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not hear any of it, nor did he feel the cunning fingers rifling his pockets for the purse that he had slipped into the pocket of the long coat. Tommy Titfer found it easily and slid away down the narrowest of passages by theRats’ Castle. But, no one saw the great hand suddenly pinning him to the wall; no one heard the hoarse, mad, whispering voice.
    ‘Seen yer, seen yer follerin’ me. Wot are yer? Yer shan’t foller me.’
    Tommy Titfer gasped, terrified. ‘I don’t fink so, I don’t know yer. Gerroff me, yer brute.’
    No witness saw Tommy Titfer try to wriggle away, but he was held too fast against the rough black wall. The man’s hugeness filled the passage. There was no escape. The vast hand squeezed Tommy’s throat, tighter and tighter. When it let go, the limp body slid down the wall into the oozing mud. No one saw the apelike figure, a monstrous shadow of itself, shambling away, dragging its freight behind it.
    Who shall say which man’s life is worth more? The man lying by the inn wall? Tommy Titfer? He was a villain in a small way, a low, slippery creature whose life began and ended in the greasy slime of the alleys of Seven Dials. Yet later, much later, after the case was over, in a cellar, when Constable Rogers found a starving woman with scanty red hair poking from a dirty cap, and an emaciated child with a curiously high red quiff, he felt only pity for her hacking grief.
    Outside Rats’ Castle, which had plunged into sudden darkness at the sound of the police rattles, Zeb Scruggs came to, wondering what had happened to Mr Dickens. Blimey! He hoped he wasn’t responsible for the death of the most famous man in London. He felt panic, heard the police rattle, and found himself alone, the fighters gone, scrabbling like rats into holes. Someone lay by the wall, the head covered by a long coat, a familiar red scarf trailing like a line of blood in the dust.
    When Constable Rogers of Bow Street came into the alley, he saw a big gypsyish-looking man bending over another, a man in a long coat lying by the wall. Injured, obviously. Was the gypsy robbing him? He hurried forward, his bull’s-eye lamp held high.
    ‘What’s goin on ’ere?’
    The dark-haired man turned, his black eyes anxious in the glare of the lamp.
    ‘He was knocked out, I think – there was a fight. Don’t know what about. I was knocked down, too – he’s alive though, heard him groan.’
    Rogers went forward just as the injured man groaned again and sat up, his white face bewildered.
    ‘What on earth happened, Zeb? I saw you fall.’
    Rogers looked astonished, his mouth agape. ‘Mr Dickens! What’s ’appened to you?’
    ‘An altercation with a pair of boots, I think, hob-nailed ones judging by the pain in my back. I can stand, I think.’
    Dickens smiled weakly as Zeb helped him to his feet. Rogers picked up the length of dusty old scarf, remarking as he did so that it surely could not belong to Mr Dickens, and as for the long coat smeared with mud and a tear in its sleeve, well, it was not fit for a rag shop. Zeb was a little offended by this account of one of his saleable goods, but he agreed that it did look a bit mangled now.
    ‘Disguise,’ said Dickens. ‘We were after information, and when we came out of the pub there, all hell broke loose, and,’ he felt in the pockets of the coat, ‘my purse is gone – forever, I expect.’
    Rogers caught on. ‘You was lookin’ for Scrap and the dog. You think that there dog’s been kidnapped. You wasn’t goin’ to pay a ransom, was you, sir?’
    ‘That was the idea, and we found a young man who was willing to find out for us – for five shillings.’
    Rogers whistled. ‘Five bob, sir. Do you think you’ll see ’im again? ’E’s probably scarpered with it.’
    Zeb interrupted. ‘I know him – he’s a sly one, for sure, but I think he’ll come and meet us tomorrow. Otherwise, he knows I’ll find him.’
    ‘Are you fit to walk, Mr Dickens? Shall I take you to Bow