therefore, at London, I made straight for the office of the _Times_,
only stopping at a chemist's in Oxford Street for a bottle of antiseptic
to hold near my nose, though, having once left the neighbourhood of
Paddington, I had hardly much need of this.

I made my way to the square where the paper was printed, to find that,
even there, the ground was closely strewn with calpac and pugaree, black
abayeh and fringed praying-shawl, hob-nail and sandal, figured lungi and
striped silk, all very muddled and mauled. Through the dark square to
the twice-dark building I passed, and found open the door of an
advertisement-office; but on striking a match, saw that it had been
lighted by electricity, and had therefore to retrace my stumbling steps,
till I came to a shop of lamps in a near alley, walking meantime with
timid cares that I might hurt no one--for in this enclosed neighbourhood
I began to feel strange tremors, and kept striking matches, which, so
still was the black air, hardly flickered.

When I returned to the building with a little lighted lamp, I at once
saw a file on a table, and since there were a number of dead there, and
I wished to be alone, I took the heavy mass of paper between my left arm
and side, and the lamp in my right hand; passed then behind a counter;
and then, to the right, up a stair which led me into a very great
building and complexity of wooden steps and corridors, where I went
peering, the lamp visibly trembling in my hand, for here also were the
dead. Finally, I entered a good-sized carpeted room with a baize-covered
table in the middle, and large smooth chairs, and on the table many
manuscripts impregnated with purple dust, and around were books in
shelves. This room had been locked upon a single man, a tall man in a
frock-coat, with a pointed grey beard, who at the last moment had
decided to fly from it, for he lay at the threshold, apparently fallen