Stork coughed slightly to attract Crewe's attention.
"If you please, sir," he said, "the boy has come."
While Crewe was busy with his magnifying glass Stork returned with the
boy who had accompanied Crewe on his visit to Riversbrook on the
previous day.
The boy, a thin white-faced, sharp-eyed London street urchin, seemed
curiously out of place in the handsomely furnished office, with his legs
tucked up under the carved rail of a fine old oak chair, and his big
dark eyes fixed intently on Crewe's face. The tie between him and the
detective was an unusual one. It dated back some twelve months, when
Crewe, in the investigation of a peculiarly baffling crime, found it
advisable to disguise himself and live temporarily in a crowded criminal
quarter of Islington. The rooms he took were above a secondhand clothing
shop kept by a drunken female named Leaver; a supposed widow who lived
at the back of the shop with her two children, Lizzie, a bold-eyed girl
of 17, who worked at a Clerkenwell clothing factory, and Joe, a typical
Cockney boy of fourteen, who sold papers in the streets during the day
and was fast qualifying for a thief at night when Crewe went to the
place to live.
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