Chapter VI: Part 6

"Huh! Birds like us can't turn over a new leaf. An' don't you try to double-cross me either. You know my name, see?"

Unthinkingly Ben stooped and picked up the bronze, but a shout of derision from Jimmy made him drop it.

"You've done it now, Ben! You've got to come!"

"What do you mean?"

He shrank back with a shudder as the other flung out a gloved hand and pointed to the bronze figure.

"You've put your finger-prints on it! If you stay, the cops will arrest you!"

Ben started at the words, and stretched out his hand for support. His fingers gripped the edge of a table, and a laugh burst from the mocking lips of the burglar.

"An' now you've planted your whole hand on a polished surface! With bloodstains! Oh, Ben, ain't you giving them evidence to hang you?"

"Stop that, Jimmy! I didn't do it!"

"There's the evidence, Ben!"

The two men presented a striking contrast in every particular. Jimmy Sockem was thin, small, dark-skinned, black-haired. The other was above medium height, stoutish, ruddy, bald. Jimmy was cool, alert, waspish. Ben was flurried, confused, lumbering.

"They couldn't say it was me," he rumbled, staring from his hands to the table. "It wasn't me. I've run on the level since I came out of Parkhurst."

"You've been there, and that's against you, Ben!"

"It was you as did it."

"I'm wearin' gloves. Them finger-prints say it was you!"

"He was a decent boss. I wouldn't 'ave harmed him."

"He's dead, Ben, and can't talk!"

"It was Detective Seed as got me the job."

"I've got a better one for you!"

"I don't want to be your partner again."

"But I came for you! I need a scout!"

"I told Seed I'd run on the level. He said honesty was the best policy."

"It don't pay! As my partner you'd be rich now!"

"Seed knows I'm tryin' to run straight."

"Seed couldn't stop your arrest!"

"I could tell 'em it wasn't me as did this."

"They wouldn't believe you! Your record's bad!"

"But it's the truth that I didn't do it!"

"You daren't say it was me!"

"Why?"

"Because I'd kill you if you did! See?"

Ben groaned. He knew that this little, dark-skinned man would carry out his threat. He was in a cleft stick, but he fought feebly at his last ditch, his heavy mind clinging to the central fact that was his only hope.

"I didn't do it! I didn't do it! Supposin' you went away, I'd not mention your name!"

"Then they'd hang you! Come on, get the swag and we'll be off."

"No, no. They wouldn't hang me! I don't want to be your partner again!"

"I need you. I'll make you come!"

"You can't."

"All right. Listen!"

Footsteps were coming along the corridor outside the front door of the flat. The bell tinkled. Someone was seeking admittance.

"That's settled it, Ben," whispered Jimmy in a hoarse voice. "That's a cop. I heard one down in the garden. He's come up here to get me. They know I usually go out by the front door."

"Well?"

"He's tryin' this door first. Then he'll go up to the flat above, maybe. All I have got to do is open that door and invite him in. I can say you killed your boss to collar the swag for yourself. My word's as good as yours. Your finger-prints! You'd swing, sure! They couldn't hang me, see?"

"Jimmy!"

"Get the stuff together quick and we can hop off. I'll wipe out the prints while you collect. Hurry! Or else----"

"I'm beat!" groaned Ben. "I'll come, you fox!"

Thus this smaller man of the two, the greater criminal, constituted himself the leader, the counsel, the judge of both. He triumphed in that he was able to make his very crimes of use to him. In other men their misdeeds would have been an anchor, a drag on their brains, clogging their thoughts and chaining them with unseen manacles. In him these considerations were absent. He was most dangerous when he was cornered.

Who was this man? His real name was not English, though he was a native of Limehouse. He was the son of a Japanese waif who, after having been a housebreaker in Tokio, took to the sea because his own country sought to punish him for lawlessness. Before he had been a housebreaker this father had been a fireman. The change from the one profession to the other is not so strange as it might appear. The Japanese fire brigades are famed for their acrobatic skill. They can climb to dizzy heights, bearing ladders on their shoulders; they can leap from one point to another with a daring that can only be acquired after long practice. This man had become a burglar owing to the temptation offered after the Tokio earthquake some years ago.

He joined the _Gorotsuki_, the thieves' brotherhood. This organisation gave endless trouble to the authorities of Tokio and Yokohama and other cities. These men disdained to use gloves, jemmies, or flashlamps. They depended on their swift action and their daring. Their movements were like lightning. Many of these men ultimately came to England. Jimmy Sockem's father was among them.

When this individual came to England he mated with a woman of the East End. When they presented the world with a son they added another criminal to the population. This son, who inherited peculiarities from both parents, in fact owed them nothing socially valuable save life. He seemed to duplicate his father in everything--certainly in wickedness. He lived about the docks, he climbed rigging, he stole from seamen as well as from his own companions. None could compete with him in ability. His inventiveness was as great as his sense of honesty was deficient. He could swarm up water-pipes like a monkey, and he challenged the seamen of sailing-ships to go to the top of the masts before he was in his teens. Fortunately--or unfortunately--he was never caught, or he might have been sent to Borstal.

