He lifted his proud head and but for the shortness of his legs he might well have been Isaiah.
‘Put that chair leg on the table, boy. Forget yourself. Eat up your crumbs.’
Titus looked down at the old lag and the craggy grandeur of his upturned face.
‘You’ve come to the right place,’ said Old Crime. ‘Away from the filthy thing called Life. Join us, dear boy. You would be an asset. My friends are unique. Grow old with us.’
‘You talk too much,’ said Titus.
The man from below stretched out his strong arm slowly. His right hand fastened upon Titus’ biceps and as it tightened Titus could feel an evil strength, a sense that Old Crime’s power was limitless and that, had he wanted to, he could have torn the arm away with ease.
As it was he brought Titus to his side with a single pull, and far back in the sham nobility of his countenance Titus could see two little fires no bigger than pin-heads burning.
‘I was going to do so much for you,’ said the man from below. ‘I was going to introduce you to my colleagues. I was going to show you all the escape routes – should you want them – I was going to tell you about my poetry and where the harlots prowl. After all one mustn’t become ill, must we? That wouldn’t do at all.
‘But you have told me I talk too much, so I will do something quite different and crack your skull like an egg- shell.’
All in a breath the dreadful man let go of Titus, wheeled in his tracks, and lifting the table above his head he flung it, with all the force he could command, at Titus. But he was too late, for all his speed. Directly Titus saw the man reach for the table he sprang to one side, and the heavy piece of furniture crashed against the wall at his back.
Turning now upon the massive-chested and muscular creature, he was surprised to hear the sound of sobbing. His adversary was now upon his knees, his huge archaic face buried in his hands.
Not knowing what to do, Titus re-lit one of the candles which had been on the table and then sat down on his trestle bed, the only piece of furniture left in the cell that hadn’t been smashed.
‘Why did you have to say it? Why did you have to? O why? Why?’ sobbed the man.
‘O God,’ said Titus to himself, ‘what have I done?’
‘So I talk too much? O God, I talk too much.’
A shadow passed over Old Crime’s face. At the same moment there was a heavy sound of feet beyond the door and then after a rattling of keys the sound of one turning in the lock. Old Crime was by this time on the move and by the time the door began to open he had disappeared down the hole in the floor.
Hardly knowing what he was doing, Titus dragged the trestle bed over the hole and then lay down on it as the door opened.
A warder came in with a torch. He flashed it around the cell, the beam of light lingering on the broken table, the broken chair, and the supposedly sleeping boy.
Four strides took him to Titus, whom he pulled from his bed only to beat him back again with a vicious clout on the head.
‘Let that last you till the morning, you bloody whelp!’ shouted the warder. ‘I’ll teach you to keep your temper! I’ll teach you to smash things.’ He glowered at Titus. ‘Who were you talking to?’ he shouted, but Titus, being half stunned, could hardly answer.
In the very early morning when he awoke he thought it had all been a dream. But the dream was so vivid that he could not refrain from rolling to the floor and peering in the half-darkness beneath the trestle bed.
It had been no dream, for there it was, that heavy slab of stone, and he immediately began to shift it inch by inch and it fell into its former place. But just before the hole was finally closed he heard the old man’s voice, soft as gruel, in the darkness below.
‘Grow old with me …,’ it said. ‘Grow old with me.’
THIRTY- SEVEN
A dim light shone above his Worship’s head. In the hollow of the Court someone could be heard sharpening a pencil. A chair creaked, and Titus, standing upright at the bar, began to bang his hands together, for it was a bitter cold morning.
‘Who is applauding what?’ said the Magistrate, recovering from a reverie. ‘Have I said something profound?’
‘No, not at all, your Worship,’ said the large, pock-marked Clerk of the Court. ‘That is, sir, you made no remark.’
‘Silence can be profound, Mr Drugg. Very much so.’
‘Yes, your Worship.’
‘What
‘It was the young man, your Worship; clapping his hands, to warm them, I imagine.’
‘Ah, yes. The young man. Which young man? Where is he?’
‘In the dock, your Worship.’
The Magistrate, frowning a little, pushed his wig to one side and then drew it back again.
‘I seem to know his face,’ said the Magistrate.
‘Quite so, your Worship,’ said Mr Drugg. ‘This prisoner has been before you several times.’
‘That accounts for it,’ said the Magistrate. ‘And what has he been up to now?’
‘If I may remind your Worship,’ said the large pock-marked Clerk of the Court, not without a note of
