03_024
There was, to my mind, something eerie and ghost-like in the endless procession of faces which flitted across these narrow bars of light, sad faces and glad, haggard and merry. Like all human kind, they flitted from the gloom into the light, and so back into the gloom once more.
03_025
I am not subject to impressions, but the dull, heavy evening, with the strange business upon which we were engaged, combined to make me nervous and depressed. I could see from Miss Morstans manner that she was suffering from the same feeling. Holmes alone could rise superior to petty influences.
03_026
He held his open note-book upon his knee, and from time to time he jotted down figures and memoranda in the light of his pocket-lantern.
03_027
At the Lyceum Theatre the crowds were already thick at the side-entrances. In front a continuous stream of hansoms and four-wheelers were rattling up, discharging their cargoes of shirt-fronted men and beshawled, bediamonded women.
03_028
We had hardly reached the third pillar, which was our rendezvous, before a small, dark, brisk man in the dress of a coachman accosted us.
03_029
«Are you the parties who come with Miss Morstan?» he asked.
«I am Miss Morstan, and these two gentlemen are my friends,» said she.
03_030
He bent a pair of wonderfully penetrating and questioning eyes upon us. «You will excuse me, miss,» he said with a certain dogged manner, «but I was to ask you to give me your word that neither of your companions is a police-officer.»
«I give you my word on that,» she answered.
03_031
He gave a shrill whistle, on which a street Arab led across a four-wheeler and opened the door. The man who had addressed us mounted to the box, while we took our places inside. We had hardly done so before the driver whipped up his horse, and we plunged away at a furious pace through the foggy streets.
03_032
The situation was a curious one. We were driving to an unknown place, on an unknown errand. Yet our invitation was either a complete hoax, which was an inconceivable hypothesis, or else we had good reason to think that important issues might hang upon our journey.
03_033
Miss Morstans demeanor was as resolute and collected as ever. I endeavored to cheer and amuse her by reminiscences of my adventures in Afghanistan; but, to tell the truth, I was myself so excited at our situation and so curious as to our destination that my stories were slightly involved.
03_034
To this day she declares that I told her one moving anecdote as to how a musket looked into my tent at the dead of night, and how I fired a double-barrelled tiger cub at it.
03_035
At first I had some idea as to the direction in which we were driving; but soon, what with our pace, the fog, and my own limited knowledge of London, I lost my bearings, and knew nothing, save that we seemed to be going a very long way.
03_036
Sherlock Holmes was never at fault, however, and he muttered the names as the cab rattled through squares and in and out by tortuous by-streets.
03_037
«Rochester Row,» said he. «Now Vincent Square. Now we come out on the Vauxhall Bridge Road. We are making for the Surrey side, apparently. Yes, I thought so. Now we are on the bridge. You can catch glimpses of the river.»
03_038
We did indeed get a fleeting view of a stretch of the Thames with the lamps shining upon the broad, silent water; but our cab dashed on, and was soon involved in a labyrinth of streets upon the other side.
03_039
«Wordsworth Road,» said my companion. «Priory Road. Lark Hall Lane. Stockwell Place. Robert Street. Cold Harbor Lane. Our quest does not appear to take us to very fashionable regions.»
03_040
We had, indeed, reached a questionable and forbidding neighborhood. Long lines of dull brick houses were only relieved by the coarse glare and tawdry brilliancy of public houses at the corner.
03_041
Then came rows of two-storied villas each with a fronting of miniature garden, and then again interminable lines of new staring brick buildings, the monster tentacles which the giant city was throwing out into the country. At last the cab drew up at the third house in a new terrace.
03_042
None of the other houses were inhabited, and that at which we stopped was as dark as its neighbors, save for a single glimmer in the kitchen window. On our knocking, however, the door was instantly thrown open by a Hindoo servant clad in a yellow turban, white loose-fitting clothes, and a yellow sash.
03_043
There was something strangely incongruous in this Oriental figure framed in the commonplace door-way of a third-rate suburban dwelling-house.
03_044
«The Sahib awaits you,» said he, and even as he spoke there came a high piping voice from some inner room. «Show them in to me, khitmutgar,» it cried. «Show them straight in to me.»
Chapter IV. The Story of the Bald-Headed Man
04_001
We followed the Indian down a sordid and common passage, ill lit and worse furnished, until he came to a door upon the right, which he threw open.
04_002
A blaze of yellow light streamed out upon us, and in the centre of the glare there stood a small man with a very high head, a bristle of red hair all round the fringe of it, and a bald, shining scalp which shot out from among it like a mountain-peak from fir-trees.
04_003
He writhed his hands together as he stood, and his features were in a perpetual jerk, now smiling, now scowling, but never for an instant in repose.
04_004