In this youth a psychologist would have observed the meeting of the Orient and the Occident. He had never been to Japan, yet he was more Japanese than English in habit. Once or twice he went voyages in sailing-ships to the European countries, but he objected to the sea because he was confined to shipboard. He ultimately declined any offer to leave London. He became the first "cat" burglar.

His mind was a moral chaos. In this he resembled his father, who died in a brawl; and he revered his father's memory with Japanese tenacity. His father had found no refuge in his own land, and had never adapted himself to the point of view of the West, being incapable of such adjustment. He had objected to all law because it was a restraint. The only law he bowed to was the law of the jungle. The result was that his son, Jimmy, was not so much his son as he was a cub.

Strangely enough, the West that was in Jimmy Sockem aided him to outrage its ideas of conduct. The English strain in him struggled vaguely in his youth to assert itself above the abnormalities of the old _inkyo_ tradition, but it was smothered because the latter were the stronger. The mind-substances of his parents could not blend in him. They warred.

Because of his mixed blood he became the object of indiscriminate charity administered by emotional people who visited Limehouse. He was invited to the West End houses, and there exhibited as an example of race blending. As a boy he did not object to this; he was rather proud of it. But as he grew he saw the gulf between the East End and the West End. He could not reason things which, to him, were unreasonable. He flung a bridge across the gulf with Eastern fixity of purpose. As a burglar he might take what he could never otherwise handle. He left the shipyards and became a night marauder. The boy had become a man.

The name which his father handed down to him was lost in the tempest of his activities. That name was Sok-Emm; but, with that remarkable facility which the East End possesses for making a nick-name proclaim a man's character, his companions had extracted its foreign meaning and had endowed it with a grim, local significance. Sok-Emm to them was nothing. Sockem was everything. The word preserved his pitiless savagery. His career was marked with episodes of jungle ferocity. Physically he was an engine of destruction. Mentally he was cunning as a leopard. He had been guilty of maiming, and was suspected of murder. But he had brought into human life that quality of elusiveness, that protective resemblance to surroundings, which makes it difficult to tell where the forest ends and the tiger begins. Both physically and mentally he had the characteristics of a chameleon. In a word, he was a monster.

With all his cleverness, however, he had been caught. Ben Foss had been his partner, the man who acted as scout on big jobs. It was Foss who hung about mansions, hotels, shops, when a burglary was planned. It was Foss who collected the information necessary before the blow was struck. When all was ready, Sockem struck the blow. But on their previous expedition he had struck too quickly. Both he and Foss had made a mistake. They had been captured and sent to prison.

Foss, because he was not so dangerous as Sockem, had been given a shorter term, but the grind of prison life had wrought changes in both. Foss had been shaken to the roots of his pliable nature. He had emerged from his confinement with his nerve broken, a scared man. His mentality could take punishment up to a certain limit before it collapsed. The sentence exceeded this limit. Repentance had come through fear.

On Jimmy Sockem the prison life had had another effect. He had gone to his cell snarling. He came out silent. His spell, which would have broken ordinary men, hardened him. While still enduring the punishment society had inflicted on him, he planned future crimes against society. He did this out of a twisted idea that clamoured for revenge.

Foss was clay when he went to prison. Like some clay subjected to pressure, he at first rebelled. The clay became brick. The limit of resistance to the pressure was reached and passed. The brick broke into fragments of rubble.

Sockem endured the pressure without breaking. He was like the one-celled animals called protozoa. He became flint.

Having fixed his purpose, he sought the old partnership when he re-entered the world. He wanted to lose no time in carrying out his war against organised order. But Ben Foss had shrunk from his old habits; he had obtained a post as manservant to a wealthy connoisseur of _objets d'art_, a bachelor and a philanthropist. To steal from this man became doubly attractive to Sockem.

It is not every burglar who can be a "cat." It is not every "cat" who can be a burglar. Sockem could be both--and more. He could be a murderer with the same lack of compunction as he could be a thief. The one idea which dominated his acts supplied at once the excuse and the reason for his cold ruthlessness.

At first he had suspected Foss of taking the position in the flat so that he could steal its treasures easily, but the truth was now clear. Foss was no longer his partner; he was a danger unless he was involved. Fear of prison had to be overcome by fear of something else. To save himself, he had to make Foss a criminal once more.

He stood watching Ben as the latter moved about the room, collecting what valuables were worth taking and handing them to Sockem. The latter was as cool as ice. The door-bell tinkled once more. Sockem smiled, and stepped over to a gramophone, selected a record, and set the instrument going.

"Hurry!" he whispered. "That will blind him for a minute."

He wiped the bloodstained bronze with his handkerchief and took the marks off the polished table.

To Foss the whole affair seemed a kind of dream. He moved as he was ordered, doing as he was bid without protest. He had once more surrendered what remained of his personality into the hands of his master in crime; he had again become the jackal to the lion. Fear had driven him towards crime as it had driven him away from it.

They left the light burning and the gramophone playing. The door bell was ringing as they slid over the window-sill. Everything had been done swiftly, deftly, as experts work. Sockem had provided for emergencies. Half way down the drain-pipe they swung across a branch pipe that brought them to the roof of a smaller building. From this they landed into a side-lane.

