through a bit of a squall.”
“You know, then?” said Martin.
“Know! Of course I know. When my watch was over, somewhere about four
bells, and I came below dead-beat and turned in, d’you think I could get
any sleep? Not a wink, believe me. There was my old woman wide-awake,
and bursting with the news.
“‘Gollop,’ says she, ‘there’s rogues and rascals in the world.’ That
being no news at all, I just gave a grunt and began to snore. ‘Listen to
me,’ says she, ‘and don’t pretend.’ What you can’t help, put up with. So
I listened, always ready to oblige, and out it came, like a flood over a
weir.
“I own I dozed one or twice afore she was well under way, but I was fair
shook up when she’d got her canvas full spread. You take my meaning?
I’ve fought with a cutlass, and I’ve knocked down a swabber with a
marline-spike, but never in my born days have I hit a man with an oar;
there’s something uncommon about that, and as a constable I took note of
it.
“Foreign ways, to be sure. Them fellows in the boat must have been some
of the crew of that Portugal ship.”
“Not the big-nosed man with the black beard,” said Martin. “I’m sure he
was an Englishman.”
“Maybe, but I ask you, what was he doing along with those foreigners?
And what’s his ploy with Slocum?”
“Ay, and why come along this very street?” Susan put in.
“There you go!” said Dick. “I’ve seen many a big nose, also red, _and_
black beards, likewise many tabby cats. You can’t tell one from t’other
unless you’ve studied ’em. I see a tabby in one place; you see one in
another; that don’t make ’em the same.”
“What’s cats got to do with it?” protested Susan.
“Nothing,” said Dick. “All I say is, if I took up a man just because
he’d a big red nose and a black beard the magistrates would call me a
fool, and belike I’d have to pay damages, and then where’d you be?”
“Then why talk about cats?” said Susan. “And tabbies! Now if you’d said
black cats——”
“Drat the cats!” cried the constable. “You’ll go on about ’em till
you’re tired, I suppose. Martin, what I say is, keep your weather-eye
open, and if so be as you spy that black-haired fellow again, keep him
in sight, my lad, and inform an officer of the law.”
A tapping was heard on the banisters at the head of the stairs.
“There’s Mounseer, Lucy,” said Susan, “waiting to take you to school.”
The little girl sprang up; she liked her morning walk with the old
Frenchman. She ran up the stairs, but returned in a few moments.
“Mounseer says will you please lend him a hammer and chisel,” she said.
“Willing, and anything else,” said Gollop. “But ask him if I can do the
hammering for him. I’ve been reckoned a handy man in my time; you have
to turn your hand to any odd job at sea.”
The girl gave the message and returned.
“Mounseer says it’s a trifle, and he won’t trouble you!”
“Very well then; take him the things, and welcome.”
The Frenchman laid the tools on a chair in his room, then locked the
door and started with Lucy for the half-mile walk to her school.
Soon afterwards Gollop and Martin went out together, the former to take
his morning draught with his cronies, the latter to make another effort
to find work.
In his pocket he carried some bread and cheese, so that he need not come
home for the mid-day meal.
All through the hot summer day he wandered about, seeking employment. In
the evening he returned and reported that he had again met with no
success.
“Never mind,” said Susan. “Things will take a turn. Now, just run
upstairs and ask Mounseer for that hammer. I want it to knock some nails
in Lucy’s cupboard, so as she can hang up her things tidy. Tell him he
shall have it back if he hasn’t done with it, but he’s been banging
nearly all day, so I dare say he has.”
On reaching the Frenchman’s door Martin saw that a staple had been
fitted to one of the side joists, evidently to receive a padlock. From
within the room came the sound of knocking. He tapped on the door; the
sound ceased and Mounseer asked:
“Who is there?”
“It’s me, sir,” said Martin.
“Ah, you, my young friend. Wait but one little moment.”
The bolts were drawn inside, the door was opened, and there stood
Mounseer in his shirt-sleeves, chisel in hand. Martin gave his message.
“But yes; assuredly: I ask pardon for keeping it so long. But you see,
one must be careful. My lock was broken by that villain; therefore I
must make other defences.”
Martin noticed that an iron socket for a bar was fitted to the inside of
the door, and the bar itself, a stout baulk of wood, was leaning against
the wall.
“Pouf! It is hot,” the Frenchman went on, “though I take off my coat and
open the window. A little rest will be agreeable. But I ask for the
hammer again, until I finish; I wish to finish this night.”
