CHAPTER V.
THE INCIDENT IN BIGGS'S BUILDINGS.
THE tall, spare man in rusty, clerical raiment was going from room to room in one of the huge, city buildings where Business people, gregarious as sparrows, nest in hundreds.
The tall, spare man was cleanly shaved, he wore a very white collar, his expression combined benignity with a certain ascetic calm.

He carried two or three books in his left hand, pressed against his heart with a sort of caress, an affection very common with gentlemen of the cloth, for Nicholas Crips had a keen eye for character, and his various impersonations were fairly true to type, and of no mean dramatic quality.
Nickie the Kid knocked gently at an office door, a peremptory voice called "Come in," and he opened the door very softly, entered, closed the door very gently behind him, placed his crippled belltopper (rim uppermost) on the small counter that walled visitors off from the severe gentleman dictating to a blonde typewriter and said, with clerical unction.
"Good-day sir.

Good-day my dear young lady." "D-afternoon!" replied the severe gentleman severely.
"Sir.

I am here on a mission of charity, if you don't mind.

I am the Rev Andrew Rowbottom.