They were gone some way along the main road, through the thick fog, when Foss found his tongue.

"Where are we going? The cops will come to the old place."

"I've found a new one."

They walked out of the fog into Waterloo Station. Something of the old thrill of bravado stirred in Foss's blood as they passed close to the platform policeman. He experienced the old elation, or a hint of it, as they mingled with the theatre crowds on their way home. Who could trace them in the surge of hurrying figures? Who would pick up the trail which the fog had covered?

At the booking office, Sockem bought a ticket for Foss and handed it to him. Foss saw the name of a riverside station on the slip of cardboard.

"Jimmy, why are we goin' there?" he asked in surprise. He had expected a ticket for Southampton.

"You'll see," replied Jimmy grimly.

They journeyed with other passengers, and emerged at their destination in a heavy drizzle. The fog had given way to rain. The drizzle gave way to heavy torrents as they trudged along a country road. In an hour they had struck off the road into a lane. A few minutes brought them to the bank of the river.

In spite of the questions that Foss constantly asked, Sockem did not answer. His mind was filled with one object. He began to search among the bushes by the bank. At last he found what he wanted. It was a rope hitched to a sapling. He unhitched the rope and began to haul it in. A dinghy came out of the misty rain and bumped against the bank.

"Get in, Ben."

Drenched and sodden, Foss obeyed and sat down in the stern. Sockem took the oars and pulled out into the stream. Practised rower as he was, he made no noise with the oars as he pulled against the tide. The rain was coming down in torrents when he ceased rowing and turned to peer through the thick atmosphere.

"Here we are!" he announced triumphantly. "Our place!"

"What is it?"

"A house-boat. Hold on to the stage. Bill Hemsey ought to be here."

In another moment they were alongside the dark river dwelling. They landed on the floating stage, and Sockem tied the boat to a rail, then led the way inside, opening the door with confidence. He knew his way.

"Bill Hemsey hasn't got back yet," he said. "He is coming--ought to have been here now. He was getting stuff on his own. I put him up to a job."

Hemsey was one of a small gang who kept more or less close company with Sockem--a snatch-thief who posed as a sportsman.

"Ain't this safe?" Sockem cried, as he lit a lamp in the centre of the apartment. "It's one of them boat-houses used in summer, but left to itself during the winter. Wasn't it a good idea?"

"It was, if it's safe."

"Nobody comes, I tell you. I've watched this place for weeks. It's derelict. I boarded up the windows so's the light won't show. Hemsey is coming to-night, too. And Mackintosh, who gathers the stuff for Eckhardt, the fence, is due to-morrow. We're safe as houses. You can't tell me how to cover our tracks. Look!"

He pointed to a ring in the floor at their feet.

"My safe! The river hides our loot."

He bent and pulled at the ring. One of the floorboards came away. On its under side a large screw hook had been fixed, and from this hook a thin rope hung down into the black depths. Sockem hauled at the rope. A sack, dripping with water, came into view.

"Put the stuff in the sack," he said, grinning.

They deposited the goods they had brought into the canvas sack, where other valuables were already placed, and Sockem lowered it again and slammed the floorboard. There was a flush of pride on his face as he stood up.

"And supposin' the cops come here, what would they find?" he demanded. "All they could give us is a week or two for breaking into the boat. We could say we came for shelter. Who'd think that thousands of pounds' worth of stuff was swinging in the bilge below our feet? Most of these craft collect water in winter."

He laughed and slapped Foss on the shoulder.

"And Bill Hemsey is coming with more to-night. He ought to have been here now. You know Bill, don't you?"

"I remember him," said Foss. "What's he after?"

"Money. Ready money. He's getting the rents of a certain party. The money and what we've got will make the biggest haul we've made yet. The money will take us abroad. What are you looking so dismal about?"

"Seed told me honesty was the best policy," mumbled Foss hesitatingly. "I gave him my word----"

"That don't matter, Ben. You've joined me now. And I want you to start work to-morrow. Bill will bring us news."

"What do you want me for?"

"Same as you did before. Scouting. There's a village less than a mile off. You'll fetch us grub until the coast is clear."

"But if I'm caught?"

"Then Bill or I will go. If you're caught we'll know the cops are about."

The truth was out, and the shock of it drilled through Foss. Alternately he had been swayed between fears of capture and the possibility of escape. Now he saw that he was being made use of. He was the shield, the protection, the bait, the foil. A sick smile passed over his face.

"You needn't get caught unless you're careless," said Sockem, as he wrung the water from his coat. "And we'll be rich now. I'll tell you why I came to the flat. They said you had reformed."

"Who said it? I promised Seed----"

"Oh, Hemsey told me. And I needed you as a scout. You know my ways, and I know yours. See? And Mackintosh, the agent for the fence, is due to-morrow to make a deal. He's a Scot, is Mackintosh. Works for Eckhardt, the big fence. We'll get away maybe to-morrow night. You'll get your share."

"How much?"

"We'll see what Mackintosh gives us for the stuff."

"And after that?"

"He is arranging a passage to Cherbourg for me. You, too, can come. We'll get a ship for America there. There's enough in that sack to keep us for years. You couldn't make that amount in a lifetime by honesty, see?"

