I
The firm of Dorrington & Hicks had not been constructed at the time
when this case came to Dorrington's hand. Dorrington had barely emerged
from the obscurity that veils his life before some ten years ago,
and he was at this time a needier adventurer than he had been at the
period of any other of the cases I have related. Indeed, his illicit
gains on this occasion would seem first to have set him on his feet
and enabled him first to cut a fair exterior figure. Whether or not
he had developed to the full the scoundrelism that first brought me
acquainted with his trade I do not know; but certain it is that he was
involved at the time in transactions wretchedly ill paid, on behalf
of one Flint, a shipstores dealer at Deptford; an employer whose
record was never a very clean one. This Flint was one of an unpleasant
family. He was nephew to old Cater the wharfinger (and private usurer)
and cousin to another Cater, whose name was Paul, and who was also a
usurer, though he variously described himself as a "commission agent"
or "general dealer." Indeed, he was a general dealer, if the term may
be held to include a dealer in whatever would bring him gain, and
who made no great punctilio in regard to the honesty or otherwise
of his transactions. In fact, all three of these pleasant relatives
had records of the shadiest, and all three did whatever in the way
of money-lending, mortgaging, and blood-sucking came in their way.
It is, however, with old Cater--Jerry Cater, he was called--that
this narrative is in the first place concerned. I got the story from
a certain Mr. Sinclair, who for many years acted as his clerk and
debt-collector.
Old Jerry Cater lived in the crooked and decaying old house over his
wharf by Bermondsey Wall, where his father had lived before him. It
was a grim and strange old house, with long-shut loft-doors in upper
floors, and hinged flaps in sundry rooms that, when lifted, gave
startling glimpses of muddy water washing among rotten piles below. Not
once in six months now did a barge land its load at Cater's Wharf, and
no coasting brig ever lay alongside. For, in fact, the day of Cater's
Wharf was long past; and it seemed indeed that few more days were left
for old Jerry Cater himself. For seventy-eight years old Jerry Cater
had led a life useless to himself and to everybody else, though his
own belief was that he had profited considerably. Truly if one counted
nothing but the money the old miser had accumulated, then his profit
was large indeed; but it had brought nothing worth having, neither for
himself nor for others, and he had no wife nor child who might use
it more wisely when he should at last leave it behind him; no other
relative indeed than his two nephews, each in spirit a fair copy of
himself, though in body a quarter of a century younger. Seventy-eight
years of every mean and sordid vice and of every virtue that had
pecuniary gain for its sole object left Jerry Cater stranded at last
in his cheap iron bedstead with its insufficient coverings, with not
a sincere friend in the world to sit five minutes by his side. Down
below, Sinclair, his unhappy clerk, had the accommodation of a wooden
table and a chair; and the clerk's wife performed what meagre cooking
and cleaning service old Cater would have. Sinclair was a man of
forty-five, rusty, starved, honest, and very cheap. He was very cheap
because it had been his foolishness, twenty years ago, when in City
employ, to borrow forty pounds of old Cater to get married with, and to
buy furniture, together with forty pounds he had of his own. Sinclair
was young then, and knew nothing of the ways of the two hundred per
cent. money-lender. When he had, by three or four years' pinching, paid
about a hundred and fifty pounds on account of interest and fines, and
only had another hundred or two still due to clear everything off, he
fell sick and lost his place. The payment of interest ceased, and old
Jerry Cater took his victim's body, soul, wife, sticks, and chairs
together. Jerry Cater discharged his own clerk, and took Sinclair, with
a saving of five shillings a week on the nominal salary, and out of the
remainder he deducted, on account of the debt and ever-accumulating
interest, enough to keep his man thin and broken-spirited, without
absolutely incapacitating him from work, which would have been bad
finance. But the rest of the debt, capital and interest, was made into
a capital debt, with usury on the whole. So that for sixteen years or
more Sinclair had been paying something every week off the eternally
increasing sum, and might have kept on for sixteen centuries at the
same rate without getting much nearer freedom. If only there had been
one more room in the house old Cater might have compulsorily lodged
his clerk, and have deducted something more for rent. As it was he
might have used the office for the purpose, but he could never have
brought himself to charge a small rent for it, and a large one would
have swallowed most of the rest of Sinclair's salary, thus bringing
him below starvation point, and impairing his working capacity. But
Mrs. Sinclair, now gaunt and scraggy, did all the housework, so that
that came very cheap. Most of the house was filled with old bales and
rotting merchandise which old Jerry Cater had seized in payment for
wharfage dues and other debts, and had held to, because his ideas of
selling prices were large, though his notion of buying prices were
small. Sinclair was out of doors more than in, dunning and threatening
debtors as hopeless as himself. And the household was completed by one
Samuel Greer, a squinting man of grease and rags, within ten years of
the age of old Jerry Cater himself. Greer was wharf-hand, messenger,
and personal attendant on his employer, and, with less opportunity, was
thought to be near as bad a scoundrel as Cater. He lived and slept in
the house, and was popularly supposed to be paid nothing at all; though
his patronage of the "Ship and Anchor," hard by, was as frequent as
might be.
Old Jerry Cater was plainly not long for this world. Ailing for months,
he at length gave in and took to his bed. Greer watched him anxiously
and greedily, for it was his design, when his master went at last,
to get what he could for himself. More than once during his illness
old Cater had sent Greer to fetch his nephews. Greer had departed on
these errands, but never got farther than the next street. He hung
about a reasonable time--perhaps in the "Ship and Anchor," if funds
permitted--and then returned to say that the nephews could not come
just yet. Old Cater had quarrelled with his nephews, as he had with
everybody else, some time before, and Greer was resolved, if he could,
to prevent any meeting now, for that would mean that the nephews would
take possession of the place, and he would lose his chance of
convenient larceny when the end came. So it was that neither nephew
knew of old Jerry Cater's shaky condition.
