‘What about me?’ asked Marston, with an offended tone in his voice.
The occupant of the carriage gave a short little laugh.
‘My good friend, I don’t think a little more rain will do you much harm; you don’t appear to have been under an umbrella lately.’
Marston remembered that he was a penniless outcast, soaked to the skin; for the moment he had forgotten it, and fancied he was a gentleman walking home.
‘What do you want me to look for?’ he said, altering his tone.
‘Little Queer Street, No. 15; and if you find it I’ll give you a shilling.’
Marston walked up one side street and down another, peering through the fog towards those wonderful arrangements in white and black with which the Board of Works are good enough to label the street corners, and which are so high up and so small that an ordinary-sighted person requires a ladder and a magnifying glass before he can tell what they are, and at night even this would be insufficient unless accompanied by an electric light.
After much wandering up and down, and straining of the eyeballs and cross-examination of a solitary policeman, who was standing up out of the wet, and enjoying a quiet pipe down a particularly deserted side street, Marston discovered where Little Queer Street was, and ascertained which side of the way and which end was honoured by the presence of that No. 15, which was evidently about to be visited by a gentleman who kept his carriage.
He came back with the intelligence, and communicated it to the coachman.
‘Wait a minute, Cook, I haven’t rewarded this poor fellow for his trouble,’ said the doctor, for the coachman was whipping up the horses, without waiting for such a trifle.