of Limehouse. He was the son of a Japanese waif who, after having been
a housebreaker in Tokio, took to the sea because his own country sought
to punish him for lawlessness. Before he had been a housebreaker this
father had been a fireman. The change from the one profession to the
other is not so strange as it might appear. The Japanese fire brigades
are famed for their acrobatic skill. They can climb to dizzy heights,
bearing ladders on their shoulders; they can leap from one point to
another with a daring that can only be acquired after long practice.
This man had become a burglar owing to the temptation offered after the
Tokio earthquake some years ago.
He joined the _Gorotsuki_, the thieves' brotherhood. This organisation
gave endless trouble to the authorities of Tokio and Yokohama and other
cities. These men disdained to use gloves, jemmies, or flashlamps. They
depended on their swift action and their daring. Their movements were
like lightning. Many of these men ultimately came to England. Jimmy
Sockem's father was among them.
When this individual came to England he mated with a woman of the
East End. When they presented the world with a son they added another
criminal to the population. This son, who inherited peculiarities
from both parents, in fact owed them nothing socially valuable save
life. He seemed to duplicate his father in everything--certainly in
wickedness. He lived about the docks, he climbed rigging, he stole from
seamen as well as from his own companions. None could compete with him
in ability. His inventiveness was as great as his sense of honesty
was deficient. He could swarm up water-pipes like a monkey, and he
challenged the seamen of sailing-ships to go to the top of the masts
before he was in his teens. Fortunately--or unfortunately--he was never
caught, or he might have been sent to Borstal.
In this youth a psychologist would have observed the meeting of the
Orient and the Occident. He had never been to Japan, yet he was more
Japanese than English in habit. Once or twice he went voyages in
sailing-ships to the European countries, but he objected to the sea
because he was confined to shipboard. He ultimately declined any offer
to leave London. He became the first "cat" burglar.
His mind was a moral chaos. In this he resembled his father, who died
in a brawl; and he revered his father's memory with Japanese tenacity.
His father had found no refuge in his own land, and had never adapted
himself to the point of view of the West, being incapable of such
adjustment. He had objected to all law because it was a restraint. The
only law he bowed to was the law of the jungle. The result was that his
son, Jimmy, was not so much his son as he was a cub.
Strangely enough, the West that was in Jimmy Sockem aided him to
outrage its ideas of conduct. The English strain in him struggled
vaguely in his youth to assert itself above the abnormalities of the
old _inkyo_ tradition, but it was smothered because the latter were the
stronger. The mind-substances of his parents could not blend in him.
They warred.
Because of his mixed blood he became the object of indiscriminate
charity administered by emotional people who visited Limehouse. He was
invited to the West End houses, and there exhibited as an example of
race blending. As a boy he did not object to this; he was rather proud
of it. But as he grew he saw the gulf between the East End and the West
End. He could not reason things which, to him, were unreasonable. He
flung a bridge across the gulf with Eastern fixity of purpose. As a
burglar he might take what he could never otherwise handle. He left the
shipyards and became a night marauder. The boy had become a man.
The name which his father handed down to him was lost in the tempest
of his activities. That name was Sok-Emm; but, with that remarkable
facility which the East End possesses for making a nick-name proclaim
a man's character, his companions had extracted its foreign meaning
and had endowed it with a grim, local significance. Sok-Emm to them
was nothing. Sockem was everything. The word preserved his pitiless
savagery. His career was marked with episodes of jungle ferocity.
Physically he was an engine of destruction. Mentally he was cunning as
a leopard. He had been guilty of maiming, and was suspected of murder.
But he had brought into human life that quality of elusiveness, that
protective resemblance to surroundings, which makes it difficult to
tell where the forest ends and the tiger begins. Both physically and
mentally he had the characteristics of a chameleon. In a word, he was
a monster.
With all his cleverness, however, he had been caught. Ben Foss had
been his partner, the man who acted as scout on big jobs. It was Foss
who hung about mansions, hotels, shops, when a burglary was planned.
It was Foss who collected the information necessary before the blow
was struck. When all was ready, Sockem struck the blow. But on their
previous expedition he had struck too quickly. Both he and Foss had
made a mistake. They had been captured and sent to prison.
Foss, because he was not so dangerous as Sockem, had been given a
shorter term, but the grind of prison life had wrought changes in both.
