THE FRUITLESS SEARCH.
When Richard Markham was precipitated into the hole beneath the stairs,
by the perfidy of the Mummy, he fell with his head against a stone, and
became insensible.
He lay in this manner for upwards of half an hour, when a current of air
which blew steadily upon his face, revived him; and he awoke to all the
horrors of his situation.
He had seen and passed through enough that night to unhinge the
strongest mind. The secrets of the accursed den in a subterranean
dungeon of which he now lay,--the atrocious mysteries revealed by the
conversation of the body-snatchers ere they set out on their expedition
to Shoreditch Church,--the cold corpse of some unfortunate being most
inhumanly murdered, and all the paraphernalia of a hideous death, in the
front-room of that outpost of hell,--haunted his imagination, and worked
him up to a pitch of excitement bordering upon frenzy.
He felt that if he did not escape from that hole, he should dash his
head against the wall, or go raving mad.
He clenched his fists and struck them against his forehead in an access
of despair.
And then he endeavoured to reason with himself, and to look the perils
that beset him, in the face.
But he could not remain cool--he could not control his agonising
emotions.
"O God!" he exclaimed aloud; "what have I done to be thus afflicted?
What sin have I committed to be thus tortured? Have I not served
thee in word and deed to the best of my ability? Do I not
worship--venerate--adore thee? O God! why wilt thou that I should die
thus early--and die, too, so cruel a death? Is there not room on earth
enough for a worm like me? Have I not been sufficiently tried, O my God?
and in the hour of my deepest--bitterest anguish, did I ever deny thee?
Did I repine against thy supreme will when false men encompassed me to
destroy me in the opinion of the world? Hear me, O God--hear me! and let
me not die this time;--let me not perish, O Lord, thus miserably!"
Such was the fervent, heart-felt prayer which Markham breathed to
heaven, in the agony and despair of his soul.
He extended his arms, with his hands clasped together, in the ardour of
his appeal; and they encountered an opening in the wall.
A ray of hope penetrated to his heart; and when upon further search, he
discovered an aperture sufficiently wide for him to creep through, he
exclaimed, "O Lord! I thank thee, thou hast heard my prayer! Pardon--oh!
pardon my repinings;--forgive me that I dared to question thy sovereign
will!"
At all risks he determined to pass through the opening--lead
whithersoever it might; for he knew that he could scarcely be worse off;
and he felt a secret influence which prompted him thus to act, and for
which he could not wholly account.
He crept through the hole in the partition-wall, and found himself upon
a soft damp ground.
Every thing was veiled in the blackest obscurity.
He groped about with his hands, and stepped cautiously forward, pausing
at every pace.
Presently his foot encountered what appeared to be a step: to his
infinite joy he ascertained, in another moment, that he was at the
bottom of a flight of stone stairs.
He ascended them, and came to a door, which yielded to his touch. He
proceeded slowly and cautiously along a passage, groping his way with
his hands; and, in a few moments he reached another door, which opened
with a latch.
He was now in the open street!
Carefully closing the door behind him, he hurried away from that
accursed vicinity as if he were pursued by blood-hounds.
He ran--he ran, reckless of the deep pools of stagnant water, careless
of the heaps of thick mud through which he passed,--indifferent to the
bruises which he sustained against the angles of houses, the corners of
streets, and the stone-steps of doors,--unmindful of the dangers which
he dared in threading thus wildly those rugged and uneven thoroughfares
amidst the dense obscurity which covered the earth.
He ran--he ran, a delirium of joy thrilling in his brain, and
thanksgiving in his soul; for now that he had escaped from the peril
which so lately beset him, it appeared to his imagination a thousand
times more frightful than when it actually impended over him. Oh! he was
happy--happy--thrice happy, in the enjoyment of liberty, and the
security of life once more;--and he began to look upon the scenes of
that eventful night as an accumulation of horrors which could have
possibility only in a dream!
He ran--he ran, amidst those filthy lanes and foul streets, where a
nauseating atmosphere prevailed;--but had he been threading a labyrinth
of rose-trees, amongst the most delicious perfumes, he could not have
experienced a more burning--ardent--furious joy! Yes--his delight was
madness, frenzy! On, on--splashed with mud--floundering through black
puddles--knee-deep in mire,--on, on he went--reckless which direction he
pursued, so long as the rapidity of his pace removed him afar from the
accursed house that had nearly become his tomb!
For an hour did he thus pursue his way.
At length he stopped through sheer exhaustion, and seated himself upon
the steps of a door over which a lamp was flickering.
He collected his scattered ideas as well as he could, and began to
wonder whither his wild and reckless course had led him: but no
conjecture on his part furnished him with any clue to solve the mystery
of his present whereabouts. He knew that he must be somewhere in the
eastern district of the metropolis; but in what precise spot it was
impossible for him to tell.
