Pelle the Conqueror by Martin Andersen Nexø (great novels to read .TXT) 📕

grocer cast a glance at the till, as he sprang over the counter and seized the boy by the scruff of the neck. “Ay, ay,” he said sharply, “a clever little rogue!”

“I haven’t stolen anything!” cried the boy, trying to wrench himself loose and to pick up his krone-piece. “That’s mother’s money!”

“You leave the kid alone!” said Ferdinand threateningly. “He hasn’t done anything!”

The grocer struggled with the boy, who was twisting and turning in order to recover his money. “Hasn’t done anything!” he growled, panting, “then why did he cry out about stealing before ever I had mentioned the word? And where does the money come from? He wanted credit, because they hadn’t got any! No, thanks⁠—I’m not to be caught like that.”

“The money belongs to mother!” shrieked the youngster, twisting desperately in the grocer’s grip. “Mother is ill⁠—I’m to get medicine with it!” And he began to blubber.

“It’s quite right⁠—his mother is ill!” said Ferdinand, with a growl. “And the chemist certainly won’t give credit. You’d best let him go, Petersen.” He took a step forward.

“You’ve thought it out nicely!” laughed the grocer scornfully, and he wrenched the shop-door open. “Here, policeman, here!”

The policeman, who was keeping watch at the street corner, came quickly over to the shop. “Here’s a lad who plays tricks with other folks’ money,” said the grocer excitedly. “Take care of him for a bit, Iversen!”

The boy was still hitting out in all directions; the policeman had to hold him off at arm’s length. He was a ragged, hungry little fellow. The policeman saw at a glance what he had in his fingers, and proceeded to drag him away; and there was no need to have made any more ado about the matter.

Ferdinand went after him and laid his hand on the policeman’s arm. “Mister Policeman, the boy hasn’t done anything,” he said. “I was standing there myself, and I saw that he did nothing, and I know his mother!”

The policeman stood still for a moment, measuring Ferdinand with a threatening eye; then he dragged the boy forward again, the latter still struggling to get free, and bellowing: “My mother is ill; she’s waiting for me and the medicine!” Ferdinand kept step with them, in his thin canvas shoes.

“If you drag him off to the town hall, I shall come with you, at all events, and give evidence for him,” he continued; “the boy hasn’t done anything, and his mother is lying sick and waiting for the medicine at home.”

The policeman turned about, exasperated. “Yes, you’re a nice witness. One crow don’t pick another’s eyes out. You mind your own business⁠—and just you be off!”

Ferdinand stood his ground. “Who are you talking to, you Laban?” he muttered, angrily looking the other up and down. Suddenly he took a run and caught the policeman a blow in the neck so that he fell with his face upon the pavement while his helmet rolled far along the street. Ferdinand and the boy dashed off, each in a different direction, and disappeared.

And now they had been hunting him for three weeks already. He did not dare go home. The “Ark” was watched night and day, in the hope of catching him⁠—he was so fond of his mother. God only knew where he might be in that rainy, cold autumn. Madam Frandsen moved about her attic, lonely and forsaken. It was a miserable life. Every morning she came over to beg Pelle to look in The Working Man, to see whether her son had been caught. He was in the city⁠—Pelle and Madam Frandsen knew that. The police knew it also; and they believed him responsible for a series of nocturnal burglaries. He might well be sleeping in the outhouses and the kennels of the suburban villas.

The inmates of the “Ark” followed his fate with painful interest. He had grown up beneath their eyes. He had never done anything wrong there; he had always respected the “Ark” and its inhabitants; that at least could be said of him, and he loved his mother dearly. And he had been entirely in the right when he took the part of the boy; a brave little fellow he was! His mother was very ill; she lived at the end of one of the long gangways, and the boy was her only support. But it was a mad undertaking to lay hands on the police; that was the greatest crime on earth! A man had far better murder his own parents⁠—as far as the punishment went. As soon as they got hold of him, he would go to jail, for the policeman had hit his handsome face against the flagstones; according to the newspaper, anybody but a policeman would have had concussion of the brain.

Old Madam Frandsen loved to cross the gangway to visit Pelle, in order to talk about her son.

“We must be cautious,” she said. At times she would purse up her mouth, tripping restlessly to and fro; then he knew there was something particular in the wind.

“Shall I tell you something?” she would ask, looking at him importantly.

“No; better keep it to yourself,” Pelle would reply. “What one doesn’t know one can’t give evidence about.”

“You’d better let me chatter, Pelle⁠—else I shall go running in and gossiping with strangers. Old chatterbox that I am, I go fidgeting round here, and I’ve no one I can trust; and I daren’t even talk to myself! Then that Pipman hears it all through the wooden partition; it’s almost more than I can bear, and I tremble lest my toothless old mouth should get him into trouble!”

“Well, then, tell it me!” said Pelle, laughing. “But you mustn’t speak loud.”

“He’s been here again!” she whispered, beaming. “This morning, when I got up, there was money for me in the kitchen. Do you know where he had put it? In the sink! He’s such a sensible lad! He must have come creeping over the roofs⁠—otherwise I can’t think how he does it, they are looking