There was a scanty store of provisions, which had been brought by Sockem, in the house-boat, and they ate a cold, frugal supper in silence. Then they retired for the night. The only bedding available was a couple of old mattresses which had been left by the owner of the house-boat. There were no blankets or coverings, but to men who had been in prison this was not a great hardship.

Sockem occupied a small room on one side of the alleyway; Foss had one opposite. The lamp was extinguished. Only the beating of the rain on the roof above their heads and the swish of the river broke the stillness of the night.

But, if Sockem slept well, the reverse was true of Foss. He lay tossing on his mattress, tormented and restless. The silence and the darkness brought fears that grew big and fantastic. He wanted to go back. He remembered the vow he had made to the detective who had obtained the job for him. He remembered the kindnesses of his late employer. He remembered the security with which he had gone to bed in the flat--security because he was not being hunted, because he was not opposing the law, but was protected by it.

The hours passed slowly. The rain increased. It fell with relentless monotony, lashing on the house-boat and streaming down the windows. The structure swayed with the fury of the rising wind. The tide cradled it violently. Dawn broke grey and dull. And there was no sign of Mackintosh, or of Bill Hemsey.

Sockem was in the kitchen when Foss rose and joined him.

"Can't think what's keeping Bill Hemsey," growled Sockem. "He promised to be here. Anyway, Mackintosh will come. Bill, too, after the rain."

They broke up some chairs for firewood and started a fire in the stove. The atmosphere was cold and clammy. The roof leaked.

"We ain't got any grub, Ben. Our supper was the last I had. You'll have to go out and get something. Bill was to bring some eats. He's got a girl. That's where he was going after his stunt. Girls are the devil. Well, you've got to go."

Foss moved to the landing-stage sullenly, with the intention of looking for the boat they had moored the previous night. It was not there. He looked across the tumbling river. Over by the opposite bank, fifty yards down, the boat was caught by a fallen tree. It had been swept away by the rising river, which during the night had reached flood point. The water was overflowing the banks, and swirling down in a heavy, brown billowy mass. The house-boat was tugging at the chains that moored it. They were marooned.

"We can't get any grub, Jimmy. We're too far from the banks."

Something like dismay came into Jimmy Sockem's eyes.

"I broke down the shore gangway," he muttered. "It spanned a dozen yards from the bank."

"We're twice that distance now, Jimmy."

"Can you swim?"

"No. Can you?"

"No."

A silence fell on them, broken at last by Sockem.

"It means we'll wait here until the fence comes. He'll find the boat and bring it along."

They went back to the sitting-room, where two aged cane chairs remained. These Sockem broke up and burned in the stove. They picked the last crumbs off the supper-plates. Sockem took his horseshoe nail from his pocket and began to sharpen it on a small hone. He hummed a tune as he worked. The rain became heavier than ever.

By midday the river had risen still more. Not a sign of anything living appeared along the streaming banks. Drip, drip, drip; slash, slash, slash; rumble, rumble, rumble--the first from the leaking roof, the second from the whipping rain, the third from the rising river--these were the only sounds that came to the two men in the house-boat; these, and the constant honing of his large steel nail, which Jimmy Sockem kept up until the weapon shone like a knife-blade.

No receiver of stolen property came that day. They went to their mattresses hungry, cold, miserable. They no longer spoke to each other. The rain increased. The wind rose to the strength of a gale. When they woke the next morning the waters were crested with small breakers. The rain was worse than ever. The roof leaked everywhere.

The second day passed as the first, the third came as the second. They looked out and saw, not a river, but a real flood. The water had spread into the adjoining meadows, and had formed a huge lake, which was ever increasing. Their boat had been driven away in the spate. In the midst of this desolation the house-boat floated, dragging at its foundations, its stage under water. The two men were helpless.

That day Sockem fished up the sack of loot and went over the valuables like a miser counting his hoard. Foss, who watched him in silence, saw the water ooze in under the floorboards. The truth struck him like a blow. The rising river was driving them from their shelter.

The afternoon made this definite; both of them saw it. Foss had reached the limit of his endurance. Sockem was now tigerish and unapproachable. Cowed and afraid though he was, Foss spoke his thoughts.

"Seed said honesty was the best policy. It is true."

"It is a lie," thundered Sockem. "Is not this sack proof I am right? I can break any law I wish to. We are rich."

"We are poor. We are starving."

"That is your fault. I have supplied the loot that makes us rich. You must supply the food to keep us till the floods go down. I have been thinking. You have to be driven. I shall drive you."

"How?"

"You are the scout. Why don't you scout? You must be forced. Listen. I am going to make a raft from the timber of this house. On that raft you will pole your way to the village and bring back food."

"I daren't. I should be drowned."

"If you don't go I shall kill you."

His face assumed the horrible cunning peculiar to his nature, and he stretched out his hand for the shining, dagger-like nail which lay on the table.

"Why don't you go yourself?" cried Foss in desperation.

