“Don’t you get restin’ your head on that soot-sack,” observed Mr. Perks; “cos it’s wet through, and you’ll get a ear-ache.”
And having taken their seats, Mr. Belcher whipped the brown horse, and away it sprang, as though delighted that it was allowed the use of its chilled limbs.
The strange dread that had beset me since I made the singular discovery in the church path increased more and more. Clearly, sweeping the church flues was not the purport of Mr. Belcher’s visit to Romford: he had not even taken the machine with him to the church, but only a little way up the path, and there left it. He had only carried it with him in the cart and towards the church as a blind. No chimneys had been swept that night, and yet there was the full sack.
Filled with what? “Don’t lay you head on it,” Mr. Perks had cautioned me. No fear; I was afraid to touch it—to turn my head even towards where it was lying. All the talk that had happened between my master and Mr. Perks about cutting off heads, and the caravan giant of Bexley who was bent over at the knees, and of the “dead ’un” with the short pipe stuck between his lips, came back to my recollection with terrible distinctness, along with Ned Perks’s cool avowal, that with him the perpetration of certain horrors was merely a question of having “a tool sharp enough.”
What was in the sack? My dread decreased nothing; but the longer I dwelt on the subject, the hotter grew my yearning to be released from terrible surmise, and know the truth.
How could I learn it?
Cautiously I put out a trembling foot, and, reaching over to where the clayey sack was, felt at it with my toes. It was soft, and it yielded to the touch. Was it soot after all?
I must know somehow, even though I ran a risk, my suspense was so tormenting. I had a clasp-knife in my pocket, and, without pausing to reflect on the rashness of the proceeding, I softly took it out and opened it; and, gently reaching over, slit a hole in the sack with a sudden slash. It would have been a mercy if I had withdrawn my hand as suddenly as I put it forward. This, however, I did not do; and—horror of horrors!—there fell out of the slit, with a lumpish weight, across the hand of mine that still held the knife, a man’s hand, cold as ice, and so white that it showed in the dark like a light!
Of the loud cry I gave I know nothing, beyond that it was a noise so loud that the horse gave a startled leap forward; and the next instant I was over the back of the cart, sprawling in the mud, and up again with a sensation as of a bruised face, but with a pair of legs, thank heaven! sound for running. And run I did; and all the faster that presently I heard a man’s voice, and the sound of other legs hastening after me.
Chapter XXIX. In which there occurs a scene that beats hollow everything I ever witnessed at the “gaff” in Shoreditch.
It was Ned Perks’s voice.
“Come back; d’ye hear!” he bawled. “B——t yer young eyes, will yer come back when I call yer? I’ll twist yer infernal neck when I get hold on yer, if yer don’t shut up your jaws and stop.”
How could I stop? I had now no sort of doubt that Mr. Belcher and his companions were murderers; and when Ned Perks said that he would twist my neck, I fully believed him. I ran so fast that I had not much breath to spare for calling out; but to the best of my ability I so exerted myself, crying out “Murder!” as I went running and stumbling and splashing along the muddy country road. I ran so fast as to completely outstrip Mr. Perks; and, finding that he had no chance of overtaking me, he paused, and gave a whistle, and immediately afterwards I heard the well-known hoof-falls of the high-trotting mare coming in my direction. It was all over now! My speed was no match against that of the horse; so, quaking with fear, I scrambled into the narrow ditch that skirted the road, and lay flat down on my belly. There was water in the ditch, so that I had to rest on my elbows to keep my face out of it. Rank grass and weeds grew on either side so as to overhang me, and, wretched as was my plight, I rejoiced to think that I had a good chance of escaping their observation even if they searched for me.
After Ned Perks had whistled he still continued to run in the direction I had taken, and just when he had reached opposite to where I was concealed, Mr. Belcher came up in the cart.
“Got him?” asked he, eagerly, of Ned, at the same time pulling up.
“He can’t be far-off,—him,” growled Mr. Perks, too blown almost to speak. “He’s just about here. What the blazes was the matter with him? What did he take fright at, I wonder?”
“We must have him, Ned! we’re bound to have him or they’ll have us. The gaff’s blowed!”
“How d’ye mean blowed? who blowed it?” inquired Mr. Perks, in a tone of the greatest alarm.
“Who? Why, that cunnin’ whelp. Hunt about, Ned! D——l and all, we must get hold on him: when we do, we must put him past chirpin’. D’ye hear, Ned? What’s the use of standin’ there like a fool? he’ll be a mile ahead by this time.”
“It’s werry fine to say, ‘What’s the use o’ standin’ still,’ when a feller’s fairly bellust off his legs,” growled Mr. Perks. “How do yer know he means blowin’ on us? What call have yer got to think so?”
“Come and look for yourself, if yu don’t believe me; look here!”
And I could hear Ned put his foot on the cart-step to raise himself so that he might look into the vehicle, and at the same time a flash of light skimmed along the water in the ditch close to my face, showing that Mr. Belcher had unslid the screen from before the bull’s eye that Ned might see what the matter was.
“Now what do you think?” asked Mr. Belcher.
Ned Perks jumped down from the cart-step.
“Come on,” said he, with a frightful oath; “you’re right when you say we’ve got to ketch him, guv’nor.”
“He’ll have to have his mouth shot, Ned: it’s no use ketchin’ him without we shets his mouth.”
“Don’t you trouble, guv’nor, I’ll settle him. You trot the mare and I’ll hold on and run behind. He can’t have got far; he must have been nearly baked when I left off runnin’ arter him, and this ain’t a road he’s likely to meet anybody at this time in the mornin.”
And, to my inexpressible relief, the advice Mr. Perks gave was immediately followed, and next moment I could hear the brown mare’s retreating steps.
But what was I to do? If I ran forward, I might overtake them; if I ran towards London, they would speedily overtake me. In a pretty pucker of indecision I rose reeking from the ditch and scrambled out to the road, and, as I did so, to my astonishment and alarm a man broke suddenly through a gap in the hedge, and, stepping across the ditch, laid a hand on my shoulder.
“What’s the row?” said he, gruffly.
He had a lantern with him, and as he spoke he let the full blaze of it fall upon me. By the same light I was enabled to get a sight of him, and I very much doubt, extraordinary as must have been the figure I cut with my sooty rags saturated with muddy water, and my face all bloody from my scramble out of the cart when I made the dreadful discovery, whether he was more amazed than I was at his appearance, attired as he was in a great shaggy coat, with a slouched hat, and a gun in his hand.
“What’s the row, my lad?” repeated he, still with his hand on my shoulder, but in a much kinder voice than he had at first spoken. “How came your face bloody? How came you in the ditch? Did them fellows in the cart put you there?”
My head was so full of horrors that at first sight I thought that the man with the gun could be nothing less than an assassin—a highway robber perhaps—who lurked hereabout to rob and shoot people. A glance at his honest-looking face, however, reassured me.