Chapter XI: “8 Elm Grove--Back Entrance”

This story is, in many respects, such a strange one, that it is not easy to know how to set it down; whether to tell it backwards, or to commence at the beginning. It is on that account that I preface it with a remark that when, one afternoon, I was at the Arnolds’, and the parlourmaid came into the room with a tea-tray in her hands, at the sight of her I was so startled that I nearly dropped the pastel I was holding.

But the story did not begin there. It began when I was returning from spending an evening with some friends at Blackheath. I came back by the Greenwich tram; I had to return or I would have stayed the night with my friends, who were most reluctant to let me go. I believe it was the last tram. It was most dreadful weather. I had the vehicle to myself until it was boarded by two men, whom I should have described as of distinctly suspicious appearance. They sat in perfect silence till one of them rose to get off, when the other said to him in tones which were inaudible to me:

“Now don’t you make any mistake--8 Elm Grove--back entrance. Got it right?”

“Of course I’ve got it right. What do you take me for? Think that in my position I’m likely to make a mess of a thing like that?”

The speaker had a large square bag, made of what seemed to me to be a piece of old red carpet. It seemed to be full of something which was so heavy that it was all he could do to carry it. The car stopped; he got off; the other man remained. He was a square-faced, dark-visaged person; his cloth cap was crammed close down over his head. His cheeks were blue with the promise of a beard which badly needed a razor. As was the case with the man who had just departed, there was nothing to screen his lips, so that to me the words which they had uttered had been obvious.

Presently the car stopped again; a policeman got on. At sight of him the man started. If it had been possible, he would undoubtedly have got off. But it was too late. The policeman shook, as well as he could, the rain off his cape; left it near the door of the car, then entered and took his seat. He looked about him. He saw the black-visaged man, and the man saw him; plainly they knew each other. The man looked murder; the policeman grinned.

“So it’s you,” he said. “I didn’t know you were out.”

The man replied with a sort of venomous fury.

“Who asked you what you knew? You mind your own affairs, and don’t you talk to me when you’re not wanted to; that’s not your duty; you do your duty and leave me alone.”

“All right, Chippy, no harm intended. I hope you’ll keep out longer this time than you did last.”

The man made no reply; if looks could have killed there would certainly have been an end of that policeman. I wondered what had been the meaning of that reference to “8 Elm Grove--back entrance”; and what had been the contents of that bag. I should rather have liked to ask a question or two. The car stopped in the Westminster Bridge Road. The three of us descended. The policeman went his way; I presume the black-visaged man went his; I know that I went mine. I should probably have forgotten the incident had it not been for something which happened not many days afterwards--which brought it all back to my memory with a rush.

I was standing in Piccadilly, waiting for an omnibus. A shabby, unpleasant-looking individual was standing not very far from me, an ancient billycock crammed over his eyes, his hands in his breeches pockets, a broken clay pipe in the corner of his mouth. Suddenly some one came hurrying across the road, threading his way among the vehicles with the dexterity which is the birthright of a certain sort of cockney. He was an undersized youth, whose attire was in the last stage of decay. Apparently he wore no shirt; his coat was buttoned up to the neck, the collar turned up. He kept his hands in his jacket pockets as if he were unwilling to expose them to the air; I had a feeling that in one of those pockets there might be something about whose safety he was anxious. He went straight to the unpleasant-looking gentleman with a pipe in his mouth. The man’s lips formed themselves into a question.

“Got it?” The youth nodded, casting quick glances behind him and on either side. The man went on: “Then I told you what to do with it--if I was you, the sooner the better. Remember what I said? 8 Elm Grove--back entrance. Don’t you make any mistake.”

The youth passed into an entry which leads into Jermyn Street, and was gone before I had realized where I had encountered that unpleasant-looking person’s words before. “8 Elm Grove--back entrance”--that was what the black-visaged man had said in that Greenwich tramcar to his companion, who got out carrying the heavy carpet bag. My bus came up before I had quite grasped the singularity of this, and it was only after I had taken my place that I was inclined to think that I had been perhaps a trifle hasty. That unpleasant-looking person might have been worth a little observation.

