I returned to the charge and interrogated a policeman. He is the one member of the Force who has given me cause for dislike. He is a very superior person, enormously tall, with large and languorous hands that wave imperially towards the traffic at Charing Cross.

“Can you tell me of a place, please, where I can get a decent bed for half-a-crown or three shillings?”

He regarded me as if I were a sort of loathsome microbe, impertinently disturbing his contemplation of the universe.

“Six-and-sixpence is the cheapest you can get a bed in this district,” he said, languidly, in a pronounced Oxford accent.

“I can’t pay as much as that,” I answered.

“If you go across the river you could get it for ninepence.”

“I don’t want that sort of place,” I protested. “I want somewhere respectable.”