Original Penny Readings: A Series of Short Sketches

Chapter Ten.
Dining with Cabby

“Where to dine at any time,” says the advertisement, as though such a thing as money was quite out of the question, and so many men did not depend upon the hospitality of their old friend Duke Humphrey. Spite of cattle disease and trichine terrors, the human stomach – be it beneath an educated brain, or appertaining to Bill Sykes, of the Somers Town Brill – the human stomach will act upon the mind, and cause it to long after the flesh-pots. Il faut manger– as a matter of course, the more moderately the better! and as the Spartans held up the drunken Helot for their youth to shun, why do we not have a double-barrelled statue of Banting erected in our streets – a “look on this picture and on this” style of article, showing the beauties of temperance and moderation – the keeping a tight rein upon gastronomic desires, as opposed to gluttony and feasting.

When you can dine, how many temptations are offered, as, urged on by the vacuum which, above all, fond Nature abhors, you stand chinking your coin and considering. You are in London, say; and you stand and ponder. Club? No. Invites? Not one. Where shall it be – at the first-class hotel or the shilling ordinary? Fish with Simpson? Whitebait with Lovegrove? With Bibra? With Rudkin? A steak at the Cock? A snack at the Rainbow? Sawyer! Sawyer! Suggestive of snags and America, and tremendous gorges? Shall it be the London? Shall we mount above the great stationer’s – the Partridge and Cozens – suggestive names for a hungry man – impulsive as to the first, and making him think of a cozy dinner after a long tramp in the stubble – checking as to the second. “Call me cousin, but do not cozen me,” says somebody somewhere, and most likely the quotation is not correct, but then we hunger and are athirst. No; we will dine in London, but not in “The London.” Westward, ho! Strand, Circus, Quadrant, up the great street where rent is said to swallow the tradesman’s profit; where the throng is great in the season, while out of the season the dog-fancier pockets his pups, and migrates to the far east. Now down this street to the left.

The student of human nature is like the proverbial traveller – he sees strange things; and, what is more, he gets into queer company. To study human nature in its happiest moments, study it over its dinner – be it the three courses and a dessert, preceded by removes, partaken of in Belgravia, Berkleyria, or Transgibbetia; the public feed at a great tavern, with a real MP in the chair, and all the delicacies of the season upon the table, with toasts, speeches, cheers, reporters, and a long and particular account to follow in the morning paper; the dinner at the club, à la Sprouts – a nubbly potato from a can, peppered with gingery dust; the meal brought in a basin, “kivered” with a plate, tied up in a blue cotton “wipe,” and partaken of perchance upon the bricks waiting for piling in father’s hod when he has had his “wittles”; or the three-halfpenny saveloy and “penny buster,” forming in combination the delicacy popularly known as a “dustman’s sandwich,” and said, in connection with porter, to form a large portion of that gentleman’s sustenance; each, every, either of these dinners gives a certain glow to the countenance of the recipient and undoubtedly it will be found that human nature will be at its best about feeding-time.

Listen, then, and know all ye of the softer sex; and if you want anything out of this same human nature, wait till the corn is planted, and then look out for your harvest.

Knowing all this, and how mollifying is the influence of food, we should prefer the interval following his last anthropophagia in our visit to the cannibal; and, therefore, urged by a desire to see our enemy of the badge at his best, we walk down “this street to the left,” and somewhere about half-way down we find a perennial fountain in the shape of an iron post with a hole in its side by which to wind it up. There are some squat, tubby-looking little pails in a row; while close by stands a shiny-hatted straw-bit besprinkled Triton blowing his pipe. The water looks cool and limpid, but hard by is the gin – a trap within an open door. Gin and water – a potent mixture; but in this case the master takes the gin, and the horse the water. The horses look hot and stuffy this sunshiny day, as they stand with their cabs in a row down the long street, nose-bagged and contemplative, but they evidently find considerable enjoyment in banging their chaff-holding receptacles against the back of the cab in front, or resting them upon spring or wheel.

But where are the drivers – the supplanters of the Jehu, the jarvey of hackney-coach days – the men who place a bit in the mouths of their steeds, but prefer a sup in their own – the men who guide and rein them in their course and check the prancings of their hoofs – where are they? At their best. Cabby dineth! Dine we with him.

Up this shady little street, and into this shady shop – none the cooler for it though; while phew! the steam! Six, ten, fifteen hams in the window; legs, loins, shoulders, all sorts of mutton; beef joints by the dozen; and all hanging ready for to-morrow’s consumption. And to-day’s?

