Eventually, the only remaining traces of the experiment were the decorative effects in the various rooms, and numerous pieces of furniture which—having had a succession of owners—finally became Mrs. Frazer’s property. These latter were allocated to different apartments, where they stood in gay isolation, like ambassadors from a happier world, surrounded by drab pieces from a second-hand dealer which had been bought to supplement them.
This was the house to which Ivor Trent was going on this particular Sunday in October. Ten years ago, he had taken two rooms at the top, facing the river. He still had them—and every one of his books had been written there.
“The taxi is waiting, sir.”
Trent had not heard the servant enter the room, consequently the sound of her voice startled him.
He went into the hall, put on his hat and overcoat, then looked round the flat for the last time. Just as he was about to leave, the telephone-bell rang. He told the servant to say he was away, then followed the luggage out of the flat. When it had been loaded on to the taxi, he tipped the porter and dismissed him, then gave the driver the Chelsea address, asking him to tell Mrs. Frazer that he would arrive at about nine o’clock.
The taxi drove slowly away, leaving Trent on the pavement.
The fog had descended. It drifted through the streets, or eddied round the buildings, like fine yellow smoke. Blurred patches of light defined the immediate obscurity, but the intimate character of everything was obliterated. All was shrouded in fantastic anonymity. The recognisable had become a grotesque counterfeit of the familiar.
Trent started to walk automatically, careless of direction, fascinated by the phantom aspect of the streets. Each slowly emerging scene might have been the work of an artist who had subdued the actual to his own chaotic vision. In Piccadilly, the traffic was almost at a standstill: the headlights of buses and cars probed the drifting gloom like eyes of invisible monsters. Electric signs blazoned their legends from the void. Shouts and cries rose intermittently, and once—in the near distance—he heard the crash of glass.
He walked to Piccadilly Circus, crossed Leicester Square, only to find himself a minute later in a chaos of obscurity. For nearly an hour he groped about, becoming progressively irritable, till at last he emerged in the Strand.
A number of questions then besieged his mind simultaneously. Why had he not gone to Chelsea with the luggage? Why had he decided to dine out? And what in the name of God had induced him to lose himself in this desert of desolation! He had been ill recently, and a return of that illness would undermine every plan he had made. It was imperative to escape from himself; to work month after month on his novel; to identify himself so wholly with the creations of his imagination that his own name would convey less to him than that of one of his characters. This, and only this, was deliverance—and he was jeopardising it by wandering about fog-shrouded streets like a somnambulist!
He began to walk rapidly towards Fleet Street, having remembered a venerable tavern where he could dine, and where the risk of encountering anyone he knew—on such a night—was negligible.
The Strand was deserted. Every now and again he emerged into an oasis of clarity, but Fleet Street was a drifting darkness, and he had great difficulty in discovering the narrow alley leading to the tavern. At last, however, he detected an ochreous blur which proved to be the solitary light over the entrance.
He went into a room, the character and furniture of which has remained unchanged for centuries. It had heavily-timbered grimed windows, a low-planked ceiling, a floor covered with sawdust. Flames flickered merrily in a projecting fireplace. On one side was a long oak table: on the other were high stiff-backed partitions, sombre with age—resembling old-fashioned pews, with hard cushionless seats—which boxed off half-a-dozen diners to each ancient table. The room was as brown as an old meerschaum and rich with the aroma of ages. It is said that Charles II ate a chop here with Nell Gwynne.
The place was empty. Trent chose the inmost seat of the first partition on the left, the back of which was surmounted by a brass rail from which hung a short green curtain. Immediately behind him was a box, designed for greater privacy, containing a table for four.
Whether it was the result of wandering through wraith-like streets, or the effect of the time-haunted atmosphere of the tavern, or the beginning of illness, he was unable to determine, but gradually his surroundings seemed remote and he experienced a strange mental isolation which alienated him even from his memories. He dined, feeling like a man who knows he is dreaming, then—just after the waiter had brought his black coffee—he heard two men enter the box immediately behind him.