The Felthams Or Contrasts in Crime Author:Franz General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1879 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER II. CONCERNING MR. TIGHTDRAW. j| R. TIGHTDRAW, Second Floor;' was the inscription painted on the left side of a very dingy hall of a very dingy house, in a narrow, dirty lane in the city of London. Mr. Tightdraw was a solicitor, with an elastic conscience, and with an ownership from one cause or another in many clients; he owned also a few small clerks and a good many small feelings. He was a little, wiry man, with a pink face and an oily manner, with a confirmed habit of speaking very slowly, and of all the while resting the tips of his bony fingers together, as if he were designing church windows. His shirt-collar was always remarkably stiff and unrelenting, just like his heart- -- save that his collar was invariably clean, and his heart invariably was not. His head was bald and yellow, and looked for all the world like one of those displayed in the shop-windows of a celebrated phrenologist; wanting only the black lines and letterpress description. Mr. Tightdraw was the tenant of two rooms on the " second floor"; on the door of one the public read, "Clerks' Office"; and painted in legible characters on the other was the owner's name, and in case any one might enter without the customary formalities this door was locked from within, and the word " Private " written thereon in still bigger characters. Whatever might be Mr. Tightdraw's extravagance inthe decoration and embellishment of his private residence, which nobody was ever known to have seen, his worst enemy could not have accused him of over-fastidiousness in the furnishing of his business apartments. For the same reason it was ...« less