That his sister and his daughter and possibly his servants were his dupes, and in no sense his accomplices, I was absolutely convinced. But dupes his sister and daughter could be no more. They, at least, knew something of the truth, if not the whole of it. Hence their letters to me; hence their endeavours to induce me to give up Dumpling hunting and detective work; and hence their disappearance. And now that I, too, knew the truth, later though my knowledge might be, I was confronted with the question, "How, in view of what you know, do you propose to act?"
CHAPTER XXVI.
"ONLY STARVING!"
Given the fact that I had promised to refrain from further detective work, the fact that the two Miss Carletons had disappeared and had forbidden me to try to find or to follow them, "How did I now propose to act?" was the question before me.
It was answered next morning as I sat at breakfast.
Opening my newspaper, I read that, owing to the removal of the works of two of the greatest ship-building firms from Thames Side to the North, thousands of men had been thrown out of work, and the greatest destitution prevailed. "The condition of things in East London"—so it was stated in the newspaper—"is more terrible than has been known within the memory of anyone now alive, and it is no exaggeration to say that at this moment hundreds, if not thousands, of women and children are starving." Some instances which had come under the personal notice of the writer of the article were then given. Even to read them was painful; to try to realise them was heart-breaking.
"This may, or may not, be a piece of newspaper exaggeration, for the purpose of sensationalism," I said; "but if the half of what this man says be true, what right have I to be sitting here before a comfortable breakfast while little children are crying vainly for bread?"
I pushed my almost untasted breakfast away from me. I felt as if, with the wail of starving children in my ears, another mouthful of food would choke me.
"I can, of course, sit down and send a cheque to a church fund for the unemployed or to a charitable institution," I went on, "and in the majority of cases that is the wisest and best course to pursue. Organisation, especially expert organisation, can make even a small sum go further than can any amount of inexpert individual effort; in addition to which, nine out of ten of the people who happen to be charitably disposed are unable, for various reasons, to distribute their charity at first hand, and in person. I don't know that it is always desirable that they should do so. Their very kindness of heart makes them easy to be imposed upon; and promiscuous and amateur almsgiving is, I fear, often responsible for the springing up of a class of anything but amateur alms-cadgers and spongers. But I know the 'ins' and 'outs' of the East End of London. I'm not altogether unacquainted with the fact that the greater the need, the more pitiful and deserving the case, the harder is it to find. Your decent, deserving, hard-working man, whom ill-health and misfortune have brought to want, will creep away secretly to starve, in silence to suffer and to die, while your rascally loafer, who has never done an honest day's work in his life, seizes upon every opportunity of 'times being bad,' or of men being known to be out of work, to parade the streets, hymn-howling and copper-cadging for the wherewithal to spend in the public-house. I know something of the ways and wiles of gentlemen of this kidney, something of the silent suffering and dogged, splendid pride of the other class; and being myself, for the present, at least, a genuine member of the unemployed, and having, moreover, a system of my own invention for getting at the facts, I think I'll go east and investigate things for myself. For novel writing or other literary work my mind is just now too unsettled, and as I am not one who can for any length of time remain inactive, I will make the start this morning and this moment, and be off."
Taking the train to Shadwell, I deliberately set to work to find the most squalid and poverty-stricken slum in the whole district. Then I entered the nearest baker's shop.