HOW goes the night? Saint Giles’s clock is striking nine. The weather
is dull and wet, and the long lines of street lamps are blurred, as if we
saw them through tears. A damp wind blows and rakes the pieman’s fire
out, when he opens the door of his little furnace, carrying away an eddy
of sparks.
Saint Giles’s clock strikes nine. We are punctual. Where is Inspector
Field? Assistant Commissioner of Police is already here, enwrapped in
oil-skin cloak, and standing in the shadow of Saint Giles’s steeple.
Detective Sergeant, weary of speaking French all day to foreigners
unpacking at the Great Exhibition, is already here. Where is Inspector
Field?
Inspector Field is, to-night, the guardian genius of the British Museum.
He is bringing his shrewd eye to bear on every corner of its solitary
galleries, before he reports ‘all right.’ Suspicious of the Elgin
marbles, and not to be done by cat-faced Egyptian giants with their hands
upon their knees, Inspector Field, sagacious, vigilant, lamp in hand,
throwing monstrous shadows on the walls and ceilings, passes through the
spacious rooms. If a mummy trembled in an atom of its dusty covering,
Inspector Field would say, ‘Come out of that, Tom Green. I know you!’
If the smallest ‘Gonoph’ about town were crouching at the bottom of a
classic bath, Inspector Field would nose him with a finer scent than the
ogre’s, when adventurous Jack lay trembling in his kitchen copper. But
all is quiet, and Inspector Field goes warily on, making little outward
show of attending to anything in particular, just recognising the
Ichthyosaurus as a familiar acquaintance, and wondering, perhaps, how the
detectives did it in the days before the Flood.
Will Inspector Field be long about this work? He may be half-an-hour
longer. He sends his compliments by Police Constable, and proposes that
we meet at St. Giles’s Station House, across the road. Good. It were as
well to stand by the fire, there, as in the shadow of Saint Giles’s
steeple.
Anything doing here to-night? Not much. We are very quiet. A lost boy,
extremely calm and small, sitting by the fire, whom we now confide to a
constable to take home, for the child says that if you show him Newgate
Street, he can show you where he lives—a raving drunken woman in the
cells, who has screeched her voice away, and has hardly power enough left
to declare, even with the passionate help of her feet and arms, that she
is the daughter of a British officer, and, strike her blind and dead, but
she’ll write a letter to the Queen! but who is soothed with a drink of
water—in another cell, a quiet woman with a child at her breast, for
begging—in another, her husband in a smock-frock, with a basket of
watercresses—in another, a pickpocket—in another, a meek tremulous old
pauper man who has been out for a holiday ‘and has took but a little
drop, but it has overcome him after so many months in the house’—and
that’s all as yet. Presently, a sensation at the Station House door.
Mr. Field, gentlemen!
Inspector Field comes in, wiping his forehead, for he is of a burly
figure, and has come fast from the ores and metals of the deep mines of
the earth, and from the Parrot Gods of the South Sea Islands, and from
the birds and beetles of the tropics, and from the Arts of Greece and
Rome, and from the Sculptures of Nineveh, and from the traces of an elder
world, when these were not. Is Rogers ready? Rogers is ready, strapped
and great-coated, with a flaming eye in the middle of his waist, like a
deformed Cyclops. Lead on, Rogers, to Rats’ Castle!
How many people may there be in London, who, if we had brought them
deviously and blindfold, to this street, fifty paces from the Station
House, and within call of Saint Giles’s church, would know it for a not
remote part of the city in which their lives are passed? How many, who
amidst this compound of sickening smells, these heaps of filth, these
tumbling houses, with all their vile contents, animate, and inanimate,
slimily overflowing into the black road, would believe that they breathe
_this_ air? How much Red Tape may there be, that could look round on the
faces which now hem us in—for our appearance here has caused a rush from
all points to a common centre—the lowering foreheads, the sallow cheeks,
the brutal eyes, the matted hair, the infected, vermin-haunted heaps of
rags—and say, ‘I have thought of this. I have not dismissed the thing.
