TRAPPED.
The normal state of the Adelphi Hotel at Liverpool is one of such
bustle and confusion, that when the entire establishment goes stark
staring mad, as is the case twice a year, on the occasions of the
Grand National Steeplechase and the Waterloo Meeting, the people are
not inclined to regard the eccentricity as anything to be wondered at.
Passing a night at the Adelphi, you are liable to come across the man
who went out to California five-and-twenty years ago with the full
determination never to revisit the motherland where the first half of
his life had been so thrown away, but who, his fortune made and the
nostalgia strong upon him, arrived last night from New York, to travel
for six months like a gentleman in the country where, for a quarter of
a century, he had starved and slaved. Or you are equally likely to run
into the arms of the elderly friend whom you have always considered as
a fixed item of London life, but who, having heard a rumour 'that
things are going wrong out there,' is starting by the next day's
outward-bound mail to satisfy himself. The halls and passages of the
Adelphi are always crammed with sea-going chests and Saratoga boxes,
and deckchairs, more or less maimed; and there is generally a dozen of
champagne being cracked in some of the rooms to drink the health of
the captain who has just brought the good ship safely over, or success
to the captain who is just going to take the good ship out; and there
are newspaper reporters flying to and fro to get lists of passengers,
or details of any occurrences on the voyage, and relations of the
newly-arrived, who are very much elated, and relations of the
departing, who are very much depressed, and whose excessive emotion in
their case contrasts curiously with the steady-going business tone of
the members of the establishment.
It was not to be supposed that a man of Mr. Bryan Duval's foresight
would have neglected writing beforehand to secure rooms, any more than
that he would have omitted sending a hint of his intended arrival to
two or three members of the local press with whom he was on terms of
friendship. Consequently, when the theatrical party from London walked
into the house, they were not merely received with gracious smiles
from the three young ladies in the bar, and with portentous grins from
Sam the boots (not naturally a good-natured man, but an old
acquaintance of Mr. Duval's, and the recipient of many orders for the
upper boxes when that gentleman was staying there on a starring tour),
but with a warm acclamation from Mr. Lavrock, the popular editor of
the _Liverpool Lion_, and two or three of his comrades. It was not Mr.
Lavrock's fault that he was not a London editor; it was the one hope
of his life; but being unable to accomplish the feat, and finding
himself tied to Liverpool, he revenged himself on the fate which had
dictated, as his duty, the pulverisation of the Mayor, the castigation
of the Corporation, and the flaying of the Mersey Board, by devoting
every minute of his off-time to London things and London people, by
running to the metropolis at all times when he could get away, and by
acting as general agent for every London literary or theatrical
celebrity.
It had not wanted the presence of these gentlemen to remind Bryan
Duval that he had intended giving a little banquet that evening in
honour of Mr. Foster; but when he saw them, he at once thought that
they would not be merely pleasant additions to the party, but that
they might be the means of giving it world-wide publicity by inserting
a neat little paragraph in the next morning's editions, which he would
take over with him, and have copied immediately after arrival in the
New York journals. Mr. Lavrock and his friends would be delighted to
accept the invitation, and the party separated with the understanding
that they were to meet at seven o'clock, the travellers going to their
bedrooms to rest themselves after their journey, and the newspaper men
to their offices, to prepare that little paragraph concerning which
Mr. Duval had dropped a hint into the ear of each of them.
The Adelphi can give a dinner when it has a mind, and it had a mind
this day. The turtle was superb; so good that Mr. Foster, who had had
two or three rather sharp culinary arguments with Mr. Duval since
their acquaintance, was compelled to acknowledge that on one point, at
least, he had been wrong, and that he had never, even at the Brevoort
House in New York, tasted better soup than that then set before him;
and when dinner was over, Mr. Duval made a very prolonged epigrammatic
speech, proposing Mr. Foster's health, and Mr. Foster, with that
self-possession and flow of language so characteristic of his
countrymen, returned thanks. And then Mr. Lavrock stood up and
exhausted the dictionary of flattery upon Bryan Duval, who, in
responding, remarked that he hoped in a couple of months or so to give
another dinner to almost the same party in the same place, on his
return from what he intended should be a prosperous run; and then, as
they were most of them tired, and had to get up betimes, the party
broke up.
