He sat without changing his attitude in the least, or appearing to take the smallest heed of time, until his quick ear seemed to be attracted by a footstep in the street.
“At last,” he muttered, wiping his dry and fevered mouth. “At last!”
The bell rang gently as he spoke. He crept upstairs to the door, and presently returned accompanied by a man muffled to the chin, who carried a bundle under one arm. Sitting down and throwing back his outer coat, the man displayed the burly frame of Sikes.
“There!” he said, laying the bundle on the table. “Take care of that, and do the most you can with it. It’s been trouble enough to get; I thought I should have been here, three hours ago.”
Fagin laid his hand upon the bundle, and locking it in the cupboard, sat down again without speaking. But he did not take his eyes off the robber, for an instant, during this action; and now that they sat over against each other, face to face, he looked fixedly at him, with his lips quivering so violently, and his face so altered by the emotions which had mastered him, that the housebreaker involuntarily drew back his chair, and surveyed him with a look of real affright.
“Wot now?” cried Sikes. “Wot do you look at a man so for?”
Fagin raised his right hand, and shook his trembling forefinger in the air; but his passion was so great, that the power of speech was for the moment gone.
“Damme!” said Sikes, feeling in his breast with a look of alarm. “He’s gone mad. I must look to myself here.”
“No, no,” rejoined Fagin, finding his voice. “It’s not—you’re not the person, Bill. I’ve no no fault to find with you.”
“Oh, you haven’t, haven’t you?” said Sikes, looking sternly at him, and ostentatiously passing a pistol into a more convenient pocket. “That’s lucky—for one of us. Which one that is, don’t matter.”
“I’ve got that to tell you, Bill,” said Fagin, drawing his chair nearer, “will make you worse than me.”
“Aye?” returned the robber with an incredulous air. “Tell away! Look sharp, or Nance will think I’m lost.”
“Lost!” cried Fagin. “She has pretty well settled that, in her own mind, already.”
Sikes looked with an aspect of great perplexity into the Jew’s face, and reading no satisfactory explanation of the riddle there, clenched his coat collar in his huge hand and shook him soundly.
“Speak, will you!” he said; “or if you don’t, it shall be for want of breath. Open your mouth and say wot you’ve got to say in plain words. Out with it, you thundering old cur, out with it!”
“Suppose that lad that’s lying there—” Fagin began.
Sikes turned round to where Noah was sleeping, as if he had not previously observed him. “Well!” he said, resuming his former position.
“Suppose that lad,” pursued Fagin, “was to peach—to blow upon us all—first seeking out the right folks for the purpose, and then having a meeting with ’em in the street to paint our likenesses, describe every mark that they might know us by, and the crib where we might be most easily taken. Suppose he was to do all this, and besides to blow upon a plant we’ve all been in, more or less—of his own fancy; not grabbed, trapped, tried, earwigged by the parson and brought to it on bread and water,—but of his own fancy; to please his own taste; stealing out at nights to find those most interested against us, and preaching to them. Do you hear me?” cried the Jew, his eyes flashing with rage. “Suppose he did all this, what then?”
“What then!” replied Sikes; with a tremendous oath. “If he was left alive till I came, I’d grind his skull under the iron heel of my boot into as many grains as there are hairs upon his head.”
“What if I did it!” cried Fagin almost in a yell. “I, that knows so much, and could hang so many besides myself!”
“I don’t know,” replied Sikes, clenching his teeth and turning white at the mere suggestion. “I’d do something in the jail that ‘ud get me put in irons; and if I was tried along with you, I’d fall upon you with them in the open court, and beat your brains out afore the people. I should have such strength,” muttered the robber, poising his brawny arm, “that I could smash your head as if a loaded waggon had gone over it.”