Boys -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction; Slums -- Fiction
At last Josh was brought in, and lurched composedly into the dock, in
the manner of one who knew the routine. The police gave evidence of
arrest, in consequence of information received, and of finding the
watch and chain in Josh's trousers pocket. The prosecutor, with his head
conspicuously bedight with sticking-plaster, puffed and grunted up into
the witness-box, kissed the book, and was a 'retired commission agent.'
He positively identified the watch and chain, and he not less positively
identified Josh Perrott, whom he had picked out from a score of men in
the police-yard. This would have been a feat indeed for a man who had
never seen Josh, and had only once encountered his fist in the dark, had
it not been for the dutiful though private aid of Mr Weech: who, in
giving his information had described Josh and his one suit of clothes
with great fidelity, especially indicating a scar on the right
cheek-bone which would mark him among a thousand. The retired commission
agent was quite sure of the prisoner. He had met him on the stairs,
where there was plenty of light from a lamp, and the prisoner had
attacked him savagely, beating him about the head and flinging him
downstairs. The policeman called by the prosecutor's servant deposed to
finding the prosecutor bruised and bleeding. There was a ladder against
the back of the house; a bedroom window had been opened; there were
muddy marks on the sill; and he had found the stick--produced--lying in
the bedroom.
Josh leaned easily on the rail before him while evidence was being
given, and said 'No, yer worship,' whenever he was asked if he desired
to question a witness. He knew better than to run the risk of
incriminating himself by challenging the prosecutor's well-coloured
evidence; and, as it was a certain case of committal for trial, it would
have been useless in any event. He made the same reply when he was asked
if he had anything to say before being committed: and straightway was
'fullied.' He lurched serenely out of the dock, waving his cap at his
friends in the court, and that was all. The Jagos waited till Cocko
Harnwell got his three months and then retired to neighbouring
public-houses; but Dicky remembered his little sister, and hurried home.
The month's session at the Old Bailey had just begun, so that Josh had
no long stay at Holloway. Among the Jagos it was held to be a most
creditable circumstance that Josh was to take his trial with full
honours at the Old Bailey, and not at mere County Sessions at
Clerkenwell, like a simple lob-crawler or peter-claimer. For Josh's was
a case of burglary with serious violence, such as was fitting for the
Old Bailey, and not even a High Mobsman could come to trial with greater
glory. 'As like as not it's laggin' dues, after 'is other convictions,'
said Bill Rann. And Jerry Gullen thought so too.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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