When Mr. Foster came down the next morning, he found Bryan Duval,
already the centre of an admiring crowd, giving directions for the
stowage of his luggage on the huge trucks which were to convey it to
the steamer's tender. Mr. Duval had exchanged his costume of the
previous day for a yachting suit, and with an oilskin-covered straw
hat, low patent-leather shoes, and striped silk socks, looked ready to
lead off a hornpipe on any given cue. It had been arranged that they
should breakfast in their rooms, and that Mr. Foster, who might be
looked upon as accustomed to this kind of thing, should act as convoy
to the company, Mr. Duval going in front to attend to the luggage. No
sooner, therefore, was the truck duly piled than Bryan rattled off
before it in a swift-going hansom, while Mr. Foster, Miss Montressor,
and the others followed in a more sober vehicle.
The landing-stage at which the Cunard tender was lying was thronged on
this occasion with even a more motley crowd than usual, for the
paragraphs in the morning journals had announced to the actors the
presence among them of their great colleague, and several of them had
come down to see him off. Many of the young brokers and shipping
clerks too had rushed away from their offices for a few minutes to
catch a glimpse of the popular artistes, and, as if to act as a
corrective to the light tone of thought likely to be engendered by
these people, a dark-bearded sombre-faced man, in the rustic garb of a
Methodist preacher, made his way in and out amongst the crowd,
distributing tracts to whoever would take them. There was no chance
for his admirers mistaking any one else for Mr. Duval; that
gentleman's activity was preternatural; and when the tender left the
shore, they raised a little cheer, which he gratefully acknowledged by
squeezing his hat over his chest exactly as he had done on many
occasions after a successful first night's performance.
There was not much talk among the little party as they made their way
to the ship. They praised her noble proportions as she lay at anchor
in mid-stream, cast looks at the sky, and prophesied about the
weather; but their hearts were too full to say much, and they soon
lapsed into silence. When they were once on board they, those who were
to make the voyage, went straight to their state-rooms, and of our
friends all remained there with the exception of Miss Montressor and
Bryan Duval; the latter had still to see the luggage safely stowed
away in the hold, the former came straight to Mr. Foster as he was
standing very dejectedly on the hurricane-deck.
'I have just found another instance of your kindness, another thing to
be grateful to you for.'
'Not in the least,' he replied with a sad smile. 'I had forgotten all
about it; but I know there is no preventive of sea-sickness like
champagne, and you can depend upon that case being genuine.'
'I wish you would have a bottle of it now,' she said. 'I think it
would do you good.'
'I am afraid not,' he replied, with an attempt at gaiety. 'I am very
depressed and very dull, I know, and I do not think champagne would
help me; the only cure for me will be when I find myself on this or
some sister ship bound for home.'
'And Helen!' whispered Miss Montressor.
'And Helen,' he repeated gravely, lifting his hat as though invoking a
blessing on the name.
Then the shore-bell rang, and Bryan Duval came up, and in a few words
of kindly friendship, without a trace of professional affectation,
spoke his thanks and adieux to his newly-made friend.
When Mr. Foster turned to Miss Montressor he tried to put on a light
and rallying manner, but his voice broke, and the tears rose in his
eyes. He muttered something, she could not distinguish what, for she
herself was very much overcome, and vanished down the ladder and
across the gangway.
Then the tender steamed away. Bryan Duval and Clara Montressor,
leaning over the rail, watched the figure of the man in whom alone
they had an interest until it was undistinguishable; still stood
gazing until the tender herself became a mere speck in the distance.
Then he touched her on the arm.
'You had better go down and see to your things, Clara, my dear,' he
said, in a kindly tone. 'We shall meet Foster again, I trust--he is a
downright good fellow.'
'He is a gentleman,' sobbed Clara Montressor, 'and one of the best men
on the face of the earth.'
By this time the good ship was standing out to sea.
