Saved from herself or, On the edge of doom
“I may have more. They don’t know me at the station, and they will
never think it is a girl dressed like this whom he means. He will ask
for Miss Trelane, and I don’t look much like Miss Trelane.”
She was right, for the man who sold her her ticket never glanced at
her. There had been an excursion to some races, and the station was
crowded. The shabbily dressed girl got into her third-class carriage
unnoticed. And once the train started and she was safe, she dropped
asleep, in utter weariness, never once stirring till they were in the
London station.
She got out, and went quickly from the glaring lights and the crowd
into the comparative darkness of the streets. It was well they were
used to her locked door, otherwise they might have telegraphed and
stopped her. But once out of the station she was secure.
Twelve o’clock, and the night before her, fresh and rested with her
sleep, but no tangible plan in her head, no notion of what she meant
to do. She trudged aimlessly through the streets. Once she passed a
lighted music-hall, and thought of her first meeting with Cylmer, but
with a curious distance, as if of a man long dead.
Gradually, she left the thronged streets behind her, still unconscious
where she was going, till at last she stood in an open square, and knew
where she was. Round her were the lights of Onslow Square; at her very
feet the steps of Lord Abbotsford’s house.
What had drawn her to that dreadful place, alone in the night? What had
guided her straying feet? She could see the windows of that little room
where the dreadful thing had been done. They were in darkness, like the
rest of the windows, but she knew them.
Oh! why had she come here? Why was she wasting the priceless hours
like this? She turned to run, sick and trembling, but something black
on the door-step caught her eye. Ismay stooped down and peered at the
shapeless bundle.
It was a very little boy, a bootblack, asleep on the homeless stones.
His box was clasped tight in his arms, and he sobbed in his sleep.
The pity of the thing came home to the girl who had also nowhere to go,
no shelter from the freezing rain that was beginning to fall. She had
a shilling in her pocket besides what must pay for her breakfast, and
surely it was her guardian angel that prompted her to give it to the
boy.
Very gently she touched his thin shoulder.
He started up, awake at once, defiant, yet frightened, like a true
London waif.
“Let me alone,” he said. “I ain’t done nothing. Who are you, anyway?”
“I’m sleeping out, like you,” she answered. “But I’m grown up, and
you’re too little,” with a kind of reckless fellowship that reassured
the boy, who was ready for a run.
“Ain’t you got nowhere to go, either? Oh!” He stared at her with the
uncanny wisdom of the streets.
“Do you know anywhere to go if I give you a shilling?” she asked, more
for the comfort of talking than for anything else.
“I can go home if I’ve a bob. I daresent without any money. Mother’d
lick me, and I’m sick. Will you give me a bob, honest? And no tracts,
nor nothing?”
She nodded, ashamed by this time of her impulse.
What had made her such a fool, when she might starve to-morrow for want
of that shilling?
The boy stood up and stared resentfully at the dark house in front of
them.
“It’s no good staying here. The man won’t let me in. He kicked me down
the steps last time I rung.”
“Let you in!” She looked with wonder at the dirty, ragged mite. “What
do you want to go in for?”
“I want to tell them something. It’s a shame,” with a man’s oath. “They
had Billy Cook in, and asked him things, and gave him half a crown, and
he didn’t know nothin’! And it was me that ought to had it. It was my
stand opposite, by that muddy crossing, and I took sick that day, and
stayed home ever since, and to-day when I come back Billy had my stand,
and what ought to ‘a’ been mine--and he didn’t know nothing, only
answered silly.”
“Know nothing about what?” she echoed involuntarily, with no thought of
the answer that was to make her heart leap.
“About the man that was in that house the day they said there was no
one in. I say, couldn’t you knock at the door, and I’d tell them. And
p’haps they’d give me ’arf a quid, and mother could get too dead drunk
to hit me?”
“What man? Tell me, quick. I’ll get you more than half a sovereign.”
She did not know how fierce her voice was till the boy started back
from her.
“It ain’t no business of yours,” he cried. “I say, you ain’t got
nothing to do with the coppers, ’ave you?” he was on the defensive
instantly, all ready to flee.
“No; no!” she said, so gently that he believed her. “But if you’ll tell
me, instead of them,” nodding at the big silent house, “I’ll get you
more money than you ever saw in your life.”
“Girls like you don’t have none,” he retorted, with a distrustful
shiver.
“I’ll get it for you in the morning. You needn’t let me out of your
sight all night, not till it’s in your hand, if you’ll tell me all you
know.”
The boy gave a cheerful whirl.
“Golly! I bet Billy Cook’ll be sick,” he exclaimed. “Do you mean it;
hope you may die?”
“Hope I may die,” she asserted gravely, her marvelous eyes, that even
the child saw, bent on him. “But not here. Let’s walk on somewhere out
of the rain. I’m cold.”
“I’m always cold,” returned the small bootblack.
“It ain’t nothin’ when you’re used to it. But we’d better keep movin’;
cops comes round when you stands.”
“Go on about the man,” she said shortly. “How do you know it was the
day of the murder?”
“Ho! I’m not blind. Why, you never see such a how d’ye do in your
life. Cabs, and perlice, and reporters, and the cook screaming in the
area. I knowed right enough, but I never knowed they were looking for
no man till I come back to-day, and Billy Cook said so. He punched
me, too, because he’d got my stand, and I wanted it. And when I said
that ’arf-crown was mine, he punched me again. So I went to the house,
and the man told me to get out with my lies. They’d had the square
bootblack in a’ready. Billy Cook,” scornfully, “that never see the
square in his life till I got took bad with brownkeeters. He didn’t
see no man come out of the house, any day.”
