“Cor blimey, I’d a sweet jag; coo. This sweet shumpine, the sime the toffs; coo. But you feel it in the sweetbreads; that’s where it is; next day’s the day; that’s straight. Say, mate, would you mind looking for me cap. This grilling’s a steak’s game.”
They groped on the floor for the cap; the glare without increased so that they could see a little.
“We’ll be as nice as mother makes it, no bleeding error,” the man said. “If we don’t get out of here, we’ll be bleeding pancakes; that’s straight. Cor blimey, I seen men burned. Coo, kid; it’s a barracker, being burned; a fair barracker. You can always tell when a man’s dead, when you see him being burned; yes, you can, because. . . . Cor blimey, here’s me cap. Nar then.”
He struck another match, lit another cigarette, and rummaged swiftly at his cap in the glow at the door grating.
“Got a bit ’a wire,” he said. “Nar then, to be or not to be.”
He had taken the piece of wire which made the frame for the top of his cheese-cutter cap. With this, when he had bent it in a certain way, he began to fish within the lock, using a niceness of touch which Hi had not expected from a drunkard. He took some little time. The lock rattled and clicked under his fishing: often he swore a little and readjusted his wire. Once he stopped to look at the glare upon the tiles.
“It won’t ’alf be a bit of real life,” he said, “if the fire reaches Matiro’s. ’E’s got seventy tons of blasting powder under where ’e keeps ’is chickens. Cor, mate, that’ll mike them think the bleeding post’s come: seventy ton. Now, you bleeder, I’ve got you.”
Very delicately, he brought pressure to bear on the tough twisted wire: the lock turned: the door opened.
“There’s the bleeding door,” the man said. “We’d best hop it, mate. What’s the way out is the barracker for me.”
“Across the yard and then through the house,” Hi said.