* * * * * *
Mr. Foster returned to his hotel in very low spirits; the mere sight
of the sea, the mere sense of being on board a steamer, the bustle and
departure, and the glad anticipations which he heard all around him,
had produced a fit of home-sickness. It rarely occurred that Mr.
Foster, as the strictly business man, revolted against business in any
shape, or resented its exactions, but he did so on this occasion, and
yielded to a sort of physical and mental _malaise_, which he was ready
to impute partly to fatigue, and partly to the fact that he had been
amusing himself more than was his custom during the last few days, and
this was the reaction. 'I go back to the grind now,' he thought, 'and
I will get it over as soon as possible--I can't stand much more of
this kind of thing; it doesn't pay. My Helen would be cured of her
funny unreasonable notions about the supremacy of my business in my
thoughts, her pretty jealousy would vanish like a cloud if she could
only see me now, if she could only look into my heart and know how I
longed to have done with it all and to get back to her. How I envy the
people who are going where she is!'
He was walking slowly, with bent head and a musing manner, rarely seen
in the busy streets of the water-side city, as he thought this, and he
mechanically put his hand into his breast-pocket searching for his
wife's last letter, which he felt sure he had brought down with him;
but it was not there. 'I must have left it in my room,' he thought,
and quickened his steps. On reaching the hotel, Mr. Foster went to his
room and found the letter, which he glanced over and placed in his
pocket-book.
Everything, tide included, had favoured the departure of his friends.
It was nigh noon when the ship steamed down the Mersey, and the
solitary man, who was in a humour to indulge the sense of solitude,
had several hours to dispose of before returning to London. He had
contemplated staying one night in Liverpool, but he changed his mind;
he would go and have a look at the chief places of interest in the
city and its environs, and so dispose of the hours until he could go
away.
It was a little after one when he left the Adelphi, and set out on a
sort of strolling tour, and his mind, an active and intelligent one,
soon became diverted and interested in the novel scene. There is a
good deal to be seen in Liverpool and at Birkenhead, and Mr. Foster
gave his mind to seeing it; so that it was much later than he had
calculated upon when he was crossing in the ferry from the latter
place, and he perceived, with some vexation, that he had overstayed
his time, and could not possibly leave by the night train as he had
intended. 'Not that it matters,' he thought, 'except that Helen's
letter will be waiting for me instead of my being waiting for it.'
'I beg your pardon,' he said, making room on the bench where he was
sitting for a man who had stood, with rather an ostentatious air of
expecting to have room made for him, just in front of Mr. Foster, 'I
didn't see that you wanted a place;' and the man sat down, after some
words of course.
He was a slight man, who carried himself awkwardly, with high
shoulders and sunken chest and stooping head; he was of dark
complexion, had straight black hair, which fitted his head like a
thatch, and a black beard, but he was painfully nearsighted, and wore
spectacles of such power that his eyes, seen through them, seemed to
be buried in cavities altogether disproportionate to the other
feature. He was curiously ill-dressed, not only as regards the fabric
of his garments, which was incongruous, but also as regards their fit,
which had not the slightest reference to either his height or his
breadth. They were formed of two or three kinds of cloth of different
degrees of coarseness, but all of the cheapest description, and
all rusty black, which associates itself in one's mind with the
Scripture-reading, amateur-preaching, charity-letter writing, and
tract-distributing class. He wore shoes, which might have been made
for any one of the passengers on board the ferry with as much
reference to their fit as for him, and his gray cotton gloves were too
long in the fingers and too wide in the wrists. In the dog's-eared
pocket of his black cloth waistcoat he carried a clumsy silver watch,
attached to a frayed piece of black braid; and a shiny leather case,
which had evidently been replenished with tracts since he had lavishly
distributed his morning supply of that improving order of literature,
protruded from the breast-pocket of his shapeless coat.
Mr. Foster glanced at the stranger as one naturally glances at a
person to whom one has done a passing civility, and was not far out in
his estimate of his social position and professional character; not
that he was familiar with the precise type, but the character was too
ostentatiously put forward to be mistaken.
