ON THE COP
Once he had cut clear from his lodgings without delay and trouble, Viney
fell into an insupportable nervous impatience, which grew with every
minute. His reasons for the day's postponement now seemed wholly
insufficient: it must have been, he debated with himself, that the first
shock of the suggestion had driven him to the nearest excuse to put the
job off, as it were a dose of bitter physic. But now that the thing was
resolved upon, and nothing remained to do in preparation, the suspense
of inactivity became intolerable, and grew to torment. It was no matter
of scruple or compunction; of that he never dreamed. But the enterprise
was dangerous and novel, and, as the vacant hours passed, he imagined
new perils and dreamed a dozen hangings. Till at last, as night came on,
he began to fear that his courage could not hold out the time; and,
since there was now no reason for delay, he ended with a resolve to get
the thing over and the money in his pockets that same night, if it were
possible. And with that view he set out for the Cop....
* * * * *
Meantime no nervousness troubled his confederate; for him it was but a
good stroke of trade, with a turn of revenge in it; and the penniless
interval mattered nothing--could be slept off, in fact, more or less,
since there was nothing else to do.
The sun sank below London, and night came slow and black over the
marshes and the Cop. Grimes, rising from the doorstep of his office,
knocked the last ashes from his pipe and passed indoors. Dan Ogle,
sitting under the lee of his shed, found no comfort in his own empty
pipe, and no tobacco in his empty pocket. He rose, stretched his arms,
and looked across the Lea and the Cop. He could see little or nothing,
for the dark was closing on him fast. "Blind man's holiday," muttered
Dan Ogle; and he turned in for a nap on his bed of sacks.
A sulky red grew up into the darkening western sky, as though the
extinguished sun were singeing all the world's edge. So one saw London's
nimbus from this point every night, and saw below it the scattered
spangle of lights that were the suburban sentries of the myriads beyond.
The Cop and the marshes lay pitch-black, and nothing but the faint lap
of water hinted that a river divided them.
Here, where an hour's habit blotted the great hum of London from the
consciousness, sounds were few. The perseverance of the lapping water
forced a groan now and again from the moorings of an invisible barge
lying by the wharf; and as often a ghostly rustle rose on the wind from
an old willow on the farther bank. And presently, more distinct than
either, came a steady snore from the shed where Dan Ogle lay....
A rustle, that was not of any tree, began when the snore was at its
steadiest; a gentle rustle indeed, where something, some moving shadow
in the black about it, crept over the river wall. Clearer against a
faint patch, which had been white with lime in daylight, the figure grew
to that of a man; a man moving in that murky darkness with an amazing
facility, address, and quietness. Down toward the riverside he went, and
there stooping, dipped into the water some small coarse bag of cloth,
that hung in his hand. Then he rose, and, after a listening pause,
turned toward the shed whence came the snore.
With three steps and a pause, and three steps more, he neared the door:
the stick he carried silently skimming the ground before him, his face
turned upward, his single eye rolling blankly at the sky that was the
same for him at night or noon; and the dripping cloth he carried
diffused a pungent smell, as of wetted quick-lime. So, creeping and
listening, he reached the door. Within, the snore was regular and deep.
Nothing held the door but a latch, such as is lifted by a finger thrust
through a hole. He listened for a moment with his ear at this hole, and
then, with infinite precaution, inserted his finger, and lifted the
latch....
* * * * *
Up by the George Tavern, beyond Stepney, Henry Viney was hastening along
the Commercial Road to call Dan Ogle to immediate business. Ahead of him
by a good distance, Musky Mag hurried in the same direction, bearing
food in a saucer and handkerchief, and beer in a bottle. But hurry as
they might, here was a visitor well ahead of both....
* * * * *
The door opened with something of a jar, and with that there was a
little choke in the snore, and a moment's silence. Then the snore began
again, deep as before. Down on his knees went Dan Ogle's visitor, and so
crawled into the deep of the shed.
He had been gone no more than a few seconds, when the snore stopped. It
stopped with a thump and a gasp, and a sudden buffeting of legs and
arms; and in the midst arose a cry: a cry of so hideous an agony that
Grimes the wharf-keeper, snug in his first sleep fifty yards away,
sprang erect and staring in bed, and so sat motionless for half a minute
ere he remembered his legs, and thrust them out to carry him to the
window. And the dog on the wharf leapt the length of its chain,
answering the cry with a torrent of wild barks.
Floundering and tumbling against the frail boards of the shed, the two
men came out at the door in a struggling knot: Ogle wrestling and
striking at random, while the other, cunning with a life's blindness,
kept his own head safe, and hung as a dog hangs to a bull. His hands
gripped his victim by ear and hair, while the thumbs still drove at the
eyes the mess of smoking lime that clung and dripped about Ogle's head.
It trickled burning through his hair, and it blistered lips and tongue,
as he yelled and yelled again in the extremity of his anguish. Over they
rolled before the doorway; and Ogle, snatching now at last instead of
striking, tore away the hands from his face.
"Fight you level, Dan Ogle, fight you level now!" Blind George gasped
between quick breaths. "Hit me now you're blind as me! Hit me! Knock me
down! Eh?"