“This way, sir; room in that box to the left.”

We enter that box to the left, and find the “room” very small, and also that we are elbowed by the people “Pegging away” at their dinner; while, if we closed our eyes for a moment, we should be ready to take oath that we were neither in the shop of Rimmel, Hendrie, nor Atkinson. But, sinking the sentimental, and setting aside the too great smell of kitchen when a hot cinder has quenched its glow in the dripping-pan, the odour is not so very bad, and we prepare to eat.

Now, we have eaten in a variety of places in our time, and with the eating we have drunk – quaffing the regal wine of Champagne in an ex-palace – that is to say, emptied glasses of what was said to be genuine Clicquot; but we dare not venture to assert that it was not gooseberry. Reversing Mr Hullah’s legend, “per scalam ascendimus,” we have dined off an Abernethy biscuit and a “penn’orth” of shrimps in a recess of Waterloo Bridge – a redbait dinner in a granite hall, with a view of the river both ways, equalling or excelling that from Lovegrove’s; and, therefore, we were not above asking the opinion of friends right and left as to the quality of the joints on cut.

“Try the beef, guv’ner,” says a gentleman in the style of head-dress known as a “deerstalker,” which he wore while he trowelled his dinner into his mouth with the blade of a very wide knife. “Try the beef, guv’ner – the weal and ’am won’t do. Somethin’s turned, either the weal or my stummick.”

A gentleman in a great-coat on my right suggests “line o’ mutton,” while a very red-nosed man in front – red-nosed, but the very antithesis of the holy Stiggins – quotes beefsteak pudding; but we like the look of the beef proposer, and the sound of the dish; so, forgetful of rinder and every other pest, we seek to gain the attention of the hot nymph in waiting. No easy task, though, for the maiden, evidently own sister of the Polly who captivated Smallweed, junior, is in all directions in the space of a few seconds.

In luck though at last, and we announce that we will take a plate of beef – roast.

“And taters?”

“And taters.”

“And brockylow?”

“And brockylow.”

“Stout?”

“Stout’s hard,” hints our beefy friend, and we decide upon “half-and-half.”

Five minutes after we are served with a prime plate off some prime ribs of beef, three fine potatoes in their brown jackets, grinning all over, and looking temptingly mealy-mouthed; a tolerably fine head of broccoli that would suggest “cathoppers and grassipillars” were the season more advanced, while even now one cannot help shuddering and thinking of Fenianism and slugs; “a bread;” and, lastly, the beer supposed to be soft, or rather not hard.

Now, if the place had been ventilated, twenty degrees cooler, free from steam, smell, and tobacco smoke; it the knives had been what the cloth should have been, and what the salt was not; if my neighbours had not picked their teeth with their forks; if the mustard-pot had had no pipe ashes in its jaundiced throat; if the pint pots had not made the tables quite so gum-ringed; and lastly, and very briefly, if Cabby himself had been a little less demonstrative in his eating, and a little more guarded in his conversation: why, we could have made a very satisfactory dinner. But as the few above-mentioned trifles, and a mangy dog at our feet, militated against our getting a comfortable meal, why, the result was not quite so well as might be expected.

The trade going on was fast and furious. Cabbies went out and Cabbies came in; joint after joint was devoured, and the naked bones lay on the steaming pewter desert like those of the vulture-torn camel in far Araby. Cabby was certainly here at his best – the bow was unstrung, and he seemed to be enjoying himself. He seemed rather Indian – Red Indian – in his eating; laying in a good store, as though doubtful when time or money would again be propitious for a hearty meal; while jokes flew about – many at the expense of unwary fares and swells, for whom, as a rule, Cabby seemed to entertain a profound contempt.

