James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

Of course, I had not seen Ripston since that remarkable night at the gaff, and all that I knew of his address was that it was “somewhere nigh the church.” Without doubt, he meant the old parish church; and, though there were a good many streets thereabout, there could not be a great number of coal and potato shops. When I found the one where Ripston worked, I would go boldly in, ask for him, and tell him all about it.

So I comforted myself; but I found the task much more difficult than I had anticipated. There were, after all, a very great number of little and big coal and potato shops in the vicinity of the church, and I asked at least half-a-dozen of these—asking if “Ripston” worked there—without any success. I began to despair. Perhaps he didn’t go by the name of Ripston now. Perhaps he had left his situation and gone quite out of the neighbourhood. When just as I had applied at my seventh greengrocery store, and been snapped up very short indeed by the person that kept it, and who evidently had a suspicion that I was making game of her, just as I turned out of the shop once more disappointed, and was looking up and down wondering which way I should go, there I spied Ripston with half-a-hundred of coal on his shoulder, and a bunch of greens in a basket on his other arm, lumbering along on the other side of the path, but not so bowed down by the great weight but that he could whistle “Jim Crow.” When I, skipping across the road, clapped him on the back and called on him by name, so much was he startled that there would have been coals to pick up had I not assisted him in saving the toppling sack.

Scarcely giving him time to recover his breath, there and then, with the coal-sack still on his shoulder, I poured into his amazed ears the story of my connexion with Long George Hopkins, and how I had run away and why.

“Here, ketch hold!” exclaimed he, excitedly, and before I had quite finished my narrative, at the same time thrusting into my arms the basket of greens, “carry that, and we shall get along all the quicker. It’s on’y round the corner. I told my guv’ner all about what you told me at the gaff, and about the cove wot said he was your uncle as met you comin’ out, and he ses, ses he, the werry next time you sees him, if he ain’t too far gone, ses he, you bring him along to me; come on.”

And, despite his half-hundred weight of ballast, Ripston, in his eagerness to introduce me to his master, stepped out at such a rate that I, much lighter, freighted with the greens, could hardly keep pace with him.

“Here he is, sir!” exclaimed Rip, turning into a thriving-looking green-grocer’s shop and addressing a little bald-headed man busy at the potato-bin, “this is the one I was a speakin’ on, sir; this is Smiff; he ain’t gone a bit furder, sir, than when I last seed him, if you wouldn’t mind talkin’ to him.”

The little bald-headed man adjusted his spectacles, and deliberately surveyed me. “So this is the lad, is it?” said he. Then he went to the door of the shop-parlour and called “Sarah!” who came up from somewhere below. She was very little younger than he was, and she had white hair in tidy little plaits, just showing under the frill of her round cap. He spoke a few words to her; and then, turning to me, said, “Go in there, my boy; I’ll speak to you when I’ve finished my job.”

But I didn’t have to wait to be talked to till that time. The green-grocer’s wife began to question me in such a soft, motherly way that I was speedily in deep conversation with her. In the midst of it, she went to the door and called her husband.

“Come in here, Tibbit,” said she; “of all the strange stories I ever heard, this bangs everything.”

So old Mr. Tibbit came in, and I told him the story. Its effect on him was no less astonishing than on his wife. As I approached the end of it, he got up from his chair; and, taking a coat from a peg behind the door, put it on, and pulled off his blue apron, and all the while I narrated the particulars of Long George Hopkins’s singular behaviour that, morning—showing him the half-sovereign I was to buy the light shoes with—he was fidgeting from one leg to the other and brushing his beaver hat with the cuff of his coat.

“What’s to be done, father?” asked Mrs. Tibbit; “where are you going? what are you going to do?”

“There’s only one thing to do that I see, my dear,” replied the old greengrocer in a decided tone; “I shall take the lad round to the police-station at once; it’s much more their business than mine. You’ll come, boy, won’t you?”

“What for, sir?” I inquired, tremendously alarmed at the unexpected turn affairs had taken. My last business with the Ilford constabulary had not ended so satisfactorily as to make me anxious for a fresh introduction to the police.

“To prevent this burglary. That’s the first thing to be seen to, whatever we do afterwards. Don’t you be alarmed, my lad; the police will put Mr. Long Hopkins where he can’t hurt you, never fear. Come along.”

I would much rather not have gone; but there was no help for it, and in five minutes afterwards I was face to face with a police-inspector. Once more I told the story; but the effect of it on my two previous listeners was flat and dull compared with this one. He wasn’t still an instant when once his interest warmed, which it did as soon as I mentioned the names of Twiner and Johnny Armitage. He made frequent signs by holding up his forefinger for me to stop for a moment while he dashed down a hurried note with his quill-pen; he brushed up his stubbly hair fiercely on each side with both his hands; he took tremendous pinches of snuff with startling rapidity, and nodded and winked, and clicked his finger and thumb as pleasantly excited as a man who has had a swinging and unexpected legacy left to him. When I ceased talking he looked towards me with startling abruptness.

“That’s all? There’s nothing behind? Out with it, if there is; you know, we’re sure to find it out.”

“That’s all, sir.”

“Now, don’t say that, or I shan’t believe a word of it,” observed the inspector, glaring at me savagely; “what about the woman? You hav’n’t told us half of what you know about her—not a quarter; out with it. She told you not to mention her name in the business, I know, but you mustn’t mind that, she’ll be all right. Now, then, what made her split on George?”

With all sincerity I assured Mr. Inspector that I couldn’t tell, but proceeding to cross-examine me in his peculiar manner, he found out in a very few minutes, and to his perfect satisfaction.

“The old story you see, Mr. Tibbit,” said he, rubbing his hands gleefully. “Bless the women! I don’t know how we should get on without ’em. Not that he’s to be pitied; he’s earned his leg irons years ago. How he’s kept out of ’em is one of the wonders. We’ll have another cast for him now, at all events, and land him, too, if bait and tackle will do it.”

The inspector took one or two hurried turns up and down the room, and then suddenly turning to me, inquired what time it was when I came away from Keate Street.

It was ten minutes to ten, for when I looked into the parlour where Mrs. Hopkins was making signs I noticed the time by the clock that stood on the mantel-shelf.

“Now it’s five minutes to eleven,” remarked the inspector, consulting his watch. The watch was of the sort known as a “hunter,” and with his chin in one hand, and the timekeeper in the other, he regarded five minutes to eleven with a profound air, until it must have abated at least forty seconds of that time. Then he suddenly closed the case of the hunter with an emphatic click and replaced it in his fob, while his face wore the expression of a man who has quite made his mind up.