The Mysteries of London. George W. M. Reynolds
the dungeon became pitch dark; and then the murderer saw sights more appalling than when the faint gleam stole through the grating.
In due time the sonorous voice of Saint Sepulchre proclaimed the hour of nine.
Scarcely had the last stroke of that iron tongue died upon the breeze, when a noise at the head of the spiral staircase fell upon the murderer's ears. The trap-door was raised, and the well-known voice of Dick Flairer was heard.
"Well, Bill—alive or dead, eh—old fellow!" exclaimed the burglar.
"Alive—and that's all, Dick," answered Bill Bolter, ascending the staircase.
"My God! how pale you are, Bill," said Dick, the moment the light of the candle fell upon the countenance of the murderer as he emerged from the trap-door.
"Pale, Dick!" ejaculated the wretch, a shudder passing over his entire frame; "I do not believe I can stand a night in that infernal hole."
"You must, Bill—you must," said Flairer: "all is discovered up in Union Court there, and the police are about in all directions."
"When was it found out? Tell me the particulars—speak!" said the murderer, with frenzied impatience.
"Why, it appears that the neighbours heard a devil of a noise in your room, but didn't think nothink about it, cos you and Polly used to spar a bit now and then. But at last the boy—Harry, I mean—went down stairs and said that his mother wouldn't move, and that his father had gone away. So up the neighbours went—and then everything was blown. The children was sent to the workus, and the coroner held his inquest this afternoon at three. Harry was had up before him; and—"
"And what?" demanded Bolter, hastily.
"And, in course," added Dick, "the Coroner got out of the boy ull the particklars: so the jury returned a verdict——"
"Of Wilful Murder, eh?" said Bill, sinking his voice almost to a whisper.
"Wilful Murder against William Bolter," answered Dick, coolly.
"That little vagabond Harry!" cried the criminal—his entire countenance distorted with rage; "I'll be the death on him!"
"There's no news at all about t'other affair up at Clapton, and no stir made in it at all," said Dick, after a moment's pause: "so that there business is all right. But here's a lot of grub and plenty of lush, Bill: that'll cheer ye, if nothink else will."
"Dick!" exclaimed the murderer, "I cannot go back into that hole—I had rather get nabbed at once. The few hours I have already been there have nearly drove me mad; and I can't—I won't attempt the night in that infernal cold damp vault. I feel as if I was in my coffin."
"Well, you know best," said Dick, coolly. "A hempen neckcloth at Tuck-up fair, and a leap from a tree with only one leaf, is what you'll get if you're perverse."
"My God—my God!" ejaculated Bolter, wringing his hands, and throwing glances of extreme terror around the room: "what am I to do? what am I to do?"
"Lie still down below for a few weeks, or go out and be scragged," said Dick Flairer. "Come, Bill, be a man; and don't take on in this here way. Besides, I'm in a hurry, and must be off. I've brought you enough grub for three days, as I shan't come here too often till the business has blowed over a little."
Bill Bolter took a long draught from a quart bottle of rum which his friend had brought with him; and he then felt his spirits revive. Horrible as the prospect of a long sojourn in the dungeon appeared, it was still preferable to the fearful doom which must inevitably follow his capture; and, accordingly, the criminal once more returned to his hiding-place.
Dick Flairer promised to return on the third evening from that time; and the trap-door again closed over the head of the murderer.
Bolter supped off a portion of the provisions which his friend had brought him, and then lay down upon the hard stone bench to sleep. A noisome stench entered the dungeon from the Ditch, and the rats ran over the person of the inmate of that subterranean hole. Repose was impossible; the miserable wretch therefore sate up, and began to smoke.
By accident he kicked his leg a little way beneath the stone bench: the heel of his boot encountered something that yielded to the touch; and a strange noise followed.
That noise was like the rattling of bones!
The pipe fell from the man's grasp; and he himself was stupefied with sudden terror.
At length, exercising immense violence over his feelings, he determined to ascertain whether the horrible suspicions which had entered his mind, were well-founded or not.
He thrust his hand beneath the bench, and encountered the mouldering bones of a human skeleton.
With indescribable feelings of agony and horror he threw himself upon the bench—his hair on end, and his heart palpitating violently.
Heaven only can tell how he passed that long weary night—alone, in the darkness of the dungeon, with his own thoughts, the skeleton of some murdered victim, and the vermin that infected the subterranean hole.
He slept not a wink throughout those live-long hours, the lapse of which was proclaimed by the voice of Saint Sepulchre's solemn and deep toned bell.
And none who heard the bell during that night experienced feelings of such intense anguish and horror as the murderer in his lurking-hole. Not even the neighbouring prison of Newgate, nor the hospital of Saint Bartholomew, nor the death-bed of a parent, knew mental suffering so terrible as that which wrung the heart of this guilty wretch.
The morning dawned; and the light returned to the dungeon.
The clock had just struck eight, and the murderer was endeavouring to force a mouthful of food down his throat, when the voice of a man in the street fell upon his ear. He drew close up to the grating, and clearly heard the following announcement:—
"Here is a full and perfect account of the horrible assassination committed by the miscreant William Bolter, upon the person of his wife; with a portrait of the murderer, and a representation of the room as it appeared when the deed was first discovered by a neighbour. Only one Penny! The fullest and most perfect account—only one Penny!"
A pause ensued, and then the voice, bawling more lustily than before, continued thus:—
"A full and perfect account of the bloody and cruel murder in Upper Union Court; showing how the assassin first dashed out one of his victim's eyes, and then fractured her skull upon the floor. Only one Penny, together with a true portrait of the murderer, for whose apprehension a reward of One Hundred Pounds is offered! Only one Penny!"
"A reward of one hundred pounds!" cried another voice: "my eye! how I should like to find him!"
"Wouldn't I precious soon give him up!" ejaculated a third.
"I wonder whereabouts he is," said a fourth. "No doubt that he has run away—perhaps to America—perhaps to France."
"That shews how much you know about such things," said a fifth speaker. "It is a very strange fact, that murderers always linger near the scene of their crime; they are attracted towards it, seemingly, as the moth is to the candle. Now, for my part, I shouldn't at all wonder if the miscreant was within a hundred yards of us at the present moment."
"Only one Penny! The fullest and most perfect account of the horrible and bloody murder——"
The itinerant vender of pamphlets passed on, followed by the crowd which his vociferations had collected; and his voice soon ceased to break the silence of the morning.
Bolter sank down upon the stone bench, a prey to maddening feelings and fearful emotions.
A hundred pounds were offered for his capture! Such a sum might tempt even Dick Flairer or Tom the Cracksman to betray him.