Ding-Dong-Dell by Thomas Burke — Read

Tom the Tinker came off the lighter in mid-stream near Limehouse Hole, and was taken to the landing-stage in an absurdly small rowing-boat. His face was cold and grey, his clothes damp and disordered. He had been on a job. Under the uncommunicative Limehouse night the river ran like a stream of molten lead. Stately cargoes pranced here and there. Fussy little tugs champed up-stream. Sirens wailed their unhappy song. Slothful barges rolled and drifted, seeming without home or haven. Cranes creaked and blocks rattled, and far-away Eastern voices were usually expressive in chanties. But Tom the Tinker saw and heard nothing of this. He had not that queer faculty, indispensable to the really successful cracksman, of paying rapt attention to six things at once. He could only concentrate on one thing at a time, and, while that faculty may serve in commerce and office business, it will not serve in the finer, larger spheres of activity. Here are wanted the swift veins, the clear touch, imagination in directed play; every tissue straining at the leash, ready to be off in whatsoever direction the quarry may turn.

Tom the Tinker, I say, saw only one thing at a time, and on this occasion he was concerned with the nice arrangement of the Bethnal Green jewellery rampage. He did not, therefore, on arriving home, observe the distracted manner of his wife.