Some mornings, as a child, Oliver would half-waken, and as he drifted in that strange place between two worlds, where both seem simultaneously real and unreal, he would once again be Oliver Twist, his stomach clenching in the familiar knot of hunger, and he would hear the soft hiss in the voice of the one calling him my dear and see the alert hazel eyes of the other, watching him curiously, set above a wide mouth and a snub nose. For a moment or two he would not know where he was, or where the blankets and white sheets that he was enfolded in had come from. And then it would come back to him that he was Oliver Brownlow, and that the clean-smelling bed that he was lying in was his own. He remembers it being extremely perplexing.

Now, an hour or two before dawn, he dreams, and in his dreams, it seems to him that he's listening while Jack, as Oliver recognizes him these days, and another full-grown man who he somehow knows to be Charley Bates, sit on the floor in the midst of the boys in Fagin's den and read the execution broadsheets aloud. "Dodger," Charley says, "what's this here name? I don't get a bit of it," and Jack shakes his head and reads out, "Jack Dawkins, also known as the Artful Dodger, hanged for grand larceny. He conducted himself admirably on the scaffold and approached death with the greatest of dignity."

"Don't!" Oliver hears himself say, because Jack seems to be completely unaware of the noose around his neck that's pulling itself more and more tightly the further he reads. Slowly, he turns, and stares up at Oliver. The expression remains unchanged in the pallor of his face as the rope begins to wrench his head into a grotesquely unnatural angle, bringing into bloom a ring of great obscene, purplish bruises, squeezing the veins in his neck, temples and hands into greater and greater prominence until they protrude like knotty twigs, and it seems that not even a stone could withstand such pressure and that they must at any moment burst from the skin.

"What's the matter?" he asks. "Ain't you never seen a corpse?"

Oliver wakes sweating, his nightshirt wrapped about him like a clammy second skin, and stares out across the room for some minutes, picking out the shapes of wardrobe and washstand that assure him that this is his own house and not a sleep-world where memories and fears walk arm in arm. He finds, though, that it fails to bring much comfort; rather, his escape from the relentless fantasy of night only emerges into a less absurd but equally grim reality. When he rises and draws back the curtains, he can see the first subtle glimmer of light in the sky through early spring mist. It's too soon for Mrs Phillips, his cook-housekeeper, or for Sarah, or Hester in the scullery, though not greatly so for himself, habitually an early riser. The boot and odd-job boy, Jonathan, arrives a little after six, when the maids go about their work. Not yet six o'clock, then. He washes and shaves in cold water, dresses, and goes downstairs.

Somewhere under the fog outside, although he can never begin to imagine where, is Jack, the real, living man, not a childhood ghost. Oliver feels unsettled; confused, restless. He unlocks the front door, swings it wide, and stands there for a while, looking out into the morning. Then he fetches his coat, hat and cane, steps over the sill, and closes it behind him. He usually breakfasts before the short walk he takes prior to the start of consultations, but, for the time, his appetite seems to be absent.

He walks steadily, but purposefully; the studied intent of walking, in the way that a simple and repetitive action of the body's often the best way to clear the mind. It always has the effect of focusing his thoughts for the day, and so it does now, to a degree that almost shocks him. He was born from gentle stock, from honest society. Yet, in the years before chance once again made him a part of it, that same society had brushed him and many more like him aside as unwanted afterthoughts; as burdens that they had to bear, the very knowledge of the existence of the poor resting on their shoulders as their designated penance as Christians. The criminal world, the scourges of everything that's decent, had taken him in as though he were family. Oliver had needed the moral sponsorship of his uncle's love, and his uncle's home standing behind him like a mountain, to be accepted by decent people. To be accepted by thieves, he had needed no more than a grubby hand to take his own and an introduction as a new friend.

