End, it was my intention to have a port of refuge, not too far distant,
into which could run now and again to assure myself that good clothes and
cleanliness still existed. Also in such port I could receive my mail,
work up my notes, and sally forth occasionally in changed garb to
civilisation.

But this involved a dilemma. A lodging where my property would be safe
implied a landlady apt to be suspicious of a gentleman leading a double
life; while a landlady who would not bother her head over the double life
of her lodgers would imply lodgings where property was unsafe. To avoid
the dilemma was what had brought me to Johnny Upright. A detective of
thirty-odd years' continuous service in the East End, known far and wide
by a name given him by a convicted felon in the dock, he was just the man
to find me an honest landlady, and make her rest easy concerning the
strange comings and goings of which I might be guilty.

His two daughters beat him home from church--and pretty girls they were
in their Sunday dresses; withal it was the certain weak and delicate
prettiness which characterises the Cockney lasses, a prettiness which is
no more than a promise with no grip on time, and doomed to fade quickly
away like the colour from a sunset sky.

They looked me over with frank curiosity, as though I were some sort of a
strange animal, and then ignored me utterly for the rest of my wait. Then
Johnny Upright himself arrived, and I was summoned upstairs to confer
with him.

"Speak loud," he interrupted my opening words. "I've got a bad cold, and
I can't hear well."