But the couple on whom Hunk kept the most careful eye were his young daughter, Lois, and little Batty Bertello, the son of the sharpest copper’s nark in the quarter. These two sat apart, on a lounge, clasped in one another’s arms, their feet drawn up from the floor, lip locked to lip in the ecstasy of self-discovery; for the man the ecstasy of possession, for the girl the ecstasy of surrender.
Lois had picked up Batty in Tunnel Gardens one Sunday night, and although from the age of ten she had been accustomed to kisses and embraces from boy admirers, she realised, when Batty first kissed her, that here was something different. There was nothing soppy about him ... rather, something kind of curious ... big and strong, like. He seemed to give everything; yet gave you the rummy feeling of having held something in reserve, something that you were not good enough for. You didn’t know what it was or how great it was, and it made you kind of mad to find out. And when he kissed you.... She wondered if she were a bad, nasty girl for wanting to have his hands about her. All her person was at once soothed and titillated by the throb of his pulses when they clasped; she was a responsive instrument on which he played the eternal melody. She felt that she could hold no secrets from him; so at risk of losing him she told him the whole truth about herself; told it in that voice of hers, fragile and firm as fluted china and ringing with the tender tones of far-away bells. How that she was the daughter of the terrible Hunk Bottles, and lived in that bad house, the Blue Lantern, and how that her father was the lifelong enemy of his father, Jumbo Bertello. And Batty had laughed, and they had continued to love.
Presently Lois swung herself from the lounge and began to “cook” for her boy. On a small table she spread the lay-out; lit the lamp; dug out the treacly hop from the toey and held it against the flame. It bubbled furiously, and the air was charged with a loathsome sweetness. Then, holding the bamboo pipe in one hand, she scraped the bowl with a yen-shi-gow, and kneaded the brown clot with the yen-hok. Slowly it changed colour as the poison gases escaped. Then she broke a piece in her finger, and dropped it into the bowl, and handed the stem to Batty. He puffed languorously, and thick blue smoke rolled from him.
But Hunk Bottles regarded the scene with slow anger. Lois was ignoring his commands. When he had heard that she was going with the son of a copper’s nark he had drawn her aside and had spoken forceful words. He had said:
“Look ’ere, me gel, you be careful. Less you go round with that young Bertello the better. Y’know what ’is old man is, doncher? Well, be careful what yeh talk about. Cos if any of my business gets out.... Well” (he hit the air with a fat hand) “if I do catch yeh talkin’ at all, I’ll break every bone in yeh blinkin’ body. I’ll take the copper-stick to yeh and won’t let up till every bit of yeh’s broken. Else I’ll give yeh to one o’ the Chinks to do what ’e likes with. So now yeh know. See?”
Lois knew that this was not an idle threat. She had seen things done at the Blue Lantern. There were rooms into which she was not permitted to pry. Once in the cellar she had seen little glass tubes of peculiar shape, coloured papers, and a big machine. She had seen men who came to the private bar, and never called for a drink, but had one given them, and who sat and mumbled across the counter for hours at a stretch.
And Batty ... he, too, knew a bit. He wanted to take her away from the lowering Causeway and the malefic air of the quarter. But he knew that old Hunk would never consent to marriage; Lois was too useful in the bar as a draw to custom. He knew, too, that if he took her forcibly away Hunk would be after them and would drag her back. The only way by which he could get her would be to remove Hunk for a spell, and the only means by which this could be accomplished.... At this point he saw clear. Very little stood between Hunk and the Thames Police Court. A little definite evidence and old Jumbo Bertello could work a raid at the right moment.
So, the night after the Saturnalia, he took Lois for a bus-ride, and he talked and talked to her. She told him what her dad would do to her if.... But he dashed in and assured her that there was not one moment’s danger to her little dear body; not a moment’s. One tiny scrap of evidence in his hands and she would be safe with him for ever.
Well, that night certain pieces of coloured paper passed from the hands of Lois to those of her Batty, and from Batty they passed to the old copper’s nark. Jumbo hugged those pieces of coloured paper in his breast-pocket and was glad. He would go straight to the station and deposit them, and thus he would be helping his kid to marry the girl he wanted and would also be helping himself to rewards of a more substantial kind. He passed the Star of the East, and noted mechanically that it was closing time; but he noted with a very actual interest that a crowd had assembled at a near corner. Now Jumbo was a man of simple tastes. Above all else he loved the divine simplicity of a fight, and a street crowd acted on him as a red rag on a bull. At such a spectacle his eyes would light up, his nostrils quiver, his hands clench and unclench and his feet dance a double shuffle until, unable longer to remain neutral, he would charge in and lend a hand to whichever party in the contest seemed to be getting the worse. So it was to-night. Within half-a-minute he was in the centre of the crowd. At the end of the full minute he was prostrate on the ground, his skull cracked on the edge of the kerb.