h was
separated from the road by a tiny garden. They ran into the garden. The
one thing that flourished in it was a 'To Let' notice. The front-door,
shaded by unpruned trees, was shut, and there were cobwebs on the
handle, as Hugo plainly saw when he struck a match. They hastened round
to the back of the house, where was a larger garden. A French window
gave access to the house. This French window yielded at once to a firm
push. The three men searched the ground-floor and found nothing. They
then ascended the stairs and equally found nothing. The house must have
been empty for many months. From the first-floor window at the back Hugo
gazed out, baffled. Far off he could see lights of houses, but the
foreground was all darkness and mystery.

'What lies between us and those lights?' he asked.

'It must be Brompton Cemetery, sir,' said Albert. 'The garden gives on
the cemetery, I expect.'

As if suddenly possessed by a demon, Hugo flew out of the room, down the
stairs, into the garden. At the extremity of the garden was a brick
wall, and against the wall were two extremely convenient barrels; they
might have been placed there specially for the occasion. In an instant
he was in the cemetery.

* * * * *

The remainder of the adventure survives in Hugo's memory like a sort of
night-picture in which all the minor details of life are lost in large,
vague glooms, and only the central figures of the composition emerge
clearly, in a sharp and striking brilliance, against the mysterious
background.

He knew himself in the cemetery, and immediately, by a tremendous effort
of the brain, he had arranged his knowledge of the place and decided
exactly where he was. Instinctively he ran by side-alleys till he came
to the broad central way which cuts this vast field of the dead north
and south. He hurried northwards, and when he had gone about a hundred
and fifty yards he turned to the left, and then went north again.

'It's here,' he muttered.

He was in the middle of that strange and sinister city within a city,
that flat expanse of silence, decay, and putrefaction which is
surrounded on every side by the pulsating arteries of London. The living
visit the dead during the day, but at night the dead are left to
themselves, and the very flowers which embroider their dissolution close
up and forget them. Round about him everywhere trees and shrubs moved
restlessly and plaintively in the night breeze;