The men were of the ordinary dock rat type, scraggily
built, unshaven, with cunning, shifty eyes. The woman had an old
browned-green kerchief round her head, and a ragged shawl drawn tightly
round her breasts. One side of her face had evidently been burned some
time, and the eye on that side ran continually.
"Got any money, dearie?" she said to Mick.
"No, mother," Mick replied, gently taking her hand. "Is there a fellow
here called Twinetoes?"
"No blurry use t'me if no money," and she went on with her damnable
singing, like a lost soul wailing for its natural hell.
The Boss came in from the kitchen. "Twinetoes? Damned funny moniker!
Never 'eerd it," he said. "But there's a bloke asleep upstairs as calls
'isself Brum. Mebbe it's 'im."
It was. Twinetoes lay in his navvy clobber on a dirty bed, drunk, dead
to the world. We could not rouse him.
"What a kennel!" said Mick. "There's a smell about it I don't like."
There was a smell; not the common musty smell of cheap doss-houses,
something much worse than that....
"You pay your fourpence and takes your choice," I said, with an
intended grandiloquent sweep of my hand towards the dozen derelict
beds.
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