CHAPTER XIX. IN WHICH A NOTABLE PLAN IS DISCUSSED AND DETERMINED ON
It was a chill, damp, windy night, when the Jew: buttoning his great-coat tight round his shrivelled body, and pulling the collar up over his ears so as completely to obscure the lower part of his face: emerged from his den. He paused on the step as the door was locked and chained behind him; and having listened while the boys made all secure, and until their retreating footsteps were no longer audible, slunk down the street as quickly as he could.
The house to which Oliver had been conveyed, was in the neighbourhood of Whitechapel. The Jew stopped for an instant at the corner of the street; and, glancing suspiciously round, crossed the road, and struck off in the direction of the Spitalfields.
The mud lay thick upon the stones, and a black mist hung over the streets; the rain fell sluggishly down, and everything felt cold and clammy to the touch. It seemed just the night when it befitted such a being as the Jew to be abroad. As he glided stealthily along, creeping beneath the shelter of the walls and doorways, the hideous old man seemed like some loathsome reptile, engendered in the slime and darkness through which he moved: crawling forth, by night, in search of some rich offal for a meal.
He kept on his course, through many winding and narrow ways, until he reached Bethnal Green; then, turning suddenly off to the left, he soon became involved in a maze of the mean and dirty streets which abound in that close and densely-populated quarter.
The Jew was evidently too familiar with the ground he traversed to be at all bewildered, either by the darkness of the night, or the intricacies of the way. He hurried through several alleys and streets, and at length turned into one, lighted only by a single lamp at the farther end. At the door of a house in this street, he knocked; having exchanged a few muttered words with the person who opened it, he walked upstairs.
A dog growled as he touched the handle of a room-door; and a man’s voice demanded who was there.
“Only me, Bill; only me, my dear,” said the Jew looking in.
“Bring in your body then,” said Sikes. “Lie down, you stupid brute! Don’t you know the devil when he’s got a great-coat on?”
Apparently, the dog had been somewhat deceived by Mr. Fagin’s outer garment; for as the Jew unbuttoned it, and threw it over the back of a chair, he retired to the corner from which he had risen: wagging his tail as he went, to show that he was as well satisfied as it was in his nature to be.
“Well!” said Sikes.
“Well, my dear,” replied the Jew.— “Ah! Nancy.”
The latter recognition was uttered with just enough of embarrassment to imply a doubt of its reception; for Mr. Fagin and his young friend had not met, since she had interfered in behalf of Oliver. All doubts upon the subject, if he had any, were speedily removed by the young lady’s behaviour. She took her feet off the fender, pushed back her chair, and bade Fagin draw up his, without saying more about it: for it was a cold night, and no mistake.
“It is cold, Nancy dear,” said the Jew, as he warmed his skinny hands over the fire. “It seems to go right through one,” added the old man, touching his side.
“It must be a piercer, if it finds its way through your heart,” said Mr. Sikes. “Give him something to drink, Nancy. Burn my body, make haste! It’s enough to turn a man ill, to see his lean old carcase shivering in that way, like a ugly ghost just rose from the grave.”
Nancy quickly brought a bottle from a cupboard, in which there were many: which, to judge from the diversity of their appearance, were filled with several kinds of liquids. Sikes pouring out a glass of brandy, bade the Jew drink it off.
“Quite enough, quite, thankye, Bill,” replied the Jew, putting down the glass after just setting his lips to it.
“What! You’re afraid of our getting the better of you, are you?” inquired Sikes, fixing his eyes on the Jew. “Ugh!”
With a hoarse grunt of contempt, Mr. Sikes seized the glass, and threw the remainder of its contents into the ashes: as a preparatory ceremony to filling it again for himself: which he did at once.
The Jew glanced round the room, as his companion tossed down the second glassful; not in curiousity, for he had seen it often before; but in a restless and suspicious manner habitual to him. It was a meanly furnished apartment, with nothing but the contents of the closet to induce the belief that its occupier was anything but a working man; and with no more suspicious articles displayed to view than two or three heavy bludgeons which stood in a corner, and a “life-preserver” that hung over the chimney-piece.
“There,” said Sikes, smacking his lips. “Now I’m ready.”
“For business?” inquired the Jew.
“For business,” replied Sikes; “so say what you’ve got to say.”
“About the crib at Chertsey, Bill?” said the Jew, drawing his chair forward, and speaking in a very low voice.
