Mr Peter Punditt nipped out of his little newsagent’s and tobacconist’s shop in West India Dock Road, carrying in his hand a large, damp sheet, smelling strongly of the press. This he carefully pasted over a demurely complacent contents bill of The Telegraph, and then stepped back to look at it in the grey incertitude of the Limehouse twilight. It read:
Punditt’s One-Horse Snip
One Penny Daily
Is Away from Everything
Who Gave
PAINTED LADY
Gold Cup?
It was to be noted that Mr Punditt, from motives of modesty or wariness, refrained from throwing any light on his part in this dubious transaction.
With cocked head and silently whistling lips he contemplated his work, recognising, with some satisfaction, how much more arresting was his bill than that of Gale’s Monday Night Special, by whose side it stood. He was just about to nip in again, when he heard a weak, erratic step behind him, and, turning, beheld a youth of about twenty, with sallow, pimply face, slack-mouthed and furtive. An unlit Woodbine dropped from his lips.
Little Peter Punditt, the smartest bookie in Limehouse, Poplar and Blackwall, turned swiftly about. “Well?”
“Er—look ’ere, Punditt, o’ man, I’m—I’m ’fraid I sha’n’t be able to manage anything. Y’see——”
“Oh!” Punditt regarded the weed in front of him with an airy tolerance. “Oh! Yeh can’t manage anything, can’t yeh? Yer afraid, are yeh?... Look ’ere, that kind ’o talk is twos into one wiv me. See?”