I knew if it shut I could not again enter the
house, and I rushed madly toward it. I believe I even shouted out, as
though it were something human which I could compel to obey me, and
then I caught my foot against the curb and smashed into the sidewalk.
When I rose to my feet I was dizzy and half stunned, and though I
thought then that I was moving toward the door, I know now that I
probably turned directly from it; for, as I groped about in the
night, calling frantically for the police, my fingers touched nothing
but the dripping fog, and the iron railings for which I sought seemed
to have melted away. For many minutes I beat the mist with my arms
like one at blind man's buff, turning sharply in circles, cursing
aloud at my stupidity and crying continually for help. At last a
voice answered me from the fog, and I found myself held in the circle
of a policeman's lantern.
"That is the end of my adventure. What I have to tell you now is what
I learned from the police.
"At the station-house to which the man guided me I related what you
have just heard. I told them that the house they must at once find
was one set back from the street within a radius of two hundred yards
from the Knightsbridge Barracks, that within fifty yards of it
someone was giving a dance to the music of a Hungarian band, and that
the railings before it were as high as a man's waist and filed to a
point.
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