THE MISSING LINK

BY

EDWARD DYSON
1922



CHAPTER I.

DR. CRIPS'S HEALING MIXTURE.

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.