The Mysteries of Modern London

by George R. Sims

The well-dressed, well-mannered "dangerous class" has increased rapidly of late years. The conditions of modern life are wholly favourable to its development. The breaking down of social barriers which has marked the new century has opened up new and profitable fields of enterprise. In a day when millionaires spring up like mushrooms, and anybody with an American accent or a Jewish name is accepted as fabulously rich "without further inquiry," it is the easiest thing in the world for the skilful adventurer to work himself into any society—even to obtain the entrée to houses where, once having been seen, his reputation is hall-marked.

No one, as a rule—except a tradesman swindled out of his goods—seeks to pry into the mystery of these people's means. The source of the incomes of so many who live luxuriously today is a mystery, that suspicion has been lulled, and anyone with a few pounds and a portmanteau or a Saratoga trunk has only to put up a well-frequented London hotel to start making a useful circle of acquaintances at once.

Some of these people are known to the police. Their record is at Scotland Yard. It is this fact that occasionally leads to the occupant of an elegant apartment being presented with his or her bill by the management, and at the same time a polite intimation that their room is required for another guest who has secured it for that date. Sometimes the person so treated argues the matter out with a show of indignation. But, as a rule, discretion is considered the best part of valour, and the agreeable Mr. So-and-So or the charming Mrs. So-and-So is missed from the lounge or the smoking-room or the drawingroom, and the departure regretted. For these people are always "nice." If they were not, they would make no friends, and it is by the making of friends they live.

But more frequently the hotel adventurer and adventuress have not come under the official notice of the detective police. The men of position who are swindled by women, the women of good social standing who are duped by men, do not care to advertise their simplicity to the world. It is on this distaste for publicity on the part of their victims that high-class adventurers and adventuresses rely.

At a fashionable London hotel some time ago a young American arrived. He bore a well-known name, and was a partner in his father's business. The wealth and position of his family were discussed in the smoking-room, one or two Americans present volunteering information to an Englishman who had started the topic of conversation.

This Englishman, satisfied as to the bona fides of the newcomer, lost no time in making his acquaintance, and very obligingly "showed him London"—the side of it which is not in the guide-books. One night the young American was taken by his friend to a club in a side street in Soho, which he was told was a gambling club. He need not play, but the company were worth seeing. The young fellow did not want to play, but was quite willing to look on. All of a sudden a dispute arose among the players—there were about a dozen, among them some foreigners—there was a scuffle, one of the foreigners whipped out a dagger and plunged it into the breast of a man with whom he was quarrelling, his victim fell to the ground, the lights were turned down, and as the company made a rush to the door the police entered.

"This way," said the Englishman to his friend, and dragged him through a little door in the back of the room into a kitchen, out into a passage, and up a court into the main street, where they hailed a hansom and drove back to the hotel.

"We've had a narrow escape," said the Englishman. "It would have been pretty hard if we had been walked off to the station and charged. Of course, that club's illegal, and this stabbing business will be bad for everybody who was there." The young American was very thankful to have escaped the unpleasantness.

In an evening paper the next day appeared a mysterious paragraph. A man had been found stabbed in a gambling houses The police had arrested several persons present, but it was stated by the victim, who was in a precarious condition, that he believed his assailant was a young American, who managed to escape after the police had entered. The proprietor of the establishment, who was in custody, had given information which, it was hoped, would lead to the identification of the assassin. The American was horrified.

"But you know this is absurd," he said to his English friend, who gave him the paper to read. "You saw the foreigner do it." The Englishman shook his head. "It's a nasty business," he said, "and unpleasant for both of us. It's evident that the proprietor and the other people are in league to save the real culprit."