I dare say it was a fortnight afterwards that I was at Waterloo Station. There had been a race-meeting on the line; I doubt if there are many places where one can see more evil-looking faces than at Waterloo Station on such an occasion as that. It sometimes seems to me that the place is full of the sweepings of the prisons. The race-goers were returning; a cheap train was in. I drew away from the horde of men who all at once crowded the platform. As I looked about me, thinking of what a great artist would make of these singular countenances, I noticed a man in a fawn-coloured overcoat go up to a short and sturdy person who--with his legs wide apart and his hat cocked on the back of his head--immediately accosted him. I saw quite distinctly what he said.

“Hullo, George! I’ve been waiting for you. What luck?”

The other replied--I saw his answer; I wished I had not. His mouth vomited forth foulness. He had had no luck; he had not been within ten miles of a winner; he had come back stony broke. The other looked at him; he had a toothpick between his lips, which he shifted from side to side.

“Then it’s about time we did something, ain’t it, George? As far as coin goes I’m about where you are. How about the girl? We’re ready for her.”

“She comes out of Wandsworth prison to-morrow morning at six sharp, and I’m going to be there to meet her; that’s what about the girl. She’ll be ready as soon as we are.”

“I suppose she’ll be all right.”

“You bet she will; I’ll see to that. She does what I tell her or--she’ll be sorry; she will.”

“Are you going to marry her, George?”

“Marry her?--Me?--Me marry her?--She won’t dare to ask me.”

“Suppose she cuts up rough--girls do sometimes, you know.”

“Yes, and so do men. That girl cares for me. I’ll show you how she cares for me before we’ve done with her.” The speaker smiled--a thin, horrible smile. “She’ll do just as I tell her without so much as a whimper; she’d go through hell for me, and she shall.”

“She comes out to-morrow morning? Perhaps she’d better stay inside.”

“They won’t keep her, not this time they won’t. I shouldn’t wonder if next time she makes more of a stay. When a woman’s been really useful to you, it’s just as well to have her for once in a while out of your way.”

“But this one’s very young, ain’t she?”

“All the better, you can work them easier when they’re young; and when they’re young they are so fond of you--that makes it easier still.”

The two men grinned, and I could have struck them for it. The man who had been racing stood closer up to the other, he showed him something which was in his overcoat pocket. What it was I could not see; but I saw him say, in tones which were clearly meant to reach the other only:

“I’ve got a little something here--out of a lady’s bag.”

“Seems to me you’re always fond of the ladies, George. I suppose it’s another case of 8 Elm Grove--back entrance.” Again the two men grinned. “I have got a bob left; suppose we have something liquid.”

The pair moved off to the refreshment-room. I had been a spectator of one of those scenes of which I see more than I like; I had been made, after a fashion, a confidante of two individuals who I had no doubt whatever were seasoned criminals. And again there had been that reference to “8 Elm Grove--back entrance”; I could guess at what was the nature of the something which the fellow had in his overcoat pocket, but what stuck in my mind--what hurt me most--for when they were gone I felt as if I were smarting all over--were their allusions to the girl who, the next morning, was coming out of Wandsworth prison. To what a fate she seemed to be coming; as the short man had hinted, she had much better stay inside. The fellow in the overcoat was, to a superficial eye, not bad-looking. He was about five foot nine or ten, slightly built, upright; about him an air of jauntiness. His features were fairly regular--he had a tiny moustache; but apart from the fact that he had those whity-blue eyes which I, sometimes perhaps unjustly, associate with cruelty and treachery, there was in his whole expression a something mean, underhand, cunning, which would have made me, had I stood near him in a crowd, look after my belongings very carefully. He was, in short, the sort of person whom I would have expected to “find” something in a lady’s bag. The idea that he was going to get a young girl into his hands at the moment she was coming out of the jail to which she had been sent for what, probably, was her first offence; that she should be at his mercy to be fashioned into whatever thing of evil he might choose; this was an idea which I found it very hard to digest. The result was that at a very early hour the next morning I set forth on a quixotic errand. Before six o’clock I was outside the gates of Wandsworth jail.

Early though it was, I was not the first arrival. Perhaps a dozen people were there before me--such specimens of humanity. There was nothing to be seen of the man in the fawn overcoat. It suddenly burst upon me that I should not be able to recognize the girl to whom he and his companion had referred unless he addressed her first. While I was glad enough that he was not there, in his absence what was I to do when the discharged prisoners began to come out? I decided to await events.

