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The marketing centers I had left far behind me; to my right stretched
the broken range of riverside buildings, and beyond them flowed the
Thames, a stream more heavily burdened with secrets than ever was
Tiber or Tigris. On my left, occasional flickering lights broke
through the mist, for the most part the lights of taverns; and saving
these rents in the veil, the darkness was punctuated with nothing but
the faint and yellow luminance of the street lamps.
Ahead was a black mouth, which promised to swallow me up as it had
swallowed up my friend.
In short, what with my lowered condition and consequent frame of mind,
and what with the traditions, for me inseparable from that gloomy
quarter of London, I was in the grip of a shadowy menace which at any
moment might become tangible--I perceived, in the most commonplace
objects, the yellow hand of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
When the cab stopped in a place of utter darkness, I aroused myself
with an effort, opened the door, and stepped out into the mud of a
narrow lane. A high brick wall frowned upon me from one side, and,
dimly perceptible, there towered a smoke stack, beyond. On my right
uprose the side of a wharf building, shadowly, and some distance
ahead, almost obscured by the drizzling rain, a solitary lamp
flickered, I turned up the collar of my raincoat, shivering, as much
at the prospect as from physical chill.
"You will wait here," I said to the man; and, feeling in my
breast-pocket, I added: "If you hear the note of a whistle, drive on
and rejoin me."
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