The Wharf by the Docks: A Novel

by Florence Warden

Plumtree Wharf was, he knew, the name of the most important part of the property which had belonged to Dudley's father. Putting together the two facts of the discovery of a ticket for Limehouse in Dudley's possession, and of the disappearance of Edward Jacobs after a visit to that locality on the same day, Max saw that there was something to be gleaned in that neighborhood, if he should have the luck to light upon it.

It was late in the afternoon, and already dark, before he got out of the train at Limehouse station, and began the exploration of the unsavory district which fringes the docks.

Through street after street of dingy, squalid houses he passed; some broken up by dirty little shops, some presenting the dull uniformity of row after row of mean, stunted brick buildings, the broken windows of many of which were mended with brown paper, or else not mended at all. Here and there a grimy public house, each with its group of loafers about the doors, made, with the lights in its windows, a spot of comparative brightness.

Many of the streets were narrow and tortuous, roughly paved, and both difficult and dangerous to traverse by the unaccustomed foot passenger, who found himself now slipping on a piece of orange peel, the pale color of which was disguised by mud, now risking the soundness of his ankles among the uneven and slimy stones of the road.

Max had to ask his way more than once before he reached the Plumtree Wharf, the entrance to which was through a door in a high wooden fence. Rather to his surprise, he found the door unfastened and unguarded. And when he had got through he looked round and asked himself what on earth he had expected to find there.

There was nothing going on at this late hour, and Max was able to take stock of the place and of the outlook generally. Piles of timber to the right of him, the dead wall at the side of a warehouse on the left, gave him but a narrow space in which to pursue his investigations. And these only amounted to the discovery that the troubled waters of the Thames looked very dark and very cold from this spot; that the opposite bank, with little specks of light, offered a gloomy and depressing prospect, and that the lapping of the water among the black barges which were moored at his feet in a dense mass was the dreariest sound he had ever heard. He turned away with a shudder, and walked quickly up the narrow lane left by the timber, calling himself a fool for his journey.

And just as he was reaching the narrow street by which he had come he was startled to find a girl's face peering down at him from the top of a pile of timber.

Max stopped, with an exclamation. In an instant the girl withdrew the head, which was all he had seen of her, and he heard her crawling back quickly over the timber, out of his sight.

Although he had seen her for a moment only, Max had been chilled to the bone by the expression of the girl's face. Ghastly white it had looked in the feeble light of a solitary gas lamp some distance away, and wearing an expression of fear and horror such as he had never seen on any countenance before. He felt that he must find out where she had gone, his first belief being that she was a lunatic. Else why should she have disappeared in that stealthy manner, with the look of fear stamped upon her face? There was nothing in the look or manner of Max himself to alarm her; and if she had been in need of help, why had she not called to him?

He got a footing upon the timber and looked over it. But he could see nothing more of the girl. Beyond the stacks were some low-roofed outbuildings and the back of a shut-up warehouse. Reluctantly he got down, and passed into the narrow street. Not willing to leave at once a neighborhood which he had come so far to investigate, he turned, after going some dozen yards down the street, into a narrow passage on his left hand which led back to the river.