But there is a war going on in London between two races of different colour, undisturbed and unseen, for the gory scenes of warfare are enacted in the bowels of the earth. It is to the death, and has been going on for years, the combatants being the red cockroach and the blackbeetle. Both came to our shores in ships from distant lands. The blackbeetles were first, and had possession of underground London, but the cockroaches followed, disputed the right of territory, and thus the war began. The latest reports from the seat of war assert that the cockroaches are victorious all along the line as far as Regent's Park.
But this is digression. I merely made use of the cockroach simile because it occurred to me as I traversed the Italian quarter and gazed upon its denizens, an occasional accidental rub against one of whom made me shudder. Innocent they may be, but they don't look it, and when I was taken up a court—a horrible, dark, dank cul-de-sac—and shown the identical spot which a few weeks beforehand had been the scene of a murder, I made a sketch in the quickest time on record, keeping one eye on the ghastly place and the other on a window where a ragged blind was pulled quickly and nervously back, and a white face peered suddenly out and as suddenly retreated.
I did the same, pulling my detective friend after me.
WHERE THE DEED WAS DONE!
It is said that one-half the world does not know how the other half lives, but not the ninety-ninth part knows how it dies. In the vicinity of Mulberry Bend I was shown a house in which another bloody deed had recently been perpetrated—another cockroach killed. The blood was as fresh and visible as that of Rizzio in Holyrood Palace, but this excited no curiosity among the passers-by—crimes are more plentiful than mulberries here.
Paradise Park, The Bowery, New York, is a very high-sounding address. It is one that any European might imagine as a retreat of aristocratic refinement and sylvan beauty; there is nothing in the name to suggest the Seven Dials of London in its old days; and yet the place is its counterpart, the only difference being that the Five Points, as it is called, is two degrees worse than the Seven Dials that's, all!
Standing at these misnamed crossways, I noticed hurrying past an Italian woman bearing a load of household furniture on her back, and followed by a man—her husband, I was told—cursing her.