IN THE TUBULAR ROOM
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Blind Jake, shaking his
huge head.
He sat huddled up at one side of the tubular room, and his remarks
were addressed to a wretched-looking woman who sat on the other side,
her arms folded on her knees, her head bent in dejection. She was
miserably clad; her hanging hair was streaked with gray, and her hands
and face were grimy.
The room itself could hardly be described as a room. It was like an
enlarged gas main. The floor was littered with fragments of rubble and
broken concrete. One end was a steel door, just large enough for a
medium-sized person to squeeze through, and the other was a jagged
hole torn in the steel wall, and disclosing beyond a black void which,
in the light of the candle, was also littered with rubbish.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” reproved Blind Jake. “Here are
They doing all They can for ye, ye ugly old devil, and ye’re whining
and snarling! Like a pup who’s had his tail bit!”
The woman moaned and said something.
“You’d have something to snivel about if I had my way,” said Blind
Jake. “Don’t we feed ye? Didn’t we give ye a good bed to lie on, till
that dog came nosing about?”
“I want to go away,” said the woman. “You’re killing me here.”
“Not yet,” said Blind Jake with a chuckle. “Maybe they’ll want ye
killed, and then ye’ll be killed, sure.”
“I want to go out of this horrible place,” cried the woman with a sob.
“Why am I here?”
“Do ye want to be down with the rats?” growled Blind Jake. “Didn’t ye
squeak and squeal when I took ye down in the long passage under the
street, because the little fellows squeaked at you? And now ye’re safe
and sound where a rat couldn’t get ye, and to-morrow you’re going into
a nice house to live, with fine sheets on your bed. You ungrateful old
devil!”
She raised her woebegone face and looked at the blind man curiously.
“You talk about ’em as though they were gods,” she said. “One of these
days they’ll betray you----”
“Shut up!” snapped the man. “You don’t know ’em! What have they done
for me? They’ve given me a lovely life--all the money I want,
everything I can eat and drink. They gave me a young wife,” he
chuckled, but the chuckle ended with a hideous distortion of face.
“I’ll have her yet; she nearly killed me, that wench.”
“Who was she?” asked the woman.
“Never ye mind. Nobody ye know,” said Jake, but did not seem
disinclined to talk on the matter. “A young, white, sleek girl she
was,” he said. “They wanted her because she’s police, too.”
She was silent for so long that he leant forward and touched her with
his big hand.
“You’re not having a fit, are ye?” he said with a note of anxiety.
“Not another one of them fits? We can’t always bring a doctor. The
next time I’ll rouse ye,” he said menacingly. “I’ll make ye wake.” He
shook her savagely.
“I’m awake, I’m awake,” she said, terrified. “Please don’t do that;
you will break my arm.”
“Well, behave yourself,” he grumbled, and then began to crawl slowly
toward the farther end of the tubular room. Even the woman, though she
was far from tall, could not have stood upright in that cramped space.
It was wonderful how a man so big could manœuvre himself through the
jagged hole in the steel and crawl into the space beyond. She heard
him tossing bricks about and enlarging the cavity at which he had been
working all the day. She wondered where she was, for she had been a
sick woman when she had been dragged into that terrible chamber, and
had no recollection of how she had come in. Only she knew that people
were searching for her, and that the awful forces which now held her
prisoner were determined that she should not be found. She had been
hidden in the depths of the earth, in hideous places alive with
terrifying life, and this at least was better.
When he came back she said:
“Mr. Stuart would give you a lot of money if you took me to him.”
He chuckled.
“Ye’ve told me that a hundred times, ye fool!” he said, and mimicked
her: “‘If you take me to Mr. Stuart he’ll give ye a lot of money!’ A
lot of money he’ll give me!”
“I nursed his children,” she wailed, “and his poor wife. And when I
got married he gave me a beautiful wedding ring.”
“Aw, shut up!” snarled the man. “Haven’t ye got anything more to talk
about? A hundred million times ye’ve told me about nursing his babies
and your blasted wedding ring!”
“When I told him about Clarissa, he said he’d give me a thousand
pounds,” whispered the woman. “I was that surprised to see him I
nearly fell down!”
Blind Jake ignored her. He had heard this story before, and it had
lost all its novelty.
“He never knew about the twins, and thought he had no children alive.”
“If ye hadn’t been a hook or a soak, y’ could have told him where she
was; but don’t worry yer head: They’ve found her. A fine lady she is,
with plenty of money! I heard ’em say that she was a fine lady with
plenty of money,” he added simply.
His faith in these mysterious employers of his knew no bounds.
“I was fond of my drop,” confessed the half-witted woman, “and they
sent me to prison for nothing at all. And the home was awful!”
Suddenly Blind Jake lurched forward and dropped his hands upon her
shoulders. She opened her mouth to scream, but he put his face close
to hers.
“If y’ squeal ye’re dead, my lady! Be quiet!”
His sensitive ears had caught the sound of footsteps on the floor
above, though they were so completely deadened that none but a blind
man would have heard them. He crept closer to her side, put one great
arm around her shoulder, the other he held just in front of her face.
“If y’ squeal, ye’re dead,” he said again, and then somebody knocked
at the little door at the end of the chamber and the voice of Larry
Holt demanded:
“Is there anybody here?”