《代号星期四》09第七章 德·沃姆斯教授的怪异行为（在线收听）

CHAPTER VII. THE UNACCOUNTABLE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR DE WORMS

 “SIT down!” said Sunday in a voice that he used once or twice in his life, a voice that made men drop drawn swords.

The three who had risen fell away from Gogol, and that equivocal person himself resumed his seat.

“Well, my man,” said the President briskly, addressing him as one addresses a total stranger, “will you oblige me by putting your hand in your upper waistcoat pocket and showing me what you have there?”

The alleged Pole was a little pale under his tangle of dark hair, but he put two fingers into the pocket with apparent coolness and pulled out a blue strip of card. When Syme saw it lying on the table, he woke up again to the world outside him. For although the card lay at the other extreme of the table, and he could read nothing of the inscription on it, it bore a startling resemblance to the blue card in his own pocket, the card which had been given to him when he joined the anti-anarchist constabulary.

“Pathetic Slav,” said the President, “tragic child of Poland, are you prepared in the presence of that card to deny that you are in this company—shall we say de trop?”

“Right oh!” said the late Gogol. It made everyone jump to hear a clear, commercial and somewhat cockney voice coming out of that forest of foreign hair. It was irrational, as if a Chinaman had suddenly spoken with a Scotch accent.

“I gather that you fully understand your position,” said Sunday.

“You bet,” answered the Pole. “I see it’s a fair cop. All I say is, I don’t believe any Pole could have imitated my accent like I did his.”

“I concede the point,” said Sunday. “I believe your own accent to be inimitable, though I shall practise it in my bath. Do you mind leaving your beard with your card?”

“Not a bit,” answered Gogol; and with one finger he ripped off the whole of his shaggy head-covering, emerging with thin red hair and a pale, pert face. “It was hot,” he added.

“I will do you the justice to say,” said Sunday, not without a sort of brutal admiration, “that you seem to have kept pretty cool under it. Now listen to me. I like you. The consequence is that it would annoy me for just about two and a half minutes if I heard that you had died in torments. Well, if you ever tell the police or any human soul about us, I shall have that two and a half minutes of discomfort. On your discomfort I will not dwell. Good day. Mind the step.”

The red-haired detective who had masqueraded as Gogol rose to his feet without a word, and walked out of the room with an air of perfect nonchalance. Yet the astonished Syme was able to realise that this ease was suddenly assumed; for there was a slight stumble outside the door, which showed that the departing detective had not minded the step.

“Time is flying,” said the President in his gayest manner, after glancing at his watch, which like everything about him seemed bigger than it ought to be. “I must go off at once; I have to take the chair at a Humanitarian meeting.”

The Secretary turned to him with working eyebrows.

“Would it not be better,” he said a little sharply, “to discuss further the details of our project, now that the spy has left us?”

“No, I think not,” said the President with a yawn like an unobtrusive earthquake. “Leave it as it is. Let Saturday settle it. I must be off. Breakfast here next Sunday.”

But the late loud scenes had whipped up the almost naked nerves of the Secretary. He was one of those men who are conscientious even in crime.

“I must protest, President, that the thing is irregular,” he said. “It is a fundamental rule of our society that all plans shall be debated in full council. Of course, I fully appreciate your forethought when in the actual presence of a traitor—”

“Secretary,” said the President seriously, “if you’d take your head home and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can’t say. But it might.”

The Secretary reared back in a kind of equine anger.

“I really fail to understand—” he began in high offense.

“That’s it, that’s it,” said the President, nodding a great many times. “That’s where you fail right enough. You fail to understand. Why, you dancing donkey,” he roared, rising, “you didn’t want to be overheard by a spy, didn’t you? How do you know you aren’t overheard now?”

And with these words he shouldered his way out of the room, shaking with incomprehensible scorn.

Four of the men left behind gaped after him without any apparent glimmering of his meaning. Syme alone had even a glimmering, and such as it was it froze him to the bone. If the last words of the President meant anything, they meant that he had not after all passed unsuspected. They meant that while Sunday could not denounce him like Gogol, he still could not trust him like the others.