Even as a child, it had not taken very long for the chipping away to begin at any innocent belief Oliver might have held that Jack's act of charity had been without ulterior motives, and he certainly doesn't retain any of it now. Nevertheless, despite how the other boy's offer of lodgings might as well have been a press of the King's shilling into his hand for a conscription into a life of crime, the fact remains that, unlike children who had lived most, if not all, of their lives on the streets of London, Oliver had come possessed of no knowledge of how to take care of himself and would very probably have died remarkably quickly on those same streets of hunger, cold, or some form of assault and battery if Jack Dawkins, the Artful Dodger, had not picked him out. Fagin, the money-hoarder, the fence, and Nancy, the villain's mistress, had been two of the only people to ever show him kindness. Jack had been the first person since his sad fellow occupants of the workhouse to display his own idiosyncratic brand of friendship, telling the other boys that he was all right with the confidence that doing this made it so. From the beginning, Jack had treated him not as a migrant to his world that needed to be carefully evaluated, steered and enticed, but one of his own kind.

It's said by many that villains look after their own. The possibility begins to break over Oliver that, through the years, Jack may have looked out for him on a number of occasions that he hasn't been aware of at the time. Perhaps now he may have an opportunity to return the favour. And perhaps that makes him, similarly, a villain. Unconsciously, he squares his shoulders to the idea. Very well.

The fog seems a chill curtain, dividing him from the muddy outlines of houses and homes. When he turns back onto the square from Princeton Street, he feels himself half a burglar, trespassing where he has no natural cause to be. It persists after he opens the door, and Sarah comes to take his hat and coat, and even after she sets breakfast, and brings the morning newspaper and the first post, and puts them beside his plate.

Having decided what it is that he unquestionably has to do, Oliver begins to realize that he can't imagine how to actually go about it. He knows the location of no thieves' dens and haunts; no paths into the rookeries where such people can reliably be found; has nobody to approach who might both be able to advise him, and be trustworthy enough to ask. He considers making enquiries through some of his charity patients, but flinches inwardly at the possibility that it might be taken as a suggestion of their own criminal tendencies. The notion of his interest becoming common enough knowledge to somehow reach his uncle is no more appealing. The truth is that his sole link nowadays with the underworld of London is the man that he needs to find, and finding Jack by himself seems akin to nothing less than searching for a needle in a haystack. Despite the affinity between them, this most base aspect of Jack - his habitual location - has remained a mystery to Oliver. Jack has always been the one to find him. And trusting that their next meeting will come sooner rather than later is simply not a risk that he feels prepared to take.

He manages to finish the mutton, and some of the eggs, but puts the toast and the marmalade aside. Eventually, he rings for Sarah, asks her to check what appointments he has with Mrs Phillips, and sits, deep in thought, listening to the gentle chinking sounds of glass and china as she clears the table.

"Doctor Brownlow?"

Oliver looks up. "Yes?"

"Shall I ask for the kitchen to send up something else, sir?"

He blinks, then realizes that she's referring to the uneaten food. "No," he says, "thank you. Please make sure that you tell Mrs Phillips it was delicious. My stomach just seems to be lacking enthusiasm this morning. I may have risen too early for its liking."

"We thought, Hester and me, you'd been called to a patient, and we hadn't woken to the door." Sarah speaks quickly, the pinkening in her cheeks keeping pace. She always sounds very slightly out of breath, as if forcing the words through her shyness requires physical exertion. If Oliver remembers correctly, she's his own age. Although the sweet, wholesome quality of her face makes her seem younger, he imagines that many would-be followers have passed her over in favour of less pretty but more effervescent girls.

"I think that I was the patient. I'm not sure that I've found the cure for what concerns me yet, but the air does help straighten out one's thoughts."

Sarah begins to stack the dishes, then pauses. "Doctor, I hope something ain't wrong," she says, all in a hurry.

"Not with myself. Perhaps with a friend, though. A close one."

