The Turn of the Tide by Fred M. White — Read

The telephone directory, however, failed to make any mention of Greencorn Street, from which Ellis deduced the fact that it must be a very obscure thoroughfare, so he had to go out and look up the house he wanted at the nearest post office. He was not in the least surprised to find that Greencorn Street was not very far off, and consisted more or less of a blind alley leading from one of the dingy Wapping streets to the river, and terminating in a derelict piece of ground which had once been the site of a series of warehouses. But these had long been pulled down, and the ground on which they had stood had been given over as a sort of play-ground and dumping area for the neighbourhood. There was a wall of sorts round the desolate stretch of ground, and a battered board proclaiming the fact that it was for sale. At the corner of the road was a public house, apparently on its last legs, for the paint was peeling off the walls, and the creaking doors were black and greasy from contact with generations of unsavoury loafers. As Ellis passed down the road three or four of these derelicts in a state of drooping melancholy were propping up the wall of the public-house waiting patiently, no doubt, for some more prosperous ally who might be moved to take them inside and give them the beer for which their souls craved. They were the type of men who live in some mysterious fashion without work, and whose one idea or paradise is to sit in a reeking hostel with their feet in the sawdust and a pot of some stringent ale in front of them. They lounged there, addressing no word to one another, and eyed Ellis dejectedly as he passed. He knew at least two of them by name, and nodded as he went along. One of them looked up with a sort of gleam of hope in his rheumy eye before his head sank upon his breast again.

Ellis walked on, taking in his surroundings keenly. Beyond the public-house was a fried-fish shop, and beyond that appeared two or three blocks of tenement dwellings which obviously once had been warehouses. Then came another open space, and, beyond that, a series of cabin-like habitations, for the most part without roofs.