"Oh, what a fright you gave me!" he said aloud to it, and then glanced about fearfully at the sound of his own voice. "How absurd!" he said to himself, reassuringly. "I must not let the thing get on my nerves like this."
It was now not far from eight o'clock, which was the hour for Silwood's dinner. In a few minutes more, therefore, he betook himself to the restaurant in Holborn which he was in the habit of patronizing. A little after nine he walked back to Lincoln's Inn, which he entered by the small door at the side of the fine gateway opening into Lincoln's Inn Fields. He spoke to the porter for some seconds, and then went on to his private chambers in Stone Buildings, his rooms being on the top floor of the north-east corner building overlooking Chancery Lane. He had lived here for several years.
After he had let himself in he locked the door, filled a black clay pipe and lit it, took an armchair and sat down. And there he sat for a long while very still and quiet, save for the puff—puff—puffing of the smoke from his lips. The pipe burnt itself out, and he looked at his watch.
"It is too soon," he said to himself; and he filled a second black clay pipe. And this too he smoked out.
With a leisurely movement he at length rose and went to the window, threw up the sash, and peered out into the half-darkness of the street. He ran his eye up and down Chancery Lane, and noted that all the lights except the street-lamps were out, and that the pavements were bare of human forms, save for one or two dark-flitting, shadowy beings.
"It will soon be time," he thought; and he closed the window.
He sat down again, and proceeded to smoke a third pipe. All the while he had been going over the details of his scheme; now he was thinking whether he had not been too abrupt in making the suggestion that he might take a holiday to Williamson.
"What does it matter?" he concluded; "he knows nothing."
He smoked on until twelve boomed through the air—the strokes came in a great volume of sound from the clocks in the Strand and from far and near. When it had died away, he put down his pipe, and walked into his bedroom.
But it was not to go to bed.