“Do you imagine that all we have to do,” I whispered, “is to pull out all the bolts and then the slab will drop?”
I could see that he was puzzled.
“I reckon so. And yet it seems too simple.”
“Try the next one,” I suggested.
He did so with exactly the same result, and so proceeded to the next. In a minute we had withdrawn all of the five bolts along the top line of quatre-foils. As I removed the last very slowly and gently, Mr Digweed pressed his hand against the slab above it in order to hold it back and restrain its drop for we expected it to fall a few inches and reveal a space. However, it did not move.
“It must be that they all need to be pulled out,” Mr Digweed said, clearly as puzzled as I was.
In a few minutes we had withdrawn all the remaining twenty bolts except for the last one on the bottom row of quatre-foils. But when we cautiously repeated our earlier manoeuvre as we withdrew this one, once again the slab failed to move.
I looked towards my companion in despair. He reflected for a long time, holding his chin thoughtfully as he stared at the design.
“I believe I understand,” he said at last. “It’s a form of lock, and we ain’t got the key.”
“Key?” I repeated. “But where’s the key-hole?”
“Shsh,” he whispered suddenly.
We froze.
“I thought I heerd a sound at the door,” he went on. “No, there ain’t a real key. The key’s in your head, for this is fashioned on what they call the ‘combination principle’. That’s to say, you can’t jist pull all them bolts out and expeck the slab to fall, for the bolts make up like it were the wards of a lock, and so you have to know which pertickler bolts you have to withdraw — jist the way a key has to fit a lock.”
“I see,” I said. “Then should we not try out different combinations?”
“No, there ain’t no purpose to that. We wouldn’t open it that way, not if we was here all night and for days and weeks to come. There’s hundreds and hundreds of combinations. We won’t hit on the right one by hazard, we have to know the design.”
I saw that he was right, and it was a bitter blow. There was obviously no possibility of using force to open the hiding-place, for the heavy slab of marble was locked into position and we would have to make far too much noise and work for far too long to have any hope of evading discovery.
Standing precariously on the foot-stool, I leant forward and thumped the marble with my fist in my rage. I struck against one of the infernal quatre-foils and bruised my knuckles. As I did so I remembered how I had beaten my fists against the door of the old house at Charing-cross that first time when Mr Escreet had refused to open it. The quatre-foil design on the knocker had grinned down at me then, and I remembered the same mocking indifference from the cold marble quatre-foils on the tombs and memorial tablets and the old stained glass in the church at Melthorpe that had so fascinated me as a child. I felt tears prickling my eyes as I reflected that even though I had penetrated to the sanctum sanctorum in the very house of the Mompessons, yet I was met by the same cruel unconcern that I had experienced in seeing the design on the pannel of the carriage belonging to Sir Perceval that had so alarmed my mother all those many years ago.
That recollection, however, recalled to me that there was a difference, for in the designs I had always been familiar with the quatre-foils were in different colours varying between the Huffam and the Mompesson versions. As I remembered this, the faded red of the ancient glass in the East window of Melthorpe church came to mind, and the black and white of the design on the side of the yellow chariot. Yet in this case the whole design of twenty-five quatre-foils was entirely white.
I was about to explain this to my companion and ask him if he thought there could be any significance to it, but at that precise moment there came the whirring sound of a tawny-owl: there was danger within the house!
Instantly Mr Digweed began to move towards the door.
“The bolts!” I hissed. “We must put them back!”
With a look of terror he turned back to help me and hastily we pushed the bolts home. Then we both hurried — though still moving as light-footedly as we could — towards the door. Just before we reached it the handle slowly turned. We looked at each other in horror.
“The window,” I whispered.
Less cautiously now we gained the window and Mr Digweed thrust back the curtains, pulled the shutters away and raised the sash. Dawn was just beginning and there was only faint light in the street. I picked up and handed the rope to him and he leant out of the window and lowered it. At any moment the street-door below us might be opened from within the house and our escape cut off.
Just then we heard heavy feet running up the stairs and someone tried the door-handle again. There were shouts and then the sound of men hurling themselves against the door. By now Mr Digweed had clambered out of the window clutching the rope as best he could with one hand, and with his feet resting on the top of the entablature of the ground-floor window immediately below, he was trying to reach across to a conductor-pipe. At this moment I heard a window open above my head. I looked up and against the dark grey sky saw a cylindrical object protruding from the window directly above my head. To my horror, I realized it was the barrel of a gun. I glanced down and it was clear that Mr Digweed, intent upon his escape, had not seen it. As I looked up again the barrel suddenly disappeared as if it had been snatched away.
In trepidation I clambered out onto the sill clutching the rope in my turn. At that moment Mr Digweed pushed off from the entablature with the intention of seizing the conductor-pipe. I glanced up and saw the barrel appear again. Suddenly it was violently jerked upwards and sideways, and at the same instant it went off with a loud report. Mr Digweed staggered as if hit — though I was sure the gun had not been pointed towards him when it had fired — and so missed the pipe he was reaching towards with his hook. The rope slid from his grasp and he lost his balance and fell.