“Yes. Wot about it?” inquired Sikes.
“Ah! you know what I mean, my dear,” said the Jew. “He knows what I mean, Nancy; don’t he?”
“No, he don’t,” sneered Mr. Sikes. “Or he won’t, and that’s the same thing. Speak out, and call things by their right names; don’t sit there, winking and blinking, and talking to me in hints, as if you warn’t the very first that thought about the robbery. Wot d’ye mean?”
“Hush, Bill, hush!” said the Jew, who had in vain attempted to stop this burst of indignation; “somebody will hear us, my dear. Somebody will hear us.”
“Let ’em hear!” said Sikes; “I don’t care.” But as Mr. Sikes did care, on reflection, he dropped his voice as he said the words, and grew calmer.
“There, there,” said the Jew, coaxingly. “It was only my caution, nothing more. Now, my dear, about that crib at Chertsey; when is it to be done, Bill, eh? When is it to be done? Such plate, my dear, such plate!” said the Jew: rubbing his hands, and elevating his eyebrows in a rapture of anticipation.
“Not at all,” replied Sikes coldly.
“Not to be done at all!” echoed the Jew, leaning back in his chair.
“No, not at all,” rejoined Sikes. “At least it can’t be a put-up job, as we expected.”
“Then it hasn’t been properly gone about,” said the Jew, turning pale with anger. “Don’t tell me!”
“But I will tell you,” retorted Sikes. “Who are you that’s not to be told? I tell you that Toby Crackit has been hanging about the place for a fortnight, and he can’t get one of the servants in line.”
“Do you mean to tell me, Bill,” said the Jew: softening as the other grew heated: “that neither of the two men in the house can be got over?”
“Yes, I do mean to tell you so,” replied Sikes. “The old lady has had ’em these twenty years; and if you were to give ’em five hundred pound, they wouldn’t be in it.”
“But do you mean to say, my dear,” remonstrated the Jew, “that the women can’t be got over?”
“Not a bit of it,” replied Sikes.
“Not by flash Toby Crackit?” said the Jew incredulously. “Think what women are, Bill,”
“No; not even by flash Toby Crackit,” replied Sikes. “He says he’s worn sham whiskers, and a canary waistcoat, the whole blessed time he’s been loitering down there, and it’s all of no use.”
“He should have tried mustachios and a pair of military trousers, my dear,” said the Jew.
“So he did,” rejoined Sikes, “and they warn’t of no more use than the other plant.”
The Jew looked blank at this information. After ruminating for some minutes with his chin sunk on his breast, he raised his head and said, with a deep sigh, that if flash Toby Crackit reported aright, he feared the game was up.
“And yet,” said the old man, dropping his hands on his knees, “it’s a sad thing, my dear, to lose so much when we had set our hearts upon it.”
“So it is,” said Mr. Sikes. “Worse luck!”
A long silence ensued; during which the Jew was plunged in deep thought, with his face wrinkled into an expression of villainy perfectly demoniacal. Sikes eyed him furtively from time to time. Nancy, apparently fearful of irritating the housebreaker, sat with her eyes fixed upon the fire, as if she had been deaf to all that passed.
“Fagin,” said Sikes, abruptly breaking the stillness that prevailed; “is it worth fifty shiners extra, if it’s safely done from the outside?”
“Yes,” said the Jew, as suddenly rousing himself.
“Is it a bargain?” inquired Sikes.
“Yes, my dear, yes,” rejoined the Jew; his eyes glistening, and every muscle in his face working, with the excitement that the inquiry had awakened.
“Then,” said Sikes, thrusting aside the Jew’s hand, with some disdain, “let it come off as soon as you like. Toby and me were over the garden-wall the night afore last, sounding the panels of the door and shutters. The crib’s barred up at night like a jail; but there’s one part we can crack, safe and softly.”
“Which is that, Bill?” asked the Jew eagerly.
“Why,” whispered Sikes, “as you cross the lawn—”
“Yes?” said the Jew, bending his head forward, with his eyes almost starting out of it.
“Umph!” cried Sikes, stopping short, as the girl, scarcely moving her head, looked suddenly round, and pointed for an instant to the Jew’s face. “Never mind which part it is. You can’t do it without me, I know; but it’s best to be on the safe side when one deals with you.”
“As you like, my dear, as you like” replied the Jew. “Is there no help wanted, but yours and Toby’s?”
