Dodger Page 0,118
something like that is going to happen it’s a good job you are standing in a sewer. It was nothing; he knew the dead could be quite noisy at times, as Mrs Holland had said. What with gases and so on, corpses might be said to speak long after they were dead. He opened his carefully prepared little bag of camphor and cayenne pepper, which ought to keep the rats away, for long enough at least.
As he stood back to look at his handiwork, he was glad, very glad, that he wouldn’t have to do it ever again. Then there was nothing more to do, apart from packing up his gloves, but he also took great care to leave the sewer at some distance away from the scene of the crime – if such it could be called, he added to himself. Finding a pump, he washed his hands in London water, which he knew was always slightly suspicious unless you boiled it, but good old lye soap was a reliable if caustic companion. Then he strolled back to Seven Dials with the air of a young man just enjoying the sunshine which, in fact, was rather strange today, as if something was going on in the upper air.
He didn’t think very much about this, however, for as soon as he got home two peelers were waiting for him, and one of them said, ‘Sir Robert would like a word with you, my little lad.’ He sniffed at the leftover lavender that Dodger had chosen to take home because it was always welcome around Onan. ‘Flowers for your girl, hey?’
Dodger ignored him, but he had been expecting something like this, since once the peelers had got interested in you, they kept on being interested in you, apparently thinking that sooner or later you would break down and confess to everything. It was a sort of game, and the worst of it was when they tried to seem to be friends. And so, like the upstanding citizen he was, he accompanied the two men to Scotland Yard, but making sure that he went with the swagger of a geezer and everyone in the rookeries could see that this wasn’t something he was in agreement with – for Dodger had a reputation to keep down; it was bad enough to be an official hero, but he would be damned if he was going to be seen to go willingly into anywhere where peelers lurked. It wouldn’t be the first, third or tenth time the peelers thought they had got Dodger and would have to think again.
Sir Robert Peel was waiting for him. Even now Dodger didn’t trust him – he looked like a swell, but had a street gleam in his eye. The head of the peelers regarded him over his desk and said, ‘Have you ever heard of the Outlander, my friend?’
‘No,’ lied Dodger, on the basis that you always lied to a policeman if at all possible.
Sir Robert gave him a blank look and said that the police forces of Europe would very much like to see the Outlander behind bars or, for preference, swinging from the gallows. ‘The Outlander is an assassin. He is a sharp man, Mister Dodger, and so are his knives. We presume from as much information as we can glean that he is very much interested in the whereabouts of Miss Simplicity. And, by association, you. We both know the facts of the matter, and I must assume that someone somewhere is getting extremely impatient, as evinced by the murder of Sharp Bob and his employee. We appear to be running out of time, Mister Dodger. You must understand that the British government would be doing nothing wrong in the eyes of many people if a runaway wife was sent back to her legal husband.’ He sniffed. ‘Distasteful as that would seem to many of us who are cognizant of the circumstances of this whole sordid matter. The clock is ticking, my friend. People in power do not like to be continually thwarted, and can I at this stage also draw to your attention the fact that I am one of them.’
There was a tapping noise and Dodger glanced down at Sir Robert Peel’s left hand, the fingers of which were drumming on a pile of documents which seemed rather familiar.
Sir Robert looked at his face and said, ‘I know, because it is my job to know these things, that a certain embassy was broken