But perhaps she would recoil from a plot to take the life of Sikes, and that was one of the chief ends to be attained. “How,” thought Fagin, as he crept homeward, “can I increase my influence with her? what new power can I acquire?”
Such brains are fertile in expedients. If, without extracting a confession from herself, he laid a watch, discovered the object of her altered regard, and threatened to reveal the whole history to Sikes (of whom she stood in no common fear) unless she entered into his designs, could he not secure her compliance?
“I can,” said Fagin, almost aloud. “She durst not refuse me then. Not for her life, not for her life! I have it all. The means are ready, and shall be set to work. I shall have you yet!”
He cast back a dark look, and a threatening motion of the hand, towards the spot where he had left the bolder villain, and went on his way, busying his bony hands in the folds of his tattered garment, which he wrenched tightly in his grasp as though there were a hated enemy crushed with every motion of his fingers.
CHAPTER XLN
Noah Claypole is enployed by Fagin on a secret mission.
THE OLD MAN WAS UP BETIMES NEXT MORNING, AND WAITED IM- . patiently for the appearance of his new associate, who after a delay that seemed interminable, at length presented himself and commenced a voracious assault on the breakfast.
“Bolter,” said Fagin, drawing up a chair and seating himself opposite Morris Bolter.
“Well, here I am,” returned Noah. “What’s the matter? Don’t yer ask me to do anything till I have done eating. That’s a great fault in this place. Yer never get time enough over yer meals.”
“You can talk as you eat, can’t you?” said Fagin, cursing his dear young friend’s greediness from the very bottom of his heart.
“Oh yes, I can talk. I get on better when I talk,” said Noah, cutting a monstrous slice of bread. “Where’s Charlotte?”
“Out.” said Fagin. “I sent her out this morning with the other young woman, because I wanted us to be alone.”
“Oh!” said Noah. “I wish yer’d ordered her to make some buttered toast first. Well. Talk away. Yer won’t interrupt me.”
There seemed, indeed, no great fear of anything interrupting him, as he had evidently sat down with a determination to do a great deal of business.
“You did well yesterday, my dear,” said Fagin. “Beautiful! Six shillings and ninepence halfpenny on the very first day! The kinchin lay will be a fortune to you.”
“Don’t you forget to add three pint-pots and a milk-can,” said Mr. Bolter.
“No, no, my dear. The pint-pots were great strokes of genius : but the milk-can was a perfect masterpiece.”
“Pretty well, I think, for a beginner,” remarked Mr. Bolter complacently. “The pots I took off airy railings, and the milk-can was standing by itself outside a public-house. I thought it might get rusty with the rain, or catch cold, yer know. Eh? Ha! ha! ha!”
Fagin affected to laugh very heartily; and Mr. Bolter having had his laugh out, took a series of large bites, which finished his first hunk of bread and butter, and assisted himself to a second.
“I want you, Bolter,” said Fagin, leaning over the table, “to do a piece of work for me, my dear, that needs great care and caution.”
“I say.” rejoined Bolter, “don’t yer go shoving me into danger, or sending me to any more o’ yer police offices. That don’t suit me, that don’t; and so I tell yer.”
“There’s not the smallest danger in it—not the very smallest,” said the Jew: “it’s only to dodge a woman.”
“An old woman?” demanded Mr. Bolter.
“A young one,” replied Fagin.
“I can do that pretty well, I know,” said Bolter. “I was a regular cunning sneak when I was at school. What am I to dodge her for? Not to—”
“Not to do anything, but to tell me where she goes, who she sees, and, if possible, what she says; to remember the street, if it is a street, or the house, if it is a house; and to bring me back all the information you can.”
“What’ll yer give me?” asked Noah, setting down his cup, and looking his employer, eagerly, in the face.
“If you do it well, a pound, my dear. One pound,” said Fagin, wishing to interest him in the scent as much as possible. “And that’s what I never gave yet, for any job of work where there wasn’t valuable consideration to be gained.”
“Who is she?” inquired Noah.
“One of us.”
