Fiction > Book editions > London, 1885 - Dynamiter

THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION. 105
public-house in the neighbourhood, Somerset might have
still supposed himself to be alone in the Superfluous
Mansion.
Day followed day ; and still the young man had never
come by speech or sight of his mysterious lodger. The
doors of the drawing-room flat were never open; and
although Somerset could hear him moving to and fro,
the tall man had never quitted the privacy of his apart-
ments. Visitors, indeed, arrived ; sometimes in the
dusk, sometimes at intempestuous hours of night or
morning ; men, for the most part ; some meanly attired,
some decently ; some loud, some cringing; and yet all,
in the eyes of Somerset, displeasing. A certain air of
fear and secrecy was common to them all ; they were all
voluble, he thought, and ill at ease ; even the military
gentleman proved, on a closer inspection, to be no gentle-
man at all ; and as for the doctor who attended the sick
man, his manners were not suggestive of a university
career. The nurse, again, was scarcely a desirable house-
fellow. Since her arrival, the fall of Avhisky in the
young man's private bottle was much accelerated ; and
though never communicative, she was at times un-
pleasantly familiar. When asked about the patient's
health, she would dolorously shake her head, and declare
that the poor gentleman was in a pitiful condition.
Yet somehow Somerset had early begun to entertain
the notion that his complaint was other than bodily.
The ill-looking birds that gathered to the house, the
strange noises that sounded from the drawing-room in
the dead hours of night, the careless attendance and
intemperate habits of the nurse, the entire absence of
correspondence, the entire seclusion of Mr. Jones himself,
whose face, up to that hour, he could not ha^-e SAvorn to
in a court of justice — all weighed unpleasantly upon the
young man's mind. A sense of something evil, irregular
and underhand, haunted and dejjressed him ; and this
uneasy sentiment was the more firmly rooted in his
mind, when, in the fulness of time, he had an opportunity
of observing the features of his tenant. It fell in this
way, The young landloi^l was awakened about four in