V FURNISHED APARTMENTS
VI THE DISABLED
VII WOMEN IN THE UNDERWORLD
VIII MARRIAGE IN THE UNDERWORLD
IX BRAINS IN THE UNDERWORLD
X PLAY IN THE UNDERWORLD
XI ON THE VERGE OF THE UNDERWORLD
XII IN PRISONS OFT
XIII UNEMPLOYED AND UNEMPLOYABLE
XIV SUGGESTIONS.

LONDON'S UNDERWORLD

CHAPTER I. MY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES

The odds and ends of humanity, so plentiful in London's great city,
have for many years largely constituted my circle of friends and
acquaintances.

They are strange people, for each of them is, or was, possessed of some
dominating vice, passion, whim or weakness which made him incapable of
fulfilling the ordinary duties of respectable citizenship.

They had all descended from the Upper World, to live out strange lives,
or die early deaths in the mysterious but all pervading world below the
line.

Some of them I saw, as it were, for a moment only; suddenly out of the
darkness they burst upon me; suddenly the darkness again received them
out of my sight.

But our acquaintance was of sufficient duration to allow me to acquire
some knowledge, and to gain some experience of lives more than strange,
and of characters far removed from the ordinary.

But with others I spent many hours, months, or years as circumstances
warranted, or as opportunities permitted. Some of them became my
intimates; and though seven long years have passed since I gave up
police-court duties, our friendship bears the test of time, for they
remain my friends and acquaintances still.

But some have passed away, and others are passing; one by one my list
of friends grows less, and were it not that I, even now, pick up a new
friend or two, I should run the risk of being a lonely old man. Let me
confess, however, that my friends have brought me many worries, have
caused me much disappointment, have often made me very angry. Sometimes,
I must own, they have caused me real sorrow and occasionally feelings
of utter despair. But I have had my compensations, we have had our happy
times, we have even known our merry moments.

Though pathos has permeated all our intercourse, humour and comedy have
never been far away; though sometimes tragedy has been in waiting.

But over one and all of my friends hung a great mystery, a mystery that
always puzzled and sometimes paralysed me, a mystery that always set me
to thinking.

Now many of my friends wer