The Victorian Villains Megapack (39 page)

“And then?”

“If nothing happens, come back and tell me.”

When he stood at the top of the stairs Pringle felt much inclined, instead of turning to the left, to go the other way and cross the bridge, leaving the “Toff” to secure the ingots as best he could. Later on he had cause to regret that he had not done so; but for the moment love of adventure prevailed and, walking down the gradient from the bridge, he gave the signal. There was no one in sight, but the action was such a natural one on a damp and foggy night that had the street been ever so crowded it would have pass unnoticed.

Pringle counted twenty, and repeated the signal. By this time he had reached the corner, and looking down the side street, he distinctly saw the twin lights of a carriage advancing at a trot. He turned back and reached the stairs as a rubber-tyred miniature brougham pulled up beside him.

“Is it there?” whispered the “Toff” impatiently.

“There’s a brougham stopping. I don’t know—”

“Yes, yes; that’s it. Lend a hand, now; we mustn’t keep it waiting about.”

Marvelling at the style in which the “Toff” appeared to work, Pringle helped to lug the basket up, and between them they bundled it into the carriage.

“Now,” said the “Toff”, fumbling in his waistcoat pocket, “what do you say about my proposal?”

“Well, really, I should like to think over it a little,” replied Pringle evasively.

“Oh, I can’t wait here all night while you’re making up your mind. If you don’t recognize a good thing when you see it, you’re not the man for me. It’s not everyone I should make the offer to.”

“Then I think I had better say ‘No’.”

“Please yourself, and sink a little lower than you are.”

The “Toff” appeared nettled at Pringle’s refusal. He ceased to grope in his waistcoat, and drawing a leather purse from his trouser pocket, took something from it.

“That’s for your trouble,” said he shortly; and the next minute was bowling swiftly over the bridge. Pringle, who had mechanically extended his hand, found by the glimmer of a lamp that the “Toff” had appraised his services at the sum of seven shillings, and was moved to throw the coins into the river.

As he hesitated over the fate of the florin and two half-crowns in his palm, a policeman approached and glanced suspiciously at him. His hand closed on the money, and he passed on to the bridge. He felt hot and grimy with his exertions; also his boots were damp, and the night wind began to grow chilly. Half way across he broke into a run, the elastic structure swaying perceptibly beneath his feet. Over on the other side the lights of a public-house pierced the mist, and he struck into the roadway towards it.

“Outside—on the right!” said a voice, as he opened the door of the saloon bar. For the time he had forgotten the shabbiness of his dress, enhanced as it was by the many things it had suffered in the course of the night’s work, and with an unwonted diffidence he sought the public bar. There, with a steaming glass in hand, he strove to dry his boots at a gas-stove in one corner, but he still felt cold and miserable when, about half past eleven, he rose to go.

‘”Ere—what’s this?” The barman had inserted the proffered coin in a
trier
, and giving it a deft jerk, now flung it, bent nearly double, across the counter.

“I beg your pardon,” Pringle apologised, as he produced another. “I had no idea it was bad.”

The barman threw the second coin upon the counter. It rang clearly, but doubled in the
trier
like so much putty.

“Bad!” chorused the onlookers.

“Fetch a constable, Ted!” was the solo of the landlord, who had come round from the other side of the bar.

For the second time that evening Pringle’s nerve took flight. A horrible idea seized him—a crevasse seemed to open at his feet. Had the “Toff” played some treachery upon him? And as the door swung after the pot-man, he made a break for liberty. But the barman was quick as he, and with a cat-like spring over the counter, he held Pringle before he had got half across the threshold, several customers officiously aiding.

“I’m going to prosecute this man,” announced the landlord; adding, for the benefit of the audience generally, “I’ve taken six bad half-crowns this week.”

“Swine! Sarve ’im right! Oughter be shot!” were the virtuous comments on this statement.

As resistance was clearly useless Pringle submitted to his arrest, and was presently accompanied to the police station by an escort of most of the loafers in the bar.

“What’s your name?” asked the night inspector, as he took the charge.

Pringle hesitated. He realized that appearances were hopelessly against him Attired as he was, to give his real name and address would only serve to increase suspicion, while a domiciliary visit to Furnival’s Inn on the part of the police was to be avoided at all costs; the fiction of his literary agency, as spurious as the coins which had landed him in his present plight, would be the very least discovery to reward them.

