At last he was free. He tore the filthy thing from his head and the bunch of it from his mouth with the same gesture, overcame a strong desire to vomit, and looked round him.
He found himself seated upon a sort of narrow bench attached by iron clamps to the wall of a small and exceedingly noisome room, which even at that moment he had the wit to think that he would certainly have dealt with by the local inspector when he should have assumed what he had heard called the reins of office.
But for the moment other considerations occupied him to the exclusion of the condition of the room. A dirty paraffin lamp with no shade stood on the rickety table; the one window was blinded by a large old wooden shutter barred down against it; on the cracked, distempered walls, stained with a generation of grease and smoke, hung a paper upon which a few figures had been scrawled roughly in pencil, and most of them scratched out again, and here and there the same pencil or others had inscribed the surface of the plaster with sentiments and illustrations most uncongenial to his breeding.
The next thing that met his eye was a peculiarly repulsive pair of breeches, an old green-black torn overcoat, and a pair of workmen’s boots, cracked, grey with weather, laceless and apparently as stiff as wood. He had no choice: his first business was to find aid. He must put these on, break his way out of this den as best he could, and summon the Police.
He had never had his feet in such things as those boots before; it was like shuffling in boxes. He hated to feel the clammy grease of the trousers and coat against his skin.
He left the lamp burning and made for the door. To his astonishment the latch was open. To his further astonishment it gave into an open passage like a tunnel, with no door but a plain arch opening into the court beyond. He shuffled out. He was glad that it was not yet day. Fortunately it was not cold.
He turned, he knew not whither, following the streets aimlessly, but more or less in one direction, until he saw in a blotted silhouette against the darkness of the walls, the glad and familiar form of a policeman. It was like coming home! It was like making a known harbour light after three days of lost reckonings and a gale.
He went up to the man and began in that pleasant but not condescending tone in which he had ever addressed members of the force:
“Policeman, can you tell me....”
He got no further. The agile though weighty custodian of order, with the low and determined remark, “I know yer!” had seized him by the shoulders, whirled him round and away, so that he fell, bruised and a little dazed, against the steps of a house.