FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   >>  
scovered that I had been shaved perfectly clean, as with a Heat Razor. The truth rushed upon me: I had come within the range of the Mash-Glance, and had been saved from total dissolution only by intervening masonry protecting my face and body. To leave the Hill was the work of an instant. I passed through John Street to Hampstead Road, along Belsize Avenue and Buckland Crescent to Belsize Road, and so to Canterbury Road and Kilburn Lane. Here I met a fourth newspaper boy loaded with copies of the _St. James' Gazette_. He offered me one for seven-and-sixpence, or two for half a sovereign, but it seemed to me I had read enough. Turning into Ladbroke Grove Road I quickly reached Notting Hill, and stealthily entered my house in Campden Hill Gardens ten minutes later. BOOK II. London under the Wenuses. I. THE DEATH OF THE EXAMINER. My first act on entering my house, in order to guard against any sudden irruption on the part of my wife, was to bolt the door and put on the chain. My next was to visit the pantry, the cellar, and the larder, but they were all void of food and drink. My wife must have been there first. As I had drunk nothing since I burgled the Kennington chemist's, I was very thirsty, though my mind was still hydrostatic. I cannot account for it on scientific principles, but I felt very angry with my wife. Suddenly I was struck by a happy thought, and hurrying upstairs I found a bottle of methylated spirits on my wife's toilet-table. Strange as it may seem to the sober reader, I drank greedily of the unfamiliar beverage, and feeling refreshed and thoroughly kinetic, settled down once more to an exhaustive exposure of the dishonest off-handedness of the external Examiners at University College. I may add that I had taken the bread-knife (by Mappin) from the pantry, as it promised to be useful in the case of unforeseen Clerical emergencies. I should have preferred the meat-chopper with which the curate had been despatched in _The War of the Worlds,_ but it was deposited in the South Kensington Museum along with other mementoes of the Martian invasion. Besides, my wife and I had both become Wegetarians. The evening was still, and though distracted at times by recollections of the Wenuses, I made good progress with my indictment. Suddenly I was conscious of a pale pink glow which suffused my writing-pad, and I heard a soft but unmistakable thud as of a pinguid body falling in the immedi
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   >>  



Top keywords:

pantry

 

Wenuses

 

Suddenly

 

Belsize

 

greedily

 

reader

 

unfamiliar

 

settled

 

exhaustive

 
exposure

dishonest
 

feeling

 

refreshed

 
kinetic
 

beverage

 

methylated

 
principles
 

scientific

 
struck
 

account


chemist
 

thirsty

 

hydrostatic

 

thought

 

toilet

 

Kennington

 

Strange

 

spirits

 

bottle

 

hurrying


upstairs

 

handedness

 

distracted

 
recollections
 

progress

 

evening

 

Wegetarians

 
invasion
 

Martian

 
Besides

indictment
 
conscious
 

unmistakable

 

pinguid

 

immedi

 

falling

 

suffused

 

writing

 
mementoes
 

promised