Explore "The Joker" by Edgar Wallace on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THERE is a class of entertainer which devotes its talents to amusing the queues that wait at the doors of the cheaper entrances of London's theatres. Here is generally to be found a man who can tear paper into fantastic shapes, a ballad singer or two, a performer on the bones and the inevitable black-faced minstrel.
It was eleven o'clock at night, and snow was lightly falling, when a policeman on point duty at the end of Evory Street saw a figure staggering along the middle of the road, in imminent danger from the returning theatre traffic. The man had obviously taken more drink than vas good for him, for he was howling at the top of his voice the song of the moment; and making a clumsy attempt to accompany himself on the banjo which was slung around his neck.