The man steadily took stock of Jimmy, hesitated, and turned away, to mumble to his companion. Jimmy presently rose, wished him good night, and left the tavern. He paused, when in the shades beyond, to watch the door. The two men came out, surveyed the traffic carefully, and walked towards him. This would never do. He kept close to the wall, and continued. He took a dark and handy byway, and lost himself in it. Those two fellows did not appear to enter it. No use having more trouble. He had an unlucky fist.
Where was he? But it did not matter where he was. Any circumstance would do now, for he had lost the old set. Lost it? Not so easily lost as that. Anyhow, he might as well walk off his feelings till morning, when he would have to own up.
Queer place, this. There was a wall beside him which was Cyclopean. A straight section of primordial night, like the beginning of the way down to Erebus. The just and predestined path for him. He would follow it to whatever was at the bottom of it. He did not know that it was, anciently, but the beginning of Ratcliffe Highway. The night was brooding and overcast. He could only guess that he was still going east. There were no stars. Why go east? Well, when the stars have fallen out of the sky, of course they are not there for use.
When he came to a street lamp he could see the wall was only dingy brickwork, but it looked like the palpable residue of old chaos, something which had never seen daylight. It ranged upwards beyond the glim in the street. No end to it, above. The glass of the lamp was broken, and its flame, shaken by a draught, caused irresolution in the revealed area of the wall, which contracted and expanded, as though immemorial night were resilient, but too vast to be moved by a little light except as a local jest.
He continued along by the wall, which was so vague that sometimes his hand knocked it. Then he remembered he had a body. Damn! He was still there. He was not a disembodied spirit yet walking in a chaste nightshirt down to Hades. But there was no need of a grave-cloth for him, to get the appropriate feeling. Was Apollyon anywhere about? It would be a pleasure to meet him. Give a fellow something to do. The trouble with Belial is that you can get no nearer to him than when in abstraction you bark your knuckles. Pretty lonely, that kind of conflict, in the valley of the shadow. The worst thing in Hell is that nobody else is there, no devil, no fire that has the merit of being everlasting, no pal, no light, no way out, and the way in behind you gone like yesterday morning.
Were they houses, opposite? They might be houses. They were more like that than anything else. Some were the complement of the wall beside him, and the roofs of others came down almost to his level. The irregular penumbra opposite was sprinkled with lighted squares. The squares showed, surprisingly, that there might be others beside himself in this abiding-place of night; he could see into their lighted caves. Who and what were they? At times the shadow of a colossal and distorted head would appear on a window-blind, a protean shape which confused a newcomer with its grotesque mockery of order and shapeliness, reduced itself to a sudden knob, and faded off. The others here had that scope. They could take any shape they liked, and diminish to nothing suddenly while you watched. Occasionally there were wanderers like himself on the other side of the way, figures with no character, in no hurry. They only moved. Perhaps they were shapes which had come off the blinds for a change.
At times he heard voices, but they belonged to nobody. Nobody was there to speak. Once there was a single eldritch cry. Jimmy stopped. It came from a narrow opening in the dark on the other side, to which depth was given by a distant bracket lamp on a wall. He could see nothing but the lamp up there. Its light flattened and turned blue in a gust, and then flared again, as though it had got over that trouble. Maybe the lamp had shrieked in its loneliness. A figure, which reminded Jimmy of a man, leaned against a post at the bottom of the turning. It did not stir. It did not move to look at the lamp which had screamed. Perhaps it was used to the cries of loneliness in the dark.
Jimmy felt it was time to make out what the shapes were that haunted this region. He crossed over to see. But the figure did not look at him. Its head was on its breast, studying the road, perhaps trying to see daylight on a path that was far below the reach of daylight. There came along three other forms which appeared to be two women and a man, and they shambled together past him, singing with drawling and doleful remorse. The yowling whine of the women was almost human in its discordance with the subjugating dark to which it was addressed.
Jimmy, nearing another lamp, was thoughtfully regarding a truncated monument which stood under it. What did that commemorate? The top of it moved, and turned a human face to him. It was a policeman. “Good night,” said the policeman, as Jimmy got within that brief circle of knowledge.
“Good evening,” said Jimmy, and stopped.
“Having a midnight prowl, sir?” asked the policeman.
“Yes,” said Jimmy. “This is a strange parish.”
“Oh, I dunno. Not to us. We’re used to it. Not so bad as it’s painted.”
“I thought it looked like a place where everything was hidden away.”
“Not it. Don’t you