“None,” said Sikes, “’cept a centre-bit and a boy. The first we’ve both got; the second you must find us.”
“A boy!” exclaimed the Jew. “Oh! then it’s a panel, eh?”
“Never mind wot it is!” replied Sikes. “I want a boy, and he musn’t be a big ’un. Lord!” said Mr. Sikes, reflectively, “if I’d only got that young boy of Ned, the chimbley-sweeper’s! He kept him small on purpose, and let him out by the job. But the father gets lagged; and then the Juvenile Delinquent Society comes, and takes the boy away from a trade where he was earning money, teaches him to read and write, and in time makes a ’prentice of him. And so they go on,” said Mr. Sikes, his wrath rising with the recollection of his wrongs, “so they go on; and, if they’d got money enough (which it’s a Providence they haven’t,) we shouldn’t have half a dozen boys left in the whole trade, in a year or two.”
“No more we should,” acquiesced the Jew, who had been considering during this speech, and had only caught the last sentence. “Bill!”
“What now?” inquired Sikes.
The Jew nodded his head towards Nancy, who was still gazing at the fire; and intimated, by a sign, that he would have her told to leave the room. Sikes shrugged his shoulders impatiently, as if he thought the precaution unnecessary; but complied, nevertheless, by requesting Miss Nancy to fetch him a jug of beer.
“You don’t want any beer,” said Nancy, folding her arms, and retaining her seat very composedly.
“I tell you I do!” replied Sikes.
“Nonsense,” rejoined the girl coolly, “Go on, Fagin. I know what he’s going to say, Bill; he needn’t mind me.”
The Jew still hesitated. Sikes looked from one to the other in some surprise.
“Why, you don’t mind the old girl, do you, Fagin?” he asked at length. “You’ve known her long enough to trust her, or the Devil’s in it. She ain’t one to blab. Are you Nancy?”
“I should think not!” replied the young lady: drawing her chair up to the table, and putting her elbows upon it.
“No, no, my dear, I know you’re not,” said the Jew; “but—” and again the old man paused.
“But wot?” inquired Sikes.
“I didn’t know whether she mightn’t p’r’aps be out of sorts, you know, my dear, as she was the other night,” replied the Jew.
At this confession, Miss Nancy burst into a loud laugh; and, swallowing a glass of brandy, shook her head with an air of defiance, and burst into sundry exclamations of “Keep the game a-going!” “Never say die!” and the like. These seemed to have the effect of re-assuring both gentlemen; for the Jew nodded his head with a satisfied air, and resumed his seat: as did Mr. Sikes likewise.
“Now, Fagin,” said Nancy with a laugh. “Tell Bill at once, about Oliver!”
“Ha! you’re a clever one, my dear: the sharpest girl I ever saw!” said the Jew, patting her on the neck. “It was about Oliver I was going to speak, sure enough. Ha! ha! ha!”
“What about him?” demanded Sikes.
“He’s the boy for you, my dear,” replied the Jew in a hoarse whisper; laying his finger on the side of his nose, and grinning frightfully.
“He!” exclaimed Sikes.
“Have him, Bill!” said Nancy. “I would, if I was in your place. He mayn’t be so much up, as any of the others; but that’s not what you want, if he’s only to open a door for you. Depend upon it he’s a safe one, Bill.”
“I know he is,” rejoined Fagin. “He’s been in good training these last few weeks, and it’s time he began to work for his bread. Besides, the others are all too big.”
“Well, he is just the size I want,” said Mr. Sikes, ruminating.
“And will do everything you want, Bill, my dear,” interposed the Jew; “he can’t help himself. That is, if you frighten him enough.”
“Frighten him!” echoed Sikes. “It’ll be no sham frightening, mind you. If there’s anything queer about him when we once get into the work; in for a penny, in for a pound. You won’t see him alive again, Fagin. Think of that, before you send him. Mark my words!” said the robber, poising a crowbar, which he had drawn from under the bedstead.
“I’ve thought of it all,” said the Jew with energy. “I’ve—I’ve had my eye upon him, my dears, close—close. Once let him feel that he is one of us; once fill his mind with the idea that he has been a thief; and he’s ours! Ours for his life. Oho! It couldn’t have come about better!” The old man crossed his arms upon his breast; and, drawing his head and shoulders into a heap, literally hugged himself for joy.
“Ours!” said Sikes. “Yours, you mean.”
“Perhaps I do, my dear,” said the Jew, with a shrill chuckle. “Mine, if you like, Bill.”
