“Haven’t you? Really! Well, you’ll find it awfully interesting and all that sort of thing. I don’t see half as much of it as I should like. I’m a weak chap—got something wrong with my lungs,—awful bother, but can’t be helped. My mother won’t let me do too much. Here we are; this is the Princess Ziska’s.”
They were standing in a narrow street ending in a cul-de-sac, with tall houses on each side which cast long, black, melancholy shadows on the rough pavement below. A vague sense of gloom and oppression stole over Gervase as he surveyed the outside of the particular dwelling Fulkeward pointed out to him—a square, palatial building, which had no doubt once been magnificent in its exterior adornment, but which now, owing to long neglect, had fallen into somewhat melancholy decay. The sombre portal, fantastically ornamented with designs copied from some of the Egyptian monuments, rather resembled the gateway of a tomb than an entrance to the private residence of a beautiful living woman, and Fulkeward, noting his companion’s silence, added:
“Not a very cheerful corner, is it? Some of these places are regular holes, don’cher know; but I daresay it’s all right inside.”
“You have never been inside?”
“Never.” And Fulkeward lowered his voice: “Look up there; there’s the beast that keeps everybody out!”
Gervase followed his glance, and perceived behind the projecting carved lattice-work of one of the windows a dark, wrinkled face and two gleaming eyes which, even at that distance, had, or appeared to have, a somewhat sinister expression.
“He’s the nastiest type of Nubian I have ever seen,” pursued Fulkeward. “Looks just like a galvanized corpse.”
Gervase smiled, and perceiving a long bell-handle at the gateway, pulled it sharply. In another moment the Nubian appeared, his aspect fully justifying Lord Fulkeward’s description of him. The parchment-like skin on his face was yellowish-black, and wrinkled in a thousand places; his lips were of a livid blue, and were drawn up and down above and below the teeth in a kind of fixed grin, while the dense brilliance of his eyes was so fierce and fiery as to suggest those of some savage beast athirst for prey.
“Madame la Princesse Ziska,” began Gervase, addressing this unfascinating object with apparent indifference to his hideousness.
The Nubian’s grinning lips stretched themselves wider apart as, in a thick, snarling voice he demanded: