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open, but I didn't see the man who stepped out. I didn't need to see him to know who it was.
    “Ahoy the house!” he shouted.
    Mr. Goodfellow. So Worms was right; his doctor friend did hobnob with the best. But what fate had brought him here, to the dingiest part of the city? I pressed myself against Peggy, thinking how much it would please Mr. Goodfellow to see me here, shoeless, minding a bone grubber's wagon.
    “Ahoy the house!” he shouted again. He passed the wagon; he passed the horse on its other side, then stood facing the door. “Kingsley!” he called. “Kingsley, you fool.”
    A second man spilled from the cab, laughing as though Mr. Goodfellow were the greatest wit. “You'll have to fetch him out, Goody,” he said. “Kingsley always keeps us waiting.”
    “Part of his charm.” Mr. Goodfellow cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed, “Kingsley!”
    The pair had been into the gin, I could see. They wobbled their way across the street and down the steps. Just as they went in through the front, old Worms came scuttling from the back. He climbed onto the wagon and snatched up his reins.
    “Walker!” he grumbled. “Who does he think he is, that doctor? Blimey! Who does he think he is?” Worms shook his head. “‘Wait outside,’ he tells me. Well, dash it, Tom, there's other doctors. Peas in pods they may be, but there's one around the corner here.”
    I sat up beside him, and Peggy hauled us along. Her head shaking, her breath snorting, she lurched up the hill at her steady pace. We rolled along through a dreary slum, splashing our wheels in gutters that ran with sewage. It was late enough that the streets were empty, bright enough that I could see rats feasting on the bits of horse droppings the finders had missed. On either side stood the lowest of lodging houses, their long windows turned to grimy checkerboards by all the squares of paper and wood that filled the missing panes. Dismal homes of dismal people, they were die haunts of thieves and waifs and crossing sweepers, the sorts of places where I was doomed to land myself if Mr. Goodfellow had his way, if I couldn't recover my diamond.
    Suddenly, Worms looked around. “What was that?” he asked.
    I had heard nothing but our own squeaks and taps. But old Worms seemed frightened. “Listen,” he said.
    And I heard it then.
    Voices, high and eerie. They rose from my right, and then from my left, voices so faint and ghostly that the skin prickled on my neck. They came from behind and came from ahead, and a drumming began, like an army marching, as one of the arabs beat along dustbins. I saw others swirl into the street behind us, a mob of black in ragged clothes.
    “Worms,” I said. “Look!”
    He glanced back only once, only for an instant, then thrashed at his reins. “Gee up, Peggy!” he shouted. “Run, you blessed glue pot!”
    The poor old horse gave out a startled, strangled cry. Its breath came in a great puff-and-a wheeze, and the wooden leg tapped faster. I looked back and saw the street arabs running, more rushing in behind them, one with a torch that flickered a red flame on bare shoulders and chests, in the empty windows of the lodging houses.
    The wagon jolted over cobblestones. Peggy's leg tapped amid the clatter of her hoofs.
    “She can't pull us both,” said Worms, thrashing with the reins. “Get off, Tom!”
    He tried to push me from the seat, but I clung to my place. “Here!” he shouted. “Take your tuppence and go.”
    He wrestled the money from his pocket and shoved it at my side. He pushed hard, and violently, and I grabbed for his wrists to save myself. I caught him by the hand. But his fingers, slick and greasy, slipped through my fist. The pennies fell into my palm, and I went tumbling from the wagon.
    For an instant I thought that the wheel would crush my life away. But I bounced from the turning rim, and struck my head on the cobblestones.

The dead boy came after me. Down the streets and through the