"Oh, you're the gent, are you, sir, who laid the information about the opium den? I wasn't at the station when you called, but I came in directly after, and heard the superintendent talking about it. He'd be glad to see you, I think, sir, if you was to look in. Oh, yes; he sent five men round to the place at once. But, Lord, sir, the rascals had got wind of it, and when our men got there, the birds had flown. Cleared out--that's what they had, every man Jack of them. There was the broken window, just as you said, and there was the marks on the door, a-showin' as somebody had tried to break it in, or to batter it down, but them as had been there had all cleared out, and they'd taken the chemicals and tools and other things, what you saw there with 'em. The chief he's trying to track the rascals down, and to find where they've moved to, for they must have put them things somewhere. It stands to reason they can't walk about with them in the street. But though he clapped two of our best men on the job, they hadn't found anything when I came out on beat." "And Parker's body?" I inquired. "Has it been found?" "Not as I've heard on, sir. But holloa, what's this?" The constable and I had been strolling on together while talking, and on turning the corner of a small and evil-smelling street we saw a knot of people gathered outside a sweet shop. "Now, then! What's all this? Stand aside there, will you?" he commanded, shouldering the crowd aside. At the door a wretched hag, her lank grey hair falling in dishevelled wisps upon her shoulders, and the pores of her face so choked with dirt that the grime lay in lines along the wrinkles, was clawing at the air with one skinny hand and arm, alternately sobbing and screaming hysterically. "Come, come, my good woman!" said the constable sharply. "Stop that noise, and tell me what it's all about." Shaking her head, as if to convey that she was powerless to speak, the wretched creature clutched wildly at the door lintel, and then fell in a swoon almost at his feet. "Who is the woman? And what's the trouble?" inquired the constable of the bystanders. "Do any of you know her?" "Macintyre's her name," volunteered a respectable looking woman in the crowd. "She keeps the sweet shop inside, and lets her rooms as lodgings. I never heard anything against her. But I don't know what's the matter. She'd only just come out into the street before you came." "She lives here, does she?" inquired the constable. "Stand aside there, and I'll have a look inside and see if anything's wrong." Then a small voice, that sounded quite near to the pavement, shrilled from the spot where the crowd pressed thickest. It came from a wee, wizened girl-child, who looked as if she might be ten and talked with the precision and self-possession of twenty--so pitifully sharpened do the wits of the children of the streets become in the struggle for existence.