Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 1.djvu/395

 desperate,—when there emerges unexpectedly from an ugly looking court or cul-de-sac, just between Darrell and his pursuer, a slim, long-backed, buttoned-up, weazel-faced policeman. The policeman eyes the tatterdemalion instinctively, then turns his glance towards the solitary defenceless gentleman in advance, and walks on, keeping himself between the two. The tatterdemalion stifles an impatient curse. Be his purpose force, be it only supplication, be it colloquy of any kind, impossible to fulfil it while that policeman is there. True that in his powerful hands he could have clutched that slim, long-backed officer, and broken him in two as a willow-wand. But that officer is the Personation of Law, and can stalk through a legion of tatterdemalions as a ferret may glide through a barn full of rats. The prowler feels he is suspected. Unknown as yet to the London police, he has no desire to invite their scrutiny. He crosses the way; he falls back; he follows from afar. The policeman may yet turn away before the safer streets of the metropolis be gained. No; the cursed Incarnation of Law, with eyes in its slim back, continues its slow strides at the heels of the unsuspicious Darrell. The more solitary defiles are already passed,—now that dim lane, with its dead wall on one side. By the dead wall skulks the prowler; on the other side still walks the Law. Now—alas for the prowler!--shine out the throughfares, no longer dim nor deserted,—Leicester Square, the Haymarket, Pall Mall, Carlton Gardens; Darrell is at his door. The policeman turns sharply round. There, at the corner near the learned Club-house, halts the tatterdemalion. Towards the tatterdemalion the policeman now advances quickly. The tatterdemalion is quicker still; fled like a guilty thought.

Back, back, back into that maze of passages and courts, back to the mouth of that black alley. There he halts again. Look at him. He has arrived in London but that very night, after an absence of more than four years. He has arrived from the sea-side on foot; see, his shoes are worn into holes. He has not yet found a shelter for the night. He has been directed towards that quarter, thronged with adventurers, native and foreign, for a shelter, safe, if squalid. It is somewhere near that court at the mouth of which he stands. He looks round: the policeman is baffled; the coast clear. He steals forth, and pauses under the same gaslight as that under which Guy Darrell had paused before,—under the same gaslight, under the same stars. From some recess in his rags he draws forth a large, distained, distended pocket-book,—last