ch
I cannot express, he had broken into the most ghastly haunting laugh I
have ever heard.

"_Harrison?_" the words had broken throatily from him.... "_Oh yes; I
know you!... You shall very soon know that I know you if... if..._"

The cough and rattle had come as Maschka had rushed into the room. In ten
seconds Andriaovsky had fallen back, dead.

II

That same evening I began to make notes for Andriaovsky's "Life." On the
following day, the last of the fourth series of the _Martin Renards_
occupied me until I was thankful to get to bed. But thereafter I could
call rather more of my time my own, and I began in good earnest to devote
myself to the "Life."

Maschka had spoken no more than the truth when she had said that of all
men living none but I could write that "Life." His remaining behind in my
Chelsea garret that evening after the others had left had been the
beginning of a friendship that, barring that lapse of five years at the
end, had been for twenty years one of completest intimacy. Whatever money
there might or might not be in the book, I had seen _my_ opportunity in
it--the opportunity to make it the vehicle for all the aspirations,
faiths, enthusiasms, and exaltations we had shared; and I myself did not
realise until I began to note them down one tithe of the subtle links and
associations that had welded our souls together.

Even the outward and visible signs of these had been wonderful. Setting
out from one or other of the score of garrets and cheap lodgings we had
in our time inhabited, we had wandered together, day after day, night
after night, far down East, where, as we had threaded our way among the
barrels of soused herrings and the stalls and barrows of unleavened
bread, he had taught me scraps of Hebrew and Polish and Yiddish; up into
the bright West, where he could never walk a quarter of a mile without
meeting one of his extraordinary acquaintances--furred music-hall
managers, hawkers of bootlaces, commercial magnates of his own Faith,
touts, crossing-sweepers, painted women; into Soho, where he had names
for the very horses on the cab-ranks and the dogs who slumbered under the
counters of the sellers of French literature; out to the naphtha-lights
and cries of the Saturday night street markets of Islington and the North
End Road; into City churches on wintry afternoons, into the studios of
famous artists full of handsomely dressed women, into the studios of
artists not famous, at the end