by A. J. Cronin
CHAPTER XXMI
"I'M sorry, but you re a week overdue with your rent."
It was Paul's landlady, as he finished dressing early the following morning.
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"I'm a bit short, Mrs. Coppin. Will you let it wait till next Saturday?"
Standing in the doorway, her soiled wrapper clutched across her flat bosom, she scrutinized him doubtfully. She realized that he had lost his job, and although she was not heartless, the struggle for existence had made sympathy a luxury she could not well afford.
"I can't be put upon," she said finally. "I'll give you till tomorrow evening. If you haven't got work by then, I'm afraid you must go. And I'll be obliged to keep your things."
He had no intention of seeking regular work, and not more than ten shillings in his pocket. Yet he did not wish to victimize her. When she had gone he opened his suitcase, considered his few possessions, including his silver watch and chain. If she sold them they would perhaps pay what he owed her. Beyond what he was wearing, he took only his papers relating to the case, stowing them carefully in the inside pocket of his overcoat. Then, with a last look round the room, he went out.
The Lanes, which he reached towards ten o'clock, was the name given to one of the oldest parts of Wortley, an abbreviation of Fairhall Lanes, the site, in mediaeval times, of an encampment and tilt yard, which had later degenerated to a fair ground. In the late nineteenth century the process of deterioration had been continued by the erection of cheap workers' tenements — a manifestation of the Victorian industrial era. The result, today, was a slum, the worst section of the city, a network of narrow, twisted streets, hemmed in by tall dilapidated buildings. And all that day Paul combed these streets trying, without success, to locate the man named Castles. When evening came a soft rain began to fall. Resolved to stop at nothing, he made his way to the heart of the district, where for ninepence he was admitted to a "one-night" workmen's lodging-house.
It was an even poorer place than the Hart house which he had once visited, consisting merely of a long upstairs room, with bare boards, approached by a broken wooden staircase. The beds were strips of sacking, stretched out like low hammocks on two long master ropes which ran the entire length of the dormitory. At one end was a dirty kitchen where, clustered round the stove, a crowd
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of ragged men armed with trying pans and "billies" were pushing and elbowing in a cloud or rancid steam tor places to cook their supper.
With a glance towards this crowd Paul stretched himself, fully dressed, on his hammock, and pulled up the thin worn grey blanket.
"Don't you want no dinner, mate?"
Paul turned. In the adjoining hammock an undersized man with a shrunken, humorous face was lying on his elbow with two soiled paper bags before him. He wore a torn overcoat, burst canvas tennis shoes, mudstained and stuffed with brown paper, and a jaunty check muffler. While his bright beady eyes remained on Paul his bony fingers dipped into one bag, took out a cigarette end, split it, and shook and shredded the tobacco into the second bag with practiced rapidity.
"I'll cook for both, mate, if you happen to have a bit of grub about you."
"Sorry," Paul said. "I had something before I came in."
"Ah, you're lucky, mate. Me, I could eat an ox," he added, with his death's head grin. "Homs and all."
When he had finished he closed the full bag and carefully tucked it away next his skin under the shirt. From the shreds that remained he rolled a cigarette and stuck it behind his ear. Then he rose, a little human weazel, and with a knowing glance at Paul and a nod towards the notice which said no smoking, shuffled briskly towards the latrine.
When he returned Paul leaned towards him.
"I'm looking for a man called Castles. Have you ever heard of him?"
"Charlie Castles? I've heard of him. Who ain't?"
"Where can I find him?"
"Pie's away for the present. Like enough on a job. Should be back in a few days. If he ain't lagged again. Hang around and I'll give you a knock down." He paused oddly. "You know who he is, don't you?"
Paul shook his head.
"No."
In a nervous fashion the other laughed.
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"Then you'll find out, mate."
"Tell me," Paul said.
"Well," the little man shrugged. "He's a wrong un all right . . . welsher on the racetracks . . . fence tor stolen property in his spare time. He's done years in quod. Robbery and assault and that like ... in fact he's just new out on parole after a long stretch. A regular old lag. Mind you, he was up in the world once. But now he's pretty low."
