Page:Chesterton - The Club of Queer Trades.djvu/276

The Club of Queer Trades drearily demanding liberty, just as we had heard her demand it.

"Has anybody got a match?" said Rupert, grimly. "I fancy we have come pretty near the end of this business."

I struck a match and held it up. It revealed a large, bare, yellow-papered apartment with a dark-clad figure at the other end of it near the window. An instant after it burned my fingers and dropped, leaving darkness. It had, however, revealed something more practical—an iron gas-bracket just above my head. I struck another match and lit the gas. And we found ourselves suddenly and seriously in the presence of the captive.

At a sort of work-box in the window of this subterranean breakfast-room sat an elderly lady with a singularly high color and almost startling silver hair. She had, as if designedly to relieve these effects, a pair of Mephistophelean black eyebrows and a very neat black dress. The glare of the gas lit up her piquant hair and face perfectly against the brown background of the shutters. The 252