"Because I must not. Seed knows I climbed to the flat that night I killed your boss. It was he who came to the door. I heard him in the garden as I climbed. He has been on my heels for days. You can go for food. You must. Or else----"

He shrugged his shoulders and turned to the work he had indicated. He worked with savage ferocity while Foss watched him, shivering and biting his lip. He was scared. He saw Sockem, by prodigious efforts, and with the aid of a hammer taken from the kitchen, beat down a large section of the wall. It fell across the flooded staging, and lay ready to be launched.

"That's my job finished," announced Sockem. "It is up to you. Go--or say your prayers."

He laughed wolfishly and went to his room, banging the door and bolting it.

Foss was alone with his thoughts. His thoughts chilled and roasted him alternately. It was death to go and death to remain. Dusk had fallen. Away in the distance he saw the twinkling lights of the village. The rain had slackened, but the river rushed wildly on its course.

An hour passed. The darkness deepened. Foss stirred. An idea had come to him. He crept towards the room in which Sockem had locked himself and listened at the keyhole. From the room came regular breathing. Sockem was sleeping, tired out with his labour.

Foss went back to the raft. His idea was to take his chance with the floods. He repented having given in to Sockem. Why should he not try to save himself and leave this savage to his fate?

He had laid hold of the raft when a glimmer of light pierced the darkness far down the river. He looked, and saw it become bigger. It was a light from a boat. Already he heard the "chug-chug" of a motor. Someone was coming up in face of the racing tide--evidently rescuers out to aid river-dwellers caught in the storm.

Here was a chance indeed! He could escape from the terror that was Sockem. He would go to Seed and explain all. He would ask for protection against Sockem's vengeance. Seed knew he had tried to run straight. Honesty was the best policy. If a man was honest he need never have these fears and despairs that had gripped him and terrorised him since Sockem had come back for him.

The boat was now almost level with the house-boat. It would pass without seeing him. With a cry he thought of a way out.

He ran to the kitchen and took the lantern, lighting it hurriedly. Then he came back to the stage, waving it to and fro. But the waters drove him in again, lashing against his legs. He dared not shout lest he wakened Sockem. A voice came over the floods.

"Keep steady! Give us a chance to get you!"

Ah, the light must be steady! Foss dashed back to the kitchen. On the table was the long, steel nail, Sockem's one tool. He picked up the hammer and ran out to the staging again. Muffling the head of the nail in his handkerchief, he drove it into the wooden wall. It sank through, met an obstruction half way, but a blow fixed it securely. He hung the flickering lantern on the nail and waited.

The boat came towards him. Its motor chugged so loudly he was afraid Sockem would hear. Out of the darkness the boat glided, and a man sprang on to the submerged staging.

"Hullo! Floods held you prisoner--Foss!"

The man who had spoken was Detective Seed.

He took hold of Foss's shaking frame and looked into his scared eyes.

"Steady up, Foss! You're all right with us! Have you found Sockem?"

Ben gulped hard, but his tongue could not utter words. His hand jerked towards the room behind him.

"All right, Foss, you've had a hard time, but we're the river police," said Seed quickly. "Lucky Sockem didn't kill you. I suppose he's barricaded himself in. By the way, your boss told me you had gone after the burglar----"

"Ain't he dead?"

"No, but he got a bad rap on the head. He's recovering all right. He knows you're straight. Well, we've caught Sockem's receiver of goods, Mackintosh. We got him as we were coming up. He's confessed that Sockem was here, but we'd have passed you but for your lantern. I knew Sockem had a nest on the river. Don't worry. We've got him now."

He drew a revolver and approached the door of the room, and at his heels went two men from the motor-boat. They burst the lock open. One man switched on a flashlamp.

"Get up, Jimmy Sockem! I'm arresting you for burglary----_Ah!_"

Seed moved forward suddenly, and looked at the prone figure in the narrow bunk.

"Look!" he cried, pointing to the wall against which Sockem's head rested.

The long, shining horseshoe nail which had been driven through the wooden partition had caught Jimmy Sockem as he slept, and had penetrated to his brain.

* * * * *

The Governor bent forward as he finished his story and tapped the edge of his desk with his forefinger.

"So you see that Jimmy Sockem was not drowned. He was buried in the East End, and I don't doubt that you have seen his grave. As he had no relatives, the police paid for his funeral, after an inquest had been held very quietly. The verdict was 'accidental death.' And Ben Foss went back to his job. He has never again been tempted, or bullied, back to lawless ways. As for Mackintosh, the agent for Eckhardt, the receiver of stolen goods, I think I have already informed you that he is just now occupying the ninth cell below us."

The visitor remained silent for some time, thinking over what he had heard.

"I suppose I ought to be thankful to you," he remarked, "for telling me the real nature of the famous 'cat's' end. The story current in certain circles is that he was drowned in his bunk during the flood. But there is one point which your narrative leaves undetermined."

"What is it?"

"Why was it that Bill Hemsey did not come to the house-boat when he was expected?"

"Ah," smiled the Governor, "that is still to be explained, and in order to elucidate that matter I now propose to give you the story of the occupant of the tenth cell, who is none other than Bill Hemsey himself."

