Londons Underworld | Page 6

fun"
and his eyes twinkle! When I tell him that I am sure of it, he roars. Yes,
I am certain of it, Downy is a thief for the fun of it; he is the worst and
cleverest sneak I have the privilege of knowing; and yet there is such
audacity about him and his actions that even his most reprehensible
deeds do not disgust me.
He is of the spare and lean kind, but were he fatter he might well pose
as a modern Jack Falstaff, for his one idea is summed up in Falstaff's
words: "Where shall we take a purse to-night?" Downy, of course,
obtained full remission of his sentence; he did all that was required of
him in prison, and so reduced his five years' sentence by fifteen months.
But I feel certain that he did nor spend three years and nine months in a
convict establishment without robbing a good many, and the more
difficult he found the task, the more he would enjoy it.
I expect his education is now complete, so I have to beware of Downy,
for he would glory in the very thought of "besting" me, so I laugh and
joke with the rascal, but keep him at arm's length. We discuss matters
on the doorstep; if he looks ill I have pity on him, and subsidise him.
Sometimes his merry look changes to a half-pathetic look, and he goes
away to his "doss house," realising that after all his "besting" he might
have done better.
Some of my friends have crossed the river, but as I think of them they
come back and bid me tell their stories. Here is my old friend the
famous chess-player, whose books are the poetry of chess, but whose

life was more than a tragedy. I need not say where I met him; his face
was bruised and swollen, his jawbone was fractured, he was in trouble,
so we became friends. He was a strange fellow, and though he visited
my house many times, he would neither eat nor drink with us. He wore
no overcoat even in the most bitter weather, he carried no umbrella,
neither would he walk under one, though the rains descended and the
floods came!
He was a fatalist pure and simple, and took whatever came to him in a
thoroughly fatalist spirit. "My dear Holmes," he would say, "why do
you break your heart about me? Let me alone, let us be friends; you are
what you are because you can't help it; you can't be anything else even
if you tried. I am what I am for the same reason. You get your
happiness, I get mine. Do me a good turn when you can, but don't
reason with me; let us enjoy each other's company and take things as
they are."
I took him on his own terms; I saw much of him, and when he was in
difficulties I helped him out.
For a time I became his keeper, and when he had chess engagements to
fulfil I used to deliver him carriage paid to his destination wherever it
might be. He always and most punctiliously repaid any monetary
obligation I had conferred upon him, for in that respect I found him the
soul of honour, poor though he was! As I think of him I see him
dancing and yelling in the street, surrounded by a crowd of admiring
East Enders, I see him bruised and torn hurried off to the police station,
I see him standing before the magistrate awaiting judgment. What
compensation dipsomania gave him I know not, but that he did get
some kind of wild joy I am quite sure. For I see him feverish from one
debauch, but equally feverish with the expectation of another.
With his wife it was another story, and I can see her now full of anxiety
and dread, with no relief and no hope, except, dreadful as it may seem,
his death! For then, to use her own expression, "she would know the
worst." Poor fellow! the last time I saw him he was nearing the end. In
an underground room I sat by his bedside, and a poor bed it was!

As he lay propped up by pillows he was working away at his beloved
chess, writing chess notes, and solving and explaining problems for
very miserable payments,
I knew the poverty of that underground room; and was made
acquainted with the intense disappointment of both husband and wife
when letters were received that did not contain the much- desired postal
orders. And so passed a genius; but a dipsomaniac! A man of brilliant
parts and a fellow of infinite jest, who never did justice to his great
powers, but who crowded a continuous succession