‘Then idiots talk,’ said Eugene, leaning back, folding his arms, smoking with his eyes shut, and speaking slightly through his nose, ‘of Energy. If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy. It is such a conventional superstition, such parrot gabble! What the deuce! Am I to rush out into the street, collar the first man of a wealthy appearance that I meet, shake him, and say, “Go to law upon the spot, you dog, and retain me, or I’ll be the death of you”? Yet that would be energy.’
‘Precisely my view of the case, Eugene. But show me a good opportunity, show me something really worth being energetic about, and I’ll show you energy.’
‘And so will I,’ said Eugene.
And it is likely enough that ten thousand other young men, within the limits of the London Post-office town delivery, made the same hopeful remark in the course of the same evening.
The wheels rolled on, and rolled down by the Monument and by the Tower, and by the Docks; down by Ratcliffe, and by Rotherhithe; down by where accumulated scum of humanity seemed to be washed from higher grounds, like so much moral sewage, and to be pausing until its own weight forced it over the bank and sunk it in the river. In and out among vessels that seemed to have got ashore, and houses that seemed to have got afloat – among bow-splits staring into windows, and windows staring into ships – the wheels rolled on, until they stopped at a dark corner, river-washed and otherwise not washed at all, where the boy alighted and opened the door.
‘You must walk the rest, sir; it’s not many yards.’ He spoke in the singular number, to the express exclusion of Eugene.
‘This is a confoundedly out-of-the-way place,’ said Mortimer, slipping over the stones and refuse on the shore, as the boy turned the corner sharp.
‘Here’s my father’s, sir; where the light is.’
The low building had the look of having once been a mill. There was a rotten wart of wood upon its forehead that seemed to indicate where the sails had been, but the whole was very indistinctly seen in the obscurity of the night. The boy lifted the latch of the door, and they passed at once into a low circular room, where a man stood before a red fire, looking down into it, and a girl sat engaged in needlework. The fire was in a rusty brazier, not fitted to the hearth; and a common lamp, shaped like a hyacinth-root, smoked and flared in the neck of a stone bottle on the table. There was a wooden bunk or berth in a corner, and in another corner a wooden stair leading above – so clumsy and steep that it was little better than a ladder. Two or three old sculls and oars stood against the wall, and against another part of the wall was a small dresser, making a spare show of the commonest articles of crockery and cooking-vessels. The roof of the room was not plastered, but was formed of the flooring of the room above. This, being very old, knotted, seamed, and beamed, gave a lowering aspect to the chamber; and roof, and walls, and floor, alike abounding in old smears of flour, red-lead (or some such stain which it had probably acquired in warehousing), and damp, alike had a look of decomposition.
‘The gentleman, father.’
The figure at the red fire turned, raised its ruffled head, and looked like a bird of prey.
‘You’re Mortimer Lightwood Esquire; are you, sir?’
‘Mortimer Lightwood is my name. What you found,’ said Mortimer, glancing rather shrinkingly towards the bunk; ‘is it here?’
‘’Tain’t not to say here, but it’s close by. I do everything reg’lar. I’ve giv’ notice of the circumstarnce to the police, and the police have took possession of it. No time ain’t been lost, on any hand. The police have put into print already, and here’s what the print says of it.’
Taking up the bottle with the lamp in it, he held it near a paper on the wall, with the police heading, BODY FOUND. The two friends read the handbill as it stuck against the wall, and Gaffer read them as he held the light.
‘Only papers on the unfortunate man, I see,’ said Lightwood, glancing from the description of what was found, to the finder.
‘Only papers.’
Here the girl arose with her work in her hand, and went out at the door.
‘No money,’ pursued Mortimer; ‘but threepence in one of the skirt-pockets.’
‘Three. Penny. Pieces,’ said Gaffer Hexam, in as many sentences.
‘The trousers pockets empty, and turned inside out.’
Gaffer Hexam nodded. ‘But that’s common. Whether it’s the wash of the tide or no, I can’t say. Now, here,’ moving the light to another similar placard, ‘his pockets was found empty, and turned inside out. And here,’ moving the light to another, ‘her pocket was found empty, and turned inside out. And so was this one’s. And so was that one’s. I can’t read, nor I don’t want to it, for I know ‘em by their places on the wall. This one was a sailor, with two anchors and a flag and G. F. T. on his arm. Look and see if he warn’t.’
‘Quite right.’
‘This one was the young woman in grey boots, and her linen marked with a cross. Look and see if she warn’t.’
‘Quite right.’
‘This is him as had a nasty cut over the eye. This is them two young sisters what tied themselves together with a handkecher. This the drunken old chap, in a pair of list slippers and a nightcap, wot had offered – it afterwards come out – to make a hole in the water for a quartern of rum stood aforehand, and kept to his word for the first and last time in his life. They pretty well papers the room, you see; but I know ‘em all. I’m scholar enough!’
He waved the light over the whole, as if to typify the light of his scholarly intelligence, and then put it down on the table and stood behind it looking intently at his visitors. He had the special peculiarity of some birds of prey, that when he knitted his brow, his ruffled crest stood highest.
‘You did not find all these yourself; did you?’ asked Eugene.
To which the bird of prey slowly rejoined, ‘And what might your name be, now?’
‘This is my friend,’ Mortimer Lightwood interposed; ‘Mr Eugene Wrayburn.’
‘Mr Eugene Wrayburn, is it? And what might Mr Eugene Wrayburn have asked of me?’
‘I asked you, simply, if you found all these yourself?’
‘I answer you, simply, most on ‘em.’
‘Do you suppose there has been much violence and robbery, beforehand, among these cases?’
‘I don’t suppose at all about it,’ returned Gaffer. ‘I ain’t one of the supposing sort. If you’d got your living to haul out of the river every day of your life, you mightn’t be much given to supposing. Am I to show the way?’
As he opened the door, in pursuance of a nod from Lightwood, an extremely pale and disturbed face appeared in the doorway – the face of a man much agitated.
‘A body missing?’ asked Gaffer Hexam, stopping short; ‘or a body found? Which?’
‘I am lost!’ replied the man, in a hurried and an eager manner.
‘Lost?’
‘I – I – am a stranger, and don’t know the way. I – I – want to find the place where I can see what is described here. It is possible I may know it.’ He was panting, and could hardly speak; but, he showed a copy of the newly-printed bill that was still wet upon the wall. Perhaps its newness, or perhaps the accuracy of his observation of its general look, guided Gaffer to a ready conclusion.
‘This gentleman, Mr Lightwood, is on that business.’
‘Mr Lightwood?’
During a pause, Mortimer and the stranger confronted each other. Neither knew the other.
‘I think, sir,’ said Mortimer, breaking the awkward silence with his airy self-possession, ‘that you did me the honour to mention my name?’
‘I