-holes the interior could easily have been viewed.
The strongest of nerve might have shuddered as the man who had been keeping guard noisily unfastened the padlock, drew it from the staple, and was about to throw open the door of the hovel, when Harry abruptly arrested him.
“Are you sure that this answers to the description given?” he said, hoarsely.
“Sure on it! Oh yes, sir; that’s right enough. You needn’t go in without you like: you may take our word for it. But as soon as you’re saddersfied, we must go and tell the perlice, or else there’ll be a rumpus. They won’t like it as it is, and’ll be wanting to go in for the reward; but we looks to you, sir, as a genleman, to make all that right.”
“I’ll see justice done you,” said Harry, still hesitating.
“Thanky, sir! You see, about them police, there’s the inquiss, and the doctor, and the jury, and all of them to see it; but you may take our word for it as it’s all right: it’s him, sure enough.”
“How – how do you suppose it happened? – by accident?”
“Well, sir,” said the first man, “it don’t look very accidental when a poor chap’s got two knife-holes in his chest, and a cut across the head enough to do for any man. You may call it a accident if you like, but accidents don’t turn a chap’s pockets inside out, and take his watch and ring.”
Harry glanced again shudderingly at the door. Should he go in, or should he stay? It was cruel work, but he had promised the father, and the duty must be performed. He could not help dreading to gaze upon the fair frank face that he knew of old; and as he thought, he recalled it, with its insolent smile of triumph, when they parted at the station. And now, barbarously mutilated, sullied with mud and water, perhaps it would be so changed as to be beyond the power of recognition.
And yet he knew that it must be done – that it was impossible for him to take the men’s judgment, which must needs be of the most partial character.
There was nothing else for it, then, but to go, and he motioned to the man to throw open the door.
“I don’t know as I’d go, sir, if I was you,” said the man who had been his guide. “Give it up, sir, and take our word for it. We’re used to this sorter thing; but it ain’t pleasant to look at I wouldn’t go in, sir, if I was you.”
The man became so importunate at last, on seeing Harry’s firmness, that the latter grew angry, for he had now nerved himself for his task; and without waiting to hear more, he muttered the two words, “Poor Lionel!” threw back the door, and strode in.
Almost as soon as he had crossed the threshold the door swung to behind him, leaving the place in semi-obscurity, for it was only illumined by the faint pencils of light that streamed in through the treenail-holes of the old planks,
But there was light enough to show Harry that he was standing in a place whose floor was of muddy shingle stones, with a plank laid down the centre, worn and furrowed by the long coursing to and fro upon it of the iron keel of some boat. A few broken oars and a small skiff’s mast were leaned against the side in company with a boathook and a rude pole. Upon a peg hard by was a coil of rope and a grapnel; and again, in other parts, coils of rope and four-fluked, sharp-pointed grapnels, which made the visitor shudder as he thought of their purpose. Pieces of old iron, fragments of chain, scraps of rope, a ragged old ship’s fender, and some pieces of drift wood, muddy, sodden, and jagged with old red water-corroded nails, were all that remained to take his attention, as his eyes wandered round the place, studiously avoiding and leaving to the last that which he had expressly come to see.
Oars, boathook, mast, cordage, they were all there, but where was the boat’s sail? It was not in the boat – that he had seen when outside with the men.
Harry Clayton felt as if his mind were divided, and one portion were set in array against the other, questioning and responding, for the response was plain enough, and he knew that answer, though he had not seen that sail – could not see it now.
As he stood gazing upon the faint rays streaming down from between two loose tiles, falling here straight, there aslant, but all to cross and form a curious network of light with the rays pouring in from the side, he told himself that he was a coward; but the defensive part of his intelligence whispered in return, had this been the body of a stranger lying at his feet he could have calmly and sadly gazed upon the dead. But it was the dread of looking upon his friend – upon the man whom of late, but for a hard battle with self, he could have struck down as an enemy – to look upon him cut off in the flower of his youth, and by some dreadful death, in the midst of a wild freak, perhaps of dissipation.
Clayton paused, and he repeated these words —
“Had it been the body of a stranger!”
Then, as if a flash of light had illumined the meaning of those words, he started. “Had it been the body of a stranger!” Why, after all, might it not be the earthly clay of some one unknown. It would be horrible still; but if he could bear back the tidings to that stricken old man that Lionel might still be living – that this was not he – how he could fervently say, “Thank Heaven!”