I have neither blustered it away, nor frozen it away, nor tied it up and
put it away, nor smoothly said pooh, pooh! to it when it has been shown
to me?’
This is not what Rogers wants to know, however. What Rogers wants to
know, is, whether you _will_ clear the way here, some of you, or whether
you won’t; because if you don’t do it right on end, he’ll lock you up!
‘What! _You_ are there, are you, Bob Miles? You haven’t had enough of
it yet, haven’t you? You want three months more, do you? Come away from
that gentleman! What are you creeping round there for?’
‘What am I a doing, thinn, Mr. Rogers?’ says Bob Miles, appearing,
villainous, at the end of a lane of light, made by the lantern.
‘I’ll let you know pretty quick, if you don’t hook it. WILL you hook
it?’
A sycophantic murmur rises from the crowd. ‘Hook it, Bob, when Mr.
Rogers and Mr. Field tells you! Why don’t you hook it, when you are told
to?’
The most importunate of the voices strikes familiarly on Mr. Rogers’s
ear. He suddenly turns his lantern on the owner.
‘What! _You_ are there, are you, Mister Click? You hook it too—come!’
‘What for?’ says Mr. Click, discomfited.
‘You hook it, will you!’ says Mr. Rogers with stern emphasis.
Both Click and Miles _do_ ‘hook it,’ without another word, or, in plainer
English, sneak away.
‘Close up there, my men!’ says Inspector Field to two constables on duty
who have followed. ‘Keep together, gentlemen; we are going down here.
Heads!’
Saint Giles’s church strikes half-past ten. We stoop low, and creep down
a precipitous flight of steps into a dark close cellar. There is a fire.
There is a long deal table. There are benches. The cellar is full of
company, chiefly very young men in various conditions of dirt and
raggedness. Some are eating supper. There are no girls or women
present. Welcome to Rats’ Castle, gentlemen, and to this company of
noted thieves!
‘Well, my lads! How are you, my lads? What have you been doing to-day?
Here’s some company come to see you, my lads!—_There’s_ a plate of
beefsteak, sir, for the supper of a fine young man! And there’s a mouth
for a steak, sir! Why, I should be too proud of such a mouth as that, if
I had it myself! Stand up and show it, sir! Take off your cap. There’s
a fine young man for a nice little party, sir! An’t he?’
Inspector Field is the bustling speaker. Inspector Field’s eye is the
roving eye that searches every corner of the cellar as he talks.
Inspector Field’s hand is the well-known hand that has collared half the
people here, and motioned their brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, male
and female friends, inexorably to New South Wales. Yet Inspector Field
stands in this den, the Sultan of the place. Every thief here cowers
before him, like a schoolboy before his schoolmaster. All watch him, all
answer when addressed, all laugh at his jokes, all seek to propitiate
him. This cellar company alone—to say nothing of the crowd surrounding
the entrance from the street above, and making the steps shine with
eyes—is strong enough to murder us all, and willing enough to do it; but,
let Inspector Field have a mind to pick out one thief here, and take him;
let him produce that ghostly truncheon from his pocket, and say, with his
business-air, ‘My lad, I want you!’ and all Rats’ Castle shall be
stricken with paralysis, and not a finger move against him, as he fits
the handcuffs on!
Where’s the Earl of Warwick?—Here he is, Mr. Field! Here’s the Earl of
Warwick, Mr. Field!—O there you are, my Lord. Come for’ard. There’s a
chest, sir, not to have a clean shirt on. An’t it? Take your hat off,
my Lord. Why, I should be ashamed if I was you—and an Earl, too—to show
myself to a gentleman with my hat on!—The Earl of Warwick laughs and
uncovers. All the company laugh. One pickpocket, especially, laughs
with great enthusiasm. O what a jolly game it is, when Mr. Field comes
down—and don’t want nobody!
So, you are here, too, are you, you tall, grey, soldierly-looking, grave
man, standing by the fire?—Yes, sir. Good evening, Mr. Field!—Let us
see. You lived servant to a nobleman once?—Yes, Mr. Field.—And what is
it you do now; I forget?—Well, Mr. Field, I job about as well as I can.
