Outside Mister Oates’s house, I removed one of my pistols from its holster and cocked it, before knocking loudly upon the door. By now I was an old hand at making an arrest, and had dispatched Halifax’s men to the back of the house, in case Oates still thought to give us the slip.
“In the name of the King, open up,” I called out, all the time pressing Newton back with my free hand in case any shots came forth. Finally, the door not being opened, Newton ordered the Treasury men to break in the door; and this being done, with a great deal of noise that did bring all the inhabitants of Axe Yard out of their houses, I entered the little house, followed, at a safe distance, by Newton and the rest. But the house was empty.
“I fear our bird has flown,” I said, coming downstairs, having inspected the upper part of the house. “These fools have bungled it. Either that or they have been bribed.”
Newton was examining the bowl of an old clay pipe most closely. “I wonder,” he murmured, scooping the contents onto a fingernail, and tasting these.
“Bungled it,” I repeated loudly, for the benefit of the Treasury men who were in the house. “For they would not dare to take a bribe.”
“Not flown, I’ll hazard,” remarked Newton finally. “Merely gone out.” He pointed to a handsome silver snuff- box that lay upon a table. “I do not think he would have left that behind if he intended not to come back.”
“Then we may wait for him here,” said I.
Newton shook his head. “All London is in a commotion,” he said. “He will soon guess that something has gone awry with his plans. He may yet hear something that makes him bolt. No, we would do well to pursue him before he returns here.”
“But how?” said I. “We know not where he has gone. Unless it be to Westminster Hall.”
Newton shook his head. “It is long past nightfall. The shops will be shut by now. No, I have a mind he has gone somewhere else.”
“Of course,” I said. “The Swan with Two Necks, in Tuttle Street. Or perhaps the Baptist church in Wapping.”
“It may be that we shall find him there,” allowed Newton. “Or it may be that we shall find him somewhere else.”
“I confess I am at a loss where else we may look,” I said.
“This pipe is still warm,” said Newton, handing it to me.
“Why, so it is,” I said. “Then he cannot be long gone.”
“Exactly so. But notice, more particularly, the thick black encrustation of the pipe bowl. That is not tobacco.”
“It is like dried treacle,” said I, examining the pipe bowl. “Is it charcoal?”
“No, not charcoal, either. Do you recall how when we saw Mister Oates, his fingers were quite blackened? And how a curious odour did adhere to his person?”
“Yes, it was most particular. For I did think I had smelt that smell somewhere else.”
“In Southwark,” said Newton. “At the place where you went when you did follow poor Major Mornay.”
“Yes,” said I. “How did you know?”
“This is opium,” said Newton, touching the bowl of the clay pipe. “Paracelsus, and more recently an English apothecary, Thomas Sydenham, have learned to use opium in sherry wine for its medicinal properties. Here it is known as laudanum. The Dutch, however, have introduced the practice of smoking it; and in Turkey, where the practice has taken hold, it is called Mash Allah, which means “the work of God.”
“They were Dutch, the people who did keep that disreputable house in Southwark.”
“That much you did tell me yourself at the time. Opium is most efficacious in the relief of pain, which is a mercy of God, of course, but when smoked it is also a most consumptive habit. A man, or a woman, might bear a beating more easily, having smoked opium.”
“I see what you mean, sir.”
“All of which makes me suppose that were not Mister Oates to be found at The Swan with Two Necks, in Tuttle Street, we would do well to look for him in Southwark. Did once you not lose Mister Oates while you were following him in Southwark, before you knew who it was that you followed?”
“Yes sir,” said I. “And now that I come to think of it, it was not very far from that stew where Mornay went.”
“It would also explain why Mornay did not recognise you immediately. He was probably stupefied with opium. You yourself remarked upon the fact that you thought he was drunk.”
“I too would have been drunk if I had remained in that place. For the fumes were most intoxicating.”
“Can you remember the place?”
“I think so.”
“Good. We’ll call in at The Swan and then, if he’s not there, we’ll head down to the river and get a barge across.”
We took the Treasury men with us, although they must have wished they were elsewhere, such was the disdain with which Newton treated them after their letting Oates walk out of the house in Axe Yard right under their noses. Of that blackguard there was no sign at The Swan with Two Necks in Tuttle Street; and we were soon across the river and in Southwark where, as before, a fog was settling on the low roofs and jagged chimney stacks. There were few lights in the darkness to illuminate our way, and once or twice we slipped in the mud of the marshes so that we were thoroughly wet and mired by the time I had guided us, as best as I remembered, to the Dutchman’s house.
Newton sent two of the Treasury men round to the back of the house, in case Oates should try to slip away, and warned them that if he did escape, they would pay dearly for it. Then, producing my pistols once more, I knocked loudly, in the name of the King.
At last the door was opened, and by the same bawd I recognised from before. And seeing my pistols, she called out some name—I still know not what it was—at which point a gigantic hound came scrambling out of another room, barking furiously all the while, which quite took me by surprise; and the animal would surely have torn out my own throat, or Doctor Newton’s, had I not fired both pistols at its boxlike head and killed it. I was still trembling like a leaf as we entered the place, which was reeking of opium—for so I knew it now. Posting two more men at the front door, we searched upstairs and found several small cubicles, and in each of them, lying on a filthy bed, a man or a woman smoking a pipe full of that Mash Allah, that work of God, of which Newton had spoken earlier. Much to my relief, almost the first person I found was the so-called nun who had been whipped for the pleasure of the men in that room downstairs; she was alive, although so stupefied by the pipe she was smoking that hers hardly passed for life, and it was clear that she submitted to her degradation for the pleasures and oblivion of the pipe she now nursed in her blackened fingers.
Oates himself lay in the cubicle next to hers, wreathed in an evil spirit of white opium smoke. Seeing us, and hearing our warrant, he climbed slowly to his feet; but if we had expected the man to show fear and denial—and in truth we had grown used to fear and denial from the men and women we arrested—we were wrong, for Oates was all languor, submitting to the manacles I clasped around his wrists without demur.
“But we have met before, have we not?” said Oates, as we marched him outside. “I did believe that you were Lord Ashley, and you were his servant.”
It was at this point that one of the Treasury men spoke to us.
“Where to now, Doctor Newton?” he asked.
“The Whit,” said Newton.
Oates’s near motionless eyes lit up like coals. “I am honoured,” he said, inclining his head in Newton’s general direction, “to be arrested by the great Doctor Newton.” Oates smiled his smile, like a great sleepy snake, methought, which did prompt my curiosity as we made our way back to the river.
When at last we were in a boat, and on our way across the river, I could restrain my curiosity no longer. “You seem, Mister Oates, most sanguine about your arrest, the collapse of your plot,” said I, “and the prospect of your imprisonment.”
“Milord,” he said, grinning, “for I know not what else to call you, the Whit and I are old acquaintances. But I think that I shall not be there for very long, this time, Protestant feeling being right now so strong against Roman Catholics in this country.”
“We shall see,” murmured Newton.
“Might I ask, were we betrayed?”
