He seemed to have mislaid his stick. After a moment of myopic searching he gave it up, pocketed his hands and lunged on. . . . Not far to go now; but one made indifferent progress because of the fog. Of course it was fog! What else could make the lights so dim? Like a London fog, a London particular. And getting thicker every minute, blotting out the lights as a blotting paper sops up ink, leaving only blurs, faint and formless blotches fading into night absolute, black and steaming . . .
In a sudden saffron blaze Lanyard identified the common aspect of the small suite of rooms which he rented furnished. He was in the sitting-room, wrestling with his overcoat. Soaked through and dripping, the wretched thing seemed possessed of a devil of perversity which resisted all his efforts to shed it. He gave an infuriated wriggle, heard something rip, and discovered, in some surprise, that he was rid of it. Then with indignation he saw that the door stood open to the public hall, a staring oblong of black in the lighted walls. Lurching to this, Lanyard flung it shut with a thundering crash.
The problem of escaping from the intimate embrace of his dress-coat next engaged his intelligence. Something he couldn't afford to tear off his back. Yet he darkly foresaw difficulties. After a while of pondering, a spirit of low cunning prompted him to try to deceive the thing by making believe he didn't care whether it came off or not. . . . And astonishingly it appeared that this strategem had been successful: he was holding the garment in his hands. With the harsh, unfeeling laugh of a conqueror he cast it from him and shaped a course for his bedchamber. And barely in time: that London fog had stolen in after him somehow, probably through the door he had carelessly left open, Heaven knew how long. . . . At its old tricks, dimming down the lights till one could hardly see. Rapidly, too. He succeeded in beating the darkness to his bed, but with nothing to spare: as he sat on its edge, fumbling with his shoes, night whelmed the world with a stunning crash . . .
VI
A splitting headache roused Lanyard out of the void, with the help of an unfeeling hand that shook his shoulder, and a voice that heartlessly dinned his name into his ears.
When he tried to remonstrate his other shoulder was captured by another vice-like hand, and he was raised to a sitting position on the side of the bed. There, bending forward and clasping his head with both hands lest it rend itself in twain, he regained a measure of lucidity.
Broad daylight was flooding the room, not sunlight but the warm reflection of a sunny sky, beyond telling painful to optic nerves. On throbbing eardrums a voice jarred, hideously cheerful.
"Well: how're you feeling now?"
Without understanding Lanyard blinked into the homely, grinning countenance of Crane.