econd-hand bookshop, and much of
the stock was almost as old as the building itself. A weather-stained
board of faded blue bore in tarnished gold lettering the name of its
owner, and under this were two broad windows divided by a squat door,
open on week-days from eight in the morning until eight at night. Within
the shop was dark and had a musty odor.

On either side of the quaint old house was a butcher's and a baker's,
flaunting places of business, raw in their newness. Between the
first-named establishment and the bookshop a low, narrow passage led to
a small backyard and to a flight of slimy steps, down which clients who
did not wish to be seen could arrive at a kind of cellar to transact
business with Mr. Norman.

This individual combined two distinct trades. On the ground floor he
sold second-hand books; in the cellar he bought jewels and gave money on
the same to needy people. In the shop, pale youths, untidy, abstracted
old men, spectacled girls, and all varieties of the pundit caste were to
be seen poring over ancient volumes or exchanging words with the
proprietor. But to the cellar came fast young men, aged spendthrifts,
women of no reputation and some who were very respectable indeed. These
usually came at night, and in the cellar transactions would take place
which involved much money exchanging hands. In the daytime Mr. Norman
was an innocent bookseller, but after seven he retired to the cellar and
became as genuine a pawnbroker as could be found in London. Touching
books he was easy enough to deal with, but a Shylock as regards jewels
and money lent. With his bookish clients he passed for a dull shopkeeper
who knew little about literature; but in the underground establishment
he was spoken of, by those who came to pawn, as a usurer of the worst.
In an underhand way he did a deal of business.

Aaron Norman--such was the name over the shop--looked like a man with a
past--a miserable past, for in his one melancholy eye and twitching,
nervous mouth could be read sorrow and apprehension. His face was pale,
and he had an odd habit of glancing over his left shoulder, as though he
expected to be tapped thereon by a police officer. Sixty years had
rounded his shoulders and weakened his back, so that his one eye was
almost constantly on the ground. Suffering had scored marks on his
forehead and weary lines round his thin-lipped mouth. When he spoke he
did so in a low, hesitating voice, and when he looked up, whi