A respectable-looking stout woman, with a large basket, which she held
tenaciously upon her knees, to her extreme discomfort, no doubt
considering it much too precious to be intrusted to the open space of
deck at her feet, got into conversation with Mr. Foster's neighbour,
with all the facility accorded by custom to social intercourse with
gentlemen of his profession, and after a few minutes Mr. Foster found
himself taking an interest in the conversation. It referred to the
physical and spiritual needs of the water-side population, and the man
spoke in a sensible and straightforward way, quite devoid of cant,
which pleased Mr. Foster, and was singularly at variance with his
appearance--that of the most conventional theatrical type, which one
is almost irresistibly tempted to associate with imposture and
hypocrisy.
'I wonder,' said the woman, 'you are not afraid to go down into them
dens. What extraordinary sights you must see there!'
'I see a great deal of poverty and suffering,' said the man, in a
marked Irish accent, 'but much less wickedness than people think for.'
And he then proceeded to tell one or two stories of his experience of
that day, which had a very real ring about them, and which he related
with no affectation, self-seeking, or technical phraseology. Probably
he had observed that the gentleman who had made way for him was taking
an interest in the conversation, for he shifted his position, in which
he had previously had his shoulder turned towards Mr. Foster, for one
which placed him straight between his two neighbours, his shoulders
against the rail of the bench, and his bent head on his breast. There
was occasionally the slightest possible glance of the strange-looking
eyes, from under the magnifying spectacles, in the direction of Mr.
Foster's attentive and sympathising face.
'May I ask if you have seen much of this sort of thing?' said Mr.
Foster, when the speaker came to a pause, and the kindly woman on his
other side was unaffectedly wiping from her eyes tears of compassion
evoked by his story of a scene which the narrator had that morning
witnessed at a certain 'rookery,' as he called it.
'O yes; my life has passed among such scenes,' said the man.
'Do you get used to them?' asked Mr. Foster.
'In a certain sense, of course I do; as a surgeon gets used to the
sight of pain, and a judge to the presence of criminals; but if you
mean do I leave off feeling them, do the individual cases become
merged in the general, no, certainly not. And, sir,' said the man, now
turning decidedly towards Mr. Foster, but propping his arm on his
knee, and covering with his hand the end of his nose and the upper
lip, already sufficiently hidden by his straight black moustache,
which shaded his teeth and mingled with the hair of the beard, 'mine
is a life which has its consolations as well as its duties. I see a
great deal of misery, vice, sickness, cruelty, and injustice, but I
see a great deal of charity too. I am made the channel through which
not a little of it flows. Are you familiar with Liverpool?'
'No,' said Mr. Foster; 'I never was here until yesterday, having
merely passed through when I came from New York, and I am going back
to town to-morrow morning, and should have gone to-night if I hadn't
over-stayed my time in sight-seeing, and run myself late for the
train.'
'Among the sights you have seen,' said the man with the spectacles,
'had the low quarters of Liverpool and their inhabitants any place?'
'O no,' said Mr. Foster. 'I had not time for anything of that
kind--just to get a look at the surface was all I have been able to
do; besides, one never sees anything of that sort in reality, I fancy,
if one goes loafing into it as a casual stranger; one must go round
with the police to get any real insight into the life of such places.'
'Do you think so?' said the man, in a remonstrating tone. 'Did you
ever try ta get a look into the lives of the poor and the dangerous
classes in the company of their friends, for they have friends, rather
than in that of their enemies?'
'No,' said Mr. Foster; 'the idea never occurred to me; indeed, I am
sorry to say, I am such a busy man, that I have hardly ever seen
anything of that sort, even at home. I am afraid I have been rather
remiss,' he continued, with a cordial frankness, which was one of his
pleasant peculiarities; 'too easily satisfied with giving a little
money now and then, which I can readily spare, and shielding my own
feelings from the sight of poverty, which we are all ready to talk
about and depute other people to relieve.'
At this point in the conversation the brief crossing came to an end,
and the two men stepped off the ferry-boat together. He whom we may
call for convenience the stranger scrupulously assisted the woman and
her cumbersome basket--an act of politeness which he accomplished with
not a little difficulty, as it appeared he also had a parcel to carry.
