Page:Pain--Stories in the dark.djvu/72

THE GREEN LIGHT 'Let me have your best razor,' he said; 'my skin's tender; in fact, for the last two or three days I haven't been able to shave at all.'

He chatted with the barber about horse-racing, and said that he himself had a couple of horses in training. Then he inquired the way to Piccadilly, saying that he was a stranger in London, and seemed to take careful note of the barber's directions.

He walked briskly away from the shop towards his own house. A comfortable-looking, ruddy-faced woman was coming towards him. A shaft of green light from a chemist's shop-window fell full on her face as she passed, and the horror came back upon him. It was with difficulty that he checked himself from crying out. He hurried on, but that hideous light seemed to linger in his eyes and to haunt him.

'Keep quiet!' he kept saying to 68