The Hollow Man (Dr Gideon Fell) by John Dickson Carr

Author:John Dickson Carr [Carr, John Dickson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409129363
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2012-11-29T05:00:00+00:00

XIII The Secret Flat

London, on the morning of a grey winter Sunday, was deserted to the point of ghostliness along miles of streets. And Cagliostro Street, into which Hadley’s car presently turned, looked as though it would never wake up.

Cagliostro Street, as Dr Fell had said, contained a thin dingy overflow of both shops and rooming-houses. It was a backwater of Lamb’s Conduit Street – which itself is a long and narrow thoroughfare, a shopping centre of its own, stretching north to the barrack-windowed quiet of Guilford Street, and south to the main artery of traffic along Theobald’s Road. Towards the Guilford Street end on the west side, the entrance to Cagliostro Street is tucked between a stationer’s and a butcher’s. It looks so much like an alley that you would miss it altogether if you were not watching for the sign. Past these two buildings, it suddenly widens to an unexpected breadth, and runs straight for two hundred yards to a blank brick wall at the end.

This eerie feeling of streets in hiding, or whole rows of houses created by illusory magic to trick you, had never deserted Rampole in his prowlings through London. It was like wondering whether, if you walked out your own front door, you might not find the whole street mysteriously changed overnight, and strange faces grinning out of houses you had never seen before. He stood with Hadley and Dr Fell at the entrance, staring down. The overflow of shops stretched only a little way on either side. They were all shuttered, or had their windows covered with a folding steel fretwork, with an air of defying customers as a fort would defy attackers. Even the gilt signs had an air of defiance. The windows were at all stages of cleanliness, from the bright gloss of a jeweller’s farthest down on the right, to the grey murkiness of a tobacconist’s nearest on the right: a tobacconist’s that seemed to have dried up worse than ancient tobacco, shrunk together, and hidden itself behind news placards headlining news you never remembered having heard of. Beyond there were two rows of flat three-story houses in dark red brick, with window-frames in white or yellow, and drawn curtains of which a few (on the ground floor) showed a sportive bit of lace. They had darkened to the same hue with soot; they looked like one house except where iron railings went to the front doors from the lone line of area rails; they sprouted with hopeful signs announcing furnished rooms. Over them the chimney-pots stood up dark against a heavy grey sky. The snow had melted to patches of grey slush, despite a sharp wind that was swooping through the entrance and chasing a discarded newspaper with flaps and rustlings round a lamp-post.

‘Cheerful,’ grunted Dr Fell. He lumbered forward, and there were echoes of his footsteps. ‘Now, let’s get this all straight before we attract attention. Show me where Fley was when he was hit. Stop a bit!

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