There was nothing about the house to distinguish it from its stolid and respectable neighbors. It had a dingy face, woodwork painted a dark red with the traditional brass knocker and bell-pull. The windows were hung with curtains of the ordinary type, the Venetian blinds were half down, which in itself is a sign of middle-class respectability. In the center of the red door was a small brass plate bearing the name of Dr. Sergius Tchigorsky.
Not that Dr. Tchigorsky was a medical practitioner in the ordinary sense of the word. No neatly appointed "pillbox" ever stood before 101; no patient ever passed the threshold.
Tchigorsky was a savant and a traveler to boot; a man who dealt in strange out-of-the-way things, and the interior of his house would have been a revelation to the top-hatted, frock-coated doctors and lawyers and City men who elected to make their home in Brant Street, W.
The house was crammed with curiosities and souvenirs of travel from basement to garret. A large sky-lighted billiard-room at the back of the house had been turned into a library and laboratory combined.
And here, when not traveling, Tchigorsky spent all his time, seeing strange visitors from time to time, Mongolians, Hindoos, natives of Tibet—for Tchigorsky was one of the three men who had penetrated to the holy city of Lassa, and returned to tell the tale.
The doctor came into his study from his breakfast, and stood ruminating, rubbing his hands before the fire. In ordinary circumstances he would have been a fine man of over six feet in height.
But a cruel misfortune had curved his spine, while his left leg dragged almost helplessly behind him, his hands were drawn up as if the muscles had been cut and then knotted up again.
Tchigorsky had entered Lassa five years ago as a god who walks upright. When he reached the frontier six months later he was the wreck he still remained. And of those privations and sufferings Tchigorsky said nothing. But there were times when his eyes gleamed and his breath came short and he pined for the vengeance yet to be his.
As to his face, it was singularly strong and intellectual. Yet it was disfigured with deep seams checkered like a chessboard. We have seen something like it before, for the marks were identical with those that disfigured Ralph Ravenspur and made his face a horror to look upon.
A young man rose from the table where he was making some kind of an experiment. He was a fresh-colored Englishman, George Abell by name, and he esteemed it a privilege to call himself Tchigorsky's secretary.