of new staring brick buildings,--the
monster tentacles which the giant city was throwing out into the
country. At last the cab drew up at the third house in a new terrace.
None of the other houses were inhabited, and that at which we stopped
was as dark as its neighbors, save for a single glimmer in the kitchen
window. On our knocking, however, the door was instantly thrown open
by a Hindoo servant clad in a yellow turban, white loose-fitting
clothes, and a yellow sash. There was something strangely incongruous
in this Oriental figure framed in the commonplace door-way of a
third-rate suburban dwelling-house.

"The Sahib awaits you," said he, and even as he spoke there came a high
piping voice from some inner room. "Show them in to me, khitmutgar,"
it cried. "Show them straight in to me."

Chapter IV

The Story of the Bald-Headed Man

We followed the Indian down a sordid and common passage, ill lit and
worse furnished, until he came to a door upon the right, which he threw
open. A blaze of yellow light streamed out upon us, and in the centre
of the glare there stood a small man with a very high head, a bristle
of red hair all round the fringe of it, and a bald, shining scalp which
shot out from among it like a mountain-peak from fir-trees. He writhed
his hands together as he stood, and his features were in a perpetual
jerk, now smiling, now scowling, but never for an instant in repose.
Nature had given him a pendulous lip, and a too visible line of yellow
and irregular teeth, which he strove feebly to conceal by constantly
passing his hand over the lower part of his face. In spite of his
obtrusive baldness, he gave the impression of youth. In point of fact
he had just turned his thirtieth year.

"Your servant, Miss Morstan," he kept repeating, in a thin, high voice.
"Your servant, gentlemen. Pray step into my little sanctum. A small
place, miss, but furnished to my own liking. An oasis of art in the
howling desert of South London."

We were all astonished by the appearance of the apartment into which he
invited us. In that sorry house it looked as out of place as a diamond
of the first water in a setting of brass. The richest and glossiest of
curtains and tapestries draped the walls, looped back here and there to
expose some richly-mounted painting or Oriental vase. The carpet was
of amber-and-black, so soft and so thick that the foot sank pleasantly
into it, as into a bed of moss. Two great t