GERTIE MAKES A DISCOVERY.
At the back of the room where the animals were kept was another little
room, which Heckett himself occupied. Gertie’s room was upstairs, and
she never went into her grandfather’s, having particularly been
enjoined not to do so.
But on the day of Miss Adrian’s visit a peculiar thing happened. Lion,
who had been wandering about after Miss Adrian left, went into her
grandfather’s room, and was gone so long a time that Gertie called him.
He didn’t answer, and Gertie, passing in, saw him biting at a piece of
rag that seemed to stick between the boards. Gertie, terrified lest he
should be doing some mischief for which her grandfather would beat him,
ran in and drove him out.
Then she stooped down to pull the piece of rag up and see what it was.
She pulled hard, but it wouldn’t come out. She supposed it must have
got trodden between the boards. She gave one more determined pull, and
suddenly, to her intense astonishment, the floor yielded and she went
down with a bump, pulling what at first she supposed to be a huge piece
of the flooring up with her.
Her terror at what her grandfather would say when he discovered, as he
must do, that she had been into his room, yielded to astonishment as it
gradually dawned upon her that the flooring she had really pulled up
was a trap-door.
The piece of rag was the corner of a canvas bag, which had evidently
been slightly shut in and which Lion discovering had pulled further and
further through.
The reason that he could not draw it quite through was evident, for the
bag which Gertie had pulled up with the door lay on the floor, and it
was full of something hard and heavy.
Gertie scrambled up off the floor, picked up the bag, and peered into
the open space below the flooring, wondering why her grandfather had
such a queer cupboard as that.
As she looked down she was astonished to see that the space was full of
canvas bags like this one, only some of them were larger and looked
peculiar in shape. She lifted one up and opened it and saw only what
she thought was a pewter pot in it.
She thought it very strange that her grandfather should keep pewter
pots and heavy bags under his floor; but while she was looking and
wondering she heard the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs.
In an instant she was seized with a paroxysm of fear. If her
grandfather found her there, what would he do? The footsteps sounded
nearer.
Hastily flinging in the bag and closing the trap-door, Gertie, hardly
knowing what she did, crept up into a corner behind a box near the
door, which was ajar.
She was covered with dust from kneeling on the floor, and her face was
so hot and flushed she feared to meet her grandfather. She hoped he was
corning in with some one and would go out again directly.
From her corner she could peep through the crack of the door.
She saw a gentleman, who looked like a foreigner, enter first, closely
followed by her grandfather, and then another gentleman with a dark
face and a hook nose.
Lying close and trembling in every limb, she was obliged to listen to
their conversation.
‘Gertie,’ said her grandfather.
There was no answer.
‘All right,’ said the old man; ‘she’s gone out for a minute, I expect.
Shut the door and then she can’t come in.’
The foreign gentleman, who had a black silk cap on, but who spoke very
good English, closed the door, and then, addressing the other two,
appeared to be giving them instructions.
Gertie didn’t hear quite all they said, but she caught the name of
Marston spoken by her grandfather, and she instantly made up her mind
it was Marston who was being talked about. She listened eagerly. The
chance of serving Miss Adrian had come sooner than she could have
hoped.
Sometimes the three men spoke so low she could hardly make out what
they said, but she heard something about the police, and that to-morrow
some one, whom she presumed to be Marston, was to be met by one of them
after he had come from the bank with the money for a cheque.
‘They’ll search his lodgings, of course,’ said the foreign gentleman;
‘and we must take care something’s found there. Who’ll do it?’
‘I’ll manage it,’ answered the dark gentleman with the hook nose. ‘I
shall go with the ‘tecs, and shall give the information. Leave the case
to me; I’ll make it straight enough. If you want him put out of the way
for a bit, you can reckon it done.’
Gertie heard this, and more, and she instantly concluded the gentleman
in whom Miss Adrian took so much interest was in danger.