We were not there long, but the topics of the day were settled again and again in the most satisfactory of ways, though probably not in accordance with the ideas of our statesmen. Mr Sothern was pitied; and gin, rum, whisky, and brandy declared the only table spirits. Fenianism was stigmatised as “rowdy”; Jamaica turned inside out; and the Parliamentary campaign mapped down. We noted what we could while finishing our “toke”; but we were upon enemies’ ground; and who knows the fate of spies discovered amid the freemasonry of Cabland. We thought of all this, and did not so much as point a pencil within the sacred precincts; but we recollected what we could – not much, though, for after dinner the digestive organs form a combination against those devoted to thinking. We came, however, to the conclusion that Cabby loves good living – bodily, if not morally; and we fear that he possesses the amiable weakness that exists to so large an extent amongst the London poor – namely, that of living well to-day, and letting to-morrow take care of itself. To-morrow may be a bad day, and then he goes not to his club; but contents himself with a “small German” upon his box; or a kidney-pie at the corner; or lower still, perhaps, he may have but a mealy potato from a can, or a “penn’orth” of peas-pudding on a scrap of a newspaper, the aroma of whose ink imparts no improved flavour. But so it is throughout the world, Earth’s creatures remembering that on the blackest day there is another side to the cloud, and that sooner or later the sun will shine again for rich and poor alike.

Cabby says luck’s sure to turn sometime; so he munches his potato on or in his cab; goes “tic” for a screw of tobacco, for which he seldom finds the screw on too tightly, and then smokes and waits patiently for a fare. When he is down on his luck, and has nothing else to live upon, he exists upon Hope; and she deals as gently with the rough-clothed, battle-scarred veteran of the streets as with the Hon Charley Fitzgauntlet of the Blues, when Fortune frowns and he has gambled away half his patrimony at the Derby. But if Cabby makes himself comfortable at times, surely he is not much to be blamed, for this world is not peopled with abstemious Dr Franklins, and when Cabby has the money in his pocket, and smells a good dinner, who can blame him that he eats, pays, and then waits for the next? Perhaps it comes punctually, perhaps it does not; still he waits, as Trotty Veck did, for his jobs; the bells cried, “Job coming soon, Toby;” and it always did come sooner or later. And so, like Toby’s, Cabby’s job comes sooner or later, and then he does as wiser men do – eats, drinks, and is merry, “quaffing amber draughts from the pearly pewter’s foam” – draughts that make glad his heart, and sometimes unsteady his hand. But cab-horses are not given to run away – we have sometimes wished they were – that is, if they would keep in the right direction. Still it is very rarely that Cabby meets with a mishap through careless driving. Accidents he does have, ’tis true; but, considered in relation to the thousands of miles traversed, their paucity is wonderful.

“But they’re a shocking set, my dear; lazy, good-for-nothing creatures – cheating, story-telling fellows. Whatever you do, take the man’s number before you enter his cab.”

So says Mrs British Matron. But this is not all true. Cabby can cheat, lie, and be good for nothing; but he has his honest phase; and, poor fellow, he has a hard time of it.

The wind whistles down the street on a dark night; the rain or sleet drives in cutting clouds round the corners; and Dives’ son and daughter, to return from dinner or party, send for a cab. The first Cabby has been sitting for a couple of hours fareless upon his box, and as his half-frozen Rosinante is drawn up at the door of the well-lit house, Cabby stiffly descends, and begins to dance upon the pavement, and beat warmth into his breast after the popular mode of “Two thieves whopping a rascal.”

All this while there is a round of “good-byeing,” and “dearing,” shawling, wrapping, and goloshing; and then the thoughtful head of the house hopes that the cabman is a member of the Bonded Brotherhood of Bottle Scorners, and thinks Thomas had better take a hand candlestick and look at the man’s number.

The hand candlestick goes out, and so does the candle; for directly the white-stockinged legs of Thomas are outside the hall door the light is extinct, and the bearer fares like poor Mr Winkle on the windy night at Bath, for he is banged out of the house.

“Vot odds vot a cove’s number is?” says Cabby. “Tell ’em to make ’aste out.”

Now Cabby is not a member of the Bonded Brotherhood, for he has had two “goes” of gin since eight o’clock, and would have liked another – “only it runs away with the brass”; and if this were known he would probably lose his fare, although he has been sitting so long in the driving sleet or rain, and Dives, jun, has imbibed two or three glasses of sherry, three of champagne, and as many of port, during dinner and dessert.

The ricketty door of the vehicle is opened; the glass let down; dragged up again; and then, with a bang which threatens to dislocate every joint in the old cab’s body, the door is closed, the box mounted, when rattling and jangling, off goes the licensed carriage to deposit its freight.

Distance two miles, barely, time nearly midnight; what wonder that after a bad day our dinner companion pockets his “bob” with a growl, and sullenly mounts his box to seek a fairer fare?

