Murder in Grub Street Read Online Free PDF Page B

again.
    “Uh … Sir John?”
    “Yes, Jeremy?”
    “I shall have to find a new master.”
    “That much is clear.” I thought this perhaps his only comment upon the matter, for he had nothing more to say for a long space of time. Then at last he added: “1 must think upon it. Perhaps I shall talk again with Samuel Johnson.”
    “As you will, Sir John.”
    “As I will, as I will,” he mimicked me. “Indeed, all of you seem eager to give me my wish in all things. What I wish is that this terrible thing had not happened; I wish that what seems to be so simple were not so complicated.
    “Consider this, Jeremy. We have a prisoner who was taken with the murder weapon, or at least one of them, in his hand. How was he found? By backtracking a cluster of boot prints in blood tracked down from the upper floors. Did our man in the Bow Street strong room wear boots? Indeed he did not. He was barefooted when caught and had been walked barefooted by Constable Cowley to the lockup, probably on this same route we are taking now.
    “Could one man have killed so many? I doubt it. The cries of some would have roused the rest. All were more or less murdered in their sleep. I think it unlikely that one man could have moved undetected and so quickly from one group of sleepers to the next. Yet there he was, axe in hand, a patch of vomit on the floor, looking for all the world like a murderer who had beheld his own work, and sickened at it. All agree to that. The patch of vomit is left, yet we no longer have the axe. Our constable left that — may he now have learned his lesson!—and it was no doubt taken as some sort of perverse souvenir of this awful event by one of that gang of helpers that afterwards rampaged through the Crabb house. They distributed their bloody footprints through every part of the building. I’ll have at least one of them up for obstructing an inquiry, I promise you that. This whole affair has been handled badly from start to finish!”
    I had never heard Sir John speak so angrily. He puffed from the exertion of it, though he maintained his quick step. It was all I could do to keep up with him. And perhaps I gave a bit too much attention to that and too little to what lay ahead. I recall that we had passed the Cock of the Walk and, to my relief, found no crowd at the front of it. We were entering a dark and shadowy patch of street when, of a sudden, two men jumped out before us, one of them holding a wicked-looking cutlass. I grabbed Sir John by the arm and pulled him to a halt.
    “What is it?” he asked loud, turning his head this way and that.
    “Robbers,” said I in a whisper.
    “Aye, robbers,” said one of them, so close he had heard. He grinned, urging his companion forward. “Robbers we are. Come forward, Tom, and see the fish we have caught in our net. Upon my soul, ‘tis a blind man and a boy. Come forward, I say.”
    Although Tom was more timid than his fellow, it was he who wielded the cutlass. He advanced cautiously, the point of his cutlass aimed in our near direction, wavering from one of us to the other.
    “It is clear,” said Sir John, quite cool to their threat, “that you know not who I am.”
    “Nor do we care! Give over what you got.”
    With that, I plunged my hand quite automatically into my pocket in search of my shillings, but it came up hard against the butt of the pistol. And quite as automatically, I pulled it from my pocket and extended it at the two of them. It took both thumbs to get the hammer back, but back it came. And then, even more difficult in those circumstances, I sought to show them that ferocious face I had put on at the door to the Crabb house.
    Each took a step back in quiet respect to the small pistol. I cannot believe my face afrighted them much.
    “Now, boy,” said the bolder of the two, “be careful with that thing. You could hurt somebody with it.”
    “I am Sir John — “
    “I have an evil temper!” I shouted at them, making my voice its