Promising to bring the hammer back in a few minutes Martin went down to
the basement. But it was more than half an hour later, and dusk was
already falling, before he was able to return: Susan’s job had taken
longer than he had expected.
This time there was no answer to his tap on Mounseer’s door, nor any
sound from within. He waited awhile, then tapped again. A sleepy voice
asked who was there, and when Martin was at last admitted, the old
gentleman apologised for the delay.
“It is the terrible heat,” he said, spreading out his hands. “I fall
asleep; I am old, and the labour fatigues me. How I would like to be
young, like you! Labour is light for the young.”
“But I can’t get any work, sir,” said Martin.
“Courage, my young friend. It will come. Seat yourself, and tell me
where you go to-day; I am very much interested.”
Sitting on a chair facing the open window, Martin began to relate his
wanderings of the day, while the Frenchman took the hammer and chisel
and worked away at the bar of wood by the light of a candle.
While Martin was speaking he fancied he saw something move just outside
the window. Though somewhat startled, he had the presence of mind to go
on with his story, and a few moments afterwards was astonished to see a
hat appear above the edge of the window-sill, at a corner.
It rose slowly; the dim light of the candle at the farther end of the
room showed him a man’s face—a face seamed with a scar across the
temple. So great was his surprise at recognising one of the men who had
tried to steal his parcel that he jumped up with a sudden cry.
Instantly the face disappeared, and by the time Martin and the Frenchman
reached the window the man was half-way down the gutter-pipe up which he
had climbed.
With amazing quickness Mounseer seized a three-legged stool and hurled
it down. It missed the man by an inch or two, and fell with a crash upon
the ground. In another second the man dropped beside it and bolted
across the open space into the darkness.
“What is the matter?” asked a voice from above.
Looking up, Martin saw Mr. Seymour, the occupant of the upper floor,
leaning over his window-sill.
“A matter of no consequence,” said the Frenchman, drawing Martin back
into the room. “I must close the shutters,” he went on, “though it will
be very hot. But I do not like the curious people.”
“That face belonged to one of the men who tried to rob me,” said Martin.
“It is strange he should have come to the house where I live, for I’ve
nothing worth stealing here. I’ll describe him to Gollop, and he’ll
circulate the description, and someone will arrest the fellow.”
“Not for me, my friend,” said the Frenchman. “I, a stranger, would not
give trouble. And indeed my best protection is not in the Law, but in a
few stout bolts and my lifelong friend yonder.”
He pointed to his rapier, hanging on the wall.
It was clear to Martin that the Frenchman wished to be alone, so he said
Good-night and went downstairs. On the way he was struck by a curious
circumstance. According to Susan Gollop, Mounseer had been hammering all
day; why then was there so little sign of it? All that he had done would
have been the work of only an hour or two. But perhaps the old gentleman
was not expert with tools.
CHAPTER THE NINTH
AN ADVENTURE IN PUDDING LANE
Next morning, when the time came for Lucy to start for school, the
Frenchman said that he felt a little indisposed, and would not venture
out in the heat.
“I’ll take her,” said Martin. “But I can’t promise to bring her back,
because I’m going in search of work again, and I don’t know where I’ll
be when school is over.”
“Don’t you worry, my lad,” said Susan. “Dick will be home then, and he
can fetch the child for once. And I hope you’ll get a job to-day, for it
makes a difference not having your few shillings at the weekend.”
When he had left his sister at the door of the dame’s school, Martin
stood for a minute or two undecided as to the way he would go in his
hunt for work.
He was feeling rather disheartened. It was the first time Susan Gollop
had said a word to hint that he was a burden to her, and in his pride he
was determined that she should never have another occasion for any
remark of the sort.
Up to the present his applications for a job had been made at the larger
places of business—establishments that would rank equal with Mr.
Greatorex’s shop in Cheapside. But it was no time to pick and choose; he
would take the meanest job that offered itself, no matter what it was.
It occurred to him that he might have better success if he crossed the
river and made inquiries at the Hop Market in Southwark. In the course
of his walk towards London Bridge he was crossing Pudding Lane, a narrow
street near Billingsgate, when he was almost thrown down by the sudden
impact of a strange figure that darted out of a baker’s shop at the
corner.
“Steady!” he cried, putting up his hands to protect himself.
The figure recoiled, then without a word of excuse or explanation dashed
down the lane. Martin laughed; he had never seen a more comical object
than this boy, a little bigger than himself, who was covered with flour,
and whose head was almost concealed in a large mass of dough.