[Illustration]
While he was thus lost in vain endeavours to unravel the tangled
topographical skein which perplexed his imagination, he heard footsteps
advancing along the street.
By the light of the lamp he soon distinguished a policeman, walking with
slow and measured steps along his beat.
"Will you have the kindness to tell me where I am?" said Richard,
accosting the officer: "I have lost my way. What neighbourhood is this?"
"Ratcliff Highway," answered the policeman: "in the middle of Wapping,
you know."
"In the midst of Wapping?" ejaculated Markham, in a tone of surprise and
vexation.
And, truly enough, there he was in the centre of that immense assemblage
of dangerous streets, cutthroat lanes, and filthy alleys, which swarm
with crimps ever ready to entrap the reckless and generous-hearted
sailor; publicans who farm the unloading of the colliers, and compel
those whom they employ to take out half their wages in vile adulterated
beer; and poor half-starved coal-heavers whose existence alternates
between crushing toil and killing intoxication. It was in this
neighbourhood that Richard Markham now was!
Heaven alone can tell what tortuous paths and circuitous routes he had
been pursuing during the hour of his precipitate flight; but his feet
must have passed over many miles of ground from the instant that he
emerged from the murderers' den until he sank exhausted on the steps of
a house in Ratcliff Highway.
He was wet and covered with mud, and very cold. But he suddenly
remembered that there was a duty which he owed to society--an imperative
duty which he dared not neglect. He was impressed with the idea that
Providence had that night favoured his escape from the jaws of death, in
order that he might become the means of rooting up a den of horrors.
There was not a moment to be lost: the three miscreants, unconscious of
peril, had repaired to Shoreditch Church to exercise the least terrible
portion of their avocations in that sacred edifice:--it might yet be
time to secure them there!
The policeman was still standing near him.
"Which is the way to the station-house?" suddenly exclaimed Markham. "I
have matters of the deepest importance to communicate to the police,--I
can place them upon the scent of three miscreants--three demons in human
form----"
"And how came you to know about them?" asked the officer.
"Oh! it is too long to tell you now--we shall only be wasting time; and
the villains may escape," cried Richard, in a tone of excitement and
with a wildness of manner which induced the officer to fancy that his
brain was turned.
"Well, come along with me," said the policeman; "and you can tell all
you know to the Superintendent."
Markham signified his readiness to accompany the officer; and they
proceeded to the station-house in the neighbourhood.
There Richard was introduced to the Superintendent.
"I have this night," said the young man, "escaped from the most fearful
perils. I was proceeding along a dark, narrow, and dirty street
somewhere in the neighbourhood of Shoreditch Church, when I was knocked
down, and carried into a house where murder--yes, murder," added
Markham, in a tone of fearful excitement, "seems to be committed At this
moment there is a corpse--the corpse of some unfortunate man who has
been assassinated in a most inhuman manner--lying stretched out in that
house! I could tell you how the miscreants who frequent that den dispose
of their victims,--how they pounce upon those who pass their door, and
drag them into that human slaughter-house,--and how they make away with
them;--I could tell you horrors which would make your hair stand on
end;--but we should lose time; for you may yet capture the three
wretches whose crimes have been this night so providentially revealed to
me!"
"And where can we capture these men?" inquired the Superintendent,
surveying Markham from head to foot in a strange manner.
"They are at this moment at Shoreditch Church," returned the young man;
"they are engaged in exhuming a corpse for a surgeon whom they were to
meet at half-past one at the back of the burial-ground."
"And it is now three o'clock," said the Superintendent. "I dare say they
have got over their business by this time. You had much better sit down
here by the fire and rest yourself; and when it is daylight some one
shall see you home to your friends."
"Sit here tranquilly, when justice claims its due!" ejaculated Markham;
"impossible! If you will not second my endeavours to expose a most
appalling system of wholesale murder----"
"My dear sir," interrupted the Superintendent, "do compose yourself, and
get such horrid thoughts out of your head. Come--be reasonable. This is
London, you know--and it is impossible that the things you have
described could be committed in so populous a city."
"I tell you that every word I have uttered is the strict truth," cried
Markham emphatically.
"And how came you to escape from such a place?" demanded the
Superintendent.
"The villain who attacked me thought me dead--he fancied that I was
killed by the blow; but it had only stunned me for a few moments----"
"Just now there were three murderers," whispered one policeman to
another: "now there is only one. He is as mad as a March-hare."
"Then I was decoyed into a deep pit," continued Markham; "and I escaped
through an aperture opening into another pit, with stone steps to it, in
the next house."
The two policemen turned round to conceal their inclination to laugh;
and the Superintendent could scarcely maintain a serious countenance.