As if in a nightmare I watched as his body descended, his hand scrabbling desperately and unavailingly at the bricks of the wall, towards the long spikes of the fan-tail waiting below. I closed my eyes and a moment later opened them to see him slumped awkwardly across the cruel device. I noticed a figure run across the street towards him.
I had to think of my own situation now, and realized that I had no alternative but to follow Mr Digweed in the hope that I could get away while the gun was being loaded. I gripped the rope as hard as I could and swung across towards the pipe.
I missed it but, still clutching the rope, managed to get back for another attempt. This time I succeeded in seizing the pipe and instantly let go of the rope. With the aid of the pipe I lowered myself down the rusticated stone-work of the bottom story. I was haunted by the idea that the gun was being pointed at me and so, against my better judgement, I glanced up and saw a head appear at the window from which it had been fired. In the dim light I could see enough of the face to recognise it as that of a man of about thirty-five and to see the expression of keen eagerness on his face. He appeared to be arguing with someone whom I could not see, but when I looked up now he gazed full into my face. Even at the time it occurred to me that if I could see his face so clearly, he could see mine.
I reached the ground and joined Joey who was tending to his father. He had fallen between the fan-tail and the wall in such a way that one of the spikes had penetrated his side and he was wedged against the wall.
“Help me lift him!” Joey cried.
“Shouldn’t we leave him? It might kill him to move him,” I shouted, all sense of caution lost in the horror of the situation.
“He’s a dead man for sure if we leave him. He’ll dance at Newgate if they don’t let him die!”
I saw the force of this and felt that it was Joey’s decision to make. And so we began as gently as we could to lift his father off the spike which had pierced his side.
He was still sensible and his face was contorted with pain,
but he uttered not a sound except to breathe once: “Good boys.”
We were standing on the front steps and the strangeness of our situation struck me even then. I expected that at any moment the street-door before us would burst open and we would be apprehended. As we lifted him it became clear that the spike had not penetrated very far into his body, yet somehow he had been severely injured for the amount of blood that gushed forth was most alarming. I assumed that he had been hit by the bullet despite my own impressions.
We eased him off the fan-tail and still no-one came from the house. It occurred to me that the servants might not be able to open the street-door because they did not have the key. If this were so it could only be a few moments before whoever had it was found or before they got out through the back-door into the mews, and came round the corner of the street. I was also alarmed that the watch would be roused by the noise, or even that people in the surrounding houses would intervene against us. Our only advantage lay in the comparative darkness and that was passing from us with each succeeding minute.
We began to carry Mr Digweed down the steps, Joey in front holding him under the shoulders and I clutching his feet, and then broke into a kind of run when we reached the street. As I glanced back to see if we were pursued I saw that we were leaving a tell-tale spoor of blood behind us.
Just as we were about to round the corner I looked back and saw a number of men come running into our street from the direction of the mews. Since they were carrying torches and we, of course, had no lights, they might not have seen us in the near-darkness, dazzled by their own flambeaux. This must have been the case for when we dived up the next street and then turned again and then again in the hope of baffling our pursuers, we found that we had indeed shaken them off.
By now, however, it was getting so light that I feared that even if we continued to elude those chasing us, we might encounter the watch or a patrole and, incriminating as our appearance was, be taken up merely on suspicion of having committed a crime.
Joey had obviously been fearing the same thing for he suddenly whispered hoarsely: “Mount-street!”
It was a moment before I understood his meaning, but then it came to me. We bore his father to the culvert there (just opposite the Workhouse) from which we had often reached the surface in the past. There was nobody about and so we lowered him into it, and then carried him a little way under the arch so that we could not be seen from the street. Here we tried to staunch the flow of blood and found that as well as piercing his side the spike had ripped his thigh in a deep gash that had almost exposed the bone. This was the source of the blood and I had been right in believing that he had not been hit by the bullet.
While Joey hastened home, I stayed to tend Mr Digweed as best I could. It was not easy even to keep him dry in that damp place. The time dragged past. He was in great pain and I had difficulty in stifling his cries. To my relief, Joey returned a couple of hours later accompanied by his mother. When we had helped her into the culvert as discreetly as we could, she quietly and calmly did what she could for her husband.
“He should go to the Dispensary,” I said.
“No!” Joey insisted.
His mother shook her head: “We dare not risk it, if that man got a good look at him …”
She was right. Her husband was only too easy to identify.
“And they’ll be looking for toshers,” I said. “We left the rake beneath the privy-drain.” We were silent for a minute. “But if he … if he needs to go to the hospital,” I began.
Mrs Digweed shook her head again: “We don’t have no ticket anyway. And I don’t know no-one what would give us one.”
“We must get him home,” Joey cried.
And so, after a brief discussion, he hurried off again to Bethnal-green.
