Thomas Tooth, swaying slightly, took out his dumby and made as though he was looking into the depths of his wallet at a fortune lying at its bottom. 'My credit is good, I swear it!' Tooth cried, persisting with the lie. 'Who will take my marker?' He turned to look at the four bookmakers. 'If I should lose I swear I shall settle before the midnight hour.'
The young clerk looked desperately over at George Titmus the ratting master who had earlier been so free with his compliments. 'Who'll take evens, thirty pounds on Valiant to kill thirty rats, small rats… no sewers, cess or docks?'
Titmus nodded, seeming to take the young gambler seriously. 'Small it is, sir. I've a nice sack o' small 'ouse and country, just right for the little fella 'ere.' He glanced in the direction of the dog Valiant held in his owner's arms. 'Should do 'is thirty rodents easy enough, strong little fella, known to be most game!'
The punters around the ring grew silent, looking towards the bookmakers to see what would happen next. Tooth had called for small rats, house and country, which was a fair enough call as some sewer, cesspool and dockside rats were almost as large as the little terrier himself. The rat master had accepted, the contest was fair game.
From the darkness of the stairway leading to the ratting room and to the backs of most of the punters a booming voice rang out. 'Aye, I'll take it! I'll take ye marker evens on thirty rodents killed! Settlement afore midnight, did ye say?'
'Ah, a sporting man, at last!' the young gambler cried, turning to face the darkened stairway. 'Certainly, midnight! Payment you shall have precisely at the striking of the hour, my good sir!'
'Aye! May the devil hisself help ye if ye doesnae pay, laddie!'
There was a surprised gasp as the owner of the voice stepped out of the gloom into the room. The brutish, broken face which moved into the light was well known to be Dan Figgins, ex-heavyweight boxing champion of Glasgow and London, now a bookmaker with a reputation for very rough and unfavourable handling should his clients fail to settle on time.
Dan Figgins was not a regular at the ratting ring, being a horse man and well known, even by the aristocracy, at his betting box at Newmarket and Ladbroke Grove. Thomas Tooth, almost alone in the room, was unaware of this infamous pugilistic personage and besides, was now too desperate and too drunk to care. He scribbled his marker for thirty pounds and handed it to Figgins. Whereupon the rat master called for the rat boy to bring the ratsack, shouting: 'Mixed smalls, country and 'ouse, bring out the ratsack!'
This was where the final phase of the sharping began. The rat boy, a tiny, ragged lad of about ten years old, his dirty face and mucoid nose not having felt the touch of soap for a year or more, had prepared a bag of thirty-five large sewer rats to earlier instructions.
The rat master, cupping his hands to his mouth called again to the rat boy. 'Ring in the rats and shake out the tails!'
The boy, dragging the rat bag, which was tied with twine about its neck, brought it over to the outside edge of the ring. He hopped nimbly over the three-foot wall of the small circular enclosure and the bag of rats was handed to him by Titmus. The boy dropped the sack in the ring and placed his boot onto the centre of the jumping sack, which immediately calmed the rats within. The boots he wore were greatly oversized and the property of the house and were crusted with the dried blood of the night's previous bouts.
'Slap, shake and pat a rat!' George Titmus called. 'Step up the gentleman what's makin' the touch! All's fair what finds no sneaks or squeaks!'
Thomas Tooth, being the only punter, stepped into the ring to do the honours. Puffed with drunken self-importance, he commenced to beat solidly at the boy's threadbare coat, slapping hard into his skinny ribs and pummelling his shoulders and thighs in such an enthusiastic manner as to cause the lad to wince at his careless blows. Finally he required the urchin to hold his arms downwards and away from his body and, first feeling down the length of each arm by squeezing tightly across the bicep and forearm along the greasy sleeve towards the boy's wrists, he then demanded that the lad shake both sleeves vigorously. This deployment was intended to remove any rats which might miraculously have escaped the previous rigorous inspection.
Tooth, now finally satisfied, gave a nod to the rat master, who pronounced on the punters, 'All's clean what feels clean, nothin' squeaked, nothin' seen!' He turned to the rat boy. 'Sample the show, three in a row!'
The boy bent over and taking up the bag at his feet, began to untie the twine, though mid-way through this task he appeared to have acquired an itchy nose. He held the top of the bag with his left hand and scratched his nose with the other, finally wiping the copious snot from under it into his open palm and appearing to wipe his hand on his matted and greasy hair. His hand disappeared completely beneath his very large cap seemingly for this very purpose.
His sniffing and scratching finally over, the rat boy returned his attention to opening the bag and without as much as a glance inwards plunged his arm into the bag of squeaking rats and brought up the first 'show', a rat selected blind to show that the bag had been called correct, and selected as specified, 'small, house and country'.
'One-o!' he shouted holding a small house rat up above his head and then dropping it into the ring at his feet before plunging his arm back into the bag and withdrawing it again. 'Two-o!' The second rat was almost identical in size to the first. Once again his arm entered the rat bag, which was now jumping and bumping around his boots 'Three-o!' the boy finally yelled, holding a third rat above his head.
'All's fair what's shown fair! Ring the rats and free the tails!' the rat master shouted.
Whereupon the boy upended the entire bag of rats into the ring and they fell in a large tail-twisted and squirming clump. The rat boy commenced to sort them out, untying their tails and scattering them helter-skelter about the ring. Free to sniff and scratch while their eyes grew accustomed to the bright light, they seemed now to be quite calm. The rat boy climbed out of the enclosure as George Titmus rang the starting bell and the terrier, Valiant, straining in his master's arms and yapping in great excitement, was dropped in among the rodents.
What Thomas Tooth hadn't witnessed was that the three sampling rats the boy appeared to have pulled at random out of the rat bag, in fact came from under his large cap. These three small house rats, so ceremoniously shown, had been nestling quietly in his hair. They had been trained to the smell of mucus on his hand, and upon it entering his cap they had slipped down his coat sleeve where he'd concealed a crust of bread. So that he now only had to put his hand inside the bag and let a rat drop down his sleeve into it, whereupon he would withdraw it again to show that the rats in the bag had been selected small. He repeated this twice more to show three small rats in what was seen to be an honest call.
The rats which were upended into the ring from the bag stank of the river and the sewers, a particular smell no person experienced in the game of ratting could possibly mistake. Their bite was most infectious and often quite deadly, and they were larger by as much weight again as the three smaller house rats the boy had 'shown', though a direct comparison was no longer possible as all the rats in the ring now appeared to be of similar size.
This was achieved by a second clever ploy, though it would take a more sober man than Thomas Tooth to see the trick. The rat boy, having emptied the rats from the bag, scattered them about the ring, though a moment before doing so he had again wiped his nose. The three smaller house rats in the ring, trained to the smell of the mucus on the boy's hand, once again darted up his sleeve, leaving only the larger rats behind.