The other four got to their feet grumbling more or less, and betook themselves elsewhere to find lunch, for it was already well past midday. The Professor went last, very slowly and painfully. Syme sat long after the rest had gone, revolving his strange position. He had escaped a thunderbolt, but he was still under a cloud. At last he rose and made his way out of the hotel into Leicester Square. The bright, cold day had grown increasingly colder, and when he came out into the street he was surprised by a few flakes of snow. While he still carried the sword-stick and the rest of Gregory’s portable luggage, he had thrown the cloak down and left it somewhere, perhaps on the steam-tug, perhaps on the balcony. Hoping, therefore, that the snow-shower might be slight, he stepped back out of the street for a moment and stood up under the doorway of a small and greasy hair-dresser’s shop, the front window of which was empty, except for a sickly wax lady in evening dress.

Snow, however, began to thicken and fall fast; and Syme, having found one glance at the wax lady quite sufficient to depress his spirits, stared out instead into the white and empty street. He was considerably astonished to see, standing quite still outside the shop and staring into the window, a man. His top hat was loaded with snow like the hat of Father Christmas, the white drift was rising round his boots and ankles; but it seemed as if nothing could tear him away from the contemplation of the colourless wax doll in dirty evening dress. That any human being should stand in such weather looking into such a shop was a matter of sufficient wonder to Syme; but his idle wonder turned suddenly into a personal shock; for he realised that the man standing there was the paralytic old Professor de Worms. It scarcely seemed the place for a person of his years and infirmities.

Syme was ready to believe anything about the perversions of this dehumanized brotherhood; but even he could not believe that the Professor had fallen in love with that particular wax lady. He could only suppose that the man’s malady (whatever it was) involved some momentary fits of rigidity or trance. He was not inclined, however, to feel in this case any very compassionate concern. On the contrary, he rather congratulated himself that the Professor’s stroke and his elaborate and limping walk would make it easy to escape from him and leave him miles behind. For Syme thirsted first and last to get clear of the whole poisonous atmosphere, if only for an hour. Then he could collect his thoughts, formulate his policy, and decide finally whether he should or should not keep faith with Gregory.

He strolled away through the dancing snow, turned up two or three streets, down through two or three others, and entered a small Soho restaurant for lunch. He partook reflectively of four small and quaint courses, drank half a bottle of red wine, and ended up over black coffee and a black cigar, still thinking. He had taken his seat in the upper room of the restaurant, which was full of the chink of knives and the chatter of foreigners. He remembered that in old days he had imagined that all these harmless and kindly aliens were anarchists. He shuddered, remembering the real thing. But even the shudder had the delightful shame of escape. The wine, the common food, the familiar place, the faces of natural and talkative men, made him almost feel as if the Council of the Seven Days had been a bad dream; and although he knew it was nevertheless an objective reality, it was at least a distant one. Tall houses and populous streets lay between him and his last sight of the shameful seven; he was free in free London, and drinking wine among the free. With a somewhat easier action, he took his hat and stick and strolled down the stair into the shop below.

When he entered that lower room he stood stricken and rooted to the spot. At a small table, close up to the blank window and the white street of snow, sat the old anarchist Professor over a glass of milk, with his lifted livid face and pendent eyelids. For an instant Syme stood as rigid as the stick he leant upon. Then with a gesture as of blind hurry, he brushed past the Professor, dashing open the door and slamming it behind him, and stood outside in the snow.

“Can that old corpse be following me?” he asked himself, biting his yellow moustache. “I stopped too long up in that room, so that even such leaden feet could catch me up. One comfort is, with a little brisk walking I can put a man like that as far away as Timbuctoo. Or am I too fanciful? Was he really following me? Surely Sunday would not be such a fool as to send a lame man?”

He set off at a smart pace, twisting and whirling his stick, in the direction of Covent Garden. As he crossed the great market the snow increased, growing blinding and bewildering as the afternoon began to darken. The snow-flakes tormented him like a swarm of silver bees. Getting into his eyes and beard, they added their unremitting futility to his already irritated nerves; and by the time that he had come at a swinging pace to the beginning of Fleet Street, he lost patience, and finding a Sunday teashop, turned into it to take shelter. He ordered another cup of black coffee as an excuse. Scarcely had he done so, when Professor de Worms hobbled heavily into the shop, sat down with difficulty and ordered a glass of milk.