Chapter Eleven.
K9’s Adventure

One of the great peculiarities of the policeman is his head. Now, I do not mean that his head differs from the small or large capital at the head of most articles; but I allude to the use he makes of that important appendage to the human body. A nod is said to be as good as a wink to a blind horse; but leaving blind horses out of the question, the policeman’s nod is a great deal better than his wink. There is a majesty about one of his wags of the head that is sun-like in its powers; for as the snow dissolves, so melts away the crowd before that simple act. It would be a matter of no small difficulty to reduce the workings of his head to rule, on account of the vast number of exceptions which would intrude; but in spite of the attendant difficulties, I have learned something from my friend of the bracelet. What most men would do by a wave of the hand, Bobby does waggishly – that is to say, by means of his head. What one would do in a pointed manner with one’s finger, again, K9 performs with his head. If any ordinary being wished to eject an intruder from his premises he would give tongue – that is to say, not snarl or bark, but tell him to go in a very fierce tone of voice; but again, a wag of our friend’s head does the duty, and far more effectually. In short, the nod of emperor or king is not one half so potent in the upper regions of society as that of K9 with the people.

What awe there is amongst the small boys of the metropolis, and how they skim and scuffle off when the policeman wags his head; and yet, as they round a corner, how that never-to-be-beaten Briton peeps forth from their small natures as they yell defiance when out of reach. But in spite of his alacrity in fleeing, our friend holds the London gamin somewhat in dread. There is something very humiliating for a noble swell of a policeman to have to march off four feet six inches of puerile mischief – powerful in its very weakness – a morsel which acts as a barbed and stinging thorn in Bobby’s side all the way to the station. We can easily imagine the grim smile of satisfaction which would ripple over the countenance of our hero if, in traversing that part of Holborn called High, like Tom Hood, he came into contact with a mother bewailing the loss of her beloved child. We can easily believe that Bobby would fervently hope that the loss would prove his gain, that the child would be, like the old woman’s son Jerry in the ancient rhyme, lost and never found; that the young dog would never turn up again to plague his life, as he would be pretty sure to do at some future time, banding himself with birds of a similar feather, chalking the pavements, bowling hoops amongst the horses’ legs, dropping caps down areas, altering butter-shop tickets, running howling in troops out of courts, and disturbing the equanimity of foot passengers, cutting behind cabs, yelling inside shop doors, climbing lamp-posts and performing perilous acrobatic tricks on the ladder bar, giving runaway knocks and rings, casting themselves beneath horses’ hoofs and miraculously escaping death at every tick of the clock, making slides on the pave – ice in winter, mud in autumn or spring, and of the slippery stones in summer; in short, proving a most thorough plague, torment, and curse to our friend, who shuns the persecution, as beasts do gad-flies or hornets, from their painful insignificance.

A youthful pickpocket is a sad trial to him; in fact so is a small offender of any description; for the sharp boys of London are all gifted with tongues keen as the adder’s teeth, and slightly artful in their small way. They are powerful at snivelling and appealing to the tender feelings of the bystanders for aid and assistance against the bitter tyranny of their captor; and now shines forth that peculiarity of the British public against which our friend declaims, for the removal of a boy of tender years, but tough experience, generally calls forth a large amount of sympathy, which is loudly evinced in a manner most trying to the nerves of K9.

In due course I received proper apology for the rather rough treatment I had received, and then listened with considerable attention to further recitals, many of which are lost to posterity from the jealousy evinced by the street hero when an attempt was made at noting.

“No thanky, sir,” said he, “as I said afore, that sorter thing’s bad enough in open court; but then we says what we are obliged. No prifate notin’, thanky. P’raps you’ll put that flimsy away, as it might cause futur’ unpleasantry through bein’ used as information again your umbel servant. I was a-goin’ to say a word or two about a hupset as I had one night going to take a fellow for forgery. It warn’t a very partic’lar affair, for we knowed where my gentleman could be found, and there warn’t any need of a detective. I was detective that time, and only took one chap with me, as I went quietly about my job.

“From information I received I knowed my customer was somewhere out Soho way, in one o’ them big old houses as is all let out in lodgings, and full of Frenchies, and Hightalians, and sich. Reg’lar furren colony, you know, all the way towards Leicester-square. My customer had been a clerk in a City firm, and had been hard at work makin’ hisself a fortun at bettin’. He used to work hard at it, too, allus making his book so that he’d bet on the safe side, whatever ’oss won; and I don’t know what he warn’t going to make out of it.