Child as she was, she had been bred amid surroundings which inculcated
habits of self-dependence and fertility of resource. Lying there,
half-dead with fear, she had still enough sense left to plan out her
course of action.
She would go to Miss Adrian’s at once and warn her.
When the three men had agreed together what they were to do, the dark
gentleman with the hook nose went out and left Heckett and the
foreigner together.
‘That big affair I spoke to you about is ripening, Heckett,’ said the
foreigner. ‘We shall rely on you.’
‘I’ll be in it,’ growled the dog-fancier; ‘but I shall want my fair
share.’
‘It’ll be the biggest thing you ever did in your life. I shall set
Brooks to work directly I’m sure of my ground, and then you must be
ready. We may have to start any night.’
The two worthies then conversed together in a lower tone, and presently
the foreign gentleman said ‘Good-day’ and went out.
Josh Heckett, left alone, looked about him.
‘I wonder where the deuce that gal’s got to?’ he said.
He came and peered into his own room and went out again.
‘She must be out in the Dials,’ Gertie heard him say. ‘I hope she don’t
leave the place like this often.’
Presently Gertie heard the clang of his heavy boots going down the
rickety stairs.
‘He’s gone out to look for me,’ she thought.
She slipped out from her hiding-place, rushed upstairs to her own
little room, and knocked the fluff and dust off her dress.
While she was there her grandfather came in again, and shouted up the
stairs:
‘Gertie, are you there?’
‘Yes, grandfather,’ she called out. ‘I had a headache, and laid down,
and dropped off to sleep.’
‘Well,’ growled the old man, ‘come down and look arter the place. If
you go to sleep again I’ll wake yer up.’
Gertie came down trembling. The old man eyed her keenly for a moment,
then bidding her keep her eyes open and not leave the place again, he
lit his pipe and went out.
Latterly Josh Heckett had been very little at home, leaving the
business, such as it was, almost entirely to Gertie. The child noticed
that he never bought any fresh animals now, and that anything sold was
not replaced.
She asked him once if the stock wasn’t getting low, and he nodded his
head.
‘I’m going to give up business, my lass,’ he said, with the nearest
approach to a smile, his stern, fierce face could manage.
‘We’re going to make our fortunes and retire.’
Gertie listened to her grandfather’s retreating footsteps, then she
flung herself down by Lion, and, throwing her arms round the dog’s
neck, cried out:
‘Oh, Lion, Lion, however shall we let Miss Adrian know?’ She sat by the
dog as the hours went by, endeavouring to think how she could get to
the address on the piece of paper without being discovered.
She didn’t know if it was near or far. She thought she would wait till
the night, when it was time to feed the animals, shut up the place, and
go upstairs to her own little room.
She always locked the door at night, and her grandfather had another
key which he let himself in with, as he had to pass through the ‘shop,’
as he called it, to get to his bedroom.
Perhaps she could get out and get home again before he came in.
As the afternoon waned and the evening brought the longed-for darkness,
Gertie’s plans began to assume a more definite shape.
Trembling and almost terrified at her own boldness, she put on her
bonnet and cloak, and went the round of the cages and the hutches and
kennels, giving the few animals that were left their evening ration.
For each she had a kind word, and they all came at her call as close to
her as their surroundings would allow them.
When she had given Lion his biscuits, she kissed him and told him to be
very good while she was away, and that she would be back directly.
Suddenly she recollected that she had disturbed the things in her
grandfather’s room, and had not put them tidy.
He might notice them and suspect something.
She went into the mysterious chamber, and Lion followed her. When she
had put the room as she had found it, she recollected that she had
disturbed the things under the trapdoor. It took her a long time to
find where to lift the trap. But presently it yielded, and the store
beneath lay exposed to view.
She put the little bags and parcels as tidy as she could, holding a
candle which she had lighted so that the light fell on the buried
treasure.
Stooping over, her head below the flooring, and her little hands busily
engaged in putting the bags as she found they were before, she did not
hear the outer door open.
Josh Heckett had come home early to meet some friends.
