It gave his fanciful mind a sinister feeling
of a blind growth without shape or purpose. A flower or shrub in the
West grows to the blossom which is its crown, and is content. But
this was as if hands could grow out of hands or legs grow out of
legs in a nightmare. "Always adding a province to the Empire," he
said, with a smile, and then added, more sadly, "but I doubt if I
was right, after all!"
A strong but genial voice broke in on his meditations and he looked
up and smiled, seeing the face of an old friend. The voice was,
indeed, rather more genial than the face, which was at the first
glance decidedly grim. It was a typically legal face, with angular
jaws and heavy, grizzled eyebrows; and it belonged to an eminently
legal character, though he was now attached in a semimilitary
capacity to the police of that wild district. Cuthbert Grayne was
perhaps more of a criminologist than either a lawyer or a policeman,
but in his more barbarous surroundings he had proved successful in
turning himself into a practical combination of all three. The
discovery of a whole series of strange Oriental crimes stood to his
credit. But as few people were acquainted with, or attracted to,
such a hobby or branch of knowledge, his intellectual life was
somewhat solitary.
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