“On the strength of what was a-comin’, and to pay some little expenses as he used to come in for through a werry smart sort o’ lady as he courted, he used to borrow money of his gov’nor, just on the quiet-like, without bothering of him when he knowed he was busy. So he used to sign his gov’nor’s name for him on bits o’ cheques, and get what tin he wanted from the bank; but allus meant to pay it back again when he got in his heavy amounts as he was to win at Epsom, or Ascot, S’Leger, or Newmarket.

“Well, you see this sweetheart of his was jest sech another as that Miss Millwood as did for George Barnwell, and she was a regular dragon at spending money. Consequently my young friend was allus a borrowin’ of his gov’nor, as I telled you jest now; and at last of all he wouldn’t stand it any longer, for it was bleeding him precious heavy. Besides which, he wanted to know who was being so kind to him and savin’ him so much trouble about his ortygruff, as he called it. So with a little bit o’ dodgin’, in which I assisted, my customer was treed; and then, watchin’ his chance, he runs, and I has to find him. In fact, yer know, he was what we calls ‘wanted.’

“But I could tell pretty well where my gentleman would be, so when I’d got my instructions I goes off to look arter him.

“Jest as a matter of form I goes to his lodgin’s; but, jest as I expected, he wasn’t there; so then I goes on to Soho, where his lady had apartments. I was in plain clothes, so when I asked for her the people let me in at once, and said I should find her in the first-floor front. I left my mate on the other side o’ the street, for I didn’t expect any opposition, so I walks upstairs to the door, turned the handle quietly, and walks in – when I gave a bit of a start, for the place was nearly dark, and would have been quite, if it hadn’t been for the gas shining up out of the street, and making patches of light on the wall; while, as the lamps ain’t werry close together in that part, it wasn’t such a great deal o’ light as got in that ways. If I’d been in uniform I should have had my bull’s-eye; but, as I warn’t, why, I hadn’t; so I looks round the room, and, as far as I could see, it was nicely furnished, but there was nobody there; so I gives a kick under the table, but there was no one there neither; but on it I could just make out as there was a decanter and two glasses and some biscuits.

“Well, only naterally, I takes ’old o’ the decanter with one hand, pulls out the stopper with the other, and has a smell. No mistake about it – sherry.

“There was the glasses all ready, and there was my mouth all ready; so I pours out a glassful all ready too, and I was just a-goin’ to raise the glass to my lips, when a thought struck me, and I says to myself:

“‘You air a niste promisin’ young officer, you air. You’re aspiring to be a detective, you air; and jest in the midst o’ business you’re a-goin’ to commit yourself like that. How do you know it ain’t a trap?’

“Well, you see, that was rather a settler; so I leaves the glass alone, though it was rather hard work, and then I has another look, and sees as there was foldin’ doors leading into the back room, and one o’ them doors was not close shut.

“My finger goes up to the side o’ my nose, and I gives myself a wink, and slips out again to see if there warn’t a door outer the back room on to the landing. As a matter o’ course there it was, so that any one might slip out o’ that hole while I went in at t’other. So I slips in again and feels as there was one o’ them little turning bolts on the folding door; so I claps the door to, turns the bolt, and was out again on to the landing in a jiffy.

“I needn’t have hurried myself, though, for all was as quiet as could be; and I thought as there was no one there, but of course I has to make sure. All at once I thinks that perhaps the landing door would be locked in side, and as I’d shut the folding door that would be locked too, so that I should be obliged to have ’em broken open, and this was the sort of house where you wouldn’t have a row if you could help it.

“How-so-be, sir, I tries the landing door, and finds it open easy enough, and then I was inside the room, but what sort of a place it was I couldn’t tell, for it was as dark as Ejup. Of course I expect it was a bedroom, and thinks as I should soon feel the bedstead, as would fill up a good bit o’ the place. But fust of all I drops down upon my hands and knees; so as if anybody hit at me, or shot at me, or tried any o’ them little games in the dark, as they’d most likely do it at the height of a man, why it would go over one, and only hit the furniture, which can be replaced, when you can’t replace active and enterprising officers – leave alone being cut off in the flower of one’s youth, you know.

“Then I listens. All as still and as dark as could be. But still as it was, I could hear my heart go ‘beat, beat,’ wonderful loud.

“‘Wish I’d a light,’ I says to myself, but then it warn’t no use wishing; and I didn’t want to go to the people downstairs, so I begins feeling about as slow and as quiet as I could.