"And now will you come with me to Shoreditch Church, and capture the
villains?" cried Markham.
"We had better wait till morning. Pray sit down and compose yourself.
You are wet and covered with mud--you have evidently been walking a
great distance."
"Oh! now I understand the cause of your hesitation," ejaculated Markham:
"you do not believe me--you fancy that I am labouring under a delusion.
I conjure you not to suffer justice to be defeated by that idea! The
tale is strange; and I myself, had it been communicated to me as it now
is to you, should look upon it as improbable. No doubt, too, my
appearance is strange; and my manner may be excited, and my tone
wild;--but, I swear to you by the great God who hears us, that I am
sane--in the possession of my reason,--although, heaven knows! I have
this night passed through enough to unhinge the strongest intellects!"
"Can you lead us to the house where you allege that these enormities are
committed?" demanded the Superintendent, moved by the solemnity and
rationality with which Markham had uttered this last appeal to him.
"No, I cannot," was the reply: "I had lost my way amongst those streets
with which I was totally unacquainted: the night was dark--dark as it is
now;--and therefore I could not guide you to that den of such black
atrocities. But, I repeat the murderers left that house a little after
one to commit a deed of sacrilege in Shoreditch Church. You say that it
is now three: perhaps their resurrection-labours are not terminated yet;
and you might then capture them in the midst of their unholy pursuits."
"And if we do not find that Shoreditch Church has been broken open?"
said the Superintendent; "you will admit----"
"Admit that I am mad--that I have deceived you--that I deserve to be
consigned to a lunatic asylum," exclaimed Markham, in a tone which
inspired the Superintendent with confidence.
That officer accordingly gave instructions to four constables to
accompany Markham to Shoreditch Church.
The little party proceeded thither with all possible expedition; but the
clock struck four just as they reached the point of destination.
They hastily scaled the railings around the burial-ground, and proceeded
to the very door from which the body-snatchers had emerged an hour
previously.
One of the policemen tried the door; and it immediately yielded to his
touch. At the same moment his foot struck against something upon the top
step. He picked it up:--it was a padlock with the semicircular bolt
sawed through.
The policemen and Markham entered the church; and the former commenced a
strict search by means of their bull's-eye lanterns.
"There's no doubt that the gentleman was right, and all he said was
true," observed one of the officers; "but the birds have flown--that's
clear."
"Well--they must have done their work pretty cleverly if they haven't
left a trace," said another.
"I have heard it stated," remarked Richard, "that resurrection-men are
so expert at their calling, that they can defy the most acute eye to
discover the spot upon which they have been operating."
"Well, if we don't find out which vault they have opened, it's no
matter. We have seen enough to convince us that you were right, sir, in
all you told us."
"And as the body-snatchers are not here," added another police-officer,
"we had better get back as quick as we can and report the church's
having been broke open to our Superintendent."
"And I will return with you," said Markham; "for when it is light I may
perhaps be enabled to conduct you to within a short distance of the
street--even if not into the very street itself--where the den is
situated which those monsters frequent or inhabit."
The officers and Richard accordingly returned to the station-house
whence they came; and as soon as the Superintendent heard that the
church had really been broken open, he apologised to Markham for his
former incredulity.
"You will, however, admit, sir," said this functionary, "that your
narrative was calculated to excite strange suspicions relative to the
condition of the intellects of the person who told it."
"I presume you fancied that I had escaped from a madhouse?" observed
Markham.
"To tell you the truth, I did," answered the Superintendent: "you were
in such a dreadful condition! And that reminds me that you are all wet
and covered with mud: please to step into my private room, and you will
find every thing necessary to make you clean and comfortable."
* * * * *
Day dawned shortly after seven; and at that time might be seen Richard
Markham, accompanied by an officer in plain clothes, and followed by
others at a distance, threading the streets and alleys in the
neighbourhood of the Bird-cage Walk.
The sun rose upon that labyrinth of close, narrow, and wretched
thoroughfares, and irradiated those sinks of misery and crime as well as
the regal palace and the lordly mansion at the opposite end of London.
But the search after the house in which Markham had witnessed such
horrors and endured such intense mental agony on the preceding night,
was as vain and fruitless as if its existence were but a dream.
There was not a street which Markham could remember having passed
through; there was not a house to which even his suspicions attached.
And yet, may be, he and his official companions proceeded up the very
street, and went by the door of the very house, which they sought.
After a useless search throughout that neighbourhood for nearly four
hours, Markham declared that he was completely at fault.
The police accordingly abandoned any further proceedings on that
occasion. It was however agreed between them and Markham that the
strictest secresy should be preserved relative to the entire business,
in order that the measures to be subsequently adopted with a view to
discover the den of the murderers, might not be defeated by the tattle
of busy tongues.