LITMIR.BIZ

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      I had the heart of a coward.

      Everybody found me out at once and the timidness of my disposition served only to provoke the cruellest instincts of those about me. The elder boys kicked and cuffed me as a matter of daily routine. They played practical jokes upon me. They hid my caps and inked my collars and generally in all their dealings with me were as brutal and callous as only boys can be.

      As we grew up together and the years went by, they never seemed to get accustomed to me or to accord me the forbearance most generally given to old fellow workers. I was always a new-comer and always outside the pale of their confidences.

      It was not that I purposely made myself unpopular; I did nothing of the kind.

      Quick and sharp at figures as I always am, I had soon mastered the work we had to do, and was often able to give a lift to others in their tasks. Also, I was always ready to do little outdoor services for anyone, to fetch and carry for the office, to put the desks straight when they had been skylarking, to get the water boiling for the tea, and generally to make myself useful in countless little ways. But it was no good. It never made any difference, and everyone held me at best in more or less good-natured contempt.

      When I had been eleven years at Winter and Winter's, I became, by seniority, head clerk in the invoice office, and the firm expressed their appreciation of my work by an increase in salary. It was really no more than I deserved, for I was a good servant to them, and always punctual, painstaking, and thoroughly to be trusted in my work.

      I was never late in the mornings—never exceeded the hour allowed for dinner, and never grumbled when, in busy times, we had to return to the office after tea.

      I don't think, indeed, that I could ever have had any vices at all. I didn't smoke, I was a strict teetotaler, and every Sunday was a zealous frequenter of our little chapel on the Port road. Also I had never had the courage for any of the love adventures the other fellows had.

      In spite, however, of what the heads thought of me, I had no happiness at the office, because of the way the other clerks treated me. There were ten of us in my room, and even when I was formally placed in charge of them all they never showed me the slightest atom of respect, or ceased for an hour to regard me as in any other light than the butt for their cheap wit and the natural object for their silly jokes.

      I rather believe now they thought I didn't really mind it and was quite content to provide amusement for the office. But I did mind it, and it was torture to my little cowardly soul. I was sensitive, very sensitive, behind all my timidity, and it galled me to the quick to be cheeked and insulted by quite young boys.

      Sometimes I would get quite livid with anger at some scornful impertinence of one of the juniors.

      I would spring up from my desk and turn in a blast of fury upon the offender, but no sooner was I on my feet than my cowardice would take possession of me like a seizure, and I would subside ingloriously to half-muttered threats that would only redouble the laughter of my tormentors. They would slap me on the back and tell me mockingly to go back to my hutch or the bow-wows would bite me and I should lose my tail. 'Rabbits' was what they used to call me, and the contempt they put in that one word would sometimes make me wince to the very marrow.

      "Mr. Rabbits," would sneer Waller, my junior by five years, when introducing me to a newcomer. "Mr. Rabbits, our head invoice clerk, and the composer of chess problems," and then would follow a high-colored and spicy account of the latest jokes that had been played upon me, and the helpless way in which I had received them.

      How I hated Waller! He was an idle, well-dressed fellow who always came late to the office, and smoked a lot of cigarettes, and was always in debt to some one or other. He had big fat legs and went in for athletics; also he was great on football, and went to horse-races, and all that sort of thing. He was the very type of man I loathed, chiefly, I think, because he was careless and reckless and never seemed to be afraid of anyone.

      Of course, he was supposed to be under me in the office, but I should sooner have expected the roof to fall upon me than for him to have taken notice of anything I told him.

      And as I have said, it was the same with them all. They just ignored me, and the youngest junior, when he had been three weeks in the office, would have looked upon it as a huge joke if I had tried to insist upon his doing anything he didn't feel inclined to do.

      I began to perceive gradually that the firm was not satisfied with the way I kept order in the office, and our Mr. William began constantly to refer to it.

      "Wacks," he said to me irritably one day, when he had unexpectedly interrupted an exciting game of shove-penny in our room, "why don't you keep order over them all? It's quite a disgrace for a man of your age to let young boys waste their time as they were doing today. You must stop it—do you hear?"

      Mr. William had always been kindness itself to me, and his reproof made me want to burst into tears. But what could I do? I knew that no one would ever obey me, and I hated myself for being what I was.

      I went home very dismally to my lodgings that evening, with no appetite at all for the tasty tea my landlady had, as usual, provided for me.

      I lived in White Street, Bowden, about two miles from the city, and had two comfortable little rooms that I could call my own. My landlady was a hardworking widow, and I shared the house with an old retired sea-captain, who had the two front rooms, and a plain-clothes detective, who lived mysteriously in a back room, off the garden.

      Of the latter, whose name was Meadows, I knew very little, and except for an occasional meeting in the street or a rare 'Good morning' in the hall should hardly, sometimes for weeks and weeks on end, have been aware of his existence. He was a quiet secretive-looking man, about thirty, and always went about with a thick stick and with his coat buttoned high up to his chin. He must have lodged with us quite six months before I even got to know his name, but I gathered accidentally from Mrs. Bratt that he had asked all about me soon after he came, and had appeared quite interested, so she said, in all the details she had been able to supply them.

      Contrary to his appearance, however, he was not an uncommunicative man in his spare time, and I had some very interesting talks with him about his profession. He was very enthusiastic about crime, and held strong views that everyone was bursting with criminal propensities that only required encouragement and opportunity to come out.

      "None of us can ever tell," he would say mysteriously, "the undiscovered criminals that we rub shoulders with every day. The innocent looking man that we sit down next to in the train, for aught we know, may have just come fresh from some ferocious murder. Perhaps he has just hidden a body to rot in some forgotten cellar, or in the thickets of some dark wood. Perhaps, for all we can tell, he may now be living on the proceeds of robbery and violence, and, even as we sit beside him, may be planning the details of some further crime. The young woman who brings us our meal at the restaurant where we go to dinner may have been at home a secret poisoner, and somewhere may have a six-foot grave to her credit in some quiet suburban cemetery. The man who collects our tickets at the station barrier may have broken into some mansion in his spare time, in years gone by, and perhaps have married and set up house upon the proceeds of his robbery. The assistant who serves us with groceries at the store may be a secret and persistent embezzler of his master's goods; the postman who brings us our letters may sneak postal orders from time to time, and the very deacon who collects the offertory from us at the church or chapel may pilfer undiscovered, when chance comes his way. Crime is everywhere," he would wind up emphatically, "and not one-thousandth part of it falls within the meshes of the Law."

      Sometimes he stared so hard at me, and was so pointed and sweeping in his accusations, that I got quite uncomfortable and took to wondering exactly what particular crime he was suspecting me of.

      He would never tell me of the cases he was engaged upon, but he nearly always seemed to have something to do, and at times was away for weeks and weeks together. Mrs. Bratt told me he was very highly thought of at headquarters.

      The other lodger, Captain Barker, was a friend of mine, and I may add, the only friend I had. I had got to know him first in quite a casual sort of way. He was an old chap,

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