Foss had been shaken to the roots of his pliable nature. He had emerged
from his confinement with his nerve broken, a scared man. His mentality
could take punishment up to a certain limit before it collapsed. The
sentence exceeded this limit. Repentance had come through fear.
On Jimmy Sockem the prison life had had another effect. He had gone
to his cell snarling. He came out silent. His spell, which would have
broken ordinary men, hardened him. While still enduring the punishment
society had inflicted on him, he planned future crimes against society.
He did this out of a twisted idea that clamoured for revenge.
Foss was clay when he went to prison. Like some clay subjected to
pressure, he at first rebelled. The clay became brick. The limit of
resistance to the pressure was reached and passed. The brick broke into
fragments of rubble.
Sockem endured the pressure without breaking. He was like the
one-celled animals called protozoa. He became flint.
Having fixed his purpose, he sought the old partnership when he
re-entered the world. He wanted to lose no time in carrying out his war
against organised order. But Ben Foss had shrunk from his old habits;
he had obtained a post as manservant to a wealthy connoisseur of
_objets d'art_, a bachelor and a philanthropist. To steal from this man
became doubly attractive to Sockem.
It is not every burglar who can be a "cat." It is not every "cat"
who can be a burglar. Sockem could be both--and more. He could be a
murderer with the same lack of compunction as he could be a thief. The
one idea which dominated his acts supplied at once the excuse and the
reason for his cold ruthlessness.
At first he had suspected Foss of taking the position in the flat so
that he could steal its treasures easily, but the truth was now clear.
Foss was no longer his partner; he was a danger unless he was involved.
Fear of prison had to be overcome by fear of something else. To save
himself, he had to make Foss a criminal once more.
He stood watching Ben as the latter moved about the room, collecting
what valuables were worth taking and handing them to Sockem. The latter
was as cool as ice. The door-bell tinkled once more. Sockem smiled, and
stepped over to a gramophone, selected a record, and set the instrument
going.
"Hurry!" he whispered. "That will blind him for a minute."
He wiped the bloodstained bronze with his handkerchief and took the
marks off the polished table.
To Foss the whole affair seemed a kind of dream. He moved as he
was ordered, doing as he was bid without protest. He had once more
surrendered what remained of his personality into the hands of his
master in crime; he had again become the jackal to the lion. Fear had
driven him towards crime as it had driven him away from it.
They left the light burning and the gramophone playing. The door bell
was ringing as they slid over the window-sill. Everything had been done
swiftly, deftly, as experts work. Sockem had provided for emergencies.
Half way down the drain-pipe they swung across a branch pipe that
brought them to the roof of a smaller building. From this they landed
into a side-lane.
They were gone some way along the main road, through the thick fog,
when Foss found his tongue.
"Where are we going? The cops will come to the old place."
"I've found a new one."
They walked out of the fog into Waterloo Station. Something of the old
thrill of bravado stirred in Foss's blood as they passed close to the
platform policeman. He experienced the old elation, or a hint of it, as
they mingled with the theatre crowds on their way home. Who could trace
them in the surge of hurrying figures? Who would pick up the trail
which the fog had covered?
At the booking office, Sockem bought a ticket for Foss and handed it to
him. Foss saw the name of a riverside station on the slip of cardboard.
"Jimmy, why are we goin' there?" he asked in surprise. He had expected
a ticket for Southampton.
"You'll see," replied Jimmy grimly.
They journeyed with other passengers, and emerged at their destination
in a heavy drizzle. The fog had given way to rain. The drizzle gave way
to heavy torrents as they trudged along a country road. In an hour they
had struck off the road into a lane. A few minutes brought them to the
bank of the river.
In spite of the questions that Foss constantly asked, Sockem did not
answer. His mind was filled with one object. He began to search among
the bushes by the bank. At last he found what he wanted. It was a rope
hitched to a sapling. He unhitched the rope and began to haul it in. A
dinghy came out of the misty rain and bumped against the bank.
"Get in, Ben."
Drenched and sodden, Foss obeyed and sat down in the stern. Sockem took
the oars and pulled out into the stream. Practised rower as he was, he
made no noise with the oars as he pulled against the tide. The rain
was coming down in torrents when he ceased rowing and turned to peer
through the thick atmosphere.
"Here we are!" he announced triumphantly. "Our place!"
"What is it?"
