The Mark of Cain | Page 9

On the extreme fringe of the mob were some amateurs who had just been drinking in the Hit or Miss. They were noisy, curious, and impatient.
At last Tommy arrived with two policeman, who, acting on his warning, had brought with them a stretcher. He had told them briefly how the dead man was found in the cart-load of snow.
Before the men in blue, the crowd of necessity opened. One of the officers stooped down and flashed his lantern on the heap of snow where the dead face lay, as pale as its frozen pillow.
"Lord, it's old Dicky Shields!" cried a voice in the crowd, as the peaked still features were lighted up.
The man who spoke was one of the latest spectators that had arrived, after the news that some pleasant entertainment was on foot had passed into the warm alcoholic air and within the swinging doors of the Hit or Miss.
"You know him, do you?" asked the policeman with the lantern.
"Know him, rather! Didn't I give him sixpence for rum when he tattooed this here cross and anchor on my arm? Dicky was a grand hand at tattooing, bless you: he'd tattooed himself all over!"
The speaker rolled up his sleeve, and showed, on his burly red forearm, the emblems of Faith and Hope rather neatly executed in blue.
"Why, he was in the Hit or Miss," the speaker went on, "no later nor last night."
"Wot beats me," said Tommy again, as the policeman lifted the light corpse, and tried vainly to straighten the frozen limbs, "Wot beats me is how he got in this here cart of ours."
"He's light enough surely," added Tommy; "but I warrant we didn't chuck him on the cart with the snow in Belgrave Square."
"Where do you put up at night?" asked one of the policemen suddenly. He had been ruminating on the mystery.
"In the yard there, behind that there hoarding," answered Tommy, pointing to a breached and battered palisade near the corner of the public-house.
At the back of this ricketty plank fence, with its particolored tatters of damp and torn advertisements, lay a considerable space of waste ground. The old houses that recently occupied the site had been pulled down, probably as condemned "slums," in some moment of reform, when people had nothing better to think of than the housing of the poor.
There had been an idea of building model lodgings for tramps, with all the latest improvements, on the space, but the idea evaporated when something else occurred to divert the general interest. Now certain sheds, with roofs sloped against the nearest walls, formed a kind of lumber-room for the parish.
At this time the scavengers' carts were housed in the sheds, or outside the sheds when these were overcrowded. Not far off were stables for the horses, and thus the waste ground was not left wholly unoccupied.
"Was this cart o' yours under the sheds all night or in the open?" asked the policeman, with an air of penetration.
"Just outside the shed, worn't it, Bill?" replied Tommy.
Bill said nothing, being a person disinclined to commit himself.
"If the cart was outside," said the policeman, "then the thing's plain enough. You started from there, didn't you, with the cart in the afternoon?"
"Ay," answered Tommy.
"And there was a little sprinkle o' snow in the cart?"
"May be there wos. I don't remember one way or the other."
"Then you must be a stupid if you don't see that this here cove," pointing to the dead man, "got drinking too much last night, lost hisself, and wandered inside the hoarding, where he fell asleep in the cart."
"Snow do make a fellow bloomin' sleepy," one of the crowd assented.
"Well, he never wakened no more, and the snow had covered over his body when you started with the cart, and him in it, unbeknown. He's light enough to make no difference to the weight. Was it dark when you started?"
"One of them spells of fog was on; you could hardly see your hand," grunted Tommy.
"Well, then, it's as plain as--as the nose on your face," said the policeman, without any sarcastic intentions. "That's how it was."
"Bravo, Bobby!" cried one of the crowd. "They should make you an inspector, and set you to run in them dynamiting Irish coves."
The policeman was not displeased at this popular tribute to his shrewdness. Dignity forbade him, however, to acknowledge the compliment, and he contented himself with lifting the two handles of the stretcher which was next him. A covering was thrown over the face of the dead man, and the two policemen, with their burden, began to make their way northward to the hospital.
A small mob followed them, but soon dwindled into a tail of street boys and girls. These accompanied the body till it disappeared from their eyes within the hospital doors. Then they waited for half