I left my employment on account of delicate health. The family is still
kind to me. Mr. Wix of Piccadilly is also very kind to me when I am hard
up. Likewise Mr. Nix of Oxford Street. I get a trifle from them
occasionally, and rub on as well as I can, Mr. Field. Mr. Field’s eye
rolls enjoyingly, for this man is a notorious begging-letter writer.—Good
night, my lads!—Good night, Mr. Field, and thank’ee, sir!
Clear the street here, half a thousand of you! Cut it, Mrs. Stalker—none
of that—we don’t want you! Rogers of the flaming eye, lead on to the
tramps’ lodging-house!
A dream of baleful faces attends to the door. Now, stand back all of
you! In the rear Detective Sergeant plants himself, composedly
whistling, with his strong right arm across the narrow passage. Mrs.
Stalker, I am something’d that need not be written here, if you won’t get
yourself into trouble, in about half a minute, if I see that face of
yours again!
Saint Giles’s church clock, striking eleven, hums through our hand from
the dilapidated door of a dark outhouse as we open it, and are stricken
back by the pestilent breath that issues from within. Rogers to the
front with the light, and let us look!
Ten, twenty, thirty—who can count them! Men, women, children, for the
most part naked, heaped upon the floor like maggots in a cheese! Ho! In
that dark corner yonder! Does anybody lie there? Me sir, Irish me, a
widder, with six children. And yonder? Me sir, Irish me, with me wife
and eight poor babes. And to the left there? Me sir, Irish me, along
with two more Irish boys as is me friends. And to the right there? Me
sir and the Murphy fam’ly, numbering five blessed souls. And what’s
this, coiling, now, about my foot? Another Irish me, pitifully in want
of shaving, whom I have awakened from sleep—and across my other foot lies
his wife—and by the shoes of Inspector Field lie their three eldest—and
their three youngest are at present squeezed between the open door and
the wall. And why is there no one on that little mat before the sullen
fire? Because O’Donovan, with his wife and daughter, is not come in from
selling Lucifers! Nor on the bit of sacking in the nearest corner? Bad
luck! Because that Irish family is late to-night, a-cadging in the
streets!
They are all awake now, the children excepted, and most of them sit up,
to stare. Wheresoever Mr. Rogers turns the flaming eye, there is a
spectral figure rising, unshrouded, from a grave of rags. Who is the
landlord here?—I am, Mr. Field! says a bundle of ribs and parchment
against the wall, scratching itself.—Will you spend this money fairly, in
the morning, to buy coffee for ’em all?—Yes, sir, I will!—O he’ll do it,
sir, he’ll do it fair. He’s honest! cry the spectres. And with thanks
and Good Night sink into their graves again.
Thus, we make our New Oxford Streets, and our other new streets, never
heeding, never asking, where the wretches whom we clear out, crowd. With
such scenes at our doors, with all the plagues of Egypt tied up with bits
of cobweb in kennels so near our homes, we timorously make our Nuisance
Bills and Boards of Health, nonentities, and think to keep away the
Wolves of Crime and Filth, by our electioneering ducking to little
vestrymen and our gentlemanly handling of Red Tape!
Intelligence of the coffee-money has got abroad. The yard is full, and
Rogers of the flaming eye is beleaguered with entreaties to show other
Lodging Houses. Mine next! Mine! Mine! Rogers, military, obdurate,
stiff-necked, immovable, replies not, but leads away; all falling back
before him. Inspector Field follows. Detective Sergeant, with his
barrier of arm across the little passage, deliberately waits to close the
procession. He sees behind him, without any effort, and exceedingly
disturbs one individual far in the rear by coolly calling out, ‘It won’t
do, Mr. Michael! Don’t try it!’
