The Robbers.—The Drugged Wine.—Visions of the Mind Diseased.
The path over the house tops now continued for upwards of a quarter of
an hour, without presenting any very extraordinary difficulties to
Jacob Gray, and he was about to congratulate himself that really the
worst was past, when the rope suddenly slackened, and in a few moments
his guide was by his side.
“You can jump a bit, I suppose?” he said.
“Jump? Jump?”
“Yes, jump. What the devil do you repeat my words for?”
“I—am no greater jumper,” said Gray. “Where am I to jump?”
“Across this court.”
“Across a court? I cannot—I cannot.”
“You must.”
“I am lost—I am lost,” said Gray, wringing his hands, for the feat of
jumping across a court at the risk of a fall into the gulph below,
appeared to him to be totally impossible.
“Well,” cried the man, “if ever I came near such an out-and-out sneak
in the whole course of my life. Why you are afraid of what you know
nothing about. You’ve only got to jump off a parapet of one house in at
Bill’s attic window opposite.”
“Only,” said Gray, trembling exceedingly. “Do you call that easy?”
“Yes; and if you don’t jump it, I must just ease you of all you have
got in the money way on the roofs here, and leave you to your luck.”
Gray looked despairingly around him. There was no hope for him. He
stood in a drain between the two roofs, and he was as ignorant of the
locality of his position as it was possible to be. With a deep groan he
sunk grovelling at the feet of the man in whose power he was, and in
imploring accents he said,—
“Take me back, and let me run my chance of escape from the house you
live in. Oh, take me back, for I am unequal to the fearful task you
propose to me. I am, indeed—I should falter and fall—I know I should.
Then an awful death would be my lot—a death of pain and horror. Oh,
take me back—take me back!”
“I’ll see you d—d first,” cried the man. “Come on, or I’ll cut your
throat where you are. Come on, I say, you whining hound, come on, and
look at the jump you are so scared at afore you know anything about it.
Come on, I say. Oh, you won’t?”
“Spare me—spare me!”
The man took a large clasp knife from his pocket and opened it with his
teeth.
“I’ll go—I’ll go,” cried Gray. “Put up the knife—oh, God! Put up the
knife—any death but that!”
“Oh! Any death but that. Then it’s my opinion you’ve used such a little
article yourself. Speak!”
“I—I—have,” gasped Gray. “Take it out of my sight, I cannot bear to
look upon it.”
“Oh, you’re a tender-hearted piece of goods, certainly. Well, well, we
all have our little failings. You’ve had a precious fright about this
jump, and now I tell you it’s no jump at all.”
“Indeed?”
“No. These houses are so built that each story as they go up projects
outwards, so that I’m cursed if you couldn’t shake a fist with a pal
from some of the opposite attic windows. Come on, now, spooney, and
you’ll curse yourself for a fool for being afraid of nothing.”
“Is it indeed as you say,” muttered Gray, who still could not get over
his great terror, although he well knew that hundreds of houses in
narrow thoroughfares in London were so situated, that the attics had
scarcely a couple of yards of open space between them.
“Come on,” was the only reply, accompanied by a jerk of the rope, and
presently one of the roofs ceased upon one side, and turning an angle,
Gray, by the very dim light that was cast upwards from the street, saw
that he was opposite a row of dirty, squalid-looking attic windows,
from some of which lights were streaming, while others were obscured by
old clothes hung up in the inside. A very few steps further now brought
them to a part where, as the housebreaker had told Gray, the upper
story of the house on the top of which they were, projected
considerably across the narrow court; here Gray’s guide paused, and
pointing to an attic immediately opposite, he said,—
“There—that’s not much of a jump.”
“No, no,” said Gray. “I could do that.”
The distance was scarcely more than a long step from parapet to parapet.
The robber now slackened out some of the rope in order that by suddenly
jumping across the chasm he might not drag Gray from the slight
standing he had. Then, with the remainder of the rope on his arm, he
sprung across and alighted in safety in the gutter of the opposite
house.
“Jump now,” he said to Gray.
The distance was too insignificant to give occasion for fear, but still
Gray barely cleared it, and fell in the drain where the housebreaker
was standing.
“Well,” said the latter, “of all the awkward hands at business that
ever I saw you are the most awkward. It’s well for you there’s somebody
to look after you.”
He then undid a fastening on the outside of the attic window, and at
once jumped into the room, whither he was followed by Gray.
“You remain here,” he then said. “Don’t stir for your life, while I go
down stairs to speak to Bill.”
“You will not keep me here long?” said Gray.
“Not five minutes. Make no noise; but enjoy yourself as well as you
can.”
The man now left Gray to his meditations after carefully locking him in
the room, and these meditations were very far from an agreeable or
pleasant charae.
