I went ever in search of the man who called himself Purvis, but although there were many persons of that name in the London Directory I was unable to discover the identical one who had tempted the drunken labourer with half a sovereign.
After three weeks of going hither and thither it became necessary to reflect upon matters more material, and, compelled to work at my profession for a living, I became locum tenens for a doctor who had a dispensary in the Walworth Road, near Camberwell Gate. Probably that part of London is well known to you, the great wide thoroughfare that is one of the main arteries of South London, but dull, grey, and overcrowded; a depressing place for a man who like myself had so recently come from weeks of the open sea and sunshine.
I still bore the bronze of the sun and salt upon my cheeks, according to the remarks of my friends, but although well in health and with an appetite like the proverbial horse, my mind was full of the mystery of the Seahorse and the ingenious purchase of the missing parchment.
The practice in the Walworth Road was a big and a poor one. The majority of the patients were hoarse-voiced costermongers from East Street and its purlieus, seamstresses, labourers, and factory hands. There is nothing mean in “the Road” itself, as it is called in the neighbourhood, but alas! many of the streets that run off it towards the Old Kent Road are full of squalid poverty.
It was not my duty to be at the dispensary at night, the night calls being attended to by a medical friend of the man whose practice I was taking charge of; therefore at ten o’clock each night the boy closed the door, put out the red light, and I took the omnibus for Chelsea.
One night just as the last patient, a garrulous old man with gout, had taken his departure and the cheap American timepiece on the mantelshelf was chiming ten, the signal for Siddons, the boy, to turn off the gas in the red lamp, I heard voices in the shop that had been turned into a waiting-room. It was after hours, and Siddons had his orders, therefore I did not anticipate that he would disobey them. But he did, for he entered, saying: —
“There’s a lady just come, sir. Must see you, sir—very urgent, she says.”
“Do you know her?”
“No, sir—stranger,” replied the sharp Cockney youth.
I groaned within myself, and announced my readiness to see her. She entered, and as she did so and our eyes met I rose to my feet, open-mouthed, utterly dumb.