As
usual, two or three loafers were hanging about here, exchanging
blasphemies and filthy vocables, but, even if they recognised him,
there was not much fear of their giving assistance to the police.
With head bent he slouched past them, unchallenged. At the bottom of
the steps, where he was in all but utter darkness, his foot slipped
on garbage of some kind, and with a groan he fell on his aide.
'Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall,' cried a
high-pitched voice from close by.
Bob knew that the speaker was the man notorious in this locality as
Mad Jack. Raising himself with difficulty, he looked round and saw a
shape crouching in the corner.
'What is the principal thing?' continued the crazy voice. 'Wisdom is
the principal thing.'
And upon that followed a long speech which to Bob sounded as
gibberish, but which was in truth tolerably good French, a language
Mad Jack was fond of using, though he never made known how he had
acquired it.
Bob stumbled on, and quickly came to the house where be hoped to
find a refuge. The door was, of course, open; he went in and groped
his way up the staircase. A knock at the door of the room which he
believed to be still tenanted by Mrs.
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