Farther toward the gaslit regions I could not venture naked, and so turned back to midnight territory. Here the night was not entirely silent either. And the way was far from uninhabited, though it looked empty at first glance. When I focused my keen senses and my keener purpose, I could detect in almost every quarter wheezy breathing and the movement, in uneasy sleep, of ragged limbs. These came from almost any spot that offered some concealment and the promise of a little shelter against rain and wind—a doorway here, a row of dustbins there, a hedge across the way.
Although in December the situation might have been quite different, on such a balmy night in early June there were great throngs of London vagabonds, of both sexes and all ages, who preferred the risks of freedom to the gray walls of workhouse or charitable shelter. With an effortless stealth that kept my own presence unseen and unheard, I slid from one secreted sleeper to the next, inspecting them and passing on. Only a cat upon a windowsill reacted to my soft passage, with a faint snarl of vague concern. She quieted when I had looked into her yellow eyes.
So many derelicts were abroad hereabouts that it took me only a few minutes to locate a sleeping man whose physical measurements quite closely approximated my own. He was a-shudder already with some nightmare, his long limbs trembling, as I reached inside the angle of the disused doorway where he slept, and hauled him to his feet, with such a good grip on his collar that the seams of the ragged coat I coveted at once began to yield.
'Softly!' The word hissed from my lips in low but fierce command. I had seen that my client's mouth was opening, even before his eyelids began to flutter, and his larynx was in a preparatory state of vibration, tuning up for a mad scream of terror.
'Softly!' I urged him. 'And those dreams of wealth that you must sometimes nurse shall find at least modest fulfillment. But the first loud sound you utter must be drowned out at once by the sharp crackling of your own bones—and that is such a revolting noise that I grow angry if I am forced to listen to it. Surely you will not choose to anger me?'
Whilst I was reasoning with him thus, his eyes opened in the worn leather of his face—they seemed to go on opening forever—and fixed on me. The few bad teeth remaining in his mouth were like to break themselves with chattering. And his trembling legs, their joints at every moment seeking a new angle, seemed utterly unable to support his meager weight. But fortunately—for both of us, perhaps—the scream still hung unvoiced within his throat.
Having made sure of this, I eased my grip a trifle, to let his own feet assume most of their rightful load. 'I mean you no harm, my man,' I went on. 'I simply require your rags, or those of someone of your shape, and I see no reason why you should not be the one to benefit from my generosity. In payment for the abominable clothing you are wearing, I offer this.' And between thumb and forefinger. I held up a gold sovereign. 'A fair price, is it not?'
It was of course a princely overpayment. Yet I was forced to repeat my offer several times before the oaf could master his terrors sufficiently to stammer out a crude agreement. So protracted was this delay, and the fumble-fingered unbuttoning which followed, that I came near letting him fall back to the pavement, and going on my way in search of someone brighter with whom to trade.
In glancing back over the account of this event I have just written, I am convinced that some of my modern readers will have doubts (to say the least) that I should have been so patient and generous when I so sorely needed clothing. Why did not I, with all my boasted stealth and night-vision, break into some house or shop and steal garments that were clean and whole? Or waylay some victim in the dark and strip him forcibly? Well, I shall return to this point later. For the present, let me only remark that I cannot, and never could, abide a thief.
Thus I concluded purchase of cap, coat, shirt, trousers, and a pair of shoes that would never have come close to fitting me had the soles still been in reasonable communion with the uppers. These clothes were aswarm in their every decayed seam with a variety of vermin, who at my silent shout of command leaped one and all, like sailors from a drowning ship, onto the cobblestones. This dominating rapport with less-than-human life was as much part of me as my pulse, and in my addled state I never remarked to myself upon the fact that the folk around me gave no evidence of enjoying any such power.
With my nakedness now covered, I could walk openly along the lighted streets. In that quarter of the city there walked many who had no better garb than mine. The late shops all seemed to be closing now, but I thought that in the morning I would be able to enter one and buy some better clothes… if I survived till then.
