Perhaps their
grandfathers remember me, some of them!” and she laughed a harsh,
croaking laugh. And then I am bound to say that she astonished me, for
she handed me back the ring with a certain suggestion of old-fashioned
grace which was not without its pathos. The old man eyed her with a sort of sudden ferocity, half rising from
his stool, and said to me suddenly and hoarsely:

“Let me see!”

I was about to hand the ring when the old woman said:

“No! no, do not give it to Pierre! Pierre is eccentric. He loses
things; and such a pretty ring!”

“Cat!” said the old man, savagely. Suddenly the old woman said, rather
more loudly than was necessary:

“Wait! I shall tell you something about a ring.” There was something in
the sound of her voice that jarred upon me. Perhaps it was my
hyper-sensitiveness, wrought up as I was to such a pitch of nervous
excitement, but I seemed to think that she was not addressing me. As I
stole a glance round the place I saw the eyes of the rats in the bone
heaps, but missed the eyes along the back. But even as I looked I saw
them again appear. The old woman’s “Wait!” had given me a respite from
attack, and the men had sunk back to their reclining posture. “I once lost a ring—a beautiful diamond hoop that had belonged to a
queen, and which was given to me by a farmer of the taxes, who
afterwards cut his throat because I sent him away. I thought it must
have been stolen, and taxed my people; but I could get no trace. The
police came and suggested that it had found its way to the drain. We
descended—I in my fine clothes, for I would not trust them with my
beautiful ring! I know more of the drains since then, and of rats, too! but I shall never forget the horror of that place—alive with blazing
eyes, a wall of them just outside the light of our torches. Well, we
got beneath my house. We searched the outlet of the drain, and there in
the filth found my ring, and we came out. “But we found something else also before we came! As we were coming
toward the opening a lot of sewer rats—human ones this time—came
towards us. They told the police that one of their number had gone into
the drain, but had not returned. He had gone in only shortly before we
had, and, if lost, could hardly be far off. They asked help to seek
him, so we turned back. They tried to prevent me going, but I insisted. It was a new excitement, and had I not recovered my ring? Not far did
we go till we came on something. There was but little water, and the
bottom of the drain was raised with brick, rubbish, and much matter of
the kind. He had made a fight for it, even when his torch had gone out. But they were too many for him! They had not been long about it! The
bones were still warm; but they were picked clean. They had even eaten
their own dead ones and there were bones of rats as well as of the man. They took it cool enough those other—the human ones—and joked of their
comrade when they found him dead, though they would have helped him
living. Bah! what matters it—life or death?”

“And had you no fear?” I asked her. “Fear!” she said with a laugh. “Me have fear? Ask Pierre! But I was
younger then, and, as I came through that horrible drain with its wall
of greedy eyes, always moving with the circle of the light from the
torches, I did not feel easy. I kept on before the men, though! It is a
way I have! I never let the men get it before me. All I want is a
chance and a means! And they ate him up—took every trace away except
the bones; and no one knew it, nor no sound of him was ever heard!”
Here she broke into a chuckling fit of the ghastliest merriment which
it was ever my lot to hear and see. A great poetess describes her
heroine singing: “Oh! to see or hear her singing! Scarce I know which
is the divinest.”

And I can apply the same idea to the old crone—in all save the
divinity, for I scarce could tell which was the most hellish—the harsh,
malicious, satisfied, cruel laugh, or the leering grin, and the
horrible square opening of the mouth like a tragic mask, and the yellow
gleam of the few discoloured teeth in the shapeless gums. In that laugh
and with that grin and the chuckling satisfaction I knew as well as if
it had been spoken to me in words of thunder that my murder was
settled, and the murderers only bided the proper time for its
accomplishment. I could read between the lines of her gruesome story
the commands to her accomplices. “Wait,” she seemed to say, “bide your
time. I shall strike the first blow. Find the weapon for me, and I
shall make the opportunity! He shall not escape! Keep him quiet, and
then no one will be wiser. There will be no outcry, and the rats will
do their work!”

It was growing darker and darker; the night was coming. I stole a
glance round the shanty, still all the same! The bloody axe in the
corner, the heaps of filth, and the eyes on the bone heaps and in the
crannies of the floor. Pierre had been still ostensibly filling his pipe; he now struck a
light and began to puff away at it. The old woman said:

“Dear heart, how dark it is! Pierre, like a good lad, light the lamp!”

Pierre got up and with the lighted match in his hand touched the wick
of a lamp which hung at one side of the entrance to the shanty, and
which had a reflector that threw the light all over the place. It was
evidently that which was used for their sorting at night. “Not that, stupid! Not that! the lantern!” she called out to him. He immediately blew it out, saying: “All right, mother I’ll find it,”
and he hustled about the left corner of the room—the old woman saying
through the darkness:

“The lantern! the lantern! Oh! That is the light that is most useful to
us poor folks. The lantern was the friend of the revolution! It is the
friend of the chiffonier! It helps us when all else fails.”

Hardly had she said the word when there was a kind of creaking of the
whole place, and something was steadily dragged over the roof. Again I seemed to read between the lines of her words. I knew the
lesson of the lantern. “One of you get on the roof with a noose and strangle him as he passes
out if we fail within.”

As I looked out of the opening I saw the loop of a rope outlined black
against the lurid sky. I was now, indeed, beset! Pierre was not long in finding the lantern. I kept my eyes fixed
through the darkness on the old woman. Pierre struck his light, and by
its flash I saw the old woman raise from the ground beside her where it
had mysteriously appeared, and then hide in the folds of her gown, a
long sharp knife or dagger. It seemed to be like a butcher’s sharpening
iron fined to a keen point. The lantern was lit. “Bring it here, Pierre,” she said. “Place it in the doorway where we
can see it. See how nice it is! It shuts out the darkness from us; it
is just right!”

Just right for her and her purposes! It threw all its light on my face,
leaving in gloom the faces of both Pierre and the woman, who sat
outside of me on each side.