CHAPTER XI.
In which a Pole is less scrupulous
The name of the lounger was James. That was his Christian name. What his family name might be it is impossible to discover at this distance of time, for he had been born in 1868, brought up in the workhouse, apprenticed to a ropemaker, passed various terms in jail under various aliases, gone to sea, naturalised as an American citizen, returned to England as valet in the service of a tourist, been dismissed a few years before for theft, and was at this moment a member of the New Bureaucracy, to wit, a Watcher and Checker under the Ormeston Labour Exchange. He was paid (by results, 2s. 6d. for each conviction) to see that the poor did not cheat the higher officials of that invaluable Public office, to worm out the true history of applicants at the Exchange and to provide secret evidence against them, that they might be imprisoned and black-listed if they concealed their past
