CHAPTER II

AT THE OPERA


When John Steele left the court toward the end of the day, he held his
head as a man who thinks deeply. From the door he directed his steps
toward Charing Cross. But only to wheel abruptly, and retrace his way.
He was not an absent-minded man, yet he had been striding unconsciously
not toward his customary destination at that hour, the several chambers
at once his office and his home. For a moment the strong face of the man
relaxed, as if in amusement at his own remissness; gradually however, it
once more resumed its expression of musing thoughtfulness. The stream of
human beings, in the main, flowed toward him; he breasted the current as
he had for many evenings, only this night he did not look into the faces
of these, his neighbors; the great city's concourse of atoms swept
unmeaningly by.

Turning into a narrow way, not far from the embankment, he stopped
before the door of a solid-looking brick building, let himself in, and
made his way up-stairs. On the third floor he applied another and
smaller key to another lock and, from a hall, entered a large apartment,
noteworthy for its handsome array of books that reached from floor to
ceiling wherever there was shelf space. Most of these volumes were
soberly bound in conventional legal garb but others in elegant, more
gracious array, congregated, a little cosmopolitan community, in a
section by themselves.