Within the precincts of the police station the boy, still bewildered
yet not afraid, was brought to stand in a gloomy room with iron bars
across the windows. In this a bald-headed man sat at a desk writing.
“Pearson,” said the bald-headed man to a police constable who wore no
helmet, “fetch one o’ them velvet cheers out o’ the horfis for her
ladyship.”
The bald-headed man spoke in a very dictatorial manner, without
looking up from his writing. Upon the entrance of the woman he rose
majestically.
“There’ll be a cheer for you in a minute, my lady,” he said, addressing
the woman as though it gave him great pleasure to do so. “Had we knowed
you was coming we’d ’a had it dusted.”
“It is of no consequence,” said the woman, as if she meant it.
By this time her tone had acquired a note of sweetness. She had seemed
to be mollified by the manner in which her progress had stirred the
great heart of the public.
“I understand, my lady,” said the bald-headed man, “that you prefers
a charge against the accused of theft from the person at Barter’s
Emporium?”
“I have nothing whatever to do with the charges,” said the woman
tenaciously. “I ask only for my purse. I can’t _live_ without it. If it
is not restored to me immediately it will be most displeasing to Lord
Pomeroy.”
“On’y a matter o’ form, my lady,” said the bald-headed man blandly.
“Bring the book, Harby. This way, Pearson. Take a cheer, your ladyship.”
With considerable stateliness the woman sank on to a chair of purple
velvet.
The bald-headed man re-seated himself at the table and opened the book.
He turned to the boy with an almost ferocious sternness, which made him
shudder in spite of his bewilderment.
“Now then, my lad,” he said, “what’s your name?”
“I--I--I d-don’t think I know, sir,” stammered the boy, after this
question had been repeated twice.
“Oh, don’t you?” said the bald-headed man, his ferocity yielding to a
sudden pleasantness that seemed even more remarkable. “You don’t think
you knows? Bring the register, Harby. He don’t think he knows!”
The boy’s confession of ignorance had conferred upon the bald-headed
man a sweetness of manner of which few would have suspected him to be
capable.
“Look up ‘C,’ Harby, vollum six,” said the bald-headed man, rubbing his
hands with much satisfaction, and then adjusting a pair of pince-nez
which hung by a gold cord from his neck. “Open wound on the face.”
The woman turned sharply to the little girl.
“Come here, child,” she said. “Have I not told you to keep away from
that horrid boy?”
Without paying the least attention to the woman, the little girl
touched the hand of the boy with a kind of odd confidentialness.
“I yike oo velly much,” she said.
“We shall not detain you, my lady,” said the bald-headed man, bestowing
a studious attention upon his diction. “But I’m afraid we must trouble
you to come to see the magistrate to-morrow morning at eleven. The
accused will be detained in custody. He has all the appearance of being
an old hand. By to-morrow we shall hope to have found out a bit more
about him.”
“Why don’t you give me my purse?” said the woman. “I can’t live without
it.”
“Was a purse found on the accused, Moxon?” said the bald-headed man to
the stouter of the two original constables.
“No, sir,” said Moxon, “on’y fourpence in copper and a foreign book.”
“Hand them to me,” said the bald-headed man peremptorily, “and go over
him properly.”
The boy was taken by two policemen into a room close by. Immediately
they began to pull off his clothes. To his extreme horror, bewilderment
and shame they stripped him stark naked. They lifted up his heels
and passed their fingers between his toes; they held up his arms and
pressed their hands into his armpits; they ran their fingers through
his hair, and placed them in his mouth.
“No purse,” they said.
They left the boy naked, with all his clothes on the floor. As the
door closed behind them he fell senseless on the cold stone. A long
and vague period followed, which was veiled from his consciousness by
a kind of semi-darkness. During that period he seemed to find himself
again in the presence of the bald-headed man, who still sat at his desk
and glared at him over the rims of his gold eye-glasses.
