d, "if I were like my scatter-brained companion, here
were indeed the scene where I might look for an adventure. Here, in
broad day, the streets are secret as in the blackest night of January,
and in the midst of some four million sleepers, solitary as the woods
of Yucatan. If I but raise my voice I could summon up the number of an
army, and yet the grave is not more silent than this city of sleep."

He was still following these quaint and serious musings when he came
into a street of more mingled ingredients than was common in the
quarter. Here, on the one hand, framed in walls and the green tops of
trees, were several of those discreet, _bijou_ residences on which
propriety is apt to look askance. Here, too, were many of the
brick-fronted barracks of the poor; a plaster cow, perhaps, serving as
ensign to a dairy, or a ticket announcing the business of the mangler.
Before one such house, that stood a little separate among walled
gardens, a cat was playing with a straw, and Challoner paused a moment,
looking on this sleek and solitary creature, who seemed an emblem of the
neighbouring peace. With the cessation of the sound of his own steps the
silence fell dead; the house stood smokeless; the blinds down, the whole
machinery of life arrested; and it seemed to Challoner that he should
hear the breathing of the sleepers.

As he so stood, he was startled by a dull and jarring detonation from
within. This was followed by a monstrous hissing and simmering as from a
kettle of the bigness of St. Paul's; and at the same time from every
chink of door and window spurted an ill-smelling vapour. The cat
disappeared with a cry. Within the lodging-house feet pounded on the
stairs; the door flew back, emitting clouds of smoke; and two men and an
elegantly dressed young lady tumbled forth into the street and fled
without a word. The hissing had already ceased, the smoke was melting in
the air, the whole event had come and gone as in a dream, and still
Challoner was rooted to the spot. At last his reason and his fear awoke
together, and with the most unwonted energy he fell to running.

Little by little this first dash relaxed, and presently he had resumed
his sober gait and begun to piece together, out of the confused report
of his senses, some theory of the occurrence. But the occasion of the
sounds and stench that had so suddenly assailed him, and the strange
conjunction of fugitives whom he had seen to issue from the house, were
m