er thing overtook Rooum."

More: I saw it. This thing, that outrages reason--I saw it happen. That
is to say, I saw its effects, and it was in broad daylight, on an
ordinary afternoon, in the middle of Oxford Street, of all places. There
wasn't a shadow of doubt about it. People were pressing and jostling
about him, and suddenly I saw him turn his head and listen, as I'd seen
him before. I tell you, an icy creeping ran all over my skin. I fancied I
felt it approaching too, nearer and nearer.... The next moment he had
made a sort of gathering of himself, as if against a gust. He stumbled
and thrust--thrust with his body. He swayed, physically, as a tree sways
in a wind; he clutched my arm and gave a loud scream. Then, after
seconds--minutes--I don't know how long--he was free again.

And for the colour of his face when by-and-by I glanced at it ... well, I
once saw a swarthy Italian fall under a sunstroke, and _his_ face was
much the same colour that Rooum's negro face had gone; a cloudy, whitish
green.

"Well--you've seen it--what do you think of it?" he gasped presently,
turning a ghastly grin on me.

But it was night before the full horror of it had soaked into me.

Soon after that he disappeared again. I wasn't sorry.

* * * * *

Our big contract in the West End came on. It was a time-contract, with
all manner of penalty clauses if we didn't get through; and I assure
you that we were busy. I myself was far too busy to think of Rooum.

It's a shop now, the place we were working at, or rather one of these
huge weldings of fifty shops where you can buy anything; and if you'd
seen us there... but perhaps you did see us, for people stood up on the
tops of omnibuses as they passed, to look over the mud-splashed hoarding
into the great excavation we'd made. It was a sight. Staging rose on
staging, tier on tier, with interminable ladders all over the steel
structure. Three or four squat Otis lifts crouched like iron turtles on
top, and a lattice-crane on a towering three-cornered platform rose a
hundred and twenty feet into the air. At one end of the vast quarry
was a demolished house, showing flues and fireplaces and a score of
thicknesses of old wallpaper; and at night--they might well have stood up
on the tops of the buses! A dozen great spluttering violet arc-lights
half-blinded you; down below were the watchmen's fires; overhead, the
riveters had their fire-baskets; and in odd corn