After council holden in the street, we enter other lodging-houses,
public-houses, many lairs and holes; all noisome and offensive; none so
filthy and so crowded as where Irish are. In one, The Ethiopian party
are expected home presently—were in Oxford Street when last heard
of—shall be fetched, for our delight, within ten minutes. In another,
one of the two or three Professors who drew Napoleon Buonaparte and a
couple of mackerel, on the pavement and then let the work of art out to a
speculator, is refreshing after his labours. In another, the vested
interest of the profitable nuisance has been in one family for a hundred
years, and the landlord drives in comfortably from the country to his
snug little stew in town. In all, Inspector Field is received with
warmth. Coiners and smashers droop before him; pickpockets defer to him;
the gentle sex (not very gentle here) smile upon him. Half-drunken hags
check themselves in the midst of pots of beer, or pints of gin, to drink
to Mr. Field, and pressingly to ask the honour of his finishing the
draught. One beldame in rusty black has such admiration for him, that
she runs a whole street’s length to shake him by the hand; tumbling into
a heap of mud by the way, and still pressing her attentions when her very
form has ceased to be distinguishable through it. Before the power of
the law, the power of superior sense—for common thieves are fools beside
these men—and the power of a perfect mastery of their character, the
garrison of Rats’ Castle and the adjacent Fortresses make but a skulking
show indeed when reviewed by Inspector Field.
Saint Giles’s clock says it will be midnight in half-an-hour, and
Inspector Field says we must hurry to the Old Mint in the Borough. The
cab-driver is low-spirited, and has a solemn sense of his responsibility.
Now, what’s your fare, my lad?—O you know, Inspector Field, what’s the
good of asking me!
Say, Parker, strapped and great-coated, and waiting in dim Borough
doorway by appointment, to replace the trusty Rogers whom we left deep in
Saint Giles’s, are you ready? Ready, Inspector Field, and at a motion of
my wrist behold my flaming eye.
This narrow street, sir, is the chief part of the Old Mint, full of low
lodging-houses, as you see by the transparent canvas-lamps and blinds,
announcing beds for travellers! But it is greatly changed, friend Field,
from my former knowledge of it; it is infinitely quieter and more subdued
than when I was here last, some seven years ago? O yes! Inspector
Haynes, a first-rate man, is on this station now and plays the Devil with
them!
Well, my lads! How are you to-night, my lads? Playing cards here, eh?
Who wins?—Why, Mr. Field, I, the sulky gentleman with the damp flat
side-curls, rubbing my bleared eye with the end of my neckerchief which
is like a dirty eel-skin, am losing just at present, but I suppose I must
take my pipe out of my mouth, and be submissive to _you_—I hope I see you
well, Mr. Field?—Aye, all right, my lad. Deputy, who have you got
up-stairs? Be pleased to show the rooms!
Why Deputy, Inspector Field can’t say. He only knows that the man who
takes care of the beds and lodgers is always called so. Steady, O
Deputy, with the flaring candle in the blacking-bottle, for this is a
slushy back-yard, and the wooden staircase outside the house creaks and
has holes in it.
Again, in these confined intolerable rooms, burrowed out like the holes
of rats or the nests of insect-vermin, but fuller of intolerable smells,
are crowds of sleepers, each on his foul truckle-bed coiled up beneath a
rug. Holloa here! Come! Let us see you! Show your face! Pilot Parker
goes from bed to bed and turns their slumbering heads towards us, as a
salesman might turn sheep. Some wake up with an execration and a
threat.—What! who spoke? O! If it’s the accursed glaring eye that fixes
me, go where I will, I am helpless. Here! I sit up to be looked at. Is
it me you want? Not you, lie down again! and I lie down, with a woful
growl.
Whenever the turning lane of light becomes stationary for a moment, some
sleeper appears at the end of it, submits himself to be scrutinised, and
fades away into the darkness.
There should be strange dreams here, Deputy. They sleep sound enough,
says Deputy, taking the candle out of the blacking-bottle, snuffing it
with his fingers, throwing the snuff into the bottle, and corking it up
with the candle; that’s all _I_ know. What is the inscription, Deputy,
on all the discoloured sheets? A precaution against loss of linen.
Deputy turns down the rug of an unoccupied bed and discloses it. STOP
THIEF!
