The limy man took his pipe from his mouth, and pointed with a comprehensive sweep of the stem at the sheds round about. "You can go an' look in any o' them places as ain't locked," he said off-handedly. "The dog's chained up. Try the end one fust."
Grimes the wharfinger resumed his pipe, and Mag scuffled off to where the light from the window fell on the white angle of a small wooden shelter. The place was dark within, dusted about with lime, and its door stood inward. She stopped and peered.
"All right," growled Dan Ogle from the midst of the dark. "Can't ye see me now y' 'ave come?" And he thrust his thin face and big shoulders out through the opening.
"O Dan!" the woman cried, putting out her hands as though she would take him by the neck, but feared repulse. "O Dan! Thank Gawd you're safe, Dan! I bin dyin' o' fear for you, Dan!"
"G-r-r-r!" he snorted. "Stow that! What I want's money. Got any?"
CHAPTER XIX
ON THE COP
It was at a bend of the river-wall by the Lea, in sight of Kemp's Wharf, that Dan Ogle and his sister met at last. Dan had about as much regard for her as she had for him, and the total made something a long way short of affection. But common interests brought them together. Mrs. Grimes had told Mag that she knew of something that would put money in Dan's pocket; and, as money was just what Dan wanted in his pocket, he was ready to hear what his sister had to tell: more especially as it seemed plain that she was unaware—exactly—of the difficulty that had sent him into hiding.
So, instructed by Mag, she came to the Cop on a windy morning, where, from the top of the river-wall, one might look east over the Abbey Marsh, and see an unresting and unceasing press of grey and mottled cloud hurrying up from the flat horizon to pass overhead, and vanish in the smoke of London to the West. Mrs. Grimes avoided the wharf; for she saw no reason why her brother-in-law, her late employer's faithful servant, should witness her errand. She climbed the river-wall at a place where it neared the road at its Bromley end, and thence she walked along the bank-top.