[Illustration: "HE SAW A FEW DOUBLED PAPERS."]
Before long, finding that the old miser could not leave his bed--indeed
he could scarcely turn in it--Greer took courage, in Sinclair's
absence, to poke about the place in search of concealed sovereigns. He
had no great time for this, because Jerry Cater seemed to have taken a
great desire for his company, whether for the sake of his attendance
or to keep him out of mischief was not clear. At any rate Greer found
no concealed sovereigns, nor anything better than might be sold for
a few pence at the ragshop. Until one day, when old Cater was taking
alternate fits of restlessness and sleep, Greer ventured to take down
a dusty old pickle-jar from the top shelf in the cupboard of his
master's bedroom. Cater was dozing at the moment, and Greer, tilting
the jar toward the light, saw within a few doubled papers, very dusty.
He snatched the papers out, stuffed them into his pocket, replaced the
jar, and closed the cupboard door hastily. The door made some little
noise, and old Cater turned and woke, and presently he made a shift
to sit up in bed, while Greer scratched his head as innocently as he
could, and directed his divergent eyes to parts of the room as distant
from the cupboard as possible.
"Sam'l Greer," said old Cater in a feeble voice, while his lower jaw
waggled and twitched, "Sam'l Greer, I think I'll 'ave some beef-tea."
He groped tremulously under his pillow, turning his back to Greer,
who tip-toed and glared variously over his master's shoulders. He saw
nothing, however, though he heard the chink of money. Old Cater turned,
with a shilling in his shaking hand. "Git 'alf a pound o' shin o'
beef," he said, "an' go to Green's for it at the other end o' Grange
Road, d'ye hear? It's--it's a penny a pound cheaper there than it is
anywhere nearer, and--and I ain't in so much of a 'urry for it, so the
distance don't matter. Go 'long." And old Jerry Cater subsided in a fit
of coughing.
Greer needed no second bidding. He was anxious to take a peep at the
papers he had secreted. Sinclair was out collecting, or trying to
collect, but Greer did not stop to examine his prize before he had
banged the street door behind him, lest Cater, listening above, should
wonder what detained him. But in a convenient courtyard a hundred
yards away he drew out the papers and inspected them eagerly. First,
there was the policy of insurance of the house and premises. Then
there was a bundle of receipts for the yearly insurance premiums. And
then--there was old Jerry Cater's will.
There were two foolscap sheets, written all in Jerry Cater's own
straggling handwriting. Greer hastily scanned the sheets, and his
dirty face grew longer and his squint intensified as he turned over
the second sheet, found nothing behind it, and stuffed the papers
back in his pocket. For it was plain that not a penny of old Jerry
Cater's money was for his faithful servant, Samuel Greer. "Ungrateful
ole waga-bone!" mused the faithful servant as he went his way. "Not
a blessed 'a'peny; not a 'a'peny! An' them as don't want it gets it,
o' course. That's always the way--it's like a-greasing' of a fat
pig. I shall 'ave to get what I can while I can, that's all." And so
ruminating he pursued his way to the butcher's in Grange Road.
Once more on his way there, and twice on his way back, Samuel Greer
stepped into retired places to look at those papers again, and at each
inspection he grew more thoughtful. There might be money in it yet.
Come, he must think it over.
The front door being shut, and Sinclair probably not yet returned, he
entered the house by a way familiar to the inmates--a latched door
giving on to the wharf. The clock told him that he had been gone nearly
an hour, but Sinclair was still absent. When he entered old Cater's
room upstairs he found a great change. The old man lay in a state of
collapse, choking with a cough that exhausted him; and for this there
seemed little wonder, for the window was open, and the room was full of
the cold air from the river.
"Wot jer bin openin' the winder for?" asked Greer in astonishment.
"It's enough to give ye yer death." He shut it and returned to the
bedside. But though he offered his master the change from the shilling
the old man seemed not to see it nor to hear his voice.
"Well, if you won't--don't," observed Greer with some alacrity,
pocketing the coppers. "But I'll bet he'll remember right enough
presently." "D'y'ear," he added, bending over the bed, "I've got the
beef. Shall I bile it now?"
But old Jerry Cater's eyes still saw nothing and he heard not, though
his shrunken chest and shoulders heaved with the last shudders of the
cough that had exhausted him. So Greer stepped lightly to the cupboard
and restored the fire policy and the receipts to the pickle-jar. He
kept the will.
Greer made preparations for cooking the beef, and as he did so he
encountered another phenomenon. "Well, he have bin a goin' of it!" said
Greer. "Blow me if he ain't bin readin' the Bible now!"
A large, ancient, worn old Bible, in a rough calf-skin cover, lay on a
chair by old Cater's hand. It had probably been the family Bible of the
Caters for generations back, for certainly old Jerry Cater would never
have bought such a thing. For many years it had accumulated dust on a
distant shelf among certain out-of-date account-books, but Greer had
never heard of its being noticed before. "Feels he goin', that's about
it," Greer mused as he pitched the Bible back on the shelf to make room
for his utensils. "But I shouldn't ha' thought 'e'd take it sentimental
like that--readin' the Bible an' lettin' in the free air of 'eaven to
make 'im cough 'isself blind."
The beef-tea was set simmering, and still old Cater lay impotent.
The fit of prostration was longer than any that had preceded it, and
presently Greer thought it might be well to call the doctor. Call him
he did accordingly (the surgery was hard by), and the doctor came.
Jerry Cater revived a little, sufficiently to recognise the doctor, but
it was his last effort. He lived another hour and a half. Greer kept
the change and had the beef-tea as well. The doctor gave his opinion
that the old man had risen in delirium and had expended his last
strength in moving about the room and opening the window.