He feels a little shocked by the frankness of his talk. When Jack had sought him that night, in need of him as a doctor, only to end their meeting by kissing him so abruptly, Oliver had not known what to say. He's still unsure how it is that he should reply to an enthusiastic and uninvited kiss when it's from another man. Yet when the kiss had been from Jack, never seeming to be one given to unnecessary displays of sentiment, Oliver had had the distinct feeling that it had not been abrupt at all, nor uninvited, but rather a quite natural progression that only left him faintly surprised that it had never happened before. Whether he ought to find it natural is a matter that he's studiously avoided considering until now.

"Is it an old friend, Doctor?"

"A boyhood companion," Oliver says. He's never certain of how much of the story of his own low beginnings is common gossip, but he opts not to elaborate on the exact circumstances in which he and Jack might have first encountered each other. "He may be in trouble. I need to speak with him. But we haven't been in contact of late, and I don't know where I might find him."

"Mightn't some other gentlemen have his whereabouts too?"

"I would doubt it. He isn't a gentleman."

Sarah looks confused. "Is he in trade?"

A wave of trust for the quiet girl suddenly comes over Oliver. Servants talk among themselves, he knows this; he knows that he could easily be setting himself up for scandal, and yet he has the strange and all too rare feeling that he can speak almost completely freely. "No," he says. "He's a scoundrel. And a rascal, and a rogue. And no decent man would give him the time of day."

Sarah drops her gaze a little. She picks up the plate of toast and moves to put it back on the tray. Then she says, "But your friend, sir, nonetheless."

"Yes. He is. He matters a great deal to me."

She hesitates for a moment. He sees her worry at her lip slightly, as if trying to reconcile something in her own mind. "Doctor," she asks, after a time, "would you visit a beer-house? Or a skittle-ground? Where the costermongers and the like do?"

"I wouldn't know which ones to choose."

"All the working men go those places, sir. Like the tradesmen and their boys. They see what people are about, and hear what's going on. Sometimes when they call, they make conversation while they're at the kitchen, and we hear news from them, or could find it out if we'd a mind to."

Oliver observes her. "And if you were to ask," he says, "do you think that they might see fit to enquire after a man, or the places that such types of men might be found?"

"They might, sir."

It's instinctive when Oliver reaches out, rather than with any thought to propriety. He touches her sleeve. She looks up.

"Sarah," he says, "will you help me?"

-oOo-

It was as a boy, too, that Oliver had acquired the interest in medicine which has steered his life's course.

During the year that saw his thirteenth birthday, his uncle had been taken briefly ill. Afraid, accustomed to his feeble fellow inhabitants of the workhouse who, once taken to their beds in the infirmary, often failed to rise from them again, Oliver had hovered at Mrs Bedwin's side by the sickroom door. Engaged through a competitive process based upon which man demanded the lowest salary, the workhouse medical officer had been poorly qualified in his profession and little better than a common apothecary, but Oliver had been both soothed and intellectually intrigued by the physician who had attended Edward Brownlow. His instruments had seemed like magic wands, his calm and encouraging manner a panacea to his uncle in itself. Above all, Oliver had been reassured by the doctor's approach to his uncle's illness as the simple mending of an apparatus that had broken down. The notion that humanity was at least partly in control of its own destiny, rather than merely pawns in the system of an Almighty God who worked his mysteries as and if he saw fit, had captured his imagination. If a man went wrong, he could, through the rebalancing of his nerves and blood and the clearing of impurities from his body, be put right. Herein, Oliver felt certain, lay his chance to help those who needed it most. The household copy of Doctor Buchan's Domestic Medicine had quickly become his most oft-thumbed book, followed in time by the Poor Man's Physician and Surgeon and the Anatomy of the Humane Bodies, the last of which had also been rather eye-opening and some of the earliest steps along the road of his sexual instruction. He had brought diseased and cat-mauled mice inside and caged them while he attempted to cure them of their ills, carefully opening the ones that he found expired with his pocket-knife, in order to pin them out and observe the miniature organs packed tightly beneath the skin. It had all been utterly mesmerizing.

