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Updated: June 22, 2025
With these words, Tom dashed into the passage with me after him; and, after racing up a bare, carpetless flight of stairs, I found myself in a wide large room, which, the evening having closed in, was lighted up only by a single gas-burner.
The substance of the story is, that a Boston merchant proposed to gild the lamp over his street-door, but was dissuaded from so doing by the suggestion of a friend, that by savoring of aristocracy the ornamented gas-burner would offend the tyrannical people and provoke violence against it!
It was his delight to exercise on wing about the room, diving between the rounds of the ladder, darting under a stretched string or into a cage full dash. His feet found rest on any point, however small, the cork in a bottle, the tip of a gas-burner, or the corner post of a chair; nothing was too small or too delicately balanced for his light touch, and he never upset anything.
Giving the black door a vigorous push, he entered, and by the gas-burner on the first landing discovered that the postcript in his possession gave the state of the Liverpool cotton-market a day later than the body of the dispatch, which had already gone into type, and, what was more to the purpose, announced a rise of a penny-and-a-half on the pound.
Enemy or friend, I meant to be honest with him. It was some surprise to me, I must say, when he went on quietly with his work, moving from place to place, now at the gas-burner, now at his machine, just for all the world as though this visitation had not disturbed him. When he spoke it was to ask a question about Miss Ruth. "Mme. Czerny," said he, quietly; "there is a Mme. Czerny, then?"
She dropped her voice to a more confidential tone, although she and her mother were alone in the shop, where they were doing their evening's work by the aid of the one melancholy gas-burner, to which they restricted themselves after business hours. It gave insufficient light for the low-ceilinged, narrow length of the place.
We pushed through to the low-ceilinged back room, which was empty, and sat down at a table. Over a bottle of Albano's famous California "red ink" we sat silently. Kennedy was making a mental note of the place. In the middle of the ceiling was a single gas-burner with a big reflector over, it.
Another hour passed, and at last there began to be signs of life about the house. A light shone in one window and in another, and vanished, and soon the door opened and there appeared two people on the threshold, clearly visible in the light of a strong incandescent gas-burner just within the hall. The watcher in the garden moved a little to get a clearer view.
I had but a few steps to make to reach the gas-burner; these I made with the greatest caution, holding the creature in a grip like a vice. At last I got within arm’s length of the tiny speck of blue light which told me where the gas-burner lay. Quick as lightning I released my grasp with one hand and let on the full flood of light. Then I turned to look at my captive.
And as one humble gas-burner was totally insufficient to work by, I had a crown or rather a silver circlet made, each bud of which was a candlestick, and each had its candle burning, and those of the back row were a little higher than those of the front. And with this help I was able to work almost without ceasing.
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