The cash-poor—and recently infamous—young drunk reeled at her sharp shove and plowed straight into the damp wall, landing with a low grunt of dismayed surprise. He caught himself ineffectually there and crumpled gradually to the wet pavement. Morgan sat there for a moment, blinking back tears of misery and absently rubbing his upper arm and shoulder. For several moments, he considered seriously what he ought to do next. Sitting in muck on a wet pavement for the remainder of the night didn't seem a particularly attractive notion. He hadn't any place to go and no doss money of his own and he was very far, indeed, from Cleveland Street and the fancy West Side house where he'd once been popular with a certain class of rich toffs—and until tomorrow night, at least, when Eddy would finally bring him the promised money, he would have nothing to buy food, either.
His eyes stung. Damn that bitch, Polly Nichols! She was no better than he was, for all the righteous airs she put on. Just a common slattern, who'd lift her skirts for a stinking fourpence—or a well-filled glass of gin, for that matter. Word on the streets hereabout was, she'd been a common trollop for so many years her own husband had tossed her out as an unfit mother and convinced the courts to rescind the order for paying her maintenance money. Morgan, at least, had plied his trade with respectably wealthy clients; but thinking about that only made the hurt run deeper. The fine West End house had tossed him out, when he'd lost their richest client. Wasn't my fault Eddy threw me over for that bloody mystic of his, with his fancy ways and fine house and his bloody deformed...
And Polly Nichols, curse the drunken bitch, had found out about that particular house on Cleveland Street and Morgan's place in it, had shoved him against a wall and hissed out, "I know all about it, Morgan. All about what you let a bloke do t'you for money. I've ‘eard you got a little rainy day fund put aside, savin's, like, from that ‘ouse what tossed you onto the street. You ‘and it over, Morgan, maybe I won't grass on you, eh? Those constables in H Division, now, they might just want to know about an ‘andsome lad like you, bendin' over for it."
Morgan had caught his breath in horror. The very last thing Morgan needed was entanglements with the police. Prostitution was bad enough for a woman. A lad caught prostituting himself with another man... Well, the death penalty was off the books, but it'd be prison for sure, a nice long stretch at hard labor, and the thought of what would happen to a lad like himself in prison... But Morgan had come away from the house on Cleveland Street with nothing save his clothes, a half-crown his last client had given him as a bonus, which he'd managed to hide from the house's proprietor, and a black eye.
And Eddy's letters.
"Here..." He produced the half-crown, handed it over. "It's everything I've got in the world. Please, Polly, I'm starving as it is, don't tell the constables."
"An ‘alf a crown?" she screeched. "A mis'rable ‘alf crown? Bleedin' little sod! You come from a fine ‘ouse, you did, wiv rich men givin' it to you, what do you mean by givin' me nuffink but a miserly ‘alf crown!"
"It's all I've got!" he cried, desperate. "They took everything else away! Even most of my clothes!" A harsh, half-strangled laugh broke loose. "Look at my face, Polly! That's what they gave me as a going away present!"
"Copper's'll give you worse'n bruises an' a blacked eye, luv!" She jerked around and started to stalk away. "Constable!"
Morgan clutched at her arm. "Wait!"
She paused. "Well?"
He licked his lips. They were all he had... but if this drunken whore sent him to prison, what good would Eddy's letters do him? And he didn't have to give them all to her. "I've got one thing. One valuable thing."
"What's ‘at?" She narrowed her eyes.
"Letters..."
"Letters? What sort of fool d'you tyke me for?"
"They're valuable letters! Worth a lot of money!"
The narrow-eyed stare sharpened. "What sort o' letters ‘ave you got, Morgan, that'd be worth any money?"
He licked his lips once more. "Love letters," he whispered. "From someone important. They're in his handwriting, on his personal stationery, and he's signed them with his own name. Talks about everything he did to me when he visited me in that house, everything he planned to do on his next visit. They're worth a fortune, Polly. I'll share them with you. He's going to give me a lot of money to get them back, a lot of money, Polly. Tomorrow night, he's going to buy back the first one, I'll give you some of the money—"
"You'll give me the letters!" she snapped. "Hah! Share wiv you? I'll ‘ave them letters, if you please, y'little sod, you just ‘and ‘em over." She held out one grasping hand, eyes narrowed and dangerous.
Morgan clenched his fists, hating her. At least he hadn't told the bitch how many letters there were. He'd divided them into two packets, one in his trouser pocket, the other beneath his shirt. The ones in his shirt were the letters Eddy had penned to him in English. The ones in his trouser pocket were the other letters, the "special surprise" Eddy had sent to him during that last month of visits. The filthy tart wouldn't be able to read a word of them. He pulled the packet from his trouser pocket and handed them over. "Here, curse you! And may you have joy reading them!" he added with a spiteful laugh, striding away before she could realize that Prince Albert Victor had penned those particular letters in Welsh.
Now, hours later, having managed to find himself a sailor on the docks who wanted a more masculine sort of sport, Morgan was drunk and bitter, a mightily scared and very lonely lad far away from his native Cardiff. He rubbed his wet cheek with the back of his hand. Morgan had been a fool, a jolly, bloody fool, ever to leave Cardiff, but it was too late, now, to cry about it. And he couldn't sit here on his bum all night, some constable would pass and then he would be spending the night courtesy of the Metropolitan Police Department's H Division.
Morgan peered about, trying to discern shapes through the fog, and thought he saw the dark form of a man nearby, but the fog closed round the shadow again and no one approached nearer, so he decided there was no one about to help him regain his feet, after all. Scraping himself slowly together, he elbowed his way back up the wall until he was more or less upright again, then coughed and shivered and wandered several yards further along the fog-shrouded street. At times, his ears played tricks with the echoing sounds that spilled out onto the dark streets from distant public houses. Snatches of laughter and song came interspersed faintly with the nearer click of footfalls on pavement, but each time he peered round, he found nothing but swirling, malevolent yellow drifts. So he continued his meandering way down the wet street, allowing his shoulder to bump against the sooty bricks to guide and steady him on his way, making for the hidey hole he used when there was no money for a doss-house bed.
The entrance to a narrow alley robbed him of his sustaining wall. He scudded sideways, a half-swamped sailboat lashed by a sudden and brutal cross-wise gale, and stumbled into the dark alley. He tangled his wobbling feet, met another wet brick wall face on, and barely caught himself from a second ignominious slide into the muck. He was cursing softly under his breath when he heard that same, tantalizing whisper of faint footfalls from behind. Only this time, they were no trick of his hearing. Someone was coming toward him through the fog, hurrying now as he clung to the dirty brick wall in the darkness of the alley.