"A house-boat. Hold on to the stage. Bill Hemsey ought to be here."
In another moment they were alongside the dark river dwelling. They
landed on the floating stage, and Sockem tied the boat to a rail, then
led the way inside, opening the door with confidence. He knew his way.
"Bill Hemsey hasn't got back yet," he said. "He is coming--ought to
have been here now. He was getting stuff on his own. I put him up to a
job."
Hemsey was one of a small gang who kept more or less close company with
Sockem--a snatch-thief who posed as a sportsman.
"Ain't this safe?" Sockem cried, as he lit a lamp in the centre of the
apartment. "It's one of them boat-houses used in summer, but left to
itself during the winter. Wasn't it a good idea?"
"It was, if it's safe."
"Nobody comes, I tell you. I've watched this place for weeks. It's
derelict. I boarded up the windows so's the light won't show. Hemsey
is coming to-night, too. And Mackintosh, who gathers the stuff for
Eckhardt, the fence, is due to-morrow. We're safe as houses. You can't
tell me how to cover our tracks. Look!"
He pointed to a ring in the floor at their feet.
"My safe! The river hides our loot."
He bent and pulled at the ring. One of the floorboards came away. On
its under side a large screw hook had been fixed, and from this hook a
thin rope hung down into the black depths. Sockem hauled at the rope. A
sack, dripping with water, came into view.
"Put the stuff in the sack," he said, grinning.
They deposited the goods they had brought into the canvas sack, where
other valuables were already placed, and Sockem lowered it again and
slammed the floorboard. There was a flush of pride on his face as he
stood up.
"And supposin' the cops come here, what would they find?" he demanded.
"All they could give us is a week or two for breaking into the boat. We
could say we came for shelter. Who'd think that thousands of pounds'
worth of stuff was swinging in the bilge below our feet? Most of these
craft collect water in winter."
He laughed and slapped Foss on the shoulder.
"And Bill Hemsey is coming with more to-night. He ought to have been
here now. You know Bill, don't you?"
"I remember him," said Foss. "What's he after?"
"Money. Ready money. He's getting the rents of a certain party. The
money and what we've got will make the biggest haul we've made yet. The
money will take us abroad. What are you looking so dismal about?"
"Seed told me honesty was the best policy," mumbled Foss hesitatingly.
"I gave him my word----"
"That don't matter, Ben. You've joined me now. And I want you to start
work to-morrow. Bill will bring us news."
"What do you want me for?"
"Same as you did before. Scouting. There's a village less than a mile
off. You'll fetch us grub until the coast is clear."
"But if I'm caught?"
"Then Bill or I will go. If you're caught we'll know the cops are
about."
The truth was out, and the shock of it drilled through Foss.
Alternately he had been swayed between fears of capture and the
possibility of escape. Now he saw that he was being made use of. He was
the shield, the protection, the bait, the foil. A sick smile passed
over his face.
"You needn't get caught unless you're careless," said Sockem, as he
wrung the water from his coat. "And we'll be rich now. I'll tell you
why I came to the flat. They said you had reformed."
"Who said it? I promised Seed----"
"Oh, Hemsey told me. And I needed you as a scout. You know my ways,
and I know yours. See? And Mackintosh, the agent for the fence, is
due to-morrow to make a deal. He's a Scot, is Mackintosh. Works for
Eckhardt, the big fence. We'll get away maybe to-morrow night. You'll
get your share."
"How much?"
"We'll see what Mackintosh gives us for the stuff."
"And after that?"
"He is arranging a passage to Cherbourg for me. You, too, can come.
We'll get a ship for America there. There's enough in that sack to keep
us for years. You couldn't make that amount in a lifetime by honesty,
see?"
There was a scanty store of provisions, which had been brought by
Sockem, in the house-boat, and they ate a cold, frugal supper in
silence. Then they retired for the night. The only bedding available
was a couple of old mattresses which had been left by the owner of the
house-boat. There were no blankets or coverings, but to men who had
been in prison this was not a great hardship.
Sockem occupied a small room on one side of the alleyway; Foss had
one opposite. The lamp was extinguished. Only the beating of the rain
on the roof above their heads and the swish of the river broke the
stillness of the night.