The boy had only the haziest knowledge of that which took place; and
subsequently was never able to satisfy himself as to whether or not
he was again wearing clothes at this interview. At least he had no
recollection of having put them on again or of any one else having done
so.
The beautiful woman street-person in the gay clothes, and the little
girl with golden curls, had gone away. The large and gloomy room smelt
very oppressive, and seemed full of police constables.
“Have you a father?” said the bald-headed man. Although all was
darkness and confusion about the boy the harsh voice seemed to cause
his heart to stop beating.
The boy made some inaudible reply, which finally was taken for an
answer in the affirmative.
“A mother?”
A further inaudible reply was taken to be a negative.
“What is the name of your father?”
“I--I--I d-don’t think I know, sir,” stammered the boy.
“Now then, none o’ that, or it will be ’otted up for you.”
The voice of the bald-headed man caused the boy’s teeth to chatter.
“What is your father?”
The boy lifted up his strange eyes in dumb bewilderment.
“I think he’s a little bit touched, sir,” said a very melancholy-looking
police constable, tapping his head with his forefinger.
“You think nothing, Gravener,” said the bald-headed man sternly. “What
right have you to think? You’ve been in the Force long enough to know
that. What does your father do?” he said to the boy.
After a moment a flash of intelligence seemed to fuse the deadly pallor
of the boy’s face.
“H-he keeps a lot of books,” he said, “a lot of books written by the
ancient authors.”
“Vendor of old books, eh? Where does he live?”
For a moment the dark curtain of incomprehension again descended upon
the boy; but quite suddenly it lifted and his mind was illumined with a
ray of meaning.
“My father lives in the street of the second among the English
authors,” he said.
“Now then, now then,” said the bald-headed man. “If you talk in that
way I’ll promise you it will be ’otted up for you.”
“I--I know the author’s name quite well,” said the boy, disregarding
this reproof, for his mind was reverting now to the little room, which
already he seemed to have left an epoch ago. “The name begins with the
letter M. M--Mi--Mil--it is the street of Milton!”
“Milton Street--vendor of old books in Milton Street. What number?”
“N-number!” muttered the boy blankly. “N-number. Oh yes! The number of
the shop of my father is the number of the year in which Ovid was born.”
“Hovvid!” said the bald-headed man impatiently. “Who the ’ell’s Hovvid?
Do you know, Harby, who Hovvid is?”
“Not I!” said a solemn, grey-headed police constable. “Do you know,
Pearson?”
“Hovvid!” said a police constable with mutton-chop whiskers. “Can’t say
as ’ow I do. Sounds like the name of a ’oss.”
“Do you mean, my lad,” said the bald-headed man, “the number o’ the
year a ’oss o’ the name of Hovvid won the Derby?”
“A ’oss o’ the name of Hovvid never did win the Derby,” said the police
constable with mutton-chop whiskers decisively.
“Ovid is one of the chief among the Roman authors,” said the boy. For
the moment everything else had yielded to the astonishment he felt that
all these imposing, austere, and strikingly-dressed street-persons
should not know who Ovid was.
“Get the directory, Harby,” said the bald-headed man, “and look up the
year in which Hovvid was born. You were right, Gravener; he is a bit
touched.”
“Coorse I’m right,” said Gravener. “Anybody with ’alf a heye can see
that.”
“Ovid was born in the year 43 before Christ,” said the boy. “The number
of the shop of my father is forty-three.”
“Then why couldn’t you say so at first, my lad, and save all this
parley?” said the bald-headed man sternly. “What’s in Number One,
Harby?”
“A drunk and incapable, and a petty larceny.”
“Better put him in there for to-night.”
