Doktor Glass Read Online Free PDF Page A

type of boat he saw, anything you can.” Langton read through the telegram sent from the TSC’s Labor Department, who agreed to “make themselves available for his inquiries.” “Tomorrow, we’ll pay a visit to the Span Company and see if they know about our friend.”
    “Can I drop you somewhere, sir?”
    Langton glanced to the clock on his wall: twenty minutes after four. He stood up and reached for his Ulster. “Thank you, no. I have business in Everton.”
    *  *  *
    T HE TERRACED HOUSE in Hamlet Street looked no different from its neighbors, or indeed from the hundreds of dwellings in the adjacent streets. Faced with yellow brick and sandstone lintels, it merged into the soot-laden smog that had descended over Liverpool. Isolated pools of yellow light glowed on either side of the road; the lines of gas lamps gave way to a sharper, whiter light farther on, where the main road electroliers stood.
    Langton paused at the front-garden gate and listened to the sound of a piano coming from some front room nearby; the same hesitant notes played over, obviously by a beginner, most probably a child. This area attracted ambitious families, those wishing to advance themselves. Families not so very different from Langton’s own.
    He rang the bell and saw a vague shape moving behind thestained-glass door panels. The maid who opened the door came from India or one of its colonial neighbors; the spot of red dye dabbed on her forehead contrasted with the white mob cap of her uniform. “Good evening, sir.”
    “Matthew Langton,” he said. “I have an appointment for six o’clock.”
    The maid stepped aside. “Please.”
    After Langton gave her his coat, hat, and gloves, the maid left him alone in the front sitting room, giving him time to take in the contorted furniture of teak and sandalwood, the tapestries and tassels, the vivid rugs laid one over the other. Tribal masks grinned at him from the walls. A swirl of rich odors clogged his throat: jasmine, lilies, orchids.
    Langton knew he’d made a mistake. The foreign maid, the room like a theater stage set, the overpowering fumes: All signaled artifice if not fraud. He opened the door, intending to leave, and found the maid about to enter. She blocked his escape. “Please, sir. This way.”
    He followed the maid down the short hallway. He would apologize for wasting the spiritualist’s time, perhaps give her a few shillings as compensation, then leave. This was obviously no place for him. His heart went out to gatekeeper Howard, who had found solace in all this pretense.
    The maid tapped at a door and ushered Langton inside. He had expected more of the same ornate decoration. Instead he stood in a bare, almost monastic room: a plain deal table with two hard chairs, one of which was occupied; a single electric lamp; bare floorboards whose polish reflected firelight.
    The woman at the table took his hand. “Inspector Langton? I’m Genny Grizedale.”
    “Mrs. Grizedale.” Langton shook her hand but didn’t sit down. “I fear I’ve made a mistake.”
    She smiled. “I’m sorry that Meera showed you into the sitting room; it gave you the wrong impression, I’m sure. You see, most of my visitorsexpect a certain…ambience. A certain spectacle. They would be disappointed if they saw this room, my real place of work. Sit, please. If only for the moment.”
    Langton tried to guess the woman’s age. Her stocky frame and heavy black clothes and cap, so reminiscent of Queen Victoria’s perpetual mourning, implied late middle age, but no lines or fatigue marked her youthful face.
    She smiled and said, “You are skeptical of my work.”
    “How do you know?”
    “By your expression and your movements, as well as your words.”
    “I’m not sure you can help me.”
    “You may be right,” Mrs. Grizedale said. “Shall we find out?”
    Another door opened to allow the maid in with a tray balanced in both hands. Langton caught a glimpse of a modern, gleaming kitchen