Shrines of Gaiety

Ramsay walks the London streets. He approaches some workmen, feeling a sense of camaraderie, but before he can greet them, one of them tells him: “Why don’t you fuck off, you fucking posh fucker” (177).

Ramsay goes to the Sphinx. He’s supposed to oversee the club, but his role is more of a figurehead; in reality, the club’s bartender, Gerrit, manages things. Gerrit takes Ramsay to the Sphinx’s back storeroom and injects him with cocaine. Gerrit is Ramsay’s regular source of drugs, and Ramsay has some attraction to Gerrit: “Ramsay felt both uncomfortable and excited at [Gerrit’s] proximity. He never felt certain what Gerrit’s intentions toward him were” (183). While high in the Sphinx’s storeroom, Ramsay discovers a silver shoe (this is the shoe, we later learn, that matches the one found on Minnie in Chapter 13).

Edith, still not feeling well, meets her secret lover­—later revealed as Maddox—at a restaurant, Pinoli’s. The encounter is uncomfortable. Edith thinks that “[e]ven if she broke it off, she feared he would still pursue her. He couldn’t afford to let her go, she knew too much” (188). After their meeting, Edith goes to see Mrs. Darling, Florence and Freda’s landlady, on Henrietta Street (for an abortion, we later learn).