The boy was led into a room somewhat similar to that in which his
clothes had been taken off. But this apartment seemed not only larger
and more cheerless, but also very much darker. The only means by which
daylight could get in was through a narrow window high up in the wall,
and this was barred with iron. The few beams that were able to struggle
through seemed merely to render everything malign and hideous. The boy,
who from his first hour in the world had had an overpowering horror of
the darkness, shuddered in every vein when he discovered that he was
alone, and irrevocably committed to it for a nameless term. After the
first trance of his terror had passed he was able to discern that a
settle ran along the side of the wall. Hardly daring to move, he crept
towards it. As he did so he stumbled over something. It was warm and
soft. Something alive was lying on the floor. It was a shapeless mass.
He could hear it breathing.
He sank on to the settle at the side of the wall. He was inert and
stupefied. Great cold beads began to roll from his cheeks. He could see
and comprehend nothing. Under the dominion of his terror he began to
wish for death.
Quite suddenly a voice came out of the darkness.
“What ’ave they pinched you for, mate?” said a low growl in his ear.
He had not been conscious that any other living presence was in the
dark room, except that nameless something which was lying on the floor.
He was so startled that he gave a little shriek.
“Pipe up, cully,” said the low growl in his ear.
The boy’s teeth began to chatter furiously, but they emitted no sounds
that were coherent.
“Off his onion!” growled the voice, together with a string of
blood-curdling expressions, from which the boy was mercifully delivered
comprehension.
Presently the voice growled out of the darkness again.
“Got a chew, cully?”
The faculty of speech was still denied to the boy.
Further blood-curdling expressions followed from the other occupant of
the bench, who then relapsed into a morose silence.
The boy grew very cold. He trembled violently; yet his heart had
almost seemed to stop beating. The darkness and the silence and the
strangeness and the loneliness seemed to grow more intense. His mind
would hardly submit to the question of what had happened to him. It
refused to revert to his father and the little room. He felt that he
was never going to see them again.
After a while he slipped from the bench involuntarily. He found himself
on his knees on the cold stone floor. He clasped his hands and pressed
his eyes convulsively against the piece of wood on which he had been
sitting. He began to pray. There seemed to be nothing else to do.
Two hours later a police constable entered and lit a feeble gas-jet
high up in the wall. It was protected by a cage of wire. He then gave a
kick to the breathing, shapeless thing without a name, which lay in the
middle of the stone floor.
With a leer of jocular malignity the occupant of the form pointed to
the kneeling figure of the boy.
“Off his onion, mate,” he said, with a low growl and expectorating
freely.
“Pity you ain’t,” said the police constable.
The occupant of the form spat upon the boots of the police constable.
The police constable approached the boy, and said, with a sort of rough
kindness--
“You can have the _Christian Herald_, my lad, if you’d like it.”
The boy neither moved nor answered. He did not know that a word had
been spoken to him.
“Told yer, cully,” came the rough growl from the form. “He’s up the
pole.”
The police constable walked out of the cell with a greater show of
delicacy than that with which he had entered it.
An hour afterwards he came in again carrying two basins of thick
lukewarm gruel and a copy of the _Christian Herald_, two months out of
date. He found the boy to be still on his knees in the precise attitude
he was in when he entered before.
“Balmy!” growled the voice from the bench.
The police constable gave one basin of gruel to the speaker, and placed
the other basin and the copy of the _Christian Herald_ at the far end
of the form, well out of the reach of its occupant.
The police constable touched the boy on the shoulder gently.
“Don’t want to disturb you, my lad,” he said, “but your supper’s
waiting for you when you want it. And I’ve brought you the _Christian
Herald_ to cheer you up a bit.”
No sign came from the boy to suggest that he was conscious that he had
been addressed.
The police constable walked out of the cell on tiptoe.
The occupant of the form devoured his basin of gruel ravenously. The
sounds that he emitted in so doing were strongly reminiscent of the
lower animals. He then rose and fetched the other basin of gruel from
the end of the bench, together with the _Christian Herald_. He placed
the _Christian Herald_ on the floor, and wiped his boots on it with
an odd kind of gusto. He then proceeded to devour the second basin of
gruel. Afterwards he placed his legs up on the bench, went to sleep and
snored lustily.