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Trouble with Boro is that he has never learned British police "etiquette," i.e., that no matter how much of a crook or tramp you are, "they won't hound you" so long as you don't try and step out of character. So when Sergeant Matthew of Scotland Yard spots Boro playing the pub piano in a top hat instead of the usual plum derby, all hell breaks loose. "Where did he get the idea of wearing a topper in that dirty bar? . . . Where did he think he was? At the Derby? In the House of Lords?" Within minutes, angry Sergeant Matthew is flat on the floor, "covered with drunks . . . a mountain of them high as the chandelier." Boro and Ferdinand scuttle into the street, and from then on, Author Cèline shows them on the run from one crazy hideout to another:
¶ "The Leicester Boarding House," a brothel run by Frenchman Cascade, whose steady, unchanging pimpery has won the respect of "even the worst bulls of the Yard." Unlike Boro, Cascade would never dream of rousing the Yard's ire by cutting off his famed spit curl or altering the tattooing on his buttocks ("A rose on the right . . . a wolf's face on the left"). Suddenly all the other French pimps in London have turned patriotic and gone home to fight, leaving their girls for Cascade to "look after." "We're widows, Cascade! We're widows!" they croon, climbing into his lap. "I can't pimp for all of you," bellows Cascade. "Where am I going to hide [you] all?" At one point Sergeant Matthew appears in the doorway, one of the girls gets stabbed, and Boro and Ferdinand rush her, wrapped in a tablecloth, to
¶ "The London Freeborn Hospital," a masterpiece of Célinic architecture. In this vast warren of iron beds, the coal smoke and fog are so dense that Intern Dr. Clodowitz cannot see a patient's face without holding a lantern over the pillow. Leaving "Clodo" (who is in the pay of Cascade) to patch up the bawling prostitute, Boro and Ferdinand scuttle down the river to
¶ The Greenwich home of Pawnbroker Titus Jerome van Claben, who dresses like an Egyptian pasha and sleeps in a bed piled up with pawned fur pieces. Junk fills the Claben hockshop from floor to rafters: one false step and the unwary visitor is crushed under an avalanche of "pianos . . . harps and trombones . . . baby carriages, women's bicycles . . . mattresses . . . top hats . . . bottle baskets." Excited by smoking reefers, old Claben swallows a whole bag of gold sovereigns, doesn't disgorge a one of them when Boro and Ferdinand hold him upside down and bang his skull vigorously on the floor. GREENWICH TRAGEDY! bellow the newspapers next day: "Body of . . . well-known pawnbroker . . . found . . . badly mutilated . . . Might be due to foul play." Off runs Ferdinand once again, the Yard right on his tail.