The Hole in the Wall

by Arthur Morrison

"Man in!" cried one and another, hurrying in from the Highway. "Fell off the lock." "No, he cut his lucky, an' headered in!" "He didn't, I tell ye!" "Yes, he did! Why, I see 'im!"

I could not see my grandfather; and for a moment my thumping heart stood still and sick with the fear that it was he who was drowning in the dock. Then a policeman swung his lantern across to the opposite side, and in the passing flash Grandfather Nat's figure stood hard and clear for an instant and no more. He was standing midway on the lock, staring and panting, and leaning on a stanchion.

With a dozen risks of being knocked into the dock by excited onlookers, I scrambled down to the lock and seized the first stanchion. It creaked and tottered in my hand, but I went forward, gripping at the swaying chain and keeping foothold on the slippery, uneven timbers I knew not how. Sometimes the sagging chain would give till I felt myself pitching headlong, only to be saved by the check of the stanchion against the side of the socket; and once the chain hung so low, where it had slipped through the next stanchion-eye, that I had no choice but to let go, and plunged in the dark for the next upright—it might have been to plunge into space. "Grandfather Nat! Grandfather Nat!"

I reached him somehow at last, and caught tight at his wrist. He was leaning on the stanchion still, and staring at the dark water. "Here I am, grandfather," I said, "but I am frightened. Stay with me, please!"

For a little while he still peered into the gloom. Then he turned and said quietly: "I've lost him, Stevy. He went over—here."

By the sweep of his hand I saw what had happened, though I could scarce realise the whole matter then and there. As I presently learnt, however, Viney was running full for the bridge, with Captain Nat shouting behind him, when he saw the lanterns of the three policemen barring the bridge as they came on their beat from the Highway. To avoid them he swung aside and made for the lock, with his pursuer hard at his heels. Now a lock of that sort joins in an angle or mitre at the middle, where the two sides meet like a valve, pointing to resist the tide; so that the hazardous path along the top turns off sharply midway. Flying headlong, with thought of nothing but the avenger behind him, Viney overran the angle, meeting the low chain full under his knees; and so was gone, with a yell and a splash.

Grandfather Nat took me by the collar, and turned me round. "We'll get back, Stevy," he said. "Go on, I'll hold you tight."

And so in the pitchy dark I went back along the way I had come, walking before my grandfather as I had done when first I saw that lock. The dockmen had flung random life-buoys, and now were groping with drags and hooks. Some judged that the man must have gone under like a stone; others thought it quite likely that a good swimmer might have got away quietly. And everybody wished to know who the man was, and why he was running.

To all such questions my grandfather made the same answer. "It was a man I wanted, wanted bad, for the police. You find him, dead or alive, an' I'll identify him, an' say the rest in the proper place; that's all." Only once he amplified this answer, and then he said: "You can judge he was as much afraid o' the police as he was o' me, or more. Look where he went, when he saw 'em on the bridge!" And again he repeated: "I'll say the rest when he's found, not before; an' nobody can make me."

He was calm and cool enough now, as I could feel as well as hear, for my hand was buried in his, while he pushed his way stolidly through the little crowd. As for myself, I could neither think, nor speak, nor laugh, nor cry, though dizzily conscious of an impulse to do all four at once. I had Grandfather Nat again, and now he would not go away; that I could realise; and I clung with all my might to as much of his hand as I could grip.