To lie at night, wrapped in the legend of my slinking life; to take the
cry that pursues me, waking, to my breast in sleep; to have it staring at
me, and clamouring for me, as soon as consciousness returns; to have it
for my first-foot on New-Year’s day, my Valentine, my Birthday salute, my
Christmas greeting, my parting with the old year. STOP THIEF!
And to know that I _must_ be stopped, come what will. To know that I am
no match for this individual energy and keenness, or this organised and
steady system! Come across the street, here, and, entering by a little
shop and yard, examine these intricate passages and doors, contrived for
escape, flapping and counter-flapping, like the lids of the conjurer’s
boxes. But what avail they? Who gets in by a nod, and shows their
secret working to us? Inspector Field.
Don’t forget the old Farm House, Parker! Parker is not the man to forget
it. We are going there, now. It is the old Manor-House of these parts,
and stood in the country once. Then, perhaps, there was something, which
was not the beastly street, to see from the shattered low fronts of the
overhanging wooden houses we are passing under—shut up now, pasted over
with bills about the literature and drama of the Mint, and mouldering
away. This long paved yard was a paddock or a garden once, or a court in
front of the Farm House. Perchance, with a dovecot in the centre, and
fowls peeking about—with fair elm trees, then, where discoloured
chimney-stacks and gables are now—noisy, then, with rooks which have
yielded to a different sort of rookery. It’s likelier than not,
Inspector Field thinks, as we turn into the common kitchen, which is in
the yard, and many paces from the house.
Well, my lads and lasses, how are you all? Where’s Blackey, who has
stood near London Bridge these five-and-twenty years, with a painted skin
to represent disease?—Here he is, Mr. Field!—How are you, Blackey?—Jolly,
sa! Not playing the fiddle to-night, Blackey?—Not a night, sa! A sharp,
smiling youth, the wit of the kitchen, interposes. He an’t musical
to-night, sir. I’ve been giving him a moral lecture; I’ve been a talking
to him about his latter end, you see. A good many of these are my
pupils, sir. This here young man (smoothing down the hair of one near
him, reading a Sunday paper) is a pupil of mine. I’m a teaching of him
to read, sir. He’s a promising cove, sir. He’s a smith, he is, and gets
his living by the sweat of the brow, sir. So do I, myself, sir. This
young woman is my sister, Mr. Field. _She’s_ getting on very well too.
I’ve a deal of trouble with ’em, sir, but I’m richly rewarded, now I see
’em all a doing so well, and growing up so creditable. That’s a great
comfort, that is, an’t it, sir?—In the midst of the kitchen (the whole
kitchen is in ecstasies with this impromptu ‘chaff’) sits a young,
modest, gentle-looking creature, with a beautiful child in her lap. She
seems to belong to the company, but is so strangely unlike it. She has
such a pretty, quiet face and voice, and is so proud to hear the child
admired—thinks you would hardly believe that he is only nine months old!
Is she as bad as the rest, I wonder? Inspectorial experience does not
engender a belief contrariwise, but prompts the answer, Not a ha’porth of
difference!
There is a piano going in the old Farm House as we approach. It stops.
Landlady appears. Has no objections, Mr. Field, to gentlemen being
brought, but wishes it were at earlier hours, the lodgers complaining of
ill-conwenience. Inspector Field is polite and soothing—knows his woman
and the sex. Deputy (a girl in this case) shows the way up a heavy,
broad old staircase, kept very clean, into clean rooms where many
sleepers are, and where painted panels of an older time look strangely on
the truckle beds. The sight of whitewash and the smell of soap—two
things we seem by this time to have parted from in infancy—make the old
Farm House a phenomenon, and connect themselves with the so curiously
misplaced picture of the pretty mother and child long after we have left
it,—long after we have left, besides, the neighbouring nook with
something of a rustic flavour in it yet, where once, beneath a low wooden
colonnade still standing as of yore, the eminent Jack Sheppard
condescended to regale himself, and where, now, two old bachelor brothers
in broad hats (who are whispered in the Mint to have made a compact long
ago that if either should ever marry, he must forfeit his share of the
joint property) still keep a sequestered tavern, and sit o’ nights
smoking pipes in the bar, among ancient bottles and glasses, as our eyes
behold them.
