Disraeli, who Dodger was slightly unhappy to see had come in proper useful boots for the occasion, wrinkled his nose and said, ‘Well, I cannot recommend the smell, but it is not quite as bad as I expected.’ This was quite probably true, Dodger knew, because for quite some time in the last few hours he had done his level best to prepare the most salubrious bit of sewer there had ever been. After all, Simplicity was going to be walking in it.
‘It used to be nicer, in the old days,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Not so good now people are banging holes through from their houses, but just step careful, and please, if I ask any of you to do anything, please do it with alacrity and without question.’ He was pleased with ‘alacrity’; every so often Solomon hit him with a word he didn’t understand and Dodger had a good memory. He let them walk for a little while and then, like a tour guide, glanced down and said in the gluey tones of a Crown and Anchor man, ‘Now here’s an interesting place that’s occasionally kind to toshers.’ He stepped back and said, ‘Mister Disraeli, will you now try your luck as a tosher? I noticed you have clapped your eyes on what might be generously called a “sand bar” on the floor over there by that rivulet, and may I say, well done, sir, and so I will give you this stick and suggest you have a go.’
The group moved forwards as Disraeli, with the fixed grin of someone who wants to seem a good sport and dare not seem to be a bad one, took the stick from Dodger and approached the pile of miscellaneous debris with caution. He hunkered down and stirred about fastidiously until Dodger produced a pair of small gloves and handed them to the man, saying, ‘Try these, sir – very useful in certain circumstances if you can afford them.’ He thought Disraeli almost giggled at this point – the man did have some gumption after all – but the politician put on the gloves, rolled up his sleeves and trailed one hand in the pile, being rewarded with a clinking sound.
‘Hello,’ said Dodger. ‘Do we have some beginner’s luck here? That’s the sound of specie, right enough. Let’s see what you’ve got.’
They crowded round and Disraeli, almost in a daze, held up a half crown, as shiny and as untarnished as the day it had been coined.
‘My word, sir, you have the luck of a tosher and no mistake. I see I had better not let you down here again, hey? If I was you I would have another go, sir; where you find one coin, you tend to find another one. After all, it takes two to make a clink. It’s all to do with how the water’s running, you see; you never quite know for certain where the specie might turn up today.’ Again they craned as Disraeli, this time with every evidence of enthusiasm, rummaged in the heap of litter, and there was another clink and he held up a gold and diamond ring. ‘Oh my word, sir.’ Dodger reached for the ring and Disraeli pulled his hand away until he realized that was bad manners, so he allowed Dodger to handle the ring and was told, ‘Well, sir, it’s gold, that’s true. It ain’t diamonds though, just paste. Shocking, isn’t it, but there you go, sir, first time out and you’ve already earned a working man’s daily wage.’ Dodger straightened up and said, ‘I think we ought to be getting on because of the light, but maybe our young man here would like to try next time? Would you, Master Roger? You could make a day’s wages like Mister Disraeli here!’
Dodger was rewarded with a wide smile, and Disraeli, smiling just as much, said, ‘This is rather like a lucky dip, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Dodger, ‘but there aren’t many rats around at the moment, and it’s not particularly wet. I mean, you are seeing it at its best.’
Bazalgette and Disraeli began talking about the construction of the sewers, with the former tapping the brickwork occasionally and the latter trying not to be drawn into expressing an opinion, such as paying for something better. Charlie followed behind, noting and observing, his sharp eyes worryingly everywhere.
Now as they strolled carefully, sometimes bending where the roof seemed to sag, Dodger pointed to a couple of broken bricks and said, ‘There’s a place that might trap a coin or two. It’s like a little dam, see? The water goes past, heavy stuff gets trapped. This one is yours, Master Roger. I have another pair of gloves.’ He handed them to the footman with a wink.
He was entirely elated when she knelt down in the muddy gloom and stared at the brickwork, then pushed and pulled for a while and came up holding something. She gasped, and so did Disraeli, who said, ‘Another golden ring? You must live like a lord, Mister Dodger. Well done, Miss Simplicity.’
