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A constable standing at the corner of Conduit Street touched his helmet as Kerry passed and the light of an arc-lamp revealed the fierce red face. The Chief Inspector stopped, turned, and: "What the devil's the idea?" he demanded. He snapped out the words in such fashion that the unfortunate constable almost believed he could see sparks in the misty air.
The rain beat down in his face, and the men hesitated an instant, as though interrupted in some plan. It did not occur to Burke that they had approached him with a purpose. He looked at them sharply, by force of habit. Their evil faces showed pallid and grewsome in the flickering light of the arc-lamp on the corner by Shultberger's place.
The things needed are an arc-lamp, an impedance coil, or small transformer- coil, a rheostat, and a source of energy. The alternating current is not adapted to reproduce speech, but the ordinary direct current is. Of course, the theory isn't half as simple as the apparatus I have described." He had unscrewed the Osram lamp. The talking ceased immediately.
"Pyocyaneus," he muttered in my ear; "pyocyaneus, indeed! Confound the fellow. He might have got me into no end of trouble if he had known the truth, Harden." "But what is it?" I asked. "What have you got in the bag?" He stopped under a sizzling arc-lamp outside the station. "The bag," he said touching the worn leather lovingly, "contains six tubes of the Sarakoff-Harden bacillus.
Laura had been standing at the top of the steps looking down the street, where Corliss and his brisk companion had emerged momentarily from deep shadows under the trees into the illumination of a swinging arc-lamp at the corner. They disappeared; and she turned, and, smiling, gave the delaying guest her hand in good-night.
And Hillard was glad that the room was in darkness. He rose eagerly and peered out. But he saw no one. Across the street the arc-lamp burned dimly, like an opal in the matrix, while of architectural outlines not one remained, the fog having kindly obliterated them. The Voice rose and sank and soared again, drawing nearer and nearer.
There was a sinking of his head and a shrinking of his figure that told of reaction from the moment of physical excess. A roadside bench was visible beneath an arc-lamp but a few yards away. "Come and sit down," Davenant said, hoarsely. He found it difficult to speak. Ashley stumbled along. He sat down heavily, like a man spent with fatigue or drink.
The window was closed and the stink was overpowering. There was a certain amount of light from the arc-lamp in the street, and he saw that it was a small room with two beds in it, end to end; there was a washing-stand and one chair, but they left little space for anyone to move in. Cronshaw was in the bed nearest the window. He made no movement, but gave a low chuckle.
There was a street arc-lamp swinging in its high sling some distance below the window level, its scintillant spark changing weirdly to blue and green and back to blinding orange, and he stared so steadily at it that his eyes were full of tears when he turned to look down upon the waiting culprit.
She was empty and the house was empty and she needed him. She wanted to go on talking, to get this threshed out, to build a sane friendship. She wavered down to the living-room, looked out of the bay-window. He was not to be seen. But Mrs. Westlake was. She was walking past, and in the light from the corner arc-lamp she quickly inspected the porch, the windows.
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