Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 20, 2025
There were pots of pomade and face-cream, and nail-polish; bottles of hair-wash and tooth-wash; little boxes and brushes for the moustache, half a dozen gleaming razors, an array of brushes and combs and manicure-set in tortoise-shell with his crest in silver, bottles of scent with spray attachments; the onyx bowl of bath salts beside the hip-bath ready to be filled from the ewers of hot and cold water the Deanery, old-fashioned house, had but one family bath-room; the deep purple silk dressing-gown over the foot-rail of the bed, the silk pyjamas in a lighter shade spread out over the pillow, the silk underwear and soft-fronted shirt fitted with his ruby and diamond sleeve-links, hung up before the fire to air; the dinner jacket suit laid out on the glass-topped Chippendale table, with black tie and delicate handkerchief; the silk socks carefully tucked inside out, the glossy pumps with the silver shoe-horn laid across them.
There was an ingrain carpet on the floor of a green groundwork with pale-yellow flowers on it, of a genus known to no botanist. The tidies on the chair backs were so stiff with starch that it would be a punishment to lay one's head against them. On a little marble-topped table between the windows was something made of shells and seaweed in a glass-topped case.
Shaded lamps were suspended above it; and instruments, antiseptics, dressings, etc., were arranged upon a glass-topped table beside it. Secondly, I had a companion. Seated upon a similar bench on the other side of the room, was a heavily built man, his dark hair splashed with gray, as were his short, neatly trimmed beard and mustache.
He pulled at his choking collar, looked at his watch, opened the window to stare down at the street, looked at his watch, tried to read the evening paper lying on the glass-topped bureau, looked again at his watch. Three minutes had gone by since he had first looked at it. And he waited for three hours. He was sitting fixed, chilled, when the doorknob turned. Paul came in glowering.
After all, he felt, it was hopeless to think of deceiving these sleuth-hounds of the Law: this detective had been making inquiries, and identified him as the man who had shared the hansom with that statue! His knees trembled as he stood behind his glass-topped counter. "Come to make the search, sir?" he said, as cheerfully as he could. "You'll find us ready for you."
There were the vast yellow-brick, glass-topped structures of which he had seen but the ends. And there was the street up which he had looked for so many weeks, flanked by rows of offices and dressing rooms, and lively with the passing of many people. He drew a long breath and became calculating. He must see everything and see it methodically.
Yet occasionally, when two or three post-captains, contemporaries and fleet-mates, gathered here to smoke after-dinner cigars, the host would unlock the glass-topped table, select some object from his miscellany, and hold it up with a "D'you remember ?" And one or other of his guests sometimes all of them would laugh and nod and blow great clouds of smoke and slide into eager reminiscence.
The hands, whose fingers thrummed on the glass-topped desk, were soft, warm-looking, and always moist, with a dampness that on contact made you feel vaguely that you had touched oil and you had. Both of the other men were beardless, but one had the ghost of a moustache on his upper lip. He was dapper, clean and deferential.
The hotel manager's desk, wheeled out in front of a crackling wood-fire in the ornate little lobby, was studded with its row of electric call-buttons; a railroad dining-car crew had taken possession of the kitchen; and the spacious writing-and lounging-room, sacred, in the season, to the guests of the exclusive hotel, housed a ranking of glass-topped telegraph-tables and impromptu desks a work-room manned by a dozen picked young men, with O'Brien, the vice-president's private secretary, acting as the chief.
He took his place among the cases of stuffed humming birds and glass-topped tables of curios, among the brocade curtains with shaped vallances and golden tassels, among the chandeliers and lacquered cabinets and cages of avadavats, sitting there like a great Buddha while he chatted to the two old ladies of a society that seemed to Mark as remote as the people in Pelleas and Mélisande.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking