hair.
Halloa here! Now then! Show yourselves. That’ll do. It’s not
you. Don’t disturb yourself any more! So on, through a labyrinth
of airless rooms, each man responding, like a wild beast, to the
keeper who has tamed him, and who goes into his cage. What, you
haven’t found him, then? says Deputy, when we came down. A woman
mysteriously sitting up all night in the dark by the smouldering
ashes of the kitchen fire, says it’s only tramps and cadgers here;
it’s gonophs over the way. A man mysteriously walking about the
kitchen all night in the dark, bids her hold her tongue. We come
out. Deputy fastens the door and goes to bed again.
Black and Green, you know Bark, lodging-house keeper and receiver
of stolen goods? – O yes, Inspector Field. – Go to Bark’s next.
Bark sleeps in an inner wooden hutch, near his street door. As we
parley on the step with Bark’s Deputy, Bark growls in his bed. We
enter, and Bark flies out of bed. Bark is a red villain and a
wrathful, with a sanguine throat that looks very much as if it were
expressly made for hanging, as he stretches it out, in pale
defiance, over the half-door of his hutch. Bark’s parts of speech
are of an awful sort – principally adjectives. I won’t, says Bark,
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Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces
have no adjective police and adjective strangers in my adjective
premises! I won’t, by adjective and substantive! Give me my
trousers, and I’ll send the whole adjective police to adjective and
substantive! Give me, says Bark, my adjective trousers! I’ll put
an adjective knife in the whole bileing of ’em. I’ll punch their
adjective heads. I’ll rip up their adjective substantives. Give
me my adjective trousers! says Bark, and I’ll spile the bileing of
’em!
Now, Bark, what’s the use of this? Here’s Black and Green,
Detective Sergeant, and Inspector Field. You know we will come in.
– I know you won’t! says Bark. Somebody give me my adjective
trousers! Bark’s trousers seem difficult to find. He calls for
them as Hercules might for his club. Give me my adjective
trousers! says Bark, and I’ll spile the bileing of ’em!
Inspector Field holds that it’s all one whether Bark likes the
visit or don’t like it. He, Inspector Field, is an Inspector of
the Detective Police, Detective Sergeant IS Detective Sergeant,
Black and Green are constables in uniform. Don’t you be a fool,
Bark, or you know it will be the worse for you. – I don’t care,
says Bark. Give me my adjective trousers!
At two o’clock in the morning, we descend into Bark’s low kitchen,
leaving Bark to foam at the mouth above, and Imperturbable Black
and Green to look at him. Bark’s kitchen is crammed full of
thieves, holding a CONVERSAZIONE there by lamp-light. It is by far
the most dangerous assembly we have seen yet. Stimulated by the
ravings of Bark, above, their looks are sullen, but not a man
speaks. We ascend again. Bark has got his trousers, and is in a
state of madness in the passage with his back against a door that
shuts off the upper staircase. We observe, in other respects, a
ferocious individuality in Bark. Instead of ‘STOP THIEF!’ on his
linen, he prints ‘STOLEN FROM Bark’s!’
Now, Bark, we are going up-stairs! – No, you ain’t! – YOU refuse
admission to the Police, do you, Bark? – Yes, I do! I refuse it to
all the adjective police, and to all the adjective substantives.
If the adjective coves in the kitchen was men, they’d come up now,
and do for you! Shut me that there door! says Bark, and suddenly
we are enclosed in the passage. They’d come up and do for you!
cries Bark, and waits. Not a sound in the kitchen! They’d come up
and do for you! cries Bark again, and waits. Not a sound in the
kitchen! We are shut up, half-a-dozen of us, in Bark’s house in
the innermost recesses of the worst part of London, in the dead of
the night – the house is crammed with notorious robbers and
ruffians – and not a man stirs. No, Bark. They know the weight of