“Oh Lor!” cried Noah, curling up his nose. “Yer doubtful of her, are yer?”
“She has found out some new friends, my dear, and I must know who they are,” replied Fagin.
“I see,” said Noah. “Just to have the pleasure of knowing them, if they’re respectable people, eh? Ha! ha! ha! I’m your man.”
“I knew you would be,” cried Fagin, elated by the success of his proposal.
“Of course, of course,” replied Noah. “Where is she? Where am I to wait for her? Where am I to go?”
“All that, my dear, you shall hear from me. I’ll point her out at the proper time,” said Fagin. “You keep ready, and leave the rest to me.”
That night, and the next, and the next again, the spy sat booted and equipped in his carter’s dress, ready to turn out at a word from Fagin. Six night passed—six long weary nights—and on each, Fagin came home with a disappointed face, and briefly intimated that it was not yet time. On the seventh, he returned earlier, and with an exultation he could not conceal. It was Sunday.
“She goes abroad to-night,” said Fagin, “and on the right errand, I’m sure; for she has been alone all day, and the man she is afraid of will not be back much before daybreak. Come with me. Quick!”
Noah started up without saying a word, for the Jew was in a state of such intense excitement that it infected him. They left the house stealthily and, hurrying through a labyrinth of streets, arrived at length before a public-house which Noah recognized as the same in which he had slept on the night of his arrival in London.
It was past eleven o‘clock, and the door was closed. It opened softly on its hinges as Fagin gave a low whistle. They entered, without noise; and the door was closed behind them.
Scarcely venturing to whisper, but substituting dumb-show for words, Fagin and the young Jew who had admitted them pointed out the pane of glass to Noah, and signed him to climb up and observe the person in the adjoining room.
“Is that the woman?” he asked, scarcely above his breath:
Fagin nodded yes.
“I can’t see her face well,” whispered Noah. “She is looking down, and the candle is behind her.”
“Stay there,” whispered Fagin. He signed to Barney, who withdrew. In an instant the lad entered the room adjoining and, under pretence of snuffing the candle, moved it into the required position and, speaking to the girl, caused her to raise her face.
“I see her now,” cried the spy.
“Plainly?”
“I should know her among a thousand.”
He hastily descended, as the room-door opened, and the girl came out. Fagin drew him behind a small partition which was curtained off, and they held their breaths as she passed within a few feet of their place of concealment, and emerged by the door at which they had entered.
“Hist!” cried the lad who held the door. “Dow.”
Noah exchanged a look with Fagin, and darted out.
“To the left,” whispered the lad; “take the left had. and keep od the other side.”
He did so and, by the light of the lamps, saw the girl’s retreating figure already at some distance before him. He advanced as near as he considered prudent, and kept on the opposite side of the street, the better to observe her motions. She looked nervously round, twice or thrice, and once stopped to let two men who were following close behind her, pass on. She seemed to gather courage as she advanced, and to walk with a steadier and firmer step. The spy preserved the same relative distance between them, and followed, with his eye upon her.
CHAPTER XLVI
The appointment kept.
THE CHURCH CLOCKS CHIMED THREE QUARTERS PAST ELEVEN AS two figures emerged on London Bridge. One, which advanced with a swift and rapid step, was that of a woman who looked eagerly about her as though in quest of some expected object; the other figure was that of a man who slunk along in the deepest shadow he could find and, at some distance, accommodated his pace to hers, stopping when she stopped and, as she moved again, creeping stealthily on, but never allowing himself, in the ardour of his pursuit, to gain upon her footsteps. Thus they crossed the bridge, from the Middlesex to the Surrey shore, when the woman, apparently disappointed in her anxious scrutiny of the foot-passengers, turned back. The movement was sudden; but he who watched her was not thrown off his guard by it; for, shrinking into one of the recesses which surmount the piers of the bridge, and leaning over the parapet the better to conceal his figure, he suffered her to pass on the opposite pavement. When she was about the same distance in advance as she had been before, he slipped quietly down and followed,her again. At nearly the centre of the bridge, she stopped. The man stopped too.