The prison clock had struck six some minutes when the great gate which fronted us swung back--and a procession came out. Such a procession! Whether such a procession is a daily occurrence I cannot say; I imagine not. Probably chance had it that a number of sentences should terminate together; I should say that more than twenty persons emerged through the gates. I presume that they were liberated at such a matutinal hour in order that they might re-enter the world before people were up and about to observe from whence they came; yet, early though it was, nearly without exception, each prisoner was met by some one at the gate. For those who had no personal friend, there was a Salvation Army lass and a bearded individual who bore the insignia of that great organization. A slight, grey-headed man in tweeds who had a notebook in his hand was, I took it, a representative of some society.

I kept my eye on the gate. No one at all resembling the person I sought had, so far, appeared. Then, at the tail of the procession, she came; I knew her in a moment. As she came, there appeared, I could hardly have said from where, the man in the fawn-coloured overcoat. He was dressed precisely as he had been on the previous afternoon. He lifted his hat as she appeared, took her hand, and kissed her before us all; and all at once she was in his arms crying as if her heart was breaking.

It was a delicate situation--by me wholly unexpected. I could hardly interfere in such a tender meeting; on what grounds? Because of something I had not heard but seen the man say the previous afternoon. If I proffered such a reason I might be laughed to scorn. I might have misjudged him; I might have got the thing all wrong. How she cried; how tenderly he soothed her. So far as intervention went, it struck me with unpleasant force that I had not a leg to stand upon. I let them pass me, the man’s arm round the weeping girl’s waist--I making no attempt to thrust myself upon them. He led her to a taxi-cab, which was standing by the kerb at a little distance. As they entered and the cab drove off I recognized what a wild-goose errand I had come upon.

The procession ceased; the gates reclosed; prisoners and their friends went their several ways. I moved off, with the feeling strong upon me that I might just as well have stayed away. I went so slowly that the others who went with brisker steps, before I had gone any distance, were out of sight. Just as the last of them had vanished round a corner, round that same corner there came a woman running--a matronly woman, in a state of what, to me, seemed frenzied agitation. She was moving quicker than I should say she had done for many a year. When she got to me she stopped, her breath failing her.

“Have they--have they come out?” she gasped.

“Do you mean the prisoners--from the jail?”

“Of course I do. Who else would I mean?” She spoke like a person from the country, setting her old-fashioned bonnet straight with trembling hands. “I meant to have been here before, and I ought to have been, only my train was late. Do you know if they’ve come out, young woman?”

“Some minutes ago; they’ve all of them gone their different ways.”

“Then--my daughter--has she come out?”

In her voice there was a note of anguish and of terror. Her agitation increased. An idea occurred to me.

“Was your daughter a slight, dark-haired young woman, with big brown eyes?”

“That’s my Mary, miss; did you see her, miss? If she’s out, where is she? She knew I was coming; she might have guessed my train was late; where has she gone?”

“If she’s the young woman I suppose, she was met by a slightly built man, with very light blue eyes, who took her away with him in a taxi-cab.”

The woman shrieked, positively shrieked, out there in the open street. I have seldom been more startled.

“You don’t mean to say she’s gone with him! She can’t, she can’t! Not when she knew that her mother was coming to meet her and take her home! I’m her mother, and I tell you, she’s my girl.”

Before we parted I had heard her story and the story of her daughter’s downfall. A painful one it was, though I am afraid it is one which is only too common. The poor old lady was nearly broken-hearted. I saw her to the railway station, into the train which was to take her back home--alone. I promised that I would make all the inquiries that could be made; and though I was occupied with very many matters, I did my best.

But more than three months passed, and I learned nothing of the whereabouts of her erring daughter until that afternoon when I was at the Arnolds’ and that parlourmaid came into the room with the tea on a tray. She was the young woman whom I had seen that morning emerge from Wandsworth Prison, whom her mother, because the train which brought her had been behind the scheduled time, had been too late to meet. It was not surprising that I nearly dropped the pastel I was holding; which brings me to the real beginning of my tale.

Mrs. Arnold’s drawing-room is a charming room; in the best sense of the word, a feminine room--delicate, refined, delightful. Amy Arnold had had her portrait done by a fashionable pastellist; it had just come home; I had been looking at it when tea appeared. That parlourmaid struck such a jarring note; she, as it were, projected me into another world. Those doubtful characters on the Greenwich tram; the young thief in Piccadilly; the pair of rascals at Waterloo; the scene at the Wandsworth Prison gate--that dreadful procession, with the girl at the tail; the despairing mother who had lost her child--all these things came back to me in a series of discordant notes as the parlourmaid put down the tea-tray. The shock was so sudden that I hardly knew what to do; the pastel did not fall, but I laid it on my lap lest it should fall next time.