As he entered the room he saw the candle-light streaming through the
door of his bedroom.
With a cry of rage he sprang forward and rushed in.
Gertie uttered a scream of terror at the sudden appearance of her
grandfather, and knelt glued to the spot.
The old man’s face wore a look of fury she had never seen before.
‘Little wretch!’ he shrieked, seizing her by the shoulders. ‘So this is
how you repay me for all I’ve done for you! You’d rob me, rob me!’ he
shrieked, raising his voice and burning with passion; ‘rob a poor old
man who’s kept you from the workhouse, you brat! Curse you, what have
you taken? Quick—quick.’
He shook the child violently in his rage, as though he expected gold to
fall from the folds of her dress.
‘Oh, don’t, grandfather—don’t,’ moaned Gertie, white with terror. ‘I
haven’t touched anything—indeed I haven’t.
‘Who put you up to this? Who set you to rob a poor old man? Speak, you
little devil, or I’ll wring your neck.’
He seized the child in his blind rage by the throat so violently that
she uttered a shriek of pain.
The next second something sprang at the old man—something which with
fierce eyes had watched the scene from a corner of the room.
As Gertie shrieked out, the huge mastiff Lion uttered a fierce growl,
and, springing at the child’s adversary, seized him by the throat.
Gertie leapt to her feet. ‘Lion, Lion,’ she cried. ‘Oh, don’t, don’t.’
Josh Heckett, old as he was, was still a powerful man. He gripped the
dog, and they struggled fiercely for a moment.
With almost superhuman effort he freed himself from the fierce beast,
and then, beside himself with pain and rage, uttered a volley of oaths
and cried out that he would kill Gertie.
The child, once free, darted from the room and tore down the stairs and
out into the Dials, never stopping to look behind her till, white,
breathless, and almost fainting, she had got clear of Little Queer
Street and could pause for breath.
As she did so she heard a quick patter behind her, and in another
second Lion was by her side.
With a cry of joy the child dropped on her knees, and, seizing his
head, kissed him passionately.
‘Oh, Lion, you’ll take care of me, won’t you?’ she moaned.
‘I shall never go back home again. He would kill us both.’
The huge brute wagged his tail, then, looking up into his little
mistress’s face, licked her check gently.
It was lucky for Gertie that they were in a dark, quiet corner, where
there was little traffic, or they would have had a crowd round them.
As it was, Gertie felt safe directly Lion was with her, and, wiping
away her tears, hurried along towards Oxford Street.
She wanted to get out into a main thoroughfare and ask someone the
nearest way to Miss Adrian’s.
Josh Heckett, bleeding and half-mad with rage, ran down the stairs
after Gertie. As he did so the dog followed him, and, rushing past him,
bounded out of sight.
The old man’s first impulse was to follow the fugitives.
But he remembered his treasures lay unguarded upstairs.
‘Curse her!’ he growled, ‘Let her go. She’d ha’ robbed me; that’s what
she’d ha’ done. And arter all these years as I’ve been a good friend to
her, too! She wasn’t on that lay alone, though. Some of my pals has got
scent of my cupboard and put her up to this. It’s lucky I spotted the
game in time.’
Heckett convinced himself that he had fallen on some scheme to rob him,
and he determined to nip it in the bud. All that night he lay with a
loaded pistol under his head, and the next morning he made arrangements
to sell his business, and to move his ‘traps’ to fresh diggings.
‘The gal can go out to starve and earn her own livin’; and a good job,’
he said to himself; ‘she was getting in the way as it was.’
But having made his arrangements, and his anger against Gertie having
cooled down a little, he began to wonder where she could have gone to.
Then, with the cunning of his class, he concluded that she would go to
the person who had instigated her to examine his hidden treasure.
‘I’ll find her somehow,’ he said; ‘and then I shall see who’s playing
double with Josh Heckett. Whoever it is ‘ll pay for it pretty handsome
before I’ve done with’em.’