How goes the night now? Saint George of Southwark answers with twelve
blows upon his bell. Parker, good night, for Williams is already waiting
over in the region of Ratcliffe Highway, to show the houses where the
sailors dance.
I should like to know where Inspector Field was born. In Ratcliffe
Highway, I would have answered with confidence, but for his being equally
at home wherever we go. _He_ does not trouble his head as I do, about
the river at night. _He_ does not care for its creeping, black and
silent, on our right there, rushing through sluice-gates, lapping at
piles and posts and iron rings, hiding strange things in its mud, running
away with suicides and accidentally drowned bodies faster than midnight
funeral should, and acquiring such various experience between its cradle
and its grave. It has no mystery for him. Is there not the Thames
Police!
Accordingly, Williams leads the way. We are a little late, for some of
the houses are already closing. No matter. You show us plenty. All the
landlords know Inspector Field. All pass him, freely and
good-humouredly, wheresoever he wants to go. So thoroughly are all these
houses open to him and our local guide, that, granting that sailors must
be entertained in their own way—as I suppose they must, and have a right
to be—I hardly know how such places could be better regulated. Not that
I call the company very select, or the dancing very graceful—even so
graceful as that of the German Sugar Bakers, whose assembly, by the
Minories, we stopped to visit—but there is watchful maintenance of order
in every house, and swift expulsion where need is. Even in the midst of
drunkenness, both of the lethargic kind and the lively, there is sharp
landlord supervision, and pockets are in less peril than out of doors.
These houses show, singularly, how much of the picturesque and romantic
there truly is in the sailor, requiring to be especially addressed. All
the songs (sung in a hailstorm of halfpence, which are pitched at the
singer without the least tenderness for the time or tune—mostly from
great rolls of copper carried for the purpose—and which he occasionally
dodges like shot as they fly near his head) are of the sentimental sea
sort. All the rooms are decorated with nautical subjects. Wrecks,
engagements, ships on fire, ships passing lighthouses on iron-bound
coasts, ships blowing up, ships going down, ships running ashore, men
lying out upon the main-yard in a gale of wind, sailors and ships in
every variety of peril, constitute the illustrations of fact. Nothing
can be done in the fanciful way, without a thumping boy upon a scaly
dolphin.
How goes the night now? Past one. Black and Green are waiting in
Whitechapel to unveil the mysteries of Wentworth Street. Williams, the
best of friends must part. Adieu!
Are not Black and Green ready at the appointed place? O yes! They glide
out of shadow as we stop. Imperturbable Black opens the cab-door;
Imperturbable Green takes a mental note of the driver. Both Green and
Black then open each his flaming eye, and marshal us the way that we are
going.
The lodging-house we want is hidden in a maze of streets and courts. It
is fast shut. We knock at the door, and stand hushed looking up for a
light at one or other of the begrimed old lattice windows in its ugly
front, when another constable comes up—supposes that we want ‘to see the
school.’ Detective Sergeant meanwhile has got over a rail, opened a
gate, dropped down an area, overcome some other little obstacles, and
tapped at a window. Now returns. The landlord will send a deputy
immediately.
Deputy is heard to stumble out of bed. Deputy lights a candle, draws
back a bolt or two, and appears at the door. Deputy is a shivering shirt
and trousers by no means clean, a yawning face, a shock head much
confused externally and internally. We want to look for some one. You
may go up with the light, and take ’em all, if you like, says Deputy,
resigning it, and sitting down upon a bench in the kitchen with his ten
fingers sleepily twisting in his hair.
Halloa here! Now then! Show yourselves. That’ll do. It’s not you.
Don’t disturb yourself any more! So on, through a labyrinth of airless
rooms, each man responding, like a wild beast, to the keeper who has
tamed him, and who goes into his cage. What, you haven’t found him,
then? says Deputy, when we came down. A woman mysteriously sitting up
all night in the dark by the smouldering ashes of the kitchen fire, says
it’s only tramps and cadgers here; it’s gonophs over the way. A man
mysteriously walking about the kitchen all night in the dark, bids her
hold her tongue. We come out. Deputy fastens the door and goes to bed
again.