It was undoubtedly the girl; her uniform made a difference, but there was no mistaking her. I doubted if she had noticed me or what an effect her entrance had had on me. I had probably gone unobserved by her in the little crowd outside the prison gate.

When she had left the room I hardly knew what to say. They continued to speak of the pastel; my thoughts were with the maid. As I thanked Amy for the cup of tea she gave me I asked if the servant who had brought it in was not a fresh one.

“Do you mean Jane?” she asked.

“Is her name Jane?” I inquired.

“Jane--or to give her her full style and title--Jane Stamp. I suppose she has been with us about six weeks.”

“Nearly two months,” chimed in her mother, “and a very nice girl she is, and a good servant. She is quite refined for a servant, yet not a bit above her place. Don’t you think she’s pleasant looking?”

“I think she looks pale.”

“She is pale. I fancy she has troubles of her own. I have suspected her, more than once, of crying.”

“Where did you get her from?”

“Through an advertisement. I got sick of the creatures they sent me from the registry offices, so I tried an advertisement in the _Post_. She was the result.”

“Did you have a character with her?”

“Of course I had a character.” Mrs. Arnold opened her eyes as if I had suggested something utterly monstrous. “Does she look to you like a girl who hasn’t a character? She was three years in her last place; she only left it just before she came to me.”

“Where was her last place?”

“She was with some people named Reynolds who had a flat near the Marble Arch--9A Waterman Mansions.”

“Did you see Mrs. Reynolds?”

“Of course I saw her; do you suppose that I should be satisfied with a written character? My dear Judith, what are you thinking about? I called one afternoon. She was rather a florid-looking person, but the character she gave Jane was excellent. She only parted with her because they were giving up the flat. I have found that sometimes servants don’t come up to the characters I have had with them, but I must say that, up to the present, Jane hasn’t given me any cause for dissatisfaction. Of course, I’m aware that new brooms sweep clean, but I am venturing to hope that I’ve found a jewel at last. You seem to be very interested in Jane.”

I was--though Amy spoke casually. We returned to the subject of the pastel. Amy thought that the artist had given her a little too much colour; but while we talked my thoughts were with the parlourmaid. I was wondering what I ought to do. I knew that her name was not Jane Stamp--nor Jane anything; I knew that she had not been three years in her last place, nor, at any time, with people named Reynolds. I knew, in short, a great many things about her which would have surprised Mrs. Arnold not a little. The question I had to answer was--was it my duty to tell her what those things were? That would mean instant dismissal for Jane Stamp. No mistress would keep her in her house after such a revelation. And that would mean something of which I did not care to think for the maid. Placed as she had been, she could only have obtained such a situation by methods which would not bear the light of day; but, having obtained it, might she not intend to do her best, and, profiting by her past painful experience, be resolute not to sin again?

I went away from Mrs. Arnold’s leaving these questions unanswered. I admit that I was desirous of avoiding the responsibility of arriving at a too hasty decision. A few hours should make no difference; I would employ them in making certain investigations of my own. Afterwards it would be time enough to speak to Mrs. Arnold--or to Jane.

The first thing I did when I reached home was to get out a directory. I looked up the Elm Groves; as I had expected, there were plenty of them; there seemed to be Elm Groves in all parts of London. One at New Cross attracted my attention. My knowledge of that locality was not very exact, but I took it that that tramcar had been somewhere about New Cross when that man with the carpet bag got out. So far as I could judge, there might be an Elm Grove within quite a short distance of where he had alighted; and No. 8, at the time that directory went to press, was empty. It might have become occupied since then. At any rate, I thought I would go and see; and I went, by the Greenwich tramcar.

When we had gone some little distance I asked the conductor if he knew of any Elm Grove in that district. He did not; tramcar conductors never do know anything about places which are not immediately on their line of route. But there were persons who had heard my question--then the car was as full as it could hold--who were able to supply me with the information I required. I received the most precise directions from more than one of my fellow-passengers as to how I was to reach Elm Grove; but precise as they were, it did not prove an easy place to find.

