CHAPTER VI
SanctuaryThe following night, at about eleven o’clock, two men stood at the lych-gate of St. Dunstan’s Church, Stepney. One of them was at least in keeping with the place, as he wore a dark, plain suit with a priest’s collar. Both suit and wearer were respectable-looking, although sadly worn. He might have even been handsome, had he not looked quite so gaunt and careworn, but his cheeks were unhealthily hollow, and his hair prematurely grey and thin. Even so, he was a much more appealing sight than the other man, whose bristly, dirty, battle-scarred face was almost as threatening as the flick-knife with which he was all-too-conspicuously toying.
“Evenin’, vicar,” declared the knife-man, with the sort of superficial politeness that one instinctively knows can vanish in an insta
