Coulson Kernahan

“ And now again I read your thoughts, and this time you say: 'This man, this Cæsar in conception, this criminal in act, preaches humanity and practises inhumanity; this man speaks of the poor with Christ-like compassion, even while his hands are red with his fellow-creatures' blood.' But whom have I slain? My enemies? Never! My enemies, my deadliest enemy, I would not stoop so much as to strike across the face. But God's enemies, the enemies of God's cause, against them I will use all the cunning and craft of my brain, to wipe them off the face of the earth. ”

“ Whether it was the man then standing before me in the opium den who thus laughed, or whether it was the man I had seen kneeling on my chest, a knife in his hand and my life at his mercy, I do not know, and matters nothing, for the face was the same. Then suddenly he turned from me, another being altogether.
"No, don't, old man; think of the risk you run," I heard him say to his friend, laying a hand affectionately on the other's shoulder, those inscrutable eyes of his—all the cunning and cruelty gone—becoming liquid and appealing. ”

“ He was an aristocrat. He was more, even, than an aristocrat; but we will not talk further of that now. She was my mother, but not his wife. She was the mother of his child, and he left her and her child to starve. We did not starve; but I pass over those years. When I was ten, she broke down, worked out, worn out, wearied out. Then I took over her burden. No matter what my work, no matter who my employer. There are thousands of such employers as he; there are millions of such workers as I—workers whom no law protects. You may not be cruel to a cat or dog; you may not over-work a horse. ”

“ We want the co-operation of no one who is not persuaded in his own mind of the righteousness of our cause. From what I've seen of you, Mr. Rissler, you are just the sort of man with whom I should like to be associated in my work. Your getting out of that opium den with a whole skin when, believing you to be Grant, I'd given the strictest orders that you shouldn't leave the place alive, proves you to be a man ready of resource and quick of brain, just such a man whose co-operation would ensure the final success of the cause. ”

“ I could give chapter and verse in proof of inconceivable infamy. I could give instances of men, women, and even children living under circumstances more degrading than could be found in any so-called savage race. I should, in common honesty, be compelled to admit that by many of these who are most in evidence, as in search of work—work is the very last thing in the world that they really desire to find. Hymn-bawling in the streets is the nearest most of them have ever come to earning their bread by the sweat of their brow ”

“ You're in a minority in Parliament, and minorities always get crushed. We have got it on the authority of a Cabinet Minister—and he ought to know. But it's them as is in a minority outside. If you have men's blood in your veins, you'll up and crush them. You're a thousand to one, you poor, what sweat and slave and starve to make money for the rich folk to spend. ”

“ The cry of wan-faced, hollow-eyed women, working a week of winter days and nights in a fireless garret till their chilled fingers can scarce hold the needle, and for a wage, that on the streets to which—small wonder!—such women are, by starvation and despair, too often driven, can be earned at so light a cost. But most of all, the cry of little children—little hollow-eyed children, crying silently because they are hungry and cold, stretching wan hands for the bread——My God! ”

“ But I managed it at last, and staggered to the fence, upon which I hoisted my burden, where he lay for all the world like a straw-stuffed Guy Fawkes, his silly head and his body and shoulders lolling helplessly towards the river, his hips and legs hanging down limply on the side of the fence that faced the house. Then I scrambled over myself, muttering, "You come along o' me to Westminster, my pretty. A man who can hang both sides of a fence, as you can, is wasted outside of Parliament." ”

“ I dashed down the stairs and through a door which led to a corridor, at the end of which was a conservatory. A cold wind indicated either an open door or window—perhaps a broken window. As I raced along the corridor—the bewildered Metcalfe so far behind me that I could hear his heavy steps descending the stairs—I saw that though all the other plants in the conservatory were perfectly still, one white-blossomed flower in a pot was swaying and moving as if in a draught, and the next moment there peered, through a broken pane of glass behind it, the white and wicked face of the Dumpling. ”

“ It's you who hold the whip—not them. If the down-trodden people of the country was only to rise up and assert their rights, the landlords and landowners and grabbers and sweaters couldn't hold out for one hour. Come out of it, boys! Come out of it, all of you who are men and not monkeys. Monkeys!' he says. 'Yes, you are monkeys. You are like monkeys chained to a piano-organ, and the piano-organ that's what they call Parliament. The poor man he has to do the dancing and get the whip, same as the monkey does, and the rich man gets the money and chooses the tune. ”