THE STORY OF THE OCCUPANT OF THE TENTH CELL

I am living in hopes (said the Governor) that one day--though I may not see it (at this the visitor slightly inclined his head and laid his hand on his revolver)--criminals will realise that crime does not pay. For the time being, however, the difficulty is that whenever one man is taken and sent to prison another seems to step into his place. Thus crime appears to be continuous, though it could be proved by analytical discussion that it is not so. However that may be, it was evident to those whose duty it is to observe such things that Eckhardt, the receiver of stolen property, must find a crook to take the place of Mackintosh.

Up to this point, mark you, Eckhardt was merely under suspicion. The law could not lay its hands on him for lack of evidence--that is, evidence that would produce a conviction in a court of law. There was plenty of suspicion against Eckhardt, all the same, but suspicion is not evidence. But it was noticed that Eckhardt did find somebody else to do odd jobs for him, jobs that never brought him into conflict with the police, but were again suspicious.

This man was a young member of an East End company of loafers and hangers-on. His name was Tommy Conn. He openly boasted of being a burglar, but he took care that boasting was all that could be said about it. After he became friendly with Eckhardt he ceased to boast--itself a circumstance worth noting.

Conn will interest us after we have dealt with Bill Hemsey, for Conn occupied, in some ways, the same position in relation to Eckhardt as Bill Hemsey did in regard to Jimmy Sockem. That is to say, both were minor crooks who worked under the directions and suggestions of their leaders.

It was Jimmy Sockem who had put Hemsey up to the idea of taking the rent money of old Luke Kohl, the Jew who owned property in the lower reaches of the Thames. And so, on the evening that he was expected to reach the house-boat, we find Bill Hemsey on his business of annexing these rents.

Bill was not high up in the scale of criminal cunning, but he was high enough to know that he could lift the money belonging to Kohl if he worked properly. As a matter of fact, he found the actual theft easier than he had imagined it would be. He went to Kohl's house prepared for some sort of opposition, and he found none.

I think you will remember that Jimmy Sockem, during his talk with Ben Foss on the house-boat, grumbled because Bill Hemsey had said he was going to see his girl that same evening. The truth was that Bill needed his girl's help to get away with the swag, but she did not know it; or, rather, one ought to say that Bill needed the help of his girl's father, but neither did the father know it. They were not the sort of people who would have aided him had they known.

All these things come out at trials, and the trial of Hemsey resulted in him losing more than his liberty, much as he prized that.

Here, then, we have Bill in possession of the bag of money, and standing in the small back shop of Kohl, listening intently for sounds from above. No sounds came. Bill had entered the shop by the back door when Kohl was upstairs at tea. He had found the bag on the top of the safe. He opened it to make sure that the money was there. It was all there in notes and silver. Bill sighed with delight.

He snapped the catch and was on the point of leaving the shop when he thought he heard a step on the stairs. He braced himself, prepared for a struggle. But it was a false alarm. Nobody came downstairs. Hemsey did not wait. He took a firm grip on the handle and walked out by the door which he had forced in order to enter.

He went over the yard wall, and turned towards the main thoroughfare feeling that he wanted to laugh. It had been so simple that he could hardly believe it. Yet there was the money in the black handbag, the small canister of pepper which he had intended to shoot towards Kohl's eyes was in his pocket, unused, and not a soul had observed his way of entry. He had left no finger-prints on the door or anywhere about. He still wore the leather gloves he had drawn on his hands before he committed the crime. And he was nearly two hundred pounds richer than he had been a few minutes previously.

It all proved, he told himself, how easy things could be done if one took the trouble to lay the scheme beforehand. In this case he had certainly been very careful. With care comes success, in crime as in respectability. Honesty and lawlessness both require consideration.

Bill Hemsey had known about how old Kohl collected his rents for some time, though Bill did not belong to the district. There had been more than one attempt by the roughs of the riverside streets to waylay old Kohl and grab his money-bag, but these attempts had always been frustrated because old Kohl, if he was feeble and rich, was also decidedly suspicious. He knew that the bad men of the Thames wharves were anxious to purloin his money in the dark corners through which he had to pass when he collected the rents; but those who had tried to snatch his bag found it was fastened by a light, strong, steel chain to his waist. Thus a thief who wanted the bag and its contents must take Luke Kohl also; and no thief wanted his screaming accuser to accompany the loot.

Besides the chain, Luke Kohl had another means of protection. This was a police whistle, and on the occasions when he had been molested he had sounded his whistle while the would-be robbers tugged at the bag. They had been captured before they had run the length of a street, for the police were generally in the vicinity, thanks to Kohl's anxious requests for their services.

These were difficulties which Bill Hemsey had to overcome before he could possess the rent money of Luke Kohl, but Bill had found a way to beat the opposition. If Kohl was crafty, Bill was more crafty. He found the weak link in Kohl's armour. That link was Rachel, the old man's daughter.

Rachel lived with her parents in rooms above their small bric-à-brac shop. She was neither beautiful nor the reverse. She was "homely," getting on in years for a maiden. She met Bill Hemsey at a local dance-hall. It was not an accidental meeting so far as Bill was concerned, for he had come to the hall with the distinct intention of becoming acquainted with Rachel. He met her several times afterwards, he spent money taking her to the cinemas, to local music-halls, to various places where cheap amusement was to be found up West. He walked out with her two evenings a week for a month, and by that time he had wormed his way into her affections and knew the whole routine of her father's business, even down to where he placed his bag with the rent money when he brought it home. The bag was placed on the top of the safe in the back shop while Kohl locked the front door and went upstairs to tea; after tea the bag was put, with the till, into the safe.

