Blind Justice by Bruce Alexander Read Free Book Online

respectable location at Number Three Berry Lane. There is a side entrance that is quite discreet. I should be pleased—honored—to have you come for tea some weekday afternoon. Only as a friend,” she added, “to show my gratitude.”
    “Very kind of you. By all means I shall try to accept your invitation.”
    And then with a goodbye and a God-bless-you she hurried away. Without a word to me, he started off suddenly, and I ran to catch him up. He said not a word for quite some space, and I wondered that he even knew I was by his side. But at last he addressed me: “You may have wondered, Jeremy, that I characterized these women of the Haymarket as unfortunates. I offer Katherine Durham as an example—a widow of intelligence and breeding forced to pursue this life on the street. It is a sad matter indeed.”
    “Her son was one you sent off to sea?”
    “He was—and it was not easy arranging it. He and his two fellows were guilty of a theft in which severe bodily injury was inflicted upon the victim. They truly wanted to hang those boys, Jeremy, and not a one of them older than you.”
    The thought made me most uncomfortable. “But you sent them to sea?”
    “Two of them.”
    I dared not ask what became of the third.
    He remained silent until we emerged from the Haymarket and turned onto Pall Mall. I exclaimed at the sight, and he brightened considerably: “Ah yes, I wanted you to see this. Isn’t it beautiful? It certainly smells beautiful. So much of London could be like this, and so little of it is.”
    I looked about me. There were trees and flowers—gardens as I had never seen them—and gentry as I had never imagined them. They were dressed finely but not so gaudily as the courtesans and their gallants whom I had seen in the Haymarket. Ladies and gentlemen ambled carelessly along as we passed them by, and there were groupings of a few posed most decorously here and there, all of them conversing in modulated tones. Even the horse traffic differed notably from what I had seen elsewhere. Only carriages and single mounts seemed to be allowed here. I saw no wagons or drays.
    We walked Pall Mall up one side and down the other, which gave me a glimpse of Green Park and St. James and of many fine houses along the way. It was all so much more than I had expected that I felt quite the bumpkin there. Even Sir John, whom I had judged to be well dressed, seemed plain by comparison to the gentry around us. And here he did seem to be treated with a certain cold indif- ference. Little notice was taken of him, and he received no salutations. When attention was given, it came in the form of rude stares. And thus, much as I was impressed by what I saw there, I was relieved when at last we turned down Charing Cross and found our way to the Strand.
    There was a swarm of people before us, the great ocean of humanity in full tide. Sir John halted there at the head of the great street, listening, smelling, taking it all in. “Is it not wondrous?” he asked. “This great gang of people before us, all of them so different and yet all human and therefore much the same. Is it not glorious? A man who has written many foolish things and a few wise ones once said that when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life, for there is in London all that life can afford.”
    “That must have been one of the wise things he said.”
    “Indeed it was. He, by the by, is the man whom we shall now seek on your behalf.”
    “Who is that, Sir John?”
    “Samuel Johnson.”
    ”Dictionary Johnson?”
    “The same, my boy, a man of many admirable qualities, though overvalued in certain respects.”
    “Which respects are they?” For I had only heard good spoken of him by my father, both natives of Lichfield, after all.
    “For his wit, chiefly. He feels qualified to speak to every subject, including the law, in which he has no foundation, and when he speaks he wishes to be listened to by all and sundry. The man is a bore, and he has the way of