CHAPTER XXXIX

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MR. JACOBS.

A sound of running feet, a shrill whistle, was what Sir Thomas Annesley dreamed of where he lay on the greasy cobblestones after his somersault; and then a strong hand on his collar that was real, and jerked him into consciousness. A policeman was bending over him, and had Jacobs by his chain.

“Hi, sir!” he cried, “do you know your dog’s nearly killed a man?”

Tommy stared at him, and saw no one but the policeman, the quivering Jacobs. After everything had the man got away?

“You’ve let him go!” he exclaimed, and between his fall and anger turned sick. “Why didn’t you come before? I never saw one policeman all the way here.”

It is said that every man has his price; it is certain he has his weakness. The policeman’s happened to be bull-terriers. A flying glimpse of this one and his master tearing along streets where a well-dressed boy seldom came and a well-bred dog only too often, had sent him after them, though he had not seen they were following any one. In Bethnal Court he came on them. The dog standing over a man who lay on his face, the boy a crumpled heap on the stones.

Policeman Garrety, being a dog-fancier first and an officer afterward, took the chain that trailed behind Jacobs.

The dog never even growled, but came quietly to him as he was ordered.

“That’s queer,” the man said to himself. “There ain’t no ‘vicious-dog’ business here. That young sprig must have set him on!” He roused Sir Thomas with a less gentle hand than he had laid on Mr. Jacobs. And the boy’s first words were angrily, unconsciously authoritative.

“Why on earth couldn’t you keep him? Here’s everything wasted,” he cried. “Go and look for him, quick.”

The man laughed.

“I haven’t far to go,” he said. “You’re a bit knocked out still. There’s the man,” with a backward jerk of his head. “But what brought you and your dog down here? It wasn’t accident, for I saw you coming here. Don’t you know you haven’t no right to come to such places? If you hadn’t had that dog, and I hadn’t noticed you, you’d not likely have come out alive. Did French Pete set on you, or what?”

“Did what?” said Tommy. He had turned long ago and seen a dark figure lying on the stones just as it had fallen. He staggered over to it, dizzy and sick.

“He isn’t dead, is he?” he said sharply, not taking in a word of what the policeman was saying. “I don’t want him to die; I want him alive.”

The policeman looked at the man on the stones. Six feet in his stockings, girthed like a pony, and this slim-legged kid was coolly remarking that he “wanted him alive.”

“He’s that, right enough,” he observed. “It’s French Pete, and he’s only knocked out. You’d better tell me what it all means, sir! I’ve whistled for another man, and the ambulance to take him away,” significantly. For if he owned a valuable bull-terrier he would not run the risk of having him destroyed as dangerous on account of carrion like the man on the ground.

“It’s who?” said Tommy.

“French Pete!” sharply. If the boy was fool enough to stay, it was his own fault if he lost the dog. Mr. Garrety, for all his uniform, pined to lay hands on him himself.

“Let me see his face,” cried Tommy thickly, and as the man turned the unconscious head in the light of a pocket lantern, Sir Thomas gurgled unintelligibly in his throat.

It was the man he had seen in the wood, the man he had followed from Mrs. Murray’s--and ever since the policeman had called him by a strange name he had been mad with fear that Jacobs had pinned some other man. But this was he. Looked at closely, he was dark-haired, square-chinned, and blue with constant shaving; oddly like a gentleman in the pallor of his faint.

The policeman, on his knees, went through French Pete’s pockets with accustomed fingers.

“Look!” he said, and held up something. “That’s the sort of man he is! Now, what in the world had you to do with him?”

The boy stared, snatched at the dusky object that lay in an immaculate handkerchief, held it to the face on Policeman Garrety’s arm.

“It’s him!” he screamed.

For the mystery lay before him of who had worn Adrian Gordon’s clothes.

He turned wildly on the astounded policeman.

“Go up-stairs,” he cried; “up to the very top. He left a parcel up there; that’s why I followed him. It’s a----” but he stopped. It was only guesswork about that parcel. But something else came to him--the intuition of why this man had come here at all.

“I think you’ll find more up there than a parcel,” he said quite quietly, and he poured out the whole story that had been irrelevant scraps an hour ago, and now dovetailed into a neat whole. All except what was in the parcel, for in his hurry he forgot it. But he said enough to send Garrety up-stairs on the run.

“You stay here,” the man said as he went. “Here’s my whistle. You blow it if he stirs. But he won’t; he landed on his head,” and he was gone as Tommy caught the whistle.

The house was empty now, but in another hour the inmates would be strolling back, and one policeman in Bethnal Court would be extremely likely to get his head broken.

Tommy sat in a cold sweat on the greasy stones. His head was swimming, and it seemed to him as if the prostrate man before him was moving. He got up, staggered, tried to blow the whistle, and fell in a dead faint. His triumph was slipping through his fingers.

A woman sauntered into the yard and nearly walked over him. Jacobs growled, and then yelled. With wild barks and whines he danced round her, slobbered over her dirty hands, and she screamed. The next instant she had the dog round the neck, dragged him to the gaslight at the entrance of the court, and after one look fell to hugging him.

“Jack! it’s Jack!” she cried. “My Jack, that I’ve never seen since that devil half-killed him and left him on the road. Oh, my dog, my dog!” and the tears that had long since dried up in her miserable eyes streamed down now.

Long ago, when Moll Price had been “Pretty Molly” in her village, she had been given a bull-terrier puppy. When she ran away with a man who said he was a gentleman, and turned out to be a devil, she had taken the dog. And the man she loved had beaten her and her dog; had dragged them over half of England, living by their wits, poor, driven to tramp the roads, till one day he had struck her once too often, and the half-grown terrier bit him. Many and many a time in her dreams had Moll Price seen the brutal kick that broke the dog’s ribs, the blow on the head that stunned him; many a time felt the strong hand that hurried her away, powerless, leaving her only friend dead on a country road.

She had been half-drunk when she entered the yard; she was sober as she remembered she had stumbled over a man; a fierce hope rose in her as he ran back to the place.

After three years of freedom her master had found her out, had come to her with a heavy hand and a story she knew was a lie. Could that be he that lay upon the stones, and had Jack had his revenge at last? For she knew the blood the dog had shed, blood that never forgot or forgave.

She fumbled in her pocket, found a match, lit it.

“It’s him!” she cried, with fierce rejoicing, “and I hope he’s dead.”

She looked at the senseless boy beside him in his gentleman’s clothes, at the dog that ran from her to him and licked his face.

“There’s been queer work here!” she thought soberly, for French Pete’s torn clothes told their tale. “But they sha’n’t find out and kill Jack. They’re cruel hard on dogs in London, and he wasn’t muzzled. They’d take him for that alone.”

She was a strong woman; she lifted the boy easily enough, called the dog in a whisper, and went into the house. But not far. A footstep, too well-shod to belong to any of the inmates, caught her ears. She laid the boy flat under the stairs, crawled in beside him with the dog in her arms. After what seemed an hour, the heavy footsteps clumped down over her head and went out. Even then she dared not move. It would take all she knew to get this boy up to her room without having to be quick.

Outside in the court Policeman Garrety stood dumfounded. Boy and dog had vanished, but that he had half-expected, and whatever he had found up-stairs it was not what he had been told was there. But French Pete, who had lain like a log, was gone, too.

He stumped away beside the useless ambulance, and was only sure he had not dreamed the whole thing because of a parcel he held under his arm.

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