Syme’s walking-stick had fallen from his hand with a great clang, which confessed the concealed steel. But the Professor did not look round. Syme, who was commonly a cool character, was literally gaping as a rustic gapes at a conjuring trick. He had seen no cab following; he had heard no wheels outside the shop; to all mortal appearances the man had come on foot. But the old man could only walk like a snail, and Syme had walked like the wind. He started up and snatched his stick, half crazy with the contradiction in mere arithmetic, and swung out of the swinging doors, leaving his coffee untasted. An omnibus going to the Bank went rattling by with an unusual rapidity. He had a violent run of a hundred yards to reach it; but he managed to spring, swaying upon the splash-board and, pausing for an instant to pant, he climbed on to the top. When he had been seated for about half a minute, he heard behind him a sort of heavy and asthmatic breathing.

Turning sharply, he saw rising gradually higher and higher up the omnibus steps a top hat soiled and dripping with snow, and under the shadow of its brim the short-sighted face and shaky shoulders of Professor de Worms. He let himself into a seat with characteristic care, and wrapped himself up to the chin in the mackintosh rug.

Every movement of the old man’s tottering figure and vague hands, every uncertain gesture and panic-stricken pause, seemed to put it beyond question that he was helpless, that he was in the last imbecility of the body. He moved by inches, he let himself down with little gasps of caution. And yet, unless the philosophical entities called time and space have no vestige even of a practical existence, it appeared quite unquestionable that he had run after the omnibus.

Syme sprang erect upon the rocking car, and after staring wildly at the wintry sky, that grew gloomier every moment, he ran down the steps. He had repressed an elemental impulse to leap over the side.

Too bewildered to look back or to reason, he rushed into one of the little courts at the side of Fleet Street as a rabbit rushes into a hole. He had a vague idea, if this incomprehensible old Jack-in-the-box was really pursuing him, that in that labyrinth of little streets he could soon throw him off the scent. He dived in and out of those crooked lanes, which were more like cracks than thoroughfares; and by the time that he had completed about twenty alternate angles and described an unthinkable polygon, he paused to listen for any sound of pursuit. There was none; there could not in any case have been much, for the little streets were thick with the soundless snow. Somewhere behind Red Lion Court, however, he noticed a place where some energetic citizen had cleared away the snow for a space of about twenty yards, leaving the wet, glistening cobble-stones. He thought little of this as he passed it, only plunging into yet another arm of the maze. But when a few hundred yards farther on he stood still again to listen, his heart stood still also, for he heard from that space of rugged stones the clinking crutch and labouring feet of the infernal cripple.

The sky above was loaded with the clouds of snow, leaving London in a darkness and oppression premature for that hour of the evening. On each side of Syme the walls of the alley were blind and featureless; there was no little window or any kind of eve. He felt a new impulse to break out of this hive of houses, and to get once more into the open and lamp-lit street. Yet he rambled and dodged for a long time before he struck the main thoroughfare. When he did so, he struck it much farther up than he had fancied. He came out into what seemed the vast and void of Ludgate Circus, and saw St. Paul’s Cathedral sitting in the sky.

At first he was startled to find these great roads so empty, as if a pestilence had swept through the city. Then he told himself that some degree of emptiness was natural; first because the snow-storm was even dangerously deep, and secondly because it was Sunday. And at the very word Sunday he bit his lip; the word was henceforth for hire like some indecent pun. Under the white fog of snow high up in the heaven the whole atmosphere of the city was turned to a very queer kind of green twilight, as of men under the sea. The sealed and sullen sunset behind the dark dome of St. Paul’s had in it smoky and sinister colours—colours of sickly green, dead red or decaying bronze, that were just bright enough to emphasise the solid whiteness of the snow. But right up against these dreary colours rose the black bulk of the cathedral; and upon the top of the cathedral was a random splash and great stain of snow, still clinging as to an Alpine peak. It had fallen accidentally, but just so fallen as to half drape the dome from its very topmost point, and to pick out in perfect silver the great orb and the cross. When Syme saw it he suddenly straightened himself, and made with his sword-stick an involuntary salute.

He knew that that evil figure, his shadow, was creeping quickly or slowly behind him, and he did not care.

It seemed a symbol of human faith and valour that while the skies were darkening that high place of the earth was bright. The devils might have captured heaven, but they had not yet captured the cross. He had a new impulse to tear out the secret of this dancing, jumping and pursuing paralytic; and at the entrance of the court as it opened upon the Circus he turned, stick in hand, to face his pursuer.

Professor de Worms came slowly round the corner of the irregular alley behind him, his unnatural form outlined against a lonely gas-lamp, irresistibly recalling that very imaginative figure in the nursery rhymes, “the crooked man who went a crooked mile.” He really looked as if he had been twisted out of shape by the tortuous streets he had been threading. He came nearer and nearer, the lamplight shining on his lifted spectacles, his lifted, patient face. Syme waited for him as St. George waited for the dragon, as a man waits for a final explanation or for death. And the old Professor came right up to him and passed him like a total stranger, without even a blink of his mournful eyelids.

