“There’s no food here for you.”
“But, gentlemen, you don’t understand; you don’t understand. I can make you rich. Gold, much fine gold, for a miserable sparrow—or a rat! You think I am too poor to have gold? You despise me because I am clothed in rags? What are rags to me, who am richer than Solomon? I can pay; I can pay.”
He kept pace with us, shuffling along in the gutter; and I noticed that the sole of one of his boots flapped loose at each step he took. After glancing around suspiciously as though afraid of being overheard, he continued in a lower tone:
“Jahveh has laid a great task upon me. I can make gold! Give me food, even the smallest scrap, and you shall be richer than Solomon. All that your hearts desire shall be yours, kind gentlemen. Apes, ivory, peacocks and the riches of the East shall come to you. I will give you gold for your palaces and you shall deck them with beryl and chrysoberyl, sapphire, chrysolite and sardonyx. Diamonds shall be yours, and the stones of Sardis. … These do not tempt you? I curse you by the bones of Isaac! May all the burden of Gerizim and Ebal fall upon you!”
He broke off, almost inarticulate with rage; then, mastering himself, he continued in a calmer tone.
“A few crumbs of bread, kind gentlemen; even the scrapings of your pocket-linings. Or a sparrow? Think what can be bought with my gold. Slaves to your desire, concubines of the fairest, brought from all the parts of the world, whose love is more than wine. …”
It enraged me to hear this filthy object profaning all the material splendours of the world; and I thrust him aside roughly. My movement seemed to bring his suppressed anger to its climax.
“You doubt me? You will not hear the word of Jahveh’s messenger? See, I will make gold before you; and then you shall fall down and offer me all the food you have—for I know you have food. Look well, O fools; I will make gold for you this moment.”
He stooped down as though lifting something invisible in handfuls and then made the motion of throwing.
“See! My gold! I throw it abroad. Look how it glitters in the light of the moon. Hear how it tinkles as it falls upon the pavement. There”—he pointed suddenly—“see how the coins spin and run upon the ground. Gold! Much fine gold! Is it not enough? Then here is more.”
He repeated his motion of lifting something, this time with both hands as though he were delving in loose sand.
“See! Gold dust! I throw it; and it falls in showers. I scatter it; and there is a golden cloud about us. I give it all to you, kind gentlemen. Surely all this is worth a rat, a fat one; a rat to make soup?”
He looked at us expectantly, holding out his empty hands as though they contained something which he wished us to examine.
“Still you are not convinced? Not so much as a sparrow for all this gold? I have fallen amid a generation of vipers. Ha! You would rob me of my gold; you would take it all and give me not so much as a rat? But I shall escape you. Even now I go to prepare the streets of the new Jerusalem. Jahveh has commanded me that I make them ready with my finest gold. He has prepared the smelting-furnace here in this city; it burns with fire; and I have but to lay my gold in its streets so that they shall all be covered. I go! Gold! Gold!”
He ran from us; and we heard his voice in Gordon Street crying “Gold! Gold!” as he went.
After he had left us, we came by Upper Woburn Place into Tavistock Square; and it was here that I met the first pétroleuse. Some houses were burning in Burton Crescent. Suddenly at the corner of the entry I saw a figure appear, an oldish woman in rags, carrying a petrol tin and a dipper. She hobbled along, throwing liquid from her tin at every house-door as she passed. Sometimes she broke a window and threw petrol into the room beyond. I lost sight of her when she turned into Burton Street; but she soon reappeared, having evidently exhausted her stores. She now carried an improvised torch in her hand with which she set fire to the petrol spilled about the doors on her previous passage. Soon each doorway was a mass of flames; and she retired into Burton Crescent, with a final glance to see that her work had been well done.
“That sort of thing is going on all over the East End now,” said Glendyne, “and you see that it is spreading westward too. It began by the East Enders running out of coal. Then they took to lighting bonfires in the streets with wood from the houses, to keep themselves warm. And finally houses caught fire and they got the taste for destruction. You’re seeing the last of London. There are no fire-brigades now. It’s only a question of time before the whole city is ablaze.”
Russell Square was dark like all the rest of the streets; but the moon lit it up sufficiently for us to see what was going on in Southampton Row, where a band of men were engaged in breaking into a druggist’s shop.
“What do they expect to find there?” I asked. “It doesn’t seem very promising from the looter’s point of view.”
“Cocaine and morphia, of course,” Glendyne replied, “or ether to get drunk on, if they aren’t very sophisticated. They’ll do anything to keep down hunger pangs nowadays, you know.”
We crossed the south side of Russell Square, making for Montague Street, when my attention was attracted by the sound of singing which I had previously heard in Tottenham Court Road. The voices were nearer this time; and I was able to
