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The Club of Queer Trades | Gilbert K. Chesterton | |
The Painful Fall of a Great Reputation |
Page 4 of 11 |
At first I thought he had turned to face us. But though we were hardly a yard off he did not realize that we were there. He tapped four times on a very low and dirty door in the dark, crabbed street. A gleam of gas cut the darkness as it opened slowly. We listened intently, but the interview was short and simple and inexplicable as an interview could be. Our exquisite friend handed in what looked like a paper or a card and said: "At once. Take a cab." A heavy, deep voice from inside said: "Right you are." And with a click we were in the blackness again, and striding after the striding stranger through a labyrinth of London lanes, the lights just helping us. It was only five o'clock, but winter and the fog had made it like midnight. "This is really an extraordinary walk for the patent-leather boots," I repeated. "I don't know," said Basil humbly. "It leads to Berkeley Square." As I tramped on I strained my eyes through the dusky atmosphere and tried to make out the direction described. For some ten minutes I wondered and doubted; at the end of that I saw that my friend was right. We were coming to the great dreary spaces of fashionable London--more dreary, one must admit, even than the dreary plebeian spaces. "This is very extraordinary!" said Basil Grant, as we turned into Berkeley Square. "What is extraordinary?" I asked. "I thought you said it was quite natural." "I do not wonder," answered Basil, "at his walking through nasty streets; I do not wonder at his going to Berkeley Square. But I do wonder at his going to the house of a very good man." "What very good man?" I asked with exasperation. |
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The Club of Queer Trades Gilbert K. Chesterton |
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