His amusement was increased when he saw a second figure issue from the
shop—the figure of a short, stout man, he too cased in dough and flour
from head to foot. The baker set off at a toddling scamper after the
boy, their course marked on the cobblestones with a white trail.
In a few moments the pursuer recognised that his chase was hopeless. The
boy, indeed, had turned the corner and was out of sight by the time his
master had run half a dozen paces.
“The young villain!” cried the man, stopping short and shaking his fist
in the direction of the vanished fugitive.
He turned back towards the shop, picking at the dough that clung to his
hair and beard, spluttering and muttering curses the while. As he was
passing Martin a mass of the loosened dough fell over his eyes, and for
a moment he tottered like a blind man.
Martin sprang to his side, held him steady, and helped him to rid
himself of some of the dough, which hung in long clammy strips about his
face, like the curls of a full-bottomed wig.
“Ugh! Ugh!” gasped the baker. “The insolent young ruffian! Thank you!
Thank you! My hair is short, or—— The young viper! ’Tis a mercy none
of the neighbours have seen my plight. Quick, boy; lead me. I can
scarcely see my own shop door!”
Martin took him by the arm and led him the few paces to his shop. On the
sign hanging above the door were the words: “Faryner, Baker to His
Majesty the King.”
Within the shop Martin stayed to give further assistance to the angry
baker, who intermingled abuse of the runaway boy with explanations, half
to himself, and half to Martin.
“The whelp!” he exclaimed. “He comes late, and when I tax him, is saucy,
scandalously saucy. ’Twould try the patience of a saint, and I’m no
saint. Must silence his chattering tongue. Up with a pan of dough; dab
it on the rascal’s head.
“The impudence of the knave! What does he do but snatch up another pan
and empty it over me—me, a master baker, baker to the King, contractor
to the Admiralty, purveyor to half the nobility and gentry. Ay, and
flings a bag of flour at me. What do you think of that? What is the
world coming to?”
Martin did not venture to say what he thought.
“Well, he’ll never darken my doors again, that’s certain. And that
reminds me. There’s his basket—the loaves ought to have been delivered
an hour ago. I was already one boy short, and the rascal knew it, and
yet he came late. I shall lose some of my best customers.”
The greater part of the sticky mass had now been plucked from the
baker’s head. He looked ruefully at the basket of loaves in a corner of
the shop, scratched his head, became conscious that there were still
some fragments of dough adhering to his short-clipped hair, and burst
out again into violent denunciation of his errand boy.
On the impulse of the moment Martin spoke up.
“I’ll take the basket. I’m out of a job.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the baker, looking at him keenly as if he was only just
aware of him. “Who are you?”
“My name’s Martin Leake.”
“Are you honest?”
“Won’t you try me?”
“That’s not a bad answer. You’ve done me a service and I like the look
of you. I’ll try you. Here’s a list of the customers these loaves are to
be delivered to. Set off at once. Nay, wait! I don’t like changes. If I
try you, and you satisfy me, I shall expect you to stick to the job.
Five shillings a week and a loaf a day. That’s my wages.”
“I’ll be glad to earn that to begin with,” said Martin.
“Then that’s a bargain. Don’t loiter.”
Martin took the basket on his arm, and as he went out he heard the baker
mutter:
“How shall I get rid of the rest of this plaguey dough? The young
ruffian!”
Scanning the list of customers given him, Martin was interested to find
at the bottom the name of Mr. Slocum, at the goldsmith’s shop in
Cheapside. The idea of meeting his old master was not at all pleasant,
but he reflected that if he went to the back entrance, from a yard
leading out of Bow Lane, he would probably avoid such a meeting, and see
only the housekeeper or the cook, who had both been on friendly terms
with him.
“I’m glad it’s the last on the list,” he thought. “But I wish I hadn’t
to go there at all. What strange fate is always bringing me into contact
with old Slocum? I don’t like it. There’s something mysterious about
it.”
And it was with a strange feeling of misgiving that he trudged on with
his heavy load of bread.
CHAPTER THE TENTH
A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR
Martin’s first hour’s experience as baker’s boy was by no means
pleasant. Mr. Faryner’s customers had been kept waiting for their
morning rolls and loaves, and at nearly every house where Martin called
he was received with dark looks and cutting words.
He took it all in good part, explained that he was a new boy, and
promised to be earlier on the morrow. As the basket became lighter he
grew more cheerful, and by the time he reached Bow Lane he had almost
forgotten the forebodings with which he had started.