"I see," Paul said. "What prison was he in?"
"Stoneheath."
Paul drew in his breath sharply.
The din in the dormitory increased — shouts, curses, bursts of laughter. Someone began to play a mouth-harmonium. It was nearly midnight before some sort of silence prevailed. Paul slept brokenly.
Next morning, at six o'clock, everyone was wakened by the untying of one master rope, a process which automatically unslung all the hammocks. Those who tried to continue their sleep, when spilled to the floor, were nudged to activity by the doss-master's boot. As Paul filed out with the others into the raw dawn his neighbour of the night before hung on to him, guiding him to the nearest coffee stall where he stood, stamping his burst slippers, blowing on his cupped hands with an air of humorous expectancy.
"How about a mug of grits, mate? You cough up. I've nothing less than a fiver."
Breaking one of his few shillings, Paul stood the other a roll and coffee.
Jerry was his name. Jerry the Moke, to his pals. He admitted, with his shrunken grin, that he was a regular "scrounger," had not been in regular work for years, but he knew every dodge for scraping a living. His most usual occupation was that of "fag-lifter" — he scoured the city gutters for smoked cigarette ends and sold the mixed pickings for as much as three and six a pound. But in bad weather the pickings ran low and this morning he was going to try for a day with "the boards." He offered to take Paul with him.
"You come along, mate. With these good duds you'll be sure of a board."
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At first, Paul was about to refuse. Yes, why not? To find Castles he must keep in touch with his odd companion. In these surroundings he might remain hidden from the police. And with almost nothing in his pocket he had to keep himself alive. He moved off with the other in the direction of Dukes Row.
At the head of the alley, outside a dilapidated yard bearing the
Sign LANES BILLBOARD AND ADVERTISING COMPANY, they took their
places behind the men already lined up alongside the wooden palings. After about an hour the gate was opened and the first twenty men, including Paul and his companion, were admitted.
Inside the yard stood a row of sandwich-boards, each freshly pasted with a red and yellow poster for the Palace Theatre. Imitating the others, Paul went forward, to one of the double boards, lifted it upon his shoulders, moved towards the big gate. The line then re-formed, Paul fell into step and plodded along behind Jerry the Moke.
All day long the line weaved and wormed its way through the busiest streets of the city. The boards were heavy and awkward, with a tendency to snap back on the shoulder muscles. But at five o'clock they were back at Dukes Row, where each man was paid two shillings and ninepence for the day's work. As they came together out of the yard Jerry remarked:
"Now we can feed." With his beady smile he took Paul straight to the nearest eating-house.
Every day that week Paul went out with the boards. It was humiliating work — to attract attention, the men had to wear some odd article of dress, and one morning Paul was sent out with the others in a battered top hat. Towards noon, as he paraded along Ware Street, he saw one of the Bonanza assistants, Nancy Wilson, coming towards him. Quickly, he lowered his head, but not before she had recognized him, a look of startled surprise appearing in h
er face.
He did not care. With the money he received he was able to exist: ninepence went to pay for the nightly doss, and the rest was spent in the purchase of food. Since it was more economical to use the lodging-house kitchen, on Jerry's advice Paul bought a secondhand frying pan from the man who bossed the place. The cheapest meat when fried with onion made a filling supper.