Elm Grove was one of those surprises which one often encounters in suburban London; it was a relic of the past; a street of old-fashioned, solidly built houses, each standing in its own garden. There seemed to be about a dozen on either side. I came to No. 8--there was nothing to show that it was to let. A person came out of what I took to be No. 10, whom I addressed.

“Can you tell me,” I asked, “if this house is to let?”

He was rather a fussy-looking person, with a red face and whiskers to match.

“That’s more than I can tell you,” he replied; “and, so far as I know, more than anyone else can tell you either. I have been here going on for five years, and it was like that when I came, and it’s like it still. I believe that some of the rooms are furnished, because I have seen lights in some of the windows, and I have heard that people have been seen going in and out--but not by me. Between ourselves, round about here that house is looked on as a bit of a mystery.”

He went his way and left me thinking. The front gate was locked. Remembering that there had been some mention of a back entrance, I went to the end of the road and turned to the right, and presently came upon a sort of narrow lane which I proceeded to explore. These were evidently the back doors to the houses in Elm Grove. Clearly some of them were never used; some of them were overgrown with cobwebs and creepers; one or two were boarded up. Then I came to a door which did show signs of occasional usage. It was not easy to determine the number to which it belonged--but I tried the handle. It yielded and the door was open. Trusting that my boldness might have no serious result, I passed through--to find myself in a garden which was a mere wilderness of weeds. I do not think I ever saw one which suggested more shocking neglect. There were thistles and nettles which came up to my waist. It was only after momentary inspection that I perceived that there was a sort of pathway through them; one which I fancied had been lately used. The vegetation on either side had been quite recently trodden down by somebody’s feet; I should have said by the feet of more than one person. Pursuing my way along this apology for a path, I found that it led to what had probably once been a solidly constructed outhouse but which was now nothing but a ramshackle shed. The door, which hung on a single hinge, looked as if, were it moved in either direction, it might fall off. I looked to see what might be on the other side of that door; I can only excuse my persistent curiosity by saying that I felt convinced that there was something very odd about No. 8 Elm Grove. The shed was littered with all sorts of what seemed rubbish, mostly so buried under a wealth of dust, and dirt, and cobwebs that it was not easy to guess what they might once have been.

There was one exception to this state of dust and dirt, and that instantly caught my eye. In the corner stood what might have been a huge corn bin; it was painted a dark green; it was covered by a lid which seemed to be still intact--which was more than could be said for anything else inside that shed. On the lid was an old packing-case. That green-painted bin would have been all the better for another coat of paint, but in other respects it was in such a good state of preservation that it piqued my curiosity. I removed that packing-case, and found that in the lid there was an aperture something like the slit in a post-office letterbox, only on a slightly more generous scale. It almost looked as if that packing-case had been meant to conceal its presence. I had shut the garden gate as I had entered. As I was wondering what that slit might mean, I heard the gate softly opened and closed. There was a quantity of rubbish at the other end of the shed. It was in a state of indescribable dirt and confusion. Bolting towards it, I used it, so far as the thing was possible, as a cover, crouching down behind it, regardless of the creatures of all sorts whom I suspected my advent had disturbed.

Steps were approaching; I did not know how much of me was visible, but I did not dare to risk the noise which would result from an attempt to alter my position. Some one came quickly into the shed--a decently dressed boy of perhaps thirteen or fourteen years of age; not at all the sort of person I had expected to see. He had a good-sized leather bag in his hand. Going straight to the bin in the corner, taking a key out of his pocket, he slipped it into a lock which I had not noticed, and part of the front came away in the shape of a door--of sufficient size to enable him to thrust his entire body into the bin. When he came out again his hands were filled with a number of different-sized packages, done up, for the most part, in the rudest fashion--some in pocket-handkerchiefs, some in grimy rags, some in scraps of newspapers. One or two were secured in well-corded sheets of brown paper; but, generally, they were innocent of string, or of anything which could secure whatever they contained.

The boy made no attempt to examine them. He quickly counted them--I could see his lips moving as he did so; nine he made the number. He dropped them into his leather bag, which he shut with a snap, relocked the door of the bin, and passed out of the shed as quickly as he had come in--without once glancing in my direction. Apparently it had never occurred to him as possible that anyone could be in the shed beside himself.

