The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Missing Link, by Edward Dyson

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Title: The Missing Link

Author: Edward Dyson

Release Date: November 22, 2005 [EBook #17129]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MISSING LINK ***

Produced by Peter O'Connell

THE MISSING LINK

BY

EDWARD DYSON
1922

CHAPTER I.

DR. CRIPS'S HEALING MIXTURE.

HIS Christian name was Nicholas but his familiars called him Nickie the
Kid. The title did not imply that Nicholas possessed the artless gaiety,
the nimbleness, or any of the simple virtues of the young of the common
goat. Kid was short for "kidder," a term that as gone out recently in
favour of "smoodger," and which implies a quality of suave and
ingratiating cunning backed by ulterior motives.

The familiars of Mr. Nicholas Crips were a limited circle, and all
"beats," that is to say, gentlemen sitting on the rail dividing honest
toil from open crime. They were not workers, neither were they thieves,
excepting in very special circumstances, when the opportunity made
honesty almost an impertinence. The sobriquet coming from such a source
acquires peculiar significance. The god-fathers of Nickie the Kid were
all experts, and obtained bed and board mainly by exercising the art of
dissimulation. To stand out conspicuously as a specialist in such company
one needed to possess very bright and peculiar qualities.

Mr. Nicholas Crips was blonde, bony man perhaps five feet nine in height,
but looking taller because of the spareness of his limbs. This spareness
was not cultivated, as Nickie the Kid was partial to creature comforts,
but was of great assistance to him in a profession in which it was often
necessary to profess chronic sickness and touching physical decrepitude.
Mr Crips despised whiskers, but, as shaving was an extravagant
indulgence, his slightly cadaverous countenance was often littered with a
crisp, pale stubble, not unlike dry grass.

To-day Nickie wore a suit of black cloth. It had once been a very
imposing suit, and had adorned a great person, but having fallen on evil
days, was dusty and rusty, while the knees of Mr. Crips poked familiarly