The man was at first startled, then extremely angry, saying, ‘I am a policeman, you know!’
‘I don’t see no uniform, mister policeman,’ said Dodger. ‘I’ll tell you what, ’cos you have a nice face I’ll let you go, OK? And tell Mister Robert Peel that Dodger does things his way, all right?’
But he was, he thought, if not exactly in trouble with Scotland Yard, nevertheless certainly in a stew of sorts, and it was bubbling, wasn’t it just! Once the peelers from Scotland Yard got a hold of you they tended to hang on, and if the news got about that he had spoken to the peelers – especially the big Peel himself! – then the street people would think he was getting into bad company, and might be likely to peach on them.
Even worse, he was being spied on. Plain-clothed policemen! There ought to be a law against it; everybody said so – it was, well, it was unfair. After all, if you saw a peeler walking around, well, maybe you would think once or twice about dipping into someone’s pocket or dipping into something that didn’t really belong to anyone really, when you came to think about it, or just possibly knocking off something from a barrow when the owner wasn’t looking. After all, seeing policemen around kept you honest, didn’t it? If they were going to lurk around like ordinary people they were basically asking you to commit crimes, weren’t they? It was entirely unfair in Dodger’s opinion.
It had been a long night already indeed, but there were things that had to be done quickly, or else he would burst. So he ran through the dark streets until he came to the abode of Ginny-Come-Lately.
She answered the door on the third knock, and in something of a bad temper until she said, ‘Oh, it’s you, Dodger, how nice. Er, can’t invite you in quite yet, you know how it is, don’t ya?’
Dodger, who certainly did know how it was because it was always what it was, said, ‘Nice to see you, Ginny. You know that little package of tools I once asked you to keep for me when I promised Solomon I wasn’t going thieving any more? Still got it?’
She smiled at him for a moment, then ducked back in and came out with a small package wrapped in oilcloth. She gave Dodger a peck on the cheek and said, ‘I’m hearing a lot about you these days, Dodger. I hope she’s worth it!’
But at that point Dodger was already out of the door and running at speed; he had always liked running, which was just as well, since a thief who couldn’t run fast was soon dead, but now he ran like he had never run before. He was running through the streets in what seemed like a frenzy of acceleration, and occasionally an alert peeler, noting that someone was running, would shout or blow his whistle and then feel rather stupid since Dodger was a rapidly dwindling bit of darkness in a city full of the stuff. He didn’t simply run; he sped, legs pounding much faster than his heartbeat. Disturbed pigeons flew away. A man who tried to waylay him as he ran down a useful alleyway was punched and then trodden on, and Dodger kept going, not looking behind him because, well, by now everything was behind him as he channelled rage into his legs and simply followed them . . . and then, suddenly, there it was again. That building.
Dodger slowed down and disappeared into darkness and spent some time in getting his breath back; after all, now he was here, he would have to take his time. By the light of his dark lantern, he unrolled the green baize parcel wrapped in the oilcloth, and the light glistened on all his little friends – the half-diamond pick, the ball pick, and the torsion bar – but of course there were the others; there was always some lock or other which was slightly different, and he had spent many a happy hour with the rakes and picks, bending and filing them into exactly the right shapes. It seemed to him that they were saluting him, ready for combat.
Shortly afterwards, darkness moved within darkness and this particular darkness found, on the more insalubrious side of the building, a metal cover to a cellar. When he had given it just a little bit of oil and a little tinkering, Dodger was in at the enemy’s throat. He grinned, but there was no fun in the grin; it was more like a knife.
The building was mostly in shadows and Dodger just loved shadows. He was pleased to see that there were carpets – not really a sensible choice if you were running an embassy and might like to know if there were some unwelcome people walking about, because marble floors were much to be recommended, as Dodger well knew; sometimes if you stepped on them in the night time they could ring like a bell. Whenever he’d found them, he had always got down and very carefully slid himself over them, so that no sound could be heard.
Now he listened at doors, he stood behind curtains, and he made sure not to go too near the kitchens, as you never knew when a servant might be up. And all the time he stole. He stole in the same methodical way that Solomon made beautiful small objects, and he smiled when he thought that, because now Dodger was making small beautiful things disappear. He stole jewellery, when he found it, and he opened every lock and riffled through the contents of every drawer, in every boudoir. On two occasions he robbed rooms in which he could just make out people sleeping. He didn’t care; it was as if nothing could stop him, or maybe it was as if the Lady had made him invisible. He worked fast and methodically and everything was wrapped up in its own little velvet bag, within the main bundle, so that nothing would ever go ‘clink’ just at the wrong moment because if there was a clink then the clink was where you spent your days until they hanged you. It was a little joke among thieves.
At one point, in the middle of the building, in a large desk which took one hell of a long time to yield its secrets to his busy fingers and their little friends, he found ledgers and a series of little books. They had a complicated look about them, and manuscripts and scrolls with red wax on them, which always looked expensive. He recognized the crest on some of the documents, he surely did.
As he stood in this busy, important room, he thought, I wish I could do something, so that they would know. And then knew what he would do. I’ll let them know who it had been, he told himself, because, well, I could have brought the place down in flames. After all, all those oil lamps around? All those curtains? All those stairs and all those people sleeping up there? He was so angry but, in the warm darkness of the room, what he was not – whatever else he had been – was a murderer. I shall make them pay in my own way, he decided, and at that moment all of them were saved from a fiery death, if they only had known it, and were only living because Dodger, silent in this sleeping world, allowed them to.
Put like that, it made him feel a little better. Padding away silently, he thought, I’ve always said I wasn’t a hero, and I ain’t, but if I’ve ever been a hero, then as sure as Sunday I’m a hero now, because I’ve stopped an embassy full of people being burned alive.
And so at last, not long before the first crack of dawn, he was down and outside and into the mews by the side of the embassy. He knew there would be ostlers and grooms hanging about here any minute soon but nevertheless, moving even more stealthily, he found the coach house, and yes, there was a coach there with a foreign crest painted on the side. Dodger carefully knelt down beside it and felt around near the wheels. Close to one wheel it seemed that a length of metal had been thrown up on one occasion and got stuck, scraping on the rim of the wheel. Dodger tried to pull it free, but without any success until a very useful little crowbar caused it to spring out, and Dodger caught it in the air whereupon he straightened up, went to the coat of arms on the coach and scratched, as deeply as he could inscribe them, the words: MR PUNCH.