So soon as I heard the garden gate open and shut again, regardless of the state I was in, making the best of my way through the nettles and the thistles, I was after him. When I reached the entry he was already at the other end; when I gained the end, he was turning another corner. I quickened my pace, determined, if possible, to see where that bag was going; but it proved not to be possible, for when I caught sight of him again he was getting into a taxi, which stood waiting by the pavement, and whose head was turned the other way. I believe I would have boarded that cab if I had had a chance, and made a snatch at that leather bag; but before I had an opportunity to do anything the vehicle had passed from sight, and I was left lamenting. Pursuit was out of the question. There seemed to be no cabs at all in that part of the world; that taxi had been brought from a distance. The only means of locomotion seemed to be the tramcar, and by that I returned to Westminster Bridge.

My rooms were at the bottom of Sloane Street; Mrs. Arnold’s house was in an old-fashioned square within five minutes’ walk. My impulse, when I arrived home, was to go round to her at once and warn her against Jane Stamp. But for two or three reasons I did nothing of the kind. In the first place I was in rather a bad temper, and I have made it a rule never to do anything of the slightest importance when I am the least like that. Then I was dirty, tired, and hungry, and it was dinner-time, and, also, I was in rather a mystified frame of mind. I felt that when I had washed and changed and had had something to eat I might be able to look at the position with clearer eyes.

After dinner I decided that I would do nothing, at any rate until the morning. I had half a mind to get on to the telephone and talk to them at Scotland Yard about “8 Elm Grove--back entrance”; I had very little doubt about the meaning of that bin in the corner of the shed, nor about the contents of the parcels which the boy had taken out of it, nor the place to which they were being taken. The bin, I fancied, represented an ingenious system of dealing with stolen goods. I wondered how many of them were scattered over London; who were the enterprising persons who had their contents cleared, as if they had been pillar-boxes, at stated intervals. None the less, I left that telephone alone, deciding that that also was a matter which might be left to the morning. At what to me was an early hour I went to bed. However, going to bed I found was one thing; going to sleep was another. Ordinarily I sleep well; no sooner do I lay my head upon the pillow, and close my eyes, than slumber comes--I sleep till it is time to get up. That night, for what I have since thought must really have been some occult reason, I could not sleep. I had to think--and when, in bed, one starts to think, it is nearly always fatal. As the minutes slipped by I became conscious of what I cannot but call an extraordinary obsession--it seemed to me that some one was calling to me at Mrs. Arnold’s. Of course, the feeling was a ridiculous one, but there it was. Worse--it became stronger and stronger. At last, getting out of bed, switching on a light, donning a dressing-gown, I went into the sitting-room to read. But the feeling followed me there--it was really too absurd. I told myself that it was absurd; yet I began to have a most uncomfortable doubt as to whether there might not be something in it after all.

Then something curious happened--I thought so then, I think so now. I dare say it will read like nonsense, written down in cold blood--but the actual thing was indescribable. All at once it was borne in on me that my presence was needed at Mrs. Arnold’s house, that something was happening which made it necessary that I should be there. I did not ask if I might not be in one of those super-sensitive states of mind in which nothing is easier than to delude oneself. I put away the book which I was reading; I returned to my bedroom, dressed, let myself out into the street.

I had glanced at the time while dressing and noticed that it was after two; as I stepped on to the pavement a clock somewhere struck the quarter. It was not a pleasant night--or rather morning. The air was filled with a hazy dampness; it did not exactly rain, but everything was wet. So far as I was able to judge, not a soul was in sight; nor was there anywhere a sound. It was one of those rare moments between the night and the day in which the whole great city seems to be either dead or sleeping. I have known them before, and also since, but I do not recall one in which I was so struck by the perfect stillness. I walked round to Mrs. Arnold’s without seeing a creature on the way. So soon as I had gained the street the poignant feeling that some one stood in need of my instant help had passed away. Its going was quite a relief; while it lasted it had seemed to press upon some nerve in my brain. I stepped out quickly, but when I came to Tedworth Square I slackened my pace. Mrs. Arnold’s house was at the corner, on the other side of the garden.

I cannot explain the motives which prompted me that night; I can only say that directly I reached the square something told me that, if it were possible, it was of the first importance that I should not allow my movements to reveal my presence. I stole along the railings, eyes and ears wide open, with a felonious stealthiness which I am sure would have inspired a constable with just suspicion.