He stepped forward to where an old patched sail lay covering something in a pool of mud and water. The sailcloth was stained and dabbled with the mud; and a strange sense of shrinking seized upon Clayton as he stooped to lift one end.
He knew which to lift, for through the bare old cloth the human form could plainly be distinguished. It was not much to do to raise that cloth at the end for a brief moment. He could recognise Lionel in an instant; and nerving himself once more, he stooped hastily, raised the covering, and dropped it again, to mutter – nay, to exclaim loudly, with a fervour of tone that bespoke the intensity of the speaker’s feelings – “Thank God!”
Harry turned hastily away, and forced open the door to admit the light of day, and to confront the bearer of the tidings and his mate; for his glance had been but a momentary one. He had stood at the back, as he raised the sail, and in that moment’s glance he had seen no horrors – none of the distortions left sometimes by a fearful death; he had seen but one thing, and that was —
The man’s hair was black!
Volume Three – Chapter Six.
River-Side Hopes
Harry Clayton hurriedly made his way back to the chambers, where he found Sir Francis hastily walking up and down the room.
“Ah! you are back!” he said, impatiently. “I fell asleep for quite two hours, and then I should have come after you, only the address the man gave had quite glided from my memory. It seems, Clayton, as if my head were so full of this one trouble that it will hold nothing else. But what news?”
“None, sir,” said Harry, quietly. “It was, thank Heaven, a mistake.”
“I don’t know, Clayton – I don’t know. This suspense is almost more agonising than the knowledge that my poor boy had really been found dead. I feel, at times, that I cannot bear it much longer. You saw this – this – ”
“Yes, sir; I saw the body of some poor creature lying in a boat-shed; but it was not the one we seek.”
“Are you sure? You were not mistaken? You really did look to make sure?”
Harry smiled faintly, as he thought of his irresolution, and the way in which he had held back; and then he answered, calmly —
“Yes, Sir Francis; I made perfectly sure.”
It was pitiful to see the old man’s trouble – the constant agitation, the anxious gaze, the nervous restless motion of his hands – as he turned over some communication – some letter professing to give information respecting a young man in some far-off part of England or Wales – every despatch exciting hopes that were soon found to be perfectly baseless.
At length, after much persuasion, Sir Francis agreed to lie down, on the condition that Clayton would stay, ready to answer any communication that might arrive.
“You know, my dear boy, these things always will arrive when we are absent,” he said, pitifully.
“Trust me, Sir Francis,” was the reply. “I am indeed doing everything possible to lead to a discovery.”
The old man did not trust himself to speak; but wringing Harry’s hand, he despairingly left the room.
In the meantime, Harry’s sudden departure from before the boat-shed, far down on the muddy banks of the Thames, had not been allowed to pass uncanvassed by the two rough men, the seekers for such ghastly waifs and strays.
“Suv’rin,” said the one who had acted as guide, in answer to a query,
“Air you sure as there worn’t two?”
“I am,” said the other, with a wave of his pipe-stem. “Why, if there’d been two, wouldn’t you have heard ’em chink when he stuffed ’em in my hand?” said Sam, not at all relying upon the known integrity of his character for refutation of this sideways charge that he had kept back portion of the reward. “There’s what he give me,” he continued, holding out a sovereign in his horny palm; “and we’ll get it changed as soon as you like.”
“Yes,” said the other, speaking indistinctly, on account of the pipe between his lips; “we’ll get it changed afore we go on to the station.”
As he spoke, he carefully chained and padlocked the door of the shed, smoking coolly enough the while.
“I ain’t seen anything else up – no notice, nor nothing,” said Sam; “and we mustn’t wait no longer before givin’ information, or there’ll be a row.”
“No, there ain’t nothing up,” said the other, pocketing his key, and removing his pipe to expectorate. “I’ve been looking, and there’s ony a bill up about a woman. He was precious pertickler. Why wouldn’t this one do? All they wanted was some one to give a decent Christun buryin’ to; and this here poor chap would ha’ done as well as any other one, to ease their minds with.”
“But you see he’s got black hair, and on the bill it says fair curly hair,” said Sam. “I was half afeard it wouldn’t do.”