As his education at Westminster drew towards completion, the issue of his further studies and future profession had arisen. Unhesitatingly, Oliver had expressed his wish to pursue medicine. He had finally emerged from London University with the suffix of M.D. after his name, and taken up a four-year assignation to the hospital wards, always observing, always reading, always learning. These habits he has still to fall out of, and sincerely hopes that he never will.

On Tuesday, while he's making his afternoon visits, a card and an accompanying letter are left at the house by a former schoolmate, recently relocated to the Holborn district. William is in law, but very interested in and not in the least ruffled by the technicalities of Oliver's field. He comes for an informal dinner on the Friday. His wife, expecting their first child, is indisposed, although Oliver privately feels a great relief at not having an opportunity to engage in physiological and medical discussion impeded by respect for ladies' sensitivities. They shut themselves up in the study with their drinks after the meal and look over his case histories. William has recently visited the anatomy museum on Oxford Street; over three hundred natural examples in spirits, as advertised, and very faithful wax reproductions, "Not as much use as the real thing, no doubt, more for we gents in the street's education, but all very good. Not just dirty French models." There's a room set apart at the museum for members of the medical profession only. "Where I presume that you can learn all about the finer details of the clap and the pox," says William, and Oliver laughs with him, at the joke itself, and at the fact that not only the museums, but such studies, feel obscene, and at the slight despair in it being so.

"Where do their dissections come from at the medical schools now?" William asks.

"Usually unfortunates who were unclaimed at the end."

"Hm. Awfully sad that there's so many of them. At least they don't have to wait for the felons to be hanged any more, I suppose."

Oliver puts down his drink.

William leaves at about half-past nine. Oliver waits for Sarah to lock the door, then asks her to come and take away the glasses while he commences tidying his papers, feeling that the room looks as though a wind of some strength has blown through it. To his surprise, she bustles in with haste. Her face is pink again, and she appears even more flustered than is habitual for her. He interrupts his task to study her.

"Is something the matter?"

"No, sir - but I couldn't speak while the gentleman was here, all the same."

The speed at which Oliver arrives at the conclusion only proves to him how much it's occupied his thoughts. He places the stack of papers and books that he's gathered up on the table. "Is there news?" he asks.

"I think so, sir."

Oliver pulls out a chair and sits. "Tell me. What have you found out?"

Sarah takes a short breath. "Doctor Brownlow, do you know New Street by Covent Garden?"

Oliver is under no false impressions regarding the sort of area under discussion. Physicians and surgeons are reluctant to enter the rookeries even on missions of mercy, for fear of contracting some disease or being set upon. Yet he feels a curious absence of the qualms that he should by rights have, as if determination's made him bold. "I believe so," he says, "and even if I'm wrong, I can very soon find it."

"There's a pawnshop there, sir - it ain't far along, a little past an inn called the Three Crowns. If you were to walk from St Martin's Lane, you'd come to it pretty quickly."

"I see; please go on."

"Well, it's run by a man named Davy Gilpin." She pauses again, then rushes at it headlong. "He made something of a success and acts like he's above board, sir, but he's a fence. Everyone knows it. Half of what's behind his counter they say never belonged to who he bought it from in the first place, and the fellow who told us said he'd wager there ain't a villain north of the river whose name he doesn't know."

"Did that sound as if it were true, or just a manner of speaking?"

"It seemed like it was true, sir. Or else, that if he doesn't know, he's on terms with someone that does."

Oliver's aware of something stirring, faint as the heart of a chick, too weak yet to pin more than hope on. "And does he think that this man may be able to get me the information I need?"

"Yes, sir, although I never once said who I was asking for. If he was to trust you. They all take care of their own, you see, sir."

Oliver wonders if the wistful smile that he seems to feel inside shows through onto his face. "I know," he says.

-oOo-

St Giles parish is dedicated to cripples, beggars, lepers, and everything low and miserable, and nothing could seem more apt. It crawls with idlers, drunks, gay women, barefooted children, and shabby menagerie cages full of turtle-doves, nestling hawks, hedgehogs and assorted rodents, all sharply contrasted with the occasional overly flash loiterer doubtlessly funded by his pilferings from someone else's pocket, shop or house. Something in the region of every fourth building seems to have the appearance of either a gin shop, a circulating library of tasteless literature, or, to be frank, a bawdy house. Seven Dials is a maze of streets, lanes and courts, through which those persons of interest to policemen might routinely make a clean escape simply by knowing the alleyways to take and the residents who are willing to hide them, and, Oliver imagines, which a stranger to the district could easily tramp many a mile around before discovering that he's been walking in a circle. Mustard and cress sprouts on flannel laid out for the purpose, covered with a liberal sprinkling of blacks. Washing hung out to dry suffers much the same fate. On the occasional windowsill, the mignonette and London Pride of the root trade grows, although one might imagine the latter finds little to be proud about in the vicinity.

The bell of St Paul's at Covent Garden chimes hollowly, as if tolling his doom, as he turns into New Street. A narrow thoroughfare, reasonably unsullied but without a great deal of character, it still falls well within range of the sulphuric cabbage smells emanating from the market, and every so often along the cobblestones, fruit, burst and crushed, rots where it's lain since the morning procession of the traders' barrows. A central gutter runs with watery sludge. The windows of the Three Crowns inn, a little way along on the right, as described, are heavily swirled and floretted and not easy to see through to observe the exact kind of clientele that might frequent the area. Oliver feels even more excluded than he'd anticipated as he finally halts in front of his destination.

The window of the pawnbroker's establishment is clearly his showcase, given over to attractive enamels and miniatures, rings, bracelets, pins, handsomely bound books, cases - to Oliver's interest - of scientific instruments, and a large quantity of porcelain and plate. Inside the shop, accessed with the accompanying clatter of a bell above the door, the wall behind the counter is lined with shelves, on which flat irons and portraits nudge clocks, silver spoons, several sets of chessmen, and all manner of hats, handkerchiefs and wearing apparel. Bales of blankets and sheets and folded table-cloths occupy the top positions, with a ladder in the corner to reach the highest. Running the length of one wall, and each backed by a narrow door that likely opens into the same side passage, are a number of small boxes or cubby-holes, intended for embarrassed customers fallen on hard times to wait in out of direct view of other curious eyes. The place is neat, if crowded with goods; the floor recently swept. Given the knowledge he has of the proprietor, Oliver imagines that it must be considerably worth his while to present at least a facade of repute. Nonetheless, he finds himself wondering whether he has in fact come to the wrong address.

A boy, presumably an assistant, has been brought out of a back room by the noise of the bell, and situates himself on the other side of the counter, tapping his fingertips lightly upon it, full of good humour and expectancy. Despite dressing as plainly as he's able to avoid drawing obvious and unwanted attention, Oliver knows that the cut of his clothing, if not his manner of speech alone, must mark him as a man of at least modest means and therefore very likely a supplier of good merchandise. He takes out his watch, having decided to use the pretence of asking after a price for goods as a method of assessing the situation, and gambling debts as a reason, if asked. It was a gift from Oliver's uncle on his twenty-first birthday and is of some monetary value, and still more sentimental, and the idea of having to actually pawn it makes him blanch inwardly. He clears his throat as he proffers it.

"I'd like a price," he says. "It was purchased for around forty pounds, I believe. The case is gold."

"Well, you tell me what price you was looking to get, and I'll tell you what I was wanting to pay, and the two of us can come to an agreement."

"This is quite a valuable item. I want to be sure that I get a fair offer for it. I was advised to speak directly with the owner here."

The lad returns a smile. "You'll get the best offer what I can make, seeing as how we're speaking already."

