Dodger

of the building, Dodger – now dressed in his working clothes – climbed down the rope he utilized whenever he wanted to get back to ground level without being noticed. Then he slid round to where the watching man was still watching, silently tied his bootlaces together in the darkness and then kicked the man’s feet from under him, saying, ‘Hello, my name’s Dodger, what’s yours?’
    The man was at first startled, then extremely angry, saying, ‘I am a policeman, you know!’
    ‘I don’t see no uniform, mister policeman,’ said Dodger. ‘I’ll tell you what, ’cos you have a nice face I’ll let you go, OK? And tell Mister Robert Peel that Dodger does things his way, all right?’
    But he was, he thought, if not exactly in trouble with Scotland Yard, nevertheless certainly in a stew of sorts, and it was bubbling, wasn’t it just! Once the peelers from Scotland Yard got a hold of you they tended to hang on, and if the news got about that he had spoken to the peelers – especially the big Peel himself! – then the street people would think he was getting into bad company, and might be likely to peach on them.
    Even worse, he was being
spied
on. Plain-clothed policemen! There ought to be a law against it; everybody said so – it was, well, it was unfair. After all, if you saw a peeler walking around, well, maybe you would think once or twice about dipping into someone’s pocket or dipping into something that didn’t really belong to anyone really, when you came to think about it, or just possibly knocking off something from a barrow when the owner wasn ’t looking. After all, seeing policemen around kept you honest, didn’t it? If they were going to lurk around like ordinary people they were basically asking you to commit crimes, weren’t they? It was entirely unfair in Dodger’s opinion.
    It had been a long night already indeed, but there were things that had to be done quickly, or else he would burst. So he ran through the dark streets until he came to the abode of Ginny-Come-Lately.
    She answered the door on the third knock, and in something of a bad temper until she said, ‘Oh, it’s you, Dodger, how nice. Er, can’t invite you in quite yet, you know how it is, don’t ya?’
    Dodger, who certainly did know how it was because it was always what it was, said, ‘Nice to see you, Ginny. You know that little package of tools I once asked you to keep for me when I promised Solomon I wasn’t going thieving any more? Still got it?’
    She smiled at him for a moment, then ducked back in and came out with a small package wrapped in oilcloth. She gave Dodger a peck on the cheek and said, ‘I’m hearing a lot about you these days, Dodger. I hope she’s worth it!’
    But at that point Dodger was already out of the door and running at speed; he had always liked running, which was just as well, since a thief who couldn’t run fast was soon dead, but now he ran like he had never run before. He was running through the streets in what seemed like a frenzy of acceleration, and occasionally an alert peeler, noting that someone was running, would shout or blow his whistle and then feel rather stupid since Dodger was a rapidly dwindling bit of darkness in a city full of the stuff. He didn’t simply run; he
sped
, legs pounding much faster than his heartbeat. Disturbed pigeons flew away. A man who tried to waylay him as he ran down a useful alleyway was punched and then trodden on, and Dodger kept going, not looking behind him because, well, by now
everything
was behind him as he channelled rage into his legs and simply followed them . . . and then, suddenly, there it was again. That building.
    Dodger slowed down and disappeared into darkness and spent some time in getting his breath back; after all, now he was here, he would have to take his time. By the light of his dark lantern, he unrolled the green baize parcel wrapped in the oilcloth, and the light glistened on all his little friends – the half-diamond pick, the ball pick, and the torsion bar – but of course there were the others; there was always some lock or other which was slightly different, and he had spent many a happy hour with the rakes and picks, bending and filing them into exactly the right shapes. It seemed to him that they were saluting him, ready for combat.
    Shortly afterwards, darkness moved within darkness and this particular darkness found, on the more insalubrious side of the building, a metal cover to a cellar. When he