Gray’s first idea was that he would hide the money he had about him
with the exception of the amount he had averred to, namely, two hundred
pound, but then it naturally occurred to him how extremely improbable
it was that he should ever have an opportunity of repossessing himself
of it.
“Still,” he answered, with his usual selfish cunning; “still there may
be a remote, although a very remote chance; and, at all events, if I
never see it again myself, I may prevent these men from having it.”
Deep groans then burst from him, and he smote his breast as the thought
came across him that all the gold he had wrung from the guilty fear of
Learmont, and hoarded so carefully; might now be about to pass from him
in a mass never again to bless his sight.
“They will rob me—they will rob me,” he thought, and compared with
that, it appeared to him preferable to know that it was hidden from
them and undisposed of, although inaccessible to himself.
How and where to conceal it then became the object, and he felt about
in the dark to discover some loose board, or other means, of placing
his ill-gotten money out of sight—where, for all he knew, it might
remain until the coins of which it was composed, became blackened into
curiosities.
Such, however, was not to be the fate of Learmont’s gold, for while
Gray was still feeling about in the attic for a place of security in
which to deposit it, the door was suddenly opened, and his former
companion appeared, along with a shorter man, in whose countenance,
nature or education had taken especial pains to stamp villain!
“Here you are,” said the man who had guided Gray across the roofs.
“This is the gentleman, Bill. He was in an awkward fix, but now we mean
to do the thing handsomely by him, eh, Bill, don’t we?”
“I should think so,” replied Bill. “Your servant, sir.”
“Thank you,” said Gray. “Is the coast clear now? Can I go?”
“Lor’ bless you, no!” replied the man who was named Bill. “You must not
venture for an hour yet. There’s a watchman put at the end of this
court to apprehend any strange gentlemen going out of it; but in the
course of an hour we can dispose of him.”
“Indeed?” said Gray.
“Oh, yes. When Jim Binks comes home, he’ll go and be booked, as safe as
a gun.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Why, this is it,” continued Bill. “Jim Binks can make himself look so
uncommon suspicious a character, that if he likes he is sure to be
taken up, if there’s been any regular kick up about anything such as
your murder.”
Gray started.
“Well, well,” continued the ruffian, “damme, it was well done, you
needn’t now look as if you couldn’t help it.”
“I begin to understand you,” said Gray. “The person you name will allow
himself to be taken for me?”
“Exactly. They know him well at the watch-house, and will let him go
directly again, because it’s well known you are a stranger, as half a
dozen officers can swear to.”
“Then in the interval I can leave the house,” said Gray.
“You can. But Jim must be paid.”
“Oh, certainly. I have two hundred pounds, gentlemen; I hope you will
accept of one of them for your very great kindness, and leave me the
other.”
“What do you say to that, Bill?” cried the man who had come with Gray.
“I think it’s fair,” said the other.
“Well, then, that’s agreed.”
“Thank you, gentlemen,” said Gray, breathing a little more freely at
the idea of getting off with nearly all his money.
“Now then,” said Bill, “come down stairs, as all business matters are
settled, and have a bit of supper.”
“I shall be grateful for it,” said Gray, “for I have tasted nothing
to-day.”
He did not perceive the wink that passed between his new friends, but
at once followed them from the attic to the lower part of the crazy
tenement.
In an old wainscoted room on the first floor, there was a bright and
cheerful-looking fire, and such scanty articles of furniture as were
absolutely requisite for the personal accommodation of three or four
persons.
A table, on which were several plates, mugs, bottles, and other
evidences of some recent meal, stood close by the fire.
Bill, the proprietor of all this display of dirt and dinginess, took up
the poker from the fire-side, and beat it heavily against the floor,
observing at the same time—
“It’s a d—d sight better than a bell is a poker—the wire never breaks.”
“You speak like a oracle, Bill,” remarked the other man, throwing
himself into a seat, and giving Jacob Gray a pull towards him to undo
the rope that was still round his middle.
“What will you both drink?” cried Bill; “I have something of everything
here, I do believe.”
“Brandy for me,” cried the other man.
“I should prefer wine,” said Gray, “if you have some on hand.”
“I believe you—I have,” rejoined the host. “As fine a drop of wine as
ever you tasted in your life, on my honour.”
The door now opened, and an old wrinkled hag appeared, who, in not very
courteous terms, demanded,—
“What now?”
“What have you got to give a strange gentleman to eat?” said Bill.
“Nothing,” replied the woman.
“Then go and get something. Here’s a guinea. Be off with you, and do
you bring a bottle of our best claret for the gentleman. He prefers
wine, because it shouldn’t get in his head. Do you hear?”
