第6章

Dirty light filtered in through a window, the top of which was on a level with the sidewalk, and in this light I found that I was able to read newspaper print.

And here, while waiting the coming of Johnny Upright, let me explain my errand.While living, eating, and sleeping with the people of the East End, it was my intention to have a port of refuge, not too far distant, into which I could run now and again to assure myself that good clothes and cleanliness still existed.Also in such port Icould receive my mail, work up my notes, and sally forth occasionally in changed garb to civilization.

But this involved a dilemma.A lodging where my property would be safe implied a landlady apt to be suspicious of a gentleman leading a double life; while a landlady who would not bother her head over the double life of her lodgers would imply lodgings where property was unsafe.To avoid the dilemma was what had brought me to Johnny Upright.A detective of thirty-odd years' continuous service in the East End, known far and wide by a name given him by a convicted felon in the dock, he was just the man to find me an honest landlady, and make her rest easy concerning the strange comings and goings of which I might be guilty.

His two daughters beat him home from church,- and pretty girls they were in their Sunday dresses, withal it was the certain weak and delicate prettiness which characterizes the Cockney lasses, a prettiness which is no more than a promise with no grip on time, and doomed to fade quickly away like the color from a sunset sky.

They looked me over with frank curiosity, as though I were some sort of a strange animal, and then ignored me utterly for the rest of my wait.Then Johnny Upright himself arrived, and I was summoned upstairs to confer with him.

'Speak loud,' he interrupted my opening words.'I've got a bad cold, and I can't hear well.'

Shades of Old Sleuth and Sherlock Holmes! I wondered as to where the assistant was located whose duty it was to take down whatever information I might loudly vouchsafe.And to this day, much as Ihave seen of Johnny Upright and much as I have puzzled over the incident, I have never been quite able to make up my mind as to whether or not he had a cold, or had an assistant planted in the other room.But of one thing I am sure; though I gave Johnny Upright the facts concerning myself and project, he withheld judgment till next day, when I dodged into his street conventionally garbed and in a hansom.Then his greeting was cordial enough, and I went down into the dining room to join the family at tea.

'We are humble here,' he said, 'not given to the flesh, and you must take us for what we are, in our humble way.'

The girls were flushed and embarrassed at greeting me, while he did not make it any the easier for them.

'Ha! ha!' he roared heartily, slapping the table with his open hand till the dishes rang.'The girls thought yesterday you had come to ask for a piece of bread! Ha! ha! ho! ho! ho!'

This they indignantly denied, with snapping eyes and guilty red cheeks, as though it were an essential of true refinement to be able to discern under his rags a man who had no need to go ragged.

And then, while I ate bread and marmalade, proceeded a play at cross purposes, the daughters deeming it an insult to me that I should have been mistaken for a beggar, and the father considering it as the highest compliment to my cleverness to succeed in being so mistaken.All of which I enjoyed, and the bread, the marmalade, and the tea, till the time came for Johnny Upright to find me a lodging, which he did, not half a dozen doors away, on his own respectable and opulent street, in a house as like to his own as a pea to its mate.