of the court might guide me. What are you? I asked.
I m the depity, he answered. I saw at once that I was on the right
track; phonetic spelling had again misled me. A half-crown tip put the
deputy s knowledge at my disposal, and I learned that Mr. Bloxam, who
had slept off the remains of his beer on the previous night at
Corcoran s, had left for his work at Poplar at five o clock that
morning. He could not tell me where the place of work was situated, but
he had a vague idea that it was some kind of a new-fangled ware us ;
and with this slender clue I had to start for Poplar. It was twelve
o clock before I got any satisfactory hint of such a building, and this
I got at a coffee-shop, where some workmen were having their dinner. One
of these suggested that there was being erected at Cross Angel Street a
new cold storage building; and as this suited the condition of a
new-fangled ware us, I at once drove to it. An interview with a surly
gatekeeper and a surlier foreman, both of whom were appeased with the
coin of the realm, put me on the track of Bloxam; he was sent for on my
suggesting that I was willing to pay his day s wages to his foreman for
the privilege of asking him a few questions on a private matter. He was
a smart enough fellow, though rough of speech and bearing. When I had
promised to pay for his information and given him an earnest, he told me
that he had made two journeys between Carfax and a house in Piccadilly,
and had taken from this house to the latter nine great boxes-- main
heavy ones --with a horse and cart hired by him for this purpose. I
asked him if he could tell me the number of the house in Piccadilly, to
which he replied:--
Well, guv nor, I forgits the number, but it was only a few doors from a
big white church or somethink of the kind, not long built. It was a
dusty old ouse, too, though nothin to the dustiness of the ouse we
tooked the bloomin boxes from.
How did you get into the houses if they were both empty?
There was the old party what engaged me a-waitin in the ouse at
Purfleet. He elped me to lift the boxes and put them in the dray. Curse
me, but he was the strongest chap I ever struck, an him a old feller,
with a white moustache, one that thin you would think he couldn t throw
a shadder.
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