The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 232: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER XVIII TWO FRIENDS A coupPLE of rooms on the second floor of one of the houses on the same line with the Bow Street police office were in- habited by a middle-aged man of the name of Bealby. He was a short, thin, active, dapper-looking person, with hair and whiskers that had once been of a vivid red, but which were now turning gray. He had very sharp, keen, piercing eyes, and the entire expression of his countenance indicated cun- ning and duplicity. He was dressed in a somewhat seedy suit of black, and his linen was not altogether of the cleanest. The two rooms communicated with folding-doors, which stood open, and the place was most singularly crowded with articles which at the first glance might either be taken for an assemblage of archeological curiosities, or else for the con- tents of a property-room at a theatre. There were helmets, and shields, and weapons of all sorts, curious costumes, a Turkish turban surmounting the wooden framework on which a mandarin’s robe was displayed, a Red Indian’s tomahawk lying next to an old-fashioned English musket, and a whaling harpoon keeping company with a New Zealand bow and arrows. There were old pieces of china, statues, vases, and pictures, brickbats that were alleged to be part of a recently discovered Roman wall in some place or another, bowls and cups that were represented to have been dug out of Herculaneum and Pompeii, while a mummy in a glass case appeared to be staring with eyeless sockets at a gigantic skeleton which grinned at it from the opposite wall. There were strange pieces of theatrical scenery, too, and which a small label represented to have been used at the Royal Opera some little while back established by the king of the Sandwich Islands in his Majesty’s capital, — and, in 205 EGOMINGIOOKS (CO) im