“Can you tell me the way to London Bridge, my boy?” he asked.
I told him.
“Thanky,” said the butcher; and then, to my great astonishment, he continued in a low voice, “It’s all right; I’m the man who bought the shoes this morning. Going to Fulham?”
A glance at the man’s face convinced me that he really was the individual he represented himself to be, and heartily thankful that the inspector had not forgotten his promise to look after me, I told him in a few words where I was going, and all about it.
“Thanky,” replied he; and off he walked towards London Bridge as innocent-looking a butcher as ever stepped.
At nine o’clock I reached the third street over Fulham Bridge and found the beer-shop. Mr. Mason, the man behind the bar told me, was waiting for me in the private parlour, and going there I discovered Long George, and Twiner, and Johnny Armitage, playing a quiet game of whist, single dummy. “My name’s Mason,” said Long George, winking; “come and sit down, my lad.”
They played on, drinking very moderately, until half-past eleven o’clock, the landlord joining in the game part of the time, and conversing with the three as though they were something more than chance customers. At half-past eleven, the night being very dark, we came out of the beer-shop and walked—George and I together, and the other two arm-in-arm, a hundred yards or so behind—along the main road for nearly a mile, I should say. Going along, Long George confided to me the nature of the business in hand, and the part in it I was expected to perform. Nothing could be more simple as he explained it; it was merely to squeeze myself through just such a hole as the little window at home covered, to feel cautiously along the wall of the passage until I came to a door, and to shoot back the bolts thereof, top and bottom.
“You must see that there’s no danger about it, or I wouldn’t trust a green hand like you are with it. You’ll be able to manage it easy enough, won’t you?”
“Course I shall,” I replied, my teeth chattering.
“It’s as easy as cracking a filbert,” said Long George; “nobody but the old gentleman, and the old butler, and a deaf old housekeeper on the premises, and no dog or anything.”
We turned down a short lane and halted against some palings, and in a short time up came Twiner and Johnny Armitage. The first job was to scale the palings, which was accomplished by the whole party with little more noise than as many cats would have made. Then we made our way across a green and a gravel path, and halted again in the shadow of the house, which was as silent and pitchy dark as a house could be. Not a word was spoken; but I could dimly make out Johnny Armitage screwing two bright tools together, and presently Twiner “laid him a back,” and he stood upright on it, and worked away with just a slight scratching noise against the wall, and in a minute or two there was a clinking sound, and he jumped down.
“Shoes off, Jim,” whispered Long George.
Trembling with excitement, I slipped off my shoes, and then Long George mounted on Twiner’s back, with me in his arms, and thrust my legs through a hole.
“You’ll find it rather a tight fit, Jim,” whispered he; “but you’ll do it. Keep one arm straight to your side, and get that in first. That’s the ticket! Hold on the ledge and drop—it ain’t more than six feet! That’s your sort; you know what I told you about the door and the bolts.”
As he spoke, I hung my full length by the inner ledge of the little window, and dropped as requested; and, to my inexpressible relief, my hair was instantly pulled by an unseen hand. Another hand was clapped over my mouth, and I was led noiselessly to a side room, and gently pushed in.
What immediately followed I only know from hearing. Listening with all my mighty all alone in the strange room, I heard the gentle creaking of the withdrawn bolts of the back-door, and then a sudden tramping of feet, and a terrible uproar of voices—Long George’s loudest amongst them, and a gleaming and flashing of lights, as I could see through the chinks and crevices of the closed door. That was the end of it. The bait had taken as Mr. Inspector hoped it might, and the last-named worthy, besides the other two loose fish had hooked and landed that curiously slippery eel, Long George Hopkins.
And here closes the history, as promised at the beginning. Its narration has proved a long task—longer than at setting out I anticipated; therefore, with the reader’s kind permission, I will not go beyond the strict letter of my contract. With the capture of Long George ended my career as a Little Ragamuffin. There is much more that I could tell of his interesting trial and tremendous sentence, of the suicide of his wretched housekeeper, of the kind friends I found through the intercession of good Mr. Inspector, of my life at the Reformatory, of my emigration to Australia, and my various fortunes there. Some day I may find opportunity to enter into these particulars at their fullest. Thank God, I have lived to be a grown man, and am prosperous and happy, but for my Ragamuffin recollections. Mister Ripston—my coal merchant—respectively intimates that, taking it altogether, he doesn’t see that I’ve much to regret; but, you see, Ripston, even up to this time, doesn’t know everything. If I could discover all the people who have been made the poorer by my larcenous propensities, I would willingly expend all my savings in making restitution. But this is impossible. The best I can do, and, please God, I will do it, is to assist the little Ragamuffin wherever I find him.
THE END.