There was something in this silent and unexpected innocence that left Syme in a final fury. The man’s colourless face and manner seemed to assert that the whole following had been an accident. Syme was galvanised with an energy that was something between bitterness and a burst of boyish derision. He made a wild gesture as if to knock the old man’s hat off, called out something like “Catch me if you can,” and went racing away across the white, open Circus. Concealment was impossible now; and looking back over his shoulder, he could see the black figure of the old gentleman coming after him with long, swinging strides like a man winning a mile race. But the head upon that bounding body was still pale, grave and professional, like the head of a lecturer upon the body of a harlequin.

This outrageous chase sped across Ludgate Circus, up Ludgate Hill, round St. Paul’s Cathedral, along Cheapside, Syme remembering all the nightmares he had ever known. Then Syme broke away towards the river, and ended almost down by the docks. He saw the yellow panes of a low, lighted public-house, flung himself into it and ordered beer. It was a foul tavern, sprinkled with foreign sailors, a place where opium might be smoked or knives drawn.

A moment later Professor de Worms entered the place, sat down carefully, and asked for a glass of milk.

第七章 德·沃姆斯教授的怪异行为

    “坐下！”星期天以他一生中仅用过一两次的嗓音说道，这种嗓音会让男士们放下拔出的剑。

    那三个站起来的男士从果戈理身边走开，而那个暧昧的人也回到他的座位上。

    “好，我的朋友，”星期天迅速说道，就像对陌生人一样朝他讲话，“劳您驾把你的手放进马甲上层口袋里，给我看看那里装着什么好吗？”

    这个长着乱糟糟黑发的可疑的波兰人脸色有点苍白了，不过他还是冷静地把两个手指伸进了口袋里，夹出来一张细长的蓝色卡片。当赛姆看见放在桌子上的卡片时，他又意识到了一个外在的世界。尽管卡片放在桌子的另一头，他也看不清印在上面的文字，但这张卡片却和他自己口袋里的蓝色卡片惊人地相似，这张卡片是在他加入反无政府主义警察机构时发给他的。

    “可悲的斯拉夫人，”主席说道，“波兰的可怜孩子，面对这张卡片，你还要否认你在这个组织里——实在是太过分了吧？”

    “对！”先前扮作果戈理的那个人说。听到那个长着森林似的外国头发的人发出清晰的、大众化的、带点伦敦腔的声音，每个人都吓了一跳。这是不可思议的，就像一句中国话突然搭上了苏格兰腔。

    “我想你完全理解你的处境。”星期天说道。

    “当然，”波兰人答道，“我要说我是一个诚实的警察。我要说的是，我认为没有一个波兰人能够模仿我的口音，就像我模仿他的口音一样。”

    “我相信藏书网这一点，”星期天说道，“我相信你的口音是无法模仿的，尽管我会在洗澡时练习。你介意把你的胡子和卡片一起留下吗？”

    “一点也不，”果戈理答道，他用一根手指把整个粗毛密布的头套扯了下来，露出了稀疏的红头发和一张苍白雅致的脸。“太热了！”他说。

    “为了还你一个公道，我要说的是，”星期天带着一种无可否认的赞美说道，“你似乎在头套下面还保持得了十分的冷静。现在听我说，我喜欢你，后果是如果我听说你在痛苦中死去，我会苦恼两分半钟。不错，如果你向警方或者任何人告发我们，我就会拥有那两分半钟的不适。我不会老是想着你的不适。日安。小心台阶。”

    这位冒充果戈理的红头发侦探一言不发地站起来，带着完全不在乎的神色走出了屋子。不过惊讶的赛姆却意识到这种轻松自在是装出来的，因为门外有轻微的跌倒声，这表明那位离去的侦探摔了一跤。

    “时间飞逝，”主席以他最快乐的风格说道，在这之前他瞟了一眼手表，跟他一样，这手表也大得离谱，“我必须马上离开，我要去主持一个人道主义者会议。”

    秘书看着他，眉毛动了动。“现在来进一步讨论我们计划的细节，”他有点严厉地说，“难道不是更好吗，既然间谍已经离开了我们？”

