Chapter II.—In the Dead of NightBROOME MASON, solicitor of Theobald's Road, was undoubtedly of an unusual personality. Approaching middle-age, he was a tall, big man with something of the Viking look about him. Fair, with a fresh complexion, he had large and bold blue eyes, his eye-brows were bushy, and he had a wide mouth with lips rather full and on the coarse side. Quite handsome in its way, his face suggested strength. Its expression, however, was hard and ruthless, and he looked, all over, a man who would always place himself first, and have no consideration for anybody else. In speech he was curt and blunt.
One of the best-known among the so-called ‘police-court solicitors’ in London, year in year out, the greater number of his clients belonged to the criminal classes. That that was