Oliver is taken aback. He hesitates, his fingers curling reflexively around the watch. Now that he looks more closely, he can see that the other man's somewhat older than he first estimated. He's likely around Oliver's own age, but his littleness only accentuates his boyish appearance. Even at first glance, Oliver would put him at shorter than Jack, and Jack is wanting several inches of height to match Oliver himself. As a humanitarian, the knowledge causes a slight ache inside him that so many young men of the poor classes have simply not received the food that they needed during a crucial period in their maturity, and, as such, never managed to catch up. He sees fourteen and fifteen year olds that he would imagine are closer to twelve, more often than he cares to count. "Are you Davy Gilpin?" he asks.

"I am, but there ain't many strangers what ask for me by name. You must be a friendly sort. Or if you was sent here, it's for more than a ticker."

"I'm not a policeman," Oliver says, quickly.

"Why should I give tuppence if you was? This is a respectable establishment, not a dolly shop. But in them togs, you seem more like a cove with something to say for himself than a bobby or a customer." Davy pulls up a nearby stool and hops onto it. He has a pert, amiable face with a ready grin, and hair the same shade of yellow as Oliver's, although it sits neatly about his ears as opposed to spiralling into curls like Oliver's own. His hands look as though they can work with speed. Is his manner natural to him, or all part of a habitual ruse? Oliver finds himself wondering at how a such a youthful and agreeable man can hobnob willingly with robbers and thieves. And then he remembers that he himself is standing in this very shop with the studied intent to do the same.

Davy nods towards Oliver's watch. "Do you want a price for that, or dontcher?" he asks.

Oliver turns the timepiece over in his hand. "No," he says, after a moment's decision, "not really."

"Didn't think you did. You look like a toff, and not the sort of toff what sells off the family silver for Burgundy and broads." Davy watches him with bright, curious eyes. "So, what's your game, then? You must be after something, to come asking for me."

Oliver has no good reason to trust this man, and yet, conversely, he feels as though he has no other option left but to do so. "There's something that I'm looking for," he says.

"Something," Davy says. "Dontcher mean somebody?" Then, in response to the expression on Oliver's face, he winks. "Most things what I don't know, I can guess. And the rest of 'em I can find out."

"I've been told," Oliver says, "that there isn't very much that you don't know. Or very many people."

"Worthwhile to keep your ear to the ground in my trade, that's all that it is."

"While it's there, do you ever hear particular men talking about where it is that they stay?"

Davy shrugs, ambivalently. The dance is becoming evident; the steps easier to follow. "P'rhaps I might. And p'rhaps I mightn't like to tell a man's private business, if I hadn't a good reason." He rubs his chin in a thoughtful manner. Abruptly, he says, "Who do you want, what brings you around here? A feller what picked your pocket?"

Again, Oliver pauses. "No," he says. "An... acquaintance."

"Very good. Did your acquaintance ever have a name to call his own?"

"Yes. His name's Jack Dawkins."

"Can't say that it's one I've heard lately."

"He had a nickname," Oliver says, "as a boy." It's been seventeen years since Sikes and Nancy both went to their graves in the same night and Fagin's gang was consigned to the annals of history; a lifetime. He holds fast, though, to the faint possibility that Jack's former sobriquet might somewhere strike a chord. "He was known as the Artful Dodger."

"Colourful sort of cove, like?" Davy grins. He appears to be thinking for a moment or two, then shakes his head. "I ain't familiar with your pal. I'd say you're at a dead end. But I could ask a bit, if you want."

Oliver doesn't feel that he has a great deal of choice. His journey ends with Davy; beyond that lies hopelessness. "I'd appreciate it," he says, "a great deal."

Davy gives him a slightly odd look. "I think you would, too."

Oliver places his watch on the counter, and takes out his wallet. He's been foolish to carry money today as well, but he removes a sovereign. He holds it out to Davy. "Please use this as you need it, for anything that might cost you."

Davy moves to reach out for the coin, then stops. He cocks his head, regarding Oliver. "I'll take it off you after you've found what you're looking for," he says.

"Thank you."

"I wouldn't thank me yet, if I was you. Where shall I put it about that a feller can find you?"

