The room smelt of brandy and stale cigars. It was shabbier and tawdrier than the sitting-room on the first floor--a sordid copy of that sordid original. There was the same attempt at finery, tarnished ormolu, gaudy chintz curtains and chair-covers, where roses and lilies were almost effaced by dirt. The cheap tapestry carpet was threadbare, a desert of arid canvas, with here and there an oasis of faded colour, which hinted at the former richness of the soil. The windows were clouded with London grime and London smoke, and lent an additional gloom to the chilly sky and the dingy street upon which they looked. The cracked and bulging ceiling was brown with the smoke of ages. Dirt was the pervading impression which the room left upon the stranger’s mind. On a rickety old sofa lay the present proprietor of the apartment, dozing gently at noontide, with the _Daily Telegraph_ slipping from his loosened grasp. The remains of a bachelor breakfast, a half-empty eggshell, a fragment of toast, and a cracked coffee-cup, indicated that he had but lately taken his morning meal. He lifted himself lazily from the crumpled pillow, and confronted his visitor with a prolonged and audible yawn. ‘Dear boy!’ he exclaimed, ‘what an untimely hour! What has happened that you are astir so early?’ He was not a common-looking man. He was tall, broad, and deep of chest, with lean, muscular arms, an aquiline nose, large and somewhat prominent eyes, bloodshot and tarnished by long years of evil experience, thin iron-gray hair, worn unduly long to conceal its scantiness, a complexion of a dull leaden hue, stained with patches of bistre--the complexion of a man to whom fresh air was an unusual luxury--thin lips, a high, narrow forehead. He wore a threadbare frock coat, closely buttoned, a frayed black satin stock, gray trousers, tightly strapped over well-worn boots, boots that had begun their career as dress boots. Despite the shabbiness of his attire the man looked every inch a gentleman. That he was a gentleman who had fallen about as low as gentle breeding can fall, outside the Old Bailey, there was no doubt. Vice had set its mark upon him so deeply that the brand of crime itself could scarcely have done more to separate him from respectability. A man must have been very young indeed, and utterly unlearned in the experience of life, who would have trusted Mr. Desrolles in any virtuous enterprise. But Jack Chicot showed himself by no means wanting in penetration when he pitched upon Mr. Desrolles as a likely instrument for doing dirty work. He was the material of which the French _mouchard_ is made. ‘I’ve been worried, Desrolles,’ answered Jack, dropping wearily into a chair.