As the ferry touched the landing-stage, he stooped down and picked up
from under the bench, where he had placed it unnoticed by either of
his temporary companions, a good-sized package, rather neatly done up
in tarpaulin.
Mr. Foster was the first to step off the ferry, and he and the
stranger stood for a moment outside, while the latter relinquished her
basket to the woman, who took a civil leave of both, and then waited,
as if supposing that the sentence addressed to him was incomplete.
'I beg your pardon,' he said, as if expecting Mr. Foster to resume it;
'I thought you asked me a question.'
'I did not,' said Mr. Foster; 'but may I now ask you if your day's
work is done?'
The first smile which had appeared upon the face of the stranger
crossed it now, but it was instantly controlled, and had been almost
imperceptibly brief. 'O dear, no,' he replied, giving the parcel which
he had tucked under his arm a significant squeeze; 'I am on an errand
to one of the poorest places in all Liverpool--a rookery down near the
landing-stage--and I am taking some clothes there which have just been
given me for the purpose for a woman and two children, who are lying
on old sacks under a piece of old sail-cloth, because the mother has
no clothes in which she can go and beg for work. That was not a case
in which to wait for to-morrow, so I went and begged the clothes from
some people I know at Birkenhead, and I am going down there direct.'
They had walked on a few steps, but the stranger stood still now, as
if expecting--several places branching off here--the gentleman would
take leave of him. In that moment of waiting he had an indescribable
look of suspicion: the nostrils expanded and closed, the dark
complexion paled slightly, and the fingers of one hand clenched
themselves. It was only for a second, though; the next Mr. Foster
spoke:
'I suppose the place you're going to is quite a representative den?'
he said. 'Would you mind taking me with you--I should like to see it,
and I should like to help a little through you, who know these poor
people? I suppose it isn't very far? But of course it is not, down by
the landing-stage. I should hardly have thought there were dens of
that kind down there in the region of the great wharves and
warehouses.'
'That's just where they swarm,' said the stranger in a bold tone of
assertion, 'as you will see' (he stepped out briskly as he spoke). 'I
will show you several as we go down to the one my business lies in.'
The night had fallen rapidly; there was no moon, and though the stars
were coming out, there was a considerable drift of cloud, so that the
sky was gloomy. As the two men walked side by side along the lighted
streets, Mr. Foster found himself occasionally outstripping his
companion, with whom he was talking familiarly, not exclusively upon
topics which had previously engaged them, but with reference to the
aspect of Liverpool. On each occasion of the kind he apologised; on
the first the stranger complained of a slight lameness, which
prevented his keeping up with the alert step of the strange gentleman.
The slowness and the slouchingness of his gait certainly did not
decrease during their long walk; their progress was tediously slow;
and Mr. Foster would probably have been surprised at the lateness of
the hour, had it occurred to him to think about it.
The city was settling down into the silence produced by the general
evacuation of its business quarters before that walk commenced. By the
time the two turned on Water-street--along the great line of the
warehouses past which the sailor who had been Mr. Foster's
fellow-traveller from London on the previous day had taken his way the
night before--that part of Liverpool was as silent as the City of
London at midnight. It presented somewhat of a similar aspect, from a
picturesque point of view, of a great centre of wealth and business in
isolation and inaction. With this aspect of London Mr. Foster was well
acquainted. One of the sights and sensations he had procured for
himself some time before was 'the City'--properly so called--when
nobody is in it; and Liverpool was now affording him a similar study;
but the locality was entirely new, and very shortly Mr. Foster was
quite bewildered, and had lost all notion of where he was. Out there
lay the river, on the other side of the town, and the great buildings
stretched endlessly under the frowning sky, like a giant wall between
him and its life.
They had passed along innumerable immense blocks of building,
profoundly still, when they reached one where there was a kind of yard
surrounded on three sides with high walls, pierced with many windows.
The fore wall forming the front was considerably lower than the other
three, and in one corner was a door standing ajar, and kept from
closing by a stone; the aperture was very slight, and the probability
of any passer-by, previously unacquainted with the locality,
perceiving that the door was unfastened was exceedingly small. As the
two passed it, Mr. Foster, who was on the inner side, would not have
been the least aware of the fact, had not his companion stretched his
arm across him and pushed the door wide open.