Turning into the yard by which he would reach the back entrance to Mr.
Slocum’s house he suddenly collided with a boy coming in the opposite
direction. He was turning round; the basket was jerked off his arm, and
the two loaves it contained rolled out on the cobblestones.
“Now, clumsy, why don’t you look where you are going?” said a
well-remembered voice.
Martin had already recognised his old opponent, the apprentice through
whom he had been dismissed. He was himself recognised before he could
say a word in reply, and for a moment or two the boys stared at each
other. Then the apprentice laughed.
“Dash my eyes!” he said. “Do I see Martin Leake?”
Without waiting for an answer he swooped on the loaves, picked them up,
rubbed the dust off on his breeches, and rushed back into the open
doorway of the house.
“Sally, here’s Martin Leake turned baker’s boy,” Martin heard him shout.
In a few seconds he came out again followed by the cook with the loaves
in her hands. Martin had picked up his basket, and was standing just
outside the door.
“Well I never!” exclaimed the cook, who had always been well disposed
towards Martin. “So you are working for Faryner, are you? I was
wondering what had come to the boy. Mr. Slocum is in a towering rage
because he’s been kept waiting for his breakfast. I’ll just send up the
bread, then I’ll come back, Master Hopton; mind you that.”
She retreated into the house, and the boys were left at the door. They
stood looking at each other awkwardly. Martin bore Hopton no malice; on
the other hand he could not feel friendly towards him, and had not the
cook asked him to remain he would have walked away.
“Slocum’s a terror,” said the apprentice suddenly.
Martin did not reply.
“Sent me out to buy a loaf,” Hopton went on. “You saved me a journey.”
This did not appear to call for an answer. There was silence again for a
few moments.
“I say, I’m sorry I got you turned out,” said Hopton, awkwardly.
“You needn’t be,” said Martin, surprised. “I wouldn’t come back again
for anything.”
“I don’t blame you. I’m sick of Slocum and his tempers. Does Faryner pay
you well?”
“Now what’s that to do with you, Master Hopton?” said the cook,
returning. “Just you run back to the shop, or you’ll get into trouble.”
“All right, Sally,” said the apprentice, grinning. He gave Martin a
friendly wink as he turned into the house.
“So you have made up your quarrels,” said the cook.
“I’m not sure that we have,” replied Martin, with a smile. “But he’s
very friendly. I wonder why?”
“He wishes he were you, I daresay, instead of being bound to Mr. Slocum
for seven years. To Mr. Slocum, says I, though ’tis really to Mr.
Greatorex. Ah! I wish the old master had never left the City. What
things are coming to I don’t know. Mr. Slocum’s cursing and cuffing
those apprentices from morning till night, and you’re lucky to be out of
it.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“Goodness alone knows! It’s my belief he has something on his mind,
but—— There he is, bawling for me. Don’t let him see you. Coming, sir,
coming!”
Martin hurried away, feeling more than ever glad that he was no longer
in Mr. Slocum’s service, and wondering whether his old employer’s ill
temper was connected in any way with his mysterious doings on the
riverside.
Another round, in a different part of the city, occupied part of the
afternoon, and Martin had to clean out the shop before he left for home.
Again it had been a very hot day, and he was more tired than he had ever
been before; so tired, indeed, that he was not inclined to talk about
his new job.
“’Tis a come-down, to be sure, for a master mariner’s son,” said Dick
Gollop; “but what you can’t help, make the best of.”
“Now don’t you go for to dishearten the lad, with your come-downs,” said
Susan. “’Tis honest and useful, and we shan’t have to buy so much
bread.”
Weary though he was, Martin that night found it impossible to sleep. His
room was small and felt like an oven, though he had opened the window
and the door, and thrown off all the bedclothes.
The senses of a sleepless person are extraordinarily acute, and as the
hours dragged on Martin became annoyed at the regular snores of Susan
Gollop in the room beyond. Dick happened to be out on night duty again.
For a long time the only other sounds Martin heard were the footsteps of
Mr. Seymour as he went along the passage above and up the stairs to his
room.
“He’s very late home,” thought Martin.
He heard the lodger shut his door; then all was silent again until a new
sound, outside his window, caught his ear. It was a slight thud, such as
would be made by a small object falling on the ground, and he might
hardly have noticed it had not recent events made him heedful and
suspicious.