When I was close to Mrs. Arnold’s I paused; if only because my ears were so wide open that I became conscious of a sound. Two voices were speaking--in what was little more than a whisper. Soft though their utterance was, I knew that they were angry--that one of the speakers was more angry than the other. I crept a few feet farther--to the pillar on one side of Mrs. Arnold’s gate. The voices came from her garden; the gate was open. I wished I could have seen the speakers; it was impossible to hear. I wondered what they were talking about, after two o’clock in the morning, in Mrs. Arnold’s garden. Suddenly one of the voices was raised--not much, but just enough to enable me, with my wide-open ears, to catch what was said.

“I tell you she says that she won’t open. How the--something--do you think I’m going to make her? If I could get hold of her it would be dead easy, but how do you suppose I’m going to get at her when she’s the other side of the window?”

The second voice was audible--I fancy, expostulating with the other for speaking so loud. I slipped through the open gate, on to the grass--Mrs. Arnold’s old-fashioned house is detached and has quite a garden in front. A sudden idea had come to me--I guessed at the identity of those two speakers and at what they were doing there. They were so absorbed in what they were saying, and I was so noiseless, that I saw them long before they saw me--a tallish man and a shorter one, carrying on an animated discussion beneath their breath.

The shorter man seemed all at once to lose all control over his temper; he slightly raised his voice; I strained my ears.

“If she won’t she won’t; there’s an end of it--I’m off. No wild-cat games for me, that wasn’t in the bargain. Her letting us into the house and putting everything ready is one thing; what you are after is quite another--and not for me; it wouldn’t be for you if your monkey wasn’t up.”

The other man blazed out. “By ----, I’ll kill her!”

“Yes, I dare say you’d like to; and expect me to take a hand in that. No, thank you, not for me. There’d be trouble if we were found here, and as we’ve already been here longer than I like, or bargained for--I’ll say good night. You’d better come along with me.”

“As she won’t let me into the crib, as she swore she would, I’ll get in without her, and if I once have my hands on her throat----”

He left his sentence unfinished; the other continued to remonstrate--both were speaking louder than perhaps they knew.

“Now don’t you be a fool; you don’t want to get into trouble, do you? The idea was to get her into trouble and keep out of it ourselves. You’ll be able to get hold of her before very long and give her all the handling she needs. Now you come along with me. What’s that?”

I had been standing under the shadow of a tree; unconsciously I had touched one of the lower branches. Both men spun round.

“By ----!” exclaimed the shorter man, “there’s some one there.”

He stood not on the order of his going--he went at once, before he had really finished speaking, and so quickly that in the same instant, as it seemed, he was through the gate and out of sight. The other hesitated--then he would have followed--but that I would not have. The tale which the girl’s mother had told me; the facts with which I was myself acquainted; the threat which I had just heard him utter against his miserable dupe; the conviction which I had that it was his set purpose to use her for his own horrible ends, to ruin her body and soul, and then to cast her aside, caring nothing if she spent years of her life in jail to pay for his misdeeds--I say that these things rose up within me, so that when he tried to follow his shorter friend I would not let him.

I rushed out of my hiding-place, and I caught him by the coat--he still wore that fawn overcoat--and I yelled with the full force of a healthy, vigorous pair of lungs:

“Police! Police! Help! Murder! Thieves!”

It was, perhaps, not the most dignified course I could have taken, but there was no time to consider; I did the only thing which, on the spur of the moment, it seemed to me I could do--I yelled and I stuck to him. And I will undertake to say that the noise I made travelled a considerable distance. So he seemed to think. For some seconds he let me hold him without making the slightest effort to break away; whether it was because he was dazed by the suddenness of my attack or amazed at the penetrative quality of my voice I cannot say.

“It’s a woman!” he ejaculated, as if that great truth had only just burst on him. “Stop that noise and let go of my coat, or--you’ll be sorry.”

I remembered that those were the words he had used on the platform at Waterloo to illustrate what would happen to his unfortunate victim if she dared, even in one jot or tittle, to call her soul her own; and the memory inflamed me.

“Oh no, I shan’t be sorry,” I told him; “I shall be glad; it is you who will be sorry. Police! Help! Thieves!”

Loudly I yelled again. He tried to shake me off; then finding that it was not so easy he caught me by the wrist. As he did so, I heard the window open in the house behind him, and a woman’s voice cried out:

“George!--Don’t hurt her!--Go, George, go! go!”