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The lodging-house harboured a strange, abandoned, shiftless company, the dregs, the very scourings of Wortley. None of the men had steady work, even the best of them were dependent upon the vagaries of casual labour. If a string of barges came up the canal for unloading; if there was a new sewer to be dug; if a blizzard laid snow thickly upon the streets; then in Jerry's phrase, they ate and drank. There were others who followed stranger and more devious trades: the rag-pickers, the "bottle and bone" men, the cowp-hunters and midden-rakers — silent figures, in odorous rags, who scoured the garbage bins of the city, half-stooping, their eyes upon the ground, perpetually in search of the treasure of a bottle, a discarded piece of china, a scrap of rusted metal. The street entertainers were a queer crew also. There was a contortionist who amused the others by eating a sausage with his toes; a blind fiddler — a bad-tempered old man, who, every night, when he had laid aside his blue spectacles and the stick with which he pathetically tapped along, read the Courier comfortably in bed; and a vocalist who specialized in theatre queues, a fervid Dub-liner whose favourite supper was "taters and point" — hot potato dipped in salt herring. Finally, there were the cripples — the legless man who slid over the pavements on his hands and hips, the fake paralytic — the sickly youth trading on open sores, and the beggars, open and unashamed. Many were corrupt and vicious. Some were far gone in disease. Herded together in the low, ill-ventilated dormitory, seedy and unwashed, snoring, starting in nightmare cries, they gave off in the hours of darkness a foetid odour, which mingled with the stench of the latrine.
And how quickly the blight of this place infected Paul, filled him with a sense of desperation and despair. He began to feel that he would never solve the mystery and, under the growing burden of inaction, to long for some decisive action which would cut, once and for all, the tangled cords which held him. More and more savagely the joke of injustice galled his youthful spirit, he brooded palely through sleepless nights, his thoughts returning with growing bitterness to the main instrument of his father's suffering, the figure of the prosecutor, Matthew Sprott.
Towards the end of the week, the Lanes Advertising Company stopped sending out its sandwich boards. Turned away at the
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yard, Paul glanced at Jerry, who unconcernedly shrugged his meagre shoulders.
"They often run out on us. Post the boardings instead. We'll try the station."
Together they went to the railway station and, for the next two days, hung around on the chance of carrying a bag, always watching out for the porters, who resented this infringement of their rights. The few tips he received kept Paul going until Saturday. On the evening of that day as they entered the doss-house Jerry drew up short and pointed to a stranger, a tall, sinewy man of about forty with a pale, narrow face, unshaven chin, and small eyes, dressed in a brown suit, with a derby hat on his head and a dark scarf hanging loose on his waistcoat.
"There you are then, mate." Exclaimed Jerry, in a low voice. "That's Castles . . . and watch out how you use him."
CHAPTER XXIV
LATER that night, in a small back room which Castles had rented in an adjoining street, Paul faced this man whom he had so anxiously awaited. Despite his unprepossessing appearance and coarsened voice he was, as Jerry had inferred, educated and of obvious intelligence. There was, indeed, in his appearance, a lingering flavour of the law. His long lean cheeks had a clerkly air and in his dead, yellowish eye, chilling and saturnine, there was the look of one who had drafted many a well-phrased deed. But whatever he once was, or might have been, now, clearly, he had fallen far into the seamy shadows of the underworld.
"You're wondering about me," he said, cutting so suddenly into Paul's thoughts that the young man coloured with confusion. "Don't. I no longer exist." His dead eyes could express nothing, but the pale lips twisted downwards in scornful inquiry.
"What do you want with me?"
Again there was silence; then, still without speaking, never tak-
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ing his eyes from the other, Paul handed him the spill of paper which Prusty had given him. Castles unrolled it, glanced at it carelessly, then, with a sort of bitter indifference, handed it back.
"So that's what brought you."
"Who sent me that message? Was it . . . was it my father?"
Another pause, brief, but loaded with suspense.
"I daresay it could have been," Castles answered in a flat voice.
"Then . . . you know him?"
"Perhaps."
"In Stoneheath?"
"In that accursed place . . . yes ... if you must know, we had adjoining suites. We used to tap-talk at night . . . when he wasn't in solitary."
Paul drew his hand across his hot brow.
"How is he?" The words came with a gasp.
"Bad." Castles took a bag of shag tobacco from his overcoat pocket, slipped off a rice paper from a pack and, with one hand, rolled himself a cigarette. "In fact, couldn't be worse."
For all his courage something like a sob broke from Paul's breast.
"Have you nothing to tell me? No hope of any kind to give me?"
