The Mark of Cain | Page 9

in her new lodgings.
Before Tommy returned from his quest the dusk had deepened into

night The crowd round the body in the pea-coat had grown denser, and
it might truly be said that "the more part knew not wherefore they had
come together." The centre of interest was not a fight, they were sure,
otherwise the ring would have been swaying this way and that. Neither
was it a dispute between a cabman and his fare: there was no sound of
angry repartees. It might be a drunken woman, or a man in a fit, or a
lost child. So the outer circle of spectators, who saw nothing, waited,
and patiently endured till the moment of revelation should arrive.
Respectable people who passed only glanced at the gathering;
respectable people may wonder, but they never do find out the mystery
within a London crowd. 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