The Vanishing Man | Page 4

a row of well-filled coal-sacks and a
colossal tray piled high with kidney potatoes.
The passage of this strait landed me on the terra firma of Fleur-de-Lys
Court, where I halted for a moment to consult my visiting list. There
was only one more patient for me to see this morning, and he lived at
49 Nevill's Court, wherever that might be. I turned for information to
the presiding deity of the coal shop.

"Can you direct me, Mrs. Jablett, to Nevill's Court?"
She could and she did, grasping me confidentially by the arm (the mark
remained on my sleeve for weeks) and pointing a shaking forefinger at
the dead wall ahead. "Nevill's Court," said Mrs. Jablett, "is a alley, and
you goes into it through a archway. It turns out of Fetter Lane on the
right 'and as you goes up, oppersight Bream's Buildings."
I thanked Mrs. Jablett and went on my way, glad that the morning
round was nearly finished, and vaguely conscious of a growing appetite
and of a desire to wash in hot water.
The practice which I was conducting was not my own. It belonged to
poor Dick Barnard, an old St. Margaret's man of irrepressible spirits
and indifferent physique, who had started only the day before for a trip
down the Mediterranean on board a tramp engaged in the currant trade;
and this, my second morning's round, was in some sort a voyage of
geographical discovery.
I walked on briskly up Fetter Lane until a narrow, arched opening,
bearing the superscription "Nevill's Court," arrested my steps, and here
I turned to encounter one of those surprises that lie in wait for the
wanderer in London byways. Expecting to find the grey squalor of the
ordinary London court, I looked out from under the shadow of the arch
past a row of decent little shops through a vista full of light and
colour--a vista of ancient, warm-toned roofs and walls relieved by
sunlit foliage. In the heart of London a tree is always a delightful
surprise; but here were not only trees, but bushes and even flowers. The
narrow footway was bordered by little gardens, which, with their
wooden palings and well-kept shrubs, gave to the place an air of quaint
and sober rusticity; and even as I entered a bevy of work-girls, with
gaily-coloured blouses and hair aflame in the sunlight, brightened up
the quiet background like the wild flowers that spangle a summer
hedgerow.
In one of the gardens I noticed that the little paths were paved with
what looked like circular tiles, but which, on inspection, I found to be
old-fashioned stone ink-bottles, buried bottom upwards; and I was

meditating upon the quaint conceit of the forgotten scrivener who had
thus adorned his habitation--a law-writer perhaps, or an author, or
perchance even a poet--when I perceived the number that I was seeking
inscribed on a shabby door in a high wall. There was no bell or knocker,
so, lifting the latch, I pushed the door open and entered.
But if the court itself had been a surprise, this was a positive wonder, a
dream. Here, within earshot of the rumble of Fleet Street, I was in an
old-fashioned garden enclosed by high walls and, now that the gate was
shut, cut off from all sight and knowledge of the urban world that
seethed without. I stood and gazed in delighted astonishment.
Sun-gilded trees and flower-beds gay with blossom; lupins,
snap-dragons, nasturtiums, spiry foxgloves, and mighty hollyhocks
formed the foreground; over which a pair of sulphur-tinted butterflies
flitted, unmindful of a buxom and miraculously clean white cat which
pursued them, dancing across the borders and clapping her snowy paws
fruitlessly in mid-air. And the background was no less wonderful: a
grand old house, dark-eaved and venerable, that must have looked
down on this garden when ruffled dandies were borne in sedan chairs
through the court, and gentle Izaak Walton, stealing forth from his shop
in Fleet Street, strolled up Fetter Lane to "go a-angling" at Temple
Mills.
So overpowered was I by this unexpected vision that my hand was on
the bottom knob of a row of bell-pulls before I recollected myself; and
it was not until a most infernal jangling from within recalled me to my
business that I observed underneath it a small brass plate inscribed
"Miss Oman."
The door opened with some suddenness, and a short, middle-aged
woman surveyed me hungrily.
"Have I rung the wrong bell?" I asked--foolishly enough, I must admit.
"How can I tell?" she demanded. "I expect you have. It's the sort of
thing a man would do--ring the wrong bell and then say he's sorry."
"I didn't go as far as that," I retorted. "It seems to have had the desired

effect, and I've made your acquaintance into