Like all people who have lived easy and joyous lives
in those fair regions where gold smoothes every crease and law
keeps a tight hand on disorder, she found it hard to realize that
there were other regions where gold was useless and law without
power. Twenty-four hours ago she would have declared it
impossible that such an experience as she had suffered could
happen to anyone; she would have talked airily about civilization
and the nineteenth century, and progress and the police. But her
experience was teaching her that human nature remains always the
same, and that beneath the thin crust of security on which we good
citizens exist the dark and secret forces of crime continue to move,
just as they did in the days when you couldn't go from Cheapside
to Chelsea without being set upon by thieves. Her experience was
in a fair way to teach her this lesson better than she could have
learnt it even in the bureaux of the detective police of Paris,
London, and St Petersburg.
'Good morning,' the man repeated, and she glanced at him with a
sullen, angry gaze.
'You!' she exclaimed, 'You, Mr Thomas Jackson, if that is your
name! Loose me from this chair, and I will talk to you.' Her eyes
flashed as she spoke, and the contempt in them added mightily to
her beauty. Mr Thomas Jackson, otherwise Jules, erstwhile head
waiter at the Grand Babylon, considered himself a connoisseur in
feminine loveliness, and the vision of Nella Racksole smote him
like an exquisite blow.
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