Nor, even now, did he make the slightest sound. From the top-light,
high up near the ceiling and far above the little French window whose
shade was drawn, there came a faint and timid streak of moonlight. It
did not illuminate the room; it but lessened the degree of blackness, as
it were, giving a dim and shadowy outline to objects scattered here and
there about the room--and to a darker shadow amongst those other
shadows, a shadow that moved swiftly and in utter silence, a shadow that
was Jimmie Dale at work.
No one had seen him enter--not that there should be anything strange
in the fact that Smarlinghue should enter Smarlinghue's own room, but
it would not be Smarlinghue who went away! No one had seen him
enter--it was vital now that he should not be heard moving around the
room, and so invite the chance of some aimless caller in the person
of a fellow-tenant, for it was no longer Smarlinghue who would be
found there!
The ragged outer garments he had been wearing lay discarded in a heap on
the floor, close to that section of the wall near the door where the
base-board, ingeniously movable, would, in another moment or so, afford
them safe hiding until such time as "Smarlinghue" should reappear in
person again; from the nostrils, from beneath the lips, from behind the
ears, the tiny, cleverly-inserted pieces of wax, distorting the
features, had vanished; and now, over the cracked basin on the rickety
washstand, the masterly-created pallor was washed rapidly away--and the
thin, hollow-cheeked, emaciated face of Smarlinghue, the drug fiend, was
gone, and in its place, clean-cut, clear-eyed, was the face of Jimmie
Dale, clubman and millionaire.
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