'This is the rookery,' said the stranger, having checked Mr. Foster's
steps by the movement of his arm, and stopped with suddenness which
took him by surprise; 'clean and quiet as it looks outside, it swarms
like a London court.'
Mr. Foster stepped back on the pathway for a moment, while his
companion crossed the threshold, and expressed some astonishment at no
light being visible.
'They are all at the back,' replied the man, as he kicked away the
stone and held the door for Mr. Foster to pass through. He did so, and
it was shut behind him. 'Follow me,' said the stranger; 'the door into
the house is in an opposite corner, and the stairs are dark till you
get to the first landing--mind the step.'
Mr. Foster followed him in silence, and they passed through the narrow
door into the flagged passage, from which a steep and narrow
staircase, with an iron railing, led to a square landing at some
height above them. Still there was no light, except a feeble glimmer
emitted from the window above the landing. When they had mounted the
staircase so far, and could see each other's faces by the feeble
light, Mr. Foster remarked:
'There cannot be any rooks here tonight--there is no cawing.'
It was not, perhaps, any feeling so decided as distrust which lent a
peculiar tone to his voice, but it was certainly discomfort.
'I beg your pardon,' said the man; 'I didn't catch what you said,' and
he drew quite close to him on the narrow landing, from which a second
flight of steep stairs went up.
Mr. Foster repeated the sentence. 'There cannot be any rooks here
to-night--there is no cawing;' and had hardly uttered it when the man
pushed him into the angle of the wall on which the little ray of light
fell obliquely, and stabbed him to the heart! Stabbed him with a hand
so sure, with a thrust so steady, with a blade so keen, with an aim so
precise, that he only groaned and sank down dead when the hand which
pressed him back, the hilt of the weapon within it, was withdrawn.
Then the murderer, making one cautious step backward, which just
withdrew him beyond the reach of the outstretched feet, as the dead
man dropped into a heap in the corner, lighted an inch of wax candle
which he took from his pocket, and, standing well away from the blood
which soaked through the dead man's clothes, welling upwards from the
wound, but neither spurting nor dropping, for it was all caught in the
folds of the waistcoat and the shirt, stooped over him and closely
examined the features, without touching the body. The examination,
prolonged until the fixity of death had gripped every feature, and the
film of death had covered the wide-open eyes, was perfectly
satisfactory.
This ascertained, the murderer, standing at the full length of his arm
from the dead man, slowly and carefully withdrew the weapon, and
placing it on his victim's lap, proceeded to search the breast-pocket
from which he had seen a note-book peeping out. He found the
note-book, and, after a hasty glance at its contents, transferred it,
taking care that it received no stain of blood, to his own pocket; but
his rifling of the dead stopped there, with one trifling exception.
There was a handkerchief in the same pocket with the note-book, marked
in initials which did not correspond with Mr. Foster's name; this he
took possession of.
There was no hurry, there was no tremor, there was not a moment's
uncertainty, there was not an undecided movement throughout the whole
of these proceedings. This man and his victim might have been alone in
the universe for any trace of haste or fear of detection which he
displayed. His face was motionless, his lips were still, there was no
hurried breathing, no muttered words, as he minutely inspected his own
clothes and hands. His precautions had been eminently successful;
there was no stain on either.
The landing was narrow, the space was small, and for his next
operation the murderer required a little more room. Mr. Foster had
fallen completely in the angle of the wall, and when the body slipped
down, the feet projected almost to the top of the lower stair. The
murderer took hold of these feet and gently pushed them towards the
wall, so as to leave himself more space; he had deposited his bundle
on the second step of the upper stair, and he left it undisturbed
while he divested himself of every article of clothing except his
shirt, and folded them up into a neat roll, corresponding in size with
that enclosed in the tarpaulin covering.