The taking of the bag was Bill's supreme crime. It was to be his final one. Working with Sockem, his business was to lift the ready money, take it up the river, and in return he was to get a share of Sockem's loot. This trading of stolen goods is done quite often, helping to baffle the police and making the real source of a robbery difficult to trace.

As for Rachel, she was not the girl to whom Sockem referred. Rachel was merely a pawn in Bill's game. Indeed, her friendship with Bill had been a little troublesome to him. She presumed more than he intended, and she had asked him on more than one occasion to come home and meet her parents. These invitations had always been side-tracked by Bill, who had no desire to step into what might be a trap for himself; he did not want to meet Luke Kohl, who might then be able to identify him at a crucial moment--for instance, when the pepper was being thrown into his eyes. So that Rachel might be well out of the way, Bill had written to her asking her to meet him at a point up West, and he had seen her start for the rendezvous. Exit Rachel from Bill's life.

As he walked along, Bill felt confident, and had not any anxiety. Nobody had seen him take the bag, nobody could accuse him of entering by the back door, not a soul knew that he was a petty thief and had been one for years. Between his "jobs" in crime he conducted a perfunctory street-corner business of bookmaking, a cloak for his other activities and a means of getting the information to enable him to carry them out. It was as a book-maker that his friends knew him; even Rene Toler, his real girl, whom he intended to marry almost immediately, regarded him as a sporting person. It was to her rooms that Bill Hemsey was now making his way.

He left the main thoroughfare and took to side streets, past one of the blocks of flats which Luke Kohl owned, the flats the rents of which were in the bag he carried. Tall dismal buildings, these were situated near the riverside, and let out in mean dwellings of single, double, and triple rooms. They were peopled by the casual workers of the docks, labourers of the river, the families who hung on to life by short spells of work sandwiched between periods of unemployment. It was because of this unreliability of income that Kohl collected his rents regularly, never allowing arrears to accumulate.

From the streets behind the river were many dark, narrow passages, sombre and badly lit by scattered street lamps. In front of the houses was the river front, a narrow flagged pathway. No railing or fence was erected by the river's edge, and here and there lonely barges from Gravesend and Tilbury squatted on the sticky mud that was squelchy as a quagmire when the tide was out. This ooze, three feet deep, was covered at full tide with sufficient water to float the barges and the boats of the water-men up to the wall of the river front.

During the daytime the "esplanade," as it was called by courtesy, was the rendezvous of loiterers and bargemen. By night the place was deserted save for an occasional boat that crossed the river as an unofficial ferry, since the nearest bridge was a considerable distance away. It was Rene's father who worked this spasmodic ferry.

Rene did not stay with her father. She worked in a laundry on the same side of the river as Bill had rooms, and she had given Bill proof of being able to look after his wants in the future by doing his washing and pressing his suits in her spare time. Pretty, hard-working, and capable, she was as straight as a fiddle-string, and Bill knew that she would make an ideal wife. She had no silly ideas of romance about her. Her one strong point was her profound common sense. It was because he was fond of her that Bill had made the raid on Luke Kohl's money; this, he told himself, was to be his last excursion into crime.

As she opened the door in answer to his knock, he was met by a rush of hot atmosphere from the apartment.

"Hullo," said Rene. "You're early."

"Better early than late," replied Bill, grinning. "What you busy at? Same old stuff, hey?"

He sat down on a chair and looked at the heap of washed clothes on the table at which she had been ironing. His reception had not been as cordial as he had hoped, but Rene was never demonstrative. Bill chuckled to think that he had now enough money to set the two of them up comfortably.

"Give us a kiss, Rene," he said.

He rose and advanced towards her, but she waved him aside and returned to her ironing table.

"What's the matter, Rene?"

She turned on him quickly.

"There isn't anything the matter with _me_," she flashed.

Her tone startled him for a moment, but he quickly dismissed his fears. She could not possibly know that he had money in the bag and that he had stolen it.

"Well, don't be funny," he grumbled, watching her all the time. "I told you I was coming over home with you to-night. I want to talk things over with your dad. Ain't you glad to see me? I've got an appointment, but I'll be back late."

"What things are you going to talk over?"

"About you and me. I was thinking we might get married soon."

"You said that a while ago."

"I know I did. But I hadn't the money."

"Have you got it now?"

He smiled. This was his great secret, the winning card he held up his sleeve.

"More'n you think, Rene. I'll show you what I've got all in good time. And your dad too. Did you ask him to bring his boat over for us, same as I said to you?"

"I told him."

"Well, stop working and let's go."

"There's plenty of time yet. Besides, I've got these things to iron, and the suit you left me has to be pressed. I promised I'd do it by to-night."

He gazed at her cunningly.

"How long will it take you?"

"I'll be finished in an hour."

"Mind if I stay here to watch you?"

"Please yourself."