    “不，我反对，”星期天打着哈欠说，就像一次不起眼的地震，“先不要去管它。让星期六处理。我该走了。下星期天在这儿吃早餐。”

    可是刚刚发生的喧噪的场景使秘书几乎裸露的神经激动起来。他是一个即使是在犯罪，也很认真的人。“我必须抗议，主席，这件事不合规矩，”他说道，“我们团体的根本原则是所有计划都应当在全体会议中讨论。当然，我完全赞赏你的深谋远虑，在面对一个叛徒时——”

    “秘书，”星期天严肃地说道，“如果你把脑袋带回家煮成萝卜，它可能会有用。我不确定。但可能就是如此。”

    秘书像愤怒的马一样向后仰了一下。“我实在无法理解——”他要严重地冒犯星期天了。

    “确实，确实，”星期天无数次地点着头说，“那是你做不到的。你无法理解。那么，你这个手舞足蹈的猴子，”他站起来咆哮道，“你不想被间谍窃听，不是吗？你怎么知道你现在没被窃听？”

    说完他就大摇大摆地走出了屋子，因为不可思议的轻蔑而颤抖着。

    他身后有四位男士目瞪口呆，并不理解他的意思。只有赛姆听懂了，所以他有点毛骨悚然。如果星期天的最后一句话有所指的话，它的意思就是他一直被人怀疑；意思就是即使星期天无法像指控果戈理一样指控他，他也不会像相信其他人一样相信他。

    其余四个人站起来，嘴里或多或少地抱怨着，他们前往另一个地方去吃午餐，因为这时早已经过了中午。教授走在最后，又慢又难受的样子。赛姆在其他人走后很久还坐着，反复思考着自己奇怪的处境。他逃脱了一次雷击，可他还处在一朵乌云下。最后他站起来走出饭店，进入莱瑟斯特广场。晴朗的白天也相当的冷，当他在街上走时，他惊讶于几片飘扬的雪花。尽管他带着剑杖和格里高利其余便于携带的行李，但他的斗篷早不知遗留在什么地方了，可能是在拖船上，也可能是在饭店的阳台上。他一边盼望着雪能够下得小一点，一边走出街道，站在一家油晃晃的小美发店的门口。这家店前面的橱窗空荡荡的，只有一具穿着晚礼服的病态的女士蜡像。

    可是，雪下得越来越大，越来越快。赛姆明白，看一眼女士蜡像就足以使他意气消沉，所以他朝白色空旷的街道望去。他惊讶地看到，一个男子一动不动地站在店外朝橱窗里看。他的大礼帽像圣诞老人的帽子，上面落满了雪花，他脚边的白色雪堆越积越高；不过似乎没有任何东西可以阻止他凝视那具穿着脏兮兮的晚礼服的、苍白的蜡制玩偶。在那种天气里，有人会站着朝那家店张望足以令赛姆惊讶；但他的惊讶很快变成了一种震惊，因为他意识到站在那里的那个男子就是中风的德·沃姆斯教授。这根本不是像他这种年纪和病情的人待的地方。

    赛姆起先要相信这种错乱的丧失人性的手足情谊；但他还是无法相信教授会爱上那具女士蜡像。他只能猜想他的疾病（无论是什么病）会产生某种瞬间发作的僵硬或者发呆。然而，他不想体会这种强烈的怜悯和担心。相反，他很庆幸教授的中风状态和他吃力的跛行，会让他轻而易举地把教授甩到几英里之外。赛姆一直渴望摆脱那种有毒的氛围，即使只有一个小时也好。然后他就可以理清头绪，想出他的对策，最终决定是否信守对格里高利的承诺。

    他在飞舞的雪花中慢悠悠地走开了，先往北走过两三条街，又往南走过两三条街，最后走进了一家苏荷的小餐馆吃午饭。他思索着享受了四道奇特的小菜，喝了半瓶红酒，最后点上了一支黑雪茄，喝着黑咖啡，思考状态依旧持续。他坐在餐馆的二楼，这里充满了刀叉的叮当声和外国人的闲谈声。他记得，在以前他曾经想象过所有这些和蔼无害的外国人都是无政府主义者。他颤抖了一下，记起了现实的情况。但这种颤抖暗示了他开心的逃脱是一种耻辱。这酒，这普通的食物，这熟悉的地方，这些正常而健谈的人们的脸，使他几乎感到那个最高理事会只是一个噩梦；尽管他知道它是客观存在的，但它至少离他尚远。在他和他最后目睹的可耻的七人之间是高耸的房子和挤满人的街道；在自由的伦敦他是自由的，而且在自由的人们中间喝着酒。他轻松地拿起帽子和手杖走下楼梯到一楼店里。