“Now, then, what is it?” demanded the inspector impatiently.

“Augustus Stammers,” Pringle blurted, on the spur of the moment.

“Ah! I thought you were a stammerer,” was the facetious remark of the publican.

The inspector frowned his disapproval. “Address?” he queried. Pringle again hesitated. “No fixed?” the inspector suggested.

“No fixed,” agreed Pringle; and having replied to subsequent inquiries that his age was forty and his occupation a carpenter, he was ordered to turn out his pockets. Obediently he emptied his belongings on the desk, and as his money was displayed the landlord uttered a triumphant shout.

“There y’are!” he exclaimed, pouncing on a bright half-crown. “That makes three of em!”

This incriminatory evidence, together with a knife, being appropriated, Pringle was led away down some steps, through a courtyard, and then into a long whitewashed passage flanked by doors on either side. Pushing one open, “In you go,” said his conductor; and Pringle having walked in the door was shut and locked behind him.

Though lighted by a gas jet in the passage which shone through a small window above the door, the cell was rather dim, and it was some little while before his eyes, accustomed to the gloom, could properly take in his surroundings. It was a box of a place, about fourteen feet by six, with a kind of wooden bench fixed across the far end, and on this he sat down and somewhat despondently began to think.

It was impossible for Pringle to doubt that he was the victim of the “Toff’s” machinations. He remembered how the latter’s manner had changed when he positively refused the offer of partnership; how the “Toff” had ceased searching in his vest, and had drawn the purse from his trouser pocket. He supposed at the time that the “Toff,” nettled at his refusal, had substituted silver for gold, and had thought it strange that he should keep his gold loose and his silver in a purse. It all stood out clear and lucid enough now. “Snide” money, as he knew, must always be treated with gentleness and care, and, lest it should lose the bloom of youth, some artists in the line are even accustomed to wrap each piece separately in tissue paper. The “Toff” evidently kept his “snide” in a purse, and, feeling piqued, had seized the opportunity of vindictively settling a score.

Pringle cursed his folly in not having foreseen such a possibility. What malicious fate was it that curbed his first impulse to sink the “Toff’s” generosity in the river? With all his experience of the devious ways of his fellow men, after all his fishing in troubled waters, to be tricked like this—to be caught like vermin in a trap! Well might the “Toff” sneer at him as an amateur! And most galling of all was the reflection that he was absolutely guiltless of any criminal intent. But it was useless to protest his innocence; a long term of imprisonment was the least he could expect. It was certainly the tightest place in which he had ever found himself.

Pringle was, fortunately, in no mood for sleep. He had soon received unmistakable evidence of the presence of the third of Pharaoh’s plagues, and sought safety in constant motion. Besides, there were other obstacles to repose. From down the passage echoed the screams and occasional song of a drunken woman, as hysteria alternated with pleasurable ideas in her alcoholic brain; nearer, two men, who were apparently charged together, kept up an interchange of abuse from distant cells, each blaming the other for the miscarriage of their affairs; right opposite, the thunderous snoring of a drunken man filled the gaps when either the woman slumbered or the rhetoric of the disputants failed. Lastly, at regular intervals, a constable opened a trap in the cell doors to ascertain by personal observation and inquiry the continued existence of the inmates.

As time passed the cells overflowed, and every few minutes Pringle heard the tramp of feet and the renewed unlocking and sorting out as fresh guests were admitted to the hospitality of the State.

After a time the cell opposite was opened, and the voice of the snorer arose. He objected to a companion, as it seemed, and threatened unimaginable things were one forced upon him. He was too drunk to be reasoned with, so a moment after Pringle’s door was flung open, and at the decision, “This ’un’ll do,” his solitude was at an end. It was a dishevelled, dirty creature who entered; also his clothes were torn rawly as from a recent struggle. He slouched in with his hands in his pockets, and with a side glance at Pringle, flung himself down on the bench. Presently he expectorated as a preliminary to conversation, and with a jerk of the head towards the opposite cell, “I’d rawther doss wiv’ im than wiv’ a wet umbreller! What yer in for, guv’nor?”

“I’m charged with passing bad money,” replied Pringle affably.

