A wind from the North Sea had been blowing all day across the Thames
marshes, and collecting what it could carry; and the shop-keepers had
scarcely drawn their iron shutters before a thin fog drifted up from
lamp-post to lamp-post and filled the intervals with total darkness--all
but one, where, half-way down the street on the left-hand side, an
enterprising florist had set up an electric lamp at his private cost, to
shine upon his window and attract the attention of rich people as they
drove by on their way to the theatres. At nine o'clock he closed his
business: but the lamp shone on until midnight, to give the rich people
another chance, on their way home, of reading that F. Stillman was
prepared to decorate dinner-tables and ball-rooms, and to supply bridal
bouquets or mourning wreaths at short notice.
The stream of homeward-bound carriages had come to a sudden lull.
The red eyes of a belated four-wheeler vanished in the fog, and the
florist's lamp flung down its ugly incandescent stare on an empty
pavement. Himself in darkness, a policeman on the other side of the
street flashed his lantern twice, closed the slide and halted for a
moment to listen by an area railing.
Halting so, he heard a rapid footfall at the upper corner of the street.
It drew nearer. A man suddenly stepped into the circle of light on the
pavement, as if upon a miniature stage; and as suddenly paused to gaze
upward at the big white globe.
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