Suddenly the sewers were silent except for the occasional drip. At last Charlie cleared his throat and said, ‘Ben, I cannot for the life of me understand why you confused this young man, handsome though he is, with the young lady in question. Quite possibly the vapours here must, I suspect, alongside your evident joy in your new-found profession, have just for a little while gone to your head.’
Disraeli had the grace to say, ‘Yes, yes indeed. How silly of me.’ Joseph Bazalgette simply smiled nervously, like a man who knows someone has cracked a joke that he hasn’t understood, and returned to his detailed inspection of the sewer wall.
It was Charlie who worried Dodger, Charlie who held back and watched and had leaned forward and perhaps had noticed Simplicity’s gasp as she saw the inscription on the ring, and almost certainly must have noticed that she turned wide-eyed to look directly into Dodger’s face. He wasn’t quite certain about Charlie; he always had the feeling that here was a man who could see through Dodger and out the other side.
Quickly, he said, ‘I’ll tell you what, friends, let me go ahead. Tosh all you want to and I will point out some matters of interest to Mister Bazalgette. Of course, anything you find is yours for the keeping. And if I was you, Master Roger, I’d put that ring in your pocket for safety right now.’
He knew what would happen next. It happened to every new tosher; once you’d found your first coin the toshing fury was at your throat. Here was money for the taking, and already Simplicity and Disraeli were fascinated by holes in the brickwork, interesting holes, small mounds of rubbish and anything that seemed to sparkle.
Mister Bazalgette, on the other hand, was grumbling and measuring at the same time. ‘These bricks are useless,’ he said from a nearby corner. ‘They are rotten, they should be taken out and put back and faced with ceramic tiles – that can be the only way forward; it would keep the water out.’
‘Alas, we don’t have the money,’ said Disraeli, staring intently at what turned out to be one half of a dead rat.
‘Then if you don’t have the money, you have the stink,’ said Bazalgette. ‘I’ve seen the river at low tide and it is as if the whole world has taken a purgative. It surely cannot be healthy, sir.’
They walked on while the light allowed, and the total yield to the two ‘would-be toshers’ was a further one shilling and a farthing which, to give him his due, Disraeli handed over to Simplicity with a bow. And Charlie watched, with his hands in his pockets and a curious and calculating smile, occasionally taking out his damned notebook and scribbling, occasionally cheering a find, sometimes staring around at the debris and the smaller outlets.
Now the light was beginning to go. Not a problem; there were lamps galore – Dodger had made certain of one each, even though he could generally get around without one. But the lamps only lit small pools in the darkness, and as the light changed the sewers began to take on their own life. Not sinister, exactly, but little noises became more acute; the rats which were otherwise minding their own business fled out of the way, the dripping of water from the ceiling seemed louder, shadows seemed to move, and it was then that the thought might creep up on a person that if you tripped over some of these crumbling bricks, or took the wrong turning at those places where sewers met and merged, you were suddenly a long way away from what you knew as civilization.
Dodger thought, Well, Simplicity shouldn’t have any problem; he had been very careful about the special route, with the occasional brick lighter than the others and debris and other rubbish masking every wrong turn. He noticed her watching him intently now an
d it was no time to lose his nerve. A few more minutes would do, he thought. Once you lose the sun, then that’s when you really become a tosher.
Then Charlie said, ‘There’s a likely-looking place over there, Dodger. You can just about make out something like an entrance.’
Dodger bustled back to him quickly and said, ‘Do not go any further down there, sir. It is very dangerous; the floors are washed out. All very, very nasty, and all jammed up too, lots of places like it in the sewers – they just don’t get cleaned out enough. Now since we really haven’t got much light left, could we all agree that Mister Disraeli, although a gentleman, is also a tosher. Hurrah!’
Simplicity, that is to say Master Roger, burst out laughing, as did Bazalgette, and Charlie clapped, and as the clapping came to an end there was another sound – a scraping sound, the unmistakable sound of a crowbar somewhere ahead of them opening a drain cover, and Charlie said, ‘What was that, Dodger?’
Dodger shrugged it off and said, ‘Could be anything, sir. A trick of the sewers, you might say. The sun has gone down, things expand and contract, like they say, and you get all kinds of little noises then. It’s been quite a hot day really; sometimes you could think there was someone else down here with you, and if we simply turn round it’s an easy stroll back to where we came in. It’s not as though we’ve gone all that far, to tell you the truth.’