    当他走进下面的房间时，他瞬时仿佛被击中般呆若木鸡。在紧挨着空荡荡的橱窗和白雪覆盖的街道的一张小餐桌旁，那位无政府主义老教授正坐在那儿喝牛奶，他青紫色的脸仰着，眼皮下垂。赛姆一度像他倚靠的那根手杖一样僵立着。然后他带着盲目往前冲的姿势，擦过教授身边，把门冲开又甩上，站在外面的雪中。

    “那个老棺材会跟踪我吗？”他咬着黄色的上唇胡子自问，“我在那个餐厅里待得太久了，以至于让那个脚步缓慢的家伙追上我。有一点值得安慰，那就是我再走得快一点话，就可以把那个家伙甩得远远的。或许是我太爱幻想了？他刚才真的是在跟踪我吗？星期天肯定不会傻乎乎地派一个跛子来跟踪我。”

    赛姆一边迈着敏捷的步子出发了，一边四处甩动着他的手杖，朝考文特花园走去。他穿过大市场时，雪下得更大了，令人盲目和漫无头绪，而下午也向夜晚靠近。雪片就像一群银色的蜜蜂困扰着他。它们飞入他的眼睛和胡子，不断地刺激着他已经恼怒的神经；当他摇晃着走到舰队街入口时，他失去了耐心，找了一家茶馆，走进去歇脚。为了找借口多待一会儿，他点了第二杯黑咖啡。话音未落，只见德·沃姆斯教授蹒跚着走进店里，费力地坐下，点了一杯牛奶。

    赛姆的手杖当的一声从他手里落到地上，这暗示里面潜藏着铁器。但教授没有四处张望。平常极为冷静的赛姆这时就像看到魔术的乡下人——目瞪口呆。他没看到有马车在后面跟着；他没听到店外有车轮声；从所有迹象中可以看到这家伙是步行来的。可是这个老家伙走起路来像个蜗牛，而他走起来像一阵风。赛姆猛地站起来拿上手杖，犹如对算术上的矛盾着了魔似的，迈出旋转门，没有喝一口咖啡。一辆开往岸边的巴士以一种不寻常的迅捷咔嚓咔嚓地开过。他拼命跑了一百码追上它；他跃起身，成功地抓住挡泥板，他的身子在挡泥板上摇晃着，片刻喘气之后，他爬到了上面的车厢。刚落座大约半分钟后，他听到身后一种沉重的气喘吁吁的呼吸声。

    他猛地转过身去，看见巴士台阶上一顶有泥污并淌着雪水的大礼帽慢慢冒出，帽檐的阴影下是德·沃姆斯教授近视的脸和摇晃的肩膀。他带着特有的小心坐到一个位子上，用一块橡皮布毯子把自己包裹得严严实实，一直到下巴。

    这个老人颤巍巍的身子和暧昧的双手的每一个举动，每一个含糊的手势和惊慌的停顿，似乎都毫无疑问地表明他是个废物，他正处于身体衰朽的最后时刻。他一点点地移动，坐下时带着微微的谨慎的喘息。然而，除非被称为时间和空间的哲学实体根本不存在，否则毫无疑问，他是追着巴士跑来的。

    赛姆在摇晃的车厢里蹿起身子，胡乱地看了一眼变得越来越阴暗的风雪交加的天空，跑下了台阶。他克制不住纵身飞跃的本能冲动。

    他晕头转向地没有回头看，却不假思索地跑进了舰队街旁的一所小院子里，就像一只兔子跑进了洞穴。他有一个模糊的念头，那就是如果这个诡秘的老家伙真的在跟踪他，那么在那些迷宫般的小街里很快就能甩掉他。他在那些更像是缝隙，而不是通道的弯曲的巷子里冲进冲出；在他转了大约二十个弯，跑了一个难以置信的多边形后，他停下来细听有没有追踪的声音。没有，无论如何都听不到什么声音，狭窄的街道上都落满了无声的雪花。可是，就在红狮园的后面，他注意到一个精力充沛的市民正在扫雪，清理出一块大约二十码的空地，只留下一些湿淋淋的闪光的鹅卵石。他经过这个地方时并不在意，就冲进了另一条迷宫般的街道。跑了几百码之后他又站住细听，这下他的心脏也凝固了，因为他听到那高低不平的石地上传来了那个恶魔般的跛子叮当的拐杖声和痛苦的脚步声。