“Yah! what does the colour of the hair matter?” grumbled the other. “I mean to say its reg’larly swindlin’ us out of two ’undred pound. He’d ha’ done as well as any other; and they might have ’ad their inkwist, and sat on him, and sworn to him, and said he was found drowned; and there’d ha’ been a comfortable feelin’, and they needn’t ha’ troubled themselves no more.”
“Well, let’s go and give notice; and then we’ll change this here, and have a wet – eh, lad?”
“Ah! may as well,” said the other, removing his pipe to draw an anticipatory hand across his mouth. “Let’s see – tall and fair – curly hair – eh, Sam? Well, perhaps something may turn up yet time enough for us. That ’ere would have done safe enough if his hair had been right colour. Better luck next time – eh, lad?”
“Ah! dessay,” said Sam, forcing the sovereign right to the bottom of his pocket. “Two ’undred pound reward! We ought to have had it old man; but who knows but what something mayn’t turn up yet?”
Volume Three – Chapter Seven.
D. Wragg
There was far from being peace in the house of Wragg, for the place had gained a most unenviable notoriety. Wrong-doings were prevalent enough in Decadia, but they were ordinary wrong-doings, and those who were guilty of peculiar acts were, as a rule, patted on the back by the fraternity. In fact, if ’Arry Burge, or Tom Gagan, or Micky Green was taken for a burglary or robbery with violence, there would always be a large following of admiring companions to see the culprit off to the station, to be present at the hearing, and to give him a friendly cheer during his handcuffed walk to the black van. They had no very great objection to a murder, and more than once a good hundred of neighbours had waited all night outside Newgate to see Bob, or Ben, or Joe, die game at eight o’clock in the morning. But this mysterious disappearance work was something not to be tolerated. There was too much of the Burke and Hare, and body-snatching about it; and consequently the name of Wragg stank in the nostrils of the clean-handed dwellers in Decadia, and the house in Brownjohn Street enjoyed for the time being but little peace.
D. Wragg could not show himself outside; and as for Canau, he had been mobbed twice, to return storming and angry, ready to threaten all sorts of vengeance upon his persecutors, foremost amongst whom was Mr John Screwby.
This gentleman seemed to have devoted himself heart and soul to the task of keeping alive in the Decadian mind the fact that Lionel Redgrave had been seen to go into the Brownjohn Street house, and had not been seen to come out; though all this rested on Mr Screwby’s assertion, since he brought no corroborative evidence to bear – only spoke of the matter right and left, even haranguing excited mobs, who would have needed but little leading to have made them wreck D. Wragg’s dwelling, and administer lynch-law to its inhabitants.
In fact, instead of the matter being a nine-days’ wonder, and then passing off, interest in the mystery seemed to be ever on the increase; and a feeling of dread more than once seized all the members of the household lest some terrible evil should befall them.
“I tell you what it is, young fellow,” said P.C. Brace one evening to Mr John Screwby, whom he had warned to move on, just at a time when he was haranguing a pack of boys, – “I tell you what it is, young fellow; if you get opening your mouth so wide about all this here, people will begin to think as you know as much about it as any one else.”
Mr John Screwby’s jaw fell, and he stood gazing speechlessly at the policeman, as that worthy wagged his head expressively, to indicate the words “Move on;” and then, without uttering another syllable, on he moved, rubbing his jaw with one hand, pulling his cap a little more over his ears, and in various ways acting as if not quite at peace within himself.
It was impossible for those within the house not to observe how they were looked upon by their neighbours. The trade of the shop had dropped off day by day, till there was absolutely nothing doing, although D. Wragg sat hour after hour smoking his pipe behind the counter, and muttering to himself.
Even Mrs Winks looked troubled and scared, coming up one morning from the cellar-kitchen, with her curl papers all limp, to declare in confidence to Janet that she “dursen’t go down no more, for she had heard a noise;” and then, in a very low whisper, she declared her conviction that there was something wrong.
This was soon after daybreak one washing-day; and from that time Mrs Winks decided in favour of the central portions of the house, refusing absolutely either to ascend to the attics or descend to the basement.
“But is it not foolish?” said Janet to her, one day. “What can there be up-stairs or down-stairs to hurt you?”
“There! don’t ask me, child,” exclaimed Mrs Winks. “I don’t know; I only know what I think. There’s something wrong about the place; and you can feel it in the air; and if it wasn’t for you, child, I wouldn’t stop another day – see if I would!”
