Inspector Field says we must hurry to the Old Mint in the Borough.
The cab-driver is low-spirited, and has a solemn sense of his
responsibility. Now, what’s your fare, my lad? – O YOU know,
Inspector Field, what’s the good of asking ME!
Say, Parker, strapped and great-coated, and waiting in dim Borough
doorway by appointment, to replace the trusty Rogers whom we left
deep in Saint Giles’s, are you ready? Ready, Inspector Field, and
at a motion of my wrist behold my flaming eye.
This narrow street, sir, is the chief part of the Old Mint, full of
low lodging-houses, as you see by the transparent canvas-lamps and
blinds, announcing beds for travellers! But it is greatly changed,
friend Field, from my former knowledge of it; it is infinitely
quieter and more subdued than when I was here last, some seven
years ago? O yes! Inspector Haynes, a first-rate man, is on this
station now and plays the Devil with them!
Well, my lads! How are you to-night, my lads? Playing cards here,
eh? Who wins? – Why, Mr. Field, I, the sulky gentleman with the
damp flat side-curls, rubbing my bleared eye with the end of my
neckerchief which is like a dirty eel-skin, am losing just at
present, but I suppose I must take my pipe out of my mouth, and be
submissive to YOU – I hope I see you well, Mr. Field? – Aye, all
right, my lad. Deputy, who have you got up-stairs? Be pleased to
show the rooms!
Why Deputy, Inspector Field can’t say. He only knows that the man
who takes care of the beds and lodgers is always called so.
Steady, O Deputy, with the flaring candle in the blacking-bottle,
for this is a slushy back-yard, and the wooden staircase outside
the house creaks and has holes in it.
Again, in these confined intolerable rooms, burrowed out like the
holes of rats or the nests of insect-vermin, but fuller of
intolerable smells, are crowds of sleepers, each on his foul
truckle-bed coiled up beneath a rug. Holloa here! Come! Let us
see you! Show your face! Pilot Parker goes from bed to bed and
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Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces
turns their slumbering heads towards us, as a salesman might turn
sheep. Some wake up with an execration and a threat. – What! who
spoke? O! If it’s the accursed glaring eye that fixes me, go
where I will, I am helpless. Here! I sit up to be looked at. Is
it me you want? Not you, lie down again! and I lie down, with a
woful growl.
Whenever the turning lane of light becomes stationary for a moment,
some sleeper appears at the end of it, submits himself to be
scrutinised, and fades away into the darkness.
There should be strange dreams here, Deputy. They sleep sound
enough, says Deputy, taking the candle out of the blacking-bottle,
snuffing it with his fingers, throwing the snuff into the bottle,
and corking it up with the candle; that’s all I know. What is the
inscription, Deputy, on all the discoloured sheets? A precaution
against loss of linen. Deputy turns down the rug of an unoccupied
bed and discloses it. STOP THIEF!
To lie at night, wrapped in the legend of my slinking life; to take
the cry that pursues me, waking, to my breast in sleep; to have it
staring at me, and clamouring for me, as soon as consciousness
returns; to have it for my first-foot on New-Year’s day, my
Valentine, my Birthday salute, my Christmas greeting, my parting
with the old year. STOP THIEF!
And to know that I MUST be stopped, come what will. To know that I
am no match for this individual energy and keenness, or this
organised and steady system! Come across the street, here, and,
entering by a little shop and yard, examine these intricate
passages and doors, contrived for escape, flapping and counterflapping,
like the lids of the conjurer’s boxes. But what avail
they? Who gets in by a nod, and shows their secret working to us?
Inspector Field.
Don’t forget the old Farm House, Parker! Parker is not the man to
forget it. We are going there, now. It is the old Manor-House of