I was now grown so tired that only an effort of will kept me from staggering openly. In this way I moved on through the foggy streets, no conscious goal in mind. When
The city darkened as lights went out in one window after another. Brushing past me in the murk, the homeless and the relatively prosperous alike had turned their thoughts to shelter and to sleep. My own limbs now felt not much stronger than those of the man from whom I had my clothing. Only the fact that it was as yet not much past midnight gave me the strength I needed to move on. Every instinct warned me that from this hour my strength must wane, till dawn came like a fire to burn away my life—unless before dawn I had found rest.
By now my wanderings had brought me out upon the great thoroughfare called Commercial Road. Comparing what I saw about me with the blotched palimpsest of my memory, I gained some vague awareness of my location within London, and judged that Limehouse must be near ahead. Whether to push on farther to the east, or turn my steps some other way, I could not immediately decide. I stumbled and nearly fell, less from my broken shoes than from sheer deadly weariness. Folk hurried past in the slum street, paying no attention to my difficulties. Even my will wavered momentarily. Then I stoked up the flickering fires of life within my soul, and chose.
Scarcely had I proceeded fifty yards along the dim street of my selection, when the flare of a private gaslight came into view immediately ahead, shining full upon a sign whose painted message I at once accepted as an omen. In bold lettering it promised to all in need the solace of their Savior, in the most eminently practical form of food and lodging.
Though there was money in my pockets, I had so far avoided all hotels and lodging houses, feeling certain in my bones that their soft beds would offer me no more repose than had my prisoner's cot, or the rough planking of the pier. But this hostel, with its tender of more than ordinary help, seemed something different, and I was immediately drawn to it.
I had, as I was later to realize, chanced upon one of the first shelters operated by the Salvation Army. The sturdy outer doors were on the verge of closing for the night, but their keeper—a charity case himself, to judge by his apparel—delayed long enough to admit me, along with one additional latecomer. This last, a patch-eyed fellow with a sailor's rolling gait, came hurrying along behind me.
The gatekeeper, as he barred the doors behind us, recited in a sort of doggerel the basic rules of the establishment. Between my own weariness and his thick country accent being unfamiliar to me, I failed to extract much of his meaning. This was no loss, for the laws were also posted beside an inner door, for the benefit of all guests who could read. Another small sign there announced the availability of tea and soup, in the canteen, for a charge of only a few pence; and I believe that if I had sworn myself penniless, nourishment and lodging would both have been provided gratis.
The man who ladled out the soup and poured the tea looked twice at me, and at my shilling thrice. But he took it and said nothing, and contrived to make my change, though no doubt he was seldom handed anything but coppers. I carried mug and bowl and spoon over to a heavy trestle table, dimly lighted but quite recently scrubbed clean. The one-eyed sailor perforce followed me, for all other furniture had been stacked or upended to make way for a recent mopping of the floor, which still shone damp.
The soup-man went away upon some chore, and we two were left alone in the large room. After tasting my soup, I passed it over to the sailor, in whose eyes I thought I could see the reflexive greed of those who live habitually near starvation. He was not reluctant to accept, and wolfed down the contents of my bowl even before beginning upon his own, perhaps in fear that I might change my mind.
It was natural enough, then, that we should begin to exchange a few words, and so my soup bought me a little information regarding the hostel to which I had been led by fate. I sat with my face mostly in the shadow of the distant lamp, pretending from time to time to sip a little tea. When we were finished in the canteen, we found ourselves assigned, as latecomers, not to the rows of ordinary cots which filled a long, dim dormitory room, but rather to an even older-looking chamber hard nearby. This room was smaller and even darker than the other, and in it the beds were not raised in the ordinary way. Rather they were thin pallets fixed right on the floor, and encased in bed-sized boxes, so that they looked like nothing so much as a row of coffins set out to accommodate the victims
