y fact that this shadow, which had pursued him with an
intolerable oppression of peril, was only the shadow of a friend trying
to catch him up. He knew simultaneously that he was a fool and a free
man. For with any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain
healthy humiliation. There comes a certain point in such conditions when
only three things are possible: first a perpetuation of Satanic pride,
secondly tears, and third laughter. Syme's egotism held hard to the
first course for a few seconds, and then suddenly adopted the third.
Taking his own blue police ticket from his own waist coat pocket, he
tossed it on to the table; then he flung his head back until his spike
of yellow beard almost pointed at the ceiling, and shouted with a
barbaric laughter.

Even in that close den, perpetually filled with the din of knives,
plates, cans, clamorous voices, sudden struggles and stampedes, there
was something Homeric in Syme's mirth which made many half-drunken men
look round.

"What yer laughing at, guv'nor?" asked one wondering labourer from the
docks.

"At myself," answered Syme, and went off again into the agony of his
ecstatic reaction.

"Pull yourself together," said the Professor, "or you'll get hysterical.
Have some more beer. I'll join you."

"You haven't drunk your milk," said Syme.

"My milk!" said the other, in tones of withering and unfathomable
contempt, "my milk! Do you think I'd look at the beastly stuff when
I'm out of sight of the bloody anarchists? We're all Christians in this
room, though perhaps," he added, glancing around at the reeling crowd,
"not strict ones. Finish my milk? Great blazes! yes, I'll finish it
right enough!" and he knocked the tumbler off the table, making a crash
of glass and a splash of silver fluid.

Syme was staring at him with a happy curiosity.

"I understand now," he cried; "of course, you're not an old man at all."

"I can't take my face off here," replied Professor de Worms. "It's
rather an elaborate make-up. As to whether I'm an old man, that's not
for me to say. I was thirty-eight last birthday."

"Yes, but I mean," said Syme impatiently, "there's nothing the matter
with you."

"Yes," answered the other dispassionately. "I am subject to colds."

Syme's laughter at all this had about it a wild weakness of relief.
He laughed at the idea of the paralytic Professor being really a young
actor dressed up as if for the foot-lights. But he felt that he would
have l