This done, he took off his black wig, beard, and moustaches, placed
them in the centre of the roll, and proceeded to unpack the bundle. It
contained a suit of sailors clothes, including a blue shirt, a red
wig, and a red beard. These were very carefully constructed, and he
assumed them without any difficulty. He then put on the sailor's dress
complete, wrapped his white shirt round the clothes he had taken off,
and sitting down on the topmost step of the lower stair, with the dead
man's feet within a foot of his elbow, sewed up the second bundle in
the tarpaulin cover which had enclosed the first, by the aid of a
packing-needle and a piece of twine which he took with him ready in
his trousers pocket.
This done, he stood up and stood still for two clear minutes, mentally
recapitulating the precautions he had just taken, and comparing them
with the programme he had arranged. He had omitted nothing, he was
quite satisfied; so he put his bundle under his arm, blew out the
scrap of candle, and without a glance in the direction in which the
dead man lay in a mass rapidly becoming indistinguishable in the
darkness, almost groped his way down the stairs, passed out of the
door, crossed the yard noiselessly, and noiselessly pushing back the
bolt of the outer gate, emerged from it just as a policeman on his
beat had reached the second block of building above it, and was safe
not to observe him.
The sailor strolled leisurely down to the landing-stage. If any one
had met him, it would have been impossible to mistake his character of
houseless, companionless, foreign sailor; but no one did meet him, and
a few minutes' keen inspection of the lonely scene satisfied him that
the opportunity for the last precaution to be taken with success was
there. He advanced to the edge of the stage, and leaning against one
of the iron posts which supported the boundary chain, he slowly
dropped the parcel with its tarpaulin covering into the river. Even to
his impassiveness, to his almost incredible indifference of manner,
the finality of this act seemed to be a relief. He straightened his
figure, drew a deep breath, stretched his arms out to their full
length, and brought them down by his sides, and after standing for a
few minutes, with a straight look-out seawards, he turned away, and
keeping the side of the road which borders the landing-stage, avoiding
on this occasion the shade of the great warehouses, he took his way
towards the tramps' quarters where he had passed the previous night.
On his road he passed a trough provided for the watering of cattle on
their way from shipment. A lamp stood near, so that, though the
darkness of the night had increased, there was light on that spot. The
sailor took his cap off, pulled up the sleeves of his jersey, and
pumped a quantity of water over his head and face. This done, he once
more inspected the premises, and finding himself perfectly free from
any danger of observation, he took off his shoes and examined his feet
by the gaslight. It was as he supposed. There were traces of blood
upon them, but it had dried before he had put on his stockings, so
that no tell-tale marks had extended to them. He swung himself up on
the side of the trough, and carefully washed first one foot, then the
other; after which he sat swinging them in the air until they were
perfectly dry, when he resumed his shoes and stockings, and again went
on his way.
The lodging-house was even more crowded than it had been on the
previous night, and the proprietor was more drunk and less
accommodating. A couple of dirty sacks on the landing, outside the
wretched dormitory, was all that the sailor could procure by way of a
bed; and when he asked for a pillow, he was told that he might roll up
his clothes, and use them for that purpose--they hadn't got no
pillows--advice which was accompanied by a coarse jest at the
luxuriousness of his requirements, and which was overheard by one of
the men whose efforts at conversation the sailor had met, on the
previous night, with sullen moroseness.
'Pillow,' said this man; 'what do you want with a pillow? Where's that
'ere bundle you were so particular about last night? One would think
it was stuffed with diamonds, you was so fond of it.'
'I've been robbed of it,' replied the man, with an oath. 'Worse luck.'
'Well, you weren't robbed of it here,' said the proprietor of the
establishment.
'No, that you weren't, Tom Summers,' struck in his neighbour; 'we
ain't fine gentlemen here as are above being spoken to, but we're on
the square, and pals is safe with us.' With which testimony to the
virtues of the company, and protest against the surliness of the
new-comer, this gentleman turned on his bed of sacking and went to
sleep.
And so the night wore on in Liverpool, and the dawn brightened over
the fair ship with her happy and hopeful company out at sea, and over
the stark figure of the dead man who lay with wide-open eyes upon the
landing of the great warehouse, where many hurrying feet would shortly
be arrested beside him in horror at the fate of the unknown, unclaimed
stranger.