He looked at us expectantly, holding out his empty hands as though they contained something which he wished us to examine.
“Still you are not convinced? Not so much as a sparrow for all this gold? I have fallen amid a generation of vipers. Ha! You would rob me of my gold; you would take it all and give me not so much as a rat? But I shall escape you. Even now I go to prepare the streets of the new Jerusalem. Jahveh has commanded me that I make them ready with my finest gold. He has prepared the smelting-furnace here in this city; it burns with fire; and I have but to lay my gold in its streets so that they shall all be covered. I go! Gold! Gold!”
He ran from us; and we heard his voice in Gordon Street crying “Gold! Gold!” as he went.
After he had left us, we came by Upper Woburn Place into Tavistock Square; and it was here that I met the first petroleuse. Some houses were burning in Burton Crescent. Suddenly at the corner of the entry I saw a figure appear, an oldish woman in rags, carrying a petrol tin and a dipper. She hobbled along, throwing liquid from her tin at every house-door as she passed. Sometimes she broke a window and threw petrol into the room beyond. I lost sight of her when she turned into Burton Street; but she soon reappeared, having evidently exhausted her stores. She now carried an improvised torch in her hand with which she set fire to the petrol spilled about the doors on her previous passage. Soon each doorway was a mass of flames; and she retired into Burton Crescent, with a final glance to see that her work had been well done.
“That sort of thing is going on all over the East End now,” said Glendyne, “and you see that it is spreading westward too. It began by the East Enders running out of coal. Then they took to lighting bonfires in the streets with wood from the houses, to keep themselves warm. And finally houses caught fire and they got the taste for destruction. You’re seeing the last of London. There are no fire-brigades now. It’s only a question of time before the whole city is ablaze.”
Russell Square was dark like all the rest of the streets; but the moon lit it up sufficiently for us to see what was going on in Southampton Row, where a band of men were engaged in breaking into a druggist’s shop.
“What do they expect to find there?” I asked. “It doesn’t seem very promising from the looter’s point of view.”
“Cocaine and morphia, of course,” Glendyne replied, “or ether to get drunk on, if they aren’t very sophisticated. They’ll do anything to keep down hunger pangs nowadays, you know.”
We crossed the south side of Russell Square, making for Montague Street, when my attention was attracted by the sound of singing which I had previously heard in Tottenham Court Road. The voices were nearer this time; and I was able to make out one line of the song:
“Here we go dancing, under the Moon....”