Page:The Middle of Things - Fletcher (1922).djvu/261

 moved about, and groups of poorly clad children played in the gutters.

"All right," he said as he got down from the car, and the chauffeur made a grimace at the unlovely vista. "Look here—I don't want you to wait here. Go back to Whitechapel Road and hang about the end of the street we've just come down. I'll come back there to you."

"Not afraid of going down here alone, then, sir?" asked the chauffeur. "It's a bit as that policeman said."

"I'm all right," repeated Viner. "You go back and wait. I may be some time. I mayn't be long."

He turned away down the street—and in spite of his declaration, he felt that this was certainly the most doubtful place he had ever been in. There were evil and sinister faces on the sidewalks; evil and sinister eyes looking out of dirty windows; here and there a silent-footed figure went by him in the gloom of the December day with the soft step of a wild animal; here and there, men leaning against the wall, glared suspiciously at him or fixed rapacious eyes on his good clothes. There were shops in this street such as Viner had never seen the like of—shops wherein coarse, dreadful looking food was exposed for sale; and there were public-houses from which came the odour of cheap gin and bad beer and rank tobacco; an atmosphere of fried fish and something far worse hung heavily above the dirty pavements, and at every step he took Viner asked himself the same question—what on earth could Miss Wickham and Mrs. Killenhall be doing in this wretched neighbourhood?