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"Perhaps the smell of the paraffin candle spoiled the aroma of the opium," I suggested; to which Thorndyke made no reply but continued his inspection of the room, pulling out the drawer of the washstand which contained a single, worn-out nail-brush and even picking up and examining the dry and cracked cake of soap in the dish.
Some day these records may be made public, and then we shall read of happenings which will cause us to hold our breath, and our hair to bristle like a nail-brush. Who has not heard the story of the unarmed fishing boat which attacked a hostile periscope with nothing more formidable than a coal hammer, or the ex-fisherman who attempted to cloud Fritz's vision with a tar brush?
Her dress was whisked, as if for microscopic inspection; her face was washed; and her finger-nails were scrubbed with the hard convent nail-brush, until the disciplined little tips ached with a pristine soreness. And still there were hours to wait, and still the boat added up delays.
I put out all the little instruments for cleanliness and comfort which it contained: a nail-brush, a new toothbrush I always carry a selection of them about with me my nail-scissors, a nail-file, and sponges. I uncorked a bottle of eau de cologne, one of lavender-water, and a little bottle of new-mown hay, so that she might have a choice.
Then the scrubbing-room is entered, where, at a series of basins provided with running hot and cold water, whose faucets are turned by pressure with the foot so as to avoid any necessity for touching them with the hand, the hands are thoroughly scrubbed with hot water, boiled soap, and a boiled nail-brush.
But then a year ago he could still call up the horror of the communal plunge at his earlier lodgings: the listening for other bathers, the dodging of shrouded ladies in "crimping"-pins, the cold wait on the landing, the reluctant descent into a blotchy tin bath, and the effort to identify one's soap and nail-brush among the promiscuous implements of ablution.
Presently he came back on tip-toe, and whispered, "Why can't you talk lower, you young muff?" "Surely she can't hear, here up stairs?" "Can't she? That's all you know! She hears every word you say all over the place, I tell you." I went on "hard all" at the nail-brush for a minute or so in much perplexity. "Keep what you've got to say till you get outside.
Accordingly he proceeded to brush the bulb of the thumb with a well-soaked badger-hair nail-brush, and, having rinsed it in water, dried it with a silk handkerchief, and gave it a final rub on a piece of chamois leather.
The ash from his pipe fell on his coat, he would not brush it away; he had evidently given up the use of a nail-brush; his hair hung over his forehead; his untrimmed beard and whiskers stuck out round the big face which was flabby now, and unwholesome. Missing the luxuries from his table, he forgot the niceties he had hitherto observed there.
I cooked with one eye on the gas-stove and the other on Bryce. I had scarcely set to work before he wandered into the kitchen, found the nail-brush or whatever it was that the cook used for cleaning the pots, washed the black loam off the piece of wood which had so excited my curiosity earlier in the day, and then commenced to scrub it.
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