“Let us hear it, your honor,” said the black one.
“Well, listen,” whispered Everage, in a very low voice. “This child is about two years and a half old. He is the child of foreign parents who know not much of English life. He is sent out with his nurse, a black girl who wears a plaid turban instead of a bonnet; you may know her by that. He is sent out with this girl morning and evening of every fair day. She is a fool, and she takes him about Trafalgar square and up and down the street, and to St. Mary le Strand and along Fleet Street. And they stop and gaze in the shop windows, and stand with the crowd around every organ-grinder and monkey, and especially around every Punch and Judy. This is my plan. I will take an opportunity to point out the nurse and child to Mother Rooter. She can afterwards point them out to you. Once having seen them, you cannot possibly mistake them. Are you attending to me?”
“With all our ears, sir,” answered the black villain, while the red one nodded emphatically.
“Then listen! when you have once seen this nurse and child, you must watch for them, and arrange something like this manœuvre between you: One must be the abductor, the other must be the assistant. The one who is to carry off the child must have in his pocket a bottle of chloroform. Do you know what that is?”
“Don’t we, sir? It has saved the slitting of many a windpipe!” chuckled the red wretch.
“Very well. Let the one who is to carry off the child take a bottle of chloroform, which I will provide; also a dark shawl. Then watch until you see the child and nurse standing in some crowd around a street show. Then, the abductor must keep very near the child, having the shawl and the chloroform at hand. The assistant may then go farther up or down the street and at the right moment raise the hue and cry of ‘Stop thief!’ and lead the chase up or down the street towards the crowd in which the child stands. Then let him who is to carry off the child uncork his chloroform and have it ready, snatch up the child, throw the shawl quickly over his head, and run with the rest, shouting ‘Stop thief!’ at the top of his voice; but all the time letting the fumes of the chloroform escape within the folds of the shawl, so as to overpower the child and render him incapable of struggling or calling out.”
“But it might kill the baby, and that would be murder and we don’t want nothink to do with sich at no price,” objected the black scamp.
“Do you think, Bill, as the gentleman would ax us to do murder? I don’t. True, there might be a accident from chloroform, as there often bees to the ’ospitals, but that wouldn’t be murder,” said Red Roger.
“You’d find as the jury would bring it in murder,” answered Black Bill.
“There is no sort of danger. I will only put enough of the stuff in the bottle to quiet the child, and not enough even to make him insensible. Besides am I not as responsible for the thing as you are?”