“Did you?”
The great clock on the church-tower struck one. If the boy did not
hurry it would be too late to-night for what was in her mind.
“I saw him go in about half after one. I saw a woman go in and out
twice, too; but that was after three. The last time there was a girl
with her, and they whispered, and while the woman was in a gentleman
went in and come out again quick. Him that raised the fuss afterward.
But my man he never come out till half-past four. I heard the clock,
when it was dusklike. He never see me, and he walked quick. And he was
crossing the street by my stand when he drops something out of his
hand, quick, right in the middle of the road, in the traffic. So I
jumped to get it before a bus went over it, and it was just a little
blue glass bottle that smelled funny.”
“What did you do with it?” She was exultant, treading on air, the rain
falling unfelt on her thinly clad shoulders. And yet she dreaded that
at a question the boy’s story would fall to the ground.
“Put it in my box. It’s there now. You bet I didn’t tell Billy Cook
anything about it to-day, when he was smelling round! I was sick when I
went home, and I never thought of it till to-day, and the man wouldn’t
let me speak.”
“What did he look like, the man you saw come out of the house?”
“He was big, and ugly, without no mustache. I’d know him if I see him.
Say, do you suppose there was stuff in that bottle to kill a man?”
“I don’t know. Let me see it.”
The boy yawned; but he took it from his box as they walked. In the
light of a street-lamp Ismay looked at it, shaking with excitement. An
ordinary chemist’s bottle, of blue glass, without a label. She pulled
out the cork, and a faint odor of bitter almonds met her nostrils.
Prussic acid! And the bottle had held enough to kill ten men!
In a wild fit of laughter that made the boy start, she shook from head
to foot.
“Can’t you remember anything else about him?” she gasped, at last.
“Dirty cuffs,” said the boy doubtfully. “I saw ’em in the lights when
he passed the shop at the corner. Oh! and blue things on them, on the
one next me.”
“Blue things! What like?”
“Oh, I dunno! They were blue. Studs, I guess. He was awful ugly, and
thin.”
Ismay stopped short on the soaking pavement, and whistled to a belated
hansom.
“Come on; we’re going to get that money!” she said, and before the boy
could object she had jerked him adroitly into the cab.
But as she gave the driver an address that made him stare, her bold
heart was quailing. In another hour she might have given her own mother
over to be hanged! At best it would be touch and go. She caught the
bootblack’s dirty hand and clung to it despairingly, as if to her only
friend. Something not herself was driving her; something she must obey.
She shook in her terror, sitting close to the dirty little boy.
CHAPTER XXX.
INTO THE LION’S MOUTH.
In the sickness of her suspense Ismay turned to the bootblack. Her
mouth was so stiff and dry that she questioned him chiefly to see if
her tongue would obey her.
“Why didn’t you go straight to the police and tell them all you knew
this afternoon? That man in the house was only a servant, who didn’t
care what you knew.”
“I ain’t lucky,” he said cunningly. “It’s all right if they comes to
you, then you has to answer. But it’s never no good to go and blow the
gaff on any one. You gets it in the neck after.”
“That’s nonsense,” with uneasy sharpness. What if the child were right?
“I never was in no cab before,” he remarked gaily. “It’s fine, ain’t
it? Where are we going?”
“We’re nearly there.” She peered out into the silent, dreary streets
evasively.
“I say, you’re not taking me to no refuge?” he cried suspiciously.
“Because I won’t go, and you can’t make me. I earn my living, I do.”
“No, we’re not going to--a refuge,” she answered, with a pang at her
heart. For truly she was going into the lion’s mouth.
They had turned under a stone archway, and the hansom stopped at an
open door, where the cold electric light shone relentlessly.
She dared not stop to pay the cab, for the boy, with a yell, and a wild
squirm, was trying to get away from her.
“I ain’t done nothing,” he screeched, “and you’re a liar. You said
you’d nothing to do with the coppers, and you’ve brought me to Scotland
Yard!”
He bit at her hand as she forced him into the grim hall, under the
glaring lights.
“Listen!” she cried; “no one’s going to hurt you. It’s I they’ll hurt
if it’s any one. You’re not going to get anything but good.”
But the bootblack merely roared and kicked. Two policemen, who were
standing by a door, came forward.
“What’s the matter, miss?” one asked affably. “Has he been picking your
pocket? I beg your pardon, madam!” for Ismay, without slackening her
hold on the writhing child, had looked at him as a queen looks at a
forward servant.
“He has done nothing,” she said clearly. “Is the inspector here, Mr.
Davids?” she spoke on chance. Davids had been inspector here four years
ago. He might have left or died since then.
“Yes, madam. But----” he hesitated. “It’s very late, and these things
usually go to the police court.”
“Go and tell him I want to see him.” The tone was perfectly civil, but
the man went as if he had been shot out of a gun. Who was this that
came so late, in the clothes of a working girl, with the speech and
manner of a duchess? But the inspector, sitting wearily, waiting for a
report, was not much interested. He was too well used to women arriving
at strange hours, and they had generally lost their umbrellas.