The Whispering Lane/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII
IN THE UNDERWORLD
At Chelmsford the Inspector prepared the way for the success of the adventure by telephoning lavishly to Scotland Yard. This proceeding interested Jimmy enormously, as it implied his indirect connection with the C.I.D., and incidentally opened the path to preferment. He determined that his doings in the Fryfeld murder case should serve as credentials to impress the august heads of the Department with a full sense of his worth. The public praise could be given to Trant, but the private approval was to be for him alone, so that he might be elected a humble member of the profession so dear to his soul. Not that the boy intended to remain in the lower ranks of that detective army, which wages incessant war against the criminal classes. No! Once his foot pressed the first rung of the ladder, Mr. James Took was positive that he would ascend with the rapidity of a saint to heaven. He had a great opinion of his capabilities, had Jimmy.
For this reason the neophyte had clamoured for inclusion in the adventure, and had achieved his purpose in the face of troublesome objections. Aileen pointing out how tired and shaken he was by his late efforts, used all her persuasive powers to retain him in Wessbury. But in vain. This was the flood-tide in Jimmy’s affairs which would float him on to fame and fortune, as he argued in his own logical mind. Therefore he resisted female blandishments with the courage of an embryo St. Anthony, and braced himself for strenuous happenings. The mere thought of sharing in the peril—for peril there surely was—sent a surge of fresh vitality through his wearied young body. It was an alert, observant, bright-eyed youngster, who stepped into the train at the heels of Dick and the Inspector.
As the trio had a first-class compartment all to themselves, Trant requested his young companion to repeat his story, lest any detail should be overlooked. Jimmy, whose memory bordered on the miraculous, gave it out again, word for word as before, glancing slyly from one listener to the other. “Have you left out anything important, youngster?” asked Trant, when the thrice told tale was ended.
“Nothing that matters at the present moment, sir,” said the boy, blandly.
“But later?”
“When later comes, the rest will come.”
“The rest of what?”
“Of my story.”
“Then you are not telling me everything,” scolded the Inspector, irritably.
“Everything you need know just now, sir,” fenced Jimmy, artfully.
Trant looked at Hustings and Hustings looked at Trant. Jimmy was a hard nut to crack. “I think you should tell the Inspector all you know,” advised Dick, seriously, “he may be the means of helping you to realize your ambition.”
“I am sure he will,” assented the youth, just as seriously, “he is all kindness.”
The officer glanced quickly at Jimmy, suspecting sarcasm, but there was no sign of that. “If you think that I am kind, why doubt me, by keeping back what things are necessary for me to know.”
“I am not doing that, sir. All that is necessary I have told you.”
“But there is something!” insisted Trant, angered by this reticence.
Jimmy nodded, emphatically, “Something you’ll learn all about in Whitechapel.”
“Why not agree to be guided by my experience?”
“When the time comes, I’ll only be too glad to be so guided, sir,” said Jimmy bluntly, “meanwhile I work out my own ideas in my own way.”
“Don’t be disrespectful.”
“I don’t wish to be, but— Oh, Mr. Trant!” the boy’s voice sounded quite piteous, “don’t you see that this is my chance of getting into the detective force? If I tell everything now, and you succeed on my telling, I shall only be a jackal to your lion, and will have no opportunity of showing what I can do.”
“Nonsense,” said Trant, brusquely, “you’ll be given all the credit your sharpness demands. That is only fair. I am a just man, if nothing else.”
“You are more than just, sir, for you have treated me like a gentleman, putting up with my way of doing things. There’s more humanity than red-tape about you, Inspector,” said Jimmy, in his audacious way, “and that is why I have told you so much. And didn’t I return from Fryfeld, when I might have worked on my own, so that you might be in at the death and arrest the birds we’re after? I’m only anxious to show what I can do, so that the C.I.D. may take me up.”
“Oh you’ll be taken up all right,” Trant assured the boy, “you are made to your trade, Jimmy—the detective trade. I see your point, for I think as a man and not as an official machine. All I ask is that you will withhold nothing which will lose me the men we’re after.”
“I swear I won’t, sir,” answered the youth, brightening as Trant spoke. “When Wu Ti is in your hands you shall know everything.”
“Are you certain that we shall stumble on Wu Ti to-night?” asked Dick.
“From the moment Mr. Trant said something at the inn, I was certain.”
“And that something?”
“I shall keep to myself,” was the cool reply.
“Jimmy!” Dick laughed, “I believe you are preparing a cinematograph surprise.”
“You might put it that way, sir.”
