Page:Dickens - Our Mutual Friend, ed. Lang, 1897, vol.1.djvu/54

 " I am lost! " replied the man, in a hurried and an eager manner.

" Lost?"

" I—I—am a stranger, and don't know the way. I—I—want to find the place where I can see what is described here. It is possible I may know it." He was panting, and could hardly speak; but, he showed a copy of the newly-printed bill that was still wet upon the wall. Perhaps its newness, or perhaps the accuracy of his observation of its general look, guided Gaffer to a ready conclusion.

" This gentleman, Mr. Lightwood, is on that business."

" Mr. Lightwood?"

During a pause, Mortimer and the stranger confronted each other. Neither knew the other.

" I think, sir," said Mortimer, breaking the awkward silence with his airy self-possession, " that you did me the honour to mention my name?"

" I repeated it after this man."

" You said you were a stranger in London? "

" An utter stranger."

" Are you seeking a Mr. Harmon? "

" No."

" Then I believe I can assure you that you are on a fruitless errand, and will not find what you fear to find. Will you come with us?"

A little winding through some muddy alleys that might have been deposited by the last ill-savoured tide, brought them to the wicket-gate and bright lamp of a Police Station; where they found the Night-Inspector, with a pen and ink, and ruler, posting up his books in a whitewashed office, as studiously as if he were in a monastery on the top of a mountain, and no howling fury of a drunken woman were banging herself against a cell-door in the back-yard at his elbow. With the same air of a recluse much given to study, he desisted from his books to bestow a distrustful nod of recognition upon Gaffer, plainly importing, " Ah ! we know all