However, he continued to smoke, with his eyes intently fixed upon the blueish wreaths that ascended slowly and fantastically from the end of his cigar; and for five minutes after his entrance not a word was spoken.
At length the coal-whipper broke silence.
"Well, my dear," he said, addressing himself to the unfortunate girl who had already narrated a portion of her adventures, "you haven't done your story yet."
"Oh! I do not feel in the humour to go on with it to-night," she exclaimed, glancing uneasily towards the stranger. "Indeed, I recollect—I have an appointment—close by—"
She hesitated; then, apparently mustering up her courage, cried "Good-night, all," and left the room.
"Who the deuce is that feller, Tony?" demanded the Cracksman, in a whisper, of his companion. "I can't say I like his appearance at all."
"Oh! nonsense," answered the Resurrection Man: "he is some quiet chap that doesn't like to smoke and talk at the same time."
"But don't it seem as how he'd throwed a damp on the whole party?" continued the Cracksman, in the same subdued tone.
"Do you take me for a child that's frightened at a shadow?" said the Resurrection Man savagely. "I suppose you're afraid that this young Holford will play us false. Why—what could he do to us? Anything he revealed would only implicate himself. He knows nothing about our games up by the Bird-cage Walk there."
"I forgot that;—no more he doesn't," cried the Cracksman. "There's nobody can do us any harm, that I know on."
"One—and one only," answered the Resurrection Man, sinking his already subdued tone to the lowest possible whisper—"one only, I say, can injure us; and he will not dare to do it!"
"Who the devil do you mean?" demanded the Cracksman.
"I mean the only man that ever escaped out of the crib up by the walk after he had received a blow from my stick," answered the Resurrection Man.
"You don't mean to say, Tony," whispered the Cracksman, his countenance giving the most unequivocal signs of alarm, "that there's a breathing soul which ever went in the door of that crib an intended wictim, and come out alive agin!"
"Never do you mind now. We shall make all the people stare at us if we go on whispering in this way. Supposing any one did mean to nose upon us haven't we got our barkers in our pocket?"
"Ah! Tony," said the Cracksman, in whose mind these words of his companion seemed to arouse a sudden and most disagreeable idea—"talking about nosing makes me remember someot that I was told a few days ago up in Rat's Castle in the Rookery."
"And what was that?" asked the Resurrection Man, surveying his friend with his serpent-like eyes in a manner that made him actually quail beneath the glance.
"What was it?" repeated the Cracksman, who appeared to hesitate whether he should proceed, or not: "why—I heard a magsman say that you nosed upon poor Crankey Jem, and that was the reason he got lagged and you was acquitted three year ago at the Old Bailey."
"And what did you say to that?" demanded the Resurrection Man, looking from beneath his bushy brows at the Cracksman, as the ghole in eastern mythology may be supposed to gaze on the countenance of him whom he marks for his victim.
"What did I say?" answered the Cracksman in a hoarse whisper: "why—I knocked the fellow down to be sure."
"And you did what you ought to do, and what I should have done if any one had told me that of you," said the Resurrection Man in a tone of the most perfect composure.
While this conversation took place, hurriedly and in whispers, the mysterious stranger continued to smoke his cigar without once glancing around him; and the other inmates of the Dark-House parlour, recovering a little from their panic at the entrance of that individual, made a faint attempt to renew the discourse.
But although the eyes of the stranger were apparently occupied in watching the wreaths of smoke, as they curled upwards to the ceiling, they were in reality intent upon the parlour window, the lower part of which alone was darkened by the sliding shutter that lifted up and down. There was a bright lamp over the front door of the public-house; and thus the heads of all the passengers in the street might be descried, as they passed the window, by the inmates of the parlour.
"I say, Ben," exclaimed one reveller to another, "have you heerd that they're a goin' to lay out a park up by Bonner's Road and Hackney Wick?"
"Yes—the Wictoria Park," was the reply. "On'y fancy giving them poor devils of Spitalfields weavers a park to walk in instead o' filling their bellies. But I 'spose they'll make a preshus deep pond in it."
"What for?" demanded the first speaker.
"Why—for the poor creturs to drown theirselves in, to be sure."
At this moment the countenance of a man in the street peered for a single instant over the shutter, and was then immediately withdrawn; but not before a significant glance had been exchanged with the stranger sitting in the neighbourhood of the door.
All this, however, remained entirely unnoticed by the male and female revellers in the parlour.
"Well, it's gone nine," whispered the Cracksman to his companion, "and this fellow Holford don't come. It's my opinion he ain't a-going to."
"We'll give him half an hour's grace," returned the Resurrection Man. "The young fool is hard up, and won't let the hope of five couters slip through his brain quite so easy."
"Half an hour's grace, as you say, Tony," whispered the Cracksman; "and then if he don't come: we'll be off—eh?"
"Oh! just as you like," growled the Resurrection Man. "You seem quite chicken-hearted to-night, Tom."
"I don't know how it is," answered the Cracksman; "but I've got a persentiment—as they calls it—of evil. The sight of that there feller there——" and he nodded towards the stranger.
"Humbug!" interrupted the Resurrection Man, "you haven't had grog enough—that's it."
He accordingly ordered the waiter to supply fresh tumblers of hot liquor; and the next half hour slipped away rapidly enough; but no Henry Holford made his appearance.
At a quarter to ten the two villains rose, and, having settled their score, departed.
Scarcely had the parlour door closed behind them, when the short thick-set stranger also retreated precipitately from the room.
Disappointed and in an ill-humour, the Resurrection Man and the Cracksman hurried away from the Dark-House towards the den situate in the immediate vicinity of the Bird-cage Walk.
The streets were ankle-deep in mud: a thin mizzling rain was falling; and neither moon nor stars appeared upon the dark and murky field of heaven.
The two men walked one a little in advance of the other, until they reached the top of Brick Lane, where they separated for the purpose of proceeding by different routes towards the game point—a precaution they invariably adopted after quitting any public place in each other's company.
But so well were the arrangements of the police concocted, that while the Resurrection Man continued his way along Tyssen Street, and the Cracksman turned to the right in Church Street until he reached Samuel Street, up which he proceeded, an active officer followed each: while in the neighbourhood of Virginia Street and the Bird-cage Walk numerous policemen were concealed in dark alleys, lone courts, and obscure nooks, ready to hasten to any point whence the spring of rattles might presently emanate.
Also