The medical man accompanied George back to the two rooms in the Old Mint where he lived with Annie and the kids. He examined the child, a boy called Mike who was three years old and very hot to the touch. He prodded and poked with his long yellow hands as Mike lay on the ticking of the cheap mattress. The other children looked on curious and silent. After a while Doctor Tony nodded to himself. He reached inside the pocket of the greatcoat which he still wore indoors – it was midwinter and freezing in the room – and withdrew a queer kind of wallet from which he took out a phial of amber liquid. He asked Annie if there was any water and she brought him some in a chipped, dirty cup. Doctor Tony poured a little of the amber liquid into the water and swirled it round. He squatted on his haunches, propped up Mike’s head with his left hand and eased some of the preparation into the child’s mouth. Mike spluttered but he swallowed a few sips and then more, until the cup was almost empty. The tall man stood up. He said, ‘The crisis should soon be past.’ And he left.
George and Annie could only pray that he was right. They despaired when the boy seemed to sink further into his fever and grow yet hotter in the chill of the room. But by the next morning Mike’s temperature had fallen and his eyes were open and he was uttering a few feeble words. ‘That man’s a saint,’ said Annie, referring to Doctor Tony. ‘I don’t mind telling him so.’
But it was George who next encountered the good doctor a few days later in Rosemary Lane, by which time Mike was back to his normal mischievous self. George Forester was so grateful that he not only passed on his wife’s comment about saintliness but offered to do anything for the man he could only call ‘sir’.
So it was that he found himself running odd errands for Doctor Tony, who seemed to know without asking that George had a dubious past and that, however respectable his current employment, he retained a few of his old skills. For his part, George came to know Tony a little better but remained in awe of the gentleman who had, surely, preserved his son’s life.
As he sheltered inside his thin mackintosh and made his way along Lower Thames Street and towards the east, he pondered again on why Doctor Tony had instructed him to observe the habits of the newly married couple living in Abercrombie Road.
Back inside the opium den in Penharbour Lane, Doctor Tony drew for the last time on his pipe. He placed it carefully in the brass bowl by the candle and lay back on the mattress beside the sleeping woman. He left the candle to burn itself out, watching the rising spiral of smoke. He observed the smoke-thread joining the other shadows overhead, all of them swelling and shrinking as if they had life. He turned his head sideways and watched the woman. Poor as the light was, everything his eyes lingered on seemed to stand out with an unnatural clarity. He admired the white curve of her cheek and the generous red of her lips. A delicate handkerchief, lilac coloured, had fallen from her sleeve. He picked it up and held to his nose. He inhaled her scent.
He was conscious of the mattress against the back of his head, against his stockinged calves. He knew that the mattress was a rough, thin, cheap thing but just now it felt as soft as down. Doctor Tony was engulfed in a wave, a gradual wave, of warmth and safety. He sighed and gave himself up to his imaginings…
But it was no piece of imagination when, at about one o’clock of that same night, he found himself standing on a street of solid respectable houses; found himself there as if transported through the air. He was clear-headed but still under the influence of the three pipes he had smoked in Penharbour Lane. The sensation was not unpleasant, not at all. Rather, it made him feel secure to the point of invincibility.
So here he was, far from the riverside wharfs. Gaslights bloomed along the street and glistened off mud and stone that were still wet from the evening rain. Between the lights there were larger areas of darkness. The house he was interested in lay within one of these patches of dark.
The Doctor was calm, convinced that what he was about to do was not merely a fitting act but also in accord with the laws of justice, the higher laws. He pulled his greatcoat tighter about him and, despite the weight which caused the coat to pull unevenly to one side, he moved smoothly along the street until he reached the house which he was looking for. He slowed for a moment to make sure there was no stray gleam of light anywhere from within. There was no light. The occupants were tucked up asleep like the other occupants of the other houses in this solid, respectable thoroughfare.
Doctor Tony glided further along the street, counting as he did so, until he came to a narrow passage between two houses. He turned right, entered the alley and then turned right again when he reached the area behind the houses. There was a ragged stretch of ground here, neither cultivated nor wilderness. No doubt it would soon be parcelled into building plots and covered over with brick. Tony paused to let his eyes become accustomed to the greater dark on this side. Then he moved parallel to the direction in which he’d already come along the road, counting off the houses in the row one by one according to their chimney stacks. It would not do to enter the wrong dwelling.
It was awkward walking back here and more than once he almost stumbled over a tussock of grass or kicked a lump of stone. When he arrived at the eleventh house, he scrambled across the wooden palings which separated the garden from the land beyond. By now he could see quite well. There were tent-like supports for runner beans and a faint sheen of light reflecting off what was probably a cucumber frame.
Doctor Tony crept up to the rear of the house. He ignored the back door which led to the kitchen and pantry area and concentrated instead on an extension containing the water-closet. A small barred window was positioned at about head height. Tony drew from his greatcoat a length of thick rope and a steel rod. Working by touch rather than sight he passed the rope twice around two of the bars and inserted the rod between the strands. Holding the rope ends with his left hand, he turned the rod end over end with his right. After a few moments the traction on the ropes began to loosen the bars from their sockets. The row of houses might have been fairly new but the building work was not of high quality. George Forester had done a good job casing the back of the property.
In a few more seconds, one of the bars popped right out with a shower of dust and plaster. Tony placed it on the ground and eased the other bar free with his hands alone. He put the ropes and the steel rod and the bars in a pile at the foot of the wall. Beyond the bars was a pane of opaque glass. The wood of the frame was half-rotten with damp. He worked at the area round the catch with the point of a knife and it did not take long for him to insert the blade and force the catch up. Then he pushed the window open.
Tony was tall enough that he had to stoop slightly to operate on the window. But he was also thin as one of the beanpoles in the garden. Now there was a space of perhaps two-feet square through which he was able to scramble. He took off his coat, shoved it through the space and began to worm his way in. Someone as slight as George Forester would probably have accomplished the task even more quickly and easily but although Doctor Tony was prepared to borrow the little man’s kit and also to listen intently to his burgling tips, he was reluctant to involve the other man in the business itself. He knew that George was trying his best to keep on the right side of the law. More to the point, he knew that George would be horrified if he was aware of what the good Doctor was about to do. In fact, he’d probably attempt to stop him.