limbs. 'I must go – very urgent; you don't know how much so.' A partially unravelled muffler was wrapped around his scrawny throat. 'Come back – yes! Come back later, and I'll tell you anything you want to know. But not now!'
He darted past me towards the door, the sadly faithful dog following at his heel. From the landing I shouted down at him as he rushed down the clattering stairs: 'When?'
'After – after midnight!' The dog's renewed barking mingled with his reply. 'Yes – then!'
I soon heard through the window the tap of his stick on the courtyard stones. The oppressive atmosphere of the room soon drove me out, away from the building and into the cleaner night air.
The street beyond the alley entrance was deserted now, the people of remarkable aspect having hurried along to their destination. Taking careful note of the doors I passed and the turns I made, so that I would be able to retrace my steps, I quit the district. The lights of a small public house drew me towards it; I could wait there in relative comfort until the hour of my appointment with the so-far uncommunicative Fexton. When I first looked around the public house's door, I was greatly relieved to see that this had not been the point to which the residents of Wetwick had been headed; the drinkers and layabouts inside were of no more than average ugliness, wondering with a sodden surliness about the appearance of a gentleman in their midst, but at least not staring at me with the round popping eyes I had found in the district I had just left. I must admit, that as I sat at one of the more removed tables, maintaining a careful sobriety through the judicious nursing of a small ale, my heart was beating fast and high up in my throat. The great adventure on which I had launched myself was turning out to be a capital amusement: mysterious denizens of a London previously unknown to me; the colourful squalor of poverty and vice, generally reported to people of my respectable ilk only in the columns of Mayhew's excellent reportage in the Morn ing Chronicle: a rendez-vous to be kept with an actual transgressor of the law and apparent prison habitue – at that moment it seemed as if I had completely broken the shackles of my old mundane existence and stepped into some wilder, free life.
At the designated hour I hastened back to Fexton's abode. The street was still deserted, but that was to be expected, given the lateness.
Once again I mounted the precarious steps and stood on the landing outside Fexton's door. I rapped upon it and called his name, but no answer came. But, leaning close, I could hear an anxious-sounding whine from the small dog within. Perhaps its master, returned from the secretive errand on which they had embarked, had fallen asleep.
I pushed open the door and peered within. The candle on the table had burned level with the cracked dish that held it, the flame guttering in the pool of wax. By the flickering illumination I could see, not the coiner, but only the dog scratching at what I took to be an elongated bundle of old rags upon the floor. It renewed its whining, prodding with its sharp muzzle the object so much bigger than it. As I bent closer to see, the dog's efforts succeeded in rolling part of the bundle free: the blank face of its master, one eye hidden by the shattered glass of his spectacle lens, gaped up at me. The dog let loose of the grey shirt collar and nuzzled the unresponding visage.
I stood back aghast, seeing for the first time the shining wet surface of the floor beneath the stricken man. The front of his shirt was imbued with the same scarlet, still oozing from the rents in the cloth and the flesh beneath. The prints of my boots remained in the puddled blood – as the sight drove me stumbling backwards.
My heels caught on something soft; I only saved myself from falling by catching the edge of the table beside me. I looked behind me, and – with heart racing beyond excitement to fear – saw another form, as silent and motionless as that of Fexton.
I knelt down, legs trembling, and found the man's upraised shoulder. The figure turned over on to its back, and I found myself staring into the burnished, scar-etched features of the Brown Leather Man. His chest was also slashed and wet, but the fluid mingling on the floor with Fexton's darkening blood was itself clear; the briny smell, sharp in my memory, came to my nostrils as I looked at my own glistening hand.
The expiring candle blew out in a sudden rush of wind from the doorway. I scrambled upright as the light from a small hand lantern fell upon me. Dimly beyond its glare, I could make out the silhouettes of a pair of men.
'What's this, then?' spoke one of them. 'Who's this 'un?'
'Mother o' Gawd. I told you we should've brought all the gear the first time.' His companion leaned forward with the lantern. 'Best give him a plumper 'n' bring 'm along.'
I gathered my scattered wits, having gained the impression that these men had no good will towards me, and were possibly the authors of the carnage that filled the room. 'See here-'
My argument went no further than that; the men were on either side; the larger of them stood a good head above me. Or so I thought: it suddenly seemed as if he were looking down at me from an even greater distance. 'Give 'im another one,' boomed a voice from miles away.
There was no need; the first blow finally breached my senses, as if it had been a cannonball shattering a castle wall that remains seemingly intact a moment before it crumbles into bits. My cheek lay against the wet floor, betwixt the Brown Leather Man's corpse and my assailant's boots. For a moment, before I lost all awareness, I fancied that I was flying, as one of the men lifted me on to his shoulder.
6
The robed sages of Arabia Felix have written: 'There are two things without limit – the stupidity of Man and the mercy of God.' (I have had time for religious studies since my retreat from the world's affairs.) I have not yet had proof of the latter, but the former was borne out by the fulfilment of my own lamentable desires.
I had wished for Excitement, and an end to Boredom; these had been given me, and in abundant measure. But as I regained consciousness, my disordered thoughts reassembling inside my throbbing skull, I would have cried out for the return of every drab and predictable second of my previous existence, so foolishly despised and irrevocably lost. I would have cried thus, but for the rag wadded in my mouth, stoppering all speech.
The precise nature of my confinement gradually became clear to me. The back of my head – seemingly intact, though I would have otherwise supposed that the blow to it had left fragments on the floor of Fexton's room jostled against the planks of a small cart, sparking a fresh throb of pain with each cobblestone under the creaking wheels. My hands were trussed behind me; against each shoulder another body was pressed tight – the cold forms of Fexton and the Brown Leather Man, I guessed them to be. A rough cover of sacking had been thrown across the faces of the living and the dead, to shield us from the inquiring eyes of any who might look out their windows upon us as we made our progress through the night-clad city. A few times I heard the abducting ruffians murmur to each other from their perch behind the reins.
A softer murmur of lapping water, and a change in the air filtering through the stiff cloth over my face, signalled our approach to the riverside. The cart came to a halt, shifting slightly when the two men clambered down. From the hollow strike of their boots I surmised that we were on a wharf somewhere in the city's docklands.
I was fully conscious by this point, my thoughts scurrying to find some exit from my predicament. Whatever curiosity I had once had concerning the affairs of either of the deceased who shared the cart-bed with me, was now extinguished entire. Though I had, through my amateur investigations, discovered less than nothing, with a net result of more mystification than that which I had commenced, I was now perfectly willing to accept continuing ignorance of these matters' explanations as my lot. Surely these men had no malice against me specifically; I was but an inconvenient witness to their unsavoury transactions. I desperately attempted to indicate my willingness to blank my mind of what I had seen, allowing them to go about their business with no fear of scrutiny from myself or any of the constabulary I might have otherwise alerted, but my assuring words were stifled by the wadded rag.
'Here, you,' said one of them, prodding me through the sacking. 'Stop gargling about like that.'
I did not heed this admonishment, instead redoubling my thrashing efforts at communication. The ensuing noises earned me a clout on the head that left me dazed and silent, but still cognizant of events around me.