“I soon finds out as it’s a bedroom, for I rubs my knuckles up against the bed-post, and soon was close up alongside o’ the ticking, when I thinks as I heered a noise, and darts back to the door in a moment; but all was still again, and I turns back, and then in a manner I got lost, and confused, and could not tell which way I was going, nor yet where was the door.

“Now, I daresay that all sounds werry queer; but perhaps you don’t know how easy it is to be lost in a dark room as you’ve never been in before, even if it is a little ’un; and if so be as you thinks werry little of it, jest you get a handkercher tied tight over yer eyes, and do as you does at Christmas time – ‘turn round three times and ketch who you may,’ and then see where you are in two twinklings.

“Well, first of all I hits my hand again a chair; then I butts my head again the corner of as hard a chest o’ drawers as ever I did feel in my life; and then I kicks up such a clatter with the washstand as would have a’most alarmed the house; but I keeps down on my hands and knees, being suspicious of an ambushment, till last of all I feels my way round to the bedside again, and when I was far enough I reaches my hand lightly over, and lays it on the bed, and then I jumps as though I was shot, for I felt somebody’s leg under the clothes.

“Then I snatches my hand back and turns all over in a wet, cold state as if I’d been dipped, for I feels precious uncomfortable, and didn’t know what was best to be done next. One moment I expected to hear the ‘whish’ of a heavy stick, or the sharp crack of a pistol; for arter the noise I made it was quite impossible for whoever was in the bed to be asleep. Then I thinks as I would call for help, or run out, for I don’t mind telling you I felt regularly scared with the silence. How-so-be, I gets the better of my bit o’ failing; and, rousing up, I puts my hand over once more close up to where the pillow should be, and lays it upon a cold face, and there it seemed to stick, for a shudder went up my arm right to my head, and I couldn’t neither move nor speak, while my mouth felt as dry and hot inside as though it was full o’ dust.

“Cold! I never felt anything so cold; and I fell a shivering awful, till with a regular drag I rouses myself up and snatches my hand away; and as fast as ever I could I got out on to the landing and into the front room, and all the while trembling and feeling as if something was after me to pull me back. I got to the window, smashes out a pane, and gives a whistle as brings my mate to the door, and then I hears a ring, and some voices, and he was up to my side in a moment or two, with some o’ the people o’ the house arter him.

“‘Turn on your light,’ I says, as soon as he stood by me on the landing, and then, feeling as white as a sheet, and my hair wet with persperation, but more plucky now there was light and a companion, I goes back towards the room.

“‘Here, give us one o’ them candles,’ I says to a woman as came upstairs with one in each hand; and then from upstairs and down comes the people, all talking together, while as soon as some on ’em sees as it was the police they shuffles off again, so as it was all women as stayed about us.

“First glance I take I sees what was up, and I says to my mate: —

“‘Keep them all out;’ and he goes and stands at the door and closes it after him, when I’m blest if I didn’t let the candle fall, and it was out in a moment. But I felt better now there was help if I wanted it, and I goes up to the bedside and lays my hand on that face as I touched before, but it was cold as ice. Then I slips my hand down to the breast, but there wasn’t a beat there, so I then says to myself, ‘Gone,’ says I; and in spite o’ my shiverin’ and tremblin’ I tried to get the better of it, and reaches over again and lays my hand on the back of a head as felt cold, too; and then, after a good hard tussel with number one, I feels down to the breast of this one, and there wasn’t a beat there. Then I gets to the door again, just as a man comes with a candle in his hand.

“I gives him my empty candlestick, and takes his light, and I says: —

“‘I’m a policeman,’ I says, ‘and you go out and fetch the nighest doctor; and if you meets another constable tell him to come here.’

“‘What for, young man?’ he says, werry bounceable.

“‘Never you mind what for,’ I says; but you do as you’re told; and seeing me look as though I meant it, he starts off like a shot, and we two stood there till the doctor came, and then we goes in, followed by ever so many women, all looking white, and talking in whispers.

“Lord, sir, it was a sight! There was the room well-furnished, and on the bed lay as pretty a girl as ever you see, search through all London; her face, and neck looking as white as so much marble, while all her long black hair lay loose and scattered over the pillow. Her hands were under her head, and she looked for all the world as though she was asleep; while by the flickering candles I almost thought I could see her smile. And there, with one arm across her, his head close to her side, his face buried in the clothes, half-lying on the bed, with his feet on the ground by the bedside, was him as I took to be my customer as I wanted; and both him and the girl dead and stiff.