I watched her as she ate her bun, and when she rose I rose too. She payed out of a worn little purse, a plethoric purse, but, alas! its fulness was of copper. Down Woburn Street she disappeared, and I looked after her with some concern. A gentle, shrinking creature, pathetically afraid of life.
“God help her,” I said, “in this ruthless city, if she has neither friends nor money.” I decided I would write a story around her, a story of struggle and temptation. Yes, I would call it The Girl Who Looked Interesting.
That night I thought a good deal about my girl and my story, but next morning a distraction occurred. London revealed itself in the glory of a fog. At last I was exultant. Here was the city I had come so far to see. For the squat buildings seemed to take on dignity and height. Through the mellow haze they loomed as vaguely as the domiciles of a dream. The streets were corridors of mystery, and alone, abysmally alone, I seemed to be in some city of fantasy and fear.
But the river—there the fog achieved its ghostliest effects. As I wandered down the clammy embankment, cloud-built bridges emerged ethereally, and the flat barges were masses of mysterious shadow. St. Stephen’s was a spectral suggestion, and Whitehall a delicate silver-point etching. I thanked the gods for this evasive and intangible London, half-hidden, half-revealed in its vesture of all-mystifying fog.
Well, I was tired at last, and I turned to go home. But I must have missed my way, for I found myself in a long dim street, which I judged by its furniture-fringed pavement to be Tottenham Court Road. Filled with a pleasant sense of adventure, I kept on till I came to what must have been Hampstead Road. There my eyes were drawn to a large flamboyant painting above the window of a shop in a side-street. Drawing near, I read in flaring letters the following:
EXHIBITION
Amazing! Amusing! Unique!
O’FLATHER’S EDUCATED FLEAS
As performed with tremendous success before
all the Crowned Heads of Europe and the
Potentates of Asia. For a limited
time Professor O’Flather will
give the people of London
the opportunity of seeing
this extraordinary
exhibition.
Entertaining!
Instructive!
Original!
Come
and
See
THE SCIENTIFIC MARVEL OF THE CENTURY!
The marvellous insects that have all the
intelligence of human beings.
Admission, Sixpence. Children Half-price.
A large canvas showed a number of insects, vivaciously engaged in duelling, dancing, drawing water from wells, and so on. Watching them with beaming rapture was a distinguished audience, including the Czar of Russia, the Emperor William, Li Hung Chang, the Shah of Persia, and Mr. Roosevelt.
I was turning away when a big, ugly individual appeared in the doorway. He was a heavy-breathing man with a mouth like a codfish, and bloodshot eyes that peered through pouchy slits. He had a blotched, greasy face that hung down in dewlaps. From under a Stetson hat his stringy, brindled hair streamed over the collar of his fur-lined coat. On his grubby hand an off-colour diamond, big as a pea, tried to outsparkle another in the dirty bosom of his shirt. He reeked of pomatum, and his teeth looked as if they had been cleaned with a towel. No mistaking the born showman of the Bowery breed. Moved by a sudden idea, I gracefully addressed him:
“Professor O’Flather, I presume?”
The impresario looked at me with lack-lustre eye. He transferred a chew of tobacco from one cheek to the other; then he spat with marvellous precision on a passing dog. Finally he admitted reluctantly: