Two Beggars

Last Sunday near Victoria Terminus, I saw the most remarkable beggar I have ever seen in my life. He wore lipstick, an orange cap, and a black, orange and green windcheater. His teeth were in a state of abominable decay. His nails were painted in different colours. On his back was a spectacularly colourful patchwork sack; a mobile phone dangled from his neck.

Some little distance down Threadneedle Street, upon the left-hand side, there is, as you may have remarked, a small angle in the wall. There sat Neville St. Clair, alias Hugh Boone. A shock of orange hair, a pale face disfigured by a horrible scar, which, by its contraction, had turned up the outer edge of his upper lip, a bulldog chin, and a pair of very penetrating dark eyes: these were enough to mark him out from amid the common crowd of mendicants. But Neville St. Clair appeared in Conan Doyle’s fiction, set in bleak, grey London. In colourful South Bombay, obviously, stronger measures had been called for.