"Well, sir," the inspector answered, "I am sure that is not a bad way of putting it."
"Is that a policeman? Do you mean to say he is a detective?" Mary asked James Fabian Rose. "I thought those people were so illiterate and stupid."
The great Socialist laughed.
"My dear," he answered, "you have so much, so very much to learn. Inspector Brown is one of the most intelligent men you could meet with anywhere. He speaks three languages perfectly. He reads Shakespeare. He understands social economics almost as well as I do myself. If he had had better chances he would have been a leader at the bar or an archdeacon. As it is he protects society without réclame, or without acknowledgment, and his emolument for exercising his extreme talents in this direction is, I believe, something under £250 a year."
Mary said nothing. It seemed, indeed, the only thing to do, but very many new thoughts were born within her as she listened to the pleasant, cultured voice of the bearded man, who looked as if he ought to be in uniform, and who led the party with so confident and so blithe a certainty.
They walked through streets of squalor. They progressed through by-ways, ill-smelling and garbage-laden. The very spawn of London squealed and rolled in the gutters, while grey, evil-faced men and women peered at them from doorways and spat a curse as they went by.
They wound in and out of the horrid labyrinth of the West End slums until the great roar of London's traffic died away and became an indistinct hum, until they were all conscious of the fact that they were in another and different sphere.
They had arrived at the underworld.
They were come at last to grip with facts that stank and bit and gripped.
Mary turned a white face to Fabian Rose.