"Well, sir, that's for you to say when you sees him. My mate generally sees people about these sorter things, but I come to-day; and a fine job I had to get to know where you lived, for I'd forgot the number; but I found out at last from a gal cleaning the door-step close by. It don't do for us, you know, to go to no police--they humbugs a man about so; and I don't know now whether they ain't been down on my mate, 'cos you see we didn't want to say nothing to them till as how you'd been and seen it." Harry shuddered at that last word "it;" there was something so repellent, though at the same time expressive, in the one tiny syllable _it_ now, not _him_; and again he shuddered as he thought of the ordeal through which he had to go. He roused himself at last, though, to ask a few questions as the cab drove on, the driver making his way over the river to the Surrey side; and, as soon as they were in the comparative silence of the narrow streets, Harry learned that during the past night his companion had been successful in his search, and that what he had sought lay now in a boat-house far down the Thames in the low-lying district where wharf and dock and rickety stairs, or steam-boat pier, alternate with muddy-pile and drain, with bank after bank of slime, over which the water of the swift tide seemed to glide and play, here and there washing it up into a foul frothy scum, compounded of the poisonous refuse daily cast into the mighty stream. It was a long ride, down deplorable looking streets, where wretched tumble-down tenements, with frowsy aspect and dingy, patchy windows, were dominated by lordly warehouses, with great gallows-like cranes at every floor--floors six, seven, and eight stories from the ground--from whose open doors men stood gazing down as coolly as if they were on _terra firma_, though a moment's giddiness must have precipitated them into the street below.