great English capital at the midnight hour, a certain corner of an
exclusively fashionable quarter seemed strangely quiet and sequestered,
and this was the back of one of the row of palace-like dwellings known
as Carlton House Terrace. Occasionally a silent-wheeled hansom,
brougham, or flashing motor-car sped swiftly along the Mall, towards
which the wide stone balcony of the house projected,--or the heavy
footsteps of a policeman walking on his beat crunched the gravel of the
path beneath, but the general atmosphere of the place was expressive of
solitude and even of gloom. The imposing evidences of great wealth,
written in bold headlines on the massive square architecture of the
whole block of huge mansions, only intensified the austere sombreness of
their appearance, and the fringe of sad-looking trees edging the road
below sent a faint waving shadow in the lamplight against the cold
walls, as though some shuddering consciousness of happier woodland
scenes had suddenly moved them to a vain regret. The haze of heat lay
very thickly here, creeping along with slow stealth like a sluggish
stream, and a suffocating odour suggestive of some subtle anæsthetic
weighed the air with a sense of nausea and depression. It was difficult
to realise that this condition of climate was actually summer in its
prime--summer with all its glowing abundance of flower and foliage as
seen in fresh green lanes and country dells,--rather did it seem a dull
nightmare of what summer might be in a prison among criminals undergoing
punishment. The house with the wide stone balcony looked particularly
prison-like, even more so than some of its neighbours, perhaps because
the greater number of its many windows were shuttered close, and showed
no sign of life behind their impenetrable blackness. The only strong
gleam of light radiating from the inner darkness to the outer, streamed
across the balcony itself, which by means of two glass doors opened
directly from the room behind it. Here two men sat, or rather half
reclined in easy-cushioned lounge chairs, their faces turned towards the