Mister Bazalgette, waving his lamp, said, ‘I would really like more time, if you don’t mind.’ In the end, Dodger pacified him with the promise to take him further afield on the following day, possibly in the company of Mister Henry Mayhew, who had been unable to join this little excursion.
After saying that, he once again delivered the two-tone whistle of a tosher. It was not returned and this worried him, for any tosher would have whistled back . . . Even the rat-catchers knew enough to shout out when a tosher whistled – that saved embarrassment all around. Well, he thought, it was quite a good plan, it really was, but I can’t do it if there is somebody else stamping around down here. Inwardly he groaned. Well, maybe tomorrow he could come up with another plan.
He had not, he thought, heard any more noises since that scraping, apart from those made by the company, and that meant that somebody was trying to keep quiet. So right now it was important to get Simplicity out of here. It could be a very young tosher who hadn’t yet learned the ropes. Or it might be something else . . . but it wasn’t worth taking the chance. Nothing must happen to Simplicity.
Keeping his tone cheerful, he ushered his little flock back along the way they had come, silently cursing every step. It was not as easy as may have been thought, even by the lamplight, which didn’t penetrate all that far.
‘Gentlemen, if you don’t mind there are a few things I’d like to look at down here,’ he said as they approached the sewer exit. ‘When you are above ground I hope that you can take care of . . . Roger until the coach turns up. Sometimes you get undesirables down here, well, more undesirable than what’s down here already. I’ll just have a little glance around and then come back. I’m sure it’s nothing, but with Mister Disraeli here as well, I feel a little caution is sensible.’
Simplicity was watching him intently, Mister Bazalgette was looking somewhat dismayed, and Charlie was just strolling carefully back the way they had come. Mister Disraeli, quite surprisingly, took Simplicity’s hand. ‘Come along . . . Miss . . . young man. Frankly, I could do with a breath of fresh air.’
As they climbed up and out, Dodger took care to say again, ‘Probably nothing at all, nothing at all, but I had best check.’ Then he dropped back into the sewer and was free, free of other people. Someone else had got into his sewer and if it were any of the work gangs there would have been a shout along the lines of ‘Bugger off, you toshers!’ – not exactly a cheerful greeting, but at least something human. No, someone was there. It couldn’t be the Outlander, could it? That would be too glib. But the Lady knew there were still a number of people after Dodger, and everyone knew where Dodger could usually be found. Oh well, at least he was on his own ground, sticky and stinking though it was.
In the dark now, he heard the rattle of a coach overhead, and the sounds of voices, one of which was unmistakably that of Simplicity. He breathed a deep sigh of relief. Well, whatever happened now couldn’t happen to her. Of course, he told himself again, it almost certainly wasn’t the Outlander, who was surely just a bogeyman, after all . . . though try as he might, his thoughts dived from being optimistically cheerful to: I’m a bloody fool. If the Outlander has been so successful in his trade, then he must surely know just about everything concerning Dodger and Simplicity.
That was just the start of the terrible scenarios jostling for space in front of his eyes. Pictures flashed across his mind at speed, nasty pictures. Well, would someone like the Outlander go down into the sewers? Perhaps someone had paid him enough money. And then what further scenarios could near-panic throw up? Everybody knew Dodger had gone into the sewer with his group. Who did the Outlander know? How fast did news travel? And how clever must someone like the Outlander have been still to be alive when by now he must have so many enemies in so many countries. Just how stupid had Dodger, good old Dodger, been to have thought that the threat was something he could just brush off? But perhaps it was someone else?
Well, Simplicity was safe, for now. Then the sensible thing for Dodger to do was to be up and out of the sewer as soon as possible before the stranger caught him up, but with his heart pounding most unusually against his ribs, he considered his limited options. He could get out of the sewer by another drain further along, but if he took the time to get there, anything could happen, and if he tried to leave by the nearest one, whoever it was – and suddenly he felt certain that it was the Outlander and he was trapped down here with him – could come out right behind him.
