Flambeau was peering into the house with a visage as white as a sheet.
The occupant of the room was standing with his back to him,
but in front of a looking-glass, and had already fitted round his face
a sort of framework of rank red hair, hanging disordered from the head and
clinging round the jaws and chin while leaving the mocking mouth uncovered.
Seen thus in the glass the white face looked like the face of Judas
laughing horribly and surrounded by capering flames of hell.
For a spasm Flambeau saw the fierce, red-brown eyes dancing,
then they were covered with a pair of blue spectacles. Slipping on
a loose black coat, the figure vanished towards the front of the house.
A few moments later a roar of popular applause from the street beyond
announced that Dr Hirsch had once more appeared upon the balcony.




FOUR


The Man in the Passage


TWO men appeared simultaneously at the two ends of a sort of passage
running along the side of the Apollo Theatre in the Adelphi.
The evening daylight in the streets was large and luminous,
opalescent and empty. The passage was comparatively long and dark,
so each man could see the other as a mere black silhouette at the other end.
Nevertheless, each man knew the other, even in that inky outline;
for they were both men of striking appearance and they hated each other.