For the rest of the morning Mr Digweed alternated between periods of terrible pain and blessed — though worrying — lapses into insensibility. Towards noon Joey returned with Isbister’s horse and cart, and we now took the considerable risk of manoeuvring him from the concealment of the culvert into the cart in broad daylight. Our audacity was rewarded for though several foot-passengers noticed us, no-one apprehended us or sent for the watch, and by this means we succeeded in conveying the wounded man home. There Mrs Digweed stripped and cleaned the wound and then made up a composing-draught of brandy and laudanum while Joey and I carried him upstairs. When he had drunk it he fell into a deep sleep.
In the course of the evening the patient grew fevered and delirious and Joey and I — now sleeping in the lower chamber — were kept awake by his cries for much of the night. He was quieter in the morning and slept most of the day with a grey, drawn expression that struck a chill into my heart.
He was a little better the following day, but worse the day after that. And so he continued, varying between one day and the next, sometimes fevered and at other times weak but collected in his wits. The wound did not become poisoned, but neither did it heal.
Everything had gone wrong and it was my fault — though I was the least affected by it. Mrs Digweed offered no reproaches, but I saw Joey gazing at me more balefully (it seemed to me) than ever before.
Our anxiety over Mr Digweed’s condition could not prevent us from facing the fact that we had to earn money, for our failed burglary attempt had exhausted what little we had, and the situation was the more critical now that Mrs Digweed was often unable to go out on her laundress-work for having to watch her husband. And so, two days later, Joey and I ventured into the shores alone.
Now it was that I realized the full extent of Mr Digweed’s skill and knowledge, for the amount that Joey and I were able to glean dropped dramatically without his father’s guidance, and this was because we covered less distance and made poorer judgements of which tunnels to explore under the prevailing conditions.
More worryingly, our inexperience led us to make serious errors of judgement. On one occasion, the tunnel we were in, which was built over another and more ancient one, began to collapse as we walked along it and we were lucky to escape. And several times we came perilously close to being trapped by gas. We kept these incidents from Mr and Mrs Digweed, but it was quickly becoming apparent to me at least that we had to find a means of earning our living that was at once safer and more profitable.
After a little over a month Mr Digweed’s condition seemed to settle at a steady level. He would have feverish periods which lasted several days and were then followed by a slight recovery. He remained too weak to leave his bed, but at least while Joey and I were at home Mrs Digweed was able to go out and look for work. And we badly needed the money, for Joey and I were only able to make about twelve shillings a week between us.
So things continued for the following three months. As the autumn drew near it became clear to me — and, I am sure to the others, though we did not speak of it — that Mr Digweed’s strength was slowly ebbing. He now slept most of the time and could speak only with considerable difficulty.
Then one day towards the end of October, when Joey and I were in a shore near the river with which we were unfamiliar, we had our most serious misadventure. It began when Joey was venturing cautiously into an area of deep mud, probing ahead with a rake, while I held the lanthorn. Suddenly he found himself sinking rapidly where a mass of compacted material had deceptively borne his weight for a few seconds and so lured him further before giving way so that he sank to his waist. Placing the lanthorn on the ground, I waded into the mud up to my knees and held out my hand to Joey who was now immersed in thick mud up to his shoulders. After a struggle, I pulled him free but as he returned to safe ground he kicked over the lanthorn and the light was extinguished.
The darkness was absolute. Luckily the tinder, which had been in my pocket, was dry but in that damp atmosphere it would be difficult to get a match. We worked in growing desperation, well aware that without light our chances of finding our way out were slender. At last, we succeeded in nursing a spark into flame and hurriedly set off for the surface.
When we reached the larger shore into which ours debouched we found that it was several feet deep in water.
“The tide!” Joey cried.
We had lost more time than we had realized.
“But it shouldn’t be so high,” I exclaimed. “There must have been a shower.”
This was the combination that was most feared by under-goers. And our plight was now grim for the way we had come was already blocked and all other ways led down towards the river.
“I know a way out, if I can remember it,” Joey said. “My old feller took me once. We have to find the Fleet and follow it.”
“But that’s towards the tide! It’ll be higher the further we go!”
“I know, but it’s the only way out from here when the tide is so high for there’s ladders from the tops of the vaults.”
I didn’t understand what he meant but there was no alternative but to follow him. And so we waded down the shore until we reached the Fleet — the oldest and most ill-reputed of London’s hidden rivers — now a subterranean ditch that runs beside the ancient prison in which my mother and Mr Pentecost had been immured.
There was a path on our side and we followed it downwards, though even now the tide was backing up over its banking so that water was swirling about our ancles. As we descended, its level rose higher and higher. Suddenly we came to a flight of steps and as we stood at the top and peered down, saw water several feet below us. I raised the lanthorn and we made out that the river and its banks widened out and the roof soared above us twenty or thirty feet in a series of high vaults whose limits were lost in the gloom. Now we had reached the Fleet-market where the river was actually a canal built by Sir Christopher Wren more than a hundred years before; and in front of us, beneath the water, were broken wharves lining a row of vaulted warehouses. They had never been used because they flooded at high water since the water-gates — the first of which we had arrived at — had from the very beginning failed to hold back the tide. In token of this, all the stonework we could see was blackly encrusted with nitre and as I gazed, I thought of the fortunes quite literally sunk here by speculators all those years ago.