Both the men gave it up. This extraordinary youth was as slippery as an eel, so there was nothing for it but to let him arrange matters in his own secretive way. And the Inspector, being, as he said, a man rather than a machine, wished to give the boy his chance. “It’s the younger generation knocking at the door, as you said, Mr. Hustings,” he declared, ending the matter.
At Liverpool Street Station the three were met on the platform by a plain-clothes detective from Scotland Yard. He informed the Inspector that Wung’s crib was being carefully watched, and that all arrangements had been made to raid the premises when the order was given. The quartette then bundled into a taxi, and travelled swiftly to Whitechapel, where they were deposited in one of the main streets. Camp, the plain-clothes official, then took charge, guiding the party down an evil-smelling lane. “I’m glad you’re not in uniform, Inspector,” he remarked on the way, “they’re wary birds down here.”
Trant laughed quietly, “I had to borrow a suit of Mr. Hustings’ clothes, as I didn’t bring my wardrobe to Wessbury. I guessed that a civilian kit was needed.”
Camp nodded approval, and conducted the trio still further down the lane, which narrowed into a crooked alley, until they found themselves in a cul-de-sac, shut in on three sides by tall dilapidated houses. Lurking in the shadows loafed a few shabbily-dressed watchers, and Camp assured the Inspector in an undertone that a whistle would call the police, waiting no distance away. “No need to let Wung know what we’re after,” said Camp, cheerfully. “Here we are, gentlemen. All serene?” he addressed the last two words to one of the watchers and received an affirmative reply.
The man, who had for some time been ingratiating himself with the population of this unsavoury quarter, knocked seven times at odd intervals at the door of an unlighted and apparently deserted house. It was opened cautiously by a wrinkled, malignant-faced, old Chinaman, in his national dress, carrying a smoky petroleum lamp, which he held high above his head to scrutinize the visitors. A few words from the watcher assured him that this was a party of sight-seers, touring the underworld, whose curiosity meant money to its inhabitants. Wung—for this was the proprietor of the opium-den—demurred a trifle, but ultimately admitted all five men. He led them along a dingy, narrow, crooked passage, to a staircase; and thence down to a tolerably large cellar, with three doors, set between lines of bedded bunks, arranged one above the other round the walls, up to the ceiling.
In these bunks, men of several nationalities were lying: some completely under the influence of opium, others recovering from its effects. The stone floor was raggedly matted; and scattered here and there were small stools and squat tables, scarcely higher. The atmosphere was hot and clammy: thick with the smoke of many lamps, and sickly with the acrid smell of opium. A lean Chinaman, hunkering down before one of the tables, was preparing his pipe by twirling the gummy stuff on a spatula, which he held in the tiny flame of a tiny lamp. He glanced up, indifferently, when the visitors entered, and as indifferently glanced down, intent upon his occupation.
“Wantchee, dlink?” queried Wung, with his long-nailed fingers snuggling in the wide sleeves of his blouse, and blinking hospitably through huge horn-rimmed spectacles.
“No!” said Trant shortly, and began to walk round and round the cellar, peering into the faces of sleeping and waking men.
Camp saw Wung make an uneasy movement, which hinted that his suspicions were aroused, and secretly tugged the sleeve of the watcher. Immediately the man slipped out and up the stairs, so stealthily as to be unobserved by anyone. “Smokee opium!” asked Wung, blandly, but coughing loudly.
“Stop that,” cried Camp, guessing that it was a signal.
“Allee lightee!” murmured the old creature, and shuffled in his padded shoes towards one of the doors.
“Come back!” Trant not only commanded, but dashed forward to grip the man’s arm and enforce his command, “Quiet now!” for Old Wung wriggled violently.
“You no fliends,” screamed Wung, struggling with amazing strength for one so old and apparently feeble.
“P’lice chop!” shrilled the lean Chinaman preparing the pipe, and rose, feeling swiftly for his knife, only to be checkmated by Hustings.
“Hands up!” shouted Dick, whipping out his service revolver, and the savage-looking Oriental obeyed with a vicious snarl.
“Follow me! Follow me!” breathed Jimmy in Camp’s ear, and made for the door towards which Old Wung had moved earlier.
Before the detective could do this a horde of police came pouring down the narrow stairs, much to the comfort of Trant. The whistle had been blown by the watcher, under Camp’s orders, and the house was surrounded in the nick of time, seeing how pressing was the danger of a rough and tumble fight. While the invaders swarmed into the cellar, tumbling the opium-smokers wholesale out of the bunks, Trant shook Wung violently. “Wu Ti! Where is he?”
