ON THE COP
When the limy man left Blue Gate he went, first, to the Hole in the
Wall, there to make to Captain Kemp some small report on the wharf by
the Lea. This did not keep him long, and soon he was on his journey home
to the wharf itself, by way of the crooked lanes and the Commercial
Road.
He had left Blue Gate an hour and more when Musky Mag emerged from her
black stairway, peering fearfully about the street ere she ventured her
foot over the step. So she stood for a few seconds, and then, as one
chancing a great risk, stepped boldly on the pavement, and, turning her
back to the Highway, walked toward Back Lane. This was the nearer end of
Blue Gate, and, the corner turned, she stopped short, and peeped back.
Satisfied that she had no follower, she crossed Back Lane, and taking
every corner, as she came to it, with a like precaution, threaded the
maze of small, ill-lighted streets that lay in the angle between the
great Rope Walk and Commercial Road. This wide road she crossed, and
then entered the dark streets beyond, in rear of the George Tavern; and
so, keeping to obscure parallel ways, sometimes emerging into the glare
of the main road, more commonly slinking in its darker purlieus, but
never out of touch with it, she travelled east; following in the main
the later course of the limy man, who had left Blue Gate by its opposite
end.
The fog, that had dulled the lights in Ratcliff Highway, met her again
near Limehouse Basin; but, ere she reached the church, she was clear of
it once more. Beyond, the shops grew few, and the lights fewer. For a
little while decent houses lined the way: the houses of those last
merchants who had no shame to live near the docks and the works that
brought their money. At last, amid a cluster of taverns and shops that
were all for the sea and them that lived on it, the East India Dock
gates stood dim and tall, flanked by vast raking walls, so that one
might suppose a Chinese city to seethe within. And away to the left, the
dark road that the wall overshadowed was lined on the other side by
hedge and ditch, with meadows and fields beyond, that were now no more
than a vast murky gulf; so that no stranger peering over the hedge could
have guessed aright if he looked on land or on water, or on mere black
vacancy.
Here the woman made a last twist: turning down a side street, and coming
to a moment's stand in an archway. This done, she passed through the
arch into a path before a row of ill-kept cottages; and so gained the
marshy field behind the Accident Hospital, the beginning of the waste
called The Cop.
Here the great blackness was before her and about her, and she stumbled
and laboured on the invisible ground, groping for pits and ditches, and
standing breathless again and again to listen. The way was so hard as to
seem longer than it was, and in the darkness she must needs surmount
obstacles that in daylight she would have turned. Often a ditch barred
her way; and when, after long search, a means of crossing was found, it
was commonly a plank to be traversed on hands and knees. There were
stagnant pools, too, into which she walked more than once; and twice she
suffered a greater shock of terror: first at a scurry of rats, and later
at quick footsteps following in the sodden turf--the footsteps, after
all, of nothing more terrible than a horse of inquiring disposition, out
at grass.
So she went for what seemed miles: though there was little more than
half a mile in a line from where she had left the lights to where at
last she came upon a rough road, seamed with deep ruts, and made visible
by many whitish blotches where lime had fallen, and had there been
ground into the surface. To the left this road stretched away toward the
lights of Bromley and Bow Common, and to the right it rose by an easy
slope over the river wall skirting the Lea, and there ended at Kemp's
Wharf.
Not a creature was on the road, and no sound came from the black space
behind her. With a breath of relief she set foot on the firmer ground,
and hurried up the slope. From the top of the bank she could see Kemp's
Wharf just below, with two dusty lighters moored in the dull river; and
beyond the river the measureless, dim Abbey Marsh. Nearer, among the
sheds, a dog barked angrily at the sound of strange feet.
A bright light came from the window of the little house that made office
and dwelling for the wharf-keeper, and something less of the same light
from the open door; for there the limy man stood waiting, leaning on the
door-post, and smoking his pipe.
He grunted a greeting as Mag came down the bank. "Bit late," he said.
"But it ain't easy over the Cop for a stranger."
"Where?" the woman whispered eagerly. "Where is he?"
The limy man took three silent pulls at his pipe. Then he took it from
his mouth with some deliberation, and said: "Remember what I said? I
don't want 'im 'ere. I dunno what 'e's done, an' don't want; but if 'e
likes to come 'idin' about, I ain't goin' to play the informer. I dunno
why I should promise as much as that, just 'cos my brother married 'is
sister. _She_ ain't done me no credit, from what I 'ear now. Though she
'ad a good master, as I can swear; 'cos 'e's mine too."
"Where is he?" was all Mag's answer, again in an anxious whisper.
"Unnerstand?" the limy man went on. "I'm about done with the pair on 'em
now, but I ain't goin' to inform. 'E come 'ere a day or two back an'
claimed shelter; an' seein' as I was goin' up to Wappin' to-night, 'e
wanted me to tell you where 'e was. Well, I've done that, an' I ain't
goin' to do no more; see? 'E ain't none o' mine, an' I won't 'ave part
nor parcel with 'im, nor any of ye. I keep myself decent, I do. I shan't
say 'e's 'ere an' I shan't say 'e ain't; an' the sooner 'e goes the
better 'e'll please me. See?"
"Yes, Mr. Grimes, sir; but tell me where he is!"
The limy man took his pipe from his mouth, and pointed with a
comprehensive sweep of the stem at the sheds round about. "You can go
an' look in any o' them places as ain't locked," he said off-handedly.
"The dog's chained up. Try the end one fust."
Grimes the wharfinger resumed his pipe, and Mag scuffled off to where
the light from the window fell on the white angle of a small wooden
shelter. The place was dark within, dusted about with lime, and its door
stood inward. She stopped and peered.
"All right," growled Dan Ogle from the midst of the dark. "Can't ye see
me now y' 'ave come?" And he thrust his thin face and big shoulders out
through the opening.
"O Dan!" the woman cried, putting out her hands as though she would take
him by the neck, but feared repulse. "O Dan! Thank Gawd you're safe,
Dan! I bin dyin' o' fear for you, Dan!"
"G-r-r-r!" he snorted. "Stow that! What I want's money. Got any?"