“We ain’t ’ad no accidents brought in the ’ole blessed day,” returned the porter stolidly. “You’ve made a bloomer, you ’ave. Wait ’ere a moment while I goes and sees if anybody knows anything about it. Tobey, did you say your name was?”
“Tovey!” replied that individual angrily. The porter turned his back upon him and disappeared, his boots clattering noisily upon the tiled floor. Mr. Tovey, with a sudden reaction from his excited imaginings, stood cold and miserable in the centre of a puddle formed by the drops from his overcoat.
After what seemed an interminable time the porter returned. “Somebody’s bin pulling your leg,” he said, with a malicious grin. “We ain’t ’ad no accidents, and nobody ’ere ain’t ever ’eard of you. Didn’t get the name of the ’orspital wrong, did you? Wasn’t St. George’s, was it, or maybe St. Thomas’s?”
Mr. Tovey shook his head. “No, it was St. Martha’s, right enough,” he replied. A sudden wave of anger at the hoax which had been played upon him surged through his brain, and without another word he turned and strode out of the hall. It was monstrous that he, a citizen and a rate-payer, should be dragged out into the streets on a fool’s errand like this. With his grievance rankling to the exclusion of every other thought, he pushed his way along Praed Street, his head down, his hands crammed into his overcoat pockets. The drizzle had turned to sleet, and the sting of it on his face added to his ill-humour.
Ahead of him was the Express Train, a public-house which had presumably been built and named at the time of the coming of the railway. It was closing time by now, and a stream of gesticulating figures was being disgorged upon the crowded pavement. Mr. Tovey looked up as he heard the turmoil. The cold air and comparative darkness, after the warmth and light of the bar, seemed to have had an unsteadying effect upon the ejected guests. They lurched about the pavement singing snatches of ribald songs, arguing heatedly in loud voices.
Mr. Tovey frowned. Nice way to spend a Sunday evening! Thank God, he didn’t live in Praed Street, anyhow. He wasn’t going to be barged off the pavement by a lot of drunken hooligans, not he. Putting his head a trifle further down, like a bull about to charge, he strode straight ahead in an undeviating line. One man lurched into him, another jostled him from behind, and a menacing voice, its effect somewhat marred by a loud hiccough, called out, “ ’ere, ’oo the ’ell d’yer think you’re pushin’?”
And then Mr. Tovey, with a queer strangled cry, suddenly collapsed in a heap upon the muddy pavement.
Chapter II.
The Herbalist
It is the proud boast of our modern educationalists that the process of forcing knowledge down unwilling throats, known as compulsory education, has resulted in the triumph of science over superstition. Alchemy and astrology, the magic of the Middle Ages, have given place to chemistry and astronomy, the mysteries of which are displayed before the wondering eyes of the elementary scholar. The Age of Superstition is commonly supposed to have fled before the progress of the Age of Materialism.
This supposition is demonstrably false. At no other age in the earth’s history has superstition owned so many votaries. From the most rapt spiritualist to the man who refuses to walk under a ladder, the world is full of people who allow superstition to play an important part in their lives. In the neighbourhood of Praed Street fortune tellers and interpreters of dreams are superstition’s most popular ministers, though it may come as a surprise to many that a brass plate nailed to the door of a house in the Harrow Road advertises the existence of the British College of Astrology.