retreating footsteps had grown faint, Viner still stood staring in the
direction in which they had gone.

"That's strange!" he muttered. "I've seen that chap somewhere--I know
him. Now, who is he? And what made him in such a deuce of a hurry?"

It was very quiet at that point. There seemed to be nobody about. Behind
him, far down the long, wide terrace, he heard slow, measured
steps--that, of course, was a policeman on his beat. But beyond the
subdued murmur of the traffic in the Bayswater Road in one direction and
in Bishop's Road, Viner heard nothing but those measured steps. And after
listening to them for a minute, he turned into the passage out of which
the young man had just rushed so unceremoniously.

There was just one lamp in that passage--an old-fashioned affair, fixed
against the wall, halfway down. It threw but little light on its
surroundings. Those surroundings were ordinary enough. The passage itself
was about thirty yards in length. It was inclosed on each-side by old
brick walls, so old that the brick had grown black with age and smoke.
These walls were some fifteen feet in height; here and there they were
pierced by doors--the doors of the yards at the rear of the big houses on
either side. The doors were set flush with the walls--Viner, who often
walked through that passage at night, and who had something of a
whimsical fancy, had thought more than once that after nightfall the
doors looked as if they had never been opened, never shut. There was an
air of queer, cloistral or prisonlike security in their very look. They
were all shut now, as he paced down the passage, as lonely a place at
that hour as you could find in all London. It was queer, he reflected,
that he scarcely ever remembered meeting anybody in that passage.