“Anyone wiv’ yer?”

“No.”

‘”Ow many’d yer got on yer?”

“They found three.” A long whistle.

“That’s all three stretch for yer! Why didn’t yer work the pitch ’long o’ someone else? Yer ought ter ’ave ’ad a pal outside to ’old the snide, while you goes in wiv’ only one on yer, see?”

Pringle humbly acknowledged the error, and his companion, taking pity on his greenness in the lower walks of criminality, then proceeded to give him several hints, the following of which, he assured Pringle, would be “slap-up claws”!

Later on he grew confidential, told how his present “pinching” was due to “collerin’ a red jerry from a ole reeler”, and presently, pleading fatigue, he laid him down on the bench and was soon snoring enviably. But his slumbers were fitful, for, although but little inconvenienced by the smaller inhabitants of the cell, having acquired a habit of allowing for them without waking, he was periodically roused by the gaoler’s inspection. On many of these occasions he would sit up and regale Pringle for a time with such further scraps of autobiography as he appeared to pride himself on—always excepting his present misfortune, which, after his preliminary burst of confidence, he seemed anxious to ignore as a discreditable incident, being “pinched over a reeler”. In this entertaining manner they passed the night until eight o’clock, when Pringle authorized the expenditure of some of his capital on a breakfast of eggs and bacon and muddy coffee from “outside,” his less affluent companion having to content himself with the bare official meal.

Soon after breakfast a voice from a near cell rose in earnest colloquy. “Hasn’t my bail come yet, gaoler?”

“I tell yer ’e’s wired ’e’ll come soon’s ’e’s ’ad ’is breakfast.”

“But I’ve got a most important engagement at nine! Can’t you let me out before he comes?”

“Don’t talk tommy-rot! You’ve got to go up to the court at ten. If yer bail comes, out yer’ll go; if it doesn’t, yer’ll have to go on to Westminster.”

“Must I go in the van? Can’t I have a cab—I’m only charged with being excited!”

“Yer’ll ’ave to go just like everybody else.”

Bang!
went the trap in the door, and as the footsteps died up the passage Pringle’s companions chanted:

“But the pore chap doesn’t know, yer know—

E ’asn’t bin in London long!”

About an hour later the cells were emptied, and the prisoners were marched down to the courtyard and packed away in the police-van to be driven the short intervening distance to Westminster Police Court. There was no lack of company here. On arrival the van-riders were turned into a basement room, already half full, and well lighted by an amply barred window which, frosted as were its panes, allowed the sun freely to penetrate as if to brighten the over-gloomy thoughts of those within. Punctually at ten the name of the first prisoner was called. It was the hysterical lady of the police cells, who disappeared amid loudly expressed wishes of “Good-luck!” The wait was a tedious one, and as the crowd dwindled, Pringle’s habitual stoicism enabled him to draw a farcical parallel between his fellows and a dungeonful of aristocrats awaiting the tumbril during the Reign of Terror. The noisy converse around him consisted chiefly of speculations as to the chances of each one being either remanded, “fullied,” or summarily convicted.

Pringle had no inclination to join therein; besides his over-night companion had long ago decided, with judicial precision, that he would be either “fullied”—that is, fully committed for trial—or else remanded for inquiries, but that the chances were in favour of the latter.

The room was half empty when Pringle’s summons came, but the call for “Stammers” at first brought no response. He had quite forgotten his alias (not at all an unusual thing, by the way, with those who acquire such a luxury), and it was not until the gaoler repeated the name and everyone looked questioningly at his neighbour that Pringle remembered his ownership and passed out, acknowledging with a wave of the hand the chorus of “Good-luck” prescribed by the etiquette of the place.

Up a flight of steps, and along a narrow passage to a door, where he was halted for a season. A subdued hum of voices could be heard within. Suddenly the door opened.

“Three months, blimey, the ’ole image! Jus’ cos my ’usband ’it me!”

And as a red-faced matron, with a bandaged head, flounced past him on her way downstairs. Pringle stepped into the iron-railed pen she had just vacated. In front of him was a space of some yards occupied by three or four desked seats, and on the bench beyond sat a benevolent-looking old gentleman with a bald head, whom Pringle greeted with a respectful bow. The barman was at once called; he had little to say, and said it promptly.