Quickly he climbed to his feet, and aimed a parting blow with the stick
that hung from his wrist. "Dead?" he whispered hoarsely. "Not afore I've
paid you! No!"
He might have stayed to strike again, but his own hands were blistered
in the struggle, and he hastened off toward the bank, there to wash them
clear of the slaking lime. Away on the wharf the dog was yelping and
choking on its chain like a mad thing.
Screaming still, with a growing hoarseness, and writhing where he lay,
the blinded wretch scratched helplessly at the reeking lime that
scorched his skin and seared his eyes almost to the brain. Grimes came
running in shirt and trousers, and, as soon as he could find how matters
stood, turned and ran again for oil. "Good God!" he said. "Lime in his
eyes! Slaking lime! Why--why--it must be the blind chap! It must! Fight
him level, he said--an' he's blinded him!..."
* * * * *
There was a group of people staring at the patients' door of the
Accident Hospital when Viney reached the spot. He was busy enough with
his own thoughts, but he stopped, and stared also, involuntarily. The
door was an uninteresting object, however, after all, and he turned: to
find himself face to face with one he well remembered. It was the limy
man he had followed from Blue Gate to the Hole in the Wall, and then
lost sight of.
Grimes recognised Viney at once as Ogle's visitor of the morning.
"That's a pal o' yourn just gone in there," he said.
Viney was taken aback. "A pal?" he asked. "What pal?"
"Ogle--Dan Ogle. He's got lime in his eyes, an' blinded."
"Lime? Blinded? How?"
"I ain't goin' to say nothing about how--I dunno, an' 'tain't my
business. He's got it, anyhow. There's a woman in there along of
him--his wife, I b'lieve, or something. You can talk to her about it, if
you like, when she comes out. I've got nothing to do with it."
Grimes had all the reluctance of his class to be "mixed up" in any
matter likely to involve trouble at a police-court; and what was more,
he saw himself possibly compromised in the matter of Ogle's stay at the
Wharf. But Viney was so visibly concerned by the news that soon the
wharf-keeper relented a little--thinking him maybe no such bad fellow
after all, since he was so anxious about his friend. "I've heard said,"
he added presently in a lower tone, "I've heard said it was a blind chap
done it out o' spite; but of course I dunno; not to say myself; on'y
what I heard, you see. I don't think they'll let you in; but you might
see the woman. They won't let her stop long, 'specially takin' on as she
was."
Indeed it was not long ere Musky Mag emerged, reluctant and pallid,
trembling at the mouth, staring but seeing nothing. Grimes took her by
the arm and led her aside, with Viney. "Here's a friend o' Dan's,"
Grimes said, not unkindly, giving the woman a shake of the arm. "He
wants to know how he's gettin' on."
"What's 'nucleate?" she asked hoarsely, with a dull look in Viney's
face. "What's 'nucleate? I heard a doctor say to let 'im rest to-night
an' 'nucleate in the mornin'. What's 'nucleate?"
"Some sort o' operation," Grimes hazarded. "Did they say anything else?"
"Blinded," the woman answered weakly. "Blinded. But the pain's eased
with the oil."
"What did he say?" interposed Viney, fullest of his own concerns. "Did
he say someone did it?"
"He told me about it--whispered. But I shan't say nothing; nor him, not
till he comes out."
"I say--he mustn't get talkin' about it," Viney said, anxiously.
"It--it'll upset things. Tell him when you see him. Here, listen." He
took her aside out of Grimes's hearing. "It wouldn't do," he said, "it
wouldn't do to have anybody charged or anything just now. We've got
something big to pull off. I say--I ought to see him, you know. Can't I
see him? But there--someone might know me. No. But you must tell him. He
mustn't go informing, or anything like that, not yet. Tell him, won't
you?"
"Chargin'? Infornin'?" Mag answered, with contempt in her shaking voice.
"'Course 'e wouldn't go informin', not Dan. Dan ain't that sort--'e
looks arter hisself, 'e does; 'e don't go chargin' people. Not if 'e was
dyin'."
Indeed Viney did not sufficiently understand the morals of Blue Gate:
where to call in the aid of the common enemy, the police, was a foul
trick to which none would stoop. In Blue Gate a man inflicted his own
punishments, and to ask aid of the police was worse than mean and
scandalous: it was weak; and that in a place where the weak "did not
last," as the phrase went. It was the one restraint, the sole virtue of
the place, enduring to death; and like some other virtues, in some other
places, it had its admixture of necessity; for everybody was "wanted" in
turn, and to call for the help of a policeman who might, as likely as
not, begin by seizing oneself by the collar, would even have been poor
policy: bad equally for the individual and for the community. So that to
resort to the law's help in any form was classed with "narking" as the
unpardonable sin.
"You're sure o' that, are you?" asked Viney, apprehensively.
"Sure? 'Course I'm sure. Dunno what sort o' chap you take 'im for.
_'E's_ no nark. An' besides--'e can't. There's other things, an'----"
She turned away with a sigh that was near a sob, and her momentary
indignation lapsed once more into anxious grief.
Viney went off with his head confused and his plans in the melting-pot.
Ogle's scheme was gone by the board, and alone he could scarce trust
himself in any enterprise so desperate. What should he do now? Make what
terms he might with Captain Nat? Need was pressing; but he must think.