as if the
Council of the Seven Days had been a bad dream; and although he knew it
was nevertheless an objective reality, it was at least a distant one.
Tall houses and populous streets lay between him and his last sight of
the shameful seven; he was free in free London, and drinking wine among
the free. With a somewhat easier action, he took his hat and stick and
strolled down the stair into the shop below.

When he entered that lower room he stood stricken and rooted to the
spot. At a small table, close up to the blank window and the white
street of snow, sat the old anarchist Professor over a glass of milk,
with his lifted livid face and pendent eyelids. For an instant Syme
stood as rigid as the stick he leant upon. Then with a gesture as of
blind hurry, he brushed past the Professor, dashing open the door and
slamming it behind him, and stood outside in the snow.

"Can that old corpse be following me?" he asked himself, biting his
yellow moustache. "I stopped too long up in that room, so that even
such leaden feet could catch me up. One comfort is, with a little brisk
walking I can put a man like that as far away as Timbuctoo. Or am I too
fanciful? Was he really following me? Surely Sunday would not be such a
fool as to send a lame man?"

He set off at a smart pace, twisting and whirling his stick, in the
direction of Covent Garden. As he crossed the great market the snow
increased, growing blinding and bewildering as the afternoon began
to darken. The snow-flakes tormented him like a swarm of silver bees.
Getting into his eyes and beard, they added their unremitting futility
to his already irritated nerves; and by the time that he had come at a
swinging pace to the beginning of Fleet Street, he lost patience, and
finding a Sunday teashop, turned into it to take shelter. He ordered
another cup of black coffee as an excuse. Scarcely had he done so,
when Professor de Worms hobbled heavily into the shop, sat down with
difficulty and ordered a glass of milk.

Syme's walking-stick had fallen from his hand with a great clang, which
confessed the concealed steel. But the Professor did not look round.
Syme, who was commonly a cool character, was literally gaping as a
rustic gapes at a conjuring trick. He had seen no cab following; he had
heard no wheels outside the shop; to all mortal appearances the man had
come on foot. But the old man could only walk like a snail, and Syme had
walked like the wind. He started up and s