as an
awful place, the haunt of thieves and prostitutes, the vilest offsprings
of the streets of London. What with the aid of the Scripture-readers,
the various nursing and charitable sisterhoods, and the young medical
accoucheurs in their fourth year, with whom I scraped acquaintance, I
got to be quite well known in Gee's Court and could go about in safety.
But one evening as I was entering the low-browed slimy archway by which
it was approached from Oxford Street, a young policeman stopped me
and asked me if I knew where I was going. I told him that I was quite
intimate with the place and quite safe there. "Well, sir," he answered,
"you know your own business best, but I wouldn't go along there for a
fiver." My investigations had by this time brought me acquainted as
I have said already with all manner of queer people. Amongst others I
recall an omnibus driver who told me that he was the rightful heir to a
big estate by Guilford. At my invitation he told his story, and he began
it with this astounding proclamation: "It's like this, sir," he began,
"my grandfather died childless," and when I failed to disguise my
amusement he explained. "He was not really my grandfather but he was my
father's uncle and we always called him grandfather." Then he went into
a long and tangled statement of which I could neither make head nor
tail, but the fact remained clear that in his own opinion he ought to
have been a millionaire or thereabouts, and by rights able to pass his
time in smoking cigars and drinking champagne wine, which he appeared to
regard as the summit of human felicity.

The contract I had made with Edmund Yates was for a series of thirteen
articles, and when it was fulfilled, there was no more immediate work
for me to do and another little period of stress set in. But in the
meantime I had written a little handful of short stories, and one
of these, entitled _An old Meerschaum_, I sent in to Messrs Chatto
& Windus. It owed its immediate acceptance to an accident Mr George
Augustus Sala had agreed with that firm to supply a two-part story
entitled _Dr. Cupid_. For some reason or another the second part of this
story was never forthcoming, and my copy arriving in the nick of time
was used to stop the gap. It brought me a regular commission, and month
by month thereafter, for quite a considerable time, I contributed a
short story to the _Belgravia_ Magazine. Very early in the history of
this connection a curious accident