Deputy is heard to stumble out of bed. Deputy lights a candle, draws
back a bolt or two, and appears at the door. Deputy is a shivering shirt
and trousers by no means clean, a yawning face, a shock head much
confused externally and internally. We want to look for some one. You
may go up with the light, and take ’em all, if you like, says Deputy,
resigning it, and sitting down upon a bench in the kitchen with his ten
fingers sleepily twisting in his hair.
Halloa here! Now then! Show yourselves. That’ll do. It’s not you.
Don’t disturb yourself any more! So on, through a labyrinth of airless
rooms, each man responding, like a wild beast, to the keeper who has
tamed him, and who goes into his cage. What, you haven’t found him,
then? says Deputy, when we came down. A woman mysteriously sitting up
all night in the dark by the smouldering ashes of the kitchen fire, says
it’s only tramps and cadgers here; it’s gonophs over the way. A man
mysteriously walking about the kitchen all night in the dark, bids her
hold her tongue. We come out. Deputy fastens the door and goes to bed
again.
Black and Green, you know Bark, lodging-house keeper and receiver of
stolen goods?—O yes, Inspector Field.—Go to Bark’s next.
Bark sleeps in an inner wooden hutch, near his street door. As we parley
on the step with Bark’s Deputy, Bark growls in his bed. We enter, and
Bark flies out of bed. Bark is a red villain and a wrathful, with a
sanguine throat that looks very much as if it were expressly made for
hanging, as he stretches it out, in pale defiance, over the half-door of
his hutch. Bark’s parts of speech are of an awful sort—principally
adjectives. I won’t, says Bark, have no adjective police and adjective
strangers in my adjective premises! I won’t, by adjective and
substantive! Give me my trousers, and I’ll send the whole adjective
police to adjective and substantive! Give me, says Bark, my adjective
trousers! I’ll put an adjective knife in the whole bileing of ’em. I’ll
punch their adjective heads. I’ll rip up their adjective substantives.
Give me my adjective trousers! says Bark, and I’ll spile the bileing of
’em!
Now, Bark, what’s the use of this? Here’s Black and Green, Detective
Sergeant, and Inspector Field. You know we will come in.—I know you
won’t! says Bark. Somebody give me my adjective trousers! Bark’s
trousers seem difficult to find. He calls for them as Hercules might for
his club. Give me my adjective trousers! says Bark, and I’ll spile the
bileing of ’em!
Inspector Field holds that it’s all one whether Bark likes the visit or
don’t like it. He, Inspector Field, is an Inspector of the Detective
Police, Detective Sergeant is Detective Sergeant, Black and Green are
constables in uniform. Don’t you be a fool, Bark, or you know it will be
the worse for you.—I don’t care, says Bark. Give me my adjective
trousers!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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