"Is there any hope in Stoneheath?"
The pounding of Paul's heart seemed to fill his ears like the beat of a funeral drum. Yet there must, oh, there must be something behind this man's inscrutable and sinister reserve. He bit his lip fiercely.
"Why was I told to find you?"
"Your old man knew I was getting out. Thought we ought to meet. He slipped me this bunch of drivel."
Paul took the papers the other handed to him — little more than soiled scraps covered with a pencil scrawl. But though he read and reread the almost illegible words, slowly his eagerness died. They were no more than outcries from the darkness, protestations and complaints, continually repeated, proof of suffering which cut Paul to the heart, yet offered no further evidence, nothing of material value. Dully, he raised his eyes to Castles, who all this time had waited with cold yet exemplary patience.
"Then you can't help me?"
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"That depends," Castles said slowly, drawing deeply on his cigarette, "on what kind of help you want."
"You know what I want," Paul exclaimed passionately. "To dig out a poor devil who's been buried alive lor fifteen years."
"Once you're in that grave, you never get out."
Wildly, Paul exclaimed:
"I will get him out. He's innocent . . . and I'll prove it. I'll find the one who really did the murder."
"Never." Castles spoke disdainfully. "After fifteen years you haven't a dog's chance. Whoever did it could be a thousand miles away. Changed name. New identity. Maybe dead. It's hopeless." He waited to let his words sink in, and over his yellow eyes, fixed steadily on Paul, there flowed an opaque film. "Why don't you go after the legal killer . . . who really did Mathry in?"
"Who do you mean?"
"The man who prosecuted him."
As though he had been stung, Paul drew himself erect. He caught his breath.
"For God's sake . . . who are you?"
There was a heavy pause. Then slowly, with that indifference that hid him like a mask, the other answered:
"It's no secret — I'm in the records . . . convicted embezzler. At least, that's how it began. I only needed a little leniency . . . time to pay the money back. I begged for it ... in open court. Instead I got seven years' penal servitude."
A long stillness followed. Then Castles resumed:
"So you see we're in the same boat, you and me. No doubt that's why Mathry thought we ought to get together. We o
we everything to that one man. And we're so soft we haven't done a thing about it."
"What can we do?" Paul cried hopelessly.
He bowed his head between his hands, crushed by the weight of his disappointment. And still the searing voice went on.
"You've never met the gentleman?"
"No."
Castles laughed shortly.
"Don't take it to heart. We're down where we belong, you and I, but a cat can look at a king." A strange light flickered in his
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clouded pupils. "What you need is a bit of cheering up. Why don't you let me give you a little entertainment?"
"Entertainment!"
"Why not? You don't read the papers properly, or you'd know there's been a prime show in town for the past ten days . . . two first-rate performers. Oh, they play Wortley regularly, but this is one of their biggest attractions. And the joke is . . . it's all free!"
His voice had gradually taken on an inflection which chilled Paul to the bone. There was a pause. Paul waited.
"The High Court is in session, Lord Oman presiding, Sir Matthew Sprott prosecuting . . . wouldn't you like to see them?"
Staring at the other, Paul did not answer.
"It's such an opportunity . . . the last day of the trial." Castles was mocking him again, in that same deadly manner. "Surely you'd like to come with me tomorrow afternoon . . . and see how they do it?" ' "Do what?"
"You know what," he said, affecting ingenuous surprise. "Of course you do! Mind you, this one won't be so exciting. Just a wretched little bawd who's knifed her lover. Still . . . the black cap is interesting . . . quite smart . . . and always fashionable."
"No," Paul said violently.
Castles's face hardened. He pierced Paul, through and through, with his yellow eyes.
"Are you afraid?"
"No, I'm not afraid ... I don't see why I should go."
"I say you are afraid." The cold and cutting words came faster. "I thought at first you had guts. But I see I am mistaken. You say you want a showdown. Well, for God's sake, why not have it! Don't you realize that there are two kinds of people in the world today? The ones who take what they want. And the ones that don't."