“No hab got,” squeaked the Chinaman, sullenly.
“And Tyson—the girl, Jenny. Come now?”
“No hab got!”
Piercing through the uproar of resisting smokers and assaulting police, a loud and shrill cry from Jimmy, now through the doorway, caused the Inspector to pitch Wung into the arms of the nearest policeman. A moment later, he was in the adjoining room, to see the boy struggling with Jenny Walton, and Tyson entrenched behind a table, topped with three chairs. The burglar was raging furiously, in his accustomed garb as an East End tough, and levelled a revolver at the new-comer. Up shot Trant’s hands, for he was completely at the mercy of the ruffian. The next instant Tyson was at his mercy, for Jimmy, escaping from the girl’s hands, crawled under the table to sweep the man’s legs from under him. Crack went his revolver, but the shot expended itself harmlessly in the ceiling. Immediately Trant closed with him, while the girl clawed the Inspector’s back, hampering him sorely. Again Jimmy came to the rescue, pulling Jenny backward on to the floor, whence she spat out venomous words. Regaining her feet, she leaped upwards to the hanging lamp and dashed out the light.
“The roof, Bill, the roof!” screeched Jenny, groping with out-spread arms in the darkness. “I’ll hold the blinking cop. Ahrr! I’ve got yer!” and she launched herself through the gloom on to Trant’s back with such accuracy and force as to knock him sideways, thus releasing the burglar.
“Y’ come along o’ me,” bellowed Tyson to his doxy, slipping eel-like out of the officer’s loosened grip and making for an inner door. But Jimmy’s keen young eyes had espied that door earlier, as the only safe exit for the pair and Jimmy was watching expectant by that door. “Blarst y’—lemme go!” snarled Tyson, as the boy closed with him, and easily tossed his feather-weight assailant, aside. “Jenny! Jenny! Get on with it, y’ bitch!”
“I’m comin’—comin’!” gasped the girl, shuffling towards the voice, just as a policeman dashed in with a lamp. The light revealed the door, and like lightning, she and her man placed it between themselves and their pursuers.
“Hurt, laddie?” inquired the Inspector, rising at the same moment as Jimmy, who was feeling his head with a confused expression.
“Shaken a bit, sir. Come on! They’re making for the roof!”
Even as he spoke a Chinaman, snaked in from the outer cellar, twisted through the disorderly group of constables and darted towards the door. He opened and closed it with incredible dexterity, but, scarcely less rapid in his movements, Jimmy pulled it wide again. “Wu Ti!” cried the boy, exultingly, and began to climb a steep staircase, with the Inspector and his underlings streaming at his heels.
“Hurry! Hurry!” panted Trant, as they followed hot-footed in the dark, “I would not have anything happen to that lad for a kingdom. Torches!”
Half a dozen beams of light flashed out immediately, to show Jimmy disappearing into a bare corridor. Along this the officers rushed with confidence, now that many lights revealed their surroundings. Up another flight of stairs they stormed, and along another passage. Then through several rooms, all bare, dirty, unfurnished, dusty, they surged in tumultuous disorder. Afterwards the trail led them up more stairs, along more corridors, through more rooms, so endless, so confusing, that the place resembled a rabbit-warren. Finally the pursuers, climbing up a ladder through a trap-door, found themselves on the roof, four stories above the street level. “This way—this way—this way,” chanted Jimmy’s voice, exultingly, from the near distance. And in the luminous starlight, Trant caught a glimpse of him scrambling up the slanting slates with the activity of a squirrel.
Then began a nightmare chase, dimly lighted by stars and torches. In their heavy boots, the police slipped and slithered on the steep roofs, stumbled perilously along the narrow gutters, clambered to the ridge of one slope, to slide down the declivity of another, as they jostled and pushed their way from house-top to house-top. The Chinaman could not be seen but Jenny and her mate were visible, squirming their way, monkey-fashion, to safety. Occasionally they stopped to search desperately for a trap-door into the bowels of this house and that; but Jimmy and Trant, heading their pursuers, pressed them so closely that they had no time for discovery. Finally, they were driven to the last house-top at the lane-end of the cul-de-sac.
Here, perched precariously on the summit, the fugitives turned at bay—made a last stand: Tyson with his revolver, Jenny with a knife, which she flourished, screaming out insults. “Kim on, y’ crawling swine,” she taunted, hoarsely, “Bill an’ me’s ready t’ slit yer cussed windpipes!” and then followed a volley of foul words, shameless, and cutting.