“ The improvidence, the thriftlessness, of you poor is criminal! I'm afraid you're an idle, worthless fellow, Wright,' she says, 'and not deserving of any help until I see that you've reformed your ways.'"
Then, moved perhaps by the memory of his recent privations, he suddenly seemed to lose all self-control. Springing to his feet, he shook his clenched fist in the air, as with flaming face and voice hoarse with frenzy, he shouted:
"Reform my ways? Idle, worthless fellow, am I? Ah! but the days of grinding us down are gone. The days of them that oppress the poor are over! ”

“ For the committal of a crime, here, surely, is a vantage ground which is ideal and ready-made to hand. A stranger, ascending the staircase, as I am, in the [Pg 19] dark, could be knocked on the head with impunity, and nobody be the wiser. Under cover of night, the body could be dropped out of the window, conveyed across that fever-breeding piece of waste land, and hoisted over yonder fence into the river. In an hour a corpse would be borne miles away from the scene of the crime, leaving never so much as a trace behind to tell how, and by whose hand, it came there. ”

“ Kate turned to me.
"Mr. Rissler," she said, "I want you to promise that you will do nothing of the sort again."
"Nothing of what sort, Miss Carleton?" I asked, wondering whether she was speaking for herself, or from instructions she had received from her aunt.
"This detective work?" she replied.
"But why?" I asked. "What difference can it make to you in what way I employ myself?"
"For one thing," she said ruefully, "you'll be killed to a certainty. This dreadful man is clearly too clever for you." ”

“ The love that I bear to these my people, of whom I am one, burns more steadily than ever within me; but side by side with it there has sprung up a fiercer flame—the fires of fierce and relentless hate of their oppressors. Me, God has marked out to be the avenger of the poor. ”

“ Such knowledge as that gives pause to the man who is minded to assert his independence, for out of his meagre salary it is almost impossible to save; and to be out of work even for a week or two, with nothing to fall back upon, means not only starvation for him and his, but means that every week he is out, the longer is he likely to remain so. It means shabby clothes; for how, without money, can he buy new clothes to keep up the appearance which is of so much importance to him when applying for a post? ”

“ And the battle—which shall be called Armageddon—the battle which shall set Labour upon the throne as Lord and Ruler of this land—that battle approaches, and in that battle I shall fall. If I fall, all falls, unless God raise up a second in command who shall be the leader of the people after I am gone. That leader I believe you are marked out to be. That is why I dare not kill you; that is why I am going to do the maddest thing a sane man ever did. ”

“ I sometimes think I am mad when I brood over their sufferings and their wrongs. A great writer has put it on record that when he looks upon his fellow-men and fellow-women, and remembers that pain and sorrow and disease, for themselves and their dear ones, are the inevitable lot of all, and death the only certainty—when he sees them smiling, flirting, posturing, grimacing on the very edge of Eternity, he is filled with amazement and contempt. ”

“ Of the man who dares so to act, so to set employers as a class at defiance, an object-lesson must be made, lest so dangerous an example infect the workers who remain. I have known cases where, to such a man, not only has a character been refused, but where a trumped-up charge of theft, or insubordination, or other misconduct, has been brought against him, that he and his fellow-slaves may be taught the salutary lesson that, against Capital, Labour has no chance; against the employer, the employee has no appeal. ”

“ The hapless Parker had told me of seven millionaires who once a month repaired to a tavern in Shadwell, where they dined upon humble fare, drank "four half" out of pint pots, and smoked shag tobacco in clay pipes. It did not seem to be an improbable story, and, personally, I had a secret and sneaking sympathy—due possibly to my own low tastes—with anything which promised so complete and sensible a return to nature. ”

“ Your decent, deserving, hard-working man, whom ill-health and misfortune have brought to want, will creep away secretly to starve, in silence to suffer and to die, while your rascally loafer, who has never done an honest day's work in his life, seizes upon every opportunity of 'times being bad,' or of men being known to be out of work, to parade the streets, hymn-howling and copper-cadging for the wherewithal to spend in the public-house. ”