"I'll call in again, in a few days. To hear any news."

"And what makes you think that anyone what knows Jack Dawkins's address is going to give it out to a toff what won't give his own?"

Debating the issue, Oliver realises that there's truth in the other man's words. If his search is to come to fruition, a degree of confidence will be needed on both sides, not merely his own. A man in the street has no more reason to believe Oliver than he does him; perhaps less, as the element of risk involved in such a relationship is on his part considerably greater. He slips his hand into his breast pocket and retrieves a card, placing it between them. "Make it known that Oliver Twist is looking for Jack Dawkins and needs to speak with him urgently."

Davy flips the card over, taking a quick glance at the modest lines of print, a glance which undoubtedly misses nothing. "Thing is, you say Twist, but your card says Brownlow."

"Twist," Oliver says, firmly and adamantly. "Please give that name. He'd recognise it, if he was to hear it." Jack will recognise it, for certain, but it's of benefit to Oliver's efforts to remain inconspicuous that few other people these days would do so. He's never imagined, before now, that a name allocated to him simply for entering the world at a particular point in the alphabet would one day be of use to him again. He has, he supposes, an alias, as Jack does. Wherever and however far they travel, it remains; the bond with the past that the two of them share.

His watch still lies on the counter. Oliver hesitates for just a brief moment, and then, reaching out, pushes it forward. "Keep this for me," he says, in answer to Davy's quizzical look. "I'm not asking to be paid for it, but I'll still buy it back."

"Your show of good faith?" Davy says. He suddenly grins again, the gesture splitting his face. "You're a queer one. You deserve to get what you want, if a feller ever did. Good luck."

A good dose of luck is exactly what Oliver feels that he'll need, but mixed into an equally generous helping of aptitude. Even if it didn't concern him to make himself available to every back-street ruffian and bludger in the city, he could, alone, travel half of London and still fail in his quest. Linked to and compelled towards this world as he is, he's yet a stranger in it; an explorer without a guide, map or compass to navigate by. As things stand now, he needs someone to undertake the task for him. Davy, he hopes, might be that man.

The fog of the past week now has the blackish-brown of mid-day, as if the smoke from every chimney ever fired has fallen down at once; worst, as always, in this part of the city near to where it rolls off the Thames. The brightest illumination is, rather than the sun, the artificial daylight provided at ground level by the gas lit in the windows of the shops that have it, and, every so often, the pinhead lights of the link boys' torches. Carriages appear eerily like Flying Dutchmen and then are largely invisible again within a few hundred yards. So much shouting out and hulloing goes on in a fog that Oliver is not optimistic about a hansom distinguishing his call, and elects to use his cab-whistle instead. Some of the cab drivers have abandoned actually driving, instead leading their horses by the bridle, and Oliver feels tempted to tell his own to do the same. The previous month, the evening paper had run a story about two small boys who had been run down and killed by an omnibus in fog little worse than this. Near Southampton Street, he asks to dismount, and commences the remainder of the journey on foot. His fellow pedestrians come at him through the mist like souls emerging from Hades. When he almost collides bodily with Richard Manns in the middle of a pavement, the comparison seems still more appropriate.

"Most unpleasant conditions indeed, Doctor. I had hoped to go to my offices, but my coachman fears being run into in the poor visibility and having our brains dashed out. Still, I assume that the number of asthmatic lungs and bruised limbs must keep you in business. Even in our diseases, we do not seek the Lord, but the physicians, as the Chronicles say."

"My wish would be that there be no call for doctors at any time, Mr Manns," Oliver replies.

"A worthy sentiment, but idealistic. No, as long as a need exists, sir, there will always be someone to profit from it, whether it is my ships bearing tea and tobacco, or a hooping cough waiting to be attended by yourself." Manns touches his hand to his waistcoat pocket, creases his brows, and then smiles. "Doctor Brownlow, I will trouble you, if I may, for the time. I appear to have left my watch behind."

Oliver returns his gaze. "I believe that I have also."