noiter theirs? The alien area of London was well known to
me, for it had always seemed interesting since my visit to Warsaw, and,
judging from the police reports, it appeared to be a veritable happy
hunting-ground for the connoisseur in criminals.

"Hence it was that my unrest led me almost daily to perambulate that
strange region east of Aldgate where uncouth foreign names stare out
from the shop signs and almost every public or private notice is in the
Hebrew character. Dressed in my shabbiest clothes, I trudged, hour after
hour and day after day, through the gray and joyless streets and alleys,
looking earnestly into the beady eyes and broad faces of the
East-European wayfarers and wondering whether any of them was the man I
sought.

"One evening, as I was returning homeward through the district that
lies at the rear of Middlesex Street, my attention was arrested by a
large card tacked on the door of a closed shop. A dingy barber's pole
gave a clue to the nature of the industry formerly carried on, and the
card--which was written upon in fair and even scholarly Hebrew
characters--supplied particulars. I had stopped to read the inscription,
faintly amused at the incongruity between the recondite Oriental
lettering and the matter-of-fact references to 'eligible premises' and
'fixtures and goodwill,' when the door opened and two men came out. One
was a typical English Jew, smart, chubby and prosperous; the other was
evidently a foreigner.

"Both men stood aside to enable me to continue my reading, and, as I was
about to turn away, the smarter of the two addressed me.

"'Good chanth here, misther. Nithe little bithness going for nothing. No
charge for goodwill or fixtures. Ready-made bithneth and nothing to pay
but rent.'

"'Ja!' the other man broke in, 'dat shop is a leedle goldmine; und you
buys 'im for noding.'

"It was an absurd situation. I was beginning smilingly to shake my head
when the Jew resumed eagerly:

"I tell you, misther, itth a chanth in a million. A firth clath bithneth
and not a brown to pay for the goodwill. Come in and have a look round,'
he added persuasively.

"I suppose I am curious by nature. At any rate, I am sure it was nothing
but idle curiosity to see what the interior of a Whitechapel house was
like that led me to follow the two men into the dark and musty-smelling
shop. But hardly had my eyes lighted on the frowsy fixtures and
appurtenances of the trade when there flashed into my