Dodger Page 0,25
knife at the head clerk and said, ‘Give me your money or I’ll gut yer like a clam. And nobody move!’
It was a large knife – a bread knife, with a serrated edge, perfectly OK in a house where someone wanted to carve up a loaf and probably, Dodger thought, not too bad either for carving up a person. But in the horrified silence he realized that the most frightened person in the room was the man with the knife, who was glaring at the clerks and taking no notice at all of Dodger.
Dodger thought: He is not sure what to do, but he is sure that he might have to stab one of these noodles who are staring at him and wetting their pants – and he pretty well knows that if he does that he will end up in Newgate prison, swinging from the gallows. These thoughts arrived in Dodger’s head like a railway train, and were followed in the guard’s van, as it were, with the recollection that he knew that voice and its accompanying smell of bad gin. And he knew that the man wasn’t a bad sort, not really, and he knew what had turned him to this kind of deed.
He did the only thing possible. In one movement he grabbed the spike from the desk and let the pointy bit just prick the man’s sweaty neck. Keeping his voice low and cheerful, he whispered to the wretched would-be thief, so quietly that the clerks wouldn’t hear, ‘Drop the knife right now and run for it; either that or you will be breathing through three nostrils. Look, it’s me, Dodger – you know Dodger.’ Then out loud he said, ‘We will have none of this around here, you bastard!’
He almost breathed the man’s relief, and certainly breathed an awful lot of gin fumes as he dragged him out of the place and into the fog. The clerks began to yell blue murder while Dodger shouted out loudly, ‘I’ll hold him, don’t you worry about that!’ He carried on walking the man out at speed, past the red-faced doorman and into the nearest alleyway, where he dragged the would-be thief – who, it could be said, was somewhat handicapped by his wooden leg which had a little metal piece on the end of it – along a few yards and pushed him into a dark corner.
The alley smelled like alleys everywhere: largely of desperation and impatience – and now also of Onan, who had vented his spleen and other things in protest, adding to the aromas of the alley a medal-winning stench. Blessedly, the fog made a kind of blanket over them. It stank, of course, but so did the man whose trousers were so lively that quite probably they could have gone for a walk all by themselves.
Dodger heard with relief the sound of the knife being dropped to the ground. He kicked it into the shadows, then heaved the man by his collar and hustled him to the other end of the alley, crossed the street and pulled him into a corner.
‘Stumpy Higgins!’ he said. ‘Blow me down if you aren’t the dumbest thief I’ve ever met. You know, next time you come up before the beak you will end up with the screws swinging on your ankles, you bloody idiot!’ He sniffed, and groaned. ‘Cor blimey, Stumpy, what a mess you are, ain’t you? Do you ever take a wash? Or ever stand out in the rain or even change those trousers?’ He looked into two eyes full of cataracts and sighed. ‘When did you last eat?’
Then Stumpy muttered something about not wanting to be a beggar, and Dodger nearly gave up on him, but the vision of Grandad was still in his mind.
‘Look, here’s sixpence,’ he said. ‘That should get you a decent bite and a space in the flophouse, if you don’t drink it all up. OK, you poor old bugger, now off you go – no one else is chasing you, so just keep on moving and get out of the neighbourhood. I’ve never seen you before in my life, I don’t know who you are, and by the look of you, Stumpy, neither do you, you poor old devil.’ Dodger sighed. ‘Look, if you’re going to hold up something, the time to get grogged up is after the business, not before, right?’
And that was it. Dodger went back to the Chronicle offices and there was a copper there already