“ You have done your work well and faithfully, as witness your heroic attempt—mere handful as you are—to oppose this army of God which, as surely as you and I still breathe the breath of life, is marching on to victory. ”

“ And, more terrible still, do you know what it is to be so abject a thing, so infamous a creature, that you are content to play the cut-throat to your fellow-slave, to pry and spy and carry tales, in the hope that you may be appointed to replace him, and so put another shilling a week in your own pocket, and another sovereign in that of the tyrant and blood-sucker, to curry favour with whom you are ready to do this infamous thing? ”

“ They must be made to do the greatest possible amount of work at the least possible rate of pay. And that they be compelled to endure this wholesale blood-sucking and robbery, they must of necessity be kept in a state of subjection, of fear, of slavery, and bondage. All feeling of independence, of having a soul or a conscience to call their own, must be taken from them. ”

“ It is a system of infamy—a system which breeds men and women who are lower in the scale of being than a louse. You think I exaggerate. But do you know what it is to wake up each morning so weary that you had scarce the strength to struggle up that you might go forth to work for the day's bread? ”

“ CHAPTER VII. I AM SNUBBED BY SCOTLAND YARD.
It was "murder," as Parker had said. Even as I went down I was conscious of the horror, of the inhumanity, of letting a poor devil, tied hand and foot like a dog in a sack, go to his doom with never a chance of making a fight for his life. For myself, being a fair swimmer, and accustomed to a cold dip in rough seas, winter and summer, I was in no such fear as entirely to lose my presence of mind. The danger lay, of course, in my being sucked under the ship's bottom and drowned before I could make my way to the surface ”

“ Rissler, sir," was speedily [Pg 74] changed into a look of blank and crest-fallen surprise, for instead of receiving me as a favoured caller, the superintendent—who, as we entered, had his ear glued to the telephone—jumped up in a passion, and shouted:
"How dare you show this person, or any person, into my room without permission?"
Looking at me viciously, as at one who had been guilty of the crime of obtaining a respectful reception under false pretences, the unfortunate constable stammered out:
"Very sorry, sir; but thought that the gentlem—person—was a friend of yours." ”

“ The great revolution has failed of coming thus far, the cause of Labour has failed thus far, for one reason, and one reason only—there is no Napoleon to lead the people to victory. Once find Labour her Napoleon, and Labour will rule the land. ”

“ The man who has not only a genius for organisation, but has also a genius for compelling other people implicitly to accept his orders, and to abide by his organisation [Pg 288] —the man who can, at will, mould mankind in the lump, as the potter moulds clay—comes only once in a hundred years. Such a man was the Dumpling. Instead of letting his vast army straggle invertebrately westwards under his single command, his system of subdividing it into companies, each under a separate picked leader, taking orders from himself, worked out with surprisingly successful results. ”

“ Another reason why a man hesitates to throw off his chains is that some employers have been known to refuse a character to the clerk or assistant who has asserted his independence, and the independence of his class, by discharging himself; and at the man who comes seeking work, without a 'character,' no other employer will look. For an employee to dare to prove that he [Pg 168] has been overworked and underpaid by discharging himself, and finding new employment, where the work is less and the rate of pay higher, would be an example (your employer argues) which would demoralise the whole staff. ”

“ And this is what I want to say to you, sir. When the trouble comes, if you should find yourself among enemies, if you should find yourself in danger o' your life, as'll happen to many like you afore long, just you throw up your left arm with your fist closed, and say, 'God and Napoleon and the Dumpling strike with a granite arm!'"
He looked furtively around him as if afraid of being overheard by eavesdroppers, and then repeated the sentence, "'God and Napoleon and the Dumpling strike with a granite arm!' That's the word, sir. ”

“ But a poor devil of a writer of magazine articles and detective stories can't afford to offend the powers that be—especially so influential an editor as Harrison, or so wealthy a proprietor as Waldorf. So to London I must go, worse luck: to London I must go!"
Within half an hour I had changed my clothes, packed, paid my bill, and was in the train.
"Good-bye, my lovely Lady Disdain, my dear and lovely Lady of the Lake," I said, kissing my hand in the direction of my late escapade, as we puffed out of the station; "or rather au revoir, for soon, very soon, we shall meet again." ”