“And wot,” said Sikes, scowling fiercely on his agreeable friend, “wot makes you take so much pains about one chalk-faced kid, when you know there are fifty boys snoozing about Common Garden every night, as you might pick and choose from?”
“Because they’re of no use to me, my dear,” replied the Jew, with some confusion, “not worth the taking. Their looks convict ’em when they get into trouble, and I lose ’em all. With this boy, properly managed, my dears, I could do what I couldn’t with twenty of them. Besides,” said the Jew, recovering his self-possession, “he has us now if he could only give us leg-bail again; and he must be in the same boat with us. Never mind how he came there; it’s quite enough for my power over him that he was in a robbery; that’s all I want. Now, how much better this is, than being obliged to put the poor leetle boy out of the way—which would be dangerous, and we should lose by it besides.”
“When is it to be done?” asked Nancy, stopping some turbulent exclamation on the part of Mr. Sikes, expressive of the disgust with which he received Fagin’s affectation of humanity.
“Ah, to be sure,” said the Jew; “when is it to be done, Bill?”
“I planned with Toby, the night arter tomorrow,” rejoined Sikes in a surly voice, “if he heerd nothing from me to the contrairy.”
“Good,” said the Jew; “there’s no moon.”
“No,” rejoined Sikes.
“It’s all arranged about bringing off the swag, is it?” asked the Jew.
Sikes nodded.
“And about—”
“Oh, ah, it’s all planned,” rejoined Sikes, interrupting him. “Never mind particulars. You’d better bring the boy here tomorrow night. I shall get off the stone an hour arter daybreak. Then you hold your tongue, and keep the melting-pot ready, and that’s all you’ll have to do.”
After some discussion, in which all three took an active part, it was decided that Nancy should repair to the Jew’s next evening when the night had set in, and bring Oliver away with her; Fagin craftily observing, that, if he evinced any disinclination to the task, he would be more willing to accompany the girl who had so recently interfered in his behalf, than anybody else. It was also solemnly arranged that poor Oliver should, for the purposes of the contemplated expedition, be unreservedly consigned to the care and custody of Mr. William Sikes; and further, that the said Sikes should deal with him as he thought fit; and should not be held responsible by the Jew for any mischance or evil that might be necessary to visit him: it being understood that, to render the compact in this respect binding, any representations made by Mr. Sikes on his return should be required to be confirmed and corroborated, in all important particulars, by the testimony of flash Toby Crackit.
These preliminaries adjusted, Mr. Sikes proceeded to drink brandy at a furious rate, and to flourish the crowbar in an alarming manner; yelling forth, at the same time, most unmusical snatches of song, mingled with wild execrations. At length, in a fit of professional enthusiasm, he insisted upon producing his box of housebreaking tools: which he had no sooner stumbled in with, and opened for the purpose of explaining the nature and properties of the various implements it contained, and the peculiar beauties of their construction, than he fell over the box upon the floor, and went to sleep where he fell.
“Good-night, Nancy,” said the Jew, muffling himself up as before.
“Good-night.”
Their eyes met, and the Jew scrutinised her, narrowly. There was no flinching about the girl. She was as true and earnest in the matter as Toby Crackit himself could be.
The Jew again bade her good-night, and, bestowing a sly kick upon the prostrate form of Mr. Sikes while her back was turned, groped downstairs.
“Always the way!” muttered the Jew to himself as he turned homeward. “The worst of these women is, that a very little thing serves to call up some long-forgotten feeling; and, the best of them is, that it never lasts. Ha! ha! The man against the child, for a bag of gold!”
Beguiling the time with these pleasant reflections, Mr. Fagin wended his way, through mud and mire, to his gloomy abode: where the Dodger was sitting up, impatiently awaiting his return.
“Is Oliver a-bed? I want to speak to him,” was his first remark as they descended the stairs.
“Hours ago,” replied the Dodger, throwing open a door. “Here he is!”
The boy was lying, fast asleep, on a rude bed upon the floor; so pale with anxiety, and sadness, and the closeness of his prison, that he looked like death; not death as it shows in shroud and coffin, but in the guise it wears when life has just departed; when a young and gentle spirit has, but an instant, fled to Heaven, and the gross air of the world has not had time to breathe upon the changing dust it hallowed.
“Not now,” said the Jew, turning softly away. “Tomorrow. Tomorrow.”