Once he had cut clear from his lodgings without delay and trouble, Viney fell into an insupportable nervous impatience, which grew with every minute. His reasons for the day's postponement now seemed wholly insufficient: it must have been, he debated with himself, that the first shock of the suggestion had driven him to the nearest excuse to put the job off, as it were a dose of bitter physic. But now that the thing was resolved upon, and nothing remained to do in preparation, the suspense of inactivity became intolerable, and grew to torment. It was no matter of scruple or compunction; of that he never dreamed. But the enterprise was dangerous and novel, and, as the vacant hours passed, he imagined new perils and dreamed a dozen hangings. Till at last, as night came on, he began to fear that his courage could not hold out the time; and, since there was now no reason for delay, he ended with a resolve to get the thing over and the money in his pockets that same night, if it were possible. And with that view he set out for the Cop....
Meantime no nervousness troubled his confederate; for him it was but a good stroke of trade, with a turn of revenge in it; and the penniless interval mattered nothing—could be slept off, in fact, more or less, since there was nothing else to do.
The sun sank below London, and night came slow and black over the marshes and the Cop. Grimes, rising from the doorstep of his office, knocked the last ashes from his pipe and passed indoors. Dan Ogle, sitting under the lee of his shed, found no comfort in his own empty pipe, and no tobacco in his empty pocket. He rose, stretched his arms, and looked across the Lea and the Cop. He could see little or nothing, for the dark was closing on him fast. "Blind man's holiday," muttered Dan Ogle; and he turned in for a nap on his bed of sacks.
A sulky red grew up into the darkening western sky, as though the extinguished sun were singeing all the world's edge. So one saw London's nimbus from this point every night, and saw below it the scattered spangle of lights that were the suburban sentries of the myriads beyond. The Cop and the marshes lay pitch-black, and nothing but the faint lap of water hinted that a river divided them.
Here, where an hour's habit blotted the great hum of London from the consciousness, sounds were few. The perseverance of the lapping water forced a groan now and again from the moorings of an invisible barge lying by the wharf; and as often a ghostly rustle rose on the wind from an old willow on the farther bank. And presently, more distinct than either, came a steady snore from the shed where Dan Ogle lay....
A rustle, that was not of any tree, began when the snore was at its steadiest; a gentle rustle indeed, where something, some moving shadow in the black about it, crept over the river wall. Clearer against a faint patch, which had been white with lime in daylight, the figure grew to that of a man; a man moving in that murky darkness with an amazing facility, address, and quietness. Down toward the riverside he went, and there stooping, dipped into the water some small coarse bag of cloth, that hung in his hand. Then he rose, and, after a listening pause, turned toward the shed whence came the snore.
With three steps and a pause, and three steps more, he neared the door: the stick he carried silently skimming the ground before him, his face turned upward, his single eye rolling blankly at the sky that was the same for him at night or noon; and the dripping cloth he carried diffused a pungent smell, as of wetted quick-lime. So, creeping and listening, he reached the door. Within, the snore was regular and deep.
Nothing held the door but a latch, such as is lifted by a finger thrust through a hole. He listened for a moment with his ear at this hole, and then, with infinite precaution, inserted his finger, and lifted the latch....