Page:Chesterton - The Club of Queer Trades.djvu/38

The Club of Queer Trades The next moment the pale major understood. It was the head of a man thrust through the coal-hole in the street. The next moment, again, it had vanished, and Major Brown turned to the lady. "Where's your coal-cellar?" he said, and stepped out into the passage.

She looked at him with wild, gray eyes. "You will not go down," she cried, "alone, into the dark hole with that beast?"

"Is this the way?" replied Brown, and descended the kitchen stairs three at a time. He flung open the door of a black cavity and stepped in, feeling in his pocket for matches. As his right hand was thus occupied, a pair of great, slimy hands came out of the darkness, hands clearly belonging to a man of gigantic stature, and seized him by the back of the head. They forced him down, down in the suffocating darkness, a brutal image of destiny. But the major's head, though upside-down, was perfectly clear and intellectual. He gave quietly under the pressure until he had slid down almost to his hands and knees. Then, finding the knees 24