But, if Sockem slept well, the reverse was true of Foss. He lay
tossing on his mattress, tormented and restless. The silence and the
darkness brought fears that grew big and fantastic. He wanted to go
back. He remembered the vow he had made to the detective who had
obtained the job for him. He remembered the kindnesses of his late
employer. He remembered the security with which he had gone to bed in
the flat--security because he was not being hunted, because he was not
opposing the law, but was protected by it.
The hours passed slowly. The rain increased. It fell with relentless
monotony, lashing on the house-boat and streaming down the windows. The
structure swayed with the fury of the rising wind. The tide cradled
it violently. Dawn broke grey and dull. And there was no sign of
Mackintosh, or of Bill Hemsey.
Sockem was in the kitchen when Foss rose and joined him.
"Can't think what's keeping Bill Hemsey," growled Sockem. "He promised
to be here. Anyway, Mackintosh will come. Bill, too, after the rain."
They broke up some chairs for firewood and started a fire in the stove.
The atmosphere was cold and clammy. The roof leaked.
"We ain't got any grub, Ben. Our supper was the last I had. You'll have
to go out and get something. Bill was to bring some eats. He's got a
girl. That's where he was going after his stunt. Girls are the devil.
Well, you've got to go."
Foss moved to the landing-stage sullenly, with the intention of looking
for the boat they had moored the previous night. It was not there. He
looked across the tumbling river. Over by the opposite bank, fifty
yards down, the boat was caught by a fallen tree. It had been swept
away by the rising river, which during the night had reached flood
point. The water was overflowing the banks, and swirling down in a
heavy, brown billowy mass. The house-boat was tugging at the chains
that moored it. They were marooned.
"We can't get any grub, Jimmy. We're too far from the banks."
Something like dismay came into Jimmy Sockem's eyes.
"I broke down the shore gangway," he muttered. "It spanned a dozen
yards from the bank."
"We're twice that distance now, Jimmy."
"Can you swim?"
"No. Can you?"
"No."
A silence fell on them, broken at last by Sockem.
"It means we'll wait here until the fence comes. He'll find the boat
and bring it along."
They went back to the sitting-room, where two aged cane chairs
remained. These Sockem broke up and burned in the stove. They picked
the last crumbs off the supper-plates. Sockem took his horseshoe nail
from his pocket and began to sharpen it on a small hone. He hummed a
tune as he worked. The rain became heavier than ever.
By midday the river had risen still more. Not a sign of anything living
appeared along the streaming banks. Drip, drip, drip; slash, slash,
slash; rumble, rumble, rumble--the first from the leaking roof, the
second from the whipping rain, the third from the rising river--these
were the only sounds that came to the two men in the house-boat; these,
and the constant honing of his large steel nail, which Jimmy Sockem
kept up until the weapon shone like a knife-blade.
No receiver of stolen property came that day. They went to their
mattresses hungry, cold, miserable. They no longer spoke to each other.
The rain increased. The wind rose to the strength of a gale. When they
woke the next morning the waters were crested with small breakers. The
rain was worse than ever. The roof leaked everywhere.
The second day passed as the first, the third came as the second. They
looked out and saw, not a river, but a real flood. The water had spread
into the adjoining meadows, and had formed a huge lake, which was ever
increasing. Their boat had been driven away in the spate. In the midst
of this desolation the house-boat floated, dragging at its foundations,
its stage under water. The two men were helpless.
That day Sockem fished up the sack of loot and went over the valuables
like a miser counting his hoard. Foss, who watched him in silence, saw
the water ooze in under the floorboards. The truth struck him like a
blow. The rising river was driving them from their shelter.
The afternoon made this definite; both of them saw it. Foss had reached
the limit of his endurance. Sockem was now tigerish and unapproachable.
Cowed and afraid though he was, Foss spoke his thoughts.
"Seed said honesty was the best policy. It is true."
"It is a lie," thundered Sockem. "Is not this sack proof I am right? I
can break any law I wish to. We are rich."
"We are poor. We are starving."
"That is your fault. I have supplied the loot that makes us rich. You
must supply the food to keep us till the floods go down. I have been
thinking. You have to be driven. I shall drive you."
"How?"
"You are the scout. Why don't you scout? You must be forced. Listen. I
am going to make a raft from the timber of this house. On that raft you
will pole your way to the village and bring back food."
"I daren't. I should be drowned."
"If you don't go I shall kill you."
His face assumed the horrible cunning peculiar to his nature, and he
stretched out his hand for the shining, dagger-like nail which lay on
the table.