Then the last of the sunlight faded. He thought, This is my world. I know every brick. I know every place where if you put a foot wrong, you are up to your waist in stinking mess. He thought, Here I am. Maybe he could use this to his advantage. Make a new plan, a plan with a different way of getting to the same end. And Julius Caesar appeared in his mind, admittedly sitting on a jakes (an image which would stay with him for a long time) – and Dodger thought, He was a warrior, wasn’t he? A cove who was difficult to kill too. He whispered, ‘There!’ and said aloud in the gloom, ‘Come along. Here I am, mister; maybe you want to be shown the sights.’
Looking down, he realized that someone was most definitely on his way, because the rats were running straight towards him, trying to keep ahead of whoever or whatever was coming up the sewer. Dodger, by now, was up against the sewer wall, mostly in a little alcove where several ancient bricks had fallen out (and where, he recalled fondly, he had once picked up two farthings and one of the old-fashioned groats that you didn’t see around these days).
The running rats clambered over and around him as if he wasn’t there, and he thought, They see me nearly every day. He had never hunted them, slammed his boot on them or even tried to shoo them away. He left them alone and so they left him alone. Besides, he didn’t know how he would stand with the Lady if he was nasty to her little subjects. Grandad had been very firm about this, saying ‘Tread on a rat and you’re treading on the Lady’s robe.’ Dodger whispered to the silence and said, ‘Lady, it’s Dodger again. About that luck I mentioned? If you can see your way clear, thanking you in expectation, Dodger.’
And up there in the darkness, there was the scream of a stricken rat. They were capable of dying quite noisily, and there was another squeal, and even more rats were pouring past him, surrounding him.
There, suddenly, barely visible in the grimy light, was the intruder, crawling with commendable stealth along the sewer, actually passing Dodger in his stinking hideaway, since Dodger was clearly invisible, being the same colour and certainly the same stink as the sewer itself. The rats were running over the intruder too, but he was hitting out at them with something – Dodger couldn’t quite se
e what – and the rats were screeching, and most certainly the Lady would be listening.
Now, in his hand Dodger had – yes! – Sweeney Todd’s razor; he had brought it with him not so much as a weapon but as a talisman: a gift from fate that had changed his life, just as it had changed that of Sweeney Todd. On a day like this, how could he have left it behind?
In the darkness, Dodger’s dark-accustomed eye saw the gleaming stiletto dagger in the man’s hand. It was an assassin’s weapon, if ever he had seen one. No decent murderer would use something like that. The thought came to him fast and all at once: he had nothing at all to fear down here. It was his world, and he could feel the Lady helping him, he was sure of it. No, the person who ought to be afraid was the man stealthily crawling along the drain just where Dodger could see him . . . and Dodger jumped on him, pinning him down immediately, and assassin or not it is hard to use your dagger when you are splayed in the muck of a sewer with Dodger sitting on your back.
He was a wiry boy, but he held the man more or less fixed to the ground as if he had been nailed to it, and pummelled every bit of the man that could be pummelled. Even as the man struggled, Dodger pressed cold steel to his throat and whispered, ‘If you know anything about me, then you know that pressed to your neck is Sweeney Todd’s razor – wonderful smooth, so it is, and who knows what it could cut off?’ He allowed the prone man to at least lift his mouth and nose out of the muck for a moment, and added, ‘Upon my word, I was expecting rather more of an assassin than this. Come on, speak up!’ Dodger grabbed the stiletto and flung it into the darkness.
The man below him spat out mud and a piece of what might once have been part of a rat and tried to say something that Dodger couldn’t understand, so Dodger said, ‘Come on, what was that again?’
A voice – a female voice – said, ‘Good evening, Mister Dodger; if you look carefully, you will see that I am holding a pistol, quite a powerful one. You will not make a single move until my friend here stops throwing up so unpleasantly, whereupon I expect he will wish to do unto others that which hath just been done to him. In the meantime, you will stand where you are and I will pull the trigger if you move so much as an inch. Later I will kill your young lady friend . . . By the way, I can’t say I like that gentleman very much, not the best assistant I’ve ever had. Oh dear, oh dear, why is it that everybody assumes that the Outlander is a man?’ The owner of the voice stepped nearer and Dodger could now see both her and her pistol.
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