It was a very dark night. The day had been unfavourable, and at that hour and place there were few people stirring. Such as there were, hurried quickly past, very possibly without seeing, but certainly without noticing, either the woman or the man who kept her in view. Their appearance was not calculated to attract the importunate regards of such of London’s destitute population as chanced to take their way over the bridge that night in search of some cold arch or doorless hovel wherein to lay their heads; they stood there in silence, neither speaking nor spoken to by any one who passed.
A mist hung over the river, deepening the red glare of the fires that burnt upon the small craft moored off the different wharfs, and rendering darker and more indistinct the murky buildings on the banks. The old smoke-stained storehouses on either side rose heavy and dull from the dense mass of roofs and gables, and frowned sternly upon water too black to reflect even their lumbering shapes. The tower of old Saint Saviour’s Church, and the spire of Saint Magnus, so long the giant-warders of the ancient bridge, were visible in the gloom; but the forest of shipping below bridge, and the thickly scattered spires of churches above, were nearly all hidden from the sight.
The girl had taken a few restless turns to and fro—closely watched meanwhile by her hidden observer—when the heavy bell of St. Paul’s tolled for the death of another day. Midnight had come upon the crowded city. The palace, the night-cellar, the jail, the madhouse—the chambers of birth and death, of health and sickness, the rigid faces of the corpse and the calm sleep of the child—midnight was upon them all.
The hour had not struck two minutes when a young lady, accompanied by a grey-haired gentleman, alighted from a hackney-carriage within a short distance of the bridge, and, having dismissed the vehicle, walked straight towards it. They had scarcely set foot upon its pavement when the girl started and immediately made towards them.
They walked onward, looking about them with the air of persons who entertained some very slight expectation which had little chance of being realized, when they were suddenly joined by this new associate. They halted with an exclamation of surprise, but suppressed it immediately; for a man in the garments of a countryman came close up—brushed against them, indeed—at that precise moment.
“Not here,” said Nancy hurriedly, “I am afraid to speak to you here. Come away—out of the public road—down the steps yonder!”
As she uttered these words, and indicated, with her hand, the direction in which she wished them to proceed, the countryman looked round, and roughly asking what they took up the whole pavement for, passed on.
The steps to which the girl had pointed were those which, on the Surrey bank, and on the same side of the bridge as Saint Saviour’s Church, form a landing-stairs from the river. To this spot the man bearing the appearance of a countryman hastened unobserved; and after a moment’s survey of the place, he began to descend.
These stairs are a part of the bridge; they consist of three flights. Just below the end of the second, going down, the stone wall on the left terminates in an ornamental pilaster facing towards the Thames. At this point the lower steps widen, so that a person turning that angle of the wall is necessarily unseen by any others on the stairs who chance to be above him, if only a step. The countryman looked hastily round when he reached this point; arid as there seemed no better place of concealment, and, the tide being out, there was plenty of room, he slipped aside, with his back to the pilaster, and there waited, pretty certain that they would come no lower, and that even if he could not hear what was said, he could follow them again with safety.
So tardily stole the time in this lonely place, and so eager was the spy to penetrate the motives of an interview so different from what he had been led to expect, that he more than once gave the matter up for lost and persuaded himself either that they had stopped far above, or had resorted to some entirely different spot to hold their mysterious conversation. He was on the point of emerging from his hiding-place, and regaining the road above, when he heard the sound of footsteps, and directly afterwards of voices almost close at his ear.
He drew himself straight upright against the wall and, scarcely breathing, listened attentively.
“This is far enough,” said a voice, which was evidently that of the gentleman. “I will not suffer the young lady to go any farther. Many people would have distrusted you too much to have come even so far, but, you see I am willing to-huinour you.”
“To humour me!” cried the voice of the girl whom he had followed. “You’re considerate, indeed; sir. To humour me! Well, well, it’s no matter.”
“Why, for what,” said the gentleman in a kinder tone, “for what purpose can you have brought us to this strange place? Why not have let me speak to you above there, where it is light and there is something stirring, instead of bringing us to this dark and dismal hole?”