The last repetition of the word “go!” rose through the air like a trumpet; or rather like a frenzied shriek. The woman’s whole force was in the injunction the word conveyed. He released one of my wrists, put his hand into his overcoat-pocket, swung round--I was for the moment stunned by the unexpected report of a pistol. Before I had even the dimmest suspicion of his intention, he had dragged a revolver out of his pocket, and fired at the shrieking woman at the window. Just one queer sound came from her, then all was still.

“I said I would give you something for yourself,” he remarked, speaking to the place where the woman had been as coolly as if he were making some commonplace observation, “and that’s it. I don’t think you’ll want any more.”

“You’ve killed her!” I screamed; “you murderous villain, you’ve killed her!”

I tried to grip him by the throat. Had I been cooler I might have done it, and held him fast--I might at least have been upon my guard; but I was in such a storm of rage that I neglected the most simple precautions. He was not the kind of man with whom, at such a moment, it was safe to do that. He swung suddenly back towards me and struck me with the muzzle of his pistol on the forehead. Down I went, and, to convey a famous phrase, the further proceedings interested me no more.

Nearly all the rest of the story was in most of the papers. What my screams and shouts had begun the report of his pistol finished--the whole neighbourhood had been alarmed. So soon as he had felled me, before he could even attempt to escape, the police were on him. It was the girl who had called herself Jane Stamp who had appeared at the window, and, aiming perhaps better than he knew, he shot her dead. She probably never spoke a word after his bullet struck her. For her it was perhaps as well. It is easy to be optimistic, and even sentimental, if you have no actual experience of the hard facts of life; if you have, it is difficult to see what promise of happiness life could have held for a woman who had begun as she had done. Beyond the faintest shadow of a doubt she was more sinned against than sinning; but in such matters the world has a standard of its own, and, even if it seems to forgive, when a woman has at the back of her what she had it never forgets.

They hung him. At the last moment strength had been given the girl to refuse to play the despicable part he had planned. She was to have let him into her mistress’s house--it contained many valuables. She was so to arrange matters that they would be placed within easy reach. She was even to drug not only Mrs. Arnold and her daughter but also her fellow-servants; he had supplied her with all that was necessary to do this in the most up-to-date manner. While they were drugged the house was to have been ransacked. But the girl was not all bad; the good rose up within her preventing her from descending to quite such depths of treachery and crime. She refused, after all, to carry out the programme he had planned, or even to admit him into the house--and for that he shot her. The first time I ever appeared in a witness-box was to give evidence against him. The judge complimented me on what he called the courage which I had shown; I congratulated myself on having been the means of bringing such a wretch to justice.

As to “8 Elm Grove--back entrance”--I told that story to certain officials at Scotland Yard. That same afternoon the messenger was trapped as he was dropping the contents of the bin into his leather bag. There was nothing on him to show who he was or whence he came. Even when they questioned him he told them, with unnecessary plainness, what would happen to them before they got anything out of him; so they got something out of the driver of the taxi-cab instead. The lad tried to give a warning whistle, but even as his lips were shaped to whistle a hand was clapped across his mouth. The vehicle was waiting, as before, by the pavement. Instead of the small boy, two adults went up to the driver, in whom one of them instantly recognized an old acquaintance.

They induced him to talk. To begin with, they made him drive to Scotland Yard. There it was made plain to him that unless he supplied certain information he would find himself in an extremely unpleasant position; so plain was this made to him that, after what was really only natural hesitation, he supplied it. He placed the police on the track of one of the greatest combinations for dealing with stolen goods which the criminal world has ever seen.

As is so often the case in these cosmopolitan days, the heads of the business were abroad. To begin with, the police had to content themselves with the tails. As I had surmised, “8 Elm Grove--back entrance” was only one of a dozen branches in all the different parts of town; so that when a man stole, let us say, a watch, he had only to go to the nearest, attaching to it his name or pseudonym, and within a very short space of time there would come to him, at an address which was previously arranged, its value in cash.

Thief and receiver never saw each other. On the face of it there was nothing to show that the thing was stolen; while the person who had “found” it never knew who had rewarded him for his ingenuity. The business had gone on for years; it might have gone on for years longer had not those two men had the misfortune to have me as a fellow-passenger in the Greenwich tram.

One need not remind those learned in worldly lore that, sometimes, great events from little causes spring.