Then, one evening as I was
strolling aimlessly along St. James's Street, wondering how I was
going to kill time--for almost everyone I knew was out of town,
including Paul Harley, and London can be infinitely more lonely
under such conditions than any desert--I saw a thick-set figure
approaching along the other side of the street.
The swing of the shoulders, the aggressive turn of the head, were
vaguely familiar, and while I was searching my memory and
endeavouring to obtain a view of the man's face, he stared across
in my direction.
It was Adderley.
He looked even more debauched than I remembered him, for whereas
in Singapore he had had a tanned skin, now he looked unhealthily
pallid and blotchy. He raised his hand, and:
"Knox!" he cried, and ran across to greet me.
His boisterous manner and a sort of coarse geniality which he
possessed had made him popular with a certain set in former days,
but I, who knew that this geniality was forced, and assumed to
conceal a sort of appalling animalism, had never been deceived by
it. Most people found Adderley out sooner or later, but I had
detected the man's true nature from the very beginning. His eyes
alone were danger signals for any amateur psychologist.
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