Elk 04 White Face Read Online Free PDF

exactly a will, but I wrote down what I wanted doing with my money.”
    “Have you got a lot, Gregory?” asked the other good-humouredly.
    “More than you think.” There was a significance in the old man’s voice. “A lot more! It’s not money that makes me do what I’m doing—it’s pride—swank!”
    To most men who had known him for years, Gregory Wicks was a taciturn and uncommunicative man. Marford was one of the few who knew him. He often thought that this loquacity which Gregory displayed at home was his natural reaction to the hours of silence on the box. Night after night for nearly half a century this old cabman had placed himself under a vow of silence. Once he explained why, and the reason was so inadequate that Marford, who was not easily amused, laughed in spite of himself. Gregory had in a talkative moment allowed a client—he always called his fares “clients”—to wish a counterfeit half-crown upon him. It was a lesson never to be forgotten.
    The doctor often came in to chat with the old man, to hear stories of dead and forgotten celebrities whose names were famous in the eighties and the late seventies. As he was leaving, Gregory referred again to his lodger.
    “It was a good idea putting up that shutter to keep out the noise, though personally there’s nothing that would stop me sleeping. I sometimes wish he’d be a bit more lively—”
    “And come up and have a little chat with you at times?” suggested Marford.
    Gregory almost shuddered.
    “Not that! I don’t want to chat with anybody, especially strangers. I chat with you because you’ve been God’s-brother-Bill to me, to use a vulgar expression. I don’t say I’d have starved, because I shouldn’t have done. But I’d have lost something that I’d rather die than lose.”
    He came down to the door and stood looking out after the doctor, even when Marford was out of sight. The noisy children did not gibe at him, and none of these frowsy ones hurled their inevitable and unprintable jests in his direction. A wandering policeman they would have covered with derision. Only the doctor and Gregory Wicks escaped their grimy humour; the latter because of that ready fist of his, the doctor—well, you never know when the doctor will be called in, and if he’s got a grudge against you who knows what he’ll slip into your medicine? Or suppose he had to use the knife, eh? Nice so-and-so fool you’d look, lying under chloroform with your inn’ards at his mercy! Fear was a governing factor of life in Gallows Court.
    CHAPTER V
    That he had no other friends was good and sufficient reason why Mr. Elk should drop in at odd minutes to discuss with Dr. Marford the criminal tendencies and depravities of that section of the British Empire which lies between the northern end of Victoria Dock Road and the smelly drabness of Silvertown.
    Elk called on the evening Janice Harman took her farewell, and found Dr. Marford’s melancholy eyes fixed upon the dreary pageant of Endley Street. They were working overtime in the shipyard, which was almost opposite his surgery, and the din of mechanical riveters would go on during the night. Dr. Marford was so accustomed to this noise that it was hardly noticeable. The sound of drunken songsters, the pandemonium which accompanied amateur pugilism, the shrill din of children playing in the streets—hereabouts they played till midnight—the rumbling of heavy lorries on the way to the Eastern Trading Company’s yard which went on day and night never disturbed his sleep.
    “If I was sure this was hell”—Mr. Elk nodded his own gloomy face towards the thoroughfare—“I’d get religion. Not that I don’t say my prayers every night—I do. I pray for the Divisional Inspector, the Area Inspector, the Big Five and the Chief Commissioner; I pray for the Examining Board and all other members of the criminal classes.”
    The ghost of a smile illuminated the thin face of Dr. Marford. He was a man of thirty-five