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lights were all lit and the shed was almost pretty - quieter than usual, too, for there didn't seem to be many blokes about.
    After a while the fire-raiser looked up from the firehole door, where he'd been spreading out the coal, and shouted, ‘I hear you're from the North Eastern.'
    'That's it,' I said, and I was glad he was willing to chat, but anxious as to what he'd heard about me.
    'Some good running up there,' he said, and his voice came out with an echo to it, as though his head was half in the fire-hole.
    'Our first Rs', I shouted back up at him, 'did almost a hundred and fifty thousand miles between Newcastle and Edinburgh with no valve-wear to speak of.'
    But by that remark I had somehow killed the conversation, for there was no answer.
    Having no other duties, I hung around that funny little hunchback, Twenty-Nine, sitting on the buffer bar drinking tea until late in the evening, and watching the fire blokes come out of their mess at the top of the shed, which must have been a pretty uncomfortable spot, as it had a great fire burning at all times inside it. They were off to raise steam in the engines going out on 'dark days', which is what nights were called at Nine Elms, and they carried torches or sometimes buckets of burning paraffin held on wooden spars. They never used the engines' proper names but called out nicknames instead, and the talk was all of Jumbos, Piano Fronts, Town Halls and the like. As the evening progressed they were shouting about the Turnstile too, the pub near to the Nine Elms gates. I had seen it, of course, but that was all.
    I was just thinking this was a bit of all right, that maybe things were looking up, when Arthur Hunt came out of the darkness with a black-bearded fellow. One nightmare glance went shooting between us, then he and his mate leapt up onto Thirty-One, and he took her off somewhere - I did not care where.
    That night the streets were full of girls, and I suddenly knew how they got their living. From my lodge I saw washing flying on the line in the yard. There were three pairs of my landlady's knickers and three of her blouses, and they were all lit up by the light on the soap works wall. But there was no sign of the lady herself.
     
     
    Chapter Eight
    Tuesday 24 November
     

    The following Tuesday I walked in on Crook, bent over his board. He seemed to be playing a game of chequers against himself, but then there came a fearful shriek; he glanced out of his window, and what he saw galvanised him into speaking.
     
    "The Bug!' said Crook, and his eyebrows jumped, giving me high hopes of a conversation.
    'What's the Bug, Mr Crook?' I said, for I had stopped siring him.
    'A four-two-four tank,' he said after a while, looking over my head as he spoke.
    'Anything special about it?'
    'It contains at all times Sir Roger White-Chester.' He was back at his chequers game now.
    'An important gentleman, is he, Mr Crook?'
    'Board member,' said Crook, who was now back to mumbling, 'and more important than the locomotive superintendent, Mr Drummond, who was meant to have that thing to himself.'
     
    'What does Mr White-Chester do?' 'Comes in weekly to inspec t the shed.' 'To inspect it for what?' 'Slackness,' said Crook. 'Slackness of what kind?'
    'Your kind would do,' he said, looking up at me. 'Standing about talking when you should be on the job.' And he went back to his tokens.
     
    Walking out of Crook's place, I saw the Bug directly: a little squashed-up tank revolving on one of the turntables with a lot of smoke twisting out of its chimney in a spiral. I walked into the shed and found the Governor coughing outside his office with papers in his hand. He was walking me over for another cleaning turn when there came a second shriek from the Bug. It was pounding up towards the shed now, with us directly in its sights.
    The Bug lurched to a stop and a johnny in a top hat and frock coat leapt out of the side and started striding along the very road on which we were standing. At