I stopped for nothing but dashed in after him, the men giving way at
first, but as I blundered in my haste against one rough-looking fellow,
he roared out savagely: "Now, then, where are you running to?" and made a snatch at my collar.
I eluded him by making quite a bound in my alarm, and nearly falling
over the leg of another, who thrust it out to trip me up. I escaped a
fall, however, and entered the court, which seemed to be half full of
children, just in time to see my boy slip into a house nearly at the
bottom, on the left.
He stopped for a moment to look back to see if I was coming, and then he
disappeared, and my heart gave a bound, for in my excitement I felt that
I had succeeded, and that I had traced the young thief to his lair.
I did not think about anything else, only that the children all stopped
their games and set up a kind of yell, while it seemed to me that the
men who were at the entrance of the court were all following me slowly
with their hands thrust down low in their pockets, and it struck me for
the moment that they were all coming down to see the capture of the
thief.
I was in happy ignorance just then that I had followed the boy into one
of the vilest and most dangerous parts of London in those days,--to wit
a Drury Lane court, one of the refuges of some of the worst characters
in that district.
In this ignorance I was still observant, and noticed that the doors on
each side of the dirty court stood wide open, while the yell set up by
the children brought people to some of the open windows.
That was all seen in a glance, as I made for the open door at the end,
before which a boy of my own size ran as if to stop me; but even if I
had wished to stop just then I could not, and I gave him a sharp push,
the weight of my body driving him back into a sitting position as I
stumbled in from the pavement, up a couple of stone steps, and on to the
boards of the narrow passage, which seemed, by contrast to the bright
sunshine outside, quite dark.
I did not stop, but went on as if by instinct to the end, passed a
flight of steps leading down to the cellar kitchen, up which came a
noisome odour that turned me sick, and began to ascend the stairs before
me.
Then I paused for a moment with my hand on a sticky balustrade and
listened.
Yes! I was quite right, for up above me I could hear the stairs
creaking as if some one was going up; and to make me the more sure that
the boy had not entered a room I could hear his hoarse panting,
accompanied by a faint whimpering cry, as if every moment or two he kept
saying softly, "Oh!"