Josh Perrott reached home late for tea but in good humour. He had spent
most of the day at the Bag of Nails, dancing attendance on the High
Mobsmen. Those of the High Mob were the flourishing practitioners in
burglary, the mag, the mace, and the broads, with an outer fringe of
such dippers--such pick-pockets--as could dress well, welshers, and
snides-men. These, the grandees of rascality, lived in places far from
the Jago, and some drove in gigs and pony traps. But they found the Bag
of Nails a convenient and secluded exchange and house of call, and there
they met, made appointments, designed villainies, and tossed for
sovereigns: deeply reverenced by the admiring Jagos, among whom no
ambition flourished but this--to become also of these resplendent ones.
It was of these that old Beveridge had spoken one day to Dicky, in
language the child but half understood. The old man sat on a curb in
view of the Bag of Nails, and smoked a blackened bit of clay pipe. He
hauled Dicky to his side, and, pointing with his pipe, said:--'See that
man with the furs?'
'What?' Dicky replied. 'Mean 'im in the ice-cream coat, smokin' a cigar?
Yus.'
'And the other with the brimmy tall hat, and the red face, and the
umbrella?'
'Yus.'
'What are they?'
''Igh mob. 'Ooks. Toffs.'
'Right. Now, Dicky Perrott, you Jago whelp, look at them--look hard.
Some day, if you're clever--cleverer than anyone in the Jago now--if
you're only scoundrel enough, and brazen enough, and lucky enough--one
of a thousand--maybe you'll be like them: bursting with high living,
drunk when you like, red and pimply. There it is--that's your aim in
life--there's your pattern. Learn to read and write, learn all you can,
learn cunning, spare nobody and stop at nothing, and perhaps--' he
waved his hand toward the Bag of Nails. 'It's the best the world has for
you, for the Jago's got you, and that's the only way out, except gaol
and the gallows. So do your devilmost, or God help you, Dicky
Perrott--though he wont: for the Jago's got you!'
Old Beveridge had eccentric talk and manners, and the Jago regarded him
as a trifle 'balmy,' though anything but a fool. So that Dicky troubled
little to sift the meaning of what he said.
Josh Perrott's mission among the High Mob had been to discover some
Mobsman who might be disposed to back him in the fight with Billy Leary.
For though a private feud was the first cause of the turn-up, still
business must never be neglected, and a feud or anything else that could
produce money must be made to produce it, and when a fight of
exceptional merit is placed before spectators, it is but fair that they
should pay for their diversion.
But few High Mobsmen were at the Bag of Nails that day. Sunday was the
day of the chief gatherings of the High Mob: Sunday the market-day, so
to speak, of the Jago, when such rent as was due weekly was paid (most
of the Jago rents were paid daily and nightly) and other accounts were
settled or fought out. Moreover, the High Mob were perhaps a trifle shy
of the Jago at the time of a faction fight; and one was but just over,
and that cut short at a third of the usual span of days. So that Josh
waited long and touted vainly, till a patron arrived who knew him of
old; who had employed him, indeed, as 'minder'--which means a protector
or a bully, as you please to regard it--on a racecourse adventure
involving bodily risk. On this occasion Josh had earned his wages with
hard knocks given and taken, and his employer had conceived a high and
thankful opinion of his capacity. Wherefore he listened now to the tale
of the coming fight, and agreed to provide something in the way of
stakes, and to put something on for Josh himself: looking for his own
profit to the bets he might make at favourable odds with his friends.
For Billy Leary was notorious as being near prime ruffian of the Jago,
while Josh's reputation was neither so evil nor so wide. And so it was
settled, and Josh came pleased to his tea; for assuredly Billy Leary
would have no difficulty in finding another notable of the High Mob to
cover the stakes.
Dicky was at home, sitting by Looey on the bed; and when he called his
father it seemed pretty plain to Josh that the baby was out of sorts.
'She's rum about the eyes,' he said to his wife. 'Blimy if she don't
look as though she was goin' to squint.'
Josh was never particularly solicitous as to the children, but he saw
that they were fed and clothed--perhaps by mere force of the habit of
his more reputable days of plastering. He had brought home tripe, rolled
in paper, and stuffed into his coat pocket, to make a supper on the
strength of the day's stroke of business. When this tripe was boiled, he
and Dicky essayed to drive morsels into Looey's mouth, and to wash them
down with beer; but to no end but choking rejection. Whereat Josh
decided that she must go to the dispensary in the morning. And in the
morning he took her, with Dicky at his heels; for not only did his wife
still nurse her neck, but in truth she feared to venture abroad.
The dispensary was no charitable institution, but a shop so labelled in
Meakin Street, one of half a dozen such kept by a medical man who lived
away from them, and bothered himself as little about them as was
consistent with banking the takings and signing the death-certificates.
A needy young student, whose sole qualification was cheapness, was set
to do the business of each place, and the uniform price for advice and
medicine was sixpence. But there was a deal of professional character in
the blackened and gilt lettered front windows, and the sixpences came by
hundreds. For hospital letters but rarely came Meakin Street way. Such
as did were mostly in the hands of tradesmen, who subscribed for the
purpose of getting them, and gave them to their best customers, as was
proper and business-like. And so the dispensary flourished, and the
needy young student grew shifty and callous, and no doubt there were
occasional faith-cures. Indeed, cures of simple science were not at all
impossible. For there was always a good supply of two drugs in the
place--Turkey rhubarb and sulphuric acid: both very useful, both very
cheap, and both going very far in varied preparation, properly handled.
An ounce or two of sulphuric acid, for instance, costing something
fractional, dilutes with water into many gallons of physic. Excellent
medicines they made too, and balanced each other very well by reason of
their opposite effects. But indeed they were not all, for sometimes
there were two or three other drugs in hand, interfering, perhaps
troublesomely, with the simple division of therapeutics into the two
provinces of rhubarb and sulphuric acid.
Business was brisk at the dispensary: several were waiting, and medicine
and advice were going at the rate of two minutes for sixpence. Looey's
case was not so clear as most of the others: she could not describe its
symptoms succinctly, as 'a pain here,' or 'a tight feeling there.' She
did but lie heavily, staring blankly upward (she did not mind the light
now), with the little cast in her eyes, and repeat her odd little wail;
and Dicky and his father could tell very little. The young student had a
passing thought that he might have known a trifle more of the matter if
he had had time to turn up Ross on nerve and brain troubles--were such a
proceeding consistent with the dignity of the dispensary; but
straightway assigning the case to the rhubarb province, made up a
powder, ordered Josh to keep the baby quiet, and pitched his sixpence
among the others, well within the two minutes.
And faith in the dispensary was strengthened, for indeed Looey seemed a
little better after the powder; and she was fed with spoonfuls of a
fluid bought at a chandler's shop, and called milk.