Of course he wasn't to be found in Harlesden; he had left, I
was told, directly after the funeral. Everything in the house had been
sold, and one fine day Black got into the train with a small
portmanteau, and went, nobody knew where. It was a chance if he were
ever heard of again, and it was by a mere chance that I came across him
at last. I was walking one day along Gray's Inn Road, not bound for
anywhere in particular, but looking about me, as usual, and holding on
to my hat, for it was a gusty day in early March, and the wind was
making the treetops in the Inn rock and quiver. I had come up from the
Holborn end, and I had almost got to Theobald's Road when I noticed a
man walking in front of me, leaning on a stick, and to all appearance
very feeble. There was something about his look that made me curious, I
don't know why, and I began to walk briskly with the idea of overtaking
him, when of a sudden his hat blew off and came bounding along the
pavement to my feet. Of course I rescued the hat, and gave it a glance
as I went towards its owner. It was a biography in itself; a Piccadilly
maker's name in the inside, but I don't think a beggar would have picked
it out of the gutter. Then I looked up and saw Dr. Black of Harlesden
waiting for me. A queer thing, wasn't it? But, Salisbury, what a change! When I saw Dr. Black come down the steps of his house at Harlesden he
was an upright man, walking firmly with well-built limbs; a man, I
should say, in the prime of his life. And now before me there crouched
this wretched creature, bent and feeble, with shrunken cheeks, and hair
that was whitening fast, and limbs that trembled and shook together, and
misery in his eyes. He thanked me for bringing him his hat, saying, "I
don't think I should ever have got it, I can't run much now. A gusty
day, sir, isn't it?" and with this he was turning away, but by little
and little I contrived to draw him into the current of conversation, and
we walked together eastward. I think the man would have been glad to get
rid of me; but I didn't intend to let him go, and he stopped at last in
front of a miserable house in a miserable street. It was, I verily
believe, one of the most wretched quarters I have ever seen: houses that
must have been sordid and hideous enough when new, that had gathered
foulness with every year, and now seemed to lean and totter to their
fall. "I live up there," said Black, pointing to the tiles, "not in the
front--in the back. I am very quiet there. I won't ask you to come in
now, but perhaps some other day----" I caught him up at that, and told
him I should be only too glad to come and see him. He gave me an odd
sort of glance, as if he were wondering what on earth I or anybody else
could care about him, and I left him fumbling with his latch-key. I
think you will say I did pretty well when I tell you that within a few
weeks I had made myself an intimate friend of Black's. I shall never
forget the first time I went to his room; I hope I shall never see such
abject, squalid misery again. The foul paper, from which all pattern or
trace of a pattern had long vanished, subdued and penetrated with the
grime of the evil street, was hanging in mouldering pennons from the
wall. Only at the end of the room was it possible to stand upright, and
the sight of the wretched bed and the odour of corruption that pervaded
the place made me turn faint and sick. Here I found him munching a piece
of bread; he seemed surprised to find that I had kept my promise, but he
gave me his chair and sat on the bed while we talked. I used to go to
see him often, and we had long conversations together, but he never
mentioned Harlesden or his wife. I fancy that he supposed me ignorant of
the matter, or thought that if I had heard of it, I should never connect
the respectable Dr. Black of Harlesden with a poor garreteer in the
backwoods of London. He was a strange man, and as we sat together
smoking, I often wondered whether he were mad or sane, for I think the
wildest dreams of Paracelsus and the Rosicrucians would appear plain and
sober fact compared with the theories I have heard him earnestly advance
in that grimy den of his. I once ventured to hint something of the sort
to him. I suggested that something he had said was in flat contradiction
to all science and all experience. "No," he answered, "not all
experience, for mine counts for something. I am no dealer in unproved
theories; what I say I have proved for myself, and at a terrible cost. There is a region of knowledge which you will never know, which wise men
seeing from afar off shun like the plague, as well they may, but into
that region I have gone. If you knew, if you could even dream of what
may be done, of what one or two men have done in this quiet world of
ours, your very soul would shudder and faint within you. What you have
heard from me has been but the merest husk and outer covering of true
science--that science which means death, and that which is more awful
than death, to those who gain it. No, when men say that there are
strange things in the world, they little know the awe and the terror
that dwell always with them and about them." There was a sort of
fascination about the man that drew me to him, and I was quite sorry to
have to leave London for a month or two; I missed his odd talk. A few
days after I came back to town I thought I would look him up, but when I
gave the two rings at the bell that used to summon him, there was no
answer. I rang and rang again, and was just turning to go away, when the
door opened and a dirty woman asked me what I wanted. From her look I
fancy she took me for a plain-clothes officer after one of her lodgers,
but when I inquired if Mr. Black were in, she gave me a stare of another
kind. "There's no Mr. Black lives here," she said. "He's gone. He's dead
this six weeks. I always thought he was a bit queer in his head, or else
had been and got into some trouble or other. He used to go out every
morning from ten till one, and one Monday morning we heard him come in,
and go into his room and shut the door, and a few minutes after, just as
we was a-sitting down to our dinner, there was such a scream that I
thought I should have gone right off. And then we heard a stamping, and
down he came, raging and cursing most dreadful, swearing he had been
robbed of something that was worth millions. And then he just dropped
down in the passage, and we thought he was dead. We got him up to his
room, and put him on his bed, and I just sat there and waited, while my
'usband he went for the doctor.