Adventure stories; Fiction; Mystery fiction; Short stories
With that the man was gone, and Challoner, his attention thus rudely
awakened, began ruefully to consider the havoc that had been worked in
his attire. His hat was gone; his trousers were cruelly ripped; and the
best part of one tail of his very elegant frockcoat had been left hanging
from the iron crockets of the window. He had scarce had time to measure
these disasters when his host re-entered the apartment and proceeded,
without a word, to envelop the refined and urbane Challoner in a long
ulster of the cheapest material, and of a pattern so gross and vulgar
that his spirit sickened at the sight. This calumnious disguise was
crowned and completed by a soft felt hat of the Tyrolese design, and
several sizes too small. At another moment Challoner would simply have
refused to issue forth upon the world thus travestied; but the desire to
escape from Glasgow was now too strongly and too exclusively impressed
upon his mind. With one haggard glance at the spotted tails of his new
coat, he inquired what was to pay for this accoutrement. The man assured
him that the whole expense was easily met from funds in his possession,
and begged him, instead of wasting time, to make his best speed out of
the neighbourhood.
The young man was not loath to take the hint. True to his usual
courtesy, he thanked the speaker and complimented him upon his taste in
greatcoats; and leaving the man somewhat abashed by these remarks and the
manner of their delivery, he hurried forth into the lamplit city. The
last train was gone ere, after many deviations, he had reached the
terminus. Attired as he was he dared not present himself at any
reputable inn; and he felt keenly that the unassuming dignity of his
demeanour would serve to attract attention, perhaps mirth and possibly
suspicion, in any humbler hostelry. He was thus condemned to pass the
solemn and uneventful hours of a whole night in pacing the streets of
Glasgow; supperless; a figure of fun for all beholders; waiting the dawn,
with hope indeed, but with unconquerable shrinkings; and above all
things, filled with a profound sense of the folly and weakness of his
conduct. It may be conceived with what curses he assailed the memory of
the fair narrator of Hyde Park; her parting laughter rang in his ears all
night with damning mockery and iteration; and when he could spare a
thought from this chief artificer of his confusion, it was to expend his
wrath on Somerset and the career of the amateur detective. With the
coming of day, he found in a shy milk-shop the means to appease his
hunger. There were still many hours to wait before the departure of the
South express; these he passed wandering with indescribable fatigue in
the obscurer by-streets of the city; and at length slipped quietly into
the station and took his place in the darkest corner of a third-class
carriage. Here, all day long, he jolted on the bare boards, distressed
by heat and continually reawakened from uneasy slumbers. By the half
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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