The Complete Works of Arthur Morrison (Illustrated). Arthur Morrison

      “Then I guess I’ll go on with the thing, if that’s it.”

      “That depends, of course, on whether you care to take trouble to get possession of what, after all, is somebody else’s lawful property.”

      Hoker looked a little uneasy. “Well,” he said, “there’s that, of course. I didn’t know nothin’ of that at first, and when I did I’d parted with my money and felt entitled to get something back for it. Anyway, the stuff ain’t found yet. When it is, why then, you know, I might make a deal with the owner. But, say, how did you find out my name, and about this here affair being jined up with the Wedlake jewels?”

      Hewitt smiled. “As to the name and address, you just think it over a little when you’ve gone away, and if you don’t see how I did it. You’re not so cute as I think you are. In regard to the jewels—well, I just read the message of the Flitterbat Lancers, that’s all.”

      “You read it? Whew! And what does it say? How did you do it?” Hoker turned the paper over eagerly in his hands as he spoke.

      “See, now,” said Hewitt, “I won’t tell you all that, but I’ll tell you something, and it may help you to test the real knowledge of Luker and Birks. Part of the message is in these words, which you had better write down: Over the coals the fifth dancer slides, says Jerry Shield the homey.’”

      “What?” Hoker exclaimed, “fifth dancer slides over the coals? That’s mighty odd. What’s it all about?”

      “About the Wedlake jewels, as I said. Now you can go and make a bargain with Luker and Birks. The only other part of the message is an address, and that they already know, if they have been telling the truth about the house they intend taking. You can offer to tell them what I have told you of the message, after they have told you where the house is, and proved to you that they are taking the steps they talked of. If they won’t agree to that, I think you had best treat them as common rogues and charge them with obtaining your money under false pretenses.”

      Nothing more would Hewitt say than that, despite Hoker’s many questions; and when at last Hoker had gone, almost as troubled and perplexed as ever, my friend turned to me and said, “Now, Brett, if you haven’t lunched and would like to see the end of this business, hurry!”

      “The end of it?” I said. “Is it to end so soon? How?”

      “Simply by a police raid on Jerry Shiels’s old house with a search warrant. I communicated with the police this morning before I came here.”

      “Poor Hoker!” I said.

      “Oh, I had told the police before I saw Hoker, or heard of him, of course. I just conveyed the message on the music slip—that was enough. But I’ll tell you all a out it when there’s more time; I must be off now. With the information I have given him, Hoker and his friends may make an extra push and get into the house soon, but I couldn’t resist the temptation to give the unfortunate Hoker some sort of sporting chance—though it’s a poor one, I fear. Get your lunch as quickly as you can, and go at once to Colt Row, Bankside—Southwark way, you know. Probably we shall be there before you. If not, wait.”

      Colt Row was not difficult to find. It was one of those places that decay with an excess of respectability, like Drury Lane and Clare Market. Once, when Jacob’s Island was still an island, a little farther down the river, Colt Row had evidently been an unsafe place for a person with valuables about him, and then it probably prospered, in its own way. Now it was quite respectable, but very dilapidated and dirty. Perhaps it was sixty yards long—perhaps a little more. It was certainly a very few yards wide, and the houses at each side had a patient and forlorn look of waiting for a metropolitan improvement to come along and carry them away to their rest.

      I could see no sign of Hewitt, nor of the police, so I walked up and down the narrow pavement for a little while. As I did so, I became conscious of a face at the window of the least ruinous house in the row, a face that I fancied expressed particular interest in my movements. The house was an old gabled structure, faced with plaster. What had apparently once been a shop-window on the ground floor was now shuttered up, and the face that watched me—an old woman’s—looked out from the window above. I had noted these particulars with some curiosity, when, arriving again at the street corner, I observed Hewitt approaching, in company with a police inspector, and followed by two unmistakable plainclothesmen.

      “Well,” Hewitt said, “you’re first here after all. Have you seen any more of our friend Hoker?”

      “No, nothing.”

      “Very well—probably he’ll be here before long, though.”

      The party turned into Colt Row, and the inspector, walking up to the door of the house with the shuttered bottom window, knocked sharply. There was no response, so he knocked again, equally in vain.

      “All out,” said the inspector.

      “No,” I said; “I saw a woman watching me from the window above not three minutes ago.”

      “Ho, ho!” the inspector replied. “That’s so, eh? One of you—you, Johnson—step round to the back, will you?”

      One of the plainclothesmen started off, and after waiting another minute or two the inspector began a thundering cannonade of knocks that brought every available head out of the window of every inhabited room in the Row. At this the woman opened the window, and began abusing the inspector with a shrillness and fluency that added a street-corner audience to that already congregated at the windows.

      “Go away, you blaggards!” the lady said, “you ought to be ‘orse-w’ipped, every one of ye! A-comin’ ‘ere a-tryin’ to turn decent people out o’ ‘ouse and ‘ome! Wait till my ‘usband comes ‘ome—‘e’ll show yer, ye mutton-cadgin’ scoundrels! Payin’ our rent reg’lar, and good tenants as is always been—and I’m a respectable married woman, that’s what I am, ye dirty great cowards!”—this last word with a low, tragic emphasis.

      Hewitt remembered what Hoker had said about the present tenants refusing to quit the house on the landlord’s notice. “She thinks we’ve come from the landlord to turn her out,” he said to the inspector. “We’re not here from the landlord, you old fool!” the inspector said. “We don’t want to turn you out. We’re the police, with a search warrant, and you’d better let us in or you’ll get into trouble.”

      “‘Ark at ‘im!” the woman screamed, pointing at the inspector. “‘Ark at ‘im! Thinks I was born yesterday, that feller! Go ‘ome, ye dirty pie-stealer, go ‘ome!”

      The audience showed signs of becoming a small crowd, and the inspector’s patience gave out. “Here, Bradley,” he said, addressing the remaining plainclothesman, “give a hand with these shutters,” and the two—both powerful men—seized the iron bar which held the shutters and began to pull. But the garrison was undaunted, and, seizing a broom, the woman began to belabour the invaders about the shoulders and head from above. But just at this moment, the woman, emitting a terrific shriek, was suddenly lifted from behind and vanished. Then the head of the plainclothesman who had gone round to the back appeared, with the calm announcement, “There’s a winder open behind, sir. But I’ll open the front door if you like.”

      In a minute the bolts were shot, and the front door swung back. The placid Johnson stood in the passage, and as we passed in he said, “I’ve locked ‘er in the back room upstairs.”

      “It’s the bottom staircase, of course,” the inspector said; and we tramped down into the basement. A little way from the stair-foot Hewitt opened a cupboard door, which enclosed a receptacle for coals. “They still keep the coals here, you see,” he said, striking a match and passing it to and fro near the sloping roof of the cupboard. It was of plaster, and covered the underside of the stairs.

      “And now for the fifth dancer,” he said, throwing the match away and making for the staircase again.