"You are well acquainted with it now?"

"Why, yes," said Mr. Wemmick. "I know the moves of it."

"Is it a very wicked place?" I asked, more for the sake of saying
something than for information.

"You may get cheated, robbed, and murdered in London. But there are
plenty of people anywhere, who'll do that for you."

"If there is bad blood between you and them," said I, to soften it off a
little.

"O! I don't know about bad blood," returned Mr. Wemmick; "there's not
much bad blood about. They'll do it, if there's anything to be got by
it."

"That makes it worse."

"You think so?" returned Mr. Wemmick. "Much about the same, I should
say."

He wore his hat on the back of his head, and looked straight before him:
walking in a self-contained way as if there were nothing in the streets
to claim his attention. His mouth was such a post-office of a mouth
that he had a mechanical appearance of smiling. We had got to the top of
Holborn Hill before I knew that it was merely a mechanical appearance,
and that he was not smiling at all.

"Do you know where Mr. Matthew Pocket lives?" I asked Mr. Wemmick.

"Yes," said he, nodding in the direction. "At Hammersmith, west of
London."