"No. I'm sorry, I tell you. But about this boy——"
"There's no more to see now, if ye plaze. That's the way out."
O'Brien was deeply offended by the language used beneath a roof hallowed by the name of Mary Anson. The sightseer had to go, and quickly. Another commissionaire, who was observing them from a distance, came up and asked O'Brien what the stranger was talking about.
"Ye nivver heard sich a blaggard," said the old man, indignantly. "I was in the middle of tellin' him about Mr. Philip, when he began to curse like Ould Nick himself."
In the Mile End Road the rawboned person who betrayed such excitement found the policeman awaiting him. He sprang onto a 'bus, and purposely glared at the officer in a manner to attract his attention. When at a safe distance he put his fingers to his nose. The constable smiled.
"I knew I was right," he said. "I don't need to look twice at that sort of customer."
And he entered the Mary Anson Home again to ask the porter what had taken place.
It was an easy matter for Jocky Mason, released from Portland Prison on ticket-of-leave, after serving the major portion of a sentence of fourteen years' penal servitude—the man he assaulted had died, and the ex-convict narrowly escaped being hanged—to ascertain the salient facts of Philip Anson's later career.
It was known to most men. He was biographed briefly in Who's Who and had often supplied material for a column of gossip in the newspapers. Every free library held books containing references to him.
It was quite impossible that the source of his great wealth should remain hidden for all time. In one way and another it leaked out, and he became identified with the ragged youth who created a sensation in the dock of the Clerkenwell Police Station.