At his gate, felt Rudolph, they had unloaded some weight of
responsibility. He had not only accepted it, but lightened them further,
girt them, by a word and a look. Somehow, for the first time since
landing, Rudolph perceived that through this difficult, troubled,
ignorant present, a man might burrow toward a future gleam. The feeling
was but momentary. As for Heywood, he still marched on grimly, threading
the stuffed corridors like a man with a purpose.
"No dinner!" he snapped. "Catchee bymby, though. We must see Wutzler
first. To lose sight of any man for twenty-four hours, nowadays,--Well,
it's not hardly fair. Is it?"
They turned down a black lane, carpeted with dry rubbish. At long
intervals, a lantern guttering above a door showed them a hand's-breadth
of the dirty path, a litter of broken withes and basket-weavers' refuse,
between the mouldy wall of the town and a row of huts, no less black and
silent. In this greasy rift the air lay thick, as though smeared into
a groove.
Suddenly, among the hovels, they groped along a checkered surface of
brick-work. The flare of Heywood's match revealed a heavy wooden door,
which he hammered with his fist.
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