“Shut yer jawr,” growled Tyson, giving her a cuff, “git daown— Hell!” he ended with a shout of dismay.
The blow, delivered when the girl was unprepared and uncertainly balanced, knocked her off the ridge, and her body went rolling down the sloping roof, shooting off into mid-air from the slight parapet, and falling swiftly to crash, horribly, on to the merciless stones far, far below. “Oh, Bill! Bill!” she screamed reproachfully, despairingly, and that was the last sound which Tyson heard from her lips.
With a roar of anger the man stood up, recklessly and unsteadily on the roof-ridge, cursing furiously, firing continuously. Jimmy’s left arm, just above the elbow, stopped a bullet, and Trant swung him into safety, only a moment before he began to roll downward to share poor Jenny’s awful fate. By this time, Tyson’s ammunition was exhausted, so he flung away the useless weapon and slipped down to the leads between the gables. Here, while wrenching at a trap-door, as a last means of escape, the police surrounded him, and the handcuffs were on his wrists in the twinkling of an eye. “You win!” gasped the burglar breathless and became passive. “Dunno as I care naow Jenny’s gorn west.”
“You knocked her off the roof,” rebuked Trant, who was binding up the boy’s arm with his handkerchief.
“Yer a liar, y’ bloomin cop. I wos tellin’ her o’ sorts to hold her jawr, an’ look fur this blinking trap, so’s we’d git awaiy.”
This remark drew the Inspector’s attention to the best means of descent, and the strong arms of the police soon forced an entrance. With their prisoner under guard, Jimmy supported by Trant, and with no opposition from the scared inmates of the house, the party dropped down, story after story, to the ground floor. They found Jenny’s shattered body was being carried away on an ambulance, for which Camp’s men had sent. She still breathed. “I think you’d better go to the hospital also, Jimmy,” suggested the Inspector, “and get your arm dressed.”
“Not me, sir,” said the lad, stoutly, “we’ve got to hunt out Wu Ti, who is somewhere on the tiles.”
“I’m afraid he’s got away, youngster.”
“He can’t have got away, sir, with the houses surrounded. We must find him, and you must take me to help. Else,” ended Jimmy slyly, “you won’t get your surprise.”
Admiring the boy’s pluck, but doubtful of capturing Wu Ti, the Inspector brought his neophyte along with him to the raided house. Camp, awaiting orders, had allowed no one to leave the cellar, and was lining up a motley crew of yellow men, with a sprinkling of whites, for Trant’s inspection. Old Wung, accepting his fate philosophically, hunkered in a corner, smoking placidly, while Hustings caught the Inspector’s arm immediately he entered, “Have you got Wu Ti?” he demanded anxiously.
“I think that bird has flown, sir. We’ve captured Tyson!”
“And the girl, Jenny? She may tell us”
“She’s not able to tell anything at present, and perhaps never will be able, Mr. Hustings,” and he hurriedly related the way in which the unfortunate girl had met her doom.
Meanwhile Jimmy waited impatiently at the inner door, beckoning them to re-start the chase for Wu Ti, “If we don’t catch him the truth will never be known,” Jimmy assured them feverishly.
“Are you sure it was Wu Ti who made for the roof?” asked Trant, looking at the sullen line of yellow and white faces before him.
“I can’t swear to it, sir. One Chinaman is so like another, that there’s no knowing. But only Wu Ti would have been so anxious to escape.”
A cry came from Dick. “Look!” he said, pointing his finger at the man with whom he had struggled—the man who had been preparing the opium-pipe when they entered. “Jimmy! Trant! Look, look!”
They looked, and saw that the Chinaman’s jaw was working up and down soundlessly. He stopped immediately, but the mischief was done. “Wu Ti!” cried Dick, positively, “I know his trick of working his jaws. It’s Wu Ti.”
“Me no Wu Ti,”growled the man sullenly.
Jimmy came forward, leisurely, looked at the man’s blue blouse, white trousers, native shoes, at his pig-tail, at his lowering face, which seemed uncannily lifeless. “It’s Wu Ti,” he said slowly, “and someone else!”
The lean Chinaman backed nervously, trying to cover his face with his two hands. But the boy was on him like lightning, gripping his pig-tail. With a deft movement, he jerked it forward, and an exclamation of surprise came from Dick. With the pig-tail came the skull-cap to which it was attached—and with this, a mask of gold-beater’s skin, fitting closely to the face. Then
“Rackham!” cried Dick, falling back in stunned amazement.
Jimmy grinned triumphantly. “Mrs. Jerr’s servant, Wu Ti; Mr. Chane’s servant, Rackham!”