Rising from his bed he tiptoed on bare feet to the window and looked
out, taking care to keep out of sight himself. It was a starry night,
and he saw a dark patch against the sky—the form of a man standing on
the square of waste ground above the basement level.
His thoughts flew to the man who had climbed the gutter pipe to the old
Frenchman’s room, and his heart began to beat more quickly. Then he
heard whispering voices. The man was evidently talking to someone on one
of the upper floors. Only a few words were spoken, then the man walked
quickly away.
Martin was relieved; it seemed that there was to be no further attack on
the Frenchman’s room. But he was also puzzled. Who was the man? Why
should anyone come in the dead of night to the back of the house and
talk to one of the inmates? And to whom had he spoken? It must be either
Mounseer or Mr. Seymour.
Still listening and watching, Martin suddenly heard the stairs creak.
More than ever puzzled, and a little alarmed, he stole out into the
passage. There were now footsteps in the hall above. He crept up the
basement stairs on hands and knees, and noticed a dim flickering light
upon the wall.
At the top of the staircase he bent low and peeped round. A smoky candle
was guttering on the hall floor. The front door was partly open, and
Martin saw the back of a man in nightcap and dressing-gown, talking to
someone outside.
“Mr. Seymour!” said Martin to himself. “It’s too tall for Mounseer.”
“The sloop is in the river,” said a husky voice. “It’s too risky. You
had better take it.”
“If I must, I must!” replied Mr. Seymour, in a low tone.
He opened the door a little farther. Martin felt strangely excited. A
mysterious visitor to Mr. Seymour; a sloop in the river; some risky
enterprise; something that Mr. Seymour was to take; all these
circumstances sharpened his curiosity and caused him to strain eyes and
ears.
The two men between them carried a heavy object into the hall. Martin
could not see what it was, nor could he see the features of the visitor.
Mr. Seymour was between them and the light.
“Remember you’ll have to account to me,” said the stranger in the same
low, husky tone.
“If you don’t trust me,” replied Mr. Seymour impatiently, “take it
away!”
“Trust you—oh, yes!” was the answer, with a slight gurgle of laughter.
“But I thought I might as well remind you. That’s all. Good-night!”
He turned his back and went out into the darkness, Mr. Seymour gently
closing the door behind him. And then Martin saw that the object on the
floor was a square box, brass-bound at the corners.
Mr. Seymour shot the bolt without noise, shouldered the box, which
appeared to be of considerable weight, then looked at the candle.
“Confound it!” he muttered, frowning.
Martin guessed that he was annoyed because, laden with the box, he could
not stoop to lift the candle.
Slowly, taking every step cautiously, he carried the box up the first
staircase, across the landing, and then up the staircase to his own
room. In a minute he returned, picked up the candle, and ascended once
more.
Martin’s heart was thumping as he crept down to his room again, and it
was almost morning before he at last fell asleep.
CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH
MR. SLOCUM AGAIN
Having to be early at his new job, Martin was hurried in the morning.
When he left after a quick breakfast, Dick Gollop was still a-bed; he
had only returned from his night duty about five o’clock. So Martin had
no opportunity of telling the constable of the strange incident he had
witnessed in the night, and he refrained from mentioning it to the
others for fear of alarming them.
He was still greatly puzzled, and his mind was full of the matter as he
walked to Mr. Faryner’s shop in Pudding Lane. There was no reason why
Mr. Seymour should not have a box delivered to him. But why had the
messenger come secretly by night? What was the danger? And what was the
meaning of the mysterious reference to the sloop in the river?
These questions were driven from his thoughts for a time by his work.
Mr. Faryner praised him for coming punctually, gave him a few odd jobs
to do, and then sent him out on the morning round.
In due course he arrived at the goldsmith’s house, and once more made
his way to the back entrance. Leaving his basket just inside the door,
he took the four loaves intended for Mr. Slocum’s household up the
stairs to the kitchen on the first floor.
Passing the hall landing, he noticed that the door of a small room which
was usually kept locked now stood ajar. The fact did not arouse any
particular curiosity, and he went on to the kitchen and handed the bread
to the friendly cook.
“I’m glad you are early,” she said, “though it wouldn’t have mattered so
much this morning. The master isn’t up yet. He was out late last night,
and I warrant will be in a rare tantrum when he wakes. And how do you
like your new work?”
“Better when I’ve finished than when I begin,” replied Martin, smiling.
“The basket is very heavy at the start, and it makes me very tired this
hot weather.”