are illegal.'
'Yer can't do vat! I rent aht rooms. Wot vey does in 'em ain't my fault!'
'Want to prove that to a jury?'
'You can't arrest me!'
'I can and I will. You might get off, but you'll have a rough time in jail till you do. People don't like procurers, especially ones who procure little boys! Now where's Albie?'
'I dunno! Honest to God, I dunno! 'E don't tell me where 'e comes an' goes!'
'When did you see him last? What time does he usually come back-and don't tell me you don't know.'
'Abaht six-'e's always back at abaht six. But I ain't seen 'im for a couple o' days. 'E weren't 'ere last night, and I dunno where 'e went. As God's me judge! An' I carn't tell yer more'n vat if yer was to send me ter Horstralia fer it!''
'We don't send people to Australia anymore-haven't done for years,' Pitt said absently. He believed the man. There would be no point in his lying, and he had everything to lose if Pitt chose to harass him.
'Well, Coldbath Fields then!' the man said angrily. 'It's the truth. I dunno where 'e's gorn! Nor if n 'e'll be back. I bloody 'ope so-'e owes me this week's rent, 'e does!' Suddenly he was aggrieved.
'I expect he'll be back,' Pitt said with a curious sense of misery. Probably Albie would come back. After all, why
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shouldn't he? As he had said himself, he had good rooms here and an established clientele. The only other possibility was if he had found some single customer who had developed into a lover, possessive, demanding-and wealthy enough to set him up somewhere for his own exclusive patronage. Such windfalls as that were pipe dreams for boys like Albie.
'So 'e'll be back!' the landlord said testily. 'You plannin' to stand there in the passageway like a devil's 'ead till 'e does, then? You'll scare orf all me-visitors! It ain't good fera place to 'ave the likes o' you standin' there! Gives a place a bad name. Makes people fink vere's suffink wrong wiv us!'
Pitt sighed. 'Of course not. But I'll be back. And if you've done anything to send Albie away, or any harm has come to him, I'll have you down to Coldbath Fields quicker than your rotten little feet'll touch the ground!'
'Fancy 'im, then, do yer?' The old man's face split in a dirty grin, and he seized the chance to kick Pitt's foot out of the doorway and slam the door shut.
There was nothing else to do but go back to the police station. Pitt was already late, and he had no business being here.
Gillivray was jubilant about the arsonist, and it was a quarter of an hour before he bothered to ask Pitt what had taken him so long.
Pitt did not want to reply directly with the truth.
'What else do you know about Albie Frobisher?' he asked instead.
'What?' Gillivray frowned as though momentarily the name made no sense to him.
'Albie Frobisher,' Pitt repeated. 'What else do you know about him?'
'Else than what?' Gillivray said irritably. 'He's a male prostitute, that's all. What else is there? Why should we care? We can't arrest all the homosexuals in the city or we'd do nothing else. Anyway, you'd have to prove it, and how could you do that without dragging in their customers?'
'And what's wrong with dragging in their customers?' Pitt asked bluntly. 'They are at least as guilty, maybe more so. They're not doing it to live.'
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'Are you saying prostitution is all right, Mr. Pitt?' Gillivray was shocked.
Usually hypocrisy enraged Pitt. This time, because it was so totally unconscious, it overwhelmed him with hopelessness.
