Third Square | Chapter One
East London’s mist-tilled skies reluctantly made way for two men as they walked south-bound atop the crosswalk. The momentary break in the weather did little for the scattered bits of conversation attempting to be exchanged through hasty breathes and quick trials to push-a-hat-back or pull-a-scarf-up as the mid-winter weather transitions eddied about the gentlemen. Opposites, as previously said, could not have better been seen, for their faces were as cracks in a mirror, one looking calmly settled into his state of mind and the other looking anything but.
The first gentleman, for that he appeared to be, was tall, stately, eloquent in emotion and manner, and otherwise everything expected of a young and pompous London money monger. His name was well known, his reputation creditable, and his enterprises safely settled far beyond the reach of erratic, fickle street-rats. Doctor Martin Braxton, of South Courtney Street, was as reputable as he was professional, and nothing less than the current desperate circumstances, and the prominence of his honor, would have brought him to the slums of East Side to consult our latter focus.
Thus said focus was Mr. Daniel Lawrence, or Dr. Lawrence, whenever he wished to appear professional, as he did on such an occasion as this. At other times he would appear as Lawrence Search-Them-All, if he wished to appear little more than the hobo he was and agree with his friend’s teasing spirits, or Lord Daniel la Caltan whenever he wished to claim to be related to Charlemagne or Alfred the Great or some other extinct figure he knew nothing about. All such remarkable titles he drew from the books he devoured, the newspapers he collected, or his own fantasies which he strung together whenever his endless scour of missing persons was exhausted.
Daniel Laurence, fat, torpid, toad-like man that he was, possessed few enjoyments in this world besides his unethical research of unfortunate souls that had lost their stability in life and had concluded, at last, to result to the unfortunate fate of disappearing from the face of the earth. Death did not grip these souls, nor life either, but some abductive force drove them away to some solitary cave or workhouse where they were not recovered from for years. Most of these disappearances were self-consciously committed, though the occasional sleepwalker or drunkard will wander to a copse or river and never be heard from again.
These singular cases allured the slatternly Mr. Laurence, and the unmaintained rurals of London would have been in much worse condition should it not have been for his assistance on several remarkable occasions. These instances built him some sort of reputation, neither stable nor well-respected, but whenever the funds were tight or the public unappealing, misfortunate individuals brought their stories to this man who dwelt thirty paces west of the Gaither and Foxlord intersection. No great competitor was he to Doyle’s or Poe’s heroes, but was some inferior detective of his own, though he did it in such a leisurely, singular way that no profession was made out of his excursions, only fuel for his enjoyment and a flame for his time.
One can not guess why such a man as Dr. Braxton would wish to consult such a man with such a practice, but this he did on the date of February 15th, 1953, over twenty years since the incident, in which these gentlemen are now engaged, occurred. It took two decades and the death of a prodigious individual to begin the chain of events which you will now have the honor of reviewing, the mixture of facts and fiction separated in their right proportions, and perhaps a life lost revived to some old glory.