"I do, sir; if you'll come up-stairs, I'll give you what is necessary."
Up-stairs we went, and Jones produced from a chest of drawers a rough common seaman's jacket, a pair of duck trowsers, a woollen comforter, a tarpaulin hat, and a false black beard, in which he rigged me out; and then proceeded to make similar change in his own attire, with the exception of a wig of shaggy red hair and a pair of whiskers to match.
"Leave your watch, sir, and any little articles of jewelry you may have about you, in my wife's charge; keep your hat well slouched over your face and your hands in your pockets, give a swing and swagger to your walk, and you'll do."
"Why, where upon earth are we going, Jones?"
"To Blue-Anchor Lane, sir, if you know where that very fashionable quarter lies."
I did not know exactly where it was, saying from police-reports, which named it as one of the lowest parts of that low district lying between Bermondsey and Rotherhithe. I had been somewhere near it once, having occasion to call on one of the clergy belonging to the Catholic Church in Parker's Row; but that was quite an aristocratic part, for a wonder, compared with Blue-Anchor Lane. Yes, Parker's Row I had visited; and, thanks to my having grown and "gentlefolked" to the height of six feet odd, I had managed to pull the bell and get admitted to the convent behind the church, where dwell the good Sisters of Mercy, walled-in all tight and trim. But down Blue-Anchor Lane I had never penetrated; and I asked Jones if it were not considered a favorite haunt for characters of the worst description.
"It is so, sir; and we must be careful and cautious to-night in all we do." I noticed that he put his staff and alarum in his pocket, and furnished me with similar implements. "In case of necessity, sir," he said, [{614}] laughing, "you must act as special constable with me. I wouldn't take you into the smallest danger; but, you see, I don't know but what your presence is of absolute necessity, and that you may be able to gather a clue in this case quicker than I should. Not that I yield in quickness at twigging most things to any man," said Detective Jones, with a bit of professional pride quite pardonable; "but you must identify the man for certain yourself, sir, before I can act in the matter with anything like satisfaction."
It was just upon ten o'clock when we left King street, and proceeded to London Bridge; whence we took the train to Spa Road. It takes, as every one knows, but a few minutes in the transit; and leaving that dark, dismal, break-neck hole of a station, we turned to the left up Spa Road, down Jamaica Row, and so into Blue-Anchor Lane. It is needless to describe what that place is at night; it is needless to picture in words all the degrading vice that walks forth unmasked in some of the streets of this capital, which ranks so high amidst the great cities o the world. Is our exterior morality to be so far behind, so infinitely below, that of tribes and nations on whom we stoop to trample? Can such things be, and we not waken from our lethargic sleep, remembering what our account will one day be? Can our rulers so calmly eat and drink, take their pleasure, hunt their game, pursue their gentlemanlike sports, knowing, as assuredly they do too well, that thousands of their people are living lives more degraded, more brutal, more shamelessly inhuman, more full of sin, ignorance, and every kind of squalor and misery, than the wildest savages we have set our soldiers to hunt out of the lands in which God placed them?
"What can the man be doing in such a place as this?" I whispered to Jones, as he stopped before the door of a small low-looking house of entertainment, half coffee-shop and half public-house, that rejoiced in the name of "Noah's Ark."
"That's just what we've got to find out, sir. Somehow it strikes me he's better acquainted with such haunts as these than you and I are with Regent street or Piccadilly. If I haven't seen his face before, and that not ten yards from the Old Bailey, I'm blest if I was ever more mistaken in my life. But hush! here he is."