He would
glance aside with those black, slanting eyes, shrug in his
insolent fashion, and turn away. And they would follow. God
knows how many of them followed--whether through the dens of
Limehouse or the more fashionable salons of vice in the West
End--they followed--perhaps down to Hell. So much for
Tcheriapin.
At the time when the episode occurred to which I have referred,
Dr. Kreener occupied a house in Regent's Park, to which, when
his duties at the munition works allowed, he would sometimes
retire at week-ends. He was a man of complex personality. I
think no one ever knew him thoroughly; indeed, I doubt if he knew
himself.
He was hail-fellow-well-met with the painters, sculptors, poets,
and social reformers who have made of Soho a new Mecca. No
movement in art was so modern that Dr. Kreener was not
conversant with it; no development in Bolshevism so violent or so
secret that Dr. Kreener could not speak of it complacently and
with inside knowledge.
These were his Bohemian friends, these dreamers and schemers. Of
this side of his life his scientific colleagues knew little or
nothing, but in his hours of leisure at Regent's Park it was with
these dreamers that he loved to surround himself rather than with
his brethren of the laboratory.
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