Black and Green, you know Bark, lodging-house keeper and receiver of
stolen goods?—O yes, Inspector Field.—Go to Bark’s next.
Bark sleeps in an inner wooden hutch, near his street door. As we parley
on the step with Bark’s Deputy, Bark growls in his bed. We enter, and
Bark flies out of bed. Bark is a red villain and a wrathful, with a
sanguine throat that looks very much as if it were expressly made for
hanging, as he stretches it out, in pale defiance, over the half-door of
his hutch. Bark’s parts of speech are of an awful sort—principally
adjectives. I won’t, says Bark, have no adjective police and adjective
strangers in my adjective premises! I won’t, by adjective and
substantive! Give me my trousers, and I’ll send the whole adjective
police to adjective and substantive! Give me, says Bark, my adjective
trousers! I’ll put an adjective knife in the whole bileing of ’em. I’ll
punch their adjective heads. I’ll rip up their adjective substantives.
Give me my adjective trousers! says Bark, and I’ll spile the bileing of
’em!
Now, Bark, what’s the use of this? Here’s Black and Green, Detective
Sergeant, and Inspector Field. You know we will come in.—I know you
won’t! says Bark. Somebody give me my adjective trousers! Bark’s
trousers seem difficult to find. He calls for them as Hercules might for
his club. Give me my adjective trousers! says Bark, and I’ll spile the
bileing of ’em!
Inspector Field holds that it’s all one whether Bark likes the visit or
don’t like it. He, Inspector Field, is an Inspector of the Detective
Police, Detective Sergeant is Detective Sergeant, Black and Green are
constables in uniform. Don’t you be a fool, Bark, or you know it will be
the worse for you.—I don’t care, says Bark. Give me my adjective
trousers!
At two o’clock in the morning, we descend into Bark’s low kitchen,
leaving Bark to foam at the mouth above, and Imperturbable Black and
Green to look at him. Bark’s kitchen is crammed full of thieves, holding
a conversazione there by lamp-light. It is by far the most dangerous
assembly we have seen yet. Stimulated by the ravings of Bark, above,
their looks are sullen, but not a man speaks. We ascend again. Bark has
got his trousers, and is in a state of madness in the passage with his
back against a door that shuts off the upper staircase. We observe, in
other respects, a ferocious individuality in Bark. Instead of ‘STOP
THIEF!’ on his linen, he prints ‘STOLEN FROM Bark’s!’
Now, Bark, we are going up-stairs!—No, you ain’t!—You refuse admission to
the Police, do you, Bark?—Yes, I do! I refuse it to all the adjective
police, and to all the adjective substantives. If the adjective coves in
the kitchen was men, they’d come up now, and do for you! Shut me that
there door! says Bark, and suddenly we are enclosed in the passage.
They’d come up and do for you! cries Bark, and waits. Not a sound in the
kitchen! They’d come up and do for you! cries Bark again, and waits.
Not a sound in the kitchen! We are shut up, half-a-dozen of us, in
Bark’s house in the innermost recesses of the worst part of London, in
the dead of the night—the house is crammed with notorious robbers and
ruffians—and not a man stirs. No, Bark. They know the weight of the
law, and they know Inspector Field and Co. too well.
We leave bully Bark to subside at leisure out of his passion and his
trousers, and, I dare say, to be inconveniently reminded of this little
brush before long. Black and Green do ordinary duty here, and look
serious.
As to White, who waits on Holborn Hill to show the courts that are eaten
out of Rotten Gray’s Inn, Lane, where other lodging-houses are, and where
(in one blind alley) the Thieves’ Kitchen and Seminary for the teaching
of the art to children is, the night has so worn away, being now
almost at odds with morning, which is which,
that they are quiet, and no light shines through the chinks in the
shutters. As undistinctive Death will come here, one day, sleep comes
now. The wicked cease from troubling sometimes, even in this life.