"What's the matter with you, Rene? I come here to give you a pleasant surprise and you're hardly civil."

"If you found that I'd been flirting with other men you'd be mad too."

"Oh!"

He began to see the reason for her coldness. But before he could say anything she glanced at him from the hot iron her eye was following.

"You needn't deny it. You were seen."

"Who saw me?"

"I did."

"You're jealous, Rene, and there's nothing to worry about; honest, there ain't. I give you my word."

She was ironing determinedly, her lips straight and tight.

"It was only a business affair," he began.

"Business?" she scoffed.

"I'm telling you, Rene. It was business. A man has to be friendly with them that bring money to him."

"Has he to take them to the theatres?"

"It's good for business----"

"Or to dances?"

"It's good for----"

"Or buy them chocolates?"

"Aw, you needn't be jealous. There was nothing in it."

"Funny way of doing a betting business," she answered bitingly.

"Rene," he began, but stopped; for to make her understand he was bound to tell everything, and he dared not tell everything. The crime was his one secret which he must keep to himself, even if it was to be his last.

"It ain't the first time," she added. "You've been with her lots of times."

"I won't again, Rene."

"How do I know you're speaking the truth?"

"I give my oath on it. It was only business."

"What would you say if I started gadding about with men?"

He had not seen it this way, and the idea struck him forcibly, for he was fond of Rene in his way.

"What would you do?" she demanded.

"You wouldn't do that, Rene?"

"What if I did? Ain't I got the right to go to the cinema with a boy, if you go with a girl?"

He did not answer, but the look in his face was dour and ominous. She suddenly became afraid of him.

"It was only business," he muttered. "Just business."

He was standing at her elbow as she laid out his suit for the ironing process. There was something menacing in his attitude. Man-like, he did not understand her mental injury nor appreciate her point of view; his environment had never taught him that women had any right to question, yet he longed in a dull way to probe the suspicion her words had raised. She seemed to sense this, for she spoke quietly without looking at him.

"I didn't do it," she said simply. He breathed deeply, as if relieved.

"How long will you be at this job?"

"A bit yet."

"What about a drink of something?"

"I can't leave this. There's time enough before dad comes. You can go out for a drink. Come back in half an hour."

She glanced at the clock as she spoke.

"All right," he said, as he picked up his cap and kicked the leather bag under his chair. "I'll bring a bottle back for your dad. He can take it home with him."

"Didn't you say he was to meet us by the esplanade? He won't come up here----"

"Well, I'll give it him in the boat."

He clumped downstairs with something of his usual complacency gone from him. He had never been suspicious of Rene before. He was angry that she should want to know the reason he had been friendly with Rachel Kohl; and he dared not tell that. Even if he was forced to tell something of the truth, he had to hide his crime, for then Rene would tell her father, and her father would deny him the use of the boat. Bill Hemsey needed the boat that night. He could not chance taking a bus, or be seen walking in the streets with the bag. Kohl would have discovered the theft by this time and would have told the police. The police would be on the watch, and the only way to evade them was to get down to the dark esplanade and cross the river by boat. He would destroy the bag when he got to his rooms.

In fifteen minutes he returned to Rene's room, hugging three bottles of stout. He pushed the door open with his foot and entered. He heard voices. A young man about his own age was in the room.

"All right," he was saying, "I don't need to see you home if that's the case."

Bill Hemsey blundered in and placed the bottles on the tables. The stranger said he would be going. He went out, and Rene lifted from the table the coat she had been pressing. Bill wheeled as the door closed.

"Who was that?" he demanded.

"Jim Harlek. He lives next door to dad----"

"So that's why you asked me to go out and fetch a drink? You expected him here and thought I was better out of the way. He slunk off when he saw me. He came here to see you home----"

He shouted his accusations at her, giving her no chance to answer him. For the moment he was seeing red. All his suspicions were returned, flaming high. He saw it all. He had been duped, misled, deceived. He seized her shoulder in a fierce grip.

"So it's Jim Harlek! He came to see you home. Don't deny it. Up here in your room. That's why you said I was early. You expected him. You sent me out so's you could warn him I was here. Tit for tat, hey? That's because you were jealous. Thought you'd pay me out----"

"Bill, you're hurting me!"

"Hurting you! I'll hurt you more. Mine was business. You can't say that about Jim Harlek. And you said you hadn't done anything like that----"

"Let go!" she cried, wriggling from him; but he pursued her, anger raging and flushing his face.

"I'll teach you," he cried. "Playing that trick on me."

"What about the trick you played on me? What about Rachel Kohl? What about the theatres and the dances and the letters you wrote her?"

"That was business, I tell you."

"I don't believe it."

"Maybe you'll say that Jim Harlek came here on business? I'll find out about you and him. I'll teach you----"

"Let go! Let go!"

She struggled to free herself from his grasp, and the more she struggled the more he raged at her. The very resistance she made seemed to his inflamed brain to be proof that she was guilty of deception. And because he was then incapable of reason he kept up a torrent of accusation, a cataract of threats and insinuations, the words pouring from him as he shook her. He beat down the opposition she had at first shown. He silenced her by the ferocity of his wrath; and then he flung her into a chair.