V

BY-PRODUCTS OF INDUSTRY


The next entry in the amazing "Museum Archives" exhibited my poor friend
Humphrey Challoner in circumstances that were to me perfectly
incredible. When I recall that learned, cultivated man as I knew him, I
find it impossible to picture him living amidst the indescribably
squalid surroundings of the London Ghetto, the tenant of a sordid little
shop in an East End by-street. Yet this appears actually to have been
his condition at one time--but let me quote the entry in his own words,
which need no comments of mine to heighten their strangeness.

"Events connected with the acquirement of Numbers 7, 8 and 9 in the
Anthropological Series:

"We are the creatures of circumstance. Blind chance, which guided that
unknown wretch to my house in the dead of the night and which led my
dear wife to her death at his murderous hands, also impelled that other
villain (Number 6, Anthropological Series) to pursue me to the lonely
chalk-pit, where he would have done me to death had I not fortunately
anticipated his intentions. So, too, it was by a mere chance that I
presently found myself the proprietor of a shop in a Whitechapel
back-street.