The Missing Link

His Christian name was Nicholas but his familiars called him Nickie the

Kid. The title did not imply that Nicholas possessed the artless gaiety,

the nimbleness, or any of the simple virtues of the young of the common

goat. Kid was short for "kidder," a term that as gone out recently in

favour of "smoodger," and which implies a quality of suave and

ingratiating cunning backed by ulterior motives.

The familiars of Mr. Nicholas Crips were a limited circle, and all

"beats," that is to say, gentlemen sitting on the rail dividing honest

toil from open crime. They were not workers, neither were they thieves,

excepting in very special circumstances, when the opportunity made

honesty almost an impertinence. The sobriquet coming from such a source

acquires peculiar significance. The god-fathers of Nickie the Kid were

all experts, and obtained bed and board mainly by exercising the art of

dissimulation. To stand out conspicuously as a specialist in such company

one needed to possess very bright and peculiar qualities.

Mr. Nicholas Crips was blonde, bony man perhaps five feet nine in height,

but looking taller because of the spareness of his limbs. This spareness

was not cultivated, as Nickie the Kid was partial to creature comforts,

but was of great assistance to him in a profession in which it was often

necessary to profess chronic sickness and touching physical decrepitude.

Mr Crips despised whiskers, but, as shaving was an extravagant

indulgence, his slightly cadaverous countenance was often littered with a

crisp, pale stubble, not unlike dry grass.

To-day Nickie wore a suit of black cloth. It had once been a very

imposing suit, and had adorned a great person, but having fallen on evil

days, was dusty and rusty, while the knees of Mr. Crips poked familiarly

through a long slit in each leg of the stained trousers. The frock coat

went badly with the damaged tan boots and the moth-eaten rag cap Nicholas

was wearing.