The old woman fixed her keen, twinkling eye upon Gray, and then, with a
chuckle which quickly turned to a cough, she left the room on her
errand.
“We’ll settle all business after supper,” remarked Gray’s entertainer.
“Then I should advise you to lay by very snug for some days. You can’t
stay here, though.”
“No—no,” said Gray, who had quite as much objection to remaining there
as the thieves had to permitting him to do so. “I will find some place
of refuge without doubt.”
“Do you know the man whose head you so handsomely settled in the court?”
“No,” said Gray. “It was in self-defence. He would have taken me.”
“Self-defence be d—d,” remarked Gray’s first acquaintance. “He’s a good
riddance: his name was Vaughan, and a pest he was to all the family in
London.”
“Tell us what lay you had been on,” said Bill, “that made the runners
so hot after you?”
“Oh, only a—a robbery—a little robbery,” said Gray, with a sickly
attempt at a smile.
“Oh, that was all?”
“Yes; a robbery of two hundred pounds, of which you are to have one,
you know, and to leave me the other.”
“That’s quite agreed.”
The door was now again opened, and the old woman appeared with a tray
containing sundry viands from neighbouring shops dealing in
ready-cooked victuals. Wine and brandy likewise formed a part of her
burthen, and in a very few moments the table was spread, and Gray, who
really, now that he felt himself comparatively safe, began to be
tormented by the pangs of hunger, fell to with a vigorous appetite,
upon a cold tongue of ample dimensions.
“How do you like it?” said Bill, with a wink to his comrade.
“’Tis excellent,” replied Gray, glancing towards the bottles.
“You will take wine now?”
“If you please.”
A bottle was uncorked, and Gray relished the wine very much, along with
the other items of his repast.
The confederates drank small quantities of brandy from another bottle,
and encouraged Gray by never allowing his glass to be empty to make
great progress with the wine.
Glass after glass he drank with a kind of recklessness foreign to his
nature, but the liquor was drugged, and the very first draught had made
a confusion in the intellect of Jacob Gray. Up to his brain the fumes
mounted, awakening a desire still for more, and lighting up his eyes
with a strange wild fire.
His two companions now nodded and winked at each other openly, for
Jacob Gray was too far gone in intoxication to heed them.
“He’ll do,” remarked Bill in a whisper.
“Of course,” said the other, “you may depend he has something worth
while about him.”
“No doubt—no doubt.”
“Gentlemen—gentlemen,” said Gray, pouring himself out another glass,
“here’s to—to—our better—ac—acquaintance.”
“Hurrah!” cried Bill, “that’s yer sort.”
“And—confusion to Andrew Britton,” added Gray, dealing the table a
heavy blow with his fist. “Confusion, death, and damnation to Andrew
Britton.”
“Bravo! Bravo!”
“You’ll take a hundred. Mind only a hundred. Don’t rob me—no—no, don’t
rob me. It’s been too hard to get, with the—the curse of blood clinging
to it. The curse of blood.”
“Oh, that’s it, old fellow,” cried Bill.
“She—she to betray me,” muttered Gray “she of all others; I might have
killed her—I will kill her. Some slow and horrible death shall be hers.
I’ll hack your flesh from your bones, Ada—I will—I will—one word and
you die. I must shoot him—he seeks my life.”
“Here’s a beauty,” remarked Bill, to his comrade, who had very calmly
lighted a fire, and sat listening to Gray’s revelations with all the
composure in the world, as if he had merely been present at some
ordinary dramatic entertainment.
“Three thousand pounds would be enough,” said Gray, tossing off another
bumper of the drugged wine, and smashing the glass with the vehemence
with which he replaced it on the table. “Three thousand. Yes, yes;
enough to lead a life of—of riot somewhere else. Not here—not here.
Then I should read of his execution, or both their executions, and—when
I was dull, I would bring out the newspaper that had the account, and
I’d read it over and over again. I’ll wash my hands in her blood. I’ll
smash her face till—till there’s not a lineament remains to horrify me
by reminding me of her.”
“’Pon my soul,” remarked Bill, “we have hit on an out-and-outer.”
“Rather,” said the other, without taking the pipe from his mouth.
“Don’t look at me!” suddenly cried Gray, springing to his feet. “Don’t
glare at me with your stony eyes! Clear away—clear away. Do you want to
stop my breath—I—I—must go—go—from here—there—there; help—save me. What
do you do here—one—two—three. Why do you point at me? You would have
your deaths. You—you—why do you not remain and rot in the Old Smithy?
Save me from him. His wounds are bleeding still. Will the damp earth
never soak up all the blood? You—you I shot. Don’t grin at me.
Away—away—I am going mad—mad—Ada—Ada—Ada—pray—pray for me!”
He reeled around twice, and fell upon the floor with a deep groan.