That day passed in a cheerless, dreary way, but not quite in peace, for more than once a rude shout or laugh made Janet start from her seat, and stand trembling for what might be to come. But the demonstrations proved to be harmless, and no more offensive than they could be made by jeering words, and the hurling into the shop of a few stones and broken ginger-beer bottles, occasioning a vast amount of fluttering amongst the birds, and a fierce yelping from the prisoned dogs.
The night came at last, and D. Wragg was heard stumping and jerking about the house, as if busy examining all fastenings, and putting out the gas; and then there was a knock at the outer door – a well-known tap – to which Janet hastened to reply, and admitted Canau, who entered sideways, with the door only opened a few inches, and then closed it hastily, as if in dread of pursuit, when he stood looking at Janet, and wiping the perspiration from his forehead with an old silk handkerchief.
“Is there any news?” he faltered, looking hard at the deformed girl the while.
“No,” she replied, hoarsely; “there is no news.”
D. Wragg opened the back-room door at this moment, to glance out hastily, when seeing who it was, he re-closed the door and waited till his lodgers had gone up-stairs, when his head once more appeared like that of a rat from its hole, and he listened till all was still before again closing his door.
Silence fell upon the house at last; not, though, that all its inmates were at rest, for Canau lay for long enough sleepless, and turning over thought after thought. D. Wragg, too, was rather uneasy that night, while to Janet the hours dragged heavily on.
At last, though, in spite of her agitation, Janet was sleeping soundly, while, soon after daybreak, D. Wragg was astir, to gently draw up his blind and inspect the morning, a proceeding that did not seem to prove highly satisfactory, for he groaned more than sighed, shook his head, jerked about as he crossed the room, and then, without his boots, he stepped into the passage, and began to climb the stairs, pausing, though, upon each landing, to listen whether any one else were stirring.
But as far as he could judge, every one was sunk in that sound slumber of early morn, – Mrs Winks loudly announcing her state as he passed her door.
There seemed to be a great deal of indecision, though, in D. Wragg’s movements; his haltings were many, and the cautious manner in which he peered about seemed to indicate that the errand upon which he was bound was one of no trivial import.
At last, though, he climbed to the top, stood listening for awhile, and then entered the attic, closing the door carefully behind him, but apparently taking no steps to make it fast.
D. Wragg had not been out of sight five minutes, before there was the soft grating noise of a key turning in the wards of a lock; then there was a loud crack, and a door below opened to give exit to Monsieur Canau, who stood in the doorway listening for a few moments, and then, shoes in hand, descended softly and swiftly to the bottom of the house. On reaching the cellar-kitchen, he lit a candle, and after unbolting a door, passed under the area grating, with his pinched old hat held lanthorn-wise over the candle; and then, drawing open a second door, he entered a large cellar, in one corner of which was the small stock of coals in use for the house, and in another the ashes and refuse.
But Monsieur Canau had hardly a look for these; he merely glanced round the place, and then drew back the fastening of the inner cellar, one which seemed to extend far beneath the street.
His candle flickered here, and burned dimly for a few moments, as he walked backwards and forwards in the cobwebbed, vaulted place, holding his candle low down, and examining the reeking floor, particularly in one spot – the furthest corner from the door. This he scraped a little with his hands, then stamped upon several times; held the candle down to see what impression his feet had made; and then, taking up a rough piece of wood, he carefully drew it backwards and forwards over where he had stamped, and lastly, extinguished his candle. He then closed the cellar doors, crossed the area, and, after leaving all below as he had found it, hurried up-stairs once more, but, in spite of his years, with all the activity of a boy.
He stopped by his own room, entered it for a few moments, and then reappeared, to step up softly to the attic landing, where he again paused to listen attentively for fully five minutes. But though Mrs Winks was as stertorous as ever in her breathing, not another sound was to be heard in the house; and laying his hand upon the attic latch, Canau raised it very gently, not the eighth of an inch at a time, coaxing the door, as it were, to open without noise, till, by slow degrees, he had pressed it back sufficiently far to allow the passage of his head, when, cautiously inserting it to peer round, the door was pressed back upon his neck, holding it between the edge and the door-jamb, while, within a few inches, and gazing malignantly into his eyes, he found himself suddenly confronted by D. Wragg.