The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 258: what you’re looking at

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eee eS ——— eee nnn THE MYSTERIES OF THM COURT. 245 an {eae oe “Don’t be afeard, my lady—depend upon it I | dwellings, to mingle with the hot atmosphere uf gha’n’t mention a word of. what you say when I see ' rooms where the poor lay huddled together in nerd- Chiffin That is, if L ever do see him again; for _ like masses, or to render more fetid still the feverish he is very likely to get out of the country.” air in the chamber of the invalid. “I think not: for from what those people said| No wonder, then, that Lady Bess recoiled at arst dewn in the bar, he does not even seem to be sus- | from the very approaches to that pandemonium of pected. Has there been any pursuit after him?’ | noxious odours: but the next instant conquering “Not that I can learn, please your ladyship,” re- | her repugnance when she considerel tho importané plied Patch. “I do not think the detectives has : object she had in view, she continued her way, got on the right scent. But won’t your ladyship literally battling however against the rolling vapours ti3.e summut? You look all pale and no-how.” asif they were the billows of a strong tide which she “ No—nothing,” she answered petulantly. “You had thus courageously to breast. Dimly through know I never drink.” the mephitic exhalations did the lights burn in the “Yes, my lady, I know that you have none of wretched houses on either side of this alley; and them small wices,” the shouts of drunken revelry, the cries of quarrel- She was moving towards the door of the little ling women, the imprecations of brutal husbands, scrdid-looking apartment, when suddenly recollect- | and the screams of ill-treated wives, blended in hor- ing the object of her coming, she turned and said, | rible discordancy. Altogether, it was a neishbours “Thad well nigh forgotten why I called. Do you hood which, existing in the very heart. of the capita: know the whereabouts of a man named Shakerly ?” | of civilization, was a disgrace to civilizatiun ttselz! “What, old Bob Shakerly?” ejaculated Solomon.| Lady Bess passed onward, and reaching the end of “Toha gure Ido. He was once a body-snatcher: | the alley, found herself at an open gateway, revea'- row ho’s a knacker and makes catsmeat and sas- | ing a full view of a spacious yard surrounded by aces. It’s down at Cow Cross, Smithfield. Your 'tumble-down sheds and wooden buildings, from ludyship can’t mistake: anybody will tell you Bob several of which the strong light of fires threw a flLaberly’s yard.” | lurid glow into the open space. All the frontages of “Put up my horse till I return,” said Lady Bess. | these buildings gleamed ghastly in that light with “T do not like to ride him into London:’—and the bleaching bones of animals hung up to dy. A having thus given her orders, she quitted the room, | glance into the places where the fires were lighted, descended the stairs, and issued from the house; but , showed Lady Bess large cauldrons in which tho as those who stood at the bar respectfully made way | horse-flesh was boiling; and now that she was 20 for her, as she was held in the light of something | near as to be within reach of the volumes of 7a- very superior at the low boozing-ken, they could not | pour which rolled away from these cauldrons, she avoid noticing that she was excecdingly pale. odour became almost stifling in its nauseating in- Eyacrging from Agar Town, Lady Bess obtained tensity. It seemed as if it was an odour that could a cab at the nearest stand, and jumping in, ordered , be felt—that clung around you—adhered to you-= the driver to proceed to Cow Cross. During the | stuck to you like a thick and clammy substan.:e = half-hour which the journey occupied, her whole | making you feel dirty all over, and long to hasten thoughts were bent upon this diabolical murder of away to put off and eschew for ever the garments which she had just heard, and which had filled her _ thus impregnated with the feculent effluvium. ‘ith so profound a horror. Were her heart analysed | Heaped up in the corners of the yard were puiri: nt that moment, it might perhaps have been found fying masses of the entrails and offals of the slaugh- that a remorse had arisen there for the adoption of | tered horses: pools of blood darkened the ground in tuat course of life which had thrown her in the way | many places—and ever and anon the foot slipped. cf such human reptiles as Chiflin, and compelled | over some slimy substance, such as clotted gore cr her to make use of them for her purposes. yotting pieces of flesh, so that a horrible shudder On reaching the foul neighbourhood of Cow Cross, | shot upward through the entire frame and the heart ‘ady Bess descended from the cab, bade the driver | heaved as if rising to the very throat. A cart at one gait, and proceeded to inquire fur one Bob Shakerly. | extremity, resting slantwise on its shafts, contained Ye seemed to be as well known in that vicinity as | a dead horse that had been recently brought in ; wn elderman in his ward; and she was forthwith | and in one of the sheds were four oy five living directed to a narrow alley at the extremity of which | horses, huddled together in a space not savre than of she weuld find a knacker’s yard. Scarcely had she | sufficient dimensions for one. These poor brutes entered the lane, when her nose was saluted by so| were starving—yes, literally starving: they were fetid a stench that she recoiled for a moment from |the merest things of skin and bone that ever farthex encounter with the pestiferous exhalation. | managed to retain a particle of vitality—and per- Lt was a horrible smell of corrupt flesh and mouldy | heps they were goaded to a keener sense of that last bones, mingling with the sickly steam from cauldrons | spark of life by the pangs of famine. in which the anatomized animals were seething| Such was the knacker’s yard! And this horrible down. None gave those who have been so unfortu- | spot, with its nauseating odours, its accumulated nate as to venture wpon the confines of a knacker’s | filth and feculence, and its instances of hideons yard, can possihly conceive the horrible nausea pro- | cruelty to poor worn-out animals, was only ons duced by these blendd eftluvia: it was enough to | amongst several replete with kindred abominations in make the strorzest stoxcach heave and hecome sick. | that neighbourhood. There they were, in the midst It was an odour, indeed, that was not only fetid aud of one of the most densely populated quarters of Lon- sickly, but pungent and penetrating as well,—an don—hotbeds of feeulence and corruption, ready to ofour the pestiferous miasma of which une might blaze up with gunpowder effect into all the cdevastat- expect to take away in une’s clothes,—an odour thas ing horrors of plague and pestilence, And there, tee, wuld not fail to pierce into sli the surrowdisg , Ley 2ze row at the preseut day,—preparmg a rich ————— a —_— a —————— oe ei ee COMIC OOOKS. CO