“Well, it was this way,” returned Mr. Enfield: “I was coming home from
some place at the end of the world, about three o’clock of a black
winter morning, and my way lay through a part of town where there was
literally nothing to be seen but lamps. Street after street and all the
folks asleep—street after street, all lighted up as if for a procession
and all as empty as a church—till at last I got into that state of mind
when a man listens and listens and begins to long for the sight of a
policeman. All at once, I saw two figures: one a little man who was
stumping along eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl of maybe
eight or ten who was running as hard as she was able down a cross
street. Well, sir, the two ran into one another naturally enough at the
corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man
trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the
ground. It sounds nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see. It wasn’t
like a man; it was like some damned Juggernaut. I gave a few halloa,
took to my heels, collared my gentleman, and brought him back to where
there was already quite a group about the screaming child. He was
perfectly cool and made no resistance, but gave me one look, so ugly
that it brought out the sweat on me like running. The people who had
turned out were the girl’s own family; and pretty soon, the doctor, for
whom she had been sent, put in his appearance. Well, the child was not
much the worse, more frightened, according to the Sawbones; and there
you might have supposed would be an end to it. But there was one
curious circumstance. I had taken a loathing to my gentleman at first
sight. So had the child’s family, which was only natural. But the
doctor’s case was what struck me. He was the usual cut and dry
apothecary, of no particular age and colour, with a strong Edinburgh
accent and about as emotional as a bagpipe. Well, sir, he was like the
rest of us; every time he looked at my prisoner, I saw that Sawbones
turn sick and white with the desire to kill him. I knew what was in his
mind, just as he knew what was in mine; and killing being out of the
question, we did the next best. We told the man we could and would make
such a scandal out of this as should make his name stink from one end
of London to the other. If he had any friends or any credit, we
undertook that he should lose them. And all the time, as we were
pitching it in red hot, we were keeping the women off him as best we
could for they were as wild as harpies. I never saw a circle of such
hateful faces; and there was the man in the middle, with a kind of
black sneering coolness—frightened too, I could see that—but carrying
it off, sir, really like Satan. ‘If you choose to make capital out of
this accident,’ said he, ‘I am naturally helpless. No gentleman but
wishes to avoid a scene,’ says he. ‘Name your figure.’ Well, we screwed
him up to a hundred pounds for the child’s family; he would have
clearly liked to stick out; but there was something about the lot of us
that meant mischief, and at last he struck. The next thing was to get
the money; and where do you think he carried us but to that place with
the door?—whipped out a key, went in, and presently came back with the
matter of ten pounds in gold and a cheque for the balance on Coutts’s,
drawn payable to bearer and signed with a name that I can’t mention,
though it’s one of the points of my story, but it was a name at least
very well known and often printed. The figure was stiff; but the
signature was good for more than that if it was only genuine. I took
the liberty of pointing out to my gentleman that the whole business
looked apocryphal, and that a man does not, in real life, walk into a
cellar door at four in the morning and come out with another man’s
cheque for close upon a hundred pounds. But he was quite easy and
sneering. ‘Set your mind at rest,’ says he, ‘I will stay with you till
the banks open and cash the cheque myself.’ So we all set off, the
doctor, and the child’s father, and our friend and myself, and passed
the rest of the night in my chambers; and next day, when we had
breakfasted, went in a body to the bank. I gave in the cheque myself,
and said I had every reason to believe it was a forgery. Not a bit of
it. The cheque was genuine.”

“Tut-tut!” said Mr. Utterson.

“I see you feel as I do,” said Mr. Enfield. “Yes, it’s a bad story. For
my man was a fellow that nobody could have to do with, a really
damnable man; and the person that drew the cheque is the very pink of
the proprieties, celebrated too, and (what makes it worse) one of your
fellows who do what they call good. Blackmail, I suppose; an honest man
paying through the nose for some of the capers of his youth. Black Mail
House is what I call the place with the door, in consequence. Though
even that, you know, is far from explaining all,” he added, and with
the words fell into a vein of musing.

From this he was recalled by Mr. Utterson asking rather suddenly: “And
you don’t know if the drawer of the cheque lives there?”

“A likely place, isn’t it?” returned Mr. Enfield. “But I happen to have
noticed his address; he lives in some square or other.”

“And you never asked about the—place with the door?” said Mr. Utterson.

“No, sir; I had a delicacy,” was the reply. “I feel very strongly about
putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of
judgment. You start a question, and it’s like starting a stone. You sit
quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others;
and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of)
is knocked on the head in his own back garden and the family have to
change their name. No sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks
like Queer Street, the less I ask.”

“A very good rule, too,” said the lawyer.