At the top of the house all was very still. The sounds of the river came in little low laps. The noises of the street were scarcely heard at all. They paused in a body at the door. The potman was with them with the key. He unlocked the door, shoved it with a casual hand, and piped:
“Come on, kid—come on out. Some of yeh lovely narky friends think we bin murderin’ yeh.” The boys clustered in an awkward bunch at the door, peering into the darkness. But nobody came out; nobody answered; no sound at all was to be heard. “Strike a light!” shouted a voice. Far below, the silence was bespattered with muddy laughter from the four-ale bar.
The light was brought, and they crowded in. On the bare floor of the room lay Lois. Portions of her clothing were strewn here and there. Her released hair rippled mischievously over her bosom disclosed to the waist. Her stiff hands were curled into her disordered dress. She was dead. The room was otherwise empty.
Ding-Dong-Dell
Tom the Tinker came off the lighter in mid-stream near Limehouse Hole, and was taken to the landing-stage in an absurdly small rowing-boat. His face was cold and grey, his clothes damp and disordered. He had been on a job. Under the uncommunicative Limehouse night the river ran like a stream of molten lead. Stately cargoes pranced here and there. Fussy little tugs champed up-stream. Sirens wailed their unhappy song. Slothful barges rolled and drifted, seeming without home or haven. Cranes creaked and blocks rattled, and far-away Eastern voices were usually expressive in chanties. But Tom the Tinker saw and heard nothing of this. He had not that queer faculty, indispensable to the really successful cracksman, of paying rapt attention to six things at once. He could only concentrate on one thing at a time, and, while that faculty may serve in commerce and office business, it will not serve in the finer, larger spheres of activity. Here are wanted the swift veins, the clear touch, imagination in directed play; every tissue straining at the leash, ready to be off in whatsoever direction the quarry may turn.