    头上的天空充满了飘雪的云，这使黄昏时刻的伦敦过早显得阴沉和压抑。赛姆两边的小巷的围墙都难以辨认，而且毫无特色；墙上没有小窗，也没有任何的小眼。他再次感到一种冲出这迷宫式的街区，重新来到开阔的灯光照耀的大街的冲动。可是他躲躲闪闪地走了很长时间才来到大道上。他这一次是比预想的要走得远得多。他好像来到了巨大空旷的鲁嘉特马戏场，看到了耸立在天空中的圣保罗大教堂。

    他看到这些空旷的大路也吃了一惊，仿佛有一场瘟疫扫过全城。然后他告诉自己一定程度的空旷是正常的，空旷首先是因为这场危险而严重的暴风雪，其次是因为今天是星期天。想到星期天这个词，他就咬了一下嘴唇；这个词从今以后就像一个下流的双关语，被他使用。在一片白茫茫的大雪下，整个城市的天空变成了一种非常奇怪的绿色的微明，人们就像身处海底。圣保罗大教堂黑暗的圆顶后面压抑而阴沉的落日展现出烟雾似的邪恶色彩——病态的绿色，死气沉沉的红色，衰朽的青铜色，色彩鲜艳得足以突出雪的纯白色。但是映衬着这些沉闷的色彩，大教堂的黑色身躯拔地而起，在大教堂的顶上是凌乱泼洒的雪的污迹，雪似乎仍然紧握着阿尔卑斯山峰不放。雪花偶尔会落下来，但只是把大教堂的圆顶从上到下半个遮住，同时以完美的银色衬托出圆顶和十字架。赛姆看到此景，突然挺直了腰板，并且用剑杖不由自主地敬了个礼。

    他知道那个邪恶的家伙，他的影子，正在或快或慢地跟上来，可他不在乎。

    当天空变暗时，地球上的高处却很明亮，这似乎是人类信仰和勇气的标志。魔鬼们也许可以占领天堂，但他们控制不了十字架。他有一种新的冲动，要揭穿这个手舞足蹈、跳着脚追踪他的中风老头的秘密。于是他转身朝向马戏场的那个园子的入口，手里拿着剑杖，准备直面他的追踪者。

    德·沃姆斯教授慢吞吞地走过一条弯曲的巷子，他不自然的身躯映衬着一盏孤独的煤气街灯，不禁使人想起了儿歌中那位虚构的人物，“走了蜿蜒的一英里的驼背”。走了这么多迂回曲折的道路，他看起来就像散了架一样。他走得越来越近，灯光映照着他仰起的眼镜片以及他仰起的沉着的脸。

    赛姆等着他就像圣乔治等待恶龙，就像一个人等着最终的解释或者死亡。老教授走到他眼前，就像一个完全的陌生人又走过去，忧伤的眼睛一眨不眨。

    这种沉默且不期而至的装模作样令赛姆极为恼火，这家伙苍白的脸和他的仪态似乎在证明这场跟踪只是一起意外。赛姆升起一股介于痛苦和孩童式的嘲弄之间的激情，他胡乱地做了一个似乎要敲掉这个老家伙的帽子的手势，大喊了一句“快来抓我”，然后撒腿就跑过了白色空旷的马戏场。现在隐藏已不可能；转过头去，他看到这位老绅士的黑色身躯摇摇晃晃地迈着大步跟在他后面，似乎有意要赢一英里赛跑。但是安放在那个跳动身躯上的脑袋仍然苍白、严肃、像个教授，就像一个安放在丑角身体上的演讲者的脑袋。

    这场令人吃惊的追踪迅速穿过鲁嘉特马戏场，越过鲁嘉特山，绕过圣保罗大教堂，通过奇普赛德，赛姆记起了他所知的噩梦。然后，赛姆转身走向河边，最后几乎走下了码头，他看见一家低矮的亮着灯的酒馆的黄色窗格，于是疾步走进去点了啤酒。这是一个肮脏的小酒馆，零散地坐着几个外国水手，这是一个可以抽鸦片、动刀子的地方。

    过了一会儿，德·沃姆斯教授走了进来，小心翼翼地坐下，要了一杯牛奶。