One afternoon there landed from an American liner, at a Liverpool wharf, a tall, bony, haggard-looking man, roughly and shabbily dressed, with a long, tangled, grey beard, and dark, wide-open, wistful eyes; he had lost his left arm. He had been a steerage passenger of the poorest class, and had been moody and silent on the voyage, giving no offence, but making no friends or acquaintances, and saying nothing of whence he came or of whither he was bound; others talked of the little village they were going to return to, of the old parents who were longing to welcome them, of the graves left behind them or the health and youth lost for ever, of their cheated hopes and broken fortunes or their modest gains and longed-for rest; but he said nothing whatever; he had interested no one as he had offended no one; no one noticed or cared where he went when he landed.
He did not stop to eat or drink, but took his third-class ticket for London, and when that was paid had only two dollars remaining in his pocket as his share of the goods of this earth.
He was wedged up between rough navvies in an overfilled compartment, and had a slow, tedious, uncomfortable journey in the parliamentary train. But he did not heed these minor troubles; his mind was engrossed in one overwhelming, all-engrossing thought which sat on his breast and gnawed at his vitals like a vampire.
“I guess I’ll find him soon, even in that great city, if he’s as big a man as they say,” he muttered to himself as he got out of the train and passed into the mirk and noise and hurry of the London streets.
He looked at his little bit of money, hesitated, walked through several streets, then entered a modest eating-house, which proclaimed its calling by eggs and cheese and rounds of beef ticketed with their prices in the window.
He ordered a cup of coffee and a fried rasher of bacon, and when he had drunken and eaten these paid his small reckoning and said to the person who had served him:
“Can you tell me where a rich man called William Massarene, who came over from the States some years ago, lives in this city of yours?”
“No, I can’t,” said the woman. “There’s no rich folks in these here parts. But next door at the wine shop they’ve got a ‘Directory’; I’ll go and get it for you.”
In a few minutes she returned with the huge red volume under her arm and laid it open on the table.
“What trade’s your Ameriky man?” she asked.