"Why don't you go yourself?" cried Foss in desperation.
"Because I must not. Seed knows I climbed to the flat that night I
killed your boss. It was he who came to the door. I heard him in the
garden as I climbed. He has been on my heels for days. You can go for
food. You must. Or else----"
He shrugged his shoulders and turned to the work he had indicated.
He worked with savage ferocity while Foss watched him, shivering and
biting his lip. He was scared. He saw Sockem, by prodigious efforts,
and with the aid of a hammer taken from the kitchen, beat down a large
section of the wall. It fell across the flooded staging, and lay ready
to be launched.
"That's my job finished," announced Sockem. "It is up to you. Go--or
say your prayers."
He laughed wolfishly and went to his room, banging the door and bolting
it.
Foss was alone with his thoughts. His thoughts chilled and roasted him
alternately. It was death to go and death to remain. Dusk had fallen.
Away in the distance he saw the twinkling lights of the village. The
rain had slackened, but the river rushed wildly on its course.
An hour passed. The darkness deepened. Foss stirred. An idea had come
to him. He crept towards the room in which Sockem had locked himself
and listened at the keyhole. From the room came regular breathing.
Sockem was sleeping, tired out with his labour.
Foss went back to the raft. His idea was to take his chance with the
floods. He repented having given in to Sockem. Why should he not try to
save himself and leave this savage to his fate?
He had laid hold of the raft when a glimmer of light pierced the
darkness far down the river. He looked, and saw it become bigger. It
was a light from a boat. Already he heard the "chug-chug" of a motor.
Someone was coming up in face of the racing tide--evidently rescuers
out to aid river-dwellers caught in the storm.
Here was a chance indeed! He could escape from the terror that
was Sockem. He would go to Seed and explain all. He would ask for
protection against Sockem's vengeance. Seed knew he had tried to run
straight. Honesty was the best policy. If a man was honest he need
never have these fears and despairs that had gripped him and terrorised
him since Sockem had come back for him.
The boat was now almost level with the house-boat. It would pass
without seeing him. With a cry he thought of a way out.
He ran to the kitchen and took the lantern, lighting it hurriedly. Then
he came back to the stage, waving it to and fro. But the waters drove
him in again, lashing against his legs. He dared not shout lest he
wakened Sockem. A voice came over the floods.
"Keep steady! Give us a chance to get you!"
Ah, the light must be steady! Foss dashed back to the kitchen. On the
table was the long, steel nail, Sockem's one tool. He picked up the
hammer and ran out to the staging again. Muffling the head of the nail
in his handkerchief, he drove it into the wooden wall. It sank through,
met an obstruction half way, but a blow fixed it securely. He hung the
flickering lantern on the nail and waited.
The boat came towards him. Its motor chugged so loudly he was afraid
Sockem would hear. Out of the darkness the boat glided, and a man
sprang on to the submerged staging.
"Hullo! Floods held you prisoner--Foss!"
The man who had spoken was Detective Seed.
He took hold of Foss's shaking frame and looked into his scared eyes.
"Steady up, Foss! You're all right with us! Have you found Sockem?"
Ben gulped hard, but his tongue could not utter words. His hand jerked
towards the room behind him.
"All right, Foss, you've had a hard time, but we're the river police,"
said Seed quickly. "Lucky Sockem didn't kill you. I suppose he's
barricaded himself in. By the way, your boss told me you had gone after
the burglar----"
"Ain't he dead?"
"No, but he got a bad rap on the head. He's recovering all right. He
knows you're straight. Well, we've caught Sockem's receiver of goods,
Mackintosh. We got him as we were coming up. He's confessed that Sockem
was here, but we'd have passed you but for your lantern. I knew Sockem
had a nest on the river. Don't worry. We've got him now."
He drew a revolver and approached the door of the room, and at his
heels went two men from the motor-boat. They burst the lock open. One
man switched on a flashlamp.
"Get up, Jimmy Sockem! I'm arresting you for burglary----_Ah!_"
Seed moved forward suddenly, and looked at the prone figure in the
narrow bunk.
"Look!" he cried, pointing to the wall against which Sockem's head
rested.
The long, shining horseshoe nail which had been driven through
the wooden partition had caught Jimmy Sockem as he slept, and had
penetrated to his brain.
* * * * *