Hooligan Nights | Page 4

Here was stark solitude and dead silence, with a background of shouting, laughter, rifle-shots, and the tramp of myriad feet from the Walk thirty yards away. I hesitated, in the hope of hearing her voice again. But I was not to hear it a second time for many days; and she remained silent and motionless as we plunged again into obscurity.
Under the railway arches it was as black as pitch. "Sh!' said young Alf warningly, as I stumbled. It was too dark to see the lithe, sinewy hand that he placed on my own for my guidance.
In a few seconds we had turned--as my nose gave evidence--into a stable-yard. Upon one corner the moon shone, bringing a decrepit van into absurd prominence.
"Ere's where me and my pal was--up to last week,' said young Alf in a whisper.
He slipped across to a dark corner, and I followed. A stable dog barked, and then, as we stood still, lapsed into silence.
;Got a match?' said young Alf.
I handed him a box of matches, and he struck one, shading it with his hands so skilfully that no glimmer fell anywhere but on the latch of a door.
'Awright,' he muttered, as the door swung back noiselessly. Then he turned and put his face close to mine. 'If anybody wants to know anyfink, you swank as you want to take the room. See?'
The stairs were steep and in bad repair, for they creaked horribly under my feet. But young Alf as he ascended in front of me was inaudible, and I thought I had lost him and myself, until I ran into him at the top.
From utter blackness we turned into a room flooded by moonlight, a room in no way remarkable to the sight, but such a room as you may see when you are house-hunting in the suburbs, ascend to the top floor of a desirable residence, and are told that this is a servant's bedroom. The walls were papered; it had a single window through which the moonlight was streaming, and it was quite empty, save for something lying in the corner of the window--apparently a horse-cloth.
'This is where we was, me and 'im,' said young Alf. There's anuvver room across the landing.'
'Who was him?' I asked.
Young Alf walked over to the window, looked down into the yard below, and made no reply. There were things here and there that he would not tell me.
'Why did you leave?' I resumed. 'It seems a convenient sort of place to live in. Quiet enough, wasn't it?'
'Well, it was like this,' he said. 'Me and 'im was making snide coin; least 'e was making it, and I was planting it--'ere, there, and everywhere. See?'
'Made it in this room? How did he make it?'
'E'd never show me the way. But it didn't take him long. Well, we got planting it a bit too thick, 'cos there was more'n one on the same fake, and the cops come smellin' about. So we did a scoot. Time enough it was.'
'Smelling,' I said; 'I should think they did. It's enough to knock you down.'
'I fought I noticed somefink,' he said sharply, and in an instant he had pounced upon the object in the corner, and from underneath the horse-cloth drew a joint of meat, which at once proclaimed itself as the origin of the awful stench.
'Wonder how that got left 'ere?' said young Alf, as he opened the window gently and heaved the joint into the yard below.
'Better leave the window open,' I said as he was about to close it.
'Didn't I never tell you,' he said, 'how we waxed things up for that butcher as come down to the Walk? Battersea he come from.'
I had not heard the story, and said so.
'It was that what give the show away,' he said. 'You 'eard what that butcher said jest now?'
I nodded.
He leaned against the window sill, and, with one eye on the stable-yard, told me the story.
'It was Friday night last week,' he began, 'and me and two uvvers was coming along the Walk, down where the butchers are. There was one butcher there that I tumbled was a stranger soon as I ketch sight of 'is dial. He wasn't selling 'is meat over-quick, 'cos all the time he was necking four-ale in the pub cross the way. He'd got 'is joints laid out beautiful on a sort of barrer. Well, we 'ung about, watchin' 'im go cross the road and come back again, and presently I says to the uvvers, 'That bloke don't seem to be doin' no trade worf mentionin'. Let's 'elp 'im.' Well, the uvver boys didn't want asking more'n once to do a poor bloke a good turn, so we just scatters and waits a bit till the butcher went cross the way again for 'is