The Watchers

MP3 Audio CD. The Watchers

CHAPTER I

TELLS OF A DOOR AJAR AND OF A LAD WHO
STOOD BEHIND IT


I had never need to keep any record either of the date or place. It
was the fifteenth night of July, in the year 1758, and the place was
Lieutenant Clutterbuck's lodging at the south corner of Burleigh
Street, Strand. The night was tropical in its heat, and though every
window stood open to the Thames, there was not a man, I think, who did
not long for the cool relief of morning, or step out from time to time
on to the balcony and search the dark profundity of sky for the first
flecks of grey. I cannot be positive about the entire disposition of
the room: but certainly Lieutenant Clutterbuck was playing at ninepins
down the middle with half a dozen decanters and a couple of silver
salvers; and Mr. Macfarlane, a young gentleman of a Scottish regiment,
was practising a game of his own.

He carried the fire-irons and Lieutenant Clutterbuck's sword under his
arm, and walked solidly about the floor after a little paper ball
rolled up out of a news sheet, which he hit with one of these
instruments, selecting now the poker, now the tongs or the sword with
great deliberation, and explaining his selection with even greater
earnestness; there was besides a great deal of noise, which seemed to
be a quality of the room rather than the utterance of any particular
person; and I have a clear recollection that everything, from the
candles to the glasses on the tables and the broken tobacco pipes on
the floor, was of a dazzling and intolerable brightness. This
brightness distressed me particularly, because just opposite to where
I sat a large mirror hung upon the wall between two windows. On each
side was a velvet hollow of gloom, in the middle this glittering oval.
Every ray of light within t