T had been a stormy night in the London streets. In the Strand the shopkeepers' assistants were hurriedly fastening the shutters upon the windows of their masters' shops, eager to escape the hurricane of rain which swept over the London housetops, and tore through the lanes of brick and mortar like an enraged fiend. Thirsty souls who were draining huge mugs of malt liquor in the many publics along Thames street, looked out with scared faces on the river which was beating its sides angrily against the shipping and lesser craft.
The waters of the Thames ran high and wild, and down in the Pool and by Limehouse Reach, huge ships bearing the colors of many nations at their peaks, swung and rocked in the seething tides, while black night and the angry shades of the coming storm gathered around their twinkling red and blue signal lamps, which lazily danced from their yards over the surface of the river, leaving faint streaks of light that were ever and anon swallowed by the angry waters. Boatmen were anxiously securing wherries and fastening them under bridges and by water-stairs, and all the while the clouds above lowered, and the sweeping gusts of rain stung the faces of those who were unfortunate enough to be in the streets without shelter. Shutters slapped and banged in and out, and chimney pots were whirled about by the fierce and howling winds.
I had been on a tour of inspection, with a friend and a police sergeant, through London during the night, and had left the Alhambra at midnight for Evan's Supper Rooms, in Covent Garden, where we passed an hour listening to the music of the glee and madrigal boys, and on leaving Evan's at one o'clock in the morning, my friend had parted with me to go to bed, and I left him at the corner of Wellington street and the Strand, he going westward to his residence in Westminster, while the police Sergeant and myself called a cab, as I had a desire to see London in the small hours, and Sergeant Scott had insinuated that a stormy night was the best for seeing strange sights. He little thought at the time how truly he spoke.
After some discussion between this veteran of the Old Jewry office and myself, it was decided that we should visit some of the thieves' haunts in the Borough of Southwark, as it was about the hour when these night birds came home to roost, and of a consequence the best time to see their places of residence.
The first place chosen for a visit was a den in the New Kent Road, and to get there it was necessary for us to cross Waterloo Bridge.
THE STRANGER AT WATERLOO BRIDGE.
To cross some of the bridges in London it is necessary to pay a trifling toll, which goes toward the repairs of the bridge. The charge for each pedestrian on Westminster and Waterloo Bridges is half a penny each—for a horse one penny. As the cab dashed up to the turnstile at Waterloo Bridge, the toll keeper came out to take his dues, a gruff looking fellow wrapped up in a big hairy coat. He took the two pence grumblingly, and just at that moment I noticed a woman coming up to the toll-house in a gaudy looking silk dress, and having a soiled velvet wrapper about her shivering shoulders. The light from the toll-house shone on her face, which was very pale, the eyes burning with a strange light, and the garments which hung to her figure were dripping with the rain.
"Please let me pass," said she to the gruff toll keeper, with an imploring glance, "I have not a penny in the world—please let me cross the bridge?"
"Please let yer cross the bridge—yer 'aint got a penny? Well wot d'ye want ter cross the bridge for then? If yer 'aint got a h'apenny I thinks yer as well on the one side of the bridge as the other? Well go on with ye, I don't mind a h'apenny, and go to bed as soon as ye can," the toll keeper shouted through the storm after the wretched woman as she dashed through the turnstile on the bridge, and was lost in the storm and darkness of the night.
As she fled into the night, my companion caught sight of her face, and a hasty exclamation escaped his lips.