“From the shop we proceeded to the little parlor behind, from which a door gave access, by a flight of most dangerous stone steps, to the large cellar.  This was lighted by a grating from the back yard, with which it also communicated by a flight of steps and a door.  We next examined the yard itself, a small paved enclosure with a gate opening on an alley, and occupied at the moment by an empty beer-barrel, a builder’s hand-cart and a dead cat.

“‘Like to thee the upstairth roomth?’ inquired the Hebrew gentleman, whose name I understood to be Nathan.  I nodded abstractedly and followed him up the stairs, gathering a general impression of all-pervading dirt.  The upper rooms were of no interest to me after what I had seen downstairs.

“‘Well,’ said Mr. Nathan when we were once more back in the shop, ’what do you think of it?’

“I did not answer his question literally.  If I had, I should have startled him.  For I thought the place absolutely ideal for my purpose.  Just consider its potentialities!  I was searching for a criminal whom I could identify by his hair.  Here was a barber’s shop in the heart of a criminal neighborhood and admittedly the late haunt of criminals.  Those criminals were certain to come back.  I could examine their hair at my leisure; and—­there was the cellar.  It was, I repeat, absolutely ideal.

“‘I think the place will suit me,’ I said.

“Mr. Nathan beamed on me.  ‘Of courth,’ he said, ’referentheth will be nethethary, or rent in advanthe.’

“‘A year’s rent in advance will do, I suppose?’ said I; and Mr. Nathan nearly jumped clear off the floor.  A few minutes later I departed, the accepted tenant (under the pseudonym of Simon Vosper) of Samuel Nathan, with the understanding that I should deliver my advance rent in bank-notes and that he should have the top-dressing of dirt removed from the house and the name of Vosper painted over the shop.

“My preparations for the new activities on which I was to enter were quickly made.  In my Bloomsbury house I installed as caretaker a retired sergeant-major of incomparable taciturnity.  I locked up the museum wing and kept the keys.  I took a few lessons in haircutting from a West-End barber.  I paid my advance rent, sent in a set of bedroom furniture to my new premises in Saul Street, Whitechapel, abandoned the habit of shaving for some ten days, and then took possession of the shop.

“At first the customers were few and far between.  A stray coster or carman came in from time to time, but mostly the shop was silent and desolate.  But this did not distress me.  I had various preparations to make and a plan of campaign to settle.  There were the cellar stairs, for instance; a steep flight of stone steps, unguarded by baluster or handrail.  They were very dangerous.  But when I had fitted a sort of giant stride by suspending a stout rope from the ceiling, I was able to swing myself down the whole flight in perfect safety.  Other preparations consisted in the placing, of an iron safe in the parlor (with a small mirror above it) and the purchase of a tin of stiff cart-grease and a few large barrels.  These latter I bought from a cooper in the form of staves and hoops, and built them up in the cellar in my rather extensive spare time.