Bazalgette and Disraeli began talking about the construction of the sewers, with the former tapping the brickwork occasionally and the latter trying not to be drawn into expressing an opinion, such as paying for something better. Charlie followed behind, noting and observing, his sharp eyes worryingly everywhere.
Now as they strolled carefully, sometimes bending where the roof seemed to sag, Dodger pointed to a couple of broken bricks and said, ‘There’s a place that might trap a coin or two. It’s like a little dam, see? The water goes past, heavy stuff gets trapped. This one is yours, Master Roger. I have another pair of gloves.’ He handed them to the footman with a wink.
He was entirely elated when she knelt down in the muddy gloom and stared at the brickwork, then pushed and pulled for a while and came up holding something. She gasped, and so did Disraeli, who said, ‘Another golden ring? You must live like a lord, Mister Dodger. Well done, Miss Simplicity.’
Suddenly the sewers were silent except for the occasional drip. At last Charlie cleared his throat and said, ‘Ben, I cannot for the life of me understand why you confused this young man, handsome though he is, with the young lady in question. Quite possibly the vapours here must, I suspect, alongside your evident joy in your new-found profession, have just for a little while gone to your head.’
Disraeli had the grace to say, ‘Yes, yes indeed. How silly of me.’ Joseph Bazalgette simply smiled nervously, like a man who knows someone has cracked a joke that he hasn’t understood, and returned to his detailed inspection of the sewer wall.
It was Charlie who worried Dodger, Charlie who held back and watched and had leaned forward and perhaps had noticed Simplicity’s gasp as she saw the inscription on the ring, and almost certainly must have noticed that she turned wide-eyed to look directly into Dodger’s face. He wasn’t quite certain about Charlie; he always had the feeling that here was a man who could see through Dodger and out the other side.
Quickly, he said, ‘I’ll tell you what, friends, let me go ahead. Tosh all you want to and I will point out some matters of interest to Mister Bazalgette. Of course, anything you find is yours for the keeping. And if I was you, Master Roger, I’d put that ring in your pocket for safety right now.’
He knew what would happen next. It happened to every new tosher; once you’d found your first coin the toshing fury was at your throat. Here was money for the taking, and already Simplicity and Disraeli were fascinated by holes in the brickwork, interesting holes, small mounds of rubbish and anything that seemed to sparkle.
Mister Bazalgette, on the other hand, was grumbling and measuring at the same time. ‘These bricks are useless,’ he said from a nearby corner. ‘They are rotten, they should be taken out and put back and faced with ceramic tiles – that can be the only way forward; it would keep the water out.’
‘Alas, we don’t have the money,’ said Disraeli, staring intently at what turned out to be one half of a dead rat.
‘Then if you don’t have the money, you have the stink,’ said Bazalgette. ‘I’ve seen the river at low tide and it is as if the whole world has taken a purgative. It surely cannot be healthy, sir.’
They walked on while the light allowed, and the total yield to the two ‘would-be toshers’ was a further one shilling and a farthing which, to give him his due, Disraeli handed over to Simplicity with a bow. And Charlie watched, with his hands in his pockets and a curious and calculating smile, occasionally taking out his damned notebook and scribbling, occasionally cheering a find, sometimes staring around at the debris and the smaller outlets.
Now the light was beginning to go. Not a problem; there were lamps galore – Dodger had made certain of one each, even though he could generally get around without one. But the lamps only lit small pools in the darkness, and as the light changed the sewers began to take on their own life. Not sinister, exactly, but little noises became more acute; the rats which were otherwise minding their own business fled out of the way, the dripping of water from the ceiling seemed louder, shadows seemed to move, and it was then that the thought might creep up on a person that if you tripped over some of these crumbling bricks, or took the wrong turning at those places where sewers met and merged, you were suddenly a long way away from what you knew as civilization.
Dodger thought, Well, Simplicity shouldn’t have any problem; he had been very careful about the special route, with the occasional brick lighter than the others and debris and other rubbish masking every wrong turn. He noticed her watching him intently now and it was no time to lose his nerve. A few more minutes would do, he thought. Once you lose the sun, then that’s when you really become a tosher.
Then Charlie said, ‘There’s a likely-looking place over there, Dodger. You can just about make out something like an entrance.’
Dodger bustled back to him quickly and said, ‘Do not go any further down there, sir. It is very dangerous; the floors are washed out. All very, very nasty, and all jammed up too, lots of places like it in the sewers – they just don’t get cleaned out enough. Now since we really haven’t got much light left, could we all agree that Mister Disraeli, although a gentleman, is also a tosher. Hurrah!’
Simplicity, that is to say Master Roger, burst out laughing, as did Bazalgette, and Charlie clapped, and as the clapping came to an end there was another sound – a scraping sound, the unmistakable sound of a crowbar somewhere ahead of them opening a drain cover, and Charlie said, ‘What was that, Dodger?’
Dodger shrugged it off and said, ‘Could be anything, sir. A trick of the sewers, you might say. The sun has gone down, things expand and contract, like they say, and you get all kinds of little noises then. It’s been quite a hot day really; sometimes you could think there was someone else down here with you, and if we simply turn round it’s an easy stroll back to where we came in. It’s not as though we’ve gone all that far, to tell you the truth.’
Mister Bazalgette, waving his lamp, said, ‘I would really like more time, if you don’t mind.’ In the end, Dodger pacified him with the promise to take him further afield on the following day, possibly in the company of Mister Henry Mayhew, who had been unable to join this little excursion.
After saying that, he once again delivered the two-tone whistle of a tosher. It was not returned and this worried him, for any tosher would have whistled back . . . Even the rat-catchers knew enough to shout out when a tosher whistled – that saved embarrassment all around. Well, he thought, it was quite a good plan, it really was, but I can’t do it if there is somebody else stamping around down here. Inwardly he groaned. Well, maybe tomorrow he could come up with another plan.
He had not, he thought, heard any more noises since that scraping, apart from those made by the company, and that meant that somebody was trying to keep quiet. So right now it was important to get Simplicity out of here. It could be a very young tosher who hadn’t yet learned the ropes. Or it might be something else . . . but it wasn’t worth taking the chance. Nothing must happen to Simplicity.
Keeping his tone cheerful, he ushered his little flock back along the way they had come, silently cursing every step. It was not as easy as may have been thought, even by the lamplight, which didn’t penetrate all that far.
‘Gentlemen, if you don’t mind there are a few things I’d like to look at down here,’ he said as they approached the sewer exit. ‘When you are above ground I hope that you can take care of . . . Roger until the coach turns up. Sometimes you get undesirables down here, well, more undesirable than what’s down here already. I’ll just have a little glance around and then come back. I’m sure it’s nothing, but with Mister Disraeli here as well, I feel a little caution is sensible.’