But no jacket in the world would do any good if he were caught with tears. Any street boy worth his salt would spot them in a flash, just as they always seemed to know when someone was a ripe subject for tormenting and teasing. Robin had been the victim often enough of a particular gang when he walked to school, a place whose insides that group had probably rarely seen, if ever.
He gave his eyes another fierce swipe with his sleeve. Then, pulling his cap down over his ears, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, and hunching up inside his jacket, he attempted a swagger as he set out to somehow kill a half hour without being killed himself.
Actually, it was easy to melt into a street teeming with people who, unless a boy ran into one of them, had no more interest in him than if he were a rag dangling from a ragmonger’s cart. Less. Why would anyone notice him when there were hundreds of children roaming the tenement streets? Robin had one heart-stopping moment, however, when he saw a gang of street boys headed right toward him. But they were not ones he recognized, and they looked through him as if he were nothing but a lamppost. Possibly because they were looking for a pocket to pick, and Robin was only a boy in a patched jacket, not a very likely prospect. Nonetheless, inside his pocket, Robin’s fingers tightened around his nickel watch.
Beyond that, there were a great many other things happening on the street to keep his mind away from his forthcoming dreaded encounter with Hawker. For he was overwhelmed by the bedlam of confusion and racket swirling around him. Rickety wagons clogged the street, their loud-mouthed owners vying for space. Rusty wheels squealed and horses snorted. Housewives haggled with street vendors over the prices of rags and wilted vegetables. Newsboys shouted the headlines of evening papers.
To escape as much of this as he could, Robin hugged the walls, trying to interest himself in what lay behind the shop windows. At the fishmongers he stared into the eyes of dead fish to which the word “fresh” had long since ceased to apply. At the butcher shop he gazed at ugly slabs of meat being enjoyed by something that might have been flies, only this was still winter and not the time for flies.
Some shops were not so deadly. One in particular had a sign in its dusty windows saying “buy or sell.” It was filled with everything from trays of tarnished spoons, cheap rings, bracelets, and watches, to ladies’ tortoiseshell hair combs. There were even two violins with broken strings hanging on the walls. Over the door of this shop he read the word “Pawnshop.” Then his eyes fell on a large clock hanging on the pawnshop wall, its pendulum swinging. Could that be the right time?
Quickly he pulled his watch from his pocket, very careful to let no one see it. For someone in that crowd could snatch it from him, or just as easily accuse him of being a pickpocket. After all, how could a boy in a patched jacket be the owner of such a fine watch? And nickel though it might be, to Robin it was the finest watch in the world. But now this fine watch of his told him that he had managed to pass all but five minutes of the half hour he had set himself, and he must now hurry to face Hawker.
Breathless, he arrived in only four minutes at a disreputable brick building that seemed to be held up on either side by two equally disreputable buildings. But it looked like thousands of its kind even to the door, blackened and stained by filth from the city streets, splintered by the countless pairs of heavy boots that had kicked it in order to hasten their owner’s entrance into the building’s miserable interior. The only thing that distinguished this building from the rest was the sign hanging tipsily beside it. Portrayed on one side in paint that might once have been gold was a pig’s snout. Across from the snout was the opposite end of the pig. Or might have been if so much of the curly tail had not been worn away. These two pig parts were joined by words barely legible that announced the building as being The Whole Hog. This was the place where Hawker was waiting for Robin. His heart starting to pound, he pushed open the door….
And was hit in the face with the terrible stench of stale air, stale drink, and stale smoke, in a squalid room not large enough for half the bodies packed into it. In the murky light, men in work clothes and a few frowzy women sat crowded together, leaning heavily on an array of dark, scarred, wood tables. Some occupants had gone beyond simple leaning, and had collapsed on the table, arms sprawled out over their heads. No one, including the management, paid any attention to Robin as he huddled against the front wall, his eyes searching the room.
At first he saw only the dark knit cap on a head bent over a table, a cap like many others there, but he knew the black jacket under it at once. Oh, how well he knew it, for it was rarely off its owner. Sometimes it stayed on all night when he stumbled in late and fell into